The ironic thing was that Schuldich's hatred of water had come first. He never swam, loathed boats, detested beaches and even shunned seafood. So of course, it made perfect sense that he should die by drowning.
He had all of a few seconds to ponder that before a piece of masonry had the courtesy to knock him out. He had a strange dream of being held underwater in a swimming pool as a child--and his entire youth he'd never lived near one.
Ascent was gradual, towards consciousness like air above a hundred feet of water. All that reached him first through wet darkness was the chaos of Layer One thought--from everywhere around him, prayers, curses, mutterings, jumbled and overlapping, scoring the insides of his semi-conscious, unshielded mind.
Then, as he neared the surface, and his mental barriers raised of their own accord, something more focussed, a source much closer, someone voicelessly screaming directly at him.
His ribs were about to shatter, that was the first thing his mind registered as it reintegrated with his body. His chest and abdomen were bruised hideously and the pounding that had accomplished it continued still.
An incoherent groan of pain skimmed the surface of his mind unvoiced. He couldn't find the muscles he needed to open his eyes. Water flowed over his lips as he would have spoken. Gradually heightening consciousness traced the fluid's path back to his lungs--organs, he discovered, that he had never really felt before, burning now like twin furnaces in his chest. He couldn't remember any former pain so acute.
Wake up... Start breathing! Breathe!
Lips closed over his, warm air filling his mouth.
They disappeared.
Breathe!
And descended again, hard and insistent.
He coughed violently as the contact broke again, water gushing up from his lungs, and when air spilled into him a third time he finally felt it reach them.
Breathe. was the command, lips hard over his, and as the first lungful of oxygen-laced air forced its way into him he recognized the mind hammering at his own.
Balinese.
Kudou Youji.
Confusion took hold. What? Why? Why--
And then that unbearable pounding on his ribs recommenced.
God, stop. His mouth wouldn't move to say it. But if this didn't cease... Stop!! He managed to force his way into the other's mind, weak though his power was. Stop! I still have the marks of your wire around my neck, what are you doing?!
The pounding stopped, his head was tilted back, nostrils pinched, air forced into him again.
The thoughts that touched him back were tinged black with desperation. If you're in there, make an effort! Start breathing! There was more behind the words of Layer One, but he was too far gone to reach it.
Two more breaths, then his ribs were being assaulted again. Oh, stop...
He didn't realize his heart wasn't beating until it started. The first beat reverberated through him like a vicious strike to the taut skin of a drum. The second and third seemed excruciatingly long in coming.
Then slowly, almost a cell at a time, he felt his blood start to move through him again of its own accord. His heart, bruised and painful, took up a slow rhythm, gradually sped. Piece by piece, he became aware of the rest of his body again--his fingers joint by joint, his legs from the hip down.
This time when his enemy breathed into him, he inhaled, his lungs filling entirely for the first time ever, it seemed. He gasped as the mouth above him withdrew, drawing sweet, cold draughts into his burning lungs.
The lips descended again. What, hadn't he noticed? He took the air he was given anyway, unable to refuse something so newly delicious. Again they parted. He breathed. And Kudou's lips met his again.
Schuldich found his own. I'm breathing already... He kissed the mouth above him gently.
It flinched away, heavy breathing echoing overhead.
Something dripped onto his face.
Last of all, Schuldich found his eyelids. They lifted.
The slim assassin he'd expected was bent over him, sitting on his hips with knees either side. His oaken hair was near-black with moisture, plastered to his face and neck, small trails of salt water running down over his cheeks like tears, spattering onto Schuldich's face and chest.
For a long moment, the two men sat and breathed.
"Do--" Schuldich croaked. Emerald eyes flicked up to his face. He couldn't have named the expression on Kudou's if he'd tried. Doushite? He settled for telepathy. When the undersea Estet building had collapsed he'd had this man's garotte tight around his throat.
"You were dead," the other breathed at length, dropping his eyes again to the place where Schuldich's ribs met--where he'd beaten his truant heart into submission and made it resume. Images of the process flooded the German's mind. He saw himself blue-faced, drenched and lifeless, saw his body flop limply as it was pounded. He felt the clammy skin of his own chest under Kudou's fingers as his heart stubbornly refused to beat. He felt the desperation wound around the images.
"Shi-Pi-Aaru," Kudou said, snapping him back from the sensory tide. It took him a moment to recognize the English letters the Japanese man was drawing out. CPR. "I've never performed it before. I didn't know if it would work."
They breathed.
Why, Kudou?
The dark head shook. Balinese's arms fell either side of him on his open, ruined shirt as the slender torso sagged forward. More salt water spattered across his face.
They breathed.
From what Schuldich could see and smell, they had washed up beneath an abandoned shipping dock, probably on the far side of the bay from the collapsed Estet ceremonial hall. How long had they been out of the water? Kudou was still soaking wet. So was he.
What was going on? He tried, but couldn't find anything in his own memory but black water. The floor had caved in. Kudou had lost his grip on the strangling wire and been flung away. Then, black water. There was nothing else.
His mind was still reeling from oxygen deprivation. He was rigidly trained enough that his barriers had come up automatically, keeping out the thought noise that would have knocked him senseless, but he couldn't muster much strength telepathically. He could speak to this one's mind, and read what was at the surface of it, but it was too chaotic, and he was too weak to dig further.
So why had this man, who he had met not more than a handful of times before today, and all of those times in aggression, saved his life?
He tried his throat once more and found his voice.
"Why?" he repeated.
"I pulled you out," Kudou said, not answering. "You weren't breathing. You were dead."
Again he tried to push his way into that mind. It was too disjointed, too random. Even weak as he was, he could tell that something was very off.
"So why didn't you leave me? You came here to kill us, remember?"
"You were..." ...the only one I could reach. The brunet began to shake. You were the only one close enough. Everyone else... Omi, Ken, Aya... The trembling worsened. Was he crying...? They're all dead.
Schuldich blocked the White Hunter's thoughts before the sudden flood of memory could overwhelm him. A ream of random stills of the other three assassins was already splashed across his consciousness.
"Kudou--?"
The assassin collapsed over him, shuddering violently.
"O-oi..."
"They all drowned..." the other man whispered. "Dead."
_______________
Kudou had hypothermia. The waters of that bay had been freezing--and, as Schuldich figured out later, the ex-detective was anemic, and chilled easily anyway.
The German had to wait a full hour with the unconscious Weiß draped over him before enough of his strength returned to heft him off and get himself upright. With barely any consideration, he decided to take the man along. It wasn't hard, an hour had replenished his mental strength more than his physical, so a taxi and a hotel room were acquired through the very simplest of mind games.
During that hour, pinned under Kudou with even that slight weight on his abused ribs making it painful to breathe, Schuldich had wrapped himself around the other man as best he was able, and given him what warmth he could.
Once safely ensconced in an expensive hotel room--too easy to avoid notice with his powers, even dragging his companion as deadweight--he ordered blankets. Stripped Balinese and dried him quickly, laid him between the covers and heaped the blankets over him. Then, suddenly too exhausted to move, he dropped his own sodden clothing to the floor, ran a towel hastily over his body and through his hair, and crawled between the sheets. Finding the other man still shivering, he drew that lean body against his own, and passed out cold.
_______________
"Scheisse..."
It was the heat that finally woke him up. The sheets were soaked and he was suffocatingly hot. A bright flare of panic lanced through his mind before he recognized its source as the presence struggling feebly in his arms. His eyes opened to huge, terrified green ones. Kudou's jumbled thoughts skittered across his brain. It's so hot--I can't move--I can't breathe--It's too hot--Where?--And Schuldich--?!
"Calm down, calm down," the German hushed, disentangling himself from the other man and heaving off the twisted, sweat-soaked blankets. Room temperature felt like an Arctic blast against his burning skin. The smell hit him a second later. Good god, how long were we out...?
Kudou was panting like a dog beside him, skin slick with sweat and hair bedraggled. The Weiß looked up at him as though he were the devil incarnate, another stream of panicked questions pouring out from his unguarded mind.
Schuldich winced, throwing up his mental barriers against the onslaught. "Chill out, Kudou. It's not so bad as you think." He caught one lean shoulder and pressed the back of his wrist to the other man's forehead. He yanked it away with a hiss. "K'so--can't tell if you're feverish or just overheated--" he made a face as the well-aged odor of two men's sweat reasserted itself. "Let's get the hell outta this and into a shower, na?"
He had to half-drag Balinese into the bathroom--the brunet still seemed dazed and his legs would hardly support him. He hardly even protested when Schuldich pulled him along into the shower. Luckily, it was reasonably large.
It took a minute or two holding him under the fall of ice-cold water before a more lucid look entered Kudou's eyes. The slender assassin shifted, taking all his weight back onto his own feet, and simply stared at Schuldich, unmoving.
Schuldich grinned. "Unarmed and naked in the enemy's clutches--not the most pleasant way to wake up, huh?"
The other man didn't answer, but flinched as the German reached past him to turn the water to warm. The redhead raised an eyebrow, reaching out to the sink counter for a couple bars of hotel soap. He handed one to the detective and began a lather against his chest with the other. "I stink, and so do you, Kudou," he said. "Don't make me wash you myself." At that, the brunet began hastily to bathe.
The Weiß's thoughts were disappointingly cyclic as they washed in silence, so Schuldich blocked him out. He concentrated instead on the almost painfully thin contours of the brunet's body as long-fingered hands travelled quickly over them. He watched colour rise in that pretty, downcast face as Kudou tried, somehow, to keep his grass-blade eyes off Schuldich without letting his guard down.
"'Bout done?" the German asked as Kudou finished rinsing out his hair. The man nodded, eyes rising to his face again, wary. Schuldich smiled widely. "Good. I'll leave you the bathroom first, then." He stepped out of the shower, grabbing one of the complimentary robes hanging by the sink. "I don't know how long we were asleep, but I have to--well, I'll spare you the Americanism. They're such a bad influence." He laughed softly as he closed the door behind him.
Schuldich was composed and waiting seated on the bed when Kudou emerged. He'd cut across the hall and made use of another easily confused guest's bathroom, on the way out "borrowing" fresh clothes and a watch that informed him they'd been out roughly thirty-four hours.
"These will be a bit large on you," he told the brunet, gesturing to a folded pile beside him. The detective looked at it, then back at him, hand fisted in the front of his robe. It must have been the "hers" of the set, Schuldich noted, as it showed off those long, sleek legs to almost indecent advantage. "Yours were ruined--your watch is there."
Green eyes darted to the indicated nightstand, and the weapon resting on it. He looked back at Schuldich.
"What are you gonna do?" They were the first words Kudou had spoken since waking. There were more. "Where are we? What the hell happened? What are you going to do?" he repeated. It seemed he'd had enough time to get his thoughts in order. Schuldich opened his mind again, just enough to let Layer One seep in. Kudou's confused fear, and his self-loathing at letting Schuldich inspire it trickled thick and sweet over his senses.
He held up his hands before him. "Easy, Kudou, I won't harm you. How's your head?" The other man frowned at him and he tapped his forehead in explanation. "Fever?"
Kudou's frown deepened, but he lifted one hand to check. "No," he said. His hand dropped to his side as though the tendons had been cut. His other tightened at the collar of his robe. "What do you want, Schuldich? Why am I still alive?"
Schuldich's eyes creased slightly as his smile widened. There was so much hesitance in his usually cocky enemy. He was alone and unarmed. He was afraid of Schuldich. And strangely enough for someone who dressed as Kudou usually did, the scrap of robe covering that svelte body was making him very uncomfortable. "I should ask you that," the German returned. He decided he liked the way Kudou flinched away from the gaze running up his legs as though it were a physical touch. He looked directly into angry emerald eyes. "Why did you revive me?"
Kudou stared back at him defiantly. His eyes flicked to the watch on the nightstand again, then back, narrowing. "What's it to you?"
"Saa, don't be that way, Kudou. I'm curious."
"Yeah?"
"You saved my life five minutes after trying to take it. Now I wanna know why. I'm indebted to you, so like I said, I won't kill you now. But what you say may help me decide just what I should do with you." His eyebrows rose expectantly. "So."
The brunet's jaw tightened. "I wasn't thinking straight. There is no reason."
Schuldich's mouth stretched fractionally further. "I doubt that, Kudou. Even if you were muddled. You know. And if you make me dig for it in that twisted grey-matter of yours... it's gonna hurt."
Kudou's brows drew further down, his free hand fisting beside him. He was wondering just what Schuldich meant by that. How bad it would be.
"More painful than you want to risk for something so trivial," Schuldich answered the unvoiced question. "And mind-rape takes time."
Kudou flinched back at that choice of words. "You were there," he ground out through clenched teeth. "You were the only one near me."
"And your enemy."
"Aa."
"Kudou..." Schuldich's voice was warning. He rose. The Weiß backed up.
"What more do you want?" The thoughts tumbled through his mind, uncertain even to the thinker. "I didn't want to let you die at the time. Now I regret it."
"Really." Schuldich moved, so quickly the assassin jumped back a foot when he appeared before him. He followed, till Kudou's back was against the wall. "Here, then."
Kudou tore his eyes from Schuldich's face to stare at the watch being pressed into his hand. His fingers closed around it as he looked up, expression furious. "What the hell...?"
Schuldich's larger hand was still over his. "Attack, if that's how you feel about it."
"You'll just--"
"I'll give you a fair first shot, what do you say?"
Kudou's teeth clenched. "Don't toy with me, bastard. If you're going to kill me, do it. If not, then let me the hell outta here. I--" he came up short and clamped his mouth shut.
"Where do you have to go, Weiß?"
A crack appeared in the anger protecting Kudou's mind.
"What's your hurry?"
Kudou swallowed. His voice was quieter but still steady when he spoke again. "What do you know, Schuldich?" Pictures flashed through his mind. "Are they...?" he wouldn't voice the word but it was loud in his thoughts.
Schuldich shook his head. "I didn't see. Probably." Panic surfaced in the White Hunter, though outwardly he was still calm. Images of the other three Weiß flew out at Schuldich, shuffling rapidly, then slowing as they began to focus on a single member, the scenes becoming more vivid.
"Crawford is still alive," Schuldich said. "So he's most likely dead."
Kudou's eyes widened as he realized the image had been picked from his mind. Denial shot out to reign in the panic. "There's no way you could know."
The German's wide mouth twisted into a sneer. "That, I know." If Crawford were dead, he would have known. There was a heavy, restricting presence on the edge of his consciousness that meant the American was still very much alive. "Sorry to break it to you."
Kudou swallowed hard again, dropping his gaze from Schuldich's face to his chest. "You're lying."
"Am I?" Schuldich dipped into the other man's mind, sifting through the memories that floated just at the surface. "So much Fujimiya," he drawled. "Is he your lover?" The brunet went rigid against the wall, downcast eyes widening. "No... That's not it, is it?" None of the more prominent memories suggested it. "I never figured you for the type to suffer unrequited love in silence."
"Fuck you," Kudou snarled, refusing to look up. He's not dead. Aya wouldn't--he's just too--that bastard Crawford isn't--Aya...
What do you know, the Weiß kitten was downright pretty in distress.
"Poor boy." Schuldich's hand came up, brushing the brunet's cheek.
Kudou's arms slammed palm-open against the wall as he flattened himself against it, his wide eyes flying up to Schuldich's. "Don't." A touch-memory of Schuldich turning the mouth-to-mouth into a kiss spun out of his mind.
The wide mouth curved. "Oh, so you remember that."
Kudou glanced to the side, finding himself blocked by the redhead's other arm planted against the wall. His eyes riveted to his captor's face. "Why did you do that?"
Schuldich chuckled. "To get you to stop breaking my ribs. I was indisposed at the time to do much of anything else." He ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip pensively, seeing the Weiß's eyes widen fractionally further at that. "It's looking like a better and better idea by itself, though."
The brunet caught his breath. "Why? Don't, I--" He was remembering the kiss again. Then again, Fujimiya. Schuldich leaned closer, freshly-dried hair falling over his shoulders, forming a sort of screen to the rest of the room.
"Because you're pretty," the German shrugged slightly. "And I'd never bothered to notice, but you're sexy when you're scared."
Kudou's face hardened. "Bastard--" His expression shifted back to panic when the hand beside him moved to pin his shoulder instead. "Wait--" his eyes darted to the hand in his hair, holding his head firmly in place. "Don't--I--" He tried to move but it could hardly be termed a struggle. Schuldich leaned in further, till the other man's breath feathered over his lips.
He cheated, slipping into Kudou's thoughts and gently pushing aside the violet-eyed, flame-haired phantom that hovered there. Kudou's mind was still soft and vulnerable. It was shamefully easy to send Fujimiya to the background, and quiet his doubts about the redhead before him, letting him focus instead on pure reaction. Then Schuldich bent to catch the lips beneath him.
Kudou's entire body jerked as they met, but his face turned up into the kiss. His lips fell open easily to Schuldich's tongue, though he did not respond. He simply let the taller man invade his mouth, tasting, touching, teasing sensation out of him.
The Weiß assassin made a soft noise against his mouth, then suddenly was responding, drawing the tongue that invaded him deeper and pressing his lips up hard against Schuldich's.
When they parted finally, Kudou's eyes stayed closed. He pressed his head back against the wall, his already bruising lips just parted. Schuldich let him have the privacy of his thoughts.
"I don't... wanna know..." Green eyes flew open as the hand on his shoulder pushed aside his robe. The loosely tied sash slithered open and the robe slid to the floor.
Kudou's breathing filled the room.
There was something profoundly sad in his eyes as he looked up at Schuldich. But when the German's hand slid down, caressing the smooth line of his torso and then stroking lower, he did not move.
They had been just over two days in that hotel room before Schuldich walked Kudou Youji out the front door and told him to go home. It was two more before he tracked down Crawford, in a decrepit old mansion in one of the Tokyo suburbs faded from posh to slum.
The door was unlocked--for him, no doubt. The wide living room was bare but for a sofa, coffee table and chair. The last of these Crawford occupied, facing the door, his back to a staircase with a decaying railing.
"Nice of you to show up." His leader's voice was smoothly controlled, but entirely betrayed by the tension line running between his eyebrows, the murderous flash of razor-sharp blue eyes.
"Nice of you to come looking for my drowned ass, Brad," Schuldich returned, deadpan. Hands shoved in his pockets, he surveyed the surroundings.
"I knew you were alive," the older man muttered. "I've had bigger things on my hands."
"Is that so?" Schuldich drawled conversationally. His eyes lit on the bar of light visible beneath the door at the head of the staircase. "Where're the boys?"
"Upstairs being decompressed," Crawford sneered back humourlessly.
"What?" Orange brows lifted. Schuldich tried, but the American's mind remained impenetrable as always.
"They came up with the Bends, both of them. When the building collapsed, they got trapped under the debris. Nagi created an air bubble and they were down there for hours--Farfarello nearly disgorged to boot--then the masonry keeping them down shifted, they shot to the surface--"
"Scheisse." Schuldich frowned. Then grimaced. "And Farfarello has enough scars to--"
"Aa." Crawford nodded, smiling that 'I want to disembowel something' smile. "Neither could move, Farfarello should have died."
Biiitch, bitch, bitch. "And?" Schuldich prompted.
"I had to steal the equipment for their treatment; hospitals aren't safe."
The telepath was suddenly apprehensive. "Why not?"
"Because," that smile widened, Crawford speaking through his teeth. "Now the entire, headless mass of Estet is looking for us."
Schuldich's hand flicked up instinctively to catch the gun Crawford had thrown. The American was on his feet, pulling his own weapon out of his jacket.
"And this would be another group of them, now."
_______________
Over the next few days four Estet attacks followed in swift succession, two of the forces involved were large and well-equipped. Luckily, the order of psychics was, as Crawford had said, headless. These were the few Asian-posted delegations acting without the guidance of central command in Europe. The latter, from all Schuldich and Crawford could gather, was in chaos following their leaders' deaths, and not about to send reinforcements.
Finally, after their most recent round of body disposal, Crawford announced that they had finished everyone who could reach them within a month and promptly disappeared into a back room.
Neither of the senior Schwarz members had slept more than an hour or two since Schuldich's arrival. Between the attacks and eliminating the evidence so they wouldn't have the local police hounding them, too, short staggered naps were all they'd been able to take. Both had mental techniques to hold up under fatigue, but Schuldich had thought for the past two days that the older man was failing.
Finding himself alone, suddenly, in a silent, empty-seeming house, Schuldich's eyes turned to the one door visible on the second floor. It opened as he reached it.
"Yo, so you're alive after all," Schuldich greeted Nagi, raising one hand. The boy was seated in one of the twin beds at the far end of the room. It was large, mostly bare except for a large metal tube near one wall, equipped with a couple screens and control panels, and dripping with multicoloured wires.
Nagi turned huge, emotionless eyes on Schuldich, his lips curving upwards just barely in an expression more tragic than pleased. "I should be saying that. What happened to you?"
Schuldich came in and shut the door. He looked at the decompression chamber, frowning. He'd never liked medical apparatus much. Gave him the creeps. "Farfarello's still--?" he jerked a thumb at the tube.
Nagi nodded. "He was worse. Much."
The German repressed a shiver. Nagi's voice and manner were alarming. He was always restrained, but the dead face and voice he presented to the world almost always vanished when he was among Schwarz. Combined with his paler than usual face and the nightmarish look of the room, Crawford's disappearance downstairs, this slum they were holed up in... "He's gonna be alright though, na? And you? Are you--"
"I'll be fine in a day or two."
"And Farfarello?"
Nagi merely looked at him. Between them it was an acknowledged signal. 'Read it, I don't want to speak.'
You didn't see... there was so much blood. But even that wasn't so bad. Crawford stitched him himself, while he was unconscious. But he couldn't get the decompression chamber immediately. It was... bad for me. Couldn't move, could hardly breathe. But Farfarello, who never feels pain... Nagi turned away. We spent a day together in that thing. He was silent. Just sat across from me and stared at the wall. A day is usually enough. But when Crawford let us out, Farfarello started screaming-- Nagi shuddered.
Schuldich took an involuntary step back, the hoarse screams he hadn't heard ringing in his ears. He glanced warily at the decompression chamber. Steeling himself, he took a quick 'look' inside. Farfarello was asleep--a dream involving a lot of stained glass and blood.
"He seems... reasonably normal," he offered.
"I don't know..." Nagi said quietly. He looked up again. "What about you? And Crawford? I've been listening, but I couldn't really--"
Schuldich waved a hand, smiling widely now, if it was a bit strained. "They'd've been a waste of your time. We were the best Estet had, these bastards were no match for us."
"Yokatta." Nagi's face softened slightly, regaining some of the humanity Schuldich was used to. "I was thinking Crawford might not make it."
"Eh?"
"He wore himself thin taking care of us. It would've been easier to move around and avoid Estet, but with us like this he couldn't. I think he might be hurt, too... but he doesn't say."
Schuldich came the rest of the way in, sitting beside Nagi on the bed. "Hey, kid, it's alright." He ruffled the boy's bangs, gratified at the half-scowl of annoyance that finally broke the uniform sobriety of his expression. "Farf's a tough guy, he's been through worse than this." He rolled his eyes. "Half of it self-inflicted. And nothing can phase Crawford. But I'll check for you. Naa," he grinned, though it came out a bit lopsided. "Don't worry so much."
Two small hands covered Schuldich's second, beside him on the bed. "I'm glad you're back."
_______________
"Masaka na. The boy's more perceptive than I am."
Crawford glanced up at Schuldich as he made his entrance, slouched against the doorframe.
"That surprises you," Crawford bit out, turning back to the bandage he was trying to secure around his chest. "Back off--" he growled as Schuldich appeared before him, reaching to help.
"Don't be an ass." Schuldich brushed the older man's hands aside twice before Crawford subsided, glaring. "See, this is all wrong." He unwound the twisted bandage, revealing two different wounds. His eyes narrowed. "When'd you get those?"
"First Estet attack, before you showed up," was the tight-lipped reply. "And Fujimiya."
"'Taku. I leave you all alone for four days and everything goes to hell. Are they dead?" he asked, as if he didn't already know a quarter of the answer.
"I don't know. They're not involved in our immediate future, and that's all I've been looking at."
"Ah." Schuldich set aside the bandage, frowning at the stain already on it. He glanced around, spotting a second open door leading to a cramped-looking half-bathroom. "You need to wash it first--" he reached for his leader's shoulder. Crawford caught his hand, blue eyes boring into his. The German's brows raised haughtily.
"Where were you?"
Schuldich's eyes slid away from the other man's, his mouth quirking.
"Dead."
He had appeared before their adopted hideout two days later. The familiar thought pattern, so close, had taken Schuldich by surprise. He had come out to find Kudou in his high-collared coat, boots and gloves, as though on a mission, staring--by accident?--at Crawford's window.
He spared only a glance at Schuldich as he approached. "I have to kill him."
Schuldich had a loaded gun in his waistband, in easy reach. But he had no particular urge to draw it. There was nothing dangerous in the white assassin's expression, he looked as though he'd come to die rather than fight. He moved closer, till the other's verdant eyes came down to fix on him. "You can't," Schuldich said. "I can't let you."
Kudou looked at him, expression resigned. "No?"
It was somehow natural the way he took the other man's shoulder, cupping his cheek in one hand. And it didn't surprise him when he met no resistance. "No," he said gently. "You wouldn't let me kill yours, would you?"
Kudou's expression wavered, on the verge of crumpling. "It's too late for that." The details were easily culled from an unguarded mind.
"Ah."
Kudou laughed softly. Irony was beautiful on his face. "Well, this is us again. Did you decide?"
"What I should do with you? Saa..."
"You should probably kill me."
Here they were on a street corner, in plain view for what scant passersby or window-gazers there might be. Schuldich's thumb ran pensively along the shorter man's cheekbone. He noted, with some heightening of admiration, that there was none of the flinching reticence at his touch in Kudou now.
"But such a waste. And after all, you saved my life. I'm grateful to you."
"If you thought that was a favour, you should have returned it, and killed me then."
It was his own next utterance that did surprise him. "I can't let you kill yourself, either."
Ha. Never had the guts for that. Just would've been easier, that's all. In Layer Two, there was vivid pain behind those word-thoughts, undershot by a vague, pleased incredulity, directed at him. Kudou raised an eyebrow, giving him the hint of a smile that had seemed carefree and genuine the times Schuldich had seen it before. "How you gonna stop me?"
Schuldich's jade eyes opened to Kudou's room, midnight-grey by the moonlight streaming in past one open curtain. Beside him, the Weiß assassin shifted in his sleep, moving closer, the wiry arm around his waist tightening. A breeze stirred the curtain, sending dappled shadows skittering across the smooth face half visible against his chest.
"I have, haven't I?" the German said quietly. "Six months tonight. And I'm still here."
Schuldich's fingers were full of chestnut strands, his body pleasantly warm except where the sheets left off across his torso. "You, I understand. But me...?"
It was more than twenty years since he'd learned to control his power. He'd learned to classify the Layers of Thought, One, Two, Three... He'd learned the extent to which minds could be connected, of the power housed in some people's brains, the exploitable weaknesses in others. He'd learned the intricacies of consciousness--how to control it, manipulate it, even project it. And all of that had lead to the obvious and comfortable conclusion that consciousness existed only as far as the brain did. All his experiences without and within Estet had shown that while some minds were far stronger than others, the mind was still very much a physical thing. And as such, it ended.
Your heart stopped, your brain ceased functioning, and no matter how powerful a psychic you were, the rest was silence.
Schuldich's fingers tightened slightly in Kudou's hair, his eyes narrowing at the opposite, bookshelved wall as he hovered on the edge of sleep.
"'If I thought it was a favour'--ka."
He snorted.
"I'm not like Farfarello. I have no god. It was not the flames of Hell you pulled me back from. And oblivion is natural, I've never feared it.
"But..."
Exactly how much he had needed Kudou's help still gnawed at him.
Darkness, sleep? Let it come, no one could have threatened him with that.
And now...? Schuldich had let Kudou Youji become a part of his life because he had given him back something he'd been unafraid to lose. He had saved him from something he'd been born with no wariness of.
Kudou had been there when Schuldich had gained the knowledge that now coloured everything around him.
He had been dead for at least fifteen minutes.
And long before the first breath had been forced past his lips,
before the first artificial contraction of his heart,