A Sense of Dark
Chapter Eight
by PenguinKye
I'm dizzy as I go back to my room, fleeing the kitchen and the Nagi within. Things are spinning: my thoughts, his thoughts, Brad's thoughts, Far's, other people's…They're all in there, whirling and whirling, so much I can hardly see in front of me. It's like something loud and deep has gone off too close and all I see and hear are the fireworks left over.
I saw him looking at me like I was the most frightening thing in the world. I am. I am. I am a horrible creature…a "dark beast", right? They damn near denied me my tomorrow. But Nagi…I wouldn't want Nagi to look at me like anyone else. Not like Weiß. Not like the people I kill. Not like the people I don't. Not like any of them. He's family. He's Nagi. But he saw me, and I was open, and he was open, and he was afraid of me.
I stumble against Brad's office door. I hope he doesn't hear me. I hope Nagi doesn't follow me. I wish I had gotten something to eat from that stupid refridgerator. I'm hungrier than I can remember ever being. At least, not for years back. I'm cold and I'm hungry, but I'm not sure whether it's because the air is frosty and my stomach is empty. There are other ways to be hungry. There are other ways to be cold.
I'm ranting. In my head, I'm ranting. I would never do it out loud. I'm trying to walk to my door, trying to get as far as my bed. I want to tunnel into it and never come out, not for people I don't know to take over my brain like some campy science fiction flick, not for people I do know to look at me like something alien. I want to hide. It's all the fashion amongst the guilty, you know.
I think I'm going crazy.
I know Far. I know what he's like. I know crazy, and I don't want it in particular, but even as I reach safety, my own door, even as I'm twisting at the knob (it's tarnished, a brassy color), I keep reeling off. My words don't connect and my words don't make sense and I don't like my words even if they did work right. I can't turn the doorknob.
I try to turn it, I really do, I push as hard as I can and twist as far, but my arms are both hurt, and how far can you turn a knob when your wrist's in too many pieces to rotate? It makes me so angry, that it won't turn. I shouldn't have shut it behind me.
I'm going so crazy. And the door won't open. And I'm trapped with myself, not even in a safe place, not even all closed up, but out here, in the open, where they can find me and look at me like something broken has happened. Where all the trapped-with-me pieces can go flying off like blue monkeys, doing whatever they want while I wait to feel like a whole person again.
I hear something make a horrible noise, and I wonder, did I do that? Am I that far out of it? Because, really, the mindreader should know where his is before he tries to play with others'. If I'm making noises like that, then I'm gone, gone, gone, gone gone gone gonegonegonegone—
Someone's hand touches mine: Nagi. He has followed me after all.
He looks me in the eye. He doesn't say anything, because Nagi doesn't like to say things when silence is better. He looks me in the eye, and slowly turns the brassy doorknob.
"Thank you," I say. Alien words. Nagi doesn't even nod. He just waits for me to go in ahead of him. I do. My room is clean. It is always clean. It is a good thing, because if I left things on the floor, I would be stepping on them now. I can't see. Everything is hazy. I'm using short short sentences and even they don't make sense. I want to sit down and stay sitting until the world, the bus, comes to a halt. I want to be alone because I never am. I don't want to be alone because I always have been.
I wonder if this is what it's always like to feel, or if you get used to it. I wonder if it will always take this much for me to feel anything but snide. I wonder if I want it to take less. I don't like this, feeling. I don't want to be able to get here.
I must be sitting, because I'm not standing anymore. Nagi is looking at me—no, he's regarding me. So different, those two things. So very very very different.
Something clicks in my head. I really do sound crazy, when I think about the thoughts I've been thinking. I don't want to sound crazy. I don't want to be crazy. We all are, at Rosenkreuz.
But I'm not at Rosenkreuz, so wouldn't it be nice not to feel like I am anymore. Things get in my head and people get in my flesh, and they do to me exactly what Rosenkreuz did—not the same way, of course. They were never as crass (ha! a Brad word) as Weiß, and never as slippery as whoever was in my brain. Still. Rosenkreuz did what they did. They wrenched you open and spat on your insides.
I don't know know why I'm thinking of them. I don't want them to control me, any of them. I really and truly don't want to be crazy. I don't. So I stop it.
"I'm sorry, Nagi," I say. Nagi stares at me (regards me, if you want).
"Schu?" he says, which means, 'should I run in terror, fellow assassin?'
"I scared you."
He doesn't say anything for a long time.
"You don't have to lie," he says at last. You don't have to hide it, is what his mind says. His mind says, you didn't have to pretend you were okay with the gaping flesh wounds and the brain visits (which of course he remembered better than I did and therefor had more cause to worry about anyway) and then change your mind and scare me half to hell. Well. He doesn't say it quite that way. Nagi doesn't swear. But it was the gist.
"Haven't you heard, Nagi-kun? I always lie."
"Says who?" he says. He's thinking the answer before I say it, dreading it too. I shouldn't say it. It'll upset him.
"Weiß, for one," I say anyway. I sound so oblivious. Hah. Like I can't tell when the kid doesn't wanna hear something. Even if I weren't brain-scanner extraordinaire, that little pinched thing he does to his lip is cue enough.
From somewhere in my head comes a conscience (probably from someone else—they're not put off by my shields today). You shouldn't have said it. And you of all people shouldn't feel so clever at the moment.
"Farf was here earlier," Nagi says, which is his way of saying, you're still an ass when you can't walk properly.
"Was he?" I say, which is my way of saying, I don't want to answer because I know you're right.
"He was worried," says Nagi. I don't know what he wants me to get from this.
"Okay," I say. "That's…reassuring, I guess. That someone gives a shit." Nagi glares at me. I'm screwing up. It's because of all the people in my brains, whom I can't really seem to block out and who really, really don't like me. That and I feel like I've been sadistically mutilated by a band of hormonally unbalanced justice freaks with serious shoulder chips. Oh wait.
Still. It's Nagi. The woundable one. Hormonal sadists aside, he's way more vulnerable than yours truly or Far or Crawford. And he does give a shit. Which gives him mighty bonus points in my book, and makes him pretty unusual beside. I know Far cares, but the list stops there, and it's damn short at collective two. Crawford couldn't care less if I were eaten by pirranhas. The fact that he came for me at all almost made me die right there in the basement. Although, knowing him, he probably cursed himself out the whole way there (politely, of course) for being stupid enough to do it.
But that's Brad, not Nagi. Right. Off that train of thought, into the present, please. I have to sigh.
"I know, Nagi-kun, I know—you care, right?" He glared at me accusingly. "You do, you do, I get it. I'm just…not all here, y'know? Cut me some slack and I'll remember your ginormous contributions to my quality of life."
Nagi's shoulders relaxed and he almost smiled. But there was still more bothering him than was making him happy. I was curious, and I could hardly help looking even without my curiosity.
You're not okay, you're not okay, but Schu, Schu is always okay, what do I do? what do I do? Why are you in my head again? Can't you even stay out of my head? What's wrong with you?Is all of this Weiß? How could they make you this way?Who was in your mind? Who was in my mind? And everything in his mind is so stark with blood and terror.
And there was fear, awful fear. And I was so open that I really did feel for him. It was a rushing, knotting, writhing pain, worry and hatred and anger and tiredness, all picking at his soul like a razor on a vein. All picking at me. How could he stand there, look so calm and quiet, and have that inside? How on earth did he do it? He was affecting me, and for a minute I couldn't let go. I felt my face make a shape I didn't know, and I named it with this sudden thing I felt: pity.
"Nagi," I said, and I couldn't quite get my face to go back to normal. "Nagi, Nagi, it's okay." He looked at me (regarded), but instead of his usual nonexpression, there was a twinge of grief. I let go of his mind. I knew what it would cost me, but I leaned forward, caught his neck and pulled him to my eye level. Somehow I managed not to grimace as my whole body petitioned against me.
"Nagi," I said, and he looked outright shocked, "It. Is. Okay. They didn't do anything permanent. I'll be fine. We'll all be fine." He stared straight into my eyes as though I'd just thrown a puppy in front of a car.
"Then why did Farf kill Ouka?" I paused, to digest that, leaned back from him to see his face.
"What?" I said.
"He was talking about it. Last week. In his sleep. He said, it was his gun that shot, his arm, your aim, your push. Why did he shoot Ouka?"
Dammit, Far.
Because, Nagi, I ran into him. Stumbled.
Because, Nagi, I was out of ammo and I wanted to stop their attack.
Because, Nagi, I…
My hand slipped off his shoulder.
I tried to answer and nothing came out. I might have been a liar, but I couldn't lie to him. Not when he stared me down like I was a bug stuck with a pinfull of accusations. And I knew that while he stuck me with that question, it held a thousand more—not least, what had happened in the park? Why was there a parasitic mind suckering onto my brain when I woke up? What was happening? And so many damn awful more. None of them good questions. None of them good answers. Any chance I had of reassuring him had just evaporated.
Because, Nagi, I could have started, but that's where it would have stopped: Because, Nagi. Because…
Because…
…I don't know.
AN: This has got to be one of my angstier chapters of anything ever. (Well, not counting my early stuff, which was just horrific straight through.) I hope I'm not overdoing. The nice thing is, there is a plot, but my main drive is characters. I hope they manage to shine through even in this doleful little story. Oh well. R+R. Kye Syr, Dec. 12'04