Chapter 6
Makoto hates the hospital, he especially hates the forth floor where he had been a resident for nearly three months, the first month while he was in a coma the second two while he recovered. Except for the two times that he had to come in to have checkups he had not stepped foot on the hospital grounds. And the times he had the appointments Asuka had to drag him by his jacket to get him through the front door.
His hate for the place is one of the reasons that he has come to bring his wife her favorite lunch. He hopes that if she sees him in the place that he dreads the most she will see how truly sorry he is for the way he handled her telling him that she wanted a baby the night before. He hadn't seen her since he had watched her walk out and leave him at the restaurant. He stayed and drank for a while before he had been able to work up the courage to return to their apartment. When he had gotten there the bed room door had been closed and he had fallen asleep on the couch. He woke up hung over and alone. Asuka having already left the house to go to work.
He spent half the morning pacing the small balcony and smoking. Wracking his brain for a way that he could fix the mess he was in. He didn't want a baby, he really didn't want a baby, of that he was sure but he hadn't meant to be so cruel to his wife when expressing that concept. She had just caught him completely off guard, they never talked about having children before, in fact he distinctly remembered a conversation that they had while he was still in the hospital. He had been sitting in the small park outside the front entrance and Asuka had found him there. He had voiced his concern that there might be people out there that needed him and couldn't find him. He had told her he was afraid that he might have children somewhere and that he was afraid that they would grow up feeling that he had abandoned them. She had told him that she herself didn't want to have children that it would interfere with her career, that there were enough babies in the world. He had smiled and taken her hand when he said he agreed. After that conversation he assumed that they had a silent agreement that children were not going to be a factor in their relationship.
It was Yasou who gave him the idea of bringing Asuka lunch. The older man had come out onto his balcony to have a cigarette and Makoto found himself telling the man every detail of what had taken place the night before. Yasou listened politely and thought it over for a little while and then suggested that he go and see her at work, that it was better to get it out in the open rather than to let her emotions fester. Yasou had been married to his wife for nearly twenty years and he assured Makoto that he knew what he was talking about.
So Makoto had gone and bought a bucket of American fried chicken, Asuka's favorite, and gone to the hospital. It had only taken him five minutes of pacing outside of the front door before he was able to will his legs to carry him in and then another two minutes to get himself on the elevator. That is why he had run straight into the carrot topped foreigner, he literally had to throw himself off of the elevator in order to force himself onto the dreaded forth floor when he slammed right into the man.
The sudden headache that had flared behind his eyes when he crashed into the man dissolved as quickly as it had come when the man pushed him out of his way, leaving him with a strange sense of déjà vu. Two things buzzing in his mind. The first was that he knew the foreigner from somewhere, he had seen recognition in those ice blue eyes. The second was that the man was insane, he had seen that in those eyes as well, both for just a moment before the man had been able to readjust his face into a mask of annoyance and nothing more.
Now he stood in the all too familiar hallway, chicken and wife completely forgotten. His mind desperately searching for any memory that would be able to help him to remember where he knew the foreigner from. He had no doubt that he was the man that Asuka had been complaining about last night at dinner. But he knew that the feeling that he was familiar with the man extended beyond the stories he had heard from Asuka.
Since he could not remember how he knew the man he did the next best thing and tried to remember everything that Asuka had ever told him about the foreigner. He had started to come to the hospital about two weeks after Makoto's release, which meant that he hadn't seen the man while he himself had been a patient. That the man came to visit almost everyday, that he visited a young man, that the man had insisted on supplying his own furniture and that he had demanded a private room.
Makoto begins to walk down the hall, he smiles at the young nurse who is sitting at the nurses station. He doesn't recognize her, she was not assigned to the ward while he had been a patient. He forces himself to walk down the hall with an air of authority hoping that he will not be questioned as to why he is there. He still wants to see his wife but not quite yet, he wants to check something out first.
The nurse barely glances at him as he passes. Casually he begins to look into each room as he passes the open doorways. He only has to glance in to see the metal framed beds to know that each room he passes is not the one he is looking for. He is glad that the hallways are deserted, even though it is a little odd. When he had been a patient there was always some member of the hospital staff in the halls.
He finds what he is looking for at the same time he solves the mystery of the empty hallway. Most of the staff it seems in crowded into a patients room. He can hear the shrill alarm of monitoring equipment. He glances in quickly and catches a glimpse of his wife's head bent over a young girl, quickly he slips into the room across the hall praying that no one notices him.
The room is darker than the others. Heavy drapes cover the windows blocking out the sunlight. The furniture in the room is of a heavy dark wood and of a Western style. It looks very expensive and gives the room the feel of a four start hotel rather than a hospital room. Makoto glances over his shoulder to make sure that he is not being observed before he walks over to the bed, he clutches the bag of fried chicken in front of him as if it were a shield. His heart is racing in his chest and he is dimly aware that his mouth has gone dry.
He looks down at the still figure on the large bed. He knows this man of that he has no doubt. The feeling of recognition much stronger than the one he had when he bumped into the foreigner, it is not a vague sense of familiarity but a deep seeded knowledge that he knew this person very well. Without realizing he has done it he drops the bag of chicken onto the table next to the bed and reaches out to touch the pale unanimated face lying before him.
The skin beneath his fingers is cool and soft, skin that should be on a young child not a full grown man. With a long finger he delicately traces the closed black lashes. It stirs in him a flash of memory, of vibrant eyes of a strange color and he knows that if the comatose man before him were to open his eyes that he would be looking into deep purple orbs. The knowledge that he has discovered a memory is both exhilarating and terrifying. He lets his hand, now shaking trace down towards the mans lips but pulls his hand away when he brushes the thin feeding tube that is in his nose as if jarring it might cause the man pain.
Makoto clasps his hands together to keep them from shaking and to keep himself from touching the slim figure in the bed again. He wants to undo the buttons of the cotton pajama top that the man is wearing, he knows with a certainty that he cannot ever remember feeling before that the man will have a scar, a raised touch of skin shaped almost like a kiss right above his heart, and the need to see that scar, to trace it with his finger, is almost over whelming.
Suddenly Makoto is aware that he should not be in the man's room, that he is invading someone's privacy. He forces himself to pick up his bag and head back to the door. But his curiosity gets the better of him again and he stops and picks up the chart that is hooked over the bottom leg of the bed. He reads the name hoping it might stir more memories.
Winterschlaf, R. is written in a neat hand. But that is wrong, Makoto knows that is not the young man's name. He stares at the chart and frowns as if looking at it long enough will reveal the man's real name. A name is floating at the edge of his consciousness but he cannot capture it. A dull throb starts in his right temple as he attempts to force himself to remember. After what seems like an eternity he replaces the chart and looks up the bed to the painfully familiar face, "It will come to me, I know it will." He says and forces himself to leave, only stopping to look the hallway up and down to make sure no one sees him exit the room.
"Makoto?" A female voice speaks behind him after he has been back out in the hallway for a minute.
He turns to see a small brown haired nurse frowning at him. Her name is Katsuji. She was the nurse who had been responsible for changing the bed linens when Makoto had been staying at the hospital. She had always been very kind to him, treating him as a friend rather than as a patient. By the way she was looking at him with her arms crossed over her chest Makoto had a feeling that Asuka had told her about how he had acted in the restaurant and that she was not too pleased with him.
"Hi Katsuji," He gives her his best smile and holds up his paper bag, "I brought Asuka lunch."
"So I see," Katsuji speaks coolly, "I will go see if she is free." She turned her back to him and walks off down the hall.
Makoto translates this into 'I will go see if she is ready to talk to you yet'. Makoto feels a quick flash of anger, he knows that he handled himself poorly the night before but he does not think that he deserves to be treated as though he were a villain.
His anger disappears when he sees his wife come out of one of the rooms and walk towards him. She looks as though she spent the night crying. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, the pallor of her skin slightly yellowed. Makoto hates himself for hurting her. He breaks his eyes away from her and finds them drifting to the room he had just been lurking in. He feels his stomach tighten with a melancholy guilt, as he suspects he will hurt her again.
"Hey." He tries to call her baby, but the word dies in his throat, "I brought you lunch."
Asuka stops a few yards from him. She begins to frown at him but when Makoto smiles at her and waves the bag of take out her shoulders sag and she feels the resolve that she has been building since last night slip away. "I have a few things to do, Kuri went home sick and we had a minor emergency" Asuka looks around at the sterile hallway, then signs" Go out to the benches, I will meet you there in ten minutes."
Asuka turns and returns to the room she had just exited. Makoto has just been dismissed, but she had said she would meet him and that was better then being sent away. Makoto heads for the elevator, trying to organize what he is going to say to Asuka. All of his energy had been focused on just getting himself into the hospital and getting her to talk to him. Now that she was going to meet him he had no idea what he would say.
Makoto becomes aware that he has stopped walking. He is standing right in front of the dark private room. Suddenly wanting a cigarette he forces himself to go to the elevator and press the call button. He makes himself think about his wife and the task at hand until the elevator comes and he has gotten down stairs and safely out of the building. But once he is sitting on a park bench, the one he always used while he was a patient, a cigarette burning in his hand he finds that his mind keeps drifting back to the foreigner and the comatose man, the dull ache in his right temple growing into a full blown migraine.
//Go into the ally// Schuldig directs Aki from half a block behind him. He has the sensation that herding sheep would feel similar to the way he feels as he manipulates the boy away from the busy hospital to some where a little more private. The feeling is somewhat boring and tedious. The young man is really not very bright, Schuldig cannot remember the last time he has so easily controlled someone. The lack of a challenge does nothing to improve his mood. If someone is going to steal from him he would prefer them to have more than three brain cells to rub together, somehow it would be less insulting.
Schuldig lights a cigarette as he slips into the ally. With cat like grace and with speed too fast for the human eye he moves up behind the boy. Cigarette clenched between his lips, Schuldig uses both hands to pry the back pack off of the boys arm. Aki cries out in shock and pain as the speed of Schuldig's action dislocated his shoulder.
"What the fuck!" The boy whines and turns to face Schuldig.
Schuldig is ignoring him for the moment, his gaze turned up to the buildings surrounding them. His ice blue eyes focus on a fire escape two stories above them and he easily jumps up to it and gently places down the back pack. He doesn't want to chip the fragile porcelain by leaving it on the ground where it might be jarred or stepped on.
From his vantage point he takes a moment to look down at the boy and smirks at the dumb founded expression he is being given. He has always loved the way people looked at him when they see him reveal his physical talents for the first time. He makes a show of jumping down to the boy, letting his arms fly out to his sides as if he were an American comic book hero and lands gracefully, his feet crossed at the ankles, his hands in his pockets, his best Gene Kelly pose. He truly loves American pop culture.
"Close your mouth," Schuldig says still smiling, "you are going to attract flies."
"What the fuck?" Aki says again, this time less of a whine and more pure fear in his voice.
"You said that already." Schuldig points out as he uncrosses his feet and takes a large step towards the boy. He can smell Aki's fear above the less appealing smells of trash and urine in the ally and he wants more.
"Who the fuck are you?" Aki backs up trying to keep the distance between them even.
"Prophetic aren't you?" Schuldig takes another large step forward, "Your mother must be proud of your mastery of the Japanese language." Aki steps back again and trips over his own feet landing on his behind, the sudden movement jarring his damaged shoulder forcing him to yelp again. "And so graceful too," Schuldig moves in on the now seated Aki stopping when he is standing directly over the young man. "I cannot believe such a fine catch as yourself is still single."
"Tell me Kawazu, Aki," The man gasps at Schuldig's use of his full name, "do you make it a habit to steal from the wretched?"
"I don't know what you are talking about!" Aki tries to skitter backwards on his one good arm and legs like a wounded crab.
"Really?" Schuldig stands his ground dropping his cigarette and grinding it out under his hand crafted shoe. "What would you do if I said you were a liar?" He rips into Aki's mind pulling up every petty crime the man has committed in his young life. The robbing of the elderly, the bullying of young women when he is with a large gang of his friends, the money he stole from a smaller child when he was ten, and most importantly his taking of the vase from Aya's bedside.
Aki begins to whimper under Schuldig's mental assault. It feels as if the tall orange haired foreigner has removed the top of his skull and is squeezing his brain with his bare hands. He is vaguely aware of the warm wetness spreading between his legs as he pisses on himself. Part of him knows that he has to get on his feet again, that he is as good as dead if he doesn't get out of the ally and back into the crowded street. With the strength that comes from the animalistic need for self preservation he pulls himself up and pulls out the switch blade that he keeps in his jacket pocket.
"You have wet yourself." Schuldig points out to him right before he easily dodges away from Aki's lunge. With one long leg he tangles the attacking mans legs and brings him crashing back down to the ground. With another burst of speed Schuldig is sitting on the sprawled man's chest, carefully avoiding the mess that Aki has made of his pants, the switch blade now in his hand.
"You know," Schuldig presses the ball of his thumb against the thin blade, checking its sharpness, "someone once told me that the true beauty of fighting with a blade as apposed to any other weapon, is that there is always a possibility of your opponent getting your weapon away from you and using it against you." Aki is not paying attention to him, his energy focused on trying to buck the much larger man off of his chest. "Have you ever heard that?'
//Have you ever heard that?// He bellows in Aki's head when he gets no response to his verbal question. Below him Aki goes completely still and shakes his head.
"Please," Aki croaks, partially from fear and partially from the restriction that Schuldig's weight is putting on his ability to breath. "Please let me go."
"I will soon enough," Schuldig smirks down at the terrified man, he touches Aki on the tip of his nose with the thumb he has just drawn blood from, "but first we have to come to some sort of an agreement."
"Agreement?" Aki's mind is racing trying to think of something that he could pay the man above him in order to gain his release. He thinks that Schuldig is some sort of mugger.
"Don't classify me with the likes of you," Schuldig slaps him across the face, splitting his lip, "I am no two bit street thief you Hosenscheisser."
"I'm sorry." Aki whines. The realization that Schuldig is reading his thoughts spreads though him like ice, destroying his ability to fight back.
"Now," Schuldig inches further up onto Aki's chest so that he can look directly down into the terrified brown eyes and places the switch blade against the soft skin between Aki's eye and cheek bone, "as I was saying we have to come to an agreement before I will let you go."
"What sort of an agreement?" Aki's eyes strain to look at the blade. The fear that Schuldig is going to cut out his eye is a rhythmic buzzing building in his head.
"I am not going to cut out your eyes," Schuldig is starting to get bored, "I think that the punishment should fit the crime. Where have you ever heard of anyone loosing their eyes for stealing?"
"I don't know," Aki says while his mind continues its mantra. //He's going to cut out my eye. He is going to cut out my eye.//
"Usually," Schuldig pauses and frowns then pushes into Aki's mind silencing the chant, it is giving him a headache, "Usually the proper punishment is to remove the offending body part." He looks down to see if Aki is following what he says. Aki has taken his eyes off of the knife and is staring up at Schuldig. Schuldig takes this as a good enough sign to continue, "So lets say you fucked my wife, well then I would castrate you. Or if you gave away important secrets then I would cut out your tongue. In the case of theft I should cut off your hand."
Aki openly moans when Schuldig says his, his body trembling under the tall man. "But we do not really have the proper equipment for removing your hand do we?" Schuldig waits for Aki to nod up at him in agreement before he continues, "so I think that I will just take your thumbs instead."
Aki tries to scream but Schuldig constructs a mental block inside of his head, rendering him completely paralyzed. Schuldig stands up and stands on Aki's left hand, "Now try to relax, we don't want you suffocating before I am done now do we?" He places the switch blade against the joint where thumb and hand meet and uses the weight of his foot to help him cut through the tendons and muscles, only having to apply a little more weight to separate the bottom of the thumb from its socket. The right thumb gives him a little more difficulty, Aki is right handed and the tendons and muscles are more develops in that hand. When he is finished Schuldig releases his hold on Aki and as the man gasps for air Schuldig tears into his mind again, fragmenting the memory of what has just happened so that Aki will be able to remember that he has lost his thumbs for being a thief, but not who has done it too him. Schuldig mentally tells him to stay sitting in the ally for a few minutes before he tries to get help.
Schuldig drops the amputated digits and the knife down a sewer grate before he jumps back up to the back pack. He unzips it and removes his vase. He carefully checks the delicate pottery to make sure that it has not been damaged before dropping back down in front of the dazed Aki. He tosses the bag down between the young mans feet, pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He begins to whistle the opening violin solo of Vivaldi's Winter Concerto as he walks back to the hospital. Finally feeling that he is relaxed enough to visit Aya.