A/N – and here's our beloved Schuldich, just to complete the set.
I've been such a good little psycho all day I have not been fastened into my straitjacket for the night. A rare treat, even if they have managed to hide my knives away from me. I prowl around the unlit place grinning as I think how easy it would be to stop these three lives. Esset's habit of housing teams together does not take my own proclivities into account. But then I tried to kill them all once and it ended quite badly.
Instead I content myself with prowling silently about the joint peering in at the others. Crawford and Nagi are boring when the sleep, but Schuldich sleeps with the curtains open and is dead. The bright plumage shines in the moonlight and that animated face and body are still, like a doll packed up in a box. Now he is the puppet and I can lift his limbs and watch them flop down. He took diazepam tonight so I am safe from him waking. It makes me giggle quietly seeing how the mighty, arrogant mind-twister is so weak and vulnerable. His strength is his weakness and he refuses to embrace and become what he truly is. It is a shame that he wastes his potential, wrecking silly little marriages and short-changing people in the shops. He is afraid of who they are, but he denies who he is.
I frown at the paradox my little doll presents. He is neither then? He wants this power and his instinct is to sample and become other people, but his training tells him otherwise. He seems full of bravura but will not step up to the challenge his own self issues him. He does not join the battle with himself, instead avoiding it elegantly, like his fighting. His speed and strength allow him to dodge and duck so well and the gun he uses keeps himself clean. Even Crawford deigns to fight with his own two hands on occasion.
How can someone so aware of the mind be so ignorant of their own? His brashness, bright clothes, nasal, loud voice and constant need to scheme and be occupied are a cowardly retreat from himself. Sometimes I think even his assumed name is.
I smile and jump off the bed, to dive under it and lurk in shadow. I like these ones and somehow we all fit together to make a good working unit. It certainly beats being back at the nuthouse with nothing to do all day.