Chapter 15
Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!
It at first amazed and delighted Mr. S when he discovered, so gradual and unnoticed had been the pace of his discovery, that there was a full and complete language to knocks.
And not a crude, utilitarian language of patterned noise and logical sequence like JavaScript or German, either, but a full language of great artistry, with as much rhythm and cadence as could be found in any poem or asteroid impact.
Soon after buying his house, Mr. S learned how to decipher these messages hidden in the knocks, over the years developing a sensitive ear to their subtleties. He could sift the intended meaning from almost any knock, predicting from it the purpose its creator, with visitations ranging from "Trick or Treat," to "Girl Scouts!" to even "Have you accepted Jesus as your lord and savior?"
And it was through this common exchange that Mr. S realized, weather it was your candy, your money, or your soul, nobody ever knocked at your door unless they wanted something from you.
And, despite currently being on a completely different world, outfitted with an entirely alien vernacular of knocks, he could still recognize the current intent of the impacts coming from the metal doors, ones which, on earth, would roughly have translated to: Police! Open Up!
Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!
The impacts were like those of a sledgehammer against anvil, producing an unnaturally loud flash of thunderous noise which seemed barely able to fit it's great bulk into the hallway.
Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang Bang!
As Mr. S approached closer to the unnaturally static metal of the doors, he found himself surprised by how much louder the knocks, and in proportion, his anger, seemed to grow with proximity.
Although, it must be noted that Mr. S was not truly angry about the interruption to his sleep, but rather about the interruption itself, annoyed in a metaphysical way as the nature of interruption, like those of any concept, was dependent fully upon-
Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!
His eyes fluttered shut with every knock now. Each pail of noise hammered into his eardrums like an iron spike, triggering incessantly that instinctive defense mechanism.
Beyond this animal flinching, however, the higher portions of his personality were still buzzing with purpose, and, driven forward by the urgency of the moment, stumbled fortuitously upon an old memory, one which, at the moment, he took to be nothing more than random trivial about the working structure of the Japanese language, but, when applied to this very situation-
Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!
Mr. S cursed venomously under his breath and rushed forward with hard steps against the oncoming cacophony, finding his rage preserved in the noise even as his thoughts fled.
Falling gradually faster, Mr. S had broken into a slow run by the time he traced the final few steps, desperate to reach the doors before the next set of knocks could come, ears ringing tenderly inside his skull.
Nerves rising with his proximity to the seemingly lurking, and absolutely temporary, silence, Mr. S set to work with frenetic pace.
Gripping one of the over sized handles, Mr. S wrenched his arm backwards, pulling violently at the structure.
The door, a thick, metal affair which, by itself, guarded half of the eleven foot high entrance to the hall, did not need to be unlocked from the inside and, with whirring motors, swung smoothly open to the guiding motions of his hand.
Mr. S, feeling intensely the painfully slow passage of time his exhausted perspective existed in, did not wait for the door.
Weaving nimbly past the hulking iron slab, Mr. S forged into the opening, tuning down his, by then, wrathful charachicheture of an angry expression, replacing it, instead, with a finely constructed facade of controlled disdain.
Looking, first, out at the distant stairway, Mr. S then turned his head down, where he saw Weiss placed close before him, a wide, solid stance supporting her body while a tight fist hung frozen above her head, mid-knock. All of this was drawn together by the self righteous and combative note which bordered at the sharp edge of her features and burned hot in the blue of her expressive eyes.
"What!?" Mr. S all but snarled, impatient rage bubbling together with a recoiling apprehension at the prospect of dealing with Weiss again, to format his, in hindsight, overzealous reaction.
The great, booming voice of Mr. Schnee crashed through the serene surroundings, seeming to travel down every hall and haunt every pathway as it did so.
Weiss, Mr. S observed, attempted to brace herself against her father's words and, to his perfect surprise, failed completely in the attempt.
The now clear bluff of confidence she'd worn as a mask not seconds earlier, crumbled hastily away like a mirage in the wind; the natural, refined grace and ease of purpose which once characterized the heiress disappeared with it, displaced, instead, by a jittering uncertainty and vulnerable presence which seemed to bely her every action.
With an inflecting rebound, Mr. S found his defensive anger quickly smothered underneath the obstructive reality of another emotion entirely, he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was...
Weiss, in the meantime tried hastily to, hide within herself, her panicked attempts to do so only formenting the continual breakdown she seemed to be suffering.
Oh, yes, that emotion was shame. There was just something about yelling at a confused teenage girl in the body of her own father that brought that up.
Still, a flame of an anger too long suppressed lashed out against the guilt, and the deepening inertia of his consciousness did nothing to expedite the tarring slow with which the vivid momentum of his emotions seemed now to change.
Mr. S cleared his throat, fixing his tie in a self soothing action as he did so. "What do you want?" he asked, not bothering to filter the annoyance from his voice and interrupting Weiss's rapidly failing attempts to reconstruct her shield.
Weiss looked up as if just noticing him. She fumbled, straightening herself out into a stiff rendition of a formal stance, dressing herself in a decidedly distant expression as she fixed her jaw and stared, defiant, into his eyes.
She performed these practiced motions, not with the comfortable grace of a consummate heiress, but as a child might, when blockily attempting to copy directed actions which could never come naturally to her.
This juvenile appearance was juxtaposed, however, by the rich, unaffected voice with which she spoke; tinged with sadness, like hollow porcelain, proud and delicate, the words came: "you forgot to give us our room passes."
This, she said with such natural expectation and cool confidence, that even Mr. S could tell she was negotiating.
"Really?" his voice pitched with insincere shock, "I don't remember being responsible for your passes," he said, putting a hand up to his chest.
Weiss scowled slightly, releasing a short, frustrated breath through her nostrils. Speaking once again in a slow, deliberate tone: "We just need-"
"I'm not seeing how what you need is an argument for why I should help you at all," Mr. S replied, incorrigible rage still fuming at that latest, stinging interruption, as well as the mounting train wreck of a day for which he felt he was only partly responsible. "Good bye, Weiss." Biting cold etched into his words, "take it as a lesson to plan ahead next time." Waving with a dismissive finality, he turned away, moving the door to close behind him.
Crashh!
The door metal rung out like a discordant instrument, shaking almost painfully in his grip as it crashed to a hard stop. Mr. S felt painfully through his ringing bones the surprising momentum the door had carried. Spinning about, Mr. S found Weiss straddled half across the entrance, one foot stepping lightly on the carpet while a hand braced heavily against the stainless door; as she did, she looked pleadingly up at him, a dejected weight seeming to drag on every aspect of her character.
"Look," she ground, shutting her eyes before blinking them open once again with an intense, though quickly fading, fury, "I...realize I've made mistakes, and that I've hurt you; but, don't pretend that you haven't hurt me, either!"
She stopped now, gathering the moment to recapture her disjointed thoughts. "I just...I'm begging you, ok. Is that what you wanted to hear? It...wouldn't be good for us to stay out there," she gestured weakly with her free hand at some undefined location.
Again, Weiss paused, attempting vainly to shore her argument with substance. Pitiful excuses and unworkable pleas discarded themselves, one after the other, before her rapid analysis, running blazingly through every aspect and character she'd seen in her father, forcing an objective outlook until a desperate gamble appeared, carried on the wings of a distant memory...
"If you were ever serious, when you told me you only held my best interests at heart," she looked up at him, an immense depth expressing itself in her wavering eyes, "then listen to this one request."
She paused again, nervousness melting away, "You know I've never asked anything of you before," she trailed to a soft finish, speaking with a purpose that was half questioning in its demands.
Weiss slumped forward with effort, gritting her teeth and balling her fist as if a lingering, physical pain ran through her body, unable to focus any mind on the disjointed mess of a sentence she'd cobbled together under such conditions.
And, it is to Weiss's credit that she managed such an effort despite her certainty that it was doomed to failure. Even as she spoke, she made desperate contingencies, wondering if, perhaps, Blake might be shielded from the worst of the fallout if they stayed in separate locations. They might be able to-
"Ok," Mr. S replied, voice quiet, and with an unreadable quality tinging it.
Weiss straightened, blinking away her surprise. She felt...thankful, she realized, diagnosing herself with all the dispassionate analysis of a stranger. It was a strange sort of thankfulness, however, one which wouldn't allow itself to be associated with the man before her. She stood unmoving, not knowing quite what to say or do under the circumstance except to face her father, lower her fist and give a wholly inauthentic, "thank you," with a clipped and robotic voice.
"Don't," Mr. S spread his hand towards her as if making a shield; closing his eyes and turning his head to the side, he released a long breath before facing her once more, "...nevermind," he said, painedly, "just go ask Schwarz to get you a pass, tell her I said to do so… ." For the first time exhaustion was apparent in his posture.
Mr. S turned softly to leave when he was interrupted once more, this time by, what was, essentially, quite a simple question, one which under no circumstances need have taken more than a moment of his time.
"Where is Schwarz's room?" Weiss asked, and Mr. S felt his eyes twitch.
The thing about simple questions is: it doesn't matter how simple they are, if you don't know the answer.
"You know what -" Mr. S said, turning around with beleaguered enthusiasm and what seemed to be measured consideration "- we shouldn't bother Schwarz with this, she's had a long day. I'll get those passes for you myself."
Weiss, really didn't want to have her father personally come out to hand out room passes to her friends. In fact, she really didn't want, or plan, for that matter, to stay on the same continent as her father for the foreseeable century.
So, it came naturally when she said, "of course," with her own falling expression, rapidly coming to the realization of how little bargaining power she'd come out with under the situation.
"Excellent!" Mr. S said, shooting her a friendly smile.
"Great!" Weiss replied, giving him a "go fuck yourself," smile.
