Disclaimer: Don't own Weiss or anyone else from the series, and am making no profit whatsoever.
Warnings: Swearing
Chapter 43
Tomodachi, Teki, Uragirimono (1)
You know stupid things you used to think when you were young? Like clouds are made of cotton wool, the moon is really made of cheese and you could live for at least a year simply on sweets and chocolate with no side effects whatsoever? These are things young kids should be able to believe.
I always used to think, when I was younger, that maybe the world would end tomorrow. I used to have the carefree thoughts of everyone else, but then things changed and, well...everything is so fragile, everyone is so vulnerable. So I used to try and do all the things I had ever wanted to do in a single day of living, never waste a second, always live for yourself, don't take orders, that's what I thought was right. And when I woke up and the world was still passing by outside my window, I would simply believe I had been given one more chance. One last chance to do everything I'd ever wanted without consequence.
Ever since the world ended for me, I believed it would only be a matter of time until it ended for everyone else, too.
"We're under attack!"
"I can see that you fool, put out the fire, get everyone into the main hall and make sure his Lordship is not harmed!"
"Yes Sir!"
Flames everywhere. Cries for help. Brings back lots of memories, perhaps too many. Does this remind you of that time, little one? Perhaps it doesn't bother you as much as the fact that I am here too. You really don't realise how little consequence your existence holds, do you? You still think that you can save your friends, save yourself, when you could never protect anything in the first place? You don't have the right to have people care for you, you don't have the right to have others die for you.
"Get the prisoners out of here, this room isn't safe. Get everyone out!"
"Lorelei-san, please, you must hurry, his Lordship is waiting!"
"Lorelei-san, are you in there..!"
Ever since that day, when I cut you down from that naive reality you'd been living in, you've been waiting to die, haven't you? That look in your eyes, defiant but yet still resigned to the fact that, soon, things were going to end for you.
That the world would never be what you wanted it to be, ever since that day that you thought that I murdered her.
"I told you that I'd kill you if you touched him," he hissed breathlessly as I hauled him onto his bloodless legs, "I told you, and I mean it."
"I know you did, but you can't always do the things you want to do most," I smirked back, the smell of burning wood invading my senses, "even when your world is about to end."
From the first day we met, we were natural enemies. You could never forgive your mother for adopting me, could never believe that she might need more than just you. But more than that, I suppose, you couldn't accept that the reason she adopted me was because I was more than just another kid. You could never accept that your father might have had another child, been unfaithful to your precious mother. Of course, you could never understand what I truly was either. However you never asked, and so I never told you. Huh, but would you have believed me if I had told you I was no ordinary girl, that I was really a warrior, an ageless being, with a mission to revive his murdered Lord? Something tells me you would think me more insane than you already do. If I had told you that, and also that your father was not who you think he was, little Alaric. It was hard for you to believe that you were not the be all and end all of everything wasn't it, that there might be more to life than just you and your wants?
I took this body, when this child was brought into the world, because I thought that he would bestow his secrets to me; I was sure Heinrich Faxon, or should I just call him Yamamoto-san, would never have believed that I could have taken it so easily. Its soul was so pure, and yet so easily tainted by my own hatred, becoming an easy vessel to be my host. And yet he realised, the horror of it, that his own baby girl had been taken by the enemy, and he abandoned me. He never gave me the secret, the secret that he finally gave to you, and so I had to get back into your family somehow. So I told your mother the story, well not everything obviously, and then she took me in as one of her own. Such a kind woman. She gave me his ring, the ring her husband had wed her with, she said that she'd always wanted a daughter to give it to. Did that make you feel even more rejected? Was that it? Still, I loved her very much, more than I have ever loved anyone, even my own mother.
That's why I couldn't kill her, sentimental perhaps, stupid even, but still I couldn't be the one to kill her.
"You don't remember, do you?" I asked him, even as I heard Fujimiya walk over to the window, his frame outlined by the shifting flames, the other servants and acolytes running, screaming, fleeing past the doorway, "You don't even remember who killed her."
"I don't need to remember everything, I remember enough," he snarled, pushing me away and stumbling over the smoking tatami, "you took everything away from me!"
"So naive, still so naive after all this time," I shook my head and smiled, feeling the heat rising up through the floor, "you really think it was me, don't you."
"Shut up! I know what happened that day, I may not remember everything but I remember you, I remember blood on your clothes, I remember seeing my own mother in a pool of blood and you..!" he spat, backing up towards the windows almost unconsciously.
"Yes, but if there's one thing Esset taught you, it's not to believe everything you see, right? Don't you want to know who really killed her?" I said calmly, almost smiling, this being the moment I had waited for, for a long time.
Because, if those idiots at Kritiker hadn't thought that they could stage a little revolution against a band of soul jumping, sociopathic, obsessed clan warriors (and yes I do know that I'm describing myself), I would have been delivering the trump card that I had been keeping up my sleeve for the past seven hours. This rather unique piece of information was all that I had left on my dear 'little brother', and yet I suppose it was the only thing I had thought had a chance of breaking him. Still, I wished that I could have had a bit more peace and quiet to do it in. Then Fujimiya was backing away from the screens, turning and walking past me to the doorway, and I could feel the heat radiating against my back from through the thin paper walls. He was ranting again.
"It was you, you killed my mother, you..!"
"No, it wasn't," I said back simply, "after everything she gave to me I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Another pulled the trigger, don't you remember now?"
"No!"
"I can remind you," I said softly, barely audible above the now audible crackle of flames, "let me remind you."
"Don't touch me, murderer..!"
I jumped the room in a matter of seconds, suddenly in front of him, revelling in his fear and lack of control. I placed my hands on his face, holding him still as he resisted, letting his hands slough across my skin, weak and yet defiant, resolute. Then I let my mind wander back to that day, forcing his own mind along with it. I ploughed through his memories, vaguely hearing him scream, before we were both lost in the memory of that day, eighteen years ago.
We had just reached the doors, flames purging the air with smoke, making me light headed, when I happened to look up. I was so out of breath, from the run, and the rain and the smoke that I felt like simply keeling over. Yet still I managed to look up, towards the ravaged building, and there I saw him.
Glaring down at me like I was nothing but a filthy dog, waiting to be put down. I felt my feet stop moving, felt the rain getting in my eyes, stinging. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes he was gone, the window was clear.
"What are you waiting for Balinese, keep up or get left behind!"
"Ran..." I couldn't help whispering out, my own words floating back to me like a harpy to remind me of past sins.
"If I can."
Ken would never forgive me if I turned up without him, would he. The strangers, they said it was important to get him back, something to do with helping Ken. Still, how could some insane idiot like Fujimiya Ran help us now? He hated us, wanted to kill us...how was I going to get him back?
My thoughts were interrupted as I felt a harsh hand close over my rain slicked wrist and tug me out of my daze. I pulled my eyes back down to ground level and found Crawford glaring at me and dragging me forwards, Yami and Tatsuha stopping as near as they could to the burning entranceway, half turning back as my mind raged and then the glass broke above us.
The world went very still, for that one moment, where we all looked up to the window above us, the one where I had seen Ran only minutes before. The shards glittered as the window shattered outwards with force, and flew out into the night, like stars. And amidst them, falling, was a blood soaked body I found all to familiar.
However, even though he's saved my life, I still found it hard to understand my actions when I simply shook off Crawford's stunned grip, backed up and let him slam full force into willing form. He stank of smoke and blood, and strangely enough ever so slightly of perfume. That was all I got the opportunity to think before we both hit the ground, hard.
"Ah shit!" I choked out as I felt stones and debris raining down on us, instinctively curling over to protect him.
"Schuldich..!" I only just heard Crawford shout, as another explosion rang out through the air.
"Holy hell, do you have to make such dramatic entrances!" I found myself shouting at him, managing to scramble up onto my knees so that I was leaning over him, only then did I see his face, "You...oh god you..."
"Get out of the way," Crawford's hands were once again upon me, throwing me to the side.
"Hey watch what you're doing!" I shouted back, hearing Yami and Tatsuha run up behind me.
"Schuldich, look at me..." Crawford was saying to the inert man on the ground, bending down on one knee to take a hold of him, pulling him up into his lap, "are you alright? Where's Nagi...what...?"
I was about to ask Crawford what the hell he was gibbering about when I realised that Schuldich was whispering. His wide eyes were shimmering with tears, hands now reaching up to clench in Crawford's suit jacket, blood coated fingers smearing against the white. I had to say that now wasn't really the time to be asking questions, and as I stood I realised just how hot the flames from the raging inferno were, and just how close...
"We really shouldn't linger," Yami was shouting, "Crawford take him back to the van!"
"I can't leave without my team!" Crawford's face was twisted in uncharacteristic rage as he rounded on us, eyes flickering with lambent flame, "Damn it Schuldich speak up!"
I spun around and looked up to the shattered window, a dread feeling that it had been Ran who had pushed Schuldich from the window grabbing hold of me. Yet the facade was empty, only the flickering of greedy fire licking around the broken glass. I wondered, as Crawford leaned in towards his team mate, if Schuldich had thrown himself from the room to escape the fire; but then where was Nagi..?
"...What..?" Crawford's gasp made me spin round once more, this time to be surprised by the look of sheer shock on the older man's face.
"Please, Crawford whatever you're doing, do it quick," I urged, hoping to all hell that no one could see us waiting out here like sitting ducks.
"Schuldich...I..." but Brad Crawford, ever controlled leader of the enemy, wasn't listening to me.
His face had drained of colour, and his eyes were wide and, dare I say it, but I thought I caught a glint of fear in their depths. Now that stumped me, I mean, really...something really big was up. Something ground breaking, something world shaking, but right now, I really didn't care.
"Come on! Either take him to the van or bring him with us!" I shouted out, chiding myself after for raising my voice at all, feeling my feet beginning to twitch for lack of movement.
"Why?" I suddenly heard, just over the roaring of the collapsing building, hoarse and broken, "Why?"
It was Schuldich who was speaking. He sounded like a broken record, cracked and frail, and it stalled me for a second. I stared at his flickering visage, clouded with pain, and realised that his right eye really was a bloody mess. Ken had been right then, my god Ran, what have you done? How could you..?
"Crawford," I managed to push the words out through a constricting throat, "come one, if you don't hurry then Nagi..."
"Nagi's dead," he interrupted, making me grimace despite myself, "I...Nagi's dead."
"Shit," eloquent Kudo, really eloquent, "...I'm sorry. Really, I am...but right now you can't worry about that. You have to get up, get him back to the van and wait for us there."
"Right," he said after a pause, one where I wondered if perhaps he was capable of responding at all, "right."
Yet when he tried to pick Schuldich up from the ground, and I thought that it was my cue to run into the fucking inferno and find our MIA Fujimiya, a feral snarl broke the air and suddenly Crawford was sprawled on his back in the debris and the mud. I blinked, watching the uncontrollable look of betrayal play across Schuldich's face, and tried not to want to know why that was. What the fuck was going on here? Was it because of Nagi..? No, I have to focus on our team, I have to focus, or everything is going to go all to hell, and not just part the way like we were now. I had to focus.
Crawford couldn't meet the German's eyes, that raging glare, and yet the redhead couldn't make it up onto his hands, which looked red and sore, burnt and bleeding. So I snapped, I admit, well wouldn't you at a time like this? The situation was almost laughable, but for the threat of imminent death.
"Dammit!" I couldn't just leave him laying there, so I strode over and hauled him up, turning to shout at Crawford as he slowly began to pick himself up from the ground, like a man trying to put himself back together, "Hurry up, get back to the van and be ready to go and for fucks sakes pull yourselves together!"
With that I felt the need to throw Schuldich over to Crawford just for effect but...I couldn't bring myself to do it. Because when I looked round to him, now leaning on my shoulder, the tears running down his face were real tears, and the pain twisting his face was real pain, and the look in his eyes screamed,
"Save me from this."
And I turned then, after steadying him, making sure he wouldn't fall any further than it seemed he already had, and ran towards the fire once more. What I was going to do, I had no idea, other than to stick as close to Yami and Tatsuha as I could before I had to leave them.
Somehow I was sure that finding Ran wouldn't be the worst of my problems. He would come to me before the night was out.
(1) Three words meaning, respectively, "friend", "foe", and "traitor." If there's fighting, at least two of these three words must also exist. I thought it summed up our little group quite well and, if you don't think so, then you definitely will next chapter…
AN: See, I am making up for lost time! Hope this is okay, I had a read over to check for typo's but I have more than likely missed them all as I usually do! Thank you to Rio Hime, I hope this made you happy, I do try to please and I'm very glad you like it! And, of course, thank you to the wonderful Gillian Sillis, girl you definitely know how to review! Thank you again so much for pestering me about this story and I am sorry it's taken me a while to get back to it.
Thank you for reading my humble chapter, I do hope you feel need to review (oh I'm getting so close to 100 reviews!). I think I need to have a prize for the big 1-0-0, right? How about a short ficlet of choice? Or is that too overdone already, I do love to be original hehehhehe...okay, I know the irony of that statement is quite appalling but there you go! There will be something for the 100th reviewer! Thanks again for reading!