Chapter 4: Night Services
"Your mother. She's a cipher?"
"Yes." Crawford untied his tie with quick, jerky movements, shrugged out of his coat and carelessly threw it over the back of a chair. Schuldig raised an eyebrow at the atypical behavior but wisely didn't comment on it. Crawford seemed on edge. He wasn't going to provide the American with something to tear into.
"Never met a cipher before. Heard about them, though." Schuldig flopped backwards onto Crawford's bed, folded his arms underneath his head and stared at the ceiling. Everyone who had gone through Rosenkreuz had been warned about ciphers. They were the unexpected whirlpool in any talent's life, the hidden rocks. You never knew when you might run into one and leave you without your talent.
And the ones that carried this frightening effect didn't even know about the chaos they created in psis. Luckily, they were very rare. "I was told that long-term exposure to a cipher could erase your gift."
Crawford snorted as he put away his diamond and platinum cufflinks. "Schoolyard tales. I'm living refutation of that rumor." He ripped off the matching shirt studs and put them away with the cufflinks. Schuldig watched in silence, never moving from his sprawl on the bed. The silence lengthened, grew weighty. For once, Crawford broke it first.
"You didn't have to do that. You don't have to impress my mother."
Schuldig shrugged with a nonchalance he didn't feel. "She expected it."
Crawford was startled. "You could read her mind?"
Schuldig smiled sheepishly. "Just barely. I thought my head was going to explode."
"Then why bother?" Crawford crossed the room to look down on Schuldig.
Schuldig blinked up at him. "She's your mother."
Crawford didn't want to think about what that might mean, so he concentrated on the other question that bothered him. "What do you mean, she expected it?"
"I reminded her of someone, a suitor from her past."
"A suitor?"
"Yes. She thinks fondly of a German with gentlemanly manners. I wanted to remind her of that. The memory seemed to make her happy."
Crawford sat down on the edge of the bed. "I had always suspected. . ." He took off his glasses and put them on his nightstand. "My mother went to Germany in her second year of college. From what I could gather from family gossip, there was nearly a scandal. I suspect that it was an ill-fated romance, and they had brought her home before she could run off."
"Just the thing to appeal to a young woman, the allure of forbidden love," Schuldig mused.
Crawford ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know for sure. It was hushed up, and no one talks about it, least of all Mother. She came back to the States, married my father to please my grandfather, and that was that. The families, united in marriage. Hallibourne money backing Crawford ambition."
"Your mother isn't happy with her life," Schuldig said. "I could sense that just by looking at her. But she was happy to see you. She glowed with it."
"My mother's a romantic," Crawford said flatly. "She had hoped to marry for love and got married for money instead. She had wanted to be a professional pianist and now only plays at social gatherings to impress my father's associates. Is it any wonder that she clings to the last two things left to her? Religion and her offspring. Both accepted her as she was, not for what she could do for them."
"The cathedral," Schuldig murmured sleepily. The exertions of trying to stay functioning around a cipher suddenly caught up with him. Between one eye-blink and the next, he was asleep.
"What?" Crawford turned to the telepath, only to find him asleep.
Crawford blinked, nonplussed. Schuldig was asleep on his bed. He contemplated carrying the telepath to his own room. "To hell with it," he muttered. He undressed Schuldig as best he could, then changed for bed himself. He nudged Schuldig to one side and slid under the covers. Turning his back to Schuldig, he clicked off the light.
----
Crawford turned the page, squinting to decipher the archaic, spidery text. It was an illuminated, 18th century prayer book, one of many in the cathedral's collection. From the open window, he could hear the services being held. His mother was there, subjecting herself to God, making herself from the unique individual that she was into one of the nameless, faceless flock. If "the meek shall inherit the earth," than she was to be queen one day.
Crawford felt restless. He put the book down on the table next to him and stood up. Why was he hearing the service? This was his cathedral. The one in his subconscious. It was supposed to be silent, empty. He walked the familiar halls. He had taken those halls as his own, and over the years they had changed from the original in rural New England. Now pictures hung on the formerly blank walls.
Here was a picture of Schuldig, smirking his trademark smirk. One of Farfarello, cutting himself yet again. Nagi, staring solemnly back with those dead, fathomless eyes. A picture of his mother, playing piano with that small smile she reserved for those times she was making a piano sing.
There were pictures of dogs, too. A picture of his first dog, a champion Irish Setter named Hawthorne's Pride of Sun. He had called that dog Sunny and had loved the shine of his glossy chestnut coat.
Here was his second dog, a handsome mutt he had named Cody. He had found Cody on the street and fought with his father to keep the unpedigreed pup. Cody had always been his favorite. Over the years, the Crawfords had owned many dogs, but none like Cody.
But down these long halls there wasn't a single picture of his father. Crawford sometimes even forgot he had one. His mother's statement that he didn't get along with his father wasn't exactly true. His father didn't get along with him. Crawford was a man with his own agenda, who didn't take to the idea of following another man's, even his father's. His father didn't like that, couldn't understand it. It was a case of being too similar to get along.
Crawford reached the main body of the cathedral. Silence had fallen. It felt ominous. He opened the double doors even as the hair on the back of his neck lifted. The doors, well oiled, opened silently. He surveyed the area of worship. He hadn't been here very often in the original and never during dreaming. Sunlight filtered through the tall windows, casting fingers of light which caressed the empty, gleaming wooden pews.
His footsteps as he walked down the aisle were the only sounds, echoing in the large space. He paused at the third pew from the front and looked left. His mother had sat there every Sunday and most holidays. For a moment he saw her, her face lifted to watch the service with an intent gaze, for once not a mask hiding her unhappiness. Then the ghost faded.
He continued walking. He passed the choir stalls, where white-clad men and women had raised their voices vainly to beseech and flatter an indifferent God. Past the pulpit, into the sanctuary. As a child, he never had trespassed into this part of the original cathedral. In his cathedral, he roamed where he pleased. He wasn't the only one. Farfarello lay on the altar, his arms crossed over his chest, his single gold eye staring at the larger-than-life crucified statue of Jesus overlooking the altar.
"Farfarello."
Farfarello's gaze slowly turned from his staring contest with the carved image to Crawford. "Crawford."
"What are you doing here?"
"Having communion." Farfarello sat up, putting his back to the crucifix.
"Wine and wafers," Crawford snorted softly.
"In th' physical sense, aye. 'Tis more to it than that." Farfarello slid off the altar. He tilted his head curiously. "What are YOU doing here, Crawford?"
"I heard the service."
"Ah." Farfarello went to the choir stalls, found one of the prayer books. He read the cover. "Episcopalian, is it?"
"My mother was, yes. This is the church she used to attend."
"What church did she attend in Boston?" Farfarello asked, sitting down to further study the book of prayer.
"She. . . she didn't. Father had started his Senate career by then. He didn't want her spending so much time in church, so he forbid her to go any more." Crawford sat on the steps to the sanctuary to watch Farfarello.
"Ah." Farfarello put down the book and picked up a hymn book. "I was Catholic, meself." He flipped through the hymns. "Sing the same songs, it seems."
"Episcopalians have elements of both Catholic and Protestant styles." Crawford hadn't paid much attention to his mother's chosen faith, but he had picked up some information of it along the way.
Farfarello found a song that made him smile. He began to sing, his voice surprisingly pure and rich.
"One bread, one body,
one Lord of all;
One cup of blessing which we bless,
And we, though many,
throughout the earth,
We are one body
in this one Lord."
Crawford frowned a little. "I don't remember that one."
Farfarello gave no sign he had heard him. He dropped the book back onto the pew. In the quiet, the sound was loud. Farfarello sat beside the hymnal and stared into space, humming to himself. Crawford watched him for a moment, but Farfarello didn't move. Crawford studied the stained glass windows.
As a small child, he had sat during services and studied the brightly colored works of art. Angels, biblical figures, saints and martyrs. They cast frozen gazes down on the still altar, letting jewel-toned light illuminate the rounded space. He walked back down the aisle, away from that indifference. The windows overlooking the pews were clear glass, letting in white sunlight. He passed through those beams, casting a black shadow as he went.
Farfarello continued to hum but watched his former leader go. When the door shut behind the American, Farfarello closed his eye and slept.
----
A/N: Thanks to:
TrenchcoatMan – Happy you're enjoying the stories. As for Crawford's mother, well, we'll see what happens;)
Lily – Thank you so much for the sweet review. I just hope I can keep it up!
Yanagi-sen – Would you believe that I wasn't expecting Crawford's mother at first either? She just appeared and wouldn't leave, so here we all are. Wherever 'here' is.
Hisoka – Thank you. Always good to see you among the reviewers. And thin mints? FREE thin mints? I'm never so luckyT.T
Lyra Stormrider – Thanks for the wonderful review, really made my day when I read it ( I was having a bad day that day). Thanks as well for the info on Schwarz's background (or lack thereof). I really need to see if I can dig up translations of the drama CDs. . .
LoneCayt – Crawford as the child of hippies from Oregon. . . O.o It could be really funny, if done right. Makes me wish I was better at writing extended humor fics. To do that concept justice, it couldn't be a one-shot.
The First Light – You're right, if Crawford and his father were alike, I don't think that this world could handle it! But Claire is ignorant of Crawford's true self, so the world can rest easier. Somewhat. I think that I recall the snippet about his brother dying of heatstroke, but I thought I saw that in a fic somewhere. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember what is fannon and what is canon.
Precognition74 – A new reviewer! Always happy to see a new face. 'To Overcome Fear' has intrigued me with the possibilities, but Nagi is too silent a muse at times. On the other hand, Schu and Crawford are much more vocal. I'm trying to update more frequently, but life interferes way too often.