I wont need a pre-author note with how long the mini-rant at the end of this chappie is going to be. So brace yourself, read, hope you enjoy, and ciao until the A/N at the end. Song has been translated from its original German.
Disclaimer: I don't own GX. I don't own Rammstein –sadly looks at the cake in my head dancing with Priest Zane to 'Du hasst'-
Dedicated to Cupid… yesterday I washed THE satanic blender. Yes… THE satanic blender from the 'chocolate and peanut butter' milkshake…
We share a room and bed
Brother dear, come and be so kind
Brother dear, come touch me
Slide closely to me
In front of the bed, a black hole and every sheep falls inside
I am already too old, yet still count them because I cannot sleep
Under the navel, in the branches a white dream is already waiting
Brother dear, come hold tightly and shake the leaves from the tree for me
Play a game with me
Give me your hand and play with me a game
Play with me a game
Play with me because we are alone
Play with me a game
Father Mother Child
Dear brother's hand hurts
He turns to the wall again
The brother helps me now and then so that I can sleep
Play a game with me
Give me your hand and play with me a game
Play with me a game
Play with me because we are alone
Play with me a game
Father Mother Child
Humans naturally feel a vapid incongruence when unconsciousness steals into their minds. Everything bleeds into quiet lull, a gentle sway, the way the breeze is before the turn of any season. There is the remotest soft, docile and somewhat childish, like auguries of infantile innocence, before any dream or nightmare. The innocence, like life itself, is stolen as the dream progresses… the cataleptic decadence of reverie embraced with placid sadomasochism. Dreams are future aspirations and nightmares are often past mistakes, but each of them eats voraciously at our present state of comatose virginity. It is shown by the toss or turn in your cover, or the betraying smile of bliss that graces our peaceful faces. It lives in the sweat that trickles down your face, or the help that you cry out for that no one can give you unless you are pulled with inconsiderate spite into the living, breathing world where, despite the fact that it is a divinely blended lurid nightmare and gratifying dream, there is hardly any innocence left to consume. But until then, we are left to bask in the satirical self-harm of sadistic imaginings.
Father Zane gave a particularly violent turn in his eiderdown, and the first perfidy of slumber committed as he uttered a name.
"Syrus…"
His face was pulled into its habitual frown, but something about it seemed fearful, its features slipping into a curvature of confusion and poignant antipathy.
"Syrus… don't… leave…"
He curled slightly, and his eyes squinched as he closed them tighter, as he shut them harder against the real world. Mary watched him patiently, her tail swishing back and forth. It was like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, timing his rest.
An owl's hoot mingled into the strident silence of the night as Zane grimaced and his hands clenched around his comforter. He murmured something else that was just completely incoherent, before his muscles relaxed.
His face was still taut with its fearful scowl, but the rest of his body did seem less tense.
Mary inwardly sighed as she went to go find something to eat. She paused as she heard a soft cry.
This is usually where he would wake up. He would mumble the ritual last sentence before he shot out of his covers. Mary turned her head and tolerantly surveyed her master.
His face twisted in bleak rage, but his voice seemed juvenile as he mumbled his final sentence of sleep.
"Please… don't… hurt… him…"
By the time he had gotten to 'hurt', she had left the room. She didn't want to intrude on what would now be his conscious sorrow.
-!I!I!I!I!I!I!I!-
"Zane, what you don't seem to understand is that you're a priest, and that can seriously assist your crusade. It's the one thing you have over Slade, so I suggest that you use it… I know your not good with hospitals, honey, but this is one way to show the public that compassion is needed in the office and that you're their man…so go and pray for those sick people. Play our Priest Card. I know you can do it."
Zane sighed as he looked at the directory of floors in the foyer of the hospital. His secretary really didn't know anything, did she?
The hospice itself stank of the queer, faint smell of the old, unwashed bed sheets and that horrifically prevalent scent of medication.
Now that he thought about it, if he used his blessed 'Priest Card', it made him no better than Slade with his younger brother. He cast a bit of a guilty look at the bible in his hand. It was hard to find people that did love God these days and weren't just exploiting his compassion for their selfish desires. He was a priest and he knew that he was supposed to redirect the stray lambs that thought like that…
But now he himself felt like a black sheep, away from the rest of the blasphemously stark herd, left to sin and wallow in selfish misery that was the only thing left that they had to horde to themselves.
It had been a day since Slade had caught him in the chapel. Since then, he had been unusually insubstantial and a bit shaky. He had splurged on cigarettes at the corner store, and every time he felt as though the invisible irksome thing of life was too much to take, he would melt away to somewhere, a quiet corner, and he would wedge a cigarette between that habitually present scowl and take another eleven minutes off of his life. It was his escape. He refused to be the cliché priest and turn to the bottle. Too overdone. He was going out in style. He was going to slowly smoke himself to his grave.
Zane became like this every time he felt his faith was wavering. It would peak and then just burst every once in a while, leaving him to shudder slightly in a dark corner until he thought the world was good enough to face once more. It was a psychological thing, almost like a diluted anthropophobia of the mind. But of course, a mask of patronizing knowledge and blatant perfectionism always veiled the fear he had felt. That he was feeling. And he glued the mask firmly to his face, and clutched it there for dear life. Ever since Syrus left, he had felt ugly, and he didn't want anyone to see him. He just wanted God to mould him and to make him how he was before everything.
But he would never tell anyone any of this. Those were the thoughts for the innermost sanctums of his conscience. He resumed in his routine scowling while his eyes scanned the layout of the hospital floors. He wanted somewhere without the medications, the life support, the dying people…
The crying people.
He was just about to deem every floor in the sanatorium totally intolerable when some one tapped him on the shoulder. He grunted.
"Father, have you come to pray for the ill and wounded?"
Zane turned and faced the woman. She was tall with long, chestnut hair and dressed in a nurses uniform which hugged her stately and effeminate curves.
Her eyes were wide and knowing, blue, and as Zane peered into hem, he was almost shocked to see himself, scowling and slightly curious, rudely gaping back at him from their sapphire depths.
"Um… yes I am, Miss…"
His eyes flicked to the identification card above her breast. It was rude to stare.
"Rhodes."
She looked at her nametag and laughed. "I forget that's there sometimes," she said good-naturedly. Her eyes then returned to the cleric and she frowned slightly, for just a brief moment… and then her smile returned and she said warmly, "This hospital is very easy to get lost in. Why don't you let me show you to a floor, Father… it always pleases me when someone from the church comes to pray for these people, I try to help in any way I can-"
"Thanks," he said, and he felt a nice, genuine smile spreading like warm, melted butter over his face. Maybe the day wasn't going to be so miserable after all.
Miss Rhodes frowned pensively as she gazed into Zane's eyes and asked him where he wanted to go.
"The children's ward is often a favorite with the clergy members-"
Zane gasped as though someone pitched iced cold water on him. A queer sensation washed over him that made him feel bleak, desolate, but agonizingly frozen all at once. A small splinter of torridly glacial fear staked his heart in that one moment, and it seemed as though the bit of raw and powerful anger he felt along with the sadness fused his soul to the very air itself outside of him, causing his head to buzz.
He saw Syrus in that brief moment.
"No… no, thanks," he choked. He felt his hand reflexively reach for his pocket, and when he found that it was empty, angrily tighten around the bare box that had once held some cigarettes. His mouth suddenly felt very dry.
God, he wanted a smoke…
Miss Rhode's eyes became slightly worried for a moment, and then she said, "You know what? Follow me, and we'll just pick a ward, okay?"
"Can we just avoid one with hurting people… you know, people on life support and stuff… actually sick people?" Zane said this as though there were a ward constructed specifically for those that were feigning illness.
"I'll see what I can do, Father," she said distractedly as she took a outstretched clipboard from and employee while passing by. The chocolate haired doctor called after her as she continued pacing, and Zane had to speed up his step to keep up with her.
"Goddamn screwed ones in the psych ward, sis, thought you should take care of it. One of them is real quiet, his family said that they'd be here in a while, but till then you'd better talk to him or somethin-"
"Don't worry, Atticus, I'll handle it," she said loudly, cutting him short and waving a dismissive hand. Her eyes then began to examine the record on the board, and she chewed on the end of a pencil while she strolled and read, bumping into people and muttering half-hearted apologies every now and then while Zane looked curiously around to the patients and medical staff, still frowning. He didn't come in hospitals much. He didn't like them, he tried to stay away from them, but as he was here, he might as well try to take in what it looked like. After all, he wouldn't know when next he would see the interior and paradoxically bustling dying life of one. He just knew that it wouldn't be too soon.
After about another minute of strolling ascending a few staircases, Nurse Rhodes finally broke the silence.
"You know what, Father?" she mumbled a bit idly as her eyes dashed down the profile on the clipboard, "You can come with me to the psych ward… I don't think there's 'actually sick people' there, as you so eloquently put it…"
She abruptly stopped at a fairly large, white double door that swung to the inside, and turned the page of the clipboard to look at more patient records. Over the door, brass letters were nailed to spell the words: Ward Five, Psychological Ward.
"Come on," she said as she pushed open the doors and jerked her head, signaling for him to enter, "I'm sure you need to get back to church in time for afternoon Mass and I have a lot of other people to look at today. Chop-chop." But then she made no move to go inside, and she reclined slightly on the open doors to curiously study him, and her smile hadsuddenly turned itself around.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Her eyes seemed calculating but slightly confused, her smile was not angry but lost. She shook her head.
"No, it's just you look familiar, as though I've seen your face around before…"
Oh, wow, you think? After all, there are flyers of me everywhere… 'Zane For Senator'…
"I've never seen you in my whole life," Zane said frankly as he strolled into the ward, and he heard the door slam shut behind him as Alexis followed.
His secretary wanted him to go pray for people to promote his campaign… too bad half of the people didn't know he was running because they didn't know he existed… no wonder he was so behind in the polls… Of course, he got that 'I feel like I've seen you before' already. In the beginning, he would tell people, 'Yeah, I'm running for senator', but then it became far too tedious. If they didn't knew who he as, screw it. He didn't care. Let him stay that way… after all, the Bible said that ignorance was bliss, and who was he to take away their joy?
"Got some screwy ones today," Miss Rhodes muttered behind him, and she made him jump. Her voice had been curiously magnified and it resounded in the ward, and it had broken the cadence of their reverberating footsteps. The celebrant was afraid to admit that what the nurse said had a point.
Patients at their sides huddled in their rooms behind mirrored glass. Some of the sat and rocked back and forth, some of them curled up on their beds.
But all of them had the same desolate look, gave the same poignant, captivating stare that caused their entire countenance to appear emaciated as though time had completely ravaged it. It was unduly morbid and melancholic; to see the dull and wasted gazes they gave. Everything about their stares seemed a bit clueless as they looked out to the hall in which he and the nurse were walking. They didn't know if people were out there, they only saw their own reflections, their eyes wide like a deer stuck in headlights.
"Those windows… mirrored glass… so that means they can't see us, right?"
"That they are, Father, they wouldn't know if we were all running around with our heads on fire out here…"
Her mouth was still moving but Father did not hear her… Zane began to have a dubious distrust to the woman's assurances when he saw one patient in particular.
The boy had black spiky, black hair and unnaturally pale skin, and his dark, tired eyes glared disdainfully outwards, framed by sleepless shadows as dark as bruises. His hands were balled at his sides, but as they were passing, he raised one hand and smirked, a confident and terrifying smirk, and he twiddled his fingers in a wave.
Zane stopped in his tracks and looked at the boy. How could he see them-
"Father, you said you were going to come here and pray! What are you standing there gaping at?"
Zane turned and Miss Rhodes has her hands on her hips. She was looking at him confusedly.
"Hn," he grunted as he turned to the boy who had been waving. There was as good a place to start as any. The raven-haired teen had retreated to a corner of his room, and he was seated cross-legged on the floor, calmly reading the morning papers.
Zane entered the room.
"Hello the name of the Father," he greeted, closing the door behind him. The boy's eyes leered at him over the papers and he said quite coldly, "I don't believe in God."
Zane stopped and gritted his teeth, feeling the old annoyance stealing on. Why did people persist in making his job so fucking hard…
"Well… just hello then," Zane tried patiently as he took out his Rosary and flipped to a psalm in the Bible. He couldn't swear now, couldn't have impure thoughts, he had consecrated items in his hands and he was about to impart God's divine wisdom-
"Well, then, why are you here?" the dark-haired teen bristled, folding the papers and resting them aside to give Zane his undivided attention, "If I told you I don't believe in God, then why are you still here?" Zane made the sign of the cross. Impure thought number one: the thought of him violently swearing at this boy to just let him do his job.
His exterior remained indifferent though, and he said diplomatically, "If you give me a reason that you don't believe in God- a good reason, mind you, then I will obligingly leave you the hell alone."
The boy folded his arms and said spitefully, "Well, Father Zane, I stopped believing in God two nights ago… I thought he would help me, just that one time… but you wouldn't care, and I don't feel like telling the story, so…"
Zane cocked his head in one of his rare moments of confusion.
"How do you know my name-"
"You know, you really shouldn't be here, praying for the brother of your rival, Slade Princeton… you know, it might give the media the wrong impression if they get a hold of it…"
He then gave a pointed look to a security camera in the corner of the room. Zane swore . He didn't remember the sign of the cross.
"So, you're the infamous Chazz," he sneered, resting aside his bible and rosary. Wouldn't be any praying for this dweeb.
"You know, you should leave before my brothers get here," Chazz reiterated forcefully. He leaned over to grab his newspaper again, blocking his face.
"I want to know why you woke me up at two in the morning!" Zane said, his eyes boring a hole from the newspaper to Chazz.
Zane, you were already up, and you were masturbating to… God, what were you masturbating to…
Zane shooed away the thought to the small niche in his mind from which it had originated. For argument's sake, he wasn't up already. Chazz woke him up. Everything was Chazz's fault.
Zane heard an exasperated sigh from behind the papers. They were lowered, and Chazz was giving him a look that clearly said that he was bored with him.
"Father Zane," he drawled, "as you can see, I'm highly unstable, a mentally ill patient…" His words contrasted violently with the way he tranquilly turned the page, his eyes flickering over its headlines, "I need rest or I might bite your head off. Blow up downtown. Stalk you and kill your family-"
"Hey," Zane growled. Chazz turned the page and looked up at Zane, eyebrows arching slightly. He knew he had hit a nerve. He continued in his perfectly disgusted tone of voice, "My brothers are going to be here shortly and they wont be happy to see you…" he trailed off as something over Zane's shoulder held his gaze. The incensed frown on his face flexed into a supercilious smirk.
"Oh, well," he said airily, "Cant say I didn't tell you so." He turned the page. Zane knew behind him from the time he heard the sleazy, cold voice.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Zane turned his head and gave Slade a sardonic smile. "Well, look at who's on who's stumping ground now, Slade?"
A man stood next to Slade with his arms folded, and he was casting a scornful, uncompassionate look at Chazz. He was an exceptionally comely man, with ivory like skin and his dark hair slicked back. Chazz readily returned his gaze, the hate in it matched wholly.
Slade's face began to redden.
"I told you that you wouldn't get any calls or anything like that from him again, Father, doesn't that appease any debt I have for disturbing you at all? I told you I'll handle it-"
"Chill out, brother, I hardly told him anything-" Chazz said flatly to Slade, but he was still staring odiously at his other brother.
"You stay out of this, you ingrate!" Slade yelled, his eyes snapping to Chazz. The other Princetons paid him no mind. It was if they were in their own world, their continual glaring their only nutrient, suppliant and oxygen to survive in the universe they had created with their clear hatred for each other.
"Listen," Zane began, "I'm not in the mood for trouble, all I really want is a pack of cigarettes, I'll leave if you-"
"I don't want you around my brother, do you hear me Truesdale!" Slade continued to rave. His eyes were flickering nervously around, and Zane began to see the faint bulge of a vein in Slade's neck. He compulsively raised his hand and tightened his tie.
"Okay, I understand-" Zane said, lifting his hands defensively. Slade was beginning to piss him off.
"No, you don't understand," Slade said cold, his hands smoothing at his hair as he sneered at Zane, "After all, Father, your brother is dead." Zane's eyes narrowed, and he said slowly and quietly, "How do you know that?"
"It's my job to know these things," Slade said, pacing over to Chazz's bed and sitting himself on in a genteel fashion as though he were a king, "I even saw the transcripts of all the investigatory interviews, how you blamed yourself for the death and rape of your little Syrus, or, for direct quotation, your 'little bro'-"
Slade stopped when Zane angrily shot up, storming to the door of the room.
"Leaving without these, Father?" Slade said mockingly, holding up the bible and rosary.
Zane turned, and if one was watching, you would have somehow seen all the patience and tolerance and screws that held him together just leave his body and disappear.
"Get your little Satan hands off of it," Zane snarled, lunging at Slade.
He really believed Slade was the devil. Slade was Satan, and his cat was Jehovah. Hallelujah, praise the lord, because they were both turning his life into a living hell, Slade more at the moment than Mary…
Slade let out a startled scream as Zane dived for him, and his face became disfigured in a shocked snarl as he held the bible and rosary above his head, his wide eyes peering at Zane. The priest landed on top of Slade, and the bible and rosary flew out of his hands. Zane began to punch Slade, driving his hand into his abdomen, into his face, into his chest. Zane didn't stop even when he saw that Slade's nose had become mangled and bloodied. His knuckles gleamed and glistened crimson with Slade's blood as he repeatedly drove his fist into Slade's clearly broken nose.
"St… Stob!" he sputtered as he too punched Zane with flailing fists in his back.
Zane did stop, but only because he was disentangled from Slade by the other Princeton, the brother whose name he didn't know. Now the blunette was looking at the individual who had interrupted him, breathing heavily like a winded bull, and the pale-skinned man gazed evenly back.
Just as the tension in the room had reached its peak, the door opened and a shrill, female shriek was heard. The sound of the tinkling of broken tableware.
"What happened in here!" the nurse screamed softly. Her wide and horrified eyes were on the rumpled sheets and Slade's bloody nose.
Echoing, running footsteps were heard, and just then, Miss Rhodes too was in the door frame, and her hand as raised to her mouth.
"Mindy, what happened…" she said softly.
"Well," the man who had accosted Zane began, "Father Zane saw it fit to assault my brother-"
"Jagger, drob it," Slade said, rising from the bed and wiping at his nose with his sleeve. Alexis' eyes widened, and she said shakingly, "I wouldn't have let you him in here if I knew who he was, Mr. Princeton…"
"No harmb dun, Alexis," he said thickly, and he gave her what he tried to make the most charming smile through the torrent of blood that ran from his nose into his goatee. Her eyes wandered to Zane, and she said, "I don't like people who come in the hospital to make trouble… I thought you were visiting these patients to listen to their suffering and try to help ease it… Most obviously I was wrong." She pointed to the door with her thumb and inclined her head marginally in its direction. "Get out."
Zane was scowling at her…
Possible headlines in the tabloid tomorrow began to stand out vividly in his mind:
Father Zane Strikes Contender For Senate, Slade Princeton-
Angry Priest At It Again-
Zane was hardly conscious when he slowly shuffled out of the room, his eyes not seeing anything, him not hearing anything. Everyone in the room was glaring at him. His hand once again reached for his pocket and it drew back as if the empty cigarette packet had been hot. The silence seemed to have an angry buzz to it.
But there was one more headline that stood out the most. It was vivid and red, with scary, bold capital letter. It brought on worse anger and nausea and tired indifference than the others…
Probably because it had actually been a headline.
Teen Found Raped and Unconscious in Alley. Warded In Hospital, Critical Condition.
Zane kept his eye focused on the hall, which was the faint sliver of outside between the shoulders of Nurse Alexis and Mindy. He wasn't aware that Slade had rudely thrust his bible and rosary into his hand while he was walking.
It had become slow, foreboding, his walk; it was the walk of someone going to be executed, and he mumbled an "Excuse me," so Mindy and Alexis would get out of his way. He held his breath and was about to step through the door when Chazz stopped the silence.
"You don't believe in God either, Father," he said matter-of-factly, and he finally broke the mental war between himself and Jagger by blocking his face with the newspaper once more. But before it covered his eyes, Zane had slowly turned his head, and discreet dots of fear crept into Chazz's steely gaze. It wasn't anything that was highly perceptible, but Zane knew it was there because those dots of fear were once present in Syrus' eyes.
"You don't believe in God, Zane, you could see it in your eyes… so stop pretending."
Zane felt breath slowly drain out of him, and the swell his body again with that sentence. Everything in the room suddenly seemed vivid, colorful, like the way things appeared to you in a dreamscape.
But this wasn't a dream.
He breathed in and out. His hand reached in his pocket to pull out a smoke, he really needed it right now-
His shaking fingers closed around an empty box.
I was on a time limit to write this chapter, that's why it came out so badly. If any of you wanted to ever see this before school re-opened, it was now or never, so I had to write the whole thing so I could get in a cab and get to a cyber café in the city and post it. It may seem watered, but I'll fix it later. Promise.
To my seventh reviewer, I'm sorry you feel that way. I didn't know I made Zane and they so out of character that the fic should become a story and be put on fiction press where it belongs. Because I swear, from the amount of hits and how this thing has gone up on a lot of people's alert lists, I would say that this could stay right here. Next time, how about some constructive criticism to tell me how to make them more in character than telling me to move this to another site, ok?
I should take this opportunity to bring two things to the public's attention… you know, things that I should high-light that I would swear I mentioned before but sort of have to reinforce… just so I can avoid a review like that from happening again…:
One: This is an AU. Alternate. Universe. The plot is going to have nothing to do with the show, and therefore I think I would have to make the characters slightly different because Duel Academy wasn't there to influence their lives. So, moving on to point number two…Two: I hardly get to watch GX. If I made anyone out of character, don't give me a roundabout thingy of how stupid the fic is, just tell me how to fix it, and I promise you as a writer on this site that I'll fix whatever I did wrong on the next chapter I post… -points to Slaid/Slade error in the previous two chapters-.
And to everyone else (this whole Post-Author Note might strike you as bitchy, but I don't intend it to be prudish. I'm sincere here) if you don't like the summary, please don't click on it. There's a difference between
'Everyone is a bit OOC, but the story is ok… work on what you have to to make this better' and 'Omg, I hate –so and so- pairing' or 'I hate how people make –so and so- act like their –so and so-'. If you don't like it, find something else to read that'll appease your taste.I suppose this is me taking reflexive author offense… heh, I am too proud and vain for my own good. Always say it.… but I'm sure you other reviewers know how I feel, right? (
Ki-chan/Evanescent Whisper/ Kenny/ Sunshine/ Keena/ Keens/ Goth Girl #1
(-sweatdrops- CRAIG!…)
