Fanfic: Ruin
Title: Ruin
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz
Rating: Whatever (Meaning, I'm not entirely sure yet)
Summary: On and on it goes, an eternal battle where they lay the blame on each other, but mostly their son. Oma hears them across the hall, his only ally, and even then only sometimes. And he curls up in bed, knowing that somehow, this is his fault.
Notes: I forgot what fun it is to have a fandom where the origin!fics are just as fun as the post-series ones. And it's been quite a long time since I've written anything resembling dark!fic. I haven't decided yet how far this is going to go.
There's a hole in the wall. It's only a hiccup in the ugly yellow wallpaper of the apartment. People watch him through it, they make sure he's behaving. He's never seen or heard them, not physically, but he knows that they're there. He hears their thoughts.
He's not crazy, not like Oma. The things that Oma sees and hears aren't real. Oma thinks that the Gestapo are after her.
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. If he can anchor himself to the physical world, he knows that he's real, and he's himself and not anyone else. The things that he hears are real. He's learned not to tell anyone he hears them, though.
He's so intent on that wall that he doesn't hear Papa enter the room.
“Boy.”
Papa never calls him by his name. Oma doesn't either. Mama...Mama doesn't acknowledge his presence at all. The neighbors aren't sure what his name is. What was the son's name again? They say. I know we were told when we met, but I don't quite remember.
He's starting to forget it himself.
“Boy!” Papa repeats, and he finally looks around. “Are you stupid?”
Papa says that whenever he's too quiet. He wants to scream at Papa, tell him that no, he's not stupid. Sometimes when Papa says it, he wants to hit him, as if it'll make it better.
Instead, he says, “They're watching us again.”
“Don't say such things,” Papa says, and he knows that it means don't let me hear you talking about your abnormality. “Your mother has made breakfast. Go eat, and get to school.”
“Is Oma there?”
If she is, she could panic. It happens sometimes. When it does, Mama says she's in a mood. He thinks it's more like Oma is crazier than usual.
“She's better today,” Papa says, and he knows that she is there.
With some trepidation, he leaves his tiny bedroom and walks to the kitchen. He focuses on Mama's thoughts, and he knows Oma is rocking gently in a chair at the table, looking nervous. When he enters the kitchen, Mama doesn't turn to look at him. She won't. She knows what he can do, and she hates him for it and because Oma is so scared of him, so she pretends he isn't there.
Oma looks at him, though, and her eyes narrow. But it isn't in fear or anger, today. Today, she thinks that he's her ally.
“Do you hear them, Boy?” she asks in her gravelly voice. “Are the Gestapo there?”
“Papa doesn't want me to say,” he says.
“Your papa doesn't know anything,” she snaps.
He walks up to her, and whispers in her ear, “They're watching through my wall. They have a hole that they look through.”
“What about the rest of the house?”
“There's a hole above the stove.”
He feels a sharp yank as Papa pulls him away by the arm. “Stop feeding her lies,” he says. “You'll only make her worse.”
“We are being watched,” he argues.
“There is no Gestapo,” Papa says.
“What about the Stasi?” he asks.
There's complete silence in the kitchen. Mama has stopped what she's doing, frozen with the frying pan still in the soapy water, and Oma's already thin old mouth narrows even more. Papa is angry, and is resisting the urge to hit him. But he thinks about the Secret Police watching them, and they're already at risk of being split; the only reason Oma is still living with them is a deep feeling of guilt, which the child doesn't understand.
Finally, Papa snaps, “Go to school.”
He doesn't mention that he hasn't eaten yet. He's lucky to be leaving the apartment unbruised as it is.
~ ~ ~
The neighbors are gone, and there is someone new there. He's amazed at how fast the transition is; sometimes apartments will sit empty for weeks. But the new neighbors move in the same day the old ones leave.
These ones make him even more nervous than the previous people. They're so quiet, and not just in their lives. They're quiet in their minds. He can catch bits and pieces of thoughts, but he doesn't hear every thought. Not like the others.
There's three of them, two teenagers and a man. The man is the only one he can hear on a regular basis, and not much at that. He knows that the man is Russian, and he wonders if he's a Soviet officer; sometimes he catches thoughts of a place where everyone wears uniforms and does exactly what they're told.
They don't watch him, though. He knows, because he can always hear when someone is watching him.
He wants to ask Oma about them, but she's afraid of him again. She thinks that he brought the new neighbors on the family. She's wondering if they should send him away, because the neighbors would follow. She doesn't know exactly what she means by sending away, though, and wonders if it means killing him.
So instead, he sits on his narrow bed and stares at the hiccup in the wallpaper. He thinks if he can take the association, maybe he can use that to connect to the neighbors' minds.
Don't bother, Child.
He stops breathing, then gives a shaky gasp. It's like a separate voice in his mind, heavily Russian. But the man can't know what he's thinking, what he's doing. No one ever knows these things.
Never?
He can't move, can barely even think.
What is your name?
What is his name? He can barely remember that he's eight years old. Papa and Oma haven't used his name in years. His teacher had used his name at some point today, but the building was so full of other children that it had gotten lost in the shuffle of their thoughts.
For some reason, this seems to amuse the Russian. You had better decide, Child. You can't go on being called 'Boy' forever.
~ ~ ~
Mama and Papa are arguing again, and he can hear them on several planes.
“We can't go on like this!” Mama says.
“Will you keep it down?” Papa hisses.
“What's the point? He can hear us no matter how quiet we are.”
“You don't honestly believe that,” Papa says, and gives a bitter laugh. “I swear, sometimes I think you're as mad as your mother.”
“Don't say that. Don't you dare say that.”
“Why not? We spend our time tiptoeing around, because no one wants to put her in a hospital. And why not? Guilt! Because of something that happened nearly forty years ago!” Now Papa is yelling, too. “And now the boy is weak in the head, and yet still we do nothing. Worse yet, you perpetuate your mother's paranoid ramblings, insisting that he can read our thoughts because of something he said when he was four years old.”
Mama laughs now, and it's an ugly sound. “The way you're talking now, I'd think you were his greatest champion. But you hate him, too. As much as I do.”
“I hate what he is, yes. And I hate what he's made this family into,” Papa says. “It's killing you. It's driving your mother further into insanity. If I had known what trouble he would be, I would have left him in an orphanage a long time ago. But you insisted on keeping him, and now look what our lives are.”
“Don't you dare lay this on me,” Mama says. “You wanted him as much as I did.”
On and on it goes, an eternal battle where they lay the blame on each other, but mostly their son. Oma hears them across the hall, his only ally, and even then only sometimes. And he curls up in bed, knowing that somehow, this is his fault.
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