Warnings: No sex in this one. Well...almost.
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no money
Notes: This is an interlude. The action begins in the next one.
Work in Progress. No spoilers. Does not follow canon.
Translations for German at the end of the story.
On with Insanity...
Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane ...
Tori Amos, Father Lucifer
There is a moment where fear and dream must collide. That too brief pause in time where the mind stops to sit down and think about what one is doing, waging war against fervent wishes and utopia-born desires, never lasts long enough to really change anything - the way one is taking, the decisions one is making. In the end, the urge to run and do what the heart wants is greater than all reason, all logic. Kingdoms have been brought down by those rash decisions, those scarcely formed plans that are always followed by twists of fate and turns of good and bad luck.
In the end, all that matters is survival.
"Fuck!"
Schuldig whipped around, face set in a snarl, and barged his way into the pursuer's mind, overloading it with thoughts and sounds. One more bullet zinged past him, burying itself into the wall next to his head, then the man in the hallway collapsed, blood erupting from his nose and ears.
The redhead did not stop to watch the man bleed dry. He raced on, down the narrow hallway of the train station, his lungs burning. Somewhere behind him, he could hear the clatter of many feet wearing combat boots.
They were getting too close.
Down a steep stairway and around a corner, and he stood in front of train tracks and a wall on the other side of the tracks. A stupid advertisement placard grinned at him, teeth too white to be real. Looking left and right, Schuldig jumped down onto the tracks and nearly lost his footing on the metal. Two ways to go now, and neither seemed specifically comfortable: a black tunnel on the left, a black tunnel on the right.
Which would be the one with the train coming out of it?
Voices, shouts, bellowed commands at the top of the stairs he had come down. No time left.
He took the right tunnel and hoped his decision was right. Getting hit head-on by a train was the last way he wanted to end his life.
Small, gloomy security lights barely showed him the way. He had to resort to a moderate pace, lest he wanted to break his legs; it slowed him down considerably, but it would also slow down his pursuers. He ran as fast as he could, one hand gliding along the slightly moist wall for balance. Soon, all he could hear were the echoes of his own feet and his laboured breath.
Through how many tunnels, subway stations and other underground systems had they been running for the last month? Sometimes, it felt like an eternity. Their pursuers simply did not give them the chance to rest for a moment; hunting the remaining members of Schwarz and their supposed ally seemed to have become Eszet's main reason for existence.
A slight vibration under his feet made the telepath stop and listen. As he stood, a breath of wind pulled on his hair and clothes, getting stronger by the moment. He pressed himself against one wall of the tunnel and closed his eyes.
The train roared past him with a great rush of wind and nearly unbearable noise. His hair blinding his sight for a moment, Schuldig held his breath, hoping, praying the earthquake-like vibrations would not cause him to lose his balance.
The bullet hole in his hip bled on steadily.
Farfarello brought the car to a tyre-screeching halt and jumped out, a gun in one hand, a thirty-inch blade in the other. He did not pay any attention to the startled pedestrians as he ran across the street, descending the stairs that led to the subway station in three bounces.
In the car, Nagi scrambled into the driver's seat and pulled out into traffic, barely avoiding a crash with a truck on the other side of the road. He managed to swerve at the last moment and steadied the Jeep only to run over a red light the next second.
Behind the Jeep, police sirens began to wail.
"Wonderful!" Dee Moriate spat and turned around in the backseat, one hand pressed over the insane pain in her hip, the phantom pain that came from a bullet hole in someone else's flesh, cursing as she saw the three green-white police cars trying to follow them. One stopped beside the truck that had crashed into the window front of a shop, but the others kept on their tail. "Why don't you just run us into the next building?"
"Shut up!" Nagi snarled, concentrated on keeping them on the road. There were simply too many other cars for him to make a fast getaway. "Where to?"
"How the hell should I know? I've never been to Vienna before!"
Cursing inwardly, Nagi took the next corner and nearly ran them off the road. Moriate was tumbled around in the backseat and hit her head, a small line of blood running out of her hair and down her brow. With a grim face, she knelt on the backseat. This pain was hers. Something at last. Two police cars behind them, getting closer.
"Fuck you...!"
A moment later, the first car swerved wildly as its driver's vision went blank. The car raced onto the sidewalk and ended up against the wall of a building in an orgasmic collision of metal and stone. Screams filled the air; two pedestrians had been crushed between car and wall, their arms flailing wildly. Before they drove around the next corner, Moriate saw one of them stop moving and slump forward over the crinkled hood while the other screamed on.
"Stop the car! We'll have abetter chance on foot!"
Nagi nodded, sweat beading on his brow. A few more turns and they were away from heavy traffic. He stopped at a corner, grabbed Farfarello's duffel bag of knives and Schuldig's jacket and got out, waiting until Moriate followed him. She was holding a hand to her head and another to her hip, but seemed fine otherwise, cursing most flowery as they stumbled away from the car and into the next street. They ran as fast as they could, the renewed wail of sirens behind them giving them reserves of strength they didn't know they had.
"There!" Nagi pointed: the glass doors of a large mall, people streaming in and out, laden with shopping bags. Some of them shouted out as two teenagers barged into them and then into the mall, but Nagi and the telepath vanished in the crowd before anyone managed to stop them.
"Next time, I drive." Moriate held a paper tissue to her brow, blinking. The numbing fingers of a headache were beginning to caress her already throbbing skull. A concussion, probably. The phantom pain in her hip was also giving way to numbness, Schuldig had finally closed the connection between them. She looked around. People everywhere, some giving them odd glances.
"Let's move," Nagi grabbed her elbow and began to fight his way through the crowds, taking care not to push too hard with his powers. If they got caught in a building, they might as well shoot themselves.
People screamed as Farfarello arrived on the subway platform wielding a gun and a blade so long it could have passed as a small sword. The two men who had been waiting at the end of the platform, near the gaping mouth of the tunnel, reacted too late to save their lives; one went down with a smoking hole in his throat, the other with his head nearly cut off, wobbling a few steps like a chicken before he went down and died. Gravel crunched beneath the Irishman's boots as he jumped off the platform, landing between the train tracks on all fours. The mouth of the tunnel swallowed him.
News of a white-haired monster would go through the 'Bildzeitung' for weeks to come.
As if living in his own darkness had made him more sensitive to even the tiniest sliver of light, Farfarello ran along the tracks without looking where he treaded. All he could hear was the mental chant inside his head, "Schu, Schu, Schu," repeated over and over again in hopes the telepath would answer him, in hopes the Irishman would be with him before Eszet was.
It had been their own fault, really. They had been careless; their easy departure from Tokyo had made them think things would go as smoothly everywhere. They had, for a while.
The mainframe had first caught up with them at Delhi, where the plane from Tokyo made a stop. Forced to take on other identities again, they had flown to Bombay, and taken a ship across the Red Sea to Damascus. Again running into a set-up, this one nearly costing them their lives, Schuldig and Moriate had taken to muddling everyone's thoughts they met, replacing their images in other people's heads with faceless strangers, as anonymous and unnoticed as possible. On the ship from Damascus to Bucharest, Nagi had hacked into the mainframe's computer.
It had not been a wise idea. The security programs latched onto him the moment he entered their system. Eszet had been waiting for him.
An armada of hired bounty hunters had been waiting for them in Bucharest. They had killed twelve people just to get off the ship, leaving a trail of murder and blood to the next airport.
He ran deeper into the tunnel, trying to push those thoughts away, trying to concentrate on the only important thing: Schuldig; yet the human mind is treacherous and fickle, serving one with a course of deliciously poisoned memories when least needed.
Three weeks for a trip from Tokyo to Germany, the trip from Berlin to Austria another nightmare best not thought about, and they were not even anywhere near Switzerland. It was as if Eszet was trying to tire them out, and if that was the plan, then they were doing a pretty good job indeed. So far, they had managed to escape from every trap, every set-up unscathed, yet now they were tiring, their reserves slowly burning out. Three weeks for a trip that should have taken no longer than three or four days, and they were running in circles. Instead of marching straight into the Eszet base, they were zigzagging across Europe.
Worst coming to worst, not only Eszet were looking for them. If it had been carelessness or fate Farfarello did not know, but wherever they went, the police forces appeared not a minute later. After their arrival in Vienna, it had not been safe to check into a hotel and maybe rest for a day or two. The German and Austrian newspapers were writing about a group of people leaving a murderous trail across the continent, towards a destination unknown. They had no real descriptions of those people, but what they knew was enough to make things even more difficult as they already were. They knew they were four. They knew they were three males and one female. Some newspaper even went so far as to call them terrorists. Nagi had proposed to split the group into pairs, each taking a different route to Switzerland. The idea had been quickly discarded; they were safer together, even if that safety was only an illusion. Also, the pairing itself had presented a problem. Farfarello refused to be parted from his lover, and Nagi refused to go with Moriate, the latter causing Schuldig a laughing fit as he imagined what the second telepath would do to Nagi once she was out of Schuldig's eyes and reach.
Farfa...rello...
He stopped dead with such force that it nearly caused him to slip and fall. Distant and weak, but the voice inside his head was there, wiping out all other trivialities.
Where are you?
...Tunnel...can't run anymore...
His insides clenched as he heard the strain in his lover's voice.
Give me a sign. Anything I can follow
A moment later, a distant tapping sound reached him; stone on stone, hollow in the entrails of Vienna's subway system. Farfarello stood rock-still, listening, and closed his eye. He swayed slightly. That damned wind nearly made it impossible to pin the direction the tapping came from down.
Keep tapping. I'll be with you in a moment
He forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. A few metres before him, the tunnel forked into another. He took that one, and soon the tapping became louder, clearer. Farfarello fell into a flat run.
Schuldig was a slumped shape in the gloom of two securities lights, leaned against the wall with his head tilted back, breathing shallowly. Farfarello knelt down at the telepath's side, noticing with relief that the other's eyes were open. A little farther down the tunnel, many more slumped forms lay in the middle of the tracks, motionlessly.
"I got them," Schuldig whispered, smiling despite his obvious pain. One of his hands was pressed against the left side of his hip; in the darkness, his blood shimmered a near black. "I think I need a doctor, and I know I need a cigarette."
"Later." Farfarello suppressed a howl of anger as he felt the wet fabric of the telepath's pants. "I swear, I swear by all that's holy, I'll cut them all up!"
"What is holy?" Schuldig's cheerful attempt at a joke fell flat. He was given pause as he beheld the Irishman's face; insanity and bloodlust were bubbling closely under the surface of the chiselled, white features frozen like ice, bleeding out of his eye which burned like fire and brimstone. His fingers came away wet as he touched them to Farfarello's cheek.
"Farfarello...love, calm down. Please." Schuldig wrapped his arms around the trembling Irishman, as much moved as shocked by his display of vulnerability. The last thing he had ever expected to see was a crying Farfarello. Tears, Schuldig had always thought, had not been included in the unique package that made up his lover. "Get us out of here. Nagi and Moriate are waiting upstairs, yes? Come on, let's go. Help me up."
He was swept into a fierce, bone-bending embrace. Farfarello buried his face in the crook of Schuldig's neck.
"I'll cut your name into their flesh!" he whispered hotly.
They stood next to a water-sprouting fountain, close enough to appear like teenagers in love to those who looked at them, far apart enough for their comfort.
"What do we do now?" Nagi stuffed his hands into his pockets and sighed deeply, gloomily staring at the surrounding buildings. "Schuldig is wounded. Farfarello most likely just carved up the entire subway population. Eszet might still be down there, and - "
"Shut up and let me talk to Schuldig in peace, okay?"
His eyes honed in on her face, but Moriate paid him no further attention. Her eyes were half-closed, set in an ashen face devoid of all life. She was still pressing a hand to her hip, fingers kneading the flesh there as if it would ease whatever phantom pain was causing her distress. They had left the mall through the back entrance and weaselled their way through Vienna's old streets, having no eyes nor care for the astonishing beauty of the city, finally getting lost in the maze of crossing streets and dead-end alleys. Vienna was a labyrinth to both of them, built without any apparent order or plan, as if one had once lain the foundation for a cake down on a plate and simply added layer after layer.
Moriate cocked her head and then nodded. She drew a face a moment later, cursing softly, one hand going to her head to gingerly touch the swelling on top of it.
"Schuldig seems all right, for the time being at least. He has a bullet wound in his hip. Farfarello is with him."
"We have to find them."
"They're still in the subway system, but at another station, Schlosserhofer something. We need a car so we can pick them up. Schuldig says they'll be waiting outside."
Nagi crossed his arms over his chest and blew too-long bangs out of his flushed face. "You were the one who said we had a better chance on foot."
The raising of an eyebrow, and the ice was back in place between them; two feet of space between them but it might as well have been the Grand Canyon. Moriate sighed, the gesture of one who has to deal with a spoilt child, and Nagi felt the imminent wish to blow her against a wall once more, this time hopefully breaking more than just a few ribs.
The second eyebrow rose.
"By all means, try. Kill me, and then deal with that loony once I've dragged his lover boy down to death with me. And it would also interest me how you would find them if you still had the car. Did you acquire intimate knowledge of Vienna during the last ten minutes?" She stalked off into the direction of the next cab, of which there were many parked around the square.
Nagi stared at the spot where she had been standing for a moment before he followed her. Moriate turned everything he said around in his mouth. Every time he tried a normal conversation with her, he ran against an ice wall.
Then again, he had had it coming, and there was no way to change the past.
The driver of the cab turned to them, giving them an once-over, one hand coming up to scratch at his chin. Nagi did not need a mindreader's abilities to know what the man was thinking. He pulled a thick wad of money out and waved it.
"To the Schlosserhofer subway station."
"Was?"
"Shit." He turned to Moriate, but the telepath shrugged her shoulders. None of them spoke any German. "Schlosserhofer subway station." Nagi repeated loud and clear, glad to see the driver nod and start the car.
For minutes, they drove in silence. Then Moriate's head snapped up, eyes fastening on the driver who was oblivious to the scrutiny. Nagi, a bit startled by her rapt expression, frowned.
"Nimm den kurzen Weg," It came out in badly pronounced, broken German, but it was enough to make the driver flinch and stare at the girl in the rear-view mirror. Then, the man sighed, and nodded.
"How did you do that?" Nagi asked.
"I have no idea what I just said," Moriate admitted. "Schuldig told me."
At the next crossing, the cab turned left. A few hundred metres later, they stopped at the curb. Schuldig and Farfarello were waiting there. The driver, upon seeing the Irishman and the redhead, inhaled noisily, but chose to remain otherwise silent as Farfarello got into the passenger's seat next to him and Schuldig squeezed in with Moriate and Nagi. The Japanese youth's eyes widened as he saw what state the telepath was in, and they widened even more as he saw the wet patches on his dark pants. The wound had caused more blood loss than Nagi had anticipated. Had so much time passed between Schuldig's frantic call to Moriate and Farfarello's arrival? The telepath had wanted to take a walk, to think and plan, and he had been sending the images of the way he had taken to the second mindreader; the connection had snapped off suddenly at the entrance to the subway station, Schuldig's mind too busy with surviving. Nagi felt sick to the stomach as he realized that if Schuldig had not taunted Moriate with a never-ending flood of images - him being the one who could take a walk while she had to stay with Farfarello and Nagi - they never would have found him.
Schuldig leaned his head against the backseat and sighed. He spoke something in German, then closed his eyes. The driver nodded and drove on.
"Don't let him touch that green button on the dashboard next to the radio," Schuldig's voice was drained, monotone. "It's an alarm button. He's thinking about alarming the police."
In the front, Farfarello casually pulled the gun out of his belt and rested it in his lap. Nagi only saw the Irishman's profile, and he did not even see his eye, but he knew Farfarello was fuming. The driver inhaled even more noisily.
Vienna. Sugary-sweet, topped-with-old-flair-icing, the European metropolis was every simplicity-lover's nightmare come true. One, coming from America, or Asia, or any other country of the world, always wonders if it is true - this overdone sticking to ancient traditions, this almost -parody of a lifestyle. In the land of Dirndl and Weisswurst, they did not take kindly to such mocking words. Here, it was a tradition to wear clothes that looked impossible on anyone.
The houses were lovingly kept in shape, painted yellow, green, and rosé, and every other colour pleasing to the eye if one only had the right taste, framing picturesque alleys and market places with spring fountains in the middle, water flowing down bronze statues in the shapes of Greek gods and goddesses, and the odd nouveau art sculpture. Different from the broad, unadorned windows and walls of the skyscrapers of Tokyo, every surface here was cluttered with superfluities.
Schuldig had almost forgotten about those things. He had spent so many years of his life abroad that coming back to Europe seemed like setting foot inside the boundaries of a Wonderland. It was like entering a room one had not used for a long time; blow away the dust from the furniture, and look at the wonders waiting to be found. He had not been born in Austria or Switzerland, but both countries were close enough to Germany to account for the sudden flash of nostalgia that overcame him.
If these wonders were good or bad, did not matter. Alice, when she fell down the rabbit hole, had not wondered about that, either.
Down the rabbit hole Schuldig fell now, too, landing with a nasty crash in the ruins of his past. It hurt to look back and remember things he had so hard tried to forget; but look he had to, unless he wanted nightmares to come bother him again. It was a side of himself he liked to bury from others, hide it from prying eyes. Only Brad had known about it; now Farfarello was the only one who knew about it, and if Schuldig had any say in it, then those memories would never be known to anyone else. At times, he was almost ashamed of them - weaknesses lay in that past, buried along with a rotten childhood no child should experience. He had been happy, for a while. They all had been. Until the voices came and showed him what people really thought when they smiled at the young boy with the orange hair and the green eyes.
It had been a short, sharp shock, curing him of all childhood innocence.
A dull thud interrupted Schuldig's meandering thoughts. He forced his eyes to open and managed to steady them on his lover in the front seat, and the corpse of the driver. Next to Schuldig, Nagi was trying to get a better look at the wound; Schuldig batted the youth's hands away with a tired grin and sat up. Farfarello was unnaturally silent, staring at the dead driver as though the man's death held answers to the questions of the universe. Schuldig would have loved to talk to Farfarello, but there was no time, not now, not while he was slowly bleeding dry in the back of a cab. He looked out of the side window.
"We should get inside," Schuldig said, blinking a couple of times as black dots began to swim across his field of vision. "I need a doctor, and I need it now."
"Where are we, anyway?"
Schuldig turned. Moriate was slumped against the back of the seat, her face drained, her breath shallow. Her eyes were flickering from one point to another; he had almost forgotten that she felt his pain through their connection.
"Old friend of my family. Well, he's my uncle, " the redhead opened the car door, motioning to Nagi and the other telepath to follow. "Farfarello?"
The Irishman turned slowly. There was hatred in that burning gaze that made Schuldig flinch; the anger was not directed at him, he knew, and yet he felt responsible. Which was what he had always dreaded: responsibility. A side effect of love, probably the second-most hated thing on the planet. Before Farfarello, he had only taken care of himself. Having to do it for two, ignoring the fact that the Irishman needed no taking care of, felt...good.
The redhead blinked. Then his face split into a smile. Farfarello appeared both pleased and startled by that smile.
"Unless you want to get caught with a corpse in a cab," Moriate's flat voice interrupted the moment, "You should get inside and get yourself patched up. I'll drive the car away and come back on foot."
Schuldig snapped out of his thoughts once again, reminded of the fact that they were standing at the curb of a quiet, clean street in the middle of a Vienna suburb. He closed the car door and waited until the Irishman had dragged the driver's body into the foot space of the passenger's seat, and then he watched with mixed feelings how Moriate got into the car and disappeared around the next corner.
"Is that...wise?" Nagi asked. "I know you're sort of connected, but what if she contacts Eszet and tells them we're coming?"
"They already know we're coming, Nagi." Schuldig turned to the house, hoping, praying his uncle hadn't moved or died. "And the way Moriate's been 'helping' us, I doubt those old farts in the mainframe would believe her. They were wary of her before. She's just another target now."
He did not like the doubtful expression on Nagi's face, but at the moment, there were more important things to deal with.
They walked through the lovingly kept garden in front of the house. Schuldig sighed with relief as he read the name next to the bell: Gutenbruch.
"So, I guess the old ass's still living here."
He rang the bell. A few moments later, the door opened, and an elderly man stood in the doorframe, regarding them with curiosity and wariness.
"Ja bitte?"
Farfarello and Nagi, though they did not understand a single word of the conversation that followed, knew how to interpret the old man's face as its expressions went from wary to disbelieving, and finally happy. It was almost amusing to watch Schuldig flinch as he was dragged into an enthusiastic hug.
The telepath introduced the Irishman and Nagi by pointing at them and saying their names; the old man raised an eyebrow over Farfarello's appearance but no comments otherwise followed. He let them into the cool, pleasantly dark hallway of the house, attaching himself to Schuldig's arm.
Another comment from the telepath, and a surprising change overcame the old man. Holding the other away from him at arm's length, he scrutinized the wet patches on Schuldig's pants, and then pulled him into a room.
Farfarello and Nagi, at this point totally ignored by either man, followed more slowly. Wordlessly, Nagi pointed at a framed doctor's diploma hanging on the wall of the room. Farfarello nodded, and promptly moved closer to his lover.
"It's all right, Far...he's my uncle. Just let him work, he was a doctor."
Farfarello disliked the tired sound of Schuldig's voice. He also disliked the fact that his lover was lying down on a low couch, while the old man shuffled out of the room and came back a moment later with a bag under one arm and towels under the other. Farfarello sat down on the ground next to Schuldig's head.
"What's wrong?" Schuldig asked in Japanese. He hissed as the old man began to unbutton his pants, sliding blood-stiff fabric down his hips and thighs.
"I...hurt."
"What?"
Farfarello touched a hand to his sternum, frowning. "It hurts here." The frown deepened. "Inside."
At a loss for words, Schuldig stared at his lover. Pain? Farfarello did not feel pain, no matter on which level of awareness.
"I hurt because I think I might lose you." The amber eye fixed on Schuldig's face, suspiciously bright. "I don't like that feeling. Make it go away."
The doorbell rang. The old man pulled a pair of pliers out of his bag and leaned over the telepath, a tiny flashlight between his teeth. He said something in German, something to which Schuldig nodded without paying attention.
"Farfarello...I..." He had nothing to answer, only a low moan escaping his lips as the cold metal of the pliers dug into the bullet wound and began the agonizing search for the bullet that still hid in there somewhere. "That's what it feels like."
"So it's good? If love hurts, it's good?"
"Sometimes."
The telepath closed his eyes, shuddering as the pliers closed on the metal shell in his hip and pulled it out. He was glad, for a moment, that his uncle was a doctor; he was also glad that his uncle had a weak mind. Influencing him had been easy. Otto Gutenbruch had been the most adamant about putting Schuldig in that asylum years ago. It was only fair that he paid for it now.
Moriate entered the little room, sighing in relief as she saw Schuldig on the couch.
"I parked the car seven streets down and tossed the keys in a sewer. If someone saw me, they saw the driver walking away from it."
"Good."
She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. "What were you thinking, anyway? They chase us across the entire continent, and you just take a stroll in the afternoon?"
Schuldig hissed as alcohol was poured out over the wound, grasping for Farfarello's hand. His uncle was humming under his breath, getting bandages ready, studying the metal casing of the bullet.
"I wanted to know how close they really were."
"So you let them come after you and let them shoot you?" Moriate exploded, her voice cracking with strain. She ignored Gutenbruch's glare, stepping closer to the couch. "Next time, why don't you just shoot yourself? God damnit, Schuldig!"
Farfarello stood in front of her before she had ended that sentence. Towering over her by nearly an entire foot, he grabbed the young woman by the shoulders and shoved her out of the door, sending her flying to the floor in a sprawl.
"Get out of here. Cool off. Don't make me kill you."
Moriate stared up at him, her eyes so light they nearly were colourless. Her anger matched the Irishman's point for point; Schuldig could feel the air between them sizzle with energy, and even Nagi raised his hands in a calming gesture.
"You," she got up slowly, "are the last person to tell me what to do, nutcase!"
Farfarello's shoulders tensed. He took a step forward, towards the diminutive mindreader, and she met him with a step of her own.
"Farfarello!" Schuldig called from the couch, leaning up on one elbow. "Don't!"
But his lover was past paying attention to anything else but the demanding urge to kill the woman in front of him.
"Do it!" Moriate hissed. "I'll see you in hell! You and your shit for a lover!"
A wall came down between them. Nagi. Step by step, the telekinetic brought them apart, Farfarello back into the room, Moriate further down the hallway. When the Irishman was securely back inside, Nagi stepped into the hallway and closed the door, sending a last, pleading glance at Schuldig on the couch.
"It's bad enough we have all of Eszet on our tail," he said. "I'd hate the idea of us killing each other."
"She's not one of us!" Farfarello spat. "If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't be in this - "
Whatever Farfarello then said went unheard as Nagi closed the door with determination. In the hallway, Moriate stood frozen to stone. No, not frozen. As he looked, Nagi could see her shaking.
"Go for a - hey!"
She turned on her heel and stomped down the hallway, out of the house, out into the street. Casting a last look at the door, Nagi cursed under his breath and followed her.
"Wait!"
She was already down half the street, but turned as he called her.
"You shouldn't vex Farfarello like that, you know. He - "
"I did not ask to be part of your fucked up little family!" Moriate screamed on top of her lungs. "I did my job!"
Nagi actually took a step back at the venom in her voice. Before, Moriate had always seemed more or less lifeless to him - locked inside her own world, so much like Farfarello had been locked inside his own world, and yet so different. Seeing her now, on the verge of what seemed to be a mental breakdown of sorts, was.frightening. Most people, when angered, came alive. Moriate turned into... something else entirely. She was alive, and yet she was not; she was like a black hole that sucked in the light around her, deafening all sounds, stopping even the flow of blood.
Had he wanted to see this when he had raped her on the roof of their now burned apartment?
"You were looking for an outlet," the mindreader said acidly, "and you did it in the cheapest possible way."
"I - "
"Don't start!"
"But I - "
One step, and though she was smaller than even Nagi, he suddenly felt dwarfed by her. It was the same feeling he got every time he looked into Schuldig's eyes: I know all about you. And if I don't, then I can always find out. The only difference was that Schuldig did not want to kill Nagi.
"What? Apologize? I think we've been through this. God, you make me sick! At least stand up for what you've done and stop whining! What? Not as hard as you thought you were? Ooh, so sorry, little boy!"
A window opened across the street, and a woman stuck her head out, yelling something at them. Before Nagi could so much as move, Moriate snarled and turned to the woman. A second later, the woman's head...
...exploded.
Brain and other matter spattered over the wall of the house, the body slumping half out of the window, a fountain of blood erupting from the stump of the neck. Staring stupidly, Nagi blinked. It had happened so quickly! His eyes wandered from the window to Moriate and back again.
Moriate tipped over and fell onto her face like a stone.
Schuldig twitched. Once. Twice. It was enough for Farfarello to tighten his arms around the sleeping telepath and press a kiss to the top of his head, which was pillowed on his chest. In a corner of the room, the corpse of Otto Gutenbruch lay, slowly cooling. Farfarello had needed something to vent his fury on, and Schuldig had not hesitated to offer his uncle for just that purpose. The old man had not seen his death coming. It was odd. Normally, Farfarello enjoyed drawing out the kill. But this kill had been fast and messy as opposed to slow and messy. The Irishman had been surprised by himself - he knew his anger inside out, knew what made him mad.
Moriate was opening depths in him he hadn't known about. Farfarello did not know if he should be thankful for that. At the moment, there was nothing more in the entire world that he wanted than to see the woman dead, preferably by his own hands. That, and the end of this game of cat and mouse they were playing with Eszet.
And he also wanted to see Schuldig wholly himself again. The past few weeks had taken their toll on all four of them, but especially on the telepath. He didn't know if it was the connection with Moriate that was rubbing off on his lover, or the constant travelling they had been forced to, from town to town, never really getting rest anywhere. What was the point of escaping, or doing away with Eszet, when the result was a lifelong run from the remaining pawns of the mainframe? In another time, in another life, Farfarello would have found the idea entertaining - every pursuer one more altar he could desecrate, one more lamb he could slaughter before the immaculate throne of god.
But his life had changed. His priorities had changed. While no one would ever be capable of fully replacing god, Schuldig had moved to the top spot of Farfarello's things to care about, making the revenge a young Irishman had once sworn to take out on the liar secondary. God and Schuldig could not be compared. Love and hate may spring from the same fount of emotions, yet love meant keeping the telepath alive, while hate meant killing god.
He hurt. It was something he had never thought possible; for nearly a decade, Farfarello had only known hate and the joy of the kill, and sometimes the fear that he would die before his oath was fulfilled. Physical pain was unknown territory for him. Surely, there had been bruised knees and elbows when he had been a child, but these memories were dim and dead. What he felt now was alive and new, and it ate at him like a worm hiding in the cavity of his ribs, slowly gnawing its way to the Irishman's heart. Farfarello was not yet sure if he wanted that feeling to continue. On the one side, it was terrible, it was new, it was a change in everything he had known for so long. On the other side, it showed him that his feelings for Schuldig were true. He had known he loved Schuldig nearly from the start. Now, he had proof for his feelings. This pain was real.
A loud banging on a door somewhere outside startled him. Carefully dislodging the sleeping telepath, Farfarello got up and walked to the front door. As he opened it, he immediately became aware of the smell of blood hanging in the air, wafting in through the door. A second later, he had his arms full of a staggering Nagi and an out-cold Dee Moriate.
"Shitshitshitshit!" Nagi was panting, his dark blue eyes haunted, scared to death. "We gotta get out of here quick!"
"What?" Farfarello frowned, lifting Moriate off Nagi's arms. "What's going on?"
"She killed a woman, we gotta get out of here, down the street and the entire front of the house is full of blood, fuck, I couldn't just levitate her and float her down to the house, what if someone heard us or saw that and called the cops?" Nagi grabbed the Irishman's shirt. "The head just exploded!"
"Schu is sleeping. He's on sedatives. Go check if the old man has a car, and if so, find the keys."
"Yes." Breathlessly, Nagi hurried down the hallway and disappeared through the first door. Farfarello sighed, cursing in Irish. He dumped Moriate on the stairs that lead up to the first floor to the house and went back inside the room where Schuldig was curled up on the couch. Carefully, the Irishman scooped his lover up and carried him outside, calling for Nagi. The youth appeared a moment later, a key ring dangling from one finger, the duffel bag with Farfarello's knives slung over one shoulder.
"There is a car in a garage left of the house, I saw it through the kitchen window. I only hope these are the keys."
"Get Moriate. Is there a way into the garage through the house?"
"I don't know. I'll check - "
"Forget it. No time." Farfarello tilted his head; the faint sound of police sirens could be heard from outside. "Go. Levitate her."
Nagi nodded. He opened the door for Farfarello and levitated the unconscious mindreader off of the foot of the stairs, floating her out of the door before him. As soon as he stepped outside, he could hear agitated shouts down the street.
"Hurry, damnit!" Farfarello shouted. Nagi hurried.
The vehicle in the garage was a steamboat of a car. Nagi sent a silent prayer to all gods - they keys fit. They stuffed Schuldig and Moriate into the backseats; Farfarello started the car and pulled out of the driveway. On the left side of the street, a police car pulled around the corner, sirens wailing.
In front of the blood-splattered house, a group of people had lined up. They sprang to the side as Farfarello floored the gas pedal, screaming, pointing after the car. He did not look back to watch if the police followed them. Taking corners at will, he soon found them on a road leading away from the suburb, away from Vienna, while Nagi kept the two mindreaders in the backseat anchored with his powers. After a while, they reached flat land, fields; civilisation giving way to rural country, and soon enough, and much to both their liking, they had left Vienna's skyline behind and were driving through fields of gently swaying golden corn at full speed. Farfarello drove for a good ten minutes. Then, figuring they were far away enough, he pulled the car off the road and drove into a little scattering of trees that soon fanned out and ended in a clearing. Farfarello stopped the car. On the other side of the clearing, the forest thickened abruptly, the light filtering between the trees green, unreal. He took a deep breath, sighing it out.
"Okay. Tell me again what happened."
"She went outside, and I followed her. We had an argument, she screamed, and then a woman opened a window and yelled something at us - probably told us to shut up. Then, Moriate turned, and the woman's head exploded."
"Exploded?"
"Yeah. Moriate fell down after that."
Farfarello turned in the seat and looked at the unconscious woman who lay squeezed into the foot space behind them. Her eyes were half-open, rolled back into her head, the whites showing. The right side of her face was covered in a bruise. He had no idea what she had done - it must have taken an incredible amount of strength out of her. His eyes fell on Schuldig. His lover had twitched in his sleep, twice. A crease appeared between the Irishman's brows. Schuldig could not have been affected by whatever the other telepath had done, could he? The connection between the two was supposed to open only one way...but then, Schuldig left it open most of the time, in case he needed something to relate to the other mindreader. And so far, none of the things that had happened to Moriate had affected Schuldig in anyway.
Maybe those twitches had simply been a coincidence.
"What are we going to do now? We can't stay here!" Nagi fretted, staring out of the side window and then out of the back window. "They'll find us here."
"We have no choice. Only Schu knows where we have to go. Do you want to get lost?"
"No."
Farfarello started the car and crossed the clearing. There, he manoeuvred between two sets of bushes that would give them a moderate covering.
"We have to wait until Schu wakes up," he told Nagi. "Try and get some sleep. I have the feeling that we won't get much of that in the days to come."
"Sleep? Now? You're joking, right?" Nagi glowered at the Irishman. "I'm too riled up. I can't sleep now."
"Whatever you do, do it quietly." Farfarello got out of the car and opened the backdoor; he pulled Moriate out and sat her down in the front seat, much to Nagi's obvious dislike. Yet, Farfarello did not care. He crawled into the back, arranging his lover against his chest.
Schuldig was restless in his sleep. His eyes were moving behind the eyelids; dark red lashes trembling against pale skin. Farfarello suppressed a sigh and let his head sink back against the side window. Before Schuldig, he would have taken off on his own. Before Schuldig, he would have killed Moriate and it would have amused him to know that another death may follow.
Now? Now he was hoping that if Schuldig died, the next one to die would be him.
He was looking into a mirror, cracked inside the frame. His own face stared back at him; a myriad hairline fractures breaking his image into pieces, pieces that drifted down to a non-existent ground as he watched, making a non-existent sound as they shattered into even tinier pieces at his feet. As he watched, blood welled up along the cracks, delicate trails of crimson on glass. Where the shards had already fallen out of the frame, there was only blackness behind the looking glass. In that blackness, shapes were moving, the shadowy figures of a soul beyond his understanding. It was not unlike Farfarello's mind had been, back then when they had first met, and yet it was different. It was so different it felt strangely familiar. It felt old.
Schuldig reached out and touched the mirror, his finger dipping into one of the crimson trails. The blood, if it was blood, felt cool to the touch, sticky like syrup.
"Go on."
The voice came from nowhere. Schuldig did not need to turn to know that there was no one in this place but him. He pulled his hand back.
"You came this far. Why not go further? Go on, look through the mirror."
Through the mirror? One did not look through mirrors, one looked into them.
"Are you afraid?"
At his side, the shifting spheres of this unreal reality thickened, taking shape.
"You've been in there before, you know that."
"Yes." His voice sounded raspy, strange to his ears. He craved a cigarette. "Yes, I've been there."
"Why not go back?"
This time, Schuldig did look. Moriate stood at his side, her hands, as was her habit, clasped before her belly. She was dressed in her usual clothes, too, those baggy pants and oversized sweaters. She turned her head and looked up at him; the watery blue of her eyes was nearly milky, distant and cold, almost blind. She was smiling, but the smile did not reach her eyes; it lurked in the corners of her mouth, the smile of a thousand lies, a thousand dark paths.
"You know, some telepaths say that when the mirror is shattered entirely, there is no barrier between the two minds anymore. They say that the people who merged will become one mind in two bodies. And eventually, that mind will chose a single host, and leave the other to rot and die. How entertaining." Moriate's eyes shifted to the mirror and back at him. "I am curious to see if that will really happen. We're about to find out."
"No..." Schuldig turned away from her and looked at the mirror. "That's bullshit. That's not possible."
"Really? Most people would say we are not possible."
"I'm me. I will always be me." He touched the stained glass again, and now the blood was warm, as if it was welling out of a fresh wound. "Each mind is unique."
"Define 'mind' for me, Schuldig. No one really knows what it is. You've been in so many, I wonder if you still know which part in there is yours, and which comes from another. Each time you rape someone's mind, a part of you dies along with it. Each time you listen to someone's thoughts, a part of yours is lost and replaced by something else, someone else's thoughts, someone else's dreams. I know what it feels like, because it happens to me, too."
Her hand appeared next to his, thin fingers closing around his wrist and guiding his moves across the shards. He was transfixed. As he watched both their hands move, he saw that Moriate's body was dissolving again, returning to the shadows and the greyness it had come from. But the hand on his wrist remained, and now it was not attached to a body anymore, but emerged from the blackness behind the shards, the blackness behind the mirror. He took a step forward as she began to pull.
"I am me," Schuldig repeated, the words sluggishly crawling out of his mouth. The tips of his fingers skittered over the edge of the shards, dipping into darkness. It was cold there, on the other side. He shuddered as he remembered the coldness that had enveloped him in the warehouse, a coldness coming from inside, eating its way to the surface. "I am..."
"Guilty," Moriate's voice whispered. "Tell me something?"
The pull became stronger. His eyes threatened to slip shut. He had to fight now to resist it, each move on his part countered by an even stronger move by her. His free hand came up to press against the frame of the mirror. In the blackness, a face became visible, her face, smiling.
"How do you know it's really me who's pulling, and not you?"
His eyes flew open; aghast, on the verge of a scream, he stared through the looking glass, and he stared at himself, his own face, his own green eyes, his own lying smile. It was him who had his hand closed around Moriate's wrist; it was him who was pulling, trying to get Moriate through the mirror.
"No!"
He wrenched his arm back, cutting the skin of his forearm on the shards, shards that fell out of the frame and disappeared in a rainfall of sparkling glass. This time, there was a sound. A tiny, tinkering sound, like a child's bell, clear and sweet, crawling over his senses like the feet of an army of ants.
Moriate's hand disappeared as if it was sucked away into a void he hadn't known existed.
At the same time, he heard Farfarello call his name.
His fingers trembled as they lit the cigarette. The ache in his hip was not making his current state any better, and he had a headache on top of it all. As much as he would have wanted to share this headache with the other telepath, Schuldig decided not to. After his dream, or vision, or whatever it had been, he wanted his mind as far away from the other's as possible.
"I'm beginning to wonder who's the nutcase here," Moriate said quietly, her stare poison. "Do you really think I would voluntarily want you in here?" She tipped two fingers against her temple and snorted, blowing out smoke. "You are crazy."
"If it wasn't you, who was it then? Do you think I'm making this up?" Schuldig sighed. The cigarette was calming his nerves, the rituals of habit soothing his frayed temper. He regarded the other mindreader through clouds of smoke. Moriate sat on a tree trunk a few feet away from him. Behind them, on the clearing, Nagi and Farfarello were watching them, leaned against the car. The sun was beginning to sink. "Eszet?"
"I don't know."
"You know more than I do. Could they pull something like this?"
"I repeat, I don't know. Why should they?" Moriate stood and paced, chewing on her lower lip. "What would be the point?"
"Tire us out?"
"They don't even know about the merge! And I think what they've done so far is doing a fine job if they want to tire us out." She sent him a scorching glare. "Or kill us, for that matter."
Schuldig sighed and lit another cigarette. For a second, he wished the nightmare would be over. What had seemed like a good idea, a plan, when they left Tokyo had turned into suicide squad; they were not the hunters anymore, as they had set out to be, but the hunted.and hunters tended to get captured by their game.
"Tell me one thing: is it worth it?"
He looked up at her.
"All this bullshit we're going through right now, all these hunts. Are they worth it? Are our lives worth getting back at Eszet?" Moriate shook her head. "Run. Get away from here. Find peace somewhere else."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because..." he stood, spread his arms and smiled, "Because that's me. That's who I am."
Her eyes narrowed to slivers of pale aqua. "You will be your own death one day."
They drove slowly, the lights turned off, under the round, patient face of the moon. For a change, Moriate did the driving; she had rolled down the window and turned on the radio, elbow hanging out, and cigarette in hand. They went around Vienna in a wide circle, stopping at a gas station to persuade a hapless family to give up their car in exchange for the other; now, their gas tank filled up and the trunk laden with all sorts of provisions acquired at several stops along the road, they were steadily making their way towards Switzerland. Unnoticed at first, the road became steeper, the landscape changing from fields to softly sloping hilly plains that finally gave way to mountain ranges on the horizon, blue and black against the dark sky, their snow-topped crowns making them seem as majestic and mystic as long-forgotten kings who looked out over their land. Nagi, next to Moriate, felt both intimidated and welcomed by these old kings. Soon, he would stand face to face with them, and then...then, their future would be decided. The Eszet base, the mainframe, was hidden somewhere in these mountains, at the foot of the Finsteraarhorn.
In the backseats, Farfarello and Schuldig simply held each other.
Nagi looked at the telepath next to him. Calmness, other than the odd silence Moriate carried wherever she went, had come over her after they had left the clearing. He did not know what Schuldig had discussed with her - he was not sure if he wanted to know, either. Both telepaths had barely spoken a word since then, each hanging after their own thoughts, wandering the labyrinths of their own minds.
During the last weeks, Nagi had come to the rather astonishing realization that he wanted to apologize to Moriate for what he had done to her. This need was strongly countered by Moriate's downplaying the entire happening to nothing but a venting of frustration. As it was now, Nagi did not know what to do or say. Along with said realization had come the rather embarrassing knowledge that he was not as cold-hearted as he wanted to be. As odd as it was, and as much surprising - he cared for Moriate. He did not know if it was connected to the fact that she was, and most likely forever would be, bound to Schuldig; nor did he know if it was not simply his conscience, which he had thought dead, playing games with him. On the grand scale of deeds best not done, which weighted more: murder or rape? Was there a difference at all?
Nagi did not know anymore.
So much had changed. So much had gone under, new things born in the ruins of the old ones, memory rearing its ugly head among them. He had not had such disturbing dreams ever since he had overcome his nearly mortal fear of Farfarello. Most of them did not make any sense, but then there were some that left him sweating and panting in their wake, feeling as if he had just fought a war and barely escaped unscathed. At first, he had suspected Moriate. But then, the mindreader showed close to no interest in him when they were not forced to cooperate. Still, she was in there, somewhere, hidden among the memories. Some of which, he had no idea where they came from. And their pace during the last weeks had not been exactly good for inner musings.
The mountains were coming closer, slowly, but they came closer, fate inevitably linked with them. In the distance, peeking out between the hills, he could see the blinking lights of cities and villages; at night, Nagi thought, all countries looked alike. Dots of light scattered in the darkness, streets leading to and away from them like veins.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Schuldig's voice came from behind them, a whisper more than anything, spoken nearly with awe. Nagi turned, catching Moriate look into the rear-view mirror. Farfarello's head lay cradled on the telepath's shoulder; his arms were loosely slung around Schuldig's waist. The moon inked the Irishman's skin white marble with the faintest hint of blue. His eye was closed, face lax in the embrace of sleep. If one did not know Farfarello, and did not have to look into the unnerving and yet at the same time strangely calming stare of that single amber eye, the impression left behind would be thought of as peaceful and at ease with everything. To Nagi, and probably even to Moriate, Farfarello looked like a dozing cat a breath away from waking and pouncing, claws outstretched to sink into pulsing flesh.
"How long till we reach the Alps?" Moriate asked. "We'll need other clothes for the mountains unless we want to help Eszet kill us."
"The road we're taking now will lead us through a few larger towns - Innsbruck and Salzburg, if I remember correctly. We can stop there." Schuldig motioned for Nagi to light him a cigarette. "After that, no more than three or four days, if things go smoothly. We'll stay away from the highways after Innsbruck, and stick to the less frequented roads."
"They'll be monitoring those as well."
"I know...how many Europeans are among Eszet's pawns, any idea?"
Moriate shrugged. "Seven or eight, excluding you. Don't count on Eszet not being familiar with the lay of the land, Schuldig. They have been here for more than three hundred years."
"What?" Nagi asked, eyebrows shooting up. "Three hundred years?"
"Yes. Eszet is older than most people think. Power does not sprout from the next tree overnight."
Nagi turned to Schuldig. "Did you know that?"
"Yeah," Schuldig nodded. "But I never saw any reason to tell you. It's not important."
"It is now." Moriate sighed. "How much do you know about Eszet?"
"As much as you are going to tell me in a moment, I guess."
She rolled her eyes at his smirk. "Eszet is ruled by three people - two men, one woman. They're very old, very wise, and very cunning. I saw them, once, about three years ago, and believe me, they're not the nice oldies they appear to be."
"Are they gifted?" Nagi asked.
"As far as I know, yes. I don't know what kind of powers they possess, though - but it should be enough for you to know that almost everyone is afraid of them. The only reason why these three don't act more openly is because they actually have enough people who do it for them."
"Fat old spiders spinning their webs," Schuldig mused, sneering.
"Yes. Next in rank come the Eszet representatives - Tot was one of them. Strangely enough, these representatives are rarely gifted. I guess the rule was made to prevent them from rebelling against the Elders. They are the ones who communicate between Eszet and the clients. Below them come Eszet's personal...'hunters', if you will. People like me. We answer only to Eszet, and we don't get hired out, but we do get sent when a representative asks for us. Next in line are the regular gifted, like you are. And then, there's an army of normal people."
"I feel like we're going against an entire kingdom, " Nagi sighed. His eyes drifted to the silhouettes of the mountains again. Kings of stone from times long gone...
"There is something that worries me, "Moriate continued, ignoring Nagi's remark. "I expected them to do more than just chase us across Europe. The people they've sent after us were all regular humans, non-gifted. I expected them to send the other hunters."
"Maybe they don't think us that dangerous?" Schuldig said, shrugging.
"Or they gather the others at the base and wait for us there. This would be worse than what we're dealing with now. By the time we reach the Finsteraarhorn, we'll be stressed out and tired."
"We're tired already, and I have a bullet hole in the hip. How many of these hunters are there?" The redhead shifted in position, settling more comfortably against the seat. Farfarello mumbled something in his sleep but did not wake.
Moriate's eyes met his in the rear-view mirror. A cold smile appeared on her lips.
"One hundred and twelve," she said.
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
The glance she sent him rammed him into the ground. Nagi drew a face, sighed, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Sorry. I'm just thinking loud."
"God help me, " Moriate said dryly, and looked back down at the small camping oven again, stirring the soup simmering in a pot with a spoon.
Silence enveloped them again. Nagi wished it would be louder. He also wished Schuldig and Farfarello would come back from wherever they had gone...well, he could pretty much guess where they had gone, but he refused to even contemplate the fact that their sex drive would kick in while they were practically chased across Europe.
"These two are practically insatiable, ne?" His second attempt at conversation was met with the same cold stare as his first. Nagi gave up and stood to walk a few paces, trying to see the lights of the next city through the thicket of trees. They had parked the car on a little pathway that lead into yet another forest and set up camp for the night under the heavily scented canopy of leaves.
He turned back to Moriate, and frowned. She sat hunched over, her arms slung around her meagre frame. Soft moans drifted through the air. For a moment, Nagi was dumbfounded. He took in the spoon lying in the grass next to her with detachment, his mind moving sluggishly.
"Uh...Moriate?"
She did not react. Her body convulsed slightly, hands moving from her sides to her shoulders to drift slowly down her neck.
"That's not funny."
With a feeling of dread, Nagi moved closer to the mindreader, one hand reached out to touch her shoulder.
Hands. Hands moving over her body, beneath her clothes...touching sensually, carefully, adoringly. Hands that had memorized each crease, each fold of her skin discovered her once again, leaving no inch untouched. She shivered as she felt the well-known wave of the first orgasm gently roll over her, suppressing a groan. Distantly, as if through veils of rain and snow, she could hear another voice, Nagi's voice, calling her. But he was too far away, and he was not important. Schuldig had left the connection between them wide open; inadvertently, Moriate guessed, yet it was open, it was there, and it showed her exactly how intimate the relation between the telepath and his Irish madman was.
Step by step, she fought the waves of lust, of pleasure, of warmth. Step by step, she won her own grounds back, fighting with weapons that had no name, no face. If only the moment would come. If only she could be free of this, this merge, this bond, this breaking glass inside of her.
If only she could break the mirror wholly.
They moved slowly and carefully, their encounter almost as shy as the first one, back in the Taketori Towers. It was a little cold, and a little moist on the moss and leaves of the forest, yet they did not care, their bodies aching for the union as much as their minds.
No words fell between them.
"Come on, if that's a joke I stopped laughing ages ago!" Nagi knew he was babbling. Kneeling in front of the mindreader, her face held between his hands, the youth began to fear that something was terribly wrong with the young woman. Her skin was like wax, but clammy, icy, uncomfortable to the touch. Her eyes, though fixed on his face, did not see him; they stared through him, towards a point far beyond his reach, the eyelids drooping lower with every passing moment. He did not dare to move from her side - concern, ah yes, so he was truly not as cold as he had thought he had become, concern mixing with a feeling of uneasy foreboding.
He moved his hands from Moriate's face to her shoulders and roughly shook her. No reaction. He considered calling for Schuldig and Farfarello, but the Irishman and his lover were too far away to hear him.
Was she pulling a trick on him? Or had those hunters she had spoken about found them, worming their way into her mind, her mind now, and later Schuldig's, to capture them and drag them off to Eszet?
Moriate pulled her thoughts inwards, concentrating them on a single point of burning light. Through the umbilical cord that connected her with Schuldig, she could feel his pleasure slowly rising to a peak. Any moment now, and...
Schuldig's fingernails dug into Farfarello's shoulders, tearing the skin, trails of crimson meandering down the Irishman's pale skin.
A shard of ice rammed in between Nagi's eyes. He tipped backwards and fell without a sound, without a word, his hands twitching once, the fingers curling up. Moriate fell with him, her breaths loud, pained, limbs moving as if someone had pinned her to the ground and was watching her suffocate.
It only lasted a few seconds. She rested her brow against the unmoving youth's chest, listening to his slow, faint heartbeat. Good. He had actually survived it.
With a groan, she pulled herself up, sinking onto her haunches. Wiping sweat off her brow, she smiled down at Nagi, who was slowly blinking now, mouth working.
Her legs were weak as she stood. It had been some time since she had last done this, and she had not been sure if it would work.
But it had. It had.
"Get up, " she ordered.
Nagi rose to his feet, still blinking as if he had just woken from a long sleep troubled by scary dreams.
"We are going to sit by this stupid camping oven now, and pretend nothing happened. Got it?"
"I..."
She concentrated briefly, twisting something in his mind that hurt as she touched it.
"Yes."
And side by side they sat, as if nothing had happened.
"Nimm den kurzen Weg" - Take the short way.
"Ja bitte?" - Yes please?