Chapter Two:
At first Brad Crawford was well and truly pissed at his team telepath, to the point that he was repeating reasons why Schuldig was useful like a mantra when he set out to find him after the vision informed him how the night would progress. He'd told Schuldig to stay in, promised him he'd regret it if he spent his free night out of the apartment. But no, obviously it made no sense to listen to a precog's warnings. Brad was probably just talking for the sheer joy of hearing his own voice.
When he actually found Schuldig he was a lot less angry. The normally infuriatingly defiant young man was crouched on the side of the road hugging himself and thus keeping his ripped t-shirt in place. He'd been roughed up a little, but not enough considering the intentions of his assailants. Farfarello helped him into the backseat of the car and Brad drove on without saying anything.
"Aren't we going home?" Nagi asked. They were headed in the wrong direction.
"I didn't bring the two of you along just to pick Schuldig up," Brad explained. "There's a disagreement going on between Rosenkreuz and Esset at the moment. The Organization and the School are dependent upon one another but you've seen how they've clashed over insignificant posturing more than once in the past. We've been caught in the middle and there's a team of Rosen in town who wish us harm."
"There are six of them," Schuldig whispered.
"And the four of us are more than a match," Brad asserted. No one said it, but Farfarello and Nagi were clearly doubting whether Brad had taken Schuldig's distraught state into account.
He sighed. "The group of Rosen we're after specifically planned to target us one at a time using numbers against us because they are cowards and they know they can't take us at full strength. Besides, we can't let them kill Kudoh. We still need the Weiss if we want to keep our mutiny on schedule."
The car was silent for the remainder of the ride, which was only another few minutes. Schuldig mentally prepared himself for what was coming, knowing that even with his level of selfishness and general evil he'd be bothered by what he'd left Yohji to.
They found the Rosen in an alleyway not far from where Schuldig's car was parked. Yohji was bruised and bleeding, but it looked like they were still in the early stages of their 'fun'. Whether he'd been raped or not would have to be determined later. While he was killing the assholes responsible, Schuldig acted as though they had, just in case.
Yohji woke up in a hell of a lot of pain, which was not something he'd expected out of his one night off that month. The Weiss had been working almost non-stop since Aya's sister had gone missing and the conflict with Schrient had stepped up. Everyone agreed they'd needed a night to themselves, to blow off steam and keep focused for what was coming.
It was really hard to focus when even places he'd never given much thought to were hurting.
Someone was moaning, which further irritated his headache. He reluctantly opened his eyes, and even the dim lighting in the room ratcheted up the intensity of the headache ever so much more, but he wanted to know who was making the noise so he could tell them to stop. He felt pathetic when he realized it was him.
There was a light knock to the door of what Yohji realized was an unfamiliar bedroom. The furnishings were all western style, and any and all surfaces in the room were cluttered with books and papers. He was sure he'd never been there before, and couldn't guess as to where he was.
He attempted to sit up, his body protested and he fell back against the pillows with another noise of pain. He heard footsteps, presumably those of the knocker, and then the Oracle came into view as he peered down at Yohji. Brad Crawford was the only person Yohji had met in his adult life who was taller than he was, and whereas normally that wasn't high on the list of things that troubled him about the 'enemy' assassin, while being flooded with memories of what had happened in the alleyway it was nerve wracking.
"I've got some pain meds for you if you'd like, and some antibiotics you'll have to take regardless. I do think it's best if we have a conversation while you're relatively lucid as opposed to drugged and groggy though," Crawford said stiffly.
"Kay."
Crawford sat down, for which Yohji was thankful. The pillows were fluffed enough that he could still see him if he wanted to. While feeling exceptionally vulnerable and humiliated, however, he decidedly did not want to look at Schwarz's leader.
"First off you have my apologies for what happened tonight. That was a professional disagreement that the Weiss were not meant to be involved in. If it's any reassurance, the men who attacked you are all dead."
"Oh, so rape and torture are business matters to you?" Yohji rasped out. Crawford's detached tone was pissing him off.
"If you want to irrationally vent your anger out you can save it until the morning. I'm sure Farfarello will be much more interested in hearing it than I am," Crawford snapped. He continued on from there just as businesslike as he had been before.
"Whatever Kritiker might believe, a well functioning Weiss unit is in both of our best interests, so you'll be recovering with us here for the next few days, owing to the fact that in some respects your injuries are our fault, but more specifically because we are better equipped to deal with them than your team. You've noticed that for the most part Schwarz is working towards the same goals as Kritiker from different directions and all I ask is that you extend this knowledge into a tentative trust in my team. We've covered for you with your employers and team, knowing that they won't be swayed to believe us anything less than cartoonishly evil. To all interested parties you are lost in Kritiker red tape for the next week."
"A week? You think I'll be over this in a week?" Yohji asked, dumbfounded. He wasn't sure he could walk and his body craved to go back to sleep. Heading back to work in a week was unfathomable.
"For the most part. You've only got a couple of minor fractures. Most of the pain was inflicted psychically. Schuldig will handle it later, in the meantime…" He shook a pill bottle. "The rest…doesn't really go away." Crawford's tone had lost its professional detachment and for a moment he looked sadly thoughtful.
"Where's Schu?" Yohji asked it against his better judgment. Just because he didn't think Schuldig was irredeemably evil didn't mean he thought the man a saint, but he'd still thought him above what he'd done. Though he doubted talking to Schuldig about it wouldn't make him feel better.
Crawford tipped out a few pills into his hand, businesslike once more. "Schuldig sends his sympathy and regret for what happened, but he really isn't up to talking at the moment. Here are the antibiotics and you have your choice of pain pills or sleeping pills."
"Pain pills," Yohji said automatically. He'd put off sleep as long as his broken body would let him.
Brad closed the door to his bedroom as softly as possible, having taken note of Kudoh's headache, among his other pains. He hadn't said anything, but the way he'd responded to the light being shut off and how low he'd kept his voice were indications. He then walked down the hall to Schuldig's room and found the telepath hugging a pillow in a corner of his bed.
"Schuldig, Kudoh's agreed to stay and accept our care."
"Whoop dee fucking do. Doesn't change what I did."
Brad sighed. This wasn't going to come out at all how he wanted it to sound, but he had to try. It would be so much easier if he could lie to his team. As it was, he spent so much of his life lying to people that he did value the relationships he had with Schuldig, Farfarello and Nagi all the more because of his honesty with them.
"Schuldig, it is somewhat your fault that Kudoh was attacked, but only because you didn't listen to my warning. From that point on it was really out of your hands. If you had stayed you would have been hurt with Kudoh and that would have made it all the more difficult for Schwarz to dispatch that team."
"I have my standards, my lines that I don't fucking cross. I don't…I'm not like that place. I was raised there but I am not Rosenkreuz. And I left someone else to go through that shit."
His shoulders were shaking with suppressed sobs. Another effect of Rosenkreuz trauma was the reluctance to cry, even when it was safe to do so. Brad was all too familiar with that himself. Despite his excellent memory, he couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. So unlike Nagi, who thought Schuldig's idiocy and horniness had endangered their plans needlessly and was understandably angry about it, Brad had sympathy for Schuldig. He sat down on the bed next to him and rubbed soothing circles on his back while he didn't cry.
Throughout the night and into the next morning the only Schwarz Yohji saw was Crawford. At first the Oracle was obviously checking in on him, bringing glasses of water and medicine, giving him snatches of information and looking at his bandages, but when he started getting items for himself Yohji realized he was laying on the Oracle's bed. Considering his height measured against Berserker's, Mastermind's and Prodigy's he was probably wearing the Oracle's pajama pants too.
He reflected that he probably should have been more angry about all this. He'd been attacked by their enemies, not his, and all the decisions about his recovery had been made without his input or consent. But he really was too tired to care much, and the pain meds tended to make him groggy whenever his anger had a chance to sharpen. Besides, Crawford didn't make a bad nurse. He was quiet and conscientious, and polite to the point of absurdity considering who Yohji was.
It was certainly better than convalescing with the Weiss. Omi was by far the best nurse, but he was also least likely to be filling that role considering school and the bureaucratic Kritiker work he always had to do. That left Ken, who was worryingly flaky and a bit too clumsy for some of the finer tasks related to tending injuries, and Aya, who was cranky, lacking in all empathy, and thought pain meds were a sign of weakness.
The second night Yohji was feeling much better, although it looked like it would be awhile before he was back in action. Something was up with his right wrist so he was wearing a brace, and he couldn't walk unsupported due to a horrible wrenching pain in his knees. He'd graduated to sitting up in bed and was occasionally hobbling around the little room, but that was all. Pretty soon he was going to start smelling grody, and hoped his progress quickened so he'd have the dignity of showering alone.
When Crawford poked in to grab some supplies from his desk Yohji decided to engage him in conversation. He was bored, and when he was bored he was chatty.
"How's Schuldig doing?" He asked, for lack of a better subject.
"He's very shaken by what happened the other night. I don't think it's wise for the two of you to talk about it yet," Crawford answered brusquely. He gathered up a highlighter, some post its and a couple of books. "In the meantime we have a good supply of meds to ward off the psi-pain."
"What'cha doing?"
"Mission prep work."
"Oh. We usually use computers for our research," Yohji said.
"Yes well we tend to deal more with arcane occult subjects than you do and those are best accessed through out of print Latin texts," Crawford explained.
"Oh. Sounds like fun."
"Oh yes, I couldn't think of a better way to spend the next nine hours." Crawford punctuated his statement with a long suffering sigh.
"Anything I can do to help?" Yohji offered,
"You really are very bored, aren't you?" Crawford asked.
Yohji nodded. "You have one hundred eight ceiling tiles, twelve are cracked and that patch of six by nine at the left of the room is more yellowed than the rest. Could be water damage," He said by way of demonstration.
Crawford pulled a chair up to the bed and passed Yohji a packet of papers and a highlighter. "Highlight any paragraphs relevant to the base chakra."
"What?" He had no idea what he was reading. "This isn't Latin, is it?"
"No, I specifically picked an article in Japanese for you. The chakras are energy centers in the body that people meditate with. See?" He pointed to a diagram that showed different colored symbols superimposed over a seated human's spine, leading up to the forehead.
"This doesn't have anything to do with the Kundalini thing Schrient is working on, does it?" Yohji asked.
"With Schrient's work? No. This is more advanced," Crawford said. He then opened his unpleasant looking book, a sour expression on his face as he scanned the pages with a highlighter hovering just above the text.
Yohji dutifully highlighted everything he found on the base chakra in the article, glad for something to do and glad it wasn't directly related to Schrient's fetish for stealing peoples' spines. When he finished Crawford had more for him to do, until eventually he drifted off with an uncapped highlighter still in hand.
He startled awake when Crawford started clearing away the papers that had accumulated around him. "Huh? I'm awake, I'm, I'm fine."
"You probably could use the rest you know." Crawford pointed out. He looked tired too. Yohji checked the guy's alarm clock and realized they'd been reading for four hours already.
"Man, how do you keep this up for this long?" He asked.
"Threat of painful death," Crawford answered. Yohji snorted, fully aware Crawford was only half-joking. "I do take breaks though. I was going to go get something to drink. Would you like some coffee or tea or anything?"
"Tea would be good. My throat's still pretty sore," Yohji said with a smile that felt unnatural, given his mood. The afternoon had passed pleasantly, but the shadow of avoidance hung over his actions. Crawford nodded, going with Yohji's actions and knowing that in a few hours things would be different.
While Crawford was out of the room Yohji hobbled over to his desk to take a closer look at it. He wasn't snooping, per se, he was just curious and needed the constant distraction from his thoughts. One quick perusal of the papers and books left on the desk left him convinced Schwarz was being lead by a genius. He'd spotted four different languages he could identify, two he couldn't and everything had plenty of highlights and notes in Crawford's tiny little scrawl. His notes were all in English, no matter what language he was reading for work.
One of the bookmarks in a French text on witchcraft that was bound in something disturbingly not-leather was a photograph. Yohji kept his thumb on the parchment-like paper so he could hold the picture up for a better look. It was of two boys, preteens or young teens at the oldest, one of which was smiling at the camera while the other was glowering at his feet. Only when Yohji noticed how familiar the smile was did he realize who the kids were, but once he did he found the young Schuldig and Farfarello unmistakable. It was weird to see the Berserker with two eyes, even though logic said he must have been born with the two and lost the one later in life.
Schuldig looked like a cute kid. He was hamming up his smile for the camera, dark blue eyes gleaming mischief although in a much more innocent looking way than his adult counterpart's. He wondered at how long the Schwarz had been working together for Crawford to have a picture of his teammates that was this old. And the fact that he'd held onto it was a sign of emotional attachment he certainly wouldn't have expected. At least not before he'd spent extended time in Crawford's. The man was downright pleasant when he wasn't in a Schwarz vs. Weiss battle.
He put the picture back and got back into bed before Crawford returned with the tea. When Crawford had initially come in to fetch research materials he'd been dressed as though for a business meeting. While in the kitchen he'd dispensed with the suit coat and tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves, which looked wrong somehow. He associated the Oracle, cocky leader of Schwarz, with a bad suit that was clean and crisp despite the clashing colors. Then again his mental associations for cocky leader of Schwarz didn't include childhood pictures of his team lying around on his desk. Or sheltering recuperating enemy assassins for that matter.
"I'm afraid I'm not great with brewing green tea and Nagi was too preoccupied to do it for me this time, so it's probably going to be bitter," Crawford said apologetically.
"Eh, that's fine. That's what sugar's for," Yohji said with a smile. He took a sip and tried not to wince, but Crawford noticed. "Wow…that's bitter."
"See, black tea doesn't do that. But when we're food shopping I always get outvoted," He said defensively.
"Well green tea tastes better. You know, when it's not bitter," Yohji stirred some sugar into his cup and trying to picture the Schwarz grocery shopping together. "So how much more reading do you have tonight?"
Crawford groaned, ever so quietly. "Enough to keep me busy for the rest of the night. I appreciate your help though. I may get to sleep tonight."
"About that…where have you been sleeping?" Yohji asked self consciously.
"I see you noticed we don't have a guest room," Crawford said with a smile. "Our couch is a futon. We guessed you'd want your privacy, and this gives Schuldig an opportunity to dodge you while he's still feeling sensitive over the whole matter. I don't think he's used to having a conscience," He explained.
"Well it's not…I mean it's not just his fault," Yohji murmured, confused as to how he should feel. "But I wouldn't have left him."
"There are a lot of things you would do differently than us," Crawford agreed, but there was an edge to his voice. "However you also could not have survived half of what Schuldig's gone through, so I think it best if you refrain from judging him."
"I wasn't-I mean okay I was but…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
"Don't worry about it," Crawford said dismissively. "You have a right to your feelings, I'm just…it's not important."
'Worried about Schuldig,' Yohji realized. The Weiss had very much underestimated Schwarz's attachment to each other.
He drank his tea in silence and helped Crawford with a few more articles before his headache returned badly enough that he needed to take some medication. After that he wasn't able to retain much from what he was reading and had to admit defeat and sleep. Crawford thanked him again for his help and relocated to the living room.
"You spent a lot of time in there." Nagi pointed out.
"Kudoh's lonely. He's a social person and he'll be less bothersome if we indulge him," Brad answered without looking up from his reading. Besides that, Kudoh was also an excellent research assistant. He had a sharp mind that, even while coming down from pain meds was able to spot things others would have missed. In addition to highlighting things Brad had asked him to look for he'd occasionally added his own very helpful notes.
He was starting to hope for a vision where Kudoh wouldn't be missed among the Weiss.
"Whatever. Is there anything you need me to do tonight for the job?" Nagi asked, referring to the expected culmination of Brad's efforts.
"I need you to look into security, possibly find some blueprints to work with. It'd be nice if these idiots had human sized air vents for Farfarello to crawl around in too."
"I'll get on that then." Nagi nodded a goodbye and headed for his room. Brad turned back to his books, but his attention was wandering and the Latin wasn't nearly riveting enough to keep it.
He found himself wondering how Yohji was sleeping, if he'd woken up and might need anything. He was probably hungry, come to think of it, it had been hours since he'd eaten. He should poke in and see if he wanted something. Brad wasn't much of a cook, but he could order something in…
Or he could let the injured man sleep and do his damn job. He shook his head to clear it and tried once more to focus on the research. It really did take a vision of what Esset's punishment for failure would be to keep him on track.
A/N: Thanks for the feedback guys! Much appreciated and keep it coming. It's not really the writing style in this fic that's different for me (anyone who writes with Weiss gets good at the angst real quick-or at least, we all should...plenty of canon-fodder for that), it's the pairing... 0_o;; Feedback on the developing romance would be much appreciated (you know, once it starts to develop!)