A Weiß Mary Sue

Written by Sakki

I'm back from Germany and full of nothing! But I didn't see Schu, so I weep.

.-.-

Aya did not receive a phone call that day, although that may have been because he unplugged his phone as soon as he got back. Really, nothing happened at all after he got back to the flower shop and away from a hysterical Mary Sue. It went from being a hectic, squeal-filled maelstrom of events to a pile of blah in a matter of hours.

Well, all right, only one hour. Ken managed to peel Mary Sue away from him with the 'he's probably tired, he spends most of his time at the hospital completely awake, we should let him sleep' train of thought, which she readily accepted. He managed to turn down all her offers of soup and a massage as well, claiming exhaustion to the point of collapse. She'd escorted him to his room to make sure he didn't fall asleep on the stairs and break his neck, then headed back downstairs to do whatever it was she did with her spare time, leaving Aya alone in his dark and gloomy bedroom.

Or rather, just dark. It wasn't particularly gloomy at the moment, but he imagined it was whenever he was in it.

After some hours of tossing and turning and brief interludes with the Sandman, Aya lay flat on his back and stared at the ceiling. Nothing particular was going through his mind. Occasionally he thought about Mary Sue, or his sister, or, to his dismay, Crawford, but generally little things just floated in front of his consciousness, asked if he needed tea, and then faded politely from view. It was really quite pleasant.

Eventually, his eyelids lowered, and as the latest proposition for tea faded from his mind's eye, he thought that perhaps Joe would like to go out for beer and an art fair tomorrow, and afterwards the boat would rise to the sky and

WHOOMPH.

Aya wheezed and stared into the bright but uncaring eyes of Seven, who had landed gracefully on his ribcage.

"Stupid...cat!" he snarled, his chest heaving. He reached out and attempted to lift Seven up in order to throw him off the bed, but like comfortable cats everywhere Seven set all his weight into his rear end, rendering any efforts to move him void. Aya, having never actually owned a cat, didn't realize this until his arms started to ache.

He gave up and fell back, giving Seven one of his Looks. Seven ignored him and lay down, paws practically on Aya's neck, tail swishing from side to side lazily. Silence prevailed.

And prevailed.

And prevailed.

"What do you want?" Aya asked finally, unable to get back to sleep with claws this close to his jugular.

Seven meowed loudly and moved his paws to Aya's collar.

"I don't speak cat."

"Roowwwrrl."

"I just said - "

"Hisssss."

"Fine, sit there! I don't care, you only weigh forty pounds."

Seven started to purr then, but as Seven was a rather large cat it was more like a deep and noiseless rumbling. Aya felt it in his chest, and it was really quite soothing, once you got over the feeling of vibrating fur.

It was so powerful, he thought he could feel it all the way down to his legs, even.

Then he realized that he could only feel it in one leg, and really only in his pocket area, specifically. It was a high-pitched sort of vibrating, kind of like a cell phone. But Aya didn't have a cell phone, and even if he did, he wouldn't keep it in his pocket.

But these aren't your pants, are they? asked Seven nonchalantly.

There was rumbling.

In a very much resigned way, Aya reached down into the pocket of Crawford's pants that was the source of the lower rumbling and drew out what he most feared. It was small, silver, and nearly looked like a slightly oversized cigarette lighter.

The word 'Nokia' was emblazoned on the front in shiny holographic letters.

Slowly, he opened it and put it to his ear.

"...hello?"

"So you picked up. I'm glad to hear it."

"Crawford, why did you give me a cell phone?" asked Aya, closing his eyes and covering them with his free hand.

"I didn't give it to you. That one is mine. I just put it in the pocket so I could contact you."

"Why didn't you just call the shop?"

"You pulled out the cord in your room. I didn't think you wanted one of your housemates to answer when I called."

"You know too much."

"It comes with seeing the future."

"What do you want, then?" He looked at the clock by his bed and grimaced; it read 4.43 PM.

"I have a plan for tomorrow."

"For what?"

"A last strike. I want to get rid of her now."

"Why? You seem to like dragging this out and watching me suffer."

"As much as I 'enjoy' taking advantage of you " - at this Aya snarled, and nearly had his throat cut by a startled Seven - "things have started happening beyond my control and I want them to stop."

"Like what?"

"Schuldig demanding temporary paid leave to find his own house so he can propose to her and have a place for them to live in happily ever after."

Seven stared at Aya's face, intrigued by the way he was changing color so fast.

"I'll take it by your silence that you're contemplating either suicide or breaking into uncontrollable laughter. I'm trying to stop myself from pulling off the former. I will meet you at your shop tomorrow, at around six at night. I want you to tell her that you have a confession to make - admit your feelings to her, tell her your problems, look for a shoulder to cry on, I don't care. But get her to come to your room at 6.30. If this doesn't kill her, I'll give you a gun and you can perform that murder-suicide you've always wanted."

The call ended. Aya looked at the blinking numbers on the screen, shut the cellphone, and pulled his pillow over his face.

.-.-

The morning dawned like a great new fish.(1)

Aya had managed to fall asleep at about 9.30 the previous night, after sneaking downstairs to get dinner and finding, to his relief, that Mary Sue was nowhere to be found. The only life forms around at that point were Seven, who was lying on the kitchen table, and the teriyaki chicken hidden behind several beer cans in the refrigerator, which had been Ken's most recent attempt at cooking something from scratch.

After wolfing down a rather old takeout bento, he'd stolen back into his room and attempted to get some sleep. Whatever Crawford's last-ditch plan was, it couldn't be good, and it was probably going to scar him for life. And if it didn't work, this was going to be his last night alive, so hey, might as well get some decent sleep for once.

When he finally opened his eyes and didn't feel a horrible burning on his retinas, he pulled himself into a sitting position. The clock on the bedside table read 6.42 AM.

Twelve hours until doomsday.

Brushing cat hair off his shirt, Aya climbed off his bed and fumbled around until he found something decent in his dresser. It appeared that someone had gone through all his clothes, washed them, hung-dried them, folded them store-style, and put them back, then organized them by color, shape, size, and starting letter of the alphabet. He lifted out a pair of pants and sniffed them carefully.

The scent of hydrangeas hit him full in the face.

He shoved them back into their drawer and went into his closet. This, thankfully, was untouched, mainly because all that was visible were his assassinating outfit, a few trenchcoats, his two katanas, one wakizashi, and, hidden under a few piles of odds and ends, several worn shirts and pants. They smelled like dust, but that was better than hydrangeas.

Twenty minutes later, he had taken a shower and changed into his thankfully dull clothes. Seven was in his room when he opened the bathroom door, curled up in a happy little pile on Crawford's clothes. Aya took a step forward to chase him off but stopped himself.

They weren't his clothes, so why did he care?

Seven turned his head to look at him, eyes glowing in the dim morning light.

Well...they weren't his clothes...but this wasn't exactly his cat, either.

Aya hesitated.

"...get off, cat."

Seven flattened his ears and looked away.

"Do you want me to kick you? Off."

One ear twitched in his direction.

"Now."

Silence.

In a slow, leisurely way, as if this was entirely his own idea, Seven stood up, stretched, and sauntered off, leaving a small nest of hair where he had been sitting. Aya seized the pants and shirt and shook them. Half of the cat hair cascaded to the floor, and the other half stayed where it was.

They weren't his, anyway.

Breakfast had, shockingly, not begun yet. He credited this to it being so damn early and started work on plain rice.

It hadn't been cooking for five minutes when -

"AYA-KUN!1"

A pair of arms encircled his entire upper body and squeezed. Momentarily, Aya felt strangled.

"Ow..."

"Oh!" Mary Sue let go of him and bashfully stepped away. "I'm sorry, Aya-kun, it's just that...I was so worried about you yesterday because first you never came home and then you were so tired and pale looking and you went straight to bed and you were there for so long and I was just...so...just so worried about you..."

Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at him shyly through her long eyelashes.

A muscle in Aya's lower leg twitched. Crawford's words reverberated through his mind, and so instead of just turning away callously and going back to the rice, he made a pitiful attempt at a smile.

"I'm...thank...you."

Mary Sue blinked.

"Aya-kun?"

"No, it's...nothing." Now he went back to the rice, which bubbled suspiciously at him. He was reminded of cocoa beans in warm water.

Mary Sue stared at him, and he could feel her sapphire eyes penetrating the back of his head. However, she didn't say anything; she just went into the front of the shop and began preparing things for the day.

Eleven hours until doomsday.

.-.-

The one hour mark came way too fast for Aya's liking.

It was 5.30, or so the clocks said. He'd stopped trusting them years ago, especially considering that Yohji had figured out how easy they were to set to just an hour ahead. This had resulted in a lot of confusion and a lot of pain, the latter mainly on Yohji's part, and now everybody had to be wary of altered clocks and Aya's wrath.

Slowly, with his mind setting itself on autopilot, Aya approached the room where Mary Sue was sitting. Alone. Watching without interest a dramatic love scene on the television.

Here went nothing.

"...Mary Sue?" he said, standing in the doorway. She turned her head, saw him there, and nearly hit the ceiling.

"Aya-kun!" she said, regaining her composure. "I didn't see you there."

"Oh."

"Um...do you want something?" She seemed a little nervous, but also a little expectant. Aya mentally glowered.

"I...uh...look, um, can we...talk?"

"Talk? About what?"

"About..." He braced himself for the following words. "...us."

Mary Sue stared at him, wide eyed.

"I mean, about...well, I haven't exactly had anyone to...talk to about my problems in a long time, and I...want to." He took a breath. "There's just...a lot that I haven't been able to say, and since you're here now and the others aren't, could we...maybe talk about things?"

She was gaping, her mouth actually open in sheer surprise. And delight.

"What...why, Aya-kun...of course we can talk!" She stood up, teledrama all but forgotten. "I'm always around for you to talk to! You should have come to me earlier! Oh, Aya-kun..."

She stepped forward to embrace him, but he held up his hands.

"No, no...not right now, I mean...well, I just...need some time to think and be alone before you...before we can talk. I...I need to think about all this."

"Oh...okay, then," she said, sounding slightly disappointed, but looking just as heartfelt as before. "I'll come up in half an hour, how about?"

"N-no...I need more time than that. Come up in an hour."

"Okay." Mary Sue looked at the television, wrinkled her nose, and turned it off. Then she headed to go out the door, but as she brushed by Aya, she gave his arm a slight hug.

When she was gone, he rubbed his arm defensively, as if she'd left a disease there and he had to get rid of it. Now. Girl cooties were extremely nasty if not disposed of quickly.

He glanced at the clock. Forty-five minutes until doomsday.

Aya decided to wait outside until Crawford showed up, in order to avoid drawing any suspicion from Mary Sue. Fifteen minutes of boredom and a rather lovely last sunset passed before Crawford appeared beside him. He was carrying a small bag.

"What's the bag for?"

"Effect."

"Effect?"

"You'll see."

Hesitantly, Aya let him inside. It wasn't as though he didn't relish the prospect of either Mary Sue dying or him getting to shoot Crawford in the head, it was just that he had to do something before one or the other could happen.

Foreboding patted him on the shoulder sympathetically before going off to have supper with Entropy and Confusion.

They arrived in his room, and Crawford set down the bag on Aya's desk. He noticed the pair of slacks and white shirt draped over the chair's edge and gave Aya a questioning look.

"Seven was on them."

"Typical. Where is he now?"

"How should I know?" Aya sat down on the edge of the bed. "He's a cat."

"No, he's a human who looks like a cat."

"He's very convincing." He watched as Crawford pulled out two wineglasses from the bag and set them on the bedside table, then a bottle of nondescript wine. As he opened it and poured some into the glasses, Aya asked, "What exactly are you planning to do?"

"I told you, this is a last strike. We're going to hit the highest level, or at least impersonate it." Crawford glanced at him. "Don't give me that look. I said impersonate."

"You said at least impersonate it."

"If worse comes to worse, there's always actuality." Crawford put the bag somewhere out of sight and looked at Aya. "Take off your shirt."

"What!" Aya hissed, fingers tightening on the bedspread involuntarily.

"It won't look real if we're fully clothed. Besides, I'm sure you've been shirtless before."

"Not in /your/ presence."

"Why should that make any difference?" Crawford reached up and undid the two buttons on his own shirt. "It's only for now."

Aya glowered, but slowly complied. He'd never noticed exactly how cold it was in this room before, but now he could really feel it. Goosebumps rose all over his skin.

"Now move."

He got off the bed and Crawford, now shirtless and glasses-less as well, pulled off the covers in a haphazard way. After a few minutes of arranging the pillows and remaining sheets in what appeared to be a 'natural' way, he lay down on the bed and glanced at Aya.

"What time is it?"

"The clock is right there," said Aya, not looking at him.

"I don't have my glasses on."

"Are you really that blind?"

"Yes."

"...six-twenty."

"Hm." Crawford appeared to be thinking about something. Then he sat up and rearranged himself so that he was half-sitting, supported by the headrest.

Then he said the damning words.

"Come here."

Aya took a step closer.

"All the way over here, Aya. You do realize what this is supposed to look like, right?"

"Yes..."

"Then hurry up. She might arrive early."

There was a short internal battle in Aya's mind. One side of him screamed that this was against everything he had ever and would ever stand for, that this was demeaning, and that he should just leave right now and end his suffering prematurely. Another side claimed that this was for the good of mankind and should be done, and anyway Crawford was kind of good-looking like that, wasn't he? The third side, the gibberish side, was doing its usual thing, so it didn't count as a valid opinion.

Side 2 won out. Aya grimaced and climbed on top of Crawford.

"Don't do anything funny," he snarled as the older man took hold of the back of his neck.

"I can't promise that," was the response before Aya was pulled down into a kiss.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs outside.

Hands ran across his body, burning like ice, freezing like fire, making him weak on the outside and strong on the inside like an inverse Tootsie Roll Pop.

She came closer, ever closer, to his door, which was slightly open.

He bit down on his lip, trying to make himself remember that this was fake, that this was all just a charade.

One hand touched the doorknob.

"Aya-kun?"

He hardly heard the words.

Mary Sue opened the door tentatively and stepped inside.

"Aya-kun, I - "

She stared.

There was Aya, practically draped across Crawford, his eyes closed and his body shivering under a touch that was never meant to come near him. And Crawford...

Crawford stopped moving his hands and opened his eyes to look at her.

Aya didn't see the sadistic smirk he shot her.

Mary Sue screamed.

Startled, Aya opened his eyes and looked at her.

She was screaming, screaming, screaming an endless scream of pain and torment and fear and everything else, and Mary Sue Johnson, the epitome of all that was perfect and pure in this world and every other, turned very red in the face.

Aya and Crawford braced themselves.

She reached up, grabbed her head, and kept on screaming, screaming, screaming, until her head, unable to comprehend what was happening and how she could have possibly failed, imploded.

Blood, brains, skin, hair, and other things unmentionable splattered the door and the walls around it. Mary Sue's body fell to the floor and leaked blood all over the wood.

Both men stared.

Then:

"I thought you said her head would explode."

"That's what usually happens," Crawford said, seeming a little shocked himself.

Inside, something clicked, and Aya thought: it's over. It's finally, finally over.

I think.

"Disgusting," he muttered softly, climbing off the bed and heading for his doorframe. "Blood and brains all over my walls and floor." He could only imagine how difficult it would be to clean up this mess.

Suddenly, an arm slid around his waist, stopping him in his tracks.

"Why clean it up now?" said Crawford, his voice low and smooth. "There's always later."

Aya stared at the bloodstains on his otherwise spotless walls. Crawford…was telling him…to do it…later…?

"…what…are you…"

He never finished his question. He was pulled back to the edge of the bed and felt the slightest pressure on his lower back, followed by a wave of warm air.

"As long as we're here, why not go all the way?"

Aya froze.

.-.-

"You know," said Ken the following day, as he stood behind the counter of the flower shop, "I don't really remember much of the past few weeks."

"Neither do I," said Omi, dumping out a pot of what had previously been pink daisies. "But I haven't heard anything bad from anyone, so it must have just been really boring."

"Probably."

"Now you guys know what I feel like all the time," said Yohji, appearing from behind a young tree.

"I didn't think forgetfulness was relative to a hangover."

"Say that again?"

"Nothing."

Omi frowned at Ken and Yohji as they began bickering, then looked out the window of the shop. He could see Aya out there, arranging a few pots on a display.

Aya hadn't said much about the last few weeks, although they were sure he had been involved with...something. Then again, he hadn't said much lately in any case. But did he ever? Still, he seemed paler than usual. And sometimes he limped a little.

With a shrug, Omi went over to try and break up the squabble between his teammates. If Aya wanted to be alone, so be it. It never did good to pry into his affairs.

Outside, Aya shifted a final pot and stood up. He nodded at the display. It looked -

"Very nice," said a voice behind him, tinted with a shade of English.

Aya glared at the flowers, who withered under the gaze.

"I don't need your opinion."

"Of course you don't," said Crawford, walking by. "Just offering it."

Abruptly, he grabbed Aya's hand and pressed something into it, then kept moving away. Seven came over and sat on Aya's feet, apparently for no reason.

Aya looked at the thing now lying in his hand. It was small, white, vaguely cylindrical, and with a blueish label.

"'For aches and pains of all kinds...take two for great soreness relief'," read Aya quietly to himself.

An ache throbbed somewhere in his nether regions.

Crawford was summararily struck in the back of the head by the small bottle of painkillers, and Aya went back to his work in a somewhat darker mood.

-fin-

...or IS it?

So. Hate it? Love it? Wish it would spontaneously combust? Either way imma keep writing it. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. HA. Ha. ha. ..

(1) - Copyright Terry Pratchett and his book Monstrous Regiment.