Author's Notes: The next chapter is the last one of this installment. No worries, though, I'm working on the last part as we read.
(Insert your own poem here. I'm feeling lazy.)7
I am starting to think that my mind comes and goes with the phases of the moon, like the rise and fall of the tides, pulled by its gravitational force, like a witch's Sabbat. When the moon is full, the madness comes, warping my form and consciousness with that of an animal's. When it is new and black, I am myself again, playing chess with Nagi and loosing badly.
If only it was so simple, so orderly, so short. Brad says I was incapacitated ('useless' was the word he used) for nearly two weeks. Even now they still lock me in at night, secured to the bed with leather straps, hospital grade. It doesn't bother me, I should be used to them by now. I don't loose much sleep.
Two weeks and Schuldig's still terrified to come near me; won't touch me, won't look into my head. I only catch a glimpse of him when I feign sleeping, see his hunched shoulders, his nicotine-stained fingers clutching his slim arms through his paisley shirt. His hair is flat, as lifeless as his face, drooping like those sad eyes, that flat mouth. If I was awake, he wouldn't dare look at me like that…he wouldn't even be there.
"You're not really asleep," he finally whispers through the bars, "You're thoughts are…less chaotic, though."
I blink my eye open fully and smile at him. I think I actually missed him.
He opens the cell and steps in, closes the door behind him and comes to sit on the bed next to me. If it hadn't been so long, I probably wouldn't have felt so revolted when his hip brushed my side, when his hand pushed my hair back. He leaned forward, just inches from my face and breathed deeply, smelling me.
"Totally lucid…but you really need to stop thinking about 'moon madness'. It's unhealthy," he says. He was reading me and I hadn't felt a thing? Somehow that scared me.
"Not much else to think of like this," I reply, "Why aren't you in bed? It's late."
I'd heard the clock upstairs chime two just a short while ago. Schuldig just shrugged.
"I don't sleep well in a cold bed, you know that." My mouth twisted in a smile just dripping with scorn. I'd spent my entire life feeling cold, what made him think I could warm any bed, even his?
"You're welcome to stay here with the crazy," I offer, feeling strange for referring to myself in third person. It amused me.
"No way. This place creeps me right the hell out."
"Suit yourself. Is there something you want?" I ask, my breath as slow and deep as if I were sleeping, calm, genteel in its silence. It is unusual; maybe it's the way he'd been watching me before, those sad, knowing eyes. He always knew too much, he bore it like a Martyr, a real one, not those pathetic to-date ones implied by mass media. Schuldig was anything but a pop star, his pains were real. I was not empathetic, I barely understood my own skewed reactions to emotion –I laughed when I was despairing, threw fits when utterly delighted- but I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to make sure this resonating saint was real at all.
He slides off the bed and unbuckles the straps of the bed, massages my stiff arms and legs until the pins and needles leave. His skin glows in the sparse light, eggshell white, soft white, in that black room, those blue eyes like the jewels of a cat. I press the palm of my hand against his warm cheek, hold his hand on my thigh with the other.
His blue and purple and pale green shirt rides up his arm and white bandages are revealed around his wrists. My stomach twists and fights its way up to my throat, silencing any rebukes that might've poured out of my wide-open mouth. He'd stopped cutting when he was seventeen, when he's discovered Prozac.
I immediately blame myself. It made sense.
That was why he'd avoided me. Before, he could've cut off our link, ignored me. This was my worst episode to date. He might not have acted on his own, with my mind tormenting his so, as I knew it would…No wonder he was damaged.
I was just like the eggs all those months ago, the eggs and the angry husband.
"You were dreaming of someone…some boy from the school who offed himself. You wanted to die like him, thought of it as artistic…" Schu explains in soft tones, his voice still nasal, his accent thick in the darkness.
I almost apologize but he leans forward and kisses me instead, eyes bright with command in the darkness.
/Don't. It's over. I'm fine./
But I can't move on…It was my fault…
I don't even realize I am crying until Schu yanks his sleeve over his hand and wipes my face…silk against my skin, chancing ruin. Does he also chance ruin when he touches me? Will I be his end some day?
"I'm sorry," I say, my voice echoing off the bare cinderblock walls, disgusting in it's plaintiveness, but I couldn't stop myself, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
Schu just smirks at me and waits for me to calm down so he can rub his stubbled cheek into my still-open palm, squeeze me fingers to prove how real, alive and strong he is. His eyes are lined with enough sleepless black he could've been wearing makeup. His face was like the belly of the full moon, glowing as if on its own.
"Lucid, but still my crazy one," he purrs, "Come sleep with me?" He is already getting up, one foot steady on the floor.
"Brad said I'm safe now?" News to me. So far he wouldn't even give me my eye patch, convinced I'll kill myself with the elastic band. Schuldig shrugs.
"I'll keep my eyes on you." I am still iffy, tired. I can't tell if he wants company, sex or both. I really don't feel all that interesting ins ex…not tonight. He leans against me, presses his mouth to my ear.
"I could fix that," he whispers seductively. I shutter, my body screaming in protest again, totally without my permission. I flinch too violently and nearly fall off the bed.
"Don't worry. I just want some sleep, a warm bady…you know. Too tired to make an effort anyway…"
I nod and let him lead me upstairs. I am weak from two weeks of little food. His fingers on my wrist overlapped now. I'd lost enough weight that I could count my ribs and I had to hike my pants up over and over again to rest on my protruding hips. Schuldig's hand is on my hip now, guiding me…
We undress in silence, didn't even bother with a light and Schu slips into bed after me. The bed is pressed up against the wall on one side, and him on the other. There's no way I could crawl out of bed without him noticing. I turn onto my back and relish in the fell on him when he curls against me, his break and strong, calloused hands, his shipped fingernails. Ironic, those nails; he's always so meticulous of his appearance. I press my face into his hair, my chest swelling with emotion. It's random, out of place and uncontrollable, like a throwing knife once it's loosed.
"Don't say it, Far. You don't know what love is," he breathes before I even open my mouth, naming it for me.
"I know hate. It there much difference? They feel the same somehow." They do, the warm simmering in my gut, the strange, almost ticklish queasiness I felt around him…
"You die for love, do stupid things…"
"I die for hate too."
"Then love doesn't exist," Schu resolves with an annoyed sigh and turns away, obviously wishing to end the conversation. I am smiling and I slide my arm over his waist, press my chest against his back.
"Then I suppose I'll have to hate you," I whisper.
"Go to sleep."
We are working toward a common goal now, working toward some elusive idea called 'freedom'. I think the Americans have an ideal like that, but beyond that knowledge, I'm in the dark. Schuldig and Brad define it as never having to work for Esset again, as destroying Esset. Nagi is just as excited as they are about the plan they describe to me, more prophesy than anything else.
Brad is sporadic with the details, either hiding the vicious bits or honestly lacking any other information. Either way, I see a lot of holes and often say so. Schuldig just glares as me, though he knows I'm right. Brad nods, pushes his glasses up his nose and nods again.
We get a new hit from Takatori, due for later this week. I don't know if I can go, as I'm still recovering and I'm wary of getting in a fight and loosing what stability I might have, but Brad is unsympathetic, as usual. It's just as well; I hadn't expected anything less of him. Schuldig keeps shoving food in my face, demanding I eat and get my strength back, but usually I just ignore him, turn up the television and tell him to move out of the way or ask Nagi to do it for him.
We stumble into the house, the light of the streetlamp pouring in after us, like the policemen in pursuit of us. We had almost been caught on our escape and had to drive around the city blindly for an extra hour even while Schuldig's headache raged and the cut on my are bled all too freely. Weiss had nearly killed us and we all knew it. Even Nagi was huddled in his seat, eyes wide and not a little frightened, though he would hide it whenever Brad bothered to look around and check on our condition. He, as the least injured of us, drove us home, and I spent most of the time begging him to pull over at a hospital or take us home. Schuldig's migraine and Nagi's eyes were frightening me.
We had been conducting a simple bodyguard duty for Takatori's daughter when they'd just shown up out of nowhere. Even Brad had seemed surprised at Weiss's arrival. We had gotten the girl out of the way and paired off to fight again, the same opponent's we'd had before. Tiger claws had actually sunk his knives into me, which was a terrible shock, displaying my lag in training all too well. The blow to my psyche throbbed more than the waves of uncomfortable prickling the spread from my arm, more than the gush of blood I tried to slow with the gauze pads from the car's first aid kit.
We were home now, supposedly safe, but I was still jumping at shadows and Crawford turned all the lights on so he could check around corners in his own paranoid way. Schuldig went upstairs to help with the house check and to swallow a handful of painkillers and Nagi sat me down on the couch to tend my arm. His fingers tremble as he winds the bandage around my arm.
Crawford, apparently satisfied with the emptiness of the house, sinks down in a chair across the room from us and sighs. Nagi ties off the bandage while I glare at Crawford, blaming him for the fearful look in the boy's eyes. The look Crawford returns to me shakes me.
He hadn't expected any of this.
"What's the plan now, Oracle?" I seethe at him. It's barely visible, but I still see Brad flinch.
He just looks at me, then at Nagi and turns away.
"We continue doing exactly what we've been doing, keep to the schedule."
I slam my hand on the coffee table separating us, about to climb over it and throttle him.
"What schedule! You haven't told us a goddamn thing, Crawford!"
He growls at me to lower my voice, but I continue shouting at him.
"What the hell are you planning! We have to know! No more blind leading the blind, you tell us now or we're leaving!"
His sharp eyes silence me finally.
"And where would you go?" he asks, so flat, so knowing. We've nowhere to go but back to Esset…we'd never be free then. He know this and nods.
"Just trust me, Farfarello," he says. Nagi stands up, and both Crawford and I look at him, surprised.
"We can't trust you, Crawford-san," Nagi says in his quest voice, "Not until you tell us what the plan you have in mind is, to every detail."
For a moment, I adore him like a miniscule god.
Crawford sighs and slumps in his chair, too worn to deny us any longer. Perhaps he knew we would demand this sooner rather than his plotted later.
He motions for Nagi to sit down again, and the boy obeys as Brad removes his glasses to clean them on the tail of his shirt. He does not speak until he is finished.
"We are going to kill the Elders," he says softly, as if They could hear him from here, deep within Japan…maybe They can.
Nagi sucks in his breath and I whisper a soft 'what'. Brad just nods.
"How? When? Where?" I ask in the same awed tone, "Why us?"
"We're going to blow up a tower, They'll be there, inside. Weiss will kill Takatori there to save a girl from The Ceremony," I shuttered, "Both Weiss and Swartz will have a hand in ending the heads of Esset."
The Ceremony was something I had never understood. No one explained it to me, but everyone referred to it in horrified tones, if they spoke of it at all. This was the second time I had heard it mentioned, and even though I didn't know what it entailed, I feared it from the look Nagi had on his face. Nagi certainly seemed to know what it was, but when I looked about to ask, he shook his head, his eyes pleading me not to ask, just not to ask.
"Does Schuldig know about this?" I ask.
"I have no doubts with as much snooping as he does."
"Ah…"
Crawford adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, then looked up at me, his glasses flashing.
"Two months. They'll be dead in two months from today. Be on the ready. We're going to have to run if we survive."
Nagi repressed the urge to swallow, I could tell. "'If"?"
Brad just looked at us, so sadly I thought he might burst into uncharacteristic tears. That alone frightened me. Brad was out rock, our St. Peter, our steadfast leader. Without his strength, what held us together, kept us alive?
What were we, Swartz, without him?
"I didn't See us get out before the explosion," he whispered, "I didn't See survive at all."
Fin chapter 7
Please Review
xKokurox: Are you trying to be condescending or is it popping out unintentionally? Please don't review me again.
Rori BartonActually you're mentioning Farfarello's 'deteriorating sanity' gave me a great idea on how to keep this fanfiction going strong. Before I was wondering how I could wrap this installment up, but I've got it all figured out down to the most minor running theme. Thank you for unwittingly helping me! Don't you just love it when that happens?
On another note: "Oh, there has been much throwing about of brains." 2.2.356