(no subject)
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz
Author: laurose8
Pairing: Brad/Aya
Rating: G. Pre-Slash - very pre. No warnings
Points to Aya. Thanks to my beta genjyosgirl , for giving her valuable time and even more valuable advice. Hope I haven't put you off the canon forever.
On the one hand, Niel wished his school friends would come to visit him more than the statutory class trip. On the other, he was embarrassed as any sixteen year old would be at having a childish operation like Talent removal. His eyes had been fixed when he was four. But precognition can't be screened genetically before it starts working.
Though it was a physically safe operation, and one which would save him from eventual madness, the doctors had had to warn there was risk of slight personality change. This had worried his teachers, though perhaps less than it should have. Niel's attitude was they'd have to do better than that. A whole lot better.
The nurse had done Personal Feedback in exactly the allotted time. Niel watched her leave the small hospital room, with exactly the same number of steps, at exactly the same speed, as she'd left last time, and the time before that. Despite the firesealing on the door, Niel could hear just the faintest suggestion of sound as the nurse walked to the next room, the only other room the nurse visited in the corridor. She would spend twenty and a half minutes, just fifty seconds more than she had with Niel.
He sprawled on his back on the round hospital bed, staring up at the bleh-coloured ceiling. Once again, Niel tested how fast he could whirl the bed, and how far tilt it. Then he managed to peel back a bit of the fresh, clean, new and dull coloured cervel from one of the little room's rounded corners, and found equally clean and dull cervel underneath. Each minute was longer than the last. But even at sixteen his will was strong enough to keep him to the schedule he'd decided best. He would...He even found himself reciting the lullaby: In this mountain there is a city/In this city there is a level/In this level there is a unit/In this unit... he tried to whirl faster.
In order not to stress his poor little healing brain, his hospital room's vidwall was locked on mute, with all the flashy, interesting sfx screened out. The hospital library had given him a careful selection of tapes which were meant to be interesting anyway. They weren't. There were also manga. His favourites, which he'd rather lost his taste for. Br'er Fox was same old, same old; Against God and The Smallest Superboy had changed too much. The hospital's programmes were so secured against cybersabotage even a c-jock like him couldn't access the wider internet at all. He'd even had to have a printed hospital map, on glossy paper in candy colours with little explanationary notes written, apparently, for the under-ten crowd.
At any time he could phone a number of people whose job was to help and entertain people like him, and join a number of virtual clubs.
But his room's door was secured.
Antoniel Dawes had passed his emancipation test at thirteen, and could still dimly remember the statutory protection a hospital had to give to a patient in a single room. Still, it meant he was locked in. With Niel, that hadn't lasted long.
He counted out the minutes the nurse was spending in the other room, and calculated the slowest time she would spend walking down the corridor, and gave himself a few more minutes arranging his white dressing gown for maximum drape. Then he opened the door.
At the end of the corridor, the nurse looked up from the console where she was typing out reports and asked, "What in earth are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night? And how - "
Niel didn't want her to pursue that line of thought. He frowned at her. "I was going to see my neighbour."
"AJ? I suppose he'll still be awake." She stood up from the console. Quite a way. Nurse Johansson had used a lot of androgen in her time. That wasn't Niel's main reaction; he was still annoyed at how flat people appeared when you could only see them a moment at a time.
There was only one closed door. Niel had got that right, anyway. The nurse knocked on it like a curfew squad and opened without waiting. "The kid next door, Antoniel Dawes. You wanna see him?"
Niel didn't catch whether he did or not. He found himself through the door before he expected, and from the wary expression on the other boy's face, before he expected, either. The nurse's console whined back into life while they were still considering each other.
Niel's first impression was that maybe the doctor had been right about the personality change, after all. The other kid was normal enough looking, apart from the dark red hair and the violet eyes. Dressed in a bunk sleeper of some cheap, dark flimsy synthetic and the worst cut possible, he was seated, writing, at a tierdesk in the middle of his room. The room was no larger than his, but it had, under books, the interactive games he'd been forbidden. Why, then, should Niel suddenly have the fancy he was like a cat? He could practically see the cat: slim and elegant with a sleek, sand coloured coat.
He was also a shade disgruntled that the kid was at least a year younger than him. Not that Niel had particularly wanted to be stuck with a poisoned Talent, but now he realised he'd liked thinking he'd have been the strongest. If this kid had started even earlier than him...Niel offered, "You must have been a very strong Talent."
The kid considered him for a minute before replying. "I'm not in hospital for any operation. I've been given therapeutic amnesia." Niel was rather gratified that his voice hadn't finished breaking.
"Oh." Niel normally bulled ahead and didn't care what people thought. But normally Niel didn't meet people who'd suffered enough to be given t.a.
The redhead said, "I lost all my family in an accident and couldn't handle it."
Or so they tell you... Niel's mind couldn't help commenting. He said, "What's your - what do they call you?"
"They've given me the name AJ Redcastle."
For once, Niel tried to put himself in another's place, briefly. "Don't you want to know something about where you come from?" He hated the thought of being so ignorant and vulnerable, and stopped trying.
"Very much. Even tried looking through my clothes and cards. Which were all new. No Sherlock Holmes work there."
"Which Sherlock Holmes do you like?"
"The original."
Niel stared him in the eyes for a moment, and AJ looked back, like flint. Niel said, "Violet eyes...You come from Afghanistan, I perceive."
AJ's smile wasn't wide, but it didn't need to be. The eyes lightened. "I'm inclined to think I'm from Scotland. Don't I look Highland?"
Niel wasn't sure what exotic country AJ reminded him of, but not Scotland. The thin, annoying whine of the nurse's console was still on, and he looked around for something to talk of until she left. "You like chess?"
They played only a few moves before the console's sound stopped.
Niel pulled himself back from the board and stood, waving aside AJ's protest. "We'll finish later." And didn't he wish he knew whether they would or not.
Ignoring AJ's answer, and taking care not to skulk, Niel walked down the corridor, past his room, taking just enough time to open and close it as loudly as the padded door could be closed, and further down the long corridor.
On the whole, he thought it would be best to short cut in the freight lift. He reached out to press the button and a hand grasped his wrist. "No, don't. You can have a good life without a Talent."
Once he'd got his heart back down his throat, Niel decided he was talking about suicide. "You think I'm going to fold like wet paper?"
AJ's grip didn't weaken. "It was your choice."
This was so outfield, Niel puzzled over it for seconds. Then he doubled over laughing. Then he grabbed his head. He did very little laughing, certainly hadn't expected to just then, and the jab through the top of the skull was unexpected. "You do know Jack Crawford is a fictional character, don't you?" AJ didn't say anything, and didn't release his grip. Putting his own hand over AJ's, Niel pulled it off with ease. "Crawford doesn't seem to have had any children; and Jack's revenge for his loss of Talent is the panorama of fail. I don't need Talent." AJ didn't back off. "I'm just going to a public park area to get a newsdisc, and perhaps enjoy the flowers. It is summer on Level Thirty One, isn't it?" Level Thirty One was having one of those bouts of gentrification and protest, not to mention the normal variety of park users. There'd be a wide variety of newsdiscs.
Flatly. "Newsdisc." The kid was going to have a deep voice when he grew up.
Niel despised explaining himself; he purely despised it. But he had an almost precognitive certainty that throwing this kid down the corridor or the lift shaft or somewhere would prove more trouble than profit. "My father was a precog, too. But he never had the operation."
Which meant his father was the only place Talents were used; as volunteer for an outsystem colony. A Talent was so useful to the both the voyage and the colony that some governments positively encouraged them to stay uncured, with massive pensions for any family left on Earth.
And there was so much to go wrong with a starship.
AJ didn't say anything. Niel was very glad he didn't produce any of the usual soothing oil. But he did step back. "In a dressing gown?"
"On it." Niel took his shoes from his dressing gown pockets, shucked the dressing gown and rolled down the trouser legs of the suit he was wearing. "You can have the dressing gown. You look a bit cold." AJ took it. It was definitely too large for him. "By the way, when Johansson or someone comes steaming along, cover for me, will you? I'd like at least an hour's break." AJ raised one eyebrow. How do some people do that? "I trust you to do it." He was surprised to find out he meant it
The lift doors swung open and Niel stepped in. "Going up. Level Thirty One: roses and renovation."
Author: laurose8
Pairing: Brad/Aya
Rating: G. Pre-Slash - very pre. No warnings
Points to Aya. Thanks to my beta genjyosgirl , for giving her valuable time and even more valuable advice. Hope I haven't put you off the canon forever.
On the one hand, Niel wished his school friends would come to visit him more than the statutory class trip. On the other, he was embarrassed as any sixteen year old would be at having a childish operation like Talent removal. His eyes had been fixed when he was four. But precognition can't be screened genetically before it starts working.
Though it was a physically safe operation, and one which would save him from eventual madness, the doctors had had to warn there was risk of slight personality change. This had worried his teachers, though perhaps less than it should have. Niel's attitude was they'd have to do better than that. A whole lot better.
The nurse had done Personal Feedback in exactly the allotted time. Niel watched her leave the small hospital room, with exactly the same number of steps, at exactly the same speed, as she'd left last time, and the time before that. Despite the firesealing on the door, Niel could hear just the faintest suggestion of sound as the nurse walked to the next room, the only other room the nurse visited in the corridor. She would spend twenty and a half minutes, just fifty seconds more than she had with Niel.
He sprawled on his back on the round hospital bed, staring up at the bleh-coloured ceiling. Once again, Niel tested how fast he could whirl the bed, and how far tilt it. Then he managed to peel back a bit of the fresh, clean, new and dull coloured cervel from one of the little room's rounded corners, and found equally clean and dull cervel underneath. Each minute was longer than the last. But even at sixteen his will was strong enough to keep him to the schedule he'd decided best. He would...He even found himself reciting the lullaby: In this mountain there is a city/In this city there is a level/In this level there is a unit/In this unit... he tried to whirl faster.
In order not to stress his poor little healing brain, his hospital room's vidwall was locked on mute, with all the flashy, interesting sfx screened out. The hospital library had given him a careful selection of tapes which were meant to be interesting anyway. They weren't. There were also manga. His favourites, which he'd rather lost his taste for. Br'er Fox was same old, same old; Against God and The Smallest Superboy had changed too much. The hospital's programmes were so secured against cybersabotage even a c-jock like him couldn't access the wider internet at all. He'd even had to have a printed hospital map, on glossy paper in candy colours with little explanationary notes written, apparently, for the under-ten crowd.
At any time he could phone a number of people whose job was to help and entertain people like him, and join a number of virtual clubs.
But his room's door was secured.
Antoniel Dawes had passed his emancipation test at thirteen, and could still dimly remember the statutory protection a hospital had to give to a patient in a single room. Still, it meant he was locked in. With Niel, that hadn't lasted long.
He counted out the minutes the nurse was spending in the other room, and calculated the slowest time she would spend walking down the corridor, and gave himself a few more minutes arranging his white dressing gown for maximum drape. Then he opened the door.
At the end of the corridor, the nurse looked up from the console where she was typing out reports and asked, "What in earth are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night? And how - "
Niel didn't want her to pursue that line of thought. He frowned at her. "I was going to see my neighbour."
"AJ? I suppose he'll still be awake." She stood up from the console. Quite a way. Nurse Johansson had used a lot of androgen in her time. That wasn't Niel's main reaction; he was still annoyed at how flat people appeared when you could only see them a moment at a time.
There was only one closed door. Niel had got that right, anyway. The nurse knocked on it like a curfew squad and opened without waiting. "The kid next door, Antoniel Dawes. You wanna see him?"
Niel didn't catch whether he did or not. He found himself through the door before he expected, and from the wary expression on the other boy's face, before he expected, either. The nurse's console whined back into life while they were still considering each other.
Niel's first impression was that maybe the doctor had been right about the personality change, after all. The other kid was normal enough looking, apart from the dark red hair and the violet eyes. Dressed in a bunk sleeper of some cheap, dark flimsy synthetic and the worst cut possible, he was seated, writing, at a tierdesk in the middle of his room. The room was no larger than his, but it had, under books, the interactive games he'd been forbidden. Why, then, should Niel suddenly have the fancy he was like a cat? He could practically see the cat: slim and elegant with a sleek, sand coloured coat.
He was also a shade disgruntled that the kid was at least a year younger than him. Not that Niel had particularly wanted to be stuck with a poisoned Talent, but now he realised he'd liked thinking he'd have been the strongest. If this kid had started even earlier than him...Niel offered, "You must have been a very strong Talent."
The kid considered him for a minute before replying. "I'm not in hospital for any operation. I've been given therapeutic amnesia." Niel was rather gratified that his voice hadn't finished breaking.
"Oh." Niel normally bulled ahead and didn't care what people thought. But normally Niel didn't meet people who'd suffered enough to be given t.a.
The redhead said, "I lost all my family in an accident and couldn't handle it."
Or so they tell you... Niel's mind couldn't help commenting. He said, "What's your - what do they call you?"
"They've given me the name AJ Redcastle."
For once, Niel tried to put himself in another's place, briefly. "Don't you want to know something about where you come from?" He hated the thought of being so ignorant and vulnerable, and stopped trying.
"Very much. Even tried looking through my clothes and cards. Which were all new. No Sherlock Holmes work there."
"Which Sherlock Holmes do you like?"
"The original."
Niel stared him in the eyes for a moment, and AJ looked back, like flint. Niel said, "Violet eyes...You come from Afghanistan, I perceive."
AJ's smile wasn't wide, but it didn't need to be. The eyes lightened. "I'm inclined to think I'm from Scotland. Don't I look Highland?"
Niel wasn't sure what exotic country AJ reminded him of, but not Scotland. The thin, annoying whine of the nurse's console was still on, and he looked around for something to talk of until she left. "You like chess?"
They played only a few moves before the console's sound stopped.
Niel pulled himself back from the board and stood, waving aside AJ's protest. "We'll finish later." And didn't he wish he knew whether they would or not.
Ignoring AJ's answer, and taking care not to skulk, Niel walked down the corridor, past his room, taking just enough time to open and close it as loudly as the padded door could be closed, and further down the long corridor.
On the whole, he thought it would be best to short cut in the freight lift. He reached out to press the button and a hand grasped his wrist. "No, don't. You can have a good life without a Talent."
Once he'd got his heart back down his throat, Niel decided he was talking about suicide. "You think I'm going to fold like wet paper?"
AJ's grip didn't weaken. "It was your choice."
This was so outfield, Niel puzzled over it for seconds. Then he doubled over laughing. Then he grabbed his head. He did very little laughing, certainly hadn't expected to just then, and the jab through the top of the skull was unexpected. "You do know Jack Crawford is a fictional character, don't you?" AJ didn't say anything, and didn't release his grip. Putting his own hand over AJ's, Niel pulled it off with ease. "Crawford doesn't seem to have had any children; and Jack's revenge for his loss of Talent is the panorama of fail. I don't need Talent." AJ didn't back off. "I'm just going to a public park area to get a newsdisc, and perhaps enjoy the flowers. It is summer on Level Thirty One, isn't it?" Level Thirty One was having one of those bouts of gentrification and protest, not to mention the normal variety of park users. There'd be a wide variety of newsdiscs.
Flatly. "Newsdisc." The kid was going to have a deep voice when he grew up.
Niel despised explaining himself; he purely despised it. But he had an almost precognitive certainty that throwing this kid down the corridor or the lift shaft or somewhere would prove more trouble than profit. "My father was a precog, too. But he never had the operation."
Which meant his father was the only place Talents were used; as volunteer for an outsystem colony. A Talent was so useful to the both the voyage and the colony that some governments positively encouraged them to stay uncured, with massive pensions for any family left on Earth.
And there was so much to go wrong with a starship.
AJ didn't say anything. Niel was very glad he didn't produce any of the usual soothing oil. But he did step back. "In a dressing gown?"
"On it." Niel took his shoes from his dressing gown pockets, shucked the dressing gown and rolled down the trouser legs of the suit he was wearing. "You can have the dressing gown. You look a bit cold." AJ took it. It was definitely too large for him. "By the way, when Johansson or someone comes steaming along, cover for me, will you? I'd like at least an hour's break." AJ raised one eyebrow. How do some people do that? "I trust you to do it." He was surprised to find out he meant it
The lift doors swung open and Niel stepped in. "Going up. Level Thirty One: roses and renovation."