Chapter Sixteen – Ice and Fire
Guess what occurred to me? Seasons aren't the same all over the world. I know it sounds stupid, but I completely forgot that Australia's winter was in the British summer, etc. So Alz-chan, and any other readers from the Southern Hemisphere, just bear with me, okay? For the purposes of the year division at Rosenkreuz, spring is March to June, summer is July to August, autumn is September to November and winter is December to February. Just so no one's too confused.
There were complaints, when no one down Crawford's hall could get into the bathroom, because Schuldig had jammed the door shut. There were more when the toilet stopped working because the upset teen had tried to flush the dossier down it. When he tried to climb out the window and escape it was the last straw. Schuldig was sent back to the dormitories, and Crawford lost all of his privileges he'd gained as a post-graduate.
Schuldig hated Crawford more than he could put words to. He spent hours plotting ways to kill him. He attended lessons with religious fervour, learning new ways to destroy the American bastard. His mind was consumed with a fire that left him burnt out and exhausted at the end of every day, to tired to care that he couldn't distinguish his thoughts from everyone else's. When darkness took him each night, he welcomed it like a lover.
Bradley wasn't sleeping. He made up excuses, like the fact there was no longer any rhythmic breathing to lull him into a stupor, but the bags under his eyes spoke for themselves. Trapped in Rosenkreuz now, he stumbled about the building like a zombie, not hearing himself as he taught the students, not tasting the food he shovelled into his mouth, not seeing what was going on around him, or, more frighteningly, what was going to happen around him.
Dressed like a student, eating with the students, sleeping in student quarters, Bradley felt like his life had slipped backwards into the ever-repeating hell that it was to be a student at Rosenkreuz. Any status he had gained through years of obsequiousness was dust on the wind. And he blamed Schuldig with a vehemence he never thought he'd feel for anyone other than his father.
That was it, really. He'd spent years trying to make his father happy, and it had never worked. Now, when he'd tried to keep Schuldig in a healthy, happy, state of mind, he'd failed again. And Schuldig had made certain he'd known he'd failed. A crushing defeat, worse than any juvenile disgrace. He had spent years trying to prove he was good enough, but it came to the crunch, it turned out his father had been right all along: he wasn't. Schuldig resented him as he'd resented his father. And Bradley returned that resentment with equal vigour. If Schuldig was going to hate him despite his best efforts, then Schuldig deserved nothing less than an equally bitter loathing.
They didn't meet. People were careful to arrange that, making certain the now mortal enemies saw nothing of each other as the days and weeks past. Schuldig was wearing himself out, pushing too far, too fast. Crawford was running on empty, the only thing keeping him moving was his bitter pride.
* * *
And months slipped past without meaning. Time was an abstract concept. Schuldig's control over his power grew and he learnt to put up mental shields that kept his minds separate from everyone else's whilst allowing him to still hear them. Crawford earned the respect, slowly, of his peers once more. Worshipping the ground his superiors walked on and coming down like a ton of bricks on his inferiors if they didn't do likewise, his lapse was slowly forgiven as more people can in contact with the burning telepath. When you knew Schuldig, you knew why Crawford hadn't fought to keep him.
Slowly, Schuldig's hatred burnt itself out. He'd never found it so hard to hold a grudge, but occasionally, when he wasn't expecting it, a word or deed would remind him of some similar thing Bradley had done, and it hurt, just a little. The patience the older man had had with him, despite his defeatist attitude. Schuldig couldn't stand that fatalistic approach in others, and would happily beat it out of them, and he wondered why Bradley hadn't done the same to him. The way Bradley had put up with the flirting, despite the fact it made him so uncomfortable. Schuldig had pushed the boundaries, and Bradley had put up with it. The night Bradley had let him join him in bed, because Schuldig was still scared, despite the newfound knowledge that it was an irrational fear. The fact he'd done it because he thought it was the right thing to do. No one else here gave a damn about the right thing.
Crawford's hatred was slower burning, but with nothing to stoke the flame, it too went out with time. As he distanced himself from both the person and the events that had fuelled it in the first place, he could put his anger behind him. He was a rational, cool-minded, logical sort of man, and that just didn't fit with the dark boiling emotion nestled in his chest. He wondered what it would be like if he was to see Schuldig again, but he couldn't foresee that happening in the near future. He found he could separate himself from the base emotions that had inspired both affection and hatred towards the teen.
* * *
Winter crept by and spring sprung upon them. Schuldig's first year ended and his second began, now treated to a top bunk instead of a bottom bunk. Crawford was given his room back, and they started to send him on errands again. However, these were errands of a different sort. No longer playing messenger boy, he was used to ferret out new talents as he had Schuldig. He found he had quite a knack for 'seeing' untrained psychics struggling to control their powers.
The first he brought in on his own was a pyrokinetic from Greece, though he had to spend several nights in the ward. One inspired healer had the presence of mind to remove the 'pride comes before a fall' from his back while he was there. Crawford found he didn't care one way or another, any more. He didn't care much about anything, any more.
In summer, he found three telempaths in Salem, to the personal amusement of some of the other psychics. They were teenaged girls with their own little coven. Unusually, they were still very attached to their families, and Crawford narrowly avoided being picked up for kidnap. It was a struggle, bringing three in at once, and he was duly rewarded. He was given a suite of rooms now, including a private bathroom.
Also in America he found an illusionist, which kept Hertz very happy. Now a much rarer strain of telempath, the illusionist was almost as coveted as Schuldig. Crawford thought it was ridiculous, but he never said as much. Again, they rewarded him, giving him a car, so he could leave Rosenkreuz when he wanted, within reason. Of course, without a salary, he was dependent on Estet for petrol [gas].
On a trip to the East in the autumn, he found a pyrokinetic in Vietnam and two in India, as well as a clairvoyant in Nepal and a Chinese precog. They'd given him a team of assistants by now, and it was the assistants who took the new psychics back to Rosenkreuz while Crawford continued to search for other talent. He picked up quite a tan, as well as a reputation.
He was out of assistants by the time he reached Japan. Unpleasant memories threatened to surface, but Crawford kept them repressed. He had a job to do, and he'd wasted enough of his life bemoaning his father already. He didn't mind being alone in the bustling, overcrowded city of Tokyo, as he faded into the background as just another tourist.
Crawford 'meet and greet'ed several of Estet's clients, including a man who had an alarming resemblance to a koala and a bank corporation. One couple caught his eye in particular, as one of them had red hair more at home in Ireland than Japan. He made some discrete inquiries, based on a hunch, and found out that the Fujimiya's were a happily married couple with two gorgeous children. The photo was particularly endearing.
He'd been there almost a week, on was on the verge of despairing of finding even a single psychic in this metropolis, when a vision so violent it knocked him out hit him as he was crawling out of the tiny bunk that was his hotel 'room'. He woke up mere seconds later, though not without attracting some attention from the other clientele, and he had to force himself not to run as he made his way into the crowded streets. Checking his appearance in a shop window, he started to make his way towards an orphanage he'd checked out the day before. There always seemed to be an assembly of psychics in orphanages and children's home and frequently prisons. Crawford wondered unemotionally whether it was the talents that destroyed family life, or destroyed family life that created the talents. No doubt it had been looked into in the Laboratories in the past.
Hair perfect, glasses shining, creases only in the right places on the thousand-dollar suit, Crawford looked every bit the businessman. Which was why, with ten minutes of entering the back streets and 'slum area', he was attacked for his wallet. He broke the urchin's neck without a thought. When a gang made an attempt on him, he shot three of them before the others fled. Human life meant less and less to him as the days passed. He wasn't part of it any more.
Cowering in the shadows was the boy he was looking for. Huge blue eyes filled with tears studied Crawford intensely, and the other children that had been taunting the child watched as well. Ignoring them, Crawford bent down to look closer at the boy. Yes, this one had power. Estet would reward him for this.
"Nani?" The boy asked in Japanese. Crawford ignored him. Yes, he'd learnt enough Japanese to get by now, but that didn't mean he had to acknowledge these people. A part of him briefly wondered if the boy would come willingly, if asked, and whether that would be kinder and more humane, but the rest of him didn't care any more. If Schuldig had been able to get into his head, he wouldn't have believed that this was the same man as the one who'd shared a bed with him when he was scared and confused. And he would have been right.
* * *
Meanwhile Schuldig was left back at Rosenkreuz, still learning the tricks of the trade. He really began to regret his behaviour towards Crawford, especially when he realised that he could have been in China and India and America and all those exotic places with him had he behaved better. He'd taken one piece of advice to heart, though, and sucked up to the teachers in the only way he knew how, by sleeping with them.
While this ensured him glowing reports to Hertz, it didn't stop him getting into frequent trouble. His talent rendered him invaluable, but his body was seen as a mere vessel. He found himself spending months at a time in the wards, and soon became quite popular with the healers. He developed a reputation of his own.
It was a late September evening when Hertz called him into his office from supper. Surprised and confused, unaware of any recent mischief he'd gotten himself into, Schuldig found himself confronted with a man that still terrified him, despite being bale to shut him out of his mind.
"Schuldig," Hertz smiled predatorily, "we have a new proposition for you."
Schuldig waited patiently, a talent he'd picked up in the last few months.
"Do you remember the Laboratories?" Hertz watched the colour drain from Schuldig's face with a sick glee. "Ja, I thought you might. Now, as your talent is developing, we thought it would be useful for you to undergo a few more tests. We just want to measure what you can do, and see what it is that makes you different from, say, a telempath."
"I can read thoughts," Schuldig pointed out, "a telempath can just read feelings."
Hertz frowned. "If you weren't needed in the Labs I'd send you to the Ward," he muttered. "We need to establish your range, and the delicacy of your power. We also need to establish whether you are an active or a passive. Herr May maintains you are an active telepath, but you have offered us very little proof of that, and to be frank if he is wrong you're not worth the food we give you."
Schuldig blanched at this. It was true, he hadn't tried projecting his thoughts for a long time, and it hadn't occurred to him that might be because he couldn't. Sure, Gregory had picked up on his thoughts when he wanted him to, but Greg was a telepath as well, wasn't he? He hadn't known that then, but when he stole Crawford's dossier he had made a point of reading it. And if Hertz decided they were wasting resources on a passive telepath, no matter how strong, he wasn't nearly as invaluable as Crawford and Gregory had insisted he was.
*Herr Hertz, * Schuldig tried. Hertz's head snapped up and a grimace like smile distorted his features. *I think this can be considered proof that I am an active telepath. I will participate in your research, to find out more about myself. *
"You will participate in our research to help Estet find out more about you to help us find our path to glory," Hertz snapped. Schuldig sighed. Why was it whenever he opened his mouth he put his foot in it? And he hadn't had to even open his mouth this time.
