The Little Things
A Weiss Kreuz / Sandman crossover
By WhiteCat
So you've decided to blame him again for all your choices
It seemed like the softer way out
You think it'll just make life easier to swallow will it
You've made a fine career out of guilt--Stomping Ground, "Forgiveness"
"Ho, this is an interesting sort of development."
Fujimiya Aya never jumped or swore, never lashed out blindly or reacted without thought. But at the sound of that voice, his hands immediately twitched outwards, grabbing for the katana which - strangely - was not there. He was wearing his work clothes, and the dark stains on his gloves still gleamed wetly, showing they were fresh - but his katana was simply not there.
"I was beginning to wonder if maybe you were 'someone' like me," that same grating nasal voice again. "You certainly don't seem human, the way you shrug everything off. You're a peculiar kitten, 'A-yan.'"
Aya ground his teeth together as the other man sauntered into view. And his eyes widened fractionally, the only physical manifestation he gave to his surprise.
Schuldich's cat-green eyes were now glowing gold, and the long hair that fluttered over his bandanna and around his face was pale, pale green, not the red-orange Aya remembered. He was grinning widely, and his teeth seemed unnaturally sharp.
"You never seem to feel guilty," Schuldich was saying, still in that same insufferably familiar tone. "Your friends can wake themselves screaming every hour they sleep for the rest of their lives and never absolve themselves. But you lock your guilt down so tightly, I can't even reach me. Me!" Schuldich chuckled darkly. "The only one in this world who should be able to crack anyone's mental defenses, and you're still holding out on me."
Aya scowled, and shifted his stance nervously. He'd received plenty of hand-to-hand combat in the years he'd worked for Kritiker, and while that wasn't his preferred method of fighting, he was certainly no pushover in that arena - only Ken, out of Weiss, could beat him regularly, and he suspected it was mostly because Ken had once admitted being a Judo student all throughout high school. If he needed to, he knew exactly where to strike on a man's body to kill him - if only he could get past the damn German's inhumanly-fast reflexes ...
Schuldich's golden eyes narrowed. "Naughty," he scolded, holding up one long finger and shaking it at Aya. "I'm not here to fight you, Fujimiya. I'm just doing my job. Besides," and his smile widened impossibly smug, "you couldn't kill me if you tried. You can't lay a finger on me in the waking world, and you don't understand how to manipulate dreams enough to even come close to touching me now." He laughed, sharp and derisive. Aya's scowl deepened.
"Ho?" One of Schuldich's eyebrows arched upwards. "Do you want to play, 'A-yan'?" he asked mockingly, taking a step back and spreading his arms. "If that'll make you feel better," he added with drippingly false consideration, "then go right ahead."
Aya refrained himself from leaping at the last minute, though his hands itched terribly to simply close around the German's thought and squeeze until that damn smile faded and there was no more breath to produce that grating laughter. His eyes narrowed to slivers of icy violet, and he backed up a few steps, not trusting his own instincts if he let himself get too close.
And what's wrong with you, 'A-yan'? Schuldich's voice echoed brightly in his mind, and Aya's eyes snapped wide open as he clapped hands over his ears. It had no effect. Beginning to realize a few things?
"I suppose you're human after all," Schuldich continued aloud. "What a pity."
Aya said nothing, but as if in response to his unspoken confusion, Schuldich launched into explanation, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing in a long circle around the Weiss leader.
"Every person in the world carries a kernel of guilt inside them, Fujimiya. It's one of the things that was given to humanity at its first conception, when the universe itself was still a child. No matter what you people say about the 'conscienceless killer,' that's nothing more than a pretty myth, to make yourselves feel better about the things you don't want to believe in." At that pronouncement, Schuldich made a grimace of distaste. "Granted, not everyone really has much use for the guilt they carry. Some people go their lives without ever really burying themselves within that one spark's heart.
"But there are always exceptions." Schuldich stopped pacing, pinning Aya with a sharp, probing golden look. It was an uncomfortable kind of scrutiny, one that stripped clothing from limbs and flesh from bone, seeing past the outer trappings of a soul and done to the bare, elementally plain fragments at the core of one's very being. Aya managed to meet that gaze for only a few seconds before he had to look away, shifting uncomfortably.
"People like you are horribly guilty," Schuldich continued, while Aya held himself rigidly still. "Because it is in human nature to hold an aversion to killing a fellow human, no matter how corrupt that other person was. There are special places in Hell reserved just for those like you, who can't see past the blood you're wading in to whatever good you might have done. But you, Fujimiya ... you ...
"I don't understand." Schuldich was suddenly right in front of him, and Aya's backbone stiffened further, expression pinched as the German reached out and grasped his chin with long, cold fingers. "I've only seen you once ever, 'A-yan,' and in the end, it wasn't really about you - but about that sister of yours." He smiled. "She's a strong girl. I'm impressed."
Aya took a deep, shuddering breath. "Who -"
"Who am I?" Schuldich guessed, his smile turning sly. "I'm lots of things, Fujimiya. I'm the reason Takatori never turned his back on that illegitimate daughter of his. I'm the reason your 'Persia' created Kritiker. I'm why your little friend 'Yo-tan' can't stop dreaming about the only woman who ever mattered. I'm whatever I have to be," he tapped Aya's cheek with a finger from his free hand, "in order to reach into your heart and find whatever guilt you've got buried inside."
His hands were sweating in his gloves now, and he closed his eyes. That didn't seem to deter Schuldich at all; he heard the clicking sound of booted feet moving around him before long-fingered hands closed around his shoulders. "I've wondered about you, Fujimiya. Everyone's guilty about something - so what's your secret?"
Aya refused to move, and Schuldich just laughed. "You shouldn't be afraid," the green-haired man whispered into his ear. "It's a healthy part of being human."
His hands moved slightly, adjusted their grip subtly on Aya's shoulders, and the world exploded with a flash of white pain.
"Ran-nii," he heard his sister say, her voice tremulous with laughter, "you shouldn't frown like that all the time. You'll grow up to be a lonely old man if you do!" Through the blank haze, he saw her standing a few feet head of him, her head turned so she could look back and smile at him.
"Ran," his father said, and he could smell traces of his mother's perfume close by, "we're very proud of you. You're a smart young man, and your family loves you very much. You shouldn't close yourself away so often ..."
Omi's voice, piping light and sharply disbelieving, "Aya-kun! You can't just walk away from us, can you?"
Ken's silhouette, edged sharp by shadows and moonlight, fiercely angry. "Aya, you bastard! How can you tell me to 'forget' what we're doing like it's absolutely nothing? They're the 'dark beasts,' but they're still human! How the hell am I supposed to 'forget' killing another human?!"
And Youji, usually so terribly composed and suave, with his green eyes rimmed red from crying. "I didn't think -" he began, cut himself off, and tried again. "I didn't mean - I just wanted to - just for a while -"
He wanted to hold onto his little piece of the past, Schuldich's voice whispered directly into his mind. Something ghosted across his face, the feather-light touch gone before his mind fully registered it. And you just stood there and said nothing. People like that are always the most vulnerable, you know. It's just so easy to -
Car tires screeched on pavement, squealing and cuttingly loud after the almost inaudible breath of Schuldich's mental voice. Aya flinched back from it, even as he smelled gas, recognized the scene for what it was - he tried to rip away, tried to run, but that damned German bastard was holding him still -
The explosion painted starbursts of alternating red and white against his closed eyelids, but even as pieces of wood and plaster struck him, he found himself able to stand firm, unlike he had in reality. Aya-chan was screaming his name, her voice shrill with fear and shock, even as he heard the tires again, and opened his eyes long enough to see her white face, highlighted by the glare of headlights, an instant before she was struck and went flying ...
("Ah. Aha," Schuldich murmured in his ear. "I see. That's how you do it, huh?")
Running into Youji in a blank hallway, forced to catch the older, taller man when he stumbled. The soft gold-brown hair was limp with sweat, and it lay in damp, lifeless curls against a too-pale cheek. Green eyes were blank and strangely horrified over the slanted rims of his shades, and a set of short, shallow cuts traced their way down the left side of his face, in the pattern of fingernails. Annoyed by the lapse in professional distance, Aya had snapped at the older man, shoving him aside and plunging into the dark room Youji had exited, and found himself caught in a place that smelled of blood and urine and bitter fear.
And what he found, lying in stinking heaps of two and three, like discarded dolls -
("Children, 'A-yan,'" Schuldich murmured, and the damn bastard had a note of satisfaction in his low voice. "Never mind the adults you've killed. I see." The long-fingered hand moved and pressed lightly against his throat. "How boring.")
Ken's horrified face, his frame backlit from the lights in the hallway, one arm held up and firm to keep Omi from shouldering inside. The child's body had been too light in Aya's arms, the small head and thin arms dangling at unnatural angles when he shifted, trying to pull that twisted shape out of sight, because at any moment, Omi was going to manage to push past Ken and see -
And Youji, who had always professed to dislike very young children, who always avoided them when mothers or sisters brought them into the shop, had huddled in the corner staring blankly, shivering. He'd flinched when Omi had approached, speaking in low, gentle tones, pulling away at the boy's touch. Even in the face of Aya's anger, he'd remained cold-eyed, unable to rally himself even as they fled the scene of their crimes.
(The hand on his throat was tightening, slowly. It happened in gradual steps, so that he didn't quite realize it until the notion dawned on him, however foggy and distant, that he was now gasping for breath.)
He hadn't come down the day after that particular mission, ignoring all of Omi's attempts to reach him, literally tossing Ken out of his apartment when the former soccer player had barged his way in. Momoe and the wave of girls had commented on it, asking solicitously after him, but it had been a full weeks before he showed up again, haggard and white-faced and mumbling responses that were rarely longer than five words at a time.
It had been ... strange, seeing Youji like that. His confidence was a legend confined to the four of them, something as unchangeable and as much a fact of life as the constantly recycled processes of life. Having that taken away had caused a hiccup in their daily routine, and while Ken and Omi merely scrambled to compensate for Youji's absences, content to let their older teammate come to terms with that last mission on his own time, Aya had ...
He had been angry, terribly angry. He couldn't have explained why, only that it was there, festering as viciously as his hatred for Takatori Reiji, until one day, right before Omi returned from school and heralded the beginning of the afternoon rush, he had simply hung his apron up and slipped out of the shop, ignoring Ken's surprise and Momoe's soft questions. Ken had even followed him halfway up the stairs, until he'd sent the younger man back to the shop with a sharp word.
("Always the control freak, huh, Fujimiya?" Schuldich murmured. The hand was now throttle-tight around his throat, and he found he wasn't breathing at all, just making hoarse wheezing sounds, clawing ineffectually at the German's ice-solid grip. "You can't let anyone have their weaknesses, but you can't let them be stronger than you, either." He could sense the smile now, even if he couldn't see it. "That's a little more interesting. Try a little harder, now.")
Youji's apartment was cluttered - that was the first thing he thought, when he kicked the door open. There was a long coat draped across a hallway table and a battered umbrella dropped across it, and inside it was dark, like it had been at the mission.
The older Weiss member had met him in the hallway, face drawn and pale, dark rings under his deep green eyes. And for some reason, the sight of that small frailty had only annoyed Aya further; the memory of that absent confidence seemed all the more cutting when faced with its embodied opposite.
He had said something sharp, he knew, by the way first shock, then a spark of anger, moved across Youji's thin face. Something caustic, he guessed, overstepping even his usual bluntness for a moment of sheer effrontery. If Youji had been a woman, he would have been slapped hard, he was certain.
Instead, that thin mouth compressed further, into a line of barely-concealed anger as Aya continued to speak, not quite aware of what he was saying, only that he was talking, and that it was harsh, that no matter how much Youji moped, he certainly didn't deserve this kind of poison, honed as fine as a sword's edge and twice as deadly for its ability to remain in the wounds it left and fester.
At first, Youji had just listened. But eventually, it seemed, Aya's stream of anger had penetrated whatever fog he was living in, igniting a twin spark of temper in the older Weiss member.
Anger gave him speed; Aya had never seen the blow coming before he was staggering backwards, his palm pressed flat against his cheek, violet eyes. And Youji had just scowled at him, hand still raised - you want another one, you coldhearted bastard?! - unrepentant, turning Aya's earlier anger back on him, a stream as viciously accusatory and cruel as anything the redhead had said to his teammates over their years of working together.
In the end, Youji had done the same thing to Aya has he'd done to Ken, grabbing the smaller man by the collar of his sweater and bodily tossing him out of the apartment ...
Aya drew in a shaky, painful breath. Schuldich's hand was so tight around his throat now that he was certain that he'd suffocate at any moment. From the corner of his eye, through blackening and dimming vision, he could see the German's sly smirk, infuriatingly knowing, a thousand times worse than Birman's cool detachment the first night they'd met.
"Now I know," Schuldich murmured. "Well. How enlightening." He shifted slightly, and his golden eyes were brighter than before; it wasn't the malicious pleasure he was used to seeing on the tall German's narrow face, but something strangely genuine - the satisfaction of a difficult job well done, of some grand accomplishment managed under near-impossible odds.
"Go back to whatever dreams you had before, Fujimaya," Schuldich said, and his hands moved sharply - Aya heard a sickening snap somewhere, and then -
He was sitting up awake in his bed, sweat plastering his hair to his face in damp tendrils. His bedside clock read three-oh-eight in the morning, and it was dark enough that he could barely see more than the vague outline of his hands and blankets in the darkness.
Something felt wrong, as if though a key piece of something that made him who he was had vanished. The dream, already fading from his mind, had done something to him - for the first time since longer than he could remember, he could feel the cold he surrounded himself with, numbing and suffocating, as if it were some actual solid thing. It tore in his throat when he breathed, seethed like acid in the pit of his stomach, and pounded fiercely in his temples.
Whatever that dream had been - and even now, so shortly afterwards, the only impression he had of it was his sister's pale, bleeding face and Youji's wounded green eyes - had ripped some part of himself open, one he wasn't sure he was all that ready to face.
In the dark of the night, alone in his bed, Fujimaya "Aya" wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.