Chapter 4
Aya was sitting on an open platform three stories above a great battle. Below him hundreds of men were fighting, the sounds of their swords clashing as loud as thunder, the ground below their feet stained red with blood. The battle seemed to be controlled by two men who stayed far out of the fray, nobles of some sort he guessed. He had always been good at history but he could not even guess the nature of the battle that raged below. The fighters were not all dressed in the same period styles, their clothes ranged from the ancient armor that he had seen sketched in history books to the bright colored robes of fairy tales to the drab brown uniforms of the soldiers of World War II, who technically weren't Samurai at all.
It bothered him that he could not control the contents of the world around him the way that Schuldig could. It was his mind after all, he should be the one that gets to decide what the world around him would be. But it seemed his subconscious had its own ideas about how it wanted to be entertained, unfortunately for what ever part of him that was conscious, historic accuracy didn't seem to be very important. He sighed and pulled his knees up under his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs, not even the platform that he sat on would have been used until well after World War II when conservationists started to build lookout towers to protect the nearly extinct forests of Japan.
Still, the fighting was interesting. Some of the men used very good technique. Wielding their weapons with such skill that they seemed to be dancing rather than fighting. He had always wanted to be able to move with his sword in such a manner, but he had never had the skill of a true Master. The men below him would have trained from the time that they were able to hold a sword in their hands, where as he had been nearly fully grown when he had first taken up a blade.
He had no idea how long he had been watching the battle, it could have been for a minute or it could have been for a day, time for him didn't seem to move the way that it was supposed to anymore. He couldn't remember what he had been doing before the fight had broken out, he could have been walking in the barren waste land that sometimes appeared, or he could have been roaming through a garden, or back in elementary school being teased by the other children for his freakish appearance, or he could have been just floating in the blackness that substituted for sleep in his private world.
The way that things could shift and become something completely different had made him think he had died and gone to hell the first time he experienced it after he woke up, he could no longer remember what it was he had seen then, but he was sure that it had been violent and ugly. He had never believed in the Judeo-Christian concept of hell, but he had been relieved to think that was where he was, he could remember that much. There had been some confusion though because he hadn't felt any pain and he was pretty sure hell was supposed to hurt, a lot. He remembered thinking that maybe you had to be a Christian to feel the pain of hell, that if you didn't believe you weren't really a bona fide member and you could only watch the suffering from the side lines, a gruesome spectator sport.
Then Aya-chan had come to him, not as she had been when he had seen her last. Not the full grown woman he had glimpsed through the flower shop window, nor the teenage girl who he had watched sleep for so many years, but as a little girl in a the beautiful gold and green kimono that their mother had made for her sixth birthday. Again he couldn't remember where they were when he saw her, or really what they had talked about, but he did remember seeing her and then doubting that he was in hell.
Then Schuldig had appeared for the first time and he was back to thinking he was in hell again and that the tall gaijin was the Devil, the vision of Aya-chan a trick to torment him. He had thought that if the Devil would present itself to him it would do so in the form of Takatori, but he would have chosen the German as his second guess, it had taken Schuldig at least ten visits to convince him that he was not dead at all. That he was lying in a hospital bed in Tokyo, that he was in a coma.
He had laughed when he had accepted his situation, a full belly wrenching tears in the eyes laugh. Then he had gotten angry. He had been cheated. He had lost two teammates who were in his care, who he should have protected and Sena had been merely a boy. He had walked away from Weiss and he had killed without orders, he could officially look in the mirror and see just the murderer that he knew himself to be, no more pretending, no more justifications, he had spiked a man through his cerebral cortex and left him on the floor of his own office. He had given away his blood money and been stabbed by a wisp of a child. The great Abyssinian had been bested by a boy no more than ten years old. The cold hearted assassin had been dying in the street like a dog and for the first time in as long as he cared to remember he had actually been happy.
He had been so tired, tired of being alone, tired of not knowing how to be anything else, and tired of wanting something else. He was tired of his hate and his bitterness, and most of all he was tired of being tired. He had finally been given a way out. It had been a gift, maybe the only one that fate had ever really offered him, and it had been stolen from him. Like everything else in his life that he had ever hoped for, dreamed of, it had dangled in front of him, close enough to smell and taste but when he was sure it was really his it was jerked away. He hated Death, it was an Indian giver and he hated Life, it was a cheater.
A scream of pure agony drew his attention back to the battle below, one of the lords who was so carefully staying out of harms way had a burning arrow sticking out of his side. Aya felt a flash of jealousy as he watched the fire ignited across the man's chest before he burst into flames, and fell to the ground whimpering in agony. He watched the rival lord approach the burning body and burst into flames as well when he got to close to it.
"My, my, Kitten," Schuldig's familiar voice says from behind him, it is filled with a gentle humor that Aya never thought he would be able to associate with the man, but could no longer remember him without, "I really am going to have to crush up some Prozac or Lithium and inject into your feeding tube." The world already starting to change as Schuldig molded it to his liking. Suddenly they were still high above the ground, but instead of a wooden observation tower, Aya found himself sitting on a cushioned bench on a stone balcony, Schuldig still standing behind him. Schuldig liked medieval architecture and Aya assumed they were perched on some sort of a castle. A peaceful forest shrouded in a soft mist far below.
"Why can't I do that?" Aya asked the question he had been thinking before, his head tossed backwards so that he could look at the man standing behind him.
"You could Kitten, just wake up. I will get you the pills and the pestle and mortar." Schuldig tapped his chin as if thinking, "of course that might make the feeding tube moot."
"No, not that" Aya slammed his back into Schuldig's thighs, making the man stumble slightly, " Why can't I make things change the way you can?"
"Ah that," Schuldig was suddenly sitting next to Aya, an arm around his shoulders, "well I suppose it has to do with my talents." He pulls the smaller man to him and speaks the last word suggestively in Aya's ear, smiling as he feels him shiver. "Do you want me to teach you?'
"Yes," Aya felt himself being pulled onto Schuldig's lap, he doesn't fight him but he doesn't help him do it either.
"I am not sure I can do that," Schuldig shifts Aya so that they will both be comfortable, before tightly wrapping his arms around him and leaning his chin onto Aya's shoulder, " that would just give you more reason to not wake up."
Aya shrugs, "I am not going to wake up, I have no reason to."
Schuldig bites into his neck painfully, "There is me. I want you to wake up for me."
"You say that but you don't really want that. Think about it," Aya forces himself to not flinch from the sudden pain, as he earns himself a second bite. "I might not want to have anything to do with you if I were awake. Things could just go back to the way they were before, us only ever seeing each other as enemies."
"That will never happen," Schuldig declares, "I won't ever let that happen." His arms tightening around Aya's waist possessively. "I have spent far too much time making you mine, made far too many sacrifices to ever let you go again."
The certitude of Schuldig's statement is alarming, yet at the same time the feeling of being wanted, of being desired, of knowing that he is not completely alone comforts him. He gives into this feeling pushing the less pleasurable emotion away and leans back into Schuldig's body. "Maybe I will wake up but I will be a shriveled old man."
"That will not happen." The brashness of the statement makes Aya twist in Schuldig's arms so that he can look at him.
He raises an eyebrow at the man, "Really? How can you be so sure? Will you pull the plug on me before you let me get old?'
"You have no plug to pull," Schuldig chuckles, the sensation rumbling in Aya's back, "a catheter yes, but a plug no." The idea of having to use such a humiliating thing makes Aya blush and he turns his face away from Schuldig, back to the forest below.
"And as for the growing old part," Schuldig continues, inwardly pleased at the reaction he has just pulled from Aya, " it seems that not aging while in a coma is a Fujimiya family trait, like having double jointed thumbs or being able to curl your tongue."
"What?" Aya doesn't like this idea at all.
"You haven't aged a day since you were brought in Kitten," Schuldig's voice has taken on a serious tone that Aya recognizes, Schuldig only speaks in such a manner when he says something he feels is of great importance, "you haven't needed a shave, your hair hasn't grown, your fingernails haven't grown. Your injuries have healed, but besides that you haven't changed at all."
Aya goes very still in Schuldig's arms, he has nothing to say to this new information. He had envisioned himself as growing so pathetic that the hospital would eventually stop trying to keep him alive, that Schuldig would stop trying to keep him alive when he got too old to be attractive to the man anymore. It had never crossed his mind that he might respond to a vegetative state the same way that his sister had. It complicated matters, he had no interest in joining the real world again, but he also did not want to spend an eternity in the strange limbo that was his world now.
Schuldig was content to hold Aya and let him brood. It was something that he had grown used to over the course of their relationship. Since he had been hospitalized Aya brooded a lot less, but to Schuldig their relationship had been formed the day that the Fujimiya building had exploded and he had spent many an hour waiting in the recesses of Aya's mind for the man to pull himself from the dark place that he went while thinking. Schuldig who was far from being a patient person with anyone else just watched the clouds roll by and waited for his lover to once again become responsive.
"Why is there no music?" Aya eventually spoke, "there is always music when you come."
"I do apologize Pikkolo," Schuldig begins to let his hands roam down Aya's waist to the top of his thighs, "but I am not at the hospital, I am visiting you from home. I had a long night at work and wanted to see you." Schuldig immediately regrets his words.
"At home?" Aya twists on his lap so that he is straddling Schuldig, his curiosity peaked. "I didn't know you could do that."
"It is a new event," Schuldig doesn't like the turn this conversation is taking, he doesn't feel that Aya needs to know how strong the mental bond between them has become. "Would you like to see my bedroom?" He smiles and raises his eyebrows, hoping to draw Aya's attention away from the slip that he has just made. "I have exquisite taste." Schuldig adds, rolling his eyes down the body on top of his for emphasis.
Aya ignores the innuendo and shrugs again, his favorite form of expression after a grunt. Schuldig decides to take the body movement as a yes. Again the world around them begins to melt and reform. Yet this time there is something different about it, the colors are not as surreal, the images do not take the millimeter of a second to come into focus they way they usually do. What is appearing around them is not a picture drawn from memory or the imagination, but rather what Schuldig is seeing in the real world half a city away.
The walls of the large room are painted a deep blue. There are three large paintings on the walls, each of them of from the impressionist period. Aya is not familiar enough with art to be able to tell by who, but he is pretty sure that they are not replicas nor are they done by unknown artists, Schuldig has millions of yen's worth of art hanging above his bed, who would ever have guessed. The bed itself is gigantic, at least twice as big as a normal double bed, made of a rich mahogany and covered in sea green silk sheets. There is a mountain of pillows cased in the same fabric. The rest of the furniture in the room is made of the same wood as the bed.
"I am impressed," Aya says to the man who is still beneath him despite the scenery change, "you have good taste."
"Of course I do," Schuldig grabs Aya's hips and pulls him tighter over his growing arousal. The idea that he has Aya in his bed room exciting him more than he expected, "I like you don't I?"
"That might very well be the exception, not the standard." Aya says honestly, but he begins to rock above Schuldig letting the hands on his hips guide him.
"Don't you say that." Schuldig pushes him off of himself. Aya, surprised by the sudden change in Schuldig goes flying, if the bed were not so big he would land on the floor. "Don't you ever fucking berate yourself in front of me!"
Aya is too shocked to respond, he just stares at the suddenly angry man. His eyes wide and his mouth open.
"I am sorry Kitten," Schuldig's anger disappears as quickly as it surfaced. Gently he pulls Aya back into his arms, "I am tired, it has been a long night." He kisses Aya's cheek gently, "I should go now, I will see you tomorrow." He kisses Aya again, this time on the lips, his tongue pressing against Aya's mouth until it is granted entry. Schuldig holds the kiss for a few minutes, before pushing the smaller man away from himself gently.
And with that Aya finds himself back on the platform that he had been sitting on before Schuldig appeared, the battle below still raging despite the smoking black heaps that had been its leaders.