Bits of Weiss Kreuz Fic...
Over three months later, and this is what I have written. In no particular order, really, and all different projects.
I'm tired of letting them sit on my hard drive. Maybe if I put them online somewhere, I'll start to like them. The names of the cuts are just the file names I used.
~
The visions triggered by deep blue eyes felt like a punch in the gut. Crawford shouldn't have been surprised by it, since the same thing had happened with both Schuldig and Farfarello, but he was left winded, all the same. And suddenly, hazy memories of a small figure came into sharp focus, and like with his other two team members, Crawford was somewhat bewildered.
Now he wished he'd brought the telepath to Japan with him. However Farfarello hadn't been cleared to leave Europe yet, and Crawford suspected it was an attempt to get Farfarello back into Rosenkreuz, as they couldn't leave the Irishman unsupervised for more than a couple hours. Rather than play that game, he'd left Schuldig in charge.
Which meant that, instead of his beautiful German, Crawford was stuck with Kazuo Yamamoto, a wily little clairvoyant from Public Relations who hated him, perhaps on principle, but probably mostly out of envy; the thing which separated the Public Relations division of Esset from Damage Control was that Public Relations had no authority to decide the fates of potential threats, let alone eliminate them. As far as most operatives were concerned, it was a dumping ground for those too weak or stupid to go anywhere else.
Crawford almost wished that Yamamoto had the guts to just say that he hated him. It might make the current situation more bearable. Instead, the man was wearing a smile as oily as his hair, his beady little eyes darting here and there, occasionally making a comment that made it clear that he wanted Crawford to think he was hiding something.
~~
There's a hole in the wall. He can't see it, but he knows it's there.
He's not crazy, not like Grandma. The things that Grandma sees and hears aren't real. Grandma thinks that the Gestapo are after her. The Gestapo haven't existed since before he was born.
She also thinks that he's stealing her thoughts, when he was only borrowing them. He doesn't want her memories; they're scary, full of pain and death and fear.
He's not crazy, and it's times like this, staring at the place he knows the hole in the wall is and the voices are louder than usual, that he needs to remind himself this. The things that he hears are real. He's learned not to tell anyone he hears, them, though.
~ ~
I become fully aware as Crawford tries to slide from under my arm without disturbing me, but it's the energy that had already woken me. It's fairly normal for Crawford to have visions in the form of dreams, all of which emit a very distinctive white noise, and I've learned to ignore it for the most part. It's rare for him to have a vision strong enough to wake both of us up.
I open my eyes as I hear Crawford open the drawers to the metal desk Rosenkreuz provides all its students. Instead of turning on a light, he's simply opened the blinds a small amount, letting the blue from the floodlights outside in. For a few moments, I just watch the muscles of Crawford's back without his being aware of having woken me. But I'm nothing if not curious, and won't get anything out of him without asking.
“You can turn on the desk lamp,” I say, propping myself up on my elbow.
Crawford freezes for a moment, then glances behind him. “You may go back to sleep.”
“I know. But I won't.” I can't, not when Crawford's like this.
I watch Crawford work for a few moments in silence. I've seen the charts and drawings the American uses to map out his visions before, and I can't see how they make it any easier to keep organized. The only thing I understand is Crawford's little black notebook; visions recorded like lovers, or one night stands, a date and time, and word or two for Crawford to know which one is which, but no one else.
I knows which entry is the first that involves myself. 4/1/91, 9:10 a.m. Red. Banshee. I still don't know what Crawford saw exactly, although I know that Banshee is another precognitive.
Now Crawford adds another entry to his little black book, and I consider how to ask Crawford for information without asking what was seen.
Finally, I give a simple, “What's up?”
“Something big,” Crawford says, and I can see his muscles tensing by the second. “A storm's coming.”
“Is it avoidable?”
“No. We're deeply involved. All we can do is weather it.”
I frown. “Weathering implies passivity. But if we're deeply involved, how can we be passive?”
“I'm not positive,” Crawford finally pauses in his writing, but only to look over what he'd done. “A butterfly beats his wings...”
I'm is not entirely sure I buy the Chaos Theory, but then I'm not an expert on time. Not like Crawford. I see everything on a small scale, two, three weeks tops. Thinking in years is Crawford's area, and it makes us a good team.
With a sigh, I lay back down. Crawford will be working for a while now, and the later he's up the less chance he'll join me again. Officially, we're not supposed to have any sexual relations at all. But when they decided that I was now “Crawford's problem,” they'd also decided to house us together, and I'm not sure what they expected to happen when they did. It's nights like this that I hate the unused bed in Crawford's already too-small dorm room, because damn if I haven't gotten too used to the precognitive's body next to my own.
Crawford isn't my first team leader, and not for the first time I wonder if maybe I've screwedmyself over when I knifed my original leader. Jonathon Wyles had been a mid-level, asshole clairvoyant with a lolita complex, but at least I had been outside Rosenkreuz. Now I have Brad Crawford, who is everything I want in a team leader, but doesn't have official clearance to be one.
It's a trick question that a thousand Rosenkreuz students have asked each other: Would you rather have a shitty leader but outside the school, or the perfect one and still be stuck on the inside? And usually the snarky answer of “neither” is given.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter. Because no one wants an operative who has been known to kill his meal ticket. That is, no one except a fucking insane precognitive, who has been stuck in this shit hole since he was five years old, and is still technically a trainee himself. Of course, not many people know how long Crawford has been here, and I have a vested interest in keeping that quiet, too. And while logic dictates that the perfect team leader can get out to Rosenkreuz, I'm not entirely sure anymore, because no one, not even Crawford, is sure why he's still here after nearly sixteen years.
~ ~
Schuldig leaned his head against the car window focused on the sound of the windshield wipers. The windows were clouded, and he created a window in his mind; the voices took on the same, indistinct shape as the images outside. Sometimes, metaphors worked better than anything. He smiled.
“Mastermind. Are you listening?”
Schuldig's smile faded and he rolled his eyes.
“Ja,” he sighed.
“We're in Ireland.” The man's accent had a slight Australian twang. Schuldig hated it.
Well spotted. Should I break out the Gaelic, Mein Herr?
Lips thinned as what's-his-name heard Schuldig. “I'll settle for English.”
The man had been laying out the foundation for the task at hand. It was a riddle, one of which Schuldig was missing a few vital clues, but he was unable to figure if the information had been intentionally withheld or not. You never knew for sure with Rosenkruez.
One: they were in a small, sleepy town outside Limerick, looking to pick up a particularly powerful boy.
As a general rule, the most dangerous individuals Rosenkreuz had to offer came from turbulent environments. They were children that watched society slowly self-destruct, only to replaced by a new, equally-horrible regime.
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