Weiss Kreuz - slash_me_twice - 001: Shadow
001. Shadow
Beta: rosalyn_angel
Notes: for slash_me_twice challenge table.
*
A shadow falls over his hunched form. The long dark line of a blade juts out in front of his body. At last, it’s time. Schuldig smiles a liquid smile. “You know, I didn’t think you’d come.”
Abyssinian says nothing, but Schuldig hears the blade turn in his leather-gloved hands.
It is fitting, he thinks, that things should end like this. Schuldig remembers pushing a button, and watching the aftermath: an innocent boy trying to lift a wall off of a girl with black braids and a bloody face. He remembers not killing that innocent boy despite the boy seeing his face. And he remembers meeting that boy again, a jaded man with cold violet eyes and a blade as sharp as his anger was deep. Schuldig coughs wetly and spits the blood onto the pavement. “You know,” he says, because Abyssinian isn’t talking, isn’t cutting him to pieces, “I’ve always wondered if it wouldn’t have been kinder to kill you both.”
The crackling of leather. The shadow sword moves, rises above Schuldig’s head.
“Dark beast who takes the blood of the innocent-”
Schuldig wheezes a laugh. “The same speech every time,” he rasps.
Abyssinian stops talking.
And then the sword cuts deep, and Schuldig grunts in pain because his back is on fire, and he has only felt this fire in the minds of the dying. Even so, he has never felt so acutely this pain he so freely poured upon others. He falls forward and a boot kicks him onto his back. He can feel gravel worming its way into his wound, and the boot that falls on his chest grinds the pain deeper.
The bloody sword dances on the edge of his vision, and for the first time he sees the man who has come to kill him: Abyssinian. The man who was Fujimiya Ran before Schuldig took the job that turned him into a killer. Schuldig blinks up at the monster he has created and can’t even manage a trademark grin.
“Tell me what I’m thinking, Schwarz,” Abyssinian growls.
And that’s the beauty of it: Schuldig can’t. He does manage a smile then, and a short bark of laughter that lances through his insides like the sword is still there.
Abyssinian cocks his head. When Schuldig doesn’t say anything, he actually deigns to speak: “What’s so funny, Schwarz?”
Schuldig doesn’t want to answer. But he does, because there is now a sword pressed to his gut, and Schuldig knows how painful this can get. So he admits what shames him, what baffles him, the reason he brought Abyssinian here in the first place: “Can’t read you.”
A frown for his troubles. “You can’t read my mind?”
Schuldig tries shaking his head, but quickly stops-he’s woozy enough without that added pain. “No,” he whispers. Abyssinian is a void. A silent angel of death. Schuldig welcomes that emptiness.
The assassin glances into the shadows, and then quickly back, as if worried Schuldig has something else up his sleeve. Which of course he does-just not the sort of ace Abyssinian is thinking of. “It doesn’t matter,” Abyssinian says finally. The sword makes a shink noise as he turns it abruptly. “Die. And may the lives you have taken drag you to hell!”
The sword comes down.
Blessed, silent darkness.
*
Manx brings the report three days later, when the Kritiker autopsy is finished and they are certain of their findings. “He was dying,” she tells Aya in the safety of the flower shop basement.
Aya’s head snaps up. “Dying?”
“We found an inoperable tumor in his brain. We believe it would have paralyzed, then killed him. He certainly didn’t have much time when he sent you the note.”
Aya curses, then turns abruptly and punches the wall. “That bastard!”
Manx drops the folder on the table and says simply, “It doesn’t matter-he’s dead now.” The unspoken words, Isn’t that what you wanted, lingers in the air after her footsteps have ceased on the spiral stair. Aya presses his head to the wall and wants to scream. That bastard tricked him! Tricked into giving him a quick death, a fighter’s death.
Instead of the death he deserved.
*
Aya gets the letter a week letter. It appears in his room, and he wonders which Schwarz member left it there, and how they got in. He knows whoever it was, they’re long gone. He picks up the letter and reads.
It’s from Schuldig.
Aya skims it, crumples it up, throws it on the floor, and then picks it back up and uncurls it carefully and places it on the nightstand.
It’s not every day you catch a glimpse into the mind of a telepath.
It’s not every day your enemy tells you the reason he saw fit to give you your revenge, is because your mind alone offered him the silence he so craved.
It’s not every day you regret killing a man, not because he didn’t deserve it, but because you never got to really see him as a human until you’d driven a sword through his heart and watched the life seep out of his blue eyes.
Beta: rosalyn_angel
Notes: for slash_me_twice challenge table.
*
A shadow falls over his hunched form. The long dark line of a blade juts out in front of his body. At last, it’s time. Schuldig smiles a liquid smile. “You know, I didn’t think you’d come.”
Abyssinian says nothing, but Schuldig hears the blade turn in his leather-gloved hands.
It is fitting, he thinks, that things should end like this. Schuldig remembers pushing a button, and watching the aftermath: an innocent boy trying to lift a wall off of a girl with black braids and a bloody face. He remembers not killing that innocent boy despite the boy seeing his face. And he remembers meeting that boy again, a jaded man with cold violet eyes and a blade as sharp as his anger was deep. Schuldig coughs wetly and spits the blood onto the pavement. “You know,” he says, because Abyssinian isn’t talking, isn’t cutting him to pieces, “I’ve always wondered if it wouldn’t have been kinder to kill you both.”
The crackling of leather. The shadow sword moves, rises above Schuldig’s head.
“Dark beast who takes the blood of the innocent-”
Schuldig wheezes a laugh. “The same speech every time,” he rasps.
Abyssinian stops talking.
And then the sword cuts deep, and Schuldig grunts in pain because his back is on fire, and he has only felt this fire in the minds of the dying. Even so, he has never felt so acutely this pain he so freely poured upon others. He falls forward and a boot kicks him onto his back. He can feel gravel worming its way into his wound, and the boot that falls on his chest grinds the pain deeper.
The bloody sword dances on the edge of his vision, and for the first time he sees the man who has come to kill him: Abyssinian. The man who was Fujimiya Ran before Schuldig took the job that turned him into a killer. Schuldig blinks up at the monster he has created and can’t even manage a trademark grin.
“Tell me what I’m thinking, Schwarz,” Abyssinian growls.
And that’s the beauty of it: Schuldig can’t. He does manage a smile then, and a short bark of laughter that lances through his insides like the sword is still there.
Abyssinian cocks his head. When Schuldig doesn’t say anything, he actually deigns to speak: “What’s so funny, Schwarz?”
Schuldig doesn’t want to answer. But he does, because there is now a sword pressed to his gut, and Schuldig knows how painful this can get. So he admits what shames him, what baffles him, the reason he brought Abyssinian here in the first place: “Can’t read you.”
A frown for his troubles. “You can’t read my mind?”
Schuldig tries shaking his head, but quickly stops-he’s woozy enough without that added pain. “No,” he whispers. Abyssinian is a void. A silent angel of death. Schuldig welcomes that emptiness.
The assassin glances into the shadows, and then quickly back, as if worried Schuldig has something else up his sleeve. Which of course he does-just not the sort of ace Abyssinian is thinking of. “It doesn’t matter,” Abyssinian says finally. The sword makes a shink noise as he turns it abruptly. “Die. And may the lives you have taken drag you to hell!”
The sword comes down.
Blessed, silent darkness.
*
Manx brings the report three days later, when the Kritiker autopsy is finished and they are certain of their findings. “He was dying,” she tells Aya in the safety of the flower shop basement.
Aya’s head snaps up. “Dying?”
“We found an inoperable tumor in his brain. We believe it would have paralyzed, then killed him. He certainly didn’t have much time when he sent you the note.”
Aya curses, then turns abruptly and punches the wall. “That bastard!”
Manx drops the folder on the table and says simply, “It doesn’t matter-he’s dead now.” The unspoken words, Isn’t that what you wanted, lingers in the air after her footsteps have ceased on the spiral stair. Aya presses his head to the wall and wants to scream. That bastard tricked him! Tricked into giving him a quick death, a fighter’s death.
Instead of the death he deserved.
*
Aya gets the letter a week letter. It appears in his room, and he wonders which Schwarz member left it there, and how they got in. He knows whoever it was, they’re long gone. He picks up the letter and reads.
It’s from Schuldig.
Aya skims it, crumples it up, throws it on the floor, and then picks it back up and uncurls it carefully and places it on the nightstand.
It’s not every day you catch a glimpse into the mind of a telepath.
It’s not every day your enemy tells you the reason he saw fit to give you your revenge, is because your mind alone offered him the silence he so craved.
It’s not every day you regret killing a man, not because he didn’t deserve it, but because you never got to really see him as a human until you’d driven a sword through his heart and watched the life seep out of his blue eyes.