Chapter 5
Schuldig was in a foul mood. He stepped off the elevator and was immediately assaulted by the thoughts of the old battle axe who manned the nurses station. She didn't like the way he was dressed, she felt that his green shirt clashed with his orange hair, that he wore such bright colors as a cheap ploy to attract attention to himself.
// I am a full fucking head taller than two thirds of the population in this damned country// He viciously spoke into her mind, // you think what I wear can draw more attention then that?//
The woman's usually bored and disapproving look disappeared as her eyes went wide and her face went pale. He took some satisfaction when he felt her starting to question her own sanity, but not nearly enough. She had picked a very bad day to draw his attention. He stopped right in front of her and looked down at her with cold blue eyes, and pushed. Only when blood was freely running from both of her nostrils and he could sense her fear and shock at the pain in her head did he start down the hall again. //You are afraid you have a brain tumor, you are hemorrhaging.// he shot back at her as an after thought. When he heard her yelp as she thought she had the idea on her own, he smirked and felt slightly better. Sometimes inflicting small miseries on others was the best way to relieve stress.
Schuldig forces himself to slow down his breathing, trying to reign in his temper. He had made a foolish mistake the night before and he was there to repair any damage he might have done. He had known better than to visit Aya after he had been working, his adrenaline was always too high and his self control so low when ever he finished a mission. But he had wanted to see Aya so badly that he actually found himself inside of his head before he had realized what he was doing.
He thought about the two things he had done wrong, first letting Aya know that he could now reach out to him from wherever he was, that he didn't need to have the man in front of him anymore. If Aya thought about it too much he might begin to see the implications that could have and he would have even less reason to awaken. And then he had lost control over himself. It had taken him months to get Aya to believe that he was not the dangerous monster that Aya had believed him to be when he was in Weiss. He could have ruined Aya's new perception of him in a mere minute and set himself back months worth of work.
The trick was staying calm. He had to make sure that he was completely relaxed before he attempted to enter into Aya's mind. He was confident that he would be able to remove the two incidents from Aya's memory as long as he did not have to break through any defenses, but he need Aya to be completely at ease for him to be able to do it.
He desperately wished Aya was awake. Controlling him would be so much easier if he were not in a state where his subconscious was the ruling factor of his mind. Schuldig had to be so careful about what he could and couldn't do to dominate Aya. Being completely inside of his own head gave Aya a stronger sensitivity to Schuldig's manipulations of his thoughts and feelings. It forced Schuldig to have to be very subtle and to move very slowly, two things that went against his nature, made all the more difficult because he would also have to keep the sentient part of Aya occupied while he stole away the memories.
But there was some good in the fact that Aya was trapped inside of his head. Schuldig could never have isolated Aya so completely unless he had locked him in a cage, which would not be very beneficial in building the trust that he had worked so hard to gain. Schuldig had helped to a certain degree by destroying Aya's ability to manifest people from his memory, such as his sister or the members of his past teams. Schuldig didn't want any competition for Aya's attention, especially when Aya's own mind generated them, forgetting about flaws and past grievances, especially his sister. There was no way Schuldig could have competes with Aya's memories version of die kleine Ische.
Aya wasn't completely without the ability to conjure people, the warriors from the night before were proof of that. But he could no longer create people that would be able to interact with him, leaving him only Schuldig to talk to. And though he had first been very resistant, he had eventually begun to accept Schuldig's company. The loneliness that came from his isolation had eventually given Schuldig the edge he had needed to win Aya over and get the man to depend on him.
And Schuldig in a moment of pure stupidity and blind impulse might have damaged the fragile bond that they now shared. But Aya had not seemed overly affected by Schuldig's blunders when Schuldig had retreated back to himself the night before. Schuldig reasoned with himself. Also Aya's ability to recall clearly the things that happened in his private dream world was not very dependable. Too much of what happened in his mind was controlled by his subconscious making it difficult for him to remember specific details about the events that took place there, the errors of the past night might be lost on their own accord.
The self reasoning makes Schuldig feel better. Still he didn't want to take any chances. He had never been one to leave things up to chance, that had been a lesson he had painfully learned as a small child. If he could manipulate a situation to make sure things were in his favor he did, and though it would be difficult and most likely leave him with a headache that would rival the one that he had just given to the nurse Schuldig knew that he would be better off in the long run making sure that Aya could not access the incidents from the night before. If he allowed Aya to keep those memories there was a very strong possibility that he would use them to fuel one of his brooding sessions and that could be very, very bad for Schuldig, especially if he were not around to control it.
Schuldig stops outside of Aya's room and prepares himself, the first step in his usual ritual. He is depending on the daily routine to ground him so that he will be able to fix his mess with out further incident. He takes a deep breath and walks into the room. He stands just inside the door and looks around, letting the familiarity of the room both calm him and strengthen his resolve. He looks over the heavy wooden furniture, at the calm form of Aya wrapped in pale sheets, amazed as always at how much it looks like he is merely sleeping, only the tubes and the soft beeps of the machinery that monitor his vitals giving his true state away.
The two dozen roses that Schuldig has brought are suddenly forgotten, even as he clutches the stems tight enough so that the thorns cut through the cellophane they are wrapped in and dig into the soft skin of his palms and fingers, turning them into a bloody mess. The room is not completely correct. The vase is gone and the lilies that he had placed in the vase the day before are scattered over the top of the night stand and across the linoleum floor.
Schuldig drops the roses and dashes to the still form on the bed, his heart racing as he is gripped with a feeling that he has not felt since his childhood, panic. He curses in German, Japanese, and English as he carefully checks Aya's body leaving bloody smears across the pale skin where ever his hands touch. He makes sure that the violation that has taken place in the room was limited to the objects and not the defenseless man. When he is satisfied that Aya is unharmed he forces himself to look around the room again. This time training his eyes carefully over everything, taking in each detail, looking for anything else that is out of place.
The cds that he keeps neatly stacked are scattered across the table next to the stereo. A careful inventory tells him that though they were riffled none are missing. The stereo itself is still there. This strikes Schuldig as odd, if he were going to steal something from the room that is what he would have chosen to take. But the stereo is a good deal larger than the vase, maybe the thief had decided that it was too hard to get out unnoticed. He would not be as upset if the thief had taken the stereo.
The vase had been expensive, but not outrageously so, the stereo had cost a great deal more. But the vase had sentimental value. He had bought it more than three years ago when he had been 'Aya watching'. A hobby that he had delighted in when Aya had been a part of the real world. Schuldig had been following him for a full afternoon when Aya had suddenly stopped in front of a shop's display window, the blue antique that had been the center piece of the display having caught his eye. It had reminded him of a vase that his mother had in the entry way to their house. Aya had stood looking in the window at the porcelain piece for ten minutes debating with himself if he should go in and buy it before his practical nature had won over and he continued down the street. He would not waste his money on something so frivolous and self indulgent as a vase that reminded him of his past.
Schuldig had let him go, choosing not to follow him any more that day. Instead he had crossed the street and gone into the antique shop and bought the vase himself. He had taken it home and placed in near his bed where it had sat until he brought it to the hospital to put it beside Aya's bed to hold the flowers that Schuldig brought everyday. Looking at the spilled flowers Schuldig felt as though he had been violated, looking at Aya the realization that someone had stood right next to his helpless form, that someone could have easily smothered him making Schuldig feel helpless.
The streaks of blood that he has left across Aya's cheeks makes Schuldig realize that he has hurt his hands. He looks at his shredded skin holding his hands palms up in front of himself before going to the bathroom to return with wet paper towels that he uses to clean Aya up with. When he has removed enough of the blood so that no hospital staff would raise an alarm if they were to walk in Schuldig begins to pick up the scattered lilies. Their stems are still moist, who ever had taken the vase had just done so recently. Which means that there is a good chance that they are still near by.
Schuldig lets his mental guard down and begins to reach out with his mind scanning the thoughts of the other people in the ward. He is quick to dismiss the hospital staff when he touches against any of their minds, if someone who worked there was going to steal they would have done it long ago. There are never many people visiting and Schuldig finds what he is looking for with ease. Across the hall, in a room that had been empty the day before Schuldig can hear a young man mentally mulling over how he might be able to get the stereo out of the room.
Fighting the urge to simply run across the hall and snap the young man's neck, Schuldig twists the lilies in his hands, reopening the cuts on his hands as he shreds the delicate flowers. He drops them into the trash and walks over to collect the roses off the floor. He places them on the night stand, he will put them in water later, after he has retrieved his vase.
He sits down in his high back chair and lets his mind push into the young mans. He presses himself deep inside the others thoughts. His name is Aki and he fancies himself an up and coming member of the Yakuza. He took the vase on impulse when he had wandered into the room while looking for his sister. It seems the poor thing had been in a terrible car accident and had been brought into the ward the night before. Aki doesn't really know anything about pottery, but he thought that the vase looked expensive, and even if he can't sell it he might give it to his mother. The woman was very upset about the state of her daughter, too upset to be able to travel to the hospital herself and Aki thinks the vase might cheer her up. Schuldig smirks at this thought. The vase is going to cause the woman more heartbreak, he is going to make damn sure of that.
Schuldig lets his mind wander to that of the unconscious girl, Arisa. Without her in his sight, Schuldig has to concentrate in order to touch her mind, when he feels a connection he reaches out to her cautiously, some coma patients were completely lost with in their own heads, leaving only a cold blackness where their thoughts should have been. Touching such a mind was very unpleasant, he had learned that the first time he had tried to talk to Aya's sister when she had been in her coma. But Schuldig finds that the girl is in a very light coma. She has no real brain damage and if left to heal would most likely wake up on her own in a short period of time. She is so close to consciousness that Schuldig thinks he might be able to jolt her back to the real world if he wanted to. He thinks he might tell Aki this later.
Since he is far to upset to let himself make contact with Aya Schuldig decides to amuse himself with the girl while he waits for her brother to leave. Arisa is very frightened, unlike Aya she is aware of what is happening around her, she knows that she is in a hospital, she knows that she is not alone that there is someone near her but she cannot crawl out of the darkness around her to find out who. Schuldig decides to take her mind off of her situation. He begins to send her images of herself, lying alone in a dark wet place, he makes her hear a scratching noise that grows louder and louder right before hundreds of rats are suddenly swarming around her, hundreds of tiny clawed feet running over her body, their tails touching her skin with an almost gentle caress. When she opens her mouth to scream she feels her mouth fill with the greasy gray fur.
Schuldig is jolted back to himself by the sudden commotion in the hallway. Nurses are running to the room where Aki sits with Arisa. Her life support monitors have become suddenly erratic and the nurses are afraid she is going into cardiac arrest.
"You have to leave now." He hears his favorite nurse, die Schlampe, firmly tell Aki.
Smiling Schuldig stands up and gently pushes the bangs off of Aya's forehead, "I will be back soon ein Geliebte." He begins whistling as he heads for the door.
Kai has been pushed out of the room and is standing in the hallway looking confused, when Schuldig gets his first look at the boy. He looks as if he is in his mid twenties but Schuldig knows that he is younger than that. He has dull brown hair that cowlicks at the crown of his head. He is short, even for a Japanese man, maybe 164 cms. His dark eyes are ringed with deep smudges, from both lack of sleep and drugs. He has an orange and black back pack that contains Schuldig's property casually slung over one skinny shoulder. He is struggling with himself as to what he should do. Stay in the hall until the nurses allow him back in or go out and come back later. He doesn't understand what has happened, Arisa seemed to be fine one minute and then the alarms on the machines next to her were going off.
//Go outside// Schuldig mentally nudges, //you need some fresh air//
The young man starts down the hall to the elevator. Once his back is turned Schuldig steps out of Aya's room and follows him. He stands back by the nurses station while the boy waits for the elevator. Schuldig notices with satisfaction that the fashion critic is no longer sitting at her usual post.
White they wait for the elevator Schuldig scans the young thief's mind. He savors the concern that the young man is feeling for his sister as well as his confusion about what had just happened to her. When he starts to feel that leaving might be the wrong thing to do Schuldig mentally pushes him again, this time with enough force that the young man feels as if he will not be able to breath unless he gets outside. Schuldig smiles as a wave of relief washes off of the boy as he hears the elevator chime its arrival. He lazily walks to the elevator. Now that the boy needs to get outside Schuldig wants to make him hold the elevator to stretch his discomfort for as long as possible.
He is about to call out for the young man to do so but he runs into a gentleman who has just stepped off the elevator and the words are stuck in his throat as his pale blue eyes meet emerald green ones. Kudou Youji is standing right before him.
"I am so sorry," Schuldig's nemesis says to him.
Schuldig cannot speak. The last time he saw Balinese he was fighting with Aya, he had been willing to kill him in fact. At the time Schuldig had watched the two men battle each other with vague interest. He had thought it would be quite poetic if the two former lovers destroyed each other. Schuldig had wanted Aya for his own then but at the time he had been resigned to the fact that having him without first turning him into nothing more than a living puppet was not possible. And if he couldn't have Aya he was more than happy to see Aya dead. But now he had Aya and here was Kudou right in front of him. Have Weiss discovered that he has Aya here? Are they going to try and take him away? Is Balinese here to try and finish the fight that he and Aya had all those months ago?
Schuldig tears into the blonde's mind viciously, he hears the man gasp from the pain of his assault. Schuldig skims through his thoughts and finds nothing. Kudou does not know who Schuldig is. He does not remember who he himself is either. Schuldig can feel his memories, they are still there, but locked behind a chemical barrier. Smiling he releases his hold on Kudou and the man falls back, a hand going up to his temples to try and rub away the sudden pain that has flashed there. Kudou is married, he is here to see his wife, he has no memories of Weiss or Aya. Schuldig decides that the man is not a threat to him at the moment. Without a word he pushes Kudou out of his way and heads for the stairwell. He can think about what sort of complications seeing Kudou might bring later, but for the time being Schuldig is content to let him be, he has other prey to play with at the moment and a vase to get back.