Author's Notes: Yeah, life still sucks. Class is four days away from being over and college is three weeks away from starting. I started reading Wraeththu, all 800 pages. I'm about a hundred pages in and I'm enjoying it for all the trouble it is to carry around. My hair has gone from red to orange, my roots are growing out and I'm too lazy to really care. I'm not cutting it again, so whatever. If people have a problem with it, screw them. My dog doesn't care and his opinion is really all that matters. If he still loves me, I must be doing something right.
Headaches are depressing…Emo music doesn't help either.
Fanfiction is being evil and not letting me do the little underline things... please bear with me.( NS) will equal a 'new scene', or change of scene. Thank you all for your patience. And SOMEONE go tell fanfiction to fix it!
9
She was standing next to me in that dark, deserted place. It felt like the air was pressing me down, though I didn't move. The vast, gray nothingness of it reminded me of a desert I've never seen. We don't have deserts from wherever I come from…
Wherever that was…
Her fiery hair bushed around her pale face, but not for a second did I doubt who she was. She smiled at me and her blue eyes glittered with the nonexistent light when she approached me, the green smear of clothing swirling around her long frame. She was so much younger here; perhaps still a teenager, from the day we first met, or before then. Before the roundness of her cheeks had finally left, before childhood did away with her.
"Tiger Lily?" I asked softly, my voice echoing in the empty space. I wanted to move closer to her, wrap my arms around her and take her somewhere, anywhere else, where the thick jungle would close on all our open sides. I felt exposed out here. I couldn't fly. This place sucked happy thoughts away like bats for blood.
"Schuldig," she said, her voice trilling nasally. It was so suddenly not what I'd expected that I flinched and lost any interest in moving closer. She did it for me, anyway, pulling me against her body. It was then I noticed she didn't have breasts. She, or rather he, refused to let me pull away.
"Schuldig," he repeated even as I watched his face turn from effeminate to something more masculine, his cheekbones high and sharp, his smile a little manic and his eyes took on a haunted quality.
"Schuldig?"
"And you are Farfarello."
I shook my head and tried to pull away again, but the thickness of the air left me gasping in his arms, somewhere I inherently knew I shouldn't be. Men didn't hug other men.
"My name is Jei, and you're Tiger Lily," I argued softly, trying to think him back into a woman's body. His image barely flickered, his strength in this place surpassing mine easily. He pressed into me with more force and held my gaze with his.
"You are Farfarello, and you're having a psychotic episode," he said calmly, but forcefully. I briefly saw a flicker of desperation in his pale eyes, but it was gone before it registered fully in my thoughts.
"Do you understand me?" he demanded.
I bit my lip and pulled away. He didn't struggle, his grip failing as I stumbled away as quickly as possible.
"Leave me alone!" I screamed, searching for a way out of this vast nothingness. There had to be a door somewhere, through which I could escape. I tried to find a wall I could search with my fingers, but there was nothing.
Nothing existed but this apparition and me. I was on the verge of tears.
He didn't advance, just stood there waiting for me to calm down, any patience he had draining away by the second as he watched me. He looked like he would start cursing at me and attack me, but he held firm, unwilling to fit with my ideas. He rubbed my senses raw simply by existing.
"Go away!"
"Farfarello…"
"Jei! Jei, Jei, Jei, Jei, Jei! How many times do I have to tell you, you freak!" I clawed at the floor, wondering if it was there at all.
He had been standing there, somewhere near but far from me one second, then kneeling next to me in another. There was not sound, no whoosh of air in his movement, no flair of drama. He was just there and then not. It terrified me. His hands grasped mine and he held them to his face.
"What do you feel?" he whispered, pressing his cheeks into my open palms. His blue eyes assessed me, his lips set in a line that dared me to even think about clawing at the face presented so openly. He obviously trusted me, though I somehow knew he shouldn't have. I decided to answer his question.
"Nothing. I feel nothing."
"And there are no walls in this place, no floor and no ceiling. We aren't outside, as there is no light and no dark. We aren't dead, I promise you, but very much alive, so how can we survive without breathing?"
He was right. I hadn't taken a breath in several moments and it hadn't bothered me that I might've been suffocating until he mentioned it. I took a great gasp of air and he smiled something vicious.
"This isn't real," I answered, simply because that was what he wanted to hear.
What was reality anyway, but a farie tale? There was nothing beyond this, and nothing within this.
"That's right, Farfarello," he said, what he claimed to be my name dagger sharp as it fell form his tongue, "This is a dreamscape, and unfortunately not one of your most imaginative ones, either. You're dreaming, and that's all."
This was all one big nightmare? I didn't believe it.
"You're lying," I seethed, my fingers clawing against his face. He pulled away with a sigh, but kept a hold of my wrists.
"You're hallucinating, rather avidly, more so than usual. I hope it isn't because the psychosis is getting worse. You'll be no use to us like this, you know," he said softly, thoughtfully, almost as if I wasn't there at all, "Christ, did you have to stop taking your medications so fucking long, Far?"
I growled and pulled my hands away, a rising tide of anger and annoyance giving me strength. He took notice of me then, his eyes wide in matching wrath.
"Go away," I shouted, shoving him away. My voice was deeper now, my grip on his nondescript clothing stronger. He caught himself and shoved back.
"What? You being pissy because I mentioned your evil little God, or are you still in denial?"
"Fucking maniac, telling lies, invoking that hack…" I muttered and pulled away, started fading slightly, somehow, into the background.
"You're the maniac, you stupid bastard!" he shouted back.
"You don't know what you're doing, talking about that cult…"
He realized he had thrown me off my fixation on a brief mental hiccup and into a full-fledged religion-induced episode. My mind gathered tightly around that anger, that burning black hatred and I jumped on its back to ride to the center of my thoughts, my desire to destroy something so indiscriminatingly evil. I was a godsend, which implied the paradox of my being. I laughed.
He pulled out my mind with a resonating "Fuck!"
I laughed. My physical body somewhere following suit with my cackles.
NS
I came to sometime in the night. The clock on my nightstand read 3:24, and I guessed it was early by the dim outside my window and the lack of traffic noise in the city proper, just a couple blocks away. I was snuggled safely in a pristine white straight jacket, my arms a little stiff from the position and my head drowsy from the drugs I had just come out from under.
I was briefly disoriented by my lack of depth perception, but easily remembered loosing my eye. My stomach burned with the familiar hatred for that man, Takatori, and the promise I had made to myself that I would one day enjoy killing him.
Schuldig was in a chair by the bed, slumped over his chest as he slept silently. His hair shrouded his face, but I could see it was drawn, the cheekbones too sharp against his sallow skin. I wanted to brush that hair away and hold his hand, revel in the comfort of his arms over my waist as I held him, but my straight jacket prevented me. I didn't want to kick him awake, but it felt cruel of me to just leave him there with the impending crick in his neck when he woke up again.
"Schuldig," I whispered and gently brushed our mental link with my mind. He had constructed a link in the team so we could contact one another through him if we were in a position where we couldn't speak or were too far away to be heard. It was permanent until death, he claimed, but I still preferred to check and make sure it was there every week or so between work. Crawford liked to use it in place of radios and headphones and even now I remembered his sharp, cold voice in my head, barking orders when I was coherent enough to obey them and Schuldig hadn't needed to go in after me, calm me down.
He came awake swiftly, more aware of the intrusion in his mind than the familiarity of the link. He was on his feet in an instant, sleepily ready to fend off any attacker, his mind tensing against mine, testing to see if he recognized me.
Moment of terror over, and he was back in his chair, looking down at me with something close to fear in his eyes. He was worried I hadn't come out lucid, that I would still be raving and cursing, but I smiled slowly at him as I felt his mind brush mine.
Far? Are you all there?
"As far as I know, yes. Can you let me out of here now?" I asked, indicating my straight jacket, which was getting increasingly uncomfortable with every passing minute. He shook his head.
"Crawford's orders; I shouldn't let you out until you've been on your meds for a couple of days and shown signs of improvement," he said even as he pressed his fingers to the canvas enfolding my arms. He gave me an apologetic smile and I dropped the subject.
"You scared us, you know."
"You scared me," I replied, remembering the fear of the two of them, the suddenly loss of memory, "What was that? What happened to me?"
He shrugged and squeezed my arm, "I don't know. Crawford's been looking it up, but he can't find anything on it. Maybe it's a side effect of the meds, I don't know. It shouldn't be…"
"I thought you were going to loose it, all of it," he said softly, his voice betraying all emotion he couldn't show in daylight. Only in this darkness, when everyone else was asleep and oblivious, could he confide in me. He felt close in the room and I relaxed against that feeling of familiarity.
"I'm not loosing my mind, Schuldig," I countered with a hint of annoyance, my voice dripping with challenge. He flashed a smile at me and nodded, ready to accept any lies I might've fed him.
As if I really knew…Sanity was a relative thing for me.
"How long was I out?"
"You've been in and out of it for a few days. You were damn near raving just yesterday. We put you in the jacket just before then, thanks to Crawford. I suspect he Saw all of this happening, just didn't tell us."
"I doubt it would've helped any," I sighed and turned my head into the pillow, "Dreading the unavoidable in a waste of time."
Like dreading my looming madness, my fate of eternally, eventually, loosing any and all grip on reality. It was the fate of all my kind, I supposed. I stopped worrying about it in the Asylum, knowing there was little worse than that in my head…I was such a stupid child then.
"Stop degrading yourself, Far," Schuldig snapped. I gave him an apologetic look as his comment cut my thinking in two. I shoved it away.
"I went in and did some work after we put you in the jacket."
"I remember. You pissed me right the hell off," I grit through my teeth, remembering the 'dream'.
"When you can do better, I dare you to try," I snapped haughtily. I laughed and rolled on my side, my eye watching him move in the dark, so graceful, so feline.
"Why do you keep equivocating me to cats? You've been doing it for years and I still don't get it."
"If you don't then you never will, you self-satisfied bastard," I said fondly. I gave me one of those patented kitty-smirks and flipped his hair back, also feline in its movement, as a cat would flick an ear. He laughed with me and crawled into bed next to me.
"God knows why I like you so, Far," he said with a snort, combing his fingers along my scalp, the short stubble of hair coarse against his fingers, "Maybe it's your hair. You're almost like an Aryan, it's so blonde."
Actually, it was blonde, but only just. It was almost too pale to really be any color, and I had a habit of bleaching it when it had gotten a little darker with age. Thus it's straw-like quality…
"I always knew you were a Neo-Nazi," I accused jokingly.
"I'm no such thing. The lies you tell, Farfarello!" he said with mock anger, his fingernails sharply punishing against my skin.
I smirked.
"I rather consider myself an Anarchist, you know that."
"You like cigarettes and shampoo too much to be an Anarchist."
"And you're too religious for the Anti-Christ."
I merely shrugged and he hugged me to him, his smile against my cheek.
"Go back to sleep. I know you're still high off those sedatives."
High wasn't the word. I was already dropping off. He watched me and smiled, then yawned and settled against me.
Well, it wasn't exactly what I'd wanted, but his nearness was still a comfort. I curled my unbound leg around his, pressed my head under his chin and went back to sleep.
Fin Chapter 9
Please Review
Author's Notes: Written in two hours, the playing of the self-titled 'Dresden Dolls' and 'Yes, Virginia…'(Also done by the Dresden Dolls), two brownies, a glass of milk and four Advil. All this rock music can't be good for my headaches…
Whatever.
The first half of this chapter is Farfarello's dream/mental landscape. Schu projected himself into the scene to try and convince Farfarello back into sanity, which was no small feat. Thought I'd tell you guys in case it was too abstract.
To My Readers:
Roxie Faye: I was absolutely swept away by your review. Thank you so much! It made me happy my little 'Prickzilla' joke made you laugh. It made me laugh too every time I edited it and made the whole process a little more enjoyable.
Yes, Farfarello was angry, furious really, about Nagi leaving. And who wouldn't be? He knows exactly what that boy is getting into and he doesn't like it one bit. Even you were objecting to it!
I'm glad you were so receptive to Farfarello's anger. I love writing for him. He's so different from conventional characters and his non sequitor way of thinking is easy to pick up and duplicate.
Besides, I don't believe in the whole 'Eating muffins makes God cry' theory. I mean, he might be crazy, but he's still a sentient being, not a vegetable. It's insulting that some don't understand that he's still a functioning, thinking human being and not some vile, foaming animal with a blender. (Besides, where did that fucking blender come from, anyway?)
…Agh, another tangent! Sorry, I'll shut up and write now.
Morbid KnightThe three chapterswere backlogged long enough. I was sick of holding them. It made me feel like I needed to shed a few layers of skin. So by posting them I get the dual effect of creative freedom and some very pleased readers. I'm glad you were happily surprised. I do so like making nice people happy…(leer)
Yes, the boy is Nagi. But in his mental 'recession' (you could say), 'the boy' could also be him, or even Peter Pan, which his hallucinations are usually fixated on. Peter Pan is 'the boy who never grows up', and sometimes he'd consider himself as Peter, since he's never really grown out of that broken little boy his bitch mother had to flaw.
Yes, Ruth is a slut. It is implied somewhere that Farfarello is the product of an incestuous relationship between her and her brother (who was also a severe schizophrenic, for simplicity's sake), though I have no yet specified whether or not it was rape. Either way, Farfarello calls her a slut because he knows no better.
I liked the shopping trip too, a nice flash of normalcy in on every fucked up fic. It was nice to touch base for a moment there.
I usually ignore my mother if it's possible. She puts the blame on me all the time, but then, everyone does. I just shrug and leave.
And yes, Farfarello wears sweatpants. Think about it; a sexy, muscular Farfarello, fresh out of the shower, beads of wet still clinging to his bared white chest as he pads barefoot to his room, wearing nothing but a pair of loose, black sweatpants, hanging off his hips just enough to show the sharp curve of pelvis…
I'm sorry…lemme go wipe off my drool…
Congratulations to my own perversion! (giggles)