When did everything go wrong?

"You were doing what?"

Schuldig stood at the door of their new two bedroom apartment. It had been almost a month since Crawford had signed up as a permanent fighter at the downtown boxing club. The money he earned was enough to house them, clothe them, and in Farfarello's case, medicate them.

Three days ago a television and cable hook-up had been installed in the flat, and now Schuldig was checking prices for a personal computer - it was an economically sound investment... think of all the money Crawford could save buying the German a lifetime membership to Wet-Naked.com instead of having to pay a weekly cost for Playboy, Naughty Man, Playgirl, and Horses Clowns and Leather magazine? Think of all the paper they would save, it would be environmentally friendly.

A large portion of Crawford's pay check went towards aspirin.

Nagi slithered into the dining room, a carton of noodle soup cradled under his chest. He rolled up the pasta with his chop sticks and slurped them down. Crawford and Schuldig were fighting...again. Schuldig stood at the door, gesturing wildly, looking ready to bolt... again. Farfarello was sitting in the living room, back towards them, nervous and rocking himself... again.

The louder Crawford and Schuldig screamed, the harder he rocked.

It seemed like a normal afternoon to Nagi.

The two 'grown-ups' began circling each other, fists balled. Then Crawford suddenly snapped, turning to yell at Schuldig in English. Schuldig responded immediately and Nagi had to cross his eyes to keep up.

"Wait..." The child finally said, silencing them with his tiny voice. He turned confused eyes at Schuldig. "You did... who... with what?"

From the living room, Farfarello stopped rocking and made a noise that might have been a cackle.

Schuldig fought it, but a smirk crept up his face. And somehow, Crawford managed to look more annoyed than before.

"Mr. Breadwinner here," Schuldig snapped, voice lowering to that lazy seductive drawl it always plunged to when he was being especially sarcastic. His eyelids drooped to half cover emerald orbs, giving him a placid but sinister appearance. His arm moved in time with his speech, waving at Crawford like a game show host did a new car, "with his HONEST job and HONEST money doesn't approve of me..."

His hand came too close to Crawford's face and the American slapped it away.

Nagi placed the lid of his soup to his lips and swallowed the remaining broth. "What?" He asked dully, in the same tone he would use to ask about the weather, "You're soliciting your body for money?"

Any normal person might have sputtered at hearing a eight-to-ten year-old come to such a conclusion. Crawford just responded dryly. "He's selling drugs."

Both Nagi and Schuldig failed to see the problem.

"Which means, he's also taking drugs."

"Am not!" The fourteen-year-old protested.

Crawford grabbed him and tore off his jacket. He raised Schuldig's pale arm up to the light, motioning to the puncture wounds dotting it.

Nagi's eyes narrowed.

Schuldig launched into justification. "Freckles? I am a red head."

Nagi glared.

"Ticks?"

"Schuldig, that's dangerous." Nagi responded quietly, he seemed sullen.

"Drugs are bad." Farfarello supplied helpfully from the couch. The yelling had stopped, he could go back to watching TV.

"No, Farfarello, in your case, drugs are good. Drugs keep you from believing a rare African wasp fly has laid eggs underneath your skin and is hatching." Crawford corrected.

His silver head turned and regarded the others. "Drugs are bad." He said again.

The whole family was against him. A dark sensation twisted in his chest. Schuldig's head lowered until it was almost touching his neck. He slipped away, grabbing his coat and pulling it over his lanky form before Crawford could turn around and even notice he was leaving. The American stuttered his name, but his words were caught by the sound of a door slamming.

Fuck them. All of them.

Wait. Did he just call them family?


=======================================================================


America. Crawford. Drugs. Schuldig. Hopelessness, Farfarello.

The pint-sized Asian couldn't take it anymore. Day after day he spent cooped up in that house, usually on the couch, sometimes on the balcony. The television had to be almost muted until mid-afternoon, as he was the only one awake in the morning. Crawford worked nights and always took Farfarello with him, and now Schuldig, having less attacks than before - weaker memories and invasions, horrible, horrible boughts of confusion that sent a chill down Nagi's spine - was beginning to leave every night too, usually half an hour after Crawford.

And Nagi was alone. Terribly alone.

"Nagi." Crawford appeared out of thin air. The American knelt down against the back of the couch and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. Nagi jumped at the contact and turned large, endless blue eyes towards him.

For a moment Crawford was very uncomfortable.

"I have a meeting in an hour... there will be a big tournament this weekend with some betters coming from Sweden and Switzerland, but, ah..."

Crawford was actually searching for words, he marveled.

"I was thinking... tomorrow... you and I could go downtown and stock up on the week's groceries. We could, if we had time, go to some department stores. Schuldig needs some new pants... he's grown almost an inch in the last two weeks."

Normally Schuldig and Farfarello did the shopping, Crawford stayed home in bed and reserved his energy. He never talked about going to America. And he was becoming old, fast, and tired, like a man who had won something spectacular, golden, but was now standing back and watching that thing slowly fade; loose its sheen.

He never had time for Nagi.

Nagi wanted to argue that they would need Schuldig to come along to buy the new pants, and he would probably want to pick out his own, alone, with some of his new druggy pals and trashy girlfriends. But instead he just mutely nodded, face red.

Crawford squeezed his shoulder and walked off. A moment later, he was gone from the apartment.

Nagi's spirits soared.

A moment later, Farfarello crawled into his room, sat himself neatly on the child's bed, and asked Nagi to undo the lacing on his straight jacket.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two boys perched on the roof of the opposing apartment building. Crimson and obsidian eyes zoned in on the American Oracle, heading to work or where ever he went pass "Area 2", which was assigned for Nigel to monitor. Talbot and Valentine's job at the moment was to keep watch over the Schwartz boy's home, report who was coming and who was going.

Boring stuff.

"We could just get a rocket launcher and blow it up." Talbot suggested in a voice of soft dementia.

Valentine sniggered and returned to his novel. He spent most of his guard duty reading or napping, his loyalty and dedication to Sazha and his hair brain orders - watch them, protect them, film them - was frail. This was just a vacation to the Talent, a day pass from Rosenkreuz and studies.

Talbot turned to him. "Want to have sex?"

Below them, the porch glass to Crawford's apartment slide open and Farfarello slinked out, holding a VCR above his head. Before he could cast it out over the railing into the crowd underneath, Nagi swooped out, screamed something in Japanese, and slowly dragged Farfarello back inside.

The mad Irish boy appeared to be cackling.

Talbot's head tilted in the other direction, towards the small strip of shops that laid beyond the apartment complex, "Oh look Val..." He sang, "someone just opened a flower shop."