"I'm in, but isn't there any way to just have him arrested?"
After that dream, the idea of killing again left a sour taste in Ken's mouth.
"If he claimed it was all coincidence, we wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on."
It didn't matter, did it? He'd opted in, as he always did. Ken the dependable. He hadn't been the one to kill the target, Aya had, and Sakura had seen him – now they were wondering whether she was a liability. A sweet, innocent girl like that, a liability!
Ken had serious trouble not hating himself, sometimes.
Schreient had been there, and Ken mused on this as he walked the cracked, warm sidewalk toward the park. He had no idea what the sudden reoccurrence of those four women in their lives might mean, only that the sight of them had kindled a rage in his mind that frightened him. Fortunately, they had not stayed to fight. The target had been more important, and he had been destroyed. And now Ken… Ken… he was confused. It felt like all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. The construction was still going on, so he veered away.
He had passed the Buddha before he remembered why he should be avoiding the south end of the park.
He paused and looked back, suddenly expecting – no, hoping – that Farfarello was there. Maybe Ken could ask him about Schreient, see what their involvement was in this, find out something of Eszet's plans….
Farfarello wasn't there.
Ken didn't understand the sinking feeling in his heart. After all, he shouldn't want to see the Schwarz psycho, really. One moment of lucidity did not redeem the man for a lifetime of murder. But Ken almost felt… he almost felt….
"You look disappointed."
He turned so fast he lost his balance. It didn't matter. A pale, scarred hand on his shoulder held him. He looked up into a single amber eye.
"You wished to speak with me, Siberian?"
"Jei." He couldn't help it. It slipped out. Ruth's voice, all the things she had said, had been heavy on his mind of late, and that dream, with Farfarello's childhood self in it, had reappeared during his nighttime sleep. He realized his mistake instantly. Farfarello's other hand came up and Ken tried to jerk back, but he was too slow.
Farfarello took his other shoulder and set up back on his feet. "You speak to a ghost," he told Ken matter-of-factly. "Jei has been dead for these sixteen years. He will not answer you."
Ken spent a moment wondering why he wasn't dead, then dismissed it as unimportant. "G-gomen," he murmured, not sure why he was apologizing. Something in the madman's face seemed to require it. He looked patient, but vaguely affronted. "Farfarello."
Farfarello nodded and took a step back, head twisting, birdlike, as he craned his neck to look up at the trees. It was a slightly cloudier day, and the sunlight did not make magic patterns as they had the last time they had met here. He was wearing loose black cargo pants, Ken noticed, and a dark green t-shirt with English script on it. Ken couldn't read English.
"What does that say?" he wondered, then silently cursed himself. How was it that every time he ran into Farfarello, he forgot who he was talking to?
"Kiss me, I'm Irish," Farfarello replied, utterly deadpan. Ken gaped for a moment, and Farfarello turned his gaze back to him, shrugging once. "Schuldich gave it to me."
"Er… I'm not going to kiss you," Ken said, not understanding.
Farfarello merely looked at the trees again. He did not seem to deem that worthy of a reply.
"Ano," Ken murmured, stepping in closer to him. It would have seemed like a suicidal move, but Farfarello seemed so calm right now, so distant, so… he didn't have a word for it. He was something OTHER. He existed in a world Ken couldn't comprehend. Besides, he didn't want this conversation to be overheard. "Are you allowed to talk to me?"
"God makes laws," Farfarello told him. "And man makes laws. If I feel free to disobey the laws of God, why should I heed the laws of the Oracle, who is a man?"
"Doesn't he punish you?"
"To the best of his ability," Farfarello said. "But he can do nothing to me that I have not already endured. Are you allowed to talk to me?" he inquired suddenly, golden eye sharp. "Will Kritiker punish you?"
"They would if they knew about this," Ken said softly. "I should be… I don't know, trying to kill you right now, I suppose."
"Then try," Farfarello invited. Ken looked him over briefly, doubt showing clearly on his face. He couldn't see any evidence that Farfarello was armed.
"No," he decided.
"Why not?" Farfarello's voice was almost childlike in its inquisitiveness, and Ken looked away.
"I don't like to kill," he murmured.
Farfarello shook his head. "That is only half true," he said mildly.
Ken's head jerked up. "NANI?"
"I said…."
"I know what you said!" Damn. He could hear the desperation in his voice. Why did the conversation have to turn back to HIM? "I… I thought you didn't lie."
"I do not," Farfarello told him, eye narrowing and lips twisting in sadistic amusement. Ken saw a glint of the Farfarello he knew, the mad psychopath, and he tensed. "But you do. You lie to yourself. Self-deception is the worst of all deceptions. It gives us an illusion of false reality that can be fatal or damning, or both."
"I don't LIKE killing," Ken growled under his breath, fist clenching. "I hate it."
"Ken Hidaka hates killing," Farfarello told him, head tilting. "But the tiger lusts for blood. There is a more essential nature to you underneath the peaceful big-brother who likes children and soccer. But that is normal."
"What do you know about normal?" Ken wondered harshly, but Farfarello seemed unwilling to take the bait.
"I know that man is a being of two natures," he said, "the fleshly nature and the spiritual nature. The spiritual nature is pure, but the fleshly nature hungers for the things of the world, the things which are corrupted and wicked. And sometimes the fleshly nature remembers its commonality with beasts and devils, and hungers for things of hell, also. Paul did not address this," he said in a mildly disapproving tone.
Ken blinked. He hadn't understood most of that. "What are you talking about?"
"I am talking about the difference between the flesh of which you are made, and the spirit by which you are animated," Farfarello said with sudden ferocity, stepping toward Ken, his hands still loose at his side, but his entire frame filled with a graceful, coiled sort of power. He was skinny, Ken realized, but he was STRONG. "The flesh of which you are made came from the earth. It is the animal side of you. The side that hunts and kills. But the spirit which animates you came from GOD. It is a spark of divinity within you that is your life and breath. It is holy… or was once holy, but it was corrupted by the flesh. The spirit feels and knows, but the flesh hungers and wants. And the combination is man, who has both animal lust, and the intelligence to discern ways to satisfy it. For we know the difference between good and evil," Farfarello murmured, and Ken realized the madman was taller than him by a good four centimeters. "And we are made in His likeness, more potent than angels or demons, with the potential to be better – or worse – than either."
"I don't understand," Ken said softly. Farfarello was raving, he thought absently, he had to placate him somehow or he wouldn't leave this spot alive. "I'm not into religious things."
"It is simple," Farfarello said just as quietly, and his voice was soothing, musical, making Ken forget the outside world to concentrate on it. Madness? Who in hell had first thought Farfarello was mad? He had too much charisma for his own good, but was he really mad? "There is Hidaka Ken, and there is Siberian. Spirit and Flesh. You say you do not like to kill, but that is only a half-truth – Hidaka Ken does not like to kill, but Siberian LOVES it."
Oh. So there it was. Ken was having trouble breathing. He should protest that, he thought, but Farfarello's eye had captured his and staring into that single golden orb, it felt like all the veils were stripped away, like the other man could see to the depths of his soul and what he found there amused him. There was no hiding, no lying, not even for his own sake. Deep inside his soul, the tiger recognized its own and growled.
"You know," he heard himself saying nonsensically, "the Siberian is also a breed of tame housecat."
"No cat is truly tame," Farfarello told him, smirking darkly. "Every cat is a predator, and a cruel one. They hunt when they are not hungry, hurt other creatures out of curiosity, and torment their food even when they do not intend to eat it. They hide sharp talons in padded paws and twitch their tails lazily, and all the time they watch you, they are sizing you up. Is it evil to be a predator? Is it wrong?"
"It's wrong if you're a human," Ken insisted, "And you know better. There are better ways."
"In Paradise, there was a better way for all creatures, but The Fall brought with it hunger and appetites for the flesh of fellow creatures. Sin, then, is not restricted to man alone, but covers the world in which he lives. All we do affects everything around us, is it not so?"
"I… suppose."
"So, then," Farfarello followed up, circling Ken slowly, "if a predatory nature came upon the beasts when sin entered the world, is such a nature not related to sin and therefore, by association, sinful?"
"I don't…."
"So being a predator IS wrong," Farfarello concluded. "It is evil. It is as wrong and evil for a praying mantis to eat an aphid as it is wrong and evil for you to kill Dark Beasts as it is for me to kill His flock. In the eyes of God, all sin is equal, and the world, including the dumb beasts, is damned."
Ken felt dizzy. "What's the point of this?"
"The point," Farfarello said softly, circling back around to the front so Ken could see him – he had not been turning with the psychopath, he realized. He had presented him his unguarded back. What in the hell was wrong with him? "The point is that we are not so different. You and I, Weiss and Schwarz, Farfarello and Siberian. The line separating our souls, and our actions, is thin, and red, and fragile. It is the line of motive, but motive is subjective and inconstant. In many ways that matter, we are the same."
Ken shook his head. "No. No, we're different from you. You try to hurt people. We want to keep people safe. We do this so good people can live without fear and be happy."
"But they do not live without fear," Farfarello pointed out. "And they are not happy. So, what good do you do? Your mission is to prevent pain, but you don't understand the nature of it. Pain is a state of grace!"
"You think that because you don't feel any," Ken retorted, and from the look on Farfarello's face, he knew he'd scored a hit.
He wished he hadn't.
"You are right. I am cast out," Farfarello agreed quietly, his voice a soft study in mutiny. "But it goes further than that. However, I think I have showed you enough for today."
"Showed me enough? What did you show me? Nothing you say makes sense!" Ken protested.
"It makes perfect sense, because it is perfect truth," Farfarello contradicted him. "I am showing you truth. At the moment, you refuse to accept it because the sweet lies you have heard all your life still clamor inside you and drown it out. But when I have shown you enough, they will one by one be thrown into silence and you will SEE, and see truly."
"I don't want to see the world the way you see it," Ken told him firmly, fist clenching. "I wouldn't want to live in a place that twisted."
"I am insane because I realized the truth all at once," Farfarello told him. "Twice, this has happened to me, and twice my world has been shattered. Why should you be exempt? You should be grateful. I am exposing you slowly. You will not shatter as I did. Are you afraid of going mad?"
"I'm not going mad," Ken ground out through gritted teeth.
Farfarello eyed him quietly. "All of you are," he replied eventually. "Some faster, some slower, some more directly, but you are all going insane. You think it is the strain of killing that unbalances your mind, darker urges warring with the light. But that is not the reason. The reason you go insane is the lies you tell yourself to hide from yourself what you really are."
"Like you lied to yourself for sixteen years?" Ken shot back.
Farfarello merely nodded. "Yes. Like that. Consider it." He offered Ken a crooked sort of smile. "Don't I seem saner now?"
Ken paused. He considered it. He shook his head. "I don't really know what you were like before. I only saw you when you were on missions. We had to fight then."
"Yes," Farfarello agreed, "but what you saw was almost all there was. I had lost myself in my own delusion, but part of me knew the truth. The screaming between them drowned out everything else until the lies were suddenly silenced. Yes, the shock of it fractured me more. But now, I can also hear myself think. And," he said gravely, "it is a great improvement."
"I'm sure," Ken said faintly.
Farfarello became distracted by the fluttering of a bird in one of the trees that sent a few leaves drifting to the ground. It gave Ken a moment to catch his breath and break the trance the last few minutes had held over him. What the hell had he gotten himself into? His stomach was twisting, and he felt like he might be ill, but he held it down, rubbing it idly with one hand through his soccer jersey.
"Do you still hate God?" he wondered when he found his tongue again. Farfarello had prowled over to where the leaves had fallen, his bare feet silent on the grass as he moved in his peculiar, off-balance way. "Do you still want to kill Him?"
"There are many things I was wrong about," Farfarello said, picking up a leaf and rubbing it between two fingers. His skin rasped softly against its velvet underside. "But the nature of God was not one of them. My reasons have changed, but the hatred remains. I will still destroy Him."
Ken nodded. He didn't know what else to say, or do. "You're so confusing," he muttered, rubbing his forehead idly. He could feel the beginning of a headache coming on.
"It's because you're stubborn," Farfarello replied, and to Ken's shock, he was smirking. "But you have had enough today, and you are not the philosophical type in any case. I will go," he said, and stepped back toward the trees.
"Wait." Ken blinked. "What?"
"You are going to be late," came the taunting sing-song, and with a glance at his watch, Ken realized the truth of it.
"SHIT." He whirled and took off running for the field. It wouldn't do to keep his kids and their parents waiting. He was so frantic at the realization of how much time had passed, that he didn't remember until after practice when he passed the empty bench on the way home that he hadn't asked Farfarello a single thing he'd planned on asking him. Nothing about Schreient, nothing about Schwarz, nothing about Eszet.
Damn, Ken thought, staring at the bench, tucked away in the shadow of the Buddha. He got me again.
X-X-X-