Shattered
In the original plan, Brad was going to remain locked up for another few months, but I couldn't see Schuldig remembering to keep feeding him that long. I'm trying to get this fic wrapped up rather soon (we're on the downhill slope, in that there's one more minor arc and one more character arc to sort out). Things aren't quite following my plan now, and I'm writing something that, in the rewrite, I might change. There is going to be a rewrite, once this is completely finished. I need to make a decision about whether I'm going to include anything out of the drama CDs, and whether this will really be a prequel to NRNR or not. Possibly more extensive planning should have taken place before I began, but then, I thought I'd have finished this within twenty chapters. Heh.
They'd shaved his head. After he'd gone to the trouble of dying his hair they'd shaved it all off. They patched up his eye and put him in large padded mittens, so he couldn't hold anything. It was worse than any straitjacket. Not that he wasn't in one of those too.
Farfarello laughed in the coldness of the stark room. A man in a white coat glanced over at him. Farfarello grinned at him. He could still move his mouth and his eyes, if nothing else. They didn't like the fact he could move his jaw, though. They'd had to file down his teeth. Three of the lab assistants had lost fingers before they settled on using a cone, like you would fit on a dog with stitches, to keep him from chewing holes in himself, though it didn't ensure their safety. That, combined with the straitjacket and the iron frame they had strapped him to had made it next to impossible for him to ruin the body built in God's image.
The iron frame reminded Farfarello of a stick man without arms. The straitjacket wrapped around it, so the iron pole of the back followed his spine and the jacket was tied to it in the centre. Tough leather belts held him to it at the ankles, thighs, waist and neck. He could just about walk if he had someone on each side holding him up, but he'd never manage stairs. Mostly they carried him around. In his saner moments he worried about what this was doing to his knees. He couldn't bend them. He could barely flex his ankles. Looking down his legs might as well have belonged to someone else, for all he could do. Walking was going to be difficult, when they finally released him.
If they finally released him.
Farfarello couldn't help but wonder.
* * *
Crawford found himself sitting in Hertz's office, slumped in what had no doubt been a student in some dark distant past. To his shame he hadn't been able to walk there unaided, hadn't been able to walk period, and a telekinetic sat beside him making certain he stayed in the chair. Even more embarrassing was the fact that Brad really did need the help to remain seated. His limbs had given up and he couldn't even find the grip to remain in the seat. Still, the sleepy-eyed girl with her paltry powers gave Crawford an idea.
"I'd really rather you'd died," Hertz said bluntly. "I wonder if you could possibly be any more inconvenient."
"I don't really have the energy," Crawford smiled emptily.
"And now, of course, I have to make certain you get better." Hertz had an expression of extreme distaste. Crawford's stomach twisted at the idea of what the malicious small man might do to him. Healers could wreak all kinds of havoc that only other healers could undo. Hertz had reached the top of the heap by being less than powerful, and Crawford doubted that there'd be anyone who could undo his work.
"Save your energy," Crawford said firmly. "I'll recover on my own."
"You mean you'll lie around in bed taking up valuable resources," Hertz spat.
"Give me a telekinetic," Crawford said, forcing himself not to think of what an angry Hertz might do to him, compared with when he merely hated the American. "I'll teach him like I taught the telepath, and in turn he can aid me until I have fully recovered. I will happily still teach, I just lack the ability to reach the correct rooms."
"You say 'him'," Hertz observed coldly.
Crawford kicked himself mentally. Of course. "Nagi Naoe," he admitted. "The boy has the added advantage of being Japanese, and can help with decoding some of the more archaic intricies of the language used in the dossier."
"He's powerful, and he's got a good knowledge of computers," Hertz said flatly. "I'm not putting someone like that in your hands. Have Sarah," he gestured to the slack jawed girl in the room.
Crawford looked at the girl. "No," he said simply.
Crawford wondered if Hertz knew that Nagi had been the one to release him. Probably not, though he suspected something. It would be foolish to assume Hertz knew nothing about Nagi's involvement with Schuldig, but the fact that the boy was still alive seemed promising. Maybe Hertz didn't know about the scanned dossier?
"You're opinion is of no consequence," Hertz told him.
"Is mine?" said a nasal voice from the doorway.
"No," Hertz said. "Leave," he added.
"Give him Nagi," Schuldig said. Brad recognised the slight double tone to the voice that signified the telepathic emphasis place on the words. He wondered if this was because Schuldig was being clumsy, or whether perhaps his experience with Schuldig inserting his own thoughts into Crawford's brain had given him some link to the young man's powers.
"Don't play those games with me," Hertz snarled. "I've more experience with telepathy than you'll have by the time you die."
"You're just scared," Schuldig dismissed the balding healer. "You, May and DuBois have held your positions too long. You're waiting for young guns like us to topple you, like you toppled whoever was here when you arrived."
"Herr Jackson?" Hertz raised an eyebrow. "The man was a fool. He stood alone. He slept alone." The laugh was pure indulgence. Crawford wondered what ornament or trophy had once been the luckless Jackson.
"What are your ambitions, Hertz?" Schuldig purred. "Where are you going?"
"I'm not going anywhere," Hertz said calmly. "So this seat will never be vacated."
"You're old," Schuldig laughed. "How much longer do you have?"
Crawford grimaced. Hertz didn't look that old, and Madame Dubois and Mr May were hardly elderly themselves. But something... Madame Dubois had been training seers since before Crawford was born, she'd mentioned once during one of their sessions, back when Crawford was still a student. And Mr May had an unnatural attachment to a World War One plane. Crawford resolved to find someone who remembered Herr Jackson. He wanted to know precisely when Hertz had become governor of Rosenkreuz.
"I have longer than you do," Hertz said grimly.
"Is that a threat?" Schuldig laughed.
"No, it wasn't," Brad murmured softly, dread sickening him. Schuldig shouldn't laugh at this man, this institute.
"Why are you here, boy?" Hertz frowned. "You loathe this man."
"I do," Schuldig acknowledged bitterly. "But Nagi is easily cowed, for all this power. Madame Dubois's son has taken an unhealthy interest in him. Nagi doesn't want to attract interest here, but he has been making ties since he arrived."
"He has a great deal of patronage among the more superior students," Hertz acknowledged. "We are aware of his power."
Are you aware of his potential? Crawford wondered. He doubted Hertz knew anything about the cause of the earthquake, though he hardly knew more himself. And then, Madame Dubois's son? He supposed that must be the leech boy Schuldig had come to him about when Crawford wanted to take him to collect Farfarello. Schuldig was right, it was an unhealthy interest. Nagi had spent too long getting to know this boy.
When you went to Rosenkreuz you ceased to believe in friendship.
"Use him," Schuldig persisted. He couldn't meet Crawford's eyes, not that he would have anyway. Still, he wasn't entirely comfortable with what he was saying. He sounded like Crawford. Ambitious, uncaring. When you had thoughts battering you day and night it took a lot of pull off that kind of nonchalance without falling into the sociopath trap. It was hard to project the idea that he really didn't care about Nagi, but soon it wouldn't be a matter of projection. Schuldig wasn't sure whether the anticipation he held that day in was fearful or hopeful.
"The boy is nothing special," Hertz dismissed him. "He has some talent, true, but there will always be many like him. The leech boy can keep him. Your interest is suspicious, and I know you believe the child has an exceptional intellect, which I don't doubt, and an impressive power, which reminds me how young you children are." He smirked superciliously. "You are children. You must be disciplined."
Discipline. There was one technique employed at Rosenkreuz that not even the most old fashioned of boarding schools would dare employ. Brad suppressed a shudder and a calculating look lit in Schuldig's eyes. Four men entered the room, all as slimy and sadistic as Hertz. Crawford was half-marched half-dragged away, while Schuldig refused to be touch and simply walked between his would-be rapists.
Crawford was surprised to be taken back to the rooms he had once known as his own. He fought as they lay him down on his own bed, and laughed with bitter humours as they removed his clothes and hung them up in his own wardrobe. Lying on his own bed, which had only been used for this once before. Used to prevent this.
They weren't rough at first. Somewhere in Crawford's mind he thought they'd both try to take him at once, but the mechanics of that baffled him. He'd expected them to do it bare and dry, but lube and condoms were produced. One of them started to touch himself and Crawford watched in sick fascination as the hand jerked up and down. At least they didn't prepare him like Schuldig had, that first time. He would have broken at that point. Instead he was left with the bitter pain, hot and sharp and repetitive. He didn't scream. Schuldig had spent so many months trying to break his mind, and these two strangers were destroying him. The pain, the humiliation, the shame, the anger, the fear...
* Hush, * he was soothed. * It's okay. *
Brad sent wordless fury to the owner of the voice. Okay? Hah.
The second man was an illusionist; the one Brad himself had brought to Rosenkreuz. He smiled at Brad and the lips twisted into a familiar smirk. Brad closed his eyes but a coldly slicked finger to a raw and bleeding place had them open again. He stared into a familiar face.
"No," he croaked.
"Guten tag," the mirage laughed, his N'awlins drawl mangling the German.
"No!" Brad spat at him. His partner sighed and moved behind Brad to hold him down. Horror filled Brad at the idea he might have had the option to escape before.
"Don't play these games. You know Herr Hertz won't appreciate it."
"He don't care," the fake red head laughed. It was the old Schuldig Brad was looking at, he reminded himself, but that didn't make it better. The orange hair and wide eyes belonged to the boy Brad had taken to this bed and rejected and regretted it. "He hates the man."
"You want to send him insane? He's needed."
* Remember, one day they will be dead at our hands, * a voice warmed him. * You didn't strike me as the type to forget a little thing like that. *
Let them die now. Let them die painfully. Let them die now and make this stop.
* Let them die painfully, * Schuldig echoed.
Brad stared down the length of his body. The image before him and the voice in his head had confused his body, he told himself. He wasn't getting off on th-
* Come here, * Schuldig told him. * You don't need to be present for what happens next. *
Brad followed willingly, meek and desperate. He escaped his body, because his body couldn't escape them. Schuldig's head was hardly a more comforting place to be, but the ex-prostitute took the brutality of his situation with alarming calm.
* It's not a matter of yes or no or willingness, * Schuldig told him. *I feed off them, sometimes, making myself enjoy this by pretending their enjoyment is my own. They begin to think I'm willing after a while. But it's all relative. *
I don't understand how you managed to do this for a living, Brad told him. He was vulnerable here, and he didn't like feeling vulnerable, but he preferred it to feeling violated.
* It's worse afterwards, * Schuldig warned him. * Cleaning yourself up. * He pulled Brad further in, more aware of what was happening to Brad's apparently catatonic body than Brad was. * Sometimes, when you're given a choice between rape and, well, whatever the choice happens to be, it's not really a choice. You're not saying yes, and you're not willing, but you try to make the best of a bad job. You take what you're given and you're grateful for it. *
Brad's consciousness curled in on itself and Schuldig caught a glimpse of Brad's father, lips moving to echo his own words. Schuldig wanted to comfort him, but he also wanted to rub it in. His feelings for Brad were still confusing him and ripping him apart. Judging by the illusionist's choice of chimera Brad hadn't exactly found closure either.
* We'll kill them, * Schuldig reiterated. * Don't let go of that. I can feel you letting go. *
I don't want to go back, Brad told him miserably. Can I stay?
* Yes, I'll have a split personality for the rest of my life, * Schuldig told him dryly. * You'll get over it, Crawford. Hertz has taken away your control, your power. He's done it before. He let me chain you up in a dungeon for six months. He likes it when you feel weak. When they are gone take a shower, take a look at that dossier. Boss someone around. Go and take a lesson and yell at them a bit. *
Brad shuddered. He knew what Schuldig was trying to do, and it didn't fit with anything Schuldig had told him before. Schuldig was trying to help him cope, teach him how to get through it. He was being compassionate. Brad could feel the anger beneath that, anger he knew Schuldig must feel due to him, but none of the oft-mentioned hatred. Still, his head was far from a pleasant place to be, and Brad could almost see the cracks spider-webbing across his sanity.
* That's yours, * Schuldig told him.
Because this is quite a short chapter (one of the reasons I held back from posting it originally) and because the following is quite a short fic, it's bonus fic time! Basically, LadyJaida said she liked it, and I love what she writes, so I felt like sharing. It has absolutely nothing to do with OUAN and contains Gluhen spoilers.
It's not your business
"Hand over the girl."
"Why?"
Schuldig leant back against the wall, one hand resting lightly on Aya-chan's arm. This worried Mamoru more than he wanted to let on. Who knew what that telepath had done to her this time? He hadn't even been able to establish how long he'd had her. It had been three weeks since Estet wrenched her from the flowershop. How much of that time had she spent in their hands, and how much in his?
"Kritiker will handle this," he said firmly.
"Kritiker doesn't know the first fucking thing about Estet, and this is all about Estet." Schuldig's vehemence surprised both of them. Aya-chan shot him a frightened look and he smiled reassuringly, albeit briefly. Mamoru's stomach churned. "If you want to keep her safe, she stays with me."
"Kritiker has resources you can't begin to imagine," Mamoru insisted. "Hand the girl over."
"I don't take orders from Takatoris."
"Oh, really?" Mamoru smirked despite himself.
"Not any more," Schuldig growled. It seemed he hadn't taken kindly to being caught out like that. And when he got angry, he got sloppy. Mamoru folded his arms smugly. "Now, if it were Tsukiyono Omi coming here and asking to be given control over the situation, sure, I'd do it," Schuldig went on, eyes narrowing. "But Takatori Mamoru just turning up and demanding power over this mess? No way."
"You killed Tsukiyono Omi." Mamoru's voice was frightening cold.
"No, you did. I just made him cry a lot."
"Nagi." The young man stepped forwards at his name. Mamoru gestured.
"Nagi?" Schuldig stared at his former team mate. "Wait, kid, what are you..."
end
