Bleed American

Disclaimer: Err... I don\'t own Weiss Kreuz. Schuldich and Farfarello are the sole intellectual property of some dude overseas (I can\'t remember the name). I also don\'t own the song \"Bleed American\" or the lyrics, because they belong to Jimmy Eat World. (Punk rocks!) The only thing I own is my own brand of Schu\'s sarcasm and my theories on Farfamallow\'s mind.

Title: \"Bleed American\"

Author: Switchblade003

Rating: R, for... Oh, come on, now! This is a Far-centric piece of writing!

Warning(s): Not many spoilers, really. Violence, implied post-canon death, a hint of blasphemy, serious psychological musings, and a few randomly-interspersed curses.

Pairing(s): Let\'s make an educated guess.

Notes: I don\'t speak Irish Gaelic, so forgive me if you do. There are a lot of allusions and metaphors laced throughout this fic, but if you\'re familiar with my \'fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants\', stream-of-consciousness writing style, you\'re expecting it. I wanted to write a better fic that explains my thoughts on Schuldich and Farfarello, and I think I accomplished that. There really isn\'t enough writing out there that favors these two in a pairing, but I can say that what I did manage to find greatly influenced me. My heartfelt thanks go out to Ninrenigai and Scarlet Fever, because without their works I\'d have had no where to start. Also, the song title is funny if you really read into it.

Archive: AFF.Net, perhaps ShenLong\'s site later on, and eventually I\'ll get it up on my own site, RemixX.

+++

I\'m not alone \'cause the TV\'s on, yeah.
I\'m not crazy \'cause I take the right pills, every day.
And...
Rest, clear your conscious;
Clear your thoughts with speyside...

+++

I find it amazing that a single steak knife can occupy Farfarello for hours.

He\'s been sitting here for almost sixty minutes, running calloused fingertips over the edge of the blade, and every once in a while he\'ll raise it to his teeth and chew at it, his tongue darting out to knick itself on the ridges of the blade. He has a morbid fascination with a pain that he doesn\'t feel--by choice or design, I\'m still debating. His wonder for all things pointy and dangerous is almost juvenile in nature, and his thoughts are overtly simple when he\'s pacified with the cold caress of razor-sharp steel.

If it weren\'t for times like this, when his mind is quiet, sated, I think my head might implode.

I was a heroine addict for a while, before Brad \'found\' me and took me away from the sordid life I\'d had in Berlin. It helped me to block out the voices I heard, the thoughts of everyone within a five mile radius. Until I met Bradley Crawford, I hadn\'t the first clue why I heard other people\'s voices in my head, or why I got migraines every night. He explained to me that I wasn\'t crazy, that I was a telepath, and with the frighteningly efficient aid of Rosenkreuz he taught me how to control my ability... somewhat.

Let\'s make it perfectly understood that Brad doesn\'t truly give a fuck about anyone but himself and his missions. He had to make sure that I didn\'t lose control and either kill myself or someone else by mental impulse, because I am vital to his missions. The minute that the last SS elder\'s body hits the floor smoking, mine could as well and he wouldn\'t give a damn.

And then there\'s Naoe Nagi, boy wonder, who I honestly don\'t get. He\'s a telekenetic. He\'s got to be the most closed-off, distant person I\'ve ever met, and I don\'t think he likes me. He doesn\'t say too much, but he\'ll scream at me to get out of his head, much the way Brad does.

And Farfarello. I\'m fairly certain that that isn\'t even his real name. \'Farfarello\' was one of the demons in Dante\'s Inferno. If that is in fact a pseudonym, it\'s a damned clever one. I remember the day that I met him, in some shitty hotel in London. He had been a scrawny thing, pale, and eerily dead mentally. He was sixteen years old, and Brad had taken him from some state-funded asylum. In fact, the first time that I had ever laid eyes on him he had been bound in industrial-strength cloth, leather, and steel.

Brad had stuck to the straight-jacket for a while, mostly out of fear for the lives of the team, and he had had a custom-designed cell built into our apartment. The walls were reinforced steel, as was the door, and the single window was solid, double-pane, bulletproof glass, with steel bars for good measure. The floor was carpeted, a dull grey, and the only furnishings in the room were the cot that hung from the wall, suspended by chains, and the metal chair in the center of the room. There were chains suspended from the walls, the ceiling, leather restraints strewn about the floor. It looked like a torture chamber, the first time I walked into it, and I still try to avoid the room as best as I can.

Farfarello hates it. He won\'t admit it to anyone aloud, but he thinks it, and he lets me rummage through his head at will. He\'s the only one in Schwarz who\'s never tried to hide anything from me. He says and acts on what he thinks. He\'s true to himself, at least.

Speaking of which... I glance up from the TV to the coffee table he\'d been perched atop, and he\'s gone.

Panic floods my mind immediately, but then there\'s the always-there, cold, and familiar presence of his mind close by, and I decide to find him. Our apartment is large, and there are several rooms--mine, Nagi\'s, our control center, Brad\'s room, his study, Farfarello\'s cell, the bathrooms, etc.. I\'m not too certain where he\'s ventured off to this time, but I\'m not surprised to find him in Brad\'s study, standing in his favorite spot, right in front of the display case that contains our leader\'s collection of the Irishman\'s weapons.

As I\'ve said before, Farf loves all things sharp. He has--had--an archaic-looking sword similar to the katana that the redhead from Weiss slings around. He had a nice collection of daggers, maybe twenty or so, that he likes to hide in his trenchcoat on missions. There\'s his own creations, his needles, twisted pieces of scrap metal that he worked into geometrical shapes. And then there\'s the blade that he wops aps above all, the knife that he nearly killed Brad over taking.

Farfarello\'s lone amber eye is fixed on the smooth upper blade, the skillfully cut ridges in the lower blade. That knife was designed not to kill, but to maim, and it was the weapon that took the life of his mother, father, and little sister. Some lunatic went into his home while he was at church, murdered his family, and in essence killed whatever humanity Farfarello possessed, and now he chooses to become a hunter, a killer, with that same blade.

Sometimes the others try--really try--to forget that it was Farfarello who committed those murders, but I don\'t. It\'s just part of who he is; the kid\'s capable of good old-fashioned, cold-blooded murder when he sinks into one of his rages.

It\'s strangely poetic, and incredibly depressing all at once. I wanted to help him for the longest time, help him to reclaim his humanity, his ability to feel, but that was when I looked at him as one does a mentally handicapped child. Farfarello is far from insane. He\'s probably the most straight-forward and logical person I know. I can\'t say that I understand him, or even his reasons for becoming one of us, but I realized quite some time ago that my feelings for the nineteen-year old extend far beyond the bounds of teammate, or even friend.

The entire situation would be humorous to me if I weren\'t involved. This is the kind of teenaged drama that I pull from other, random people\'s minds and laugh about. I love to fuck with people, but at the same time I hate not being sure of my own predicaments. It\'s a paradox. I couldn\'t tell you for certain if any particular thought in my mind at any given time is mine or yours, and I have a hard time telling where I end and another person begins, but I am very confident in what I am: killer, psi, assassin, loudmouth. I\'m jaded, immature, manipulative, a bit of a slut, and an overall bastard when the mood hits me. I like being grounded in the knowledge of my flaws, because they are constant, not too prone to drastic changes over the span of a lifetime, and--because I\'m more in-touch with my imperfections than my positive attributes--said flaws define me as a person. I\'m comfortable with that.

What I\'m not remotely at-peace with are the mutinous thoughts that grace my conscious every time I so much as glance at Farfarello.

Perhaps more disturbing than my reluctant acceptance of my feelings toward the Irishman is the idea that I\'ve entertained for quite a while now, the thought that maybe he isn\'t capable of loving anything. Sure, he spends an insane--ha--amount of time with his knives when permitted, and he\'s more interested with his God than he\'s probably ever been in any person, but those aren\'t acts of affection. Those aren\'t even really obsessions; they\'re just patterns of behavior.sesssession indicates a thin line, between love and hate really, because even if one is obsessed with something, the amount of energy required to focus on that hatred borders on the very amount required to love it. He hates God because he has for years, now, and some times it\'s just really fucking hard to break a habit.

I need a cigarette.

Farfarello is capable of feeling a wide range of emotions, anything from apathy, to happiness, to fear. He doesn\'t care about his own well-being three-forths the time he\'s awake, he\'s noticably content when he\'s outside, and somewhere deep inside of the twisted networking of his mind he\'s afraid of dying, of meeting the deity that\'s he sought to destroy for so long, because even Farfarello is human, and even he realizes that there are some forces in this world to be reckoned with--even if he\'s one of those. Deeply buried within the fragmented maze of his thoughts, Farfarello recognizes that his God might just be the one adversary in this universe more formidable than himself.

His mind is a veritable fortress to everyone without my ability, but even telepathy can\'t help me to understand what I can hear. His thoughts run in torrents of rage, destruction, but they\'re so ordered, so patterned that it\'s laughable. Perhaps it\'s his painfully logical train of thought that makes him seem so insane... or maybe it has something to do with the almost childlike wonder and fascination that he holds for everything. See, most adults, even teenagers, are pretty self-conscious. God knows I am. They worry, whether consciously or otherwise, about how their behavior, their thoughts and speech, appears to the world around them. Adults--me, Brad, even that golf club-wielding bastard Taketori--put up fronts, masks of who we are, to the outside world. Children don\'t pretend to be things that they aren\'t, at least out of some sick sense of power or authority.

Have you ever sat and watched a kid play with fire? The unadulterated curiosity is obvious. Kids tend to stare. They also ask billions of question. You know, the \'Why?\' game? \'Why does fire burn?\' \'How do toasters work?\' Children see nothing wrong with investigating things in their spectrum of understanding that don\'t fit, strive to make everything logcial and ordered, because that\'s how we raise them, and we as adults--while dangerously annoyed--encourage these behaviors.

Well, when Farfarello was six, and he murdered his family, he was asking himself, \'How can I make these people hurt as much as I\'m hurting, right now?\'

It was an act of rage, of chaotic thought unleashed in a once well-mannered boy. If someone came to you with proof that the very foundations of everything you held to be true, just, and righteous were lies, that your own flesh and blood were imposters, and that no one deemed it necessary to clue you into your own position in life, you would see red, too. I\'d stake my life on it.

I have a theory on this, actually. Yeah, I know; someone get the paramedics on standby--Schu\'s thinking, again. Fuck off.

When Far killed his family, his mind stopped growing. It sounds absurd, given how frighteningly educated he is, but something in his pretty little head snapped. A six year-old isn\'t meant to understand the nature of death, of betrayal, and where most kids his age were asking questions about toaster ovens and radios, Farfarello\'s musings were forever tinted red and black. I\'ve watched him for the last four, five years now, and it struck me a while back how... well, childlike his words and actions are.

He stares. He has absolutely no reservations with sitting and staring at any one of us for insanely long periods of time. We lended it to insanity for a while, but then his behavior just started making too much sense to be passed off as, \'Well, he is psycho...\'. He asks \'why\' a lot, as well. \'If God is righteous and loving, why are their wars? Why do people suffer?\' Just because his thoughts have taken on the more mature tones of a theologist doesn\'t take away from their simplicity. He feels basic emotions, with the exception of pain, though something tells me that there\'s an easy explanation for that, also.

Have you ever been shot? Well, probably not, but I have. Plenty of times. It\'s not a pleasant experience, but most of the time I don\'t notice that I\'ve got a hot lead lodged somewhere into my body until after the adrenaline rush subsides and I\'m out of immediate danger. Your body will, more times than not, block out the physical pain to make room for the emotions you\'re feeling: fear, anger, a definite survival kick. With Farfarello, I think that he hurts so much inside, and there\'s so much raw feeling reigning unleashed in his mind, that physical pain is a mere afterthought.

It makes me wonder if pain is the only emotion that his mind has blocked out, or if there\'s more.

He\'s smirking slightly, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and it\'s times like these that I truly question the extent of Farfarello\'s gifts. Sometimes I\'ll think something to myself and he\'ll chuckle, or look slightly surprised, and I have to wonder whether or not he shares my ability to read minds, or Brad\'s gift of foresight. If he is in fact a telepath, then he certainly hasn\'t shown any real disapproval of my thoughts regarding him. Maybe...

I look up from my musings to find Farfarello standing in front of me, single golden eye watching me curiously, and he frowns. \"Can I hold\'t?\"

Confusion sweeps me only momentarily before I realize that he wants his sword, and then I smile inwardly at his childish speech. I suppose it couldn\'t hurt anything. Brad isn\'t here, after all...

I nod, sprawling out across one of the leather wingbacks that flank the fireplace, resting my cheek on one fist as I watch him open the display case and remove his weapon. He drops bonelessly to the carpet with the blade held firmly in his hands, not outwardly conscious of the blood that dribbles out of his closed fists and onto the carpet.

\"Shit, Far!\" I jump up from my seat, dropping to the floor beside him to scrub hastily at the once-immaculate white carpet with my shirt sleeve, and he looks over, watching as he runs his fingers down the length of the blade. \"Brad is going to have my balls for this...\"

The blood isn\'t coming out of the carpet, so I sit back on my haunches, brain whirling as I try to come up with a million different excuses for the stain. Beside me, Farfarello shrugs. \"Tell \'em t\'was m\'fault.\"

I look up at my friend and shake my head, orange-red bangs flying into my eyes. \"No, Far. He\'ll lock you in that damned cell and I\'ll have to kill him, this time.\"

What to do, what to do...

My eyes light up, poison-green as Nagi says when I get a bad idea, and I grit my teeth, holding out my arm. \"Cut me,\" I order.

The Irishman beside me blinks, that lone honey-colored eye widening slightly, that elegant silver brow rising in an arc, and the Berserker laughs, a soft bark. \"You\'ve lost yer damn\'d mind, Red.\" He lifts the sword with expert hands, resting the blade against the pale skin of my forearm, and the lights from the cabinet looming over us glint off of the smooth steel like maniac fireflies. \"I canna cutcha.\"

I growl softly, irritation colored panic at this. \"Just do it, Far! I\'ll tell him that I was fucking around with the damned thing and I cut myself. He\'ll believe me.\" I sigh, steeling myself again and averting my eyes. I\'ve never been a friend of unnecessary suffering. \"Now cut me, before I lose my nerve.\"

This time his soft, lilting accent does not disagree. His mind is a mixture of suppressed bloodlust, trepidation, and confusion, but I can\'t look at him, or I\'ll chicken-out. We sit in silence for almost a minute, and then his hand clamps down around my wrist, a surprisingly warm vice, and he draws the blade sharply across my skin.

\"Shit...\" I hiss through clenched teeth, and when I do open my eyes, there\'s an angry-looking slash down the inside of my left arm, a thin dribble of blood rolling down my arm. Farfarello is crouched, catlike, beside me, his lithe form curled around the limb in his hands, his single golden eye tracking the progress of the crimson staining my pale skin.

\"Far?\" I ask tentatively, and he doesn\'t move, doesn\'t respond. The blade has been deposited carefully in his lap, and he\'s got my wrist in one hand, my elbow in the other. Granted, this kid\'s had a sick fascination with blood and all things remotely squeamish for a long time, but it\'s definately unnerving to have his lust for yucky things turned on you.

I reach up with my non-imprisoned hand and tap his shoulder gently--physical contact with our Berserker was never expressly forbidden, but the one time that Brad did attempt to manually get him under control, he found himself on the recieving end of a well-aimed roundhouse kick to the gut; we steer clear out of some random self-preservation drive.

That amber eye darts from my arm to his shoulder, then settles on my face, and his expression is impossible to determine. Only my gift allows me to understand what\'s going on inside that tortured mind.

Blood, Schuldich, m\'blade, God, hurt, pain, need t\'feel...

\"Farfarello?\" His thoughts have taken a decidely unpleasant turn. His usual mantra, a pattern of surface thoughts that I\'ve gotten very acquainted with over the past few years, is quiet, almost subdued, and his eye has lost its customary manic gleam.

\"Schuldich?\" He echoes me half-mockingly, half-seriously, his heavily-accented voice low and dangerous. He\'s still crouched over my arm, and I realize with a jolt that he\'s very warm, and he smells like laundry detergent and soap. I\'d always expected his skin to be cold, like the snow that it resembles when unblemished, and I thought that there would be something acrid and unappealing about his scent, and I\'m surprised. And in the dim glow of the cabinet, his eye burns an antiquated amber, like old gold that\'s been polished new again. His scars are highlighted by the odd lighting, the dark marrs across the bridge of his nose, the one that bisects his lower lip, the jagged line that cuts from under his right ear to just under his remaining eye...

He\'s frighteningly beautiful.

My feelings for our Irishman have always centered around his twisted personality, the maelstrom of his mind, but what I\'m seeing now has sent a lance of pure lust to the pit of my stomach. I realize that I\'m staring, now, but I can\'t help it. Farfarello realizes that I\'m staring, as well, but he deigns to not comment. He\'s really obnoxious like that sometimes...

\"See somethin\' te yer likin\'?\" He smirks after a heartbeat too long of our intense and oppressive silence, and part of my mind screams, So what if I do?, but then that\'s the smart-assed part of me that Brad hates, so I swallow the retort back and shake my head slowly. He snorts softly, an exhalation of breath across my cheek, and in one fluid motion he\'s standing, and I\'m looking at the worn, dark blue denim of his jeans. \"Pity,\" he quips darkly, and leaves the study, sword in tow.

Pity, I think to myself, and then my brain has one of those spluttering moments that make me happy that I\'m the telepath. My mental wheels grind to a halt and the figurative squealing of brakes amounts to a verbal, \'What the fuck?!\'

I jump to my feet, ignoring the dull sting in my arm, and follow him out of the study, back into the den, where he sits atop the coffee table once more, gnawing at the ridges of the blade, my own blood streaked down the cold metal, his free hand tugging half-heartedly at the thick leather collar that encircles his neck. I don\'t quite remember where that particular article came from, but he\'s been wearing it for a while, now. I like it. Brad doesn\'t. I think his exact words were, \"If I wanted a dog, I\'d buy one that wouldn\'t kill our neighbors.\"

That\'s ridiculous, anyway, because we don\'t have nieghbors...

\"Ye\'ll be wantin\' t\'clean tha\' up, hm?\" His quiet voice drifts to me, from where I stand behind the couch, and his back\'s to me as he watches the television with apathetic interest. I glance down at my arm, and--feeling a little daring, a little suicidal--I skirt the couch, coming to stand before him. Farfarello looks mildly annoyed that I\'ve blocked his view of the TV, merely out of principle, and gives me an exasperated look. Pale hands tuck the knife into the pouch on the front of his hooded sweatshirt. \"Can I \'elp ye?\"

My trademark grin takes my lips, and I hold my arm out to him, gash in his line of sight, and cock my head to one side. \"Yeah,\" I chuckle. \"You broke it, you fix it.\"

For a moment, I think he might smile, but he doesn\'t. No, the next thing that I register is the impact of his agile, slight weight against my body, and he sends us sprawling across the living room floor, the carpet digging into my back from the force he\'s used. He\'s hit me hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, and I cough hoarsely, struggling out of instinct as his hands close over the wrist of my injured arm, twisting it back and the movement forces me to roll onto my stomach underneath him in an effort at escaping the nearly unbearable pressure. \"Far! Let go!\"

He laughs, a chillingly happy sound, and twists with more ferocity. \"Yer arm\'s not broken, yet. T\'will be, shortly.\"

\"Farfarello!\" I\'m shouting now, fighting against him physically because I don\'t want to have to knock him out mentally. \"Don\'t make me hurt you...\"

And then the idea hits me that perhaps that\'s what he wants.

His mind is blank, damned-near peaceful after I stun him. He\'s only safe from the myriad of nightmares and memories that plague him when he\'s unconscious, because his mind shuts down. He\'s provoking me in the hopes that I\'ll get tired of fighting him and simply knock him out.

So why not give him what he wants and spare my shoulder a dislocation?

\"Fine. Have it your way,\" I growl out, and send a bolt of mental energy through the link that I have with his mind. It\'s enough to throw him off-kilter, but not enough to render him helpless. Hey, if he\'s going to use me to achieve his own goals, I should get something out of the deal, too. A drugged or dazed Farfarello makes for muddled conversation.

He slumps against my back, his blade pressed to my skin muffled only by two layers of clothing, and my wrist is free. I sigh in relief, rotating the abused joint, and then I roll us over, so that I\'ve got Farfarello pinned underneath me, my thighs holding his hips to the carpet, his arms held in one of my hands. He looks fazed, but mutely dangerous at the same time. Fuck, he\'s deadly even after Brad injects him with those tranquilizers he\'s so fond of... Following that line of thought I fish around in the pouch of his sweatshirt and retrieve his knife, tossing it across the living room.

\"You\'re one obnoxious son-of-a-bitch sometimes, you know that?\" I mutter a string of curses in German, studying his eye. Even stunned, he still retains a feral quality about him. He\'s like a really disgruntled, overgrown house cat.

He doesn\'t respond to my insult, but his mind is slowing down. Right now, he\'s more than a little annoyed at being pinned down--the Berserker doesn\'t go for being dominated or bested in a fight--and he wants his blade back.

Is that all he ever thinks about? His fucking knives mean more to him than we do...

\"Aye,\" he murmurs, and I glance up at him. \"But tha\'s why y\'love me, right?\"

His features are relaxed, his eye half-lidded. He\'s completely docile under me, which is unusual because normally my energy bolts will only keep him down for thirty seconds, maximum. He\'s choosing to remain calm, submissive... Why?

\"Far, what in hell\'s gotten into you?\"

He chuckles softly. \"Hell\'s already part\'a me. Now guilt is, as well.\"

It takes a moment, because I\'m not too bright when in my Farfarello-induced hazes, to see through the surface insanity of his babbling and realize that he was making a pun, and that he was referring to the translation of my name. Mind of a child he may have, but he\'s damned clever when he wants to be. He speaks in twisted Bible verses and lyrical phrase, and if one doesn\'t take the time to sift through all of the allusions and symbolism in his speech, one might conclude that all he speaks is morbid poetry, but he\'s actually talking sense. His mind is simple.

And then I\'m gazing down at my teammate, and I feel very guilty, in a filthy sort of way that I haven\'t experienced in years.

Is loving Farfarello the moral equivalent of loving a six year-old child? I\'m as sure that he\'s a virgin as I am that the fucking sky is blue, and I know from delving through his ruby-tinted memories that the most intimate physical contact that he\'s ever shared with someone is a full-works check-up with an SS doctor every six months. He\'s never been kissed, and the last time that someone embraced him out of anything remotely sugar-coated was two days before he killed his parents.

You don\'t hug assassins. It\'s kind of a rule of the trade. You don\'t get within arm\'s length of psychopaths. And you sure as hell don\'t fall in love with one, either. Well, I\'ve broken one of the commandments; why not go for the full combo?

Because you like your arms attached to your torso, a thin voice reminds me, and again I\'m left to sit on Farfarello\'s slim hips and sigh. Would he really attack me? I remember the reluctance on his scarred features when I asked him to cut me in the study, but then the wild, crazed amusement I saw in his eye was very real when he jumped me five minutes ago. Farfarello and I spar, occassionally. Brad and Nagi think I\'m nuts, and that Far\'s insanity is rubbing off on me, but it helps him to vent pent-up frustration when there are lulls between missions, and it helps me to sharpen my hand-to-hand combat skills, which aren\'t so hot. When I \'step into the ring\' with him, so-to-speak, there\'s a shitload of trust at play.

I trust Farfarello to hold his bloodlust in-check.

I trust him to pull his punches.

I trust him not to rip me apart.

Six year-old boys rough-house. They play fight and wrestle. Maybe these minor skirmishes are Farfarello\'s idea of playing. The kid\'s strong enough to break bones with his bare hands, and his idea of having a good time is dissecting the human body, and now I\'m his playmate?

That cigarette is sounding better and better.

\"Schu?\"

I frown and snap at him, though I don\'t mean to. I think that after half a decade of dealing with me, he\'s gotten used to verbal abuse. \"What do you want?\"

His eye narrows and he rolls his hips up into mine, and while the sensation triggers a very distinct reaction in me--my pulse quickens and my head feels like all of the blood has dropped to my groin--I know that there was nothing sexual intended by his actions; he\'s just trying to illustrate a point. \"Why\'re y\'still sittin\' on me?\"

Why am I still sitting here? I purse my lips in thought. Because I want an excuse to be close to you, I think to myself. Because I need to feel you against me, and if nearly getting my arm dislocated is the only way to do it, then so be it.

Because you\'re the only thing in this sleazy whore of a city that grounds me, reminds me that I am Schuldich and I have a purpose, and sometimes I need this. Sometimes I need you.

God, I sound like a chick-flick. If I keep thinking hard on this, maybe I\'ll develop an influx of estrogen, as well.

\"Am I bothering you?\" I grit out irritably. That honey-colored eye focuses on a spot just past my shoulder, on the ceiling, and after a moment he shakes his head.

And once again I find myself lost in thoughts that resound of his lilting accent. If I came onto him, made some kind of overture, would he except out of genuine willingness, or because it was a way to anger his God. See, while Nagi and Brad are positive that he\'s a raving lunatic, that every actions he makes is deliberately done to \'hurt God\', I know that assumption to be false. Sometimes Farfarello does things just because he feels like it. But would he feel like loving me...?

My musings have run full-circle, back to that annoying little issue of \'can Far love?\'. Thoughts tend to be cycling in nature, and it annoys me. Six year-olds can love. Hell, they love their parents, and friends, and animals, right? And Farfarello loved God at one point, but this is a different kind of love.

A different train of thought hits me, and I\'m thankful to follow it out of my current mental slump. Can I settle for less than love from Far? Could I settle for devotion, loyalty, some twisted form of committment from him? Do I want to commit myself to him?

I look down at the silent form beneath mine and he\'s closed his eye, pale silver lashes lying against paler skin. He\'s relaxed completely in my hold, and I muse that if I were to release his wrists from my hold right now he\'d probably just leave them lying against the carpet on either side of his head. I give his mental shields a tentative push and they crumble easily, retracting and folding in on themselves, and he murmurs something in Gaelic but doesn\'t open his eye. He always lets me in, and I wonder why.

I sound like him, now.

His mind isn\'t the barren graveyard that most expect it to be. It\'s bright, full of all things moving, and patterns. There are patterns everywhere. Patterns in his behaviour, his words, his habits, his memories. Everything is ordered, and everything has its place in his mind. I amble around in his head, sorting through a myriad of facts on all number of subjects, bits and pieces of religious trivia, fighting statistics that he has compiled on Weiss, even a list of his favorite flavors of ice cream.

Yes, Far likes ice cream. No, it doesn\'t hurt God. I\'ve thought about it.

Music resounds throughout bits and pieces of his thoughts, the lyrics in English, and I laugh as I realize that for all Farfarello dresses like a punk, his choices in music reflect it. Wailing guitars and heavy bass beats intersperse themselves in his mind, accompanied by the occasional angry lyric barked out by a disgruntled teenager. I noted a while ago that when we go on long-distance trips away from Tokyo he brings a beat-up old MP3 player that he acquired after we recruited him, but I never took note of what he was listening to until now. It suits him, and I can\'t say that I don\'t enjoy the music...

And then the line that h bee been thinking about stutters, like a scratched record, and it\'s like someone threw a wrench in the works of his mind momentarily. Something flashes, an anomaly among his structured thoughts, and I\'m instantly drawn toward it. It takes some digging, because this particular thought is allusive, and it seems that once it makes itself present in his head, he tries desperately to force it back down.

He\'s hiding something.

A wave of hope and anticipation pasthrothrough me, but I ignore it. This thought of his could be anything, so praying that it has something to do with my muddled feelings is beyond stupid. I pursue, and note that there is a pattern to even this mutinous little notion that he\'s trying to hide. It\'s presence isn\'t triggered by anything specific, but it goes away when he wills it to, only to resurface seconds later. So I follow it to where he\'s trying to lock it away, and I wait for it to rebel once more.

I\'m not disappointed. It fights away from his irritation a heartbeat later and I take a mental lunge, snagging the thought and delving fully into it.

In retrospect I should have known better than to take a dive into some random thought of Farfarello\'s. But they say that hindsight is always twenty-twenty. The moment I breach the other youth\'s thought, I\'m awash in a sea of confusion and anger. It\'s overpowering, painting my vision red and gray, and a raging flood of uncertainty consumes me. His voice resounds in my own mind, all around me, and even the fluently-spoken words aren\'t completely present.

Aingidh... Dubh aingeal... Pian... naid...

It feels like someone\'s taken the ground from beneath my feet and I\'m falling into a cold pit, and I feel myself fight against the current that threatens to drown me, and I know that this is what Farfarello feels when this particular thought catches him off-guard. From somewhere outside the whirlwind ois ois one thought, I hear an angry growl, and suddenly I can\'t breath, but it has nothing to do with my mental surroundings. Something in the physical plane is obstructing my trachea.

I struggle harder against the raging torrents of his thought, of the confusion, the loss, the self-deprecation, but I\'m losing my sense of self. I\'m falling into him, and I can\'t tell where he stops thinking and I start feeling, again. The cold pit\'s rocky, jagged bottom is approaching at an alarming rate, and I slam into a beautiful, agonizing death. Blackness consumes me.

+++

\"...Serves y\'right...\"

I come-to some while later, and I don\'t know what time it is. It feels like I\'ve been asleep for hours. My legs are stiff, and my throat feels like someone cleaned it out with sandpaper.

Farfarello\'s muttering catches my ears, and I will my eyelids open, grimacing at the light that streams into them from the television set. We\'re still in the living room, though now I\'m on my back and he\'s straddling my hips. How we switches positions is beyond me. I don\'t even care that he\'s armed, again. I just need to reorient myself with my own thoughts, because the link between us is wide open and seething. He\'s angry, but not in a \'I\'ll kill anything that moves\' kinda way. No, this is a deeper anger. This is a betrayed type of anger.

If I don\'t get some nicotine into my lungs, soon, I might lapse into one of those homocidal rages. When I die of a Farfarello-induced lung cancer, someday, I swear by Christ I\'ll fucking haunt him.

I look up, groggy, my eyes adjusting to the flickering light, and the television screen bathes his face in a soft blue gleam. It catches on the blade, glinting lazily as he chews at it, glows on his pale skin, and turns his red sweatshirt an almost indigo color. \"Why does it feel like someone tried to strangle me?\" I groan, pressing tentative fingers to the tender, bruised flesh of my neck.

Farfarello sneers, retorting around the red-streaked edge of his blade. \"B\'cause I did try t\'strangle ye.\"

Oh. Well, in that case... \"You asshole!\" I shout, shoving at him, and his stomach feels strangely soft through the thick layer of the sweatshirt. \"Why\'d you do that?!\"

A glowing amber eye regards me with loathing, a controlled fury. He pulls the knife from between full lips and snarls softly. \"\'Cause y\'need t\'learn not t\'go rummagin\' \'round in things tha\' dun belong t\'ye.\"

What in the world is he... oh. I recall with a sharp jab of mental discomfort the thought that I delved into, and my eyes widen. \"Why were you hiding it from me?\" I shoot back, and he shifts under my gaze after a moment. I\'ve never seen Farfarello squirm out of nervous habit before and it\'s strangely endearing.

\"Y\'dun have t\'be privy t\'me every wakin\' thought, d\'ye?\"

My automatic answer is yes. I want to know what he\'s thinking constantly, and it isn\'t a need based on fear. It\'s not that I want to keep tabs on him, that I don\'t trust him; it\'s the complete opposite. I want to know what he\'s thinking about because I want it to be me. I want to know what goes on in that warped, beautiful mind because it\'s his.

\t art are you so afraid of?\" I ask instead, intending to catch him off guard, but that\'s like hoping for snow in Havanna.

He leans closer, and his face is inches from mine. I can feel his breath on my cheek, and it tastes like mint toothpaste and the sharp, metallic tang of fresh blood. \"What\'re y\'so afraid\'a not knowin\'?\"

It\'s a stalemate, now, a staring contest, and he already knows that he won\'t lose. Chalk it up to a solid sense of chivalry on my part, but I look away. I lay my cheek against the scratchy carpet of the living room floor and sigh. \"Tell me what you\'re afraid of and I\'ll tell you why I\'m afraid,\" I concede.

I hear his elbows lock, palms flat against the floor on either side of my head, and he hangs his own. The television shoots jagged, crazed sapphire highlights through his spiked silver hair. He\'s mulling over my proposal, but I don\'t want to risk jumping back into his head so soon after regaining unsteady ground within my own. Instead, I revert back to relying on the basics; his expression, the thickness of the lilt in his voice, his body posture.

\"M\'chest \'urts whenever you\'re \'round,\" he murmurs, thoughtful. \"M\'chest \'urts and I \'ave thoughts tha\' aren\'t m\'own.\"

In his childish way of thinking, it\'s the best that he can explain it, but I understand. The confusion, the uncertainty aren\'t things that he normally feels. I reach up, carefully, slowly, and run a hand through his short hair. His head lifts with the motion, until I\'m cupping the back of his head in that hand and he\'s looking down at me. He\'s confused because of my presence, or maybe my presence triggers the confusion. And physical pain... No, he must mean emotional pain. That\'s probably the only way that he knows to express it.

So he feels the exact thing that I do when confronted with him.

That amber eye narrows and he cocks his head to the side expectantly. I chew my lower lip for a moment and then avert my eyes, much the way he did, and answer his question. \"I\'m afraid of not knowing because I don\'t want to miss anything that you\'re thinking.\"

A soft, wry snort is his response. \"Why? \'Re y\'afraid you\'ll miss m\'thinkin\' \'bout rippin\' yer throat out?\"

I feel a grin tug at the corner of my lips. Maybe his thoughts aren\'t quite as childish as I thought. He has a sick sense of humor that I\'ve always found highly amusing. He lets out a sigh, explosive in the silence of the living room, and lowers himself onto me, tucking his head under my chin, and I reach up to sling my arms around his waist. He feels thin, almost frail underneath the thick, baggy sweatshirt. He seems like a normal teenager, excluding his severe appearance.

\"Far, do you know what you\'re feeling?\"

His answer surprises me, soft and muffled against my chest. \"Somethin\' tha\'ll surely make Crawford very nervous.\" I chuckle outright at that, and I know that he\'s smirking, as well. And then the humor of the moment all but flees us, and in its wake is a veritable uncertainty. Even without my Gift, I know the question that lingers on his mind--what now?

\"I dun love ye.\" His words are quiet, simple, and blunt. His words define him. \"I doubt tha\' I\'m even capable\'a lovin\' another person.\"

I nod, stroking one hand through his spiky, ruffled hair, and frown. \"Then what do you feel?\" I\'m almost afraid to hear his answerd itd it strikes me then how ridiculous this situation is. Me, of all people, worried about what a teenaged kidnks nks of me... But that is the situation, and I do care.

Farfarello thinks on this for a moment before answering. \"I\'m \'fraid somethin\'s goin\' t\'happen t\'ye. I\'m...\" He pauses, trying to find the right words, and I know that he\'s frustrated. I can feel him tense against me, hear his molars grating together, and it\'s quickly turning into anger, seeping steadily through our link. \"I feel \'lone when yer not \'round.\"

He raises himself up onto his elbows on either side of my neck, gazing down at me with something close to fear burning in his remaining honey-gold eye. His slender brows draw together in a frown, and his voice is subdued, heavy with his Irish brogue. \"I dun care \'bout \'urtin\' God when I\'m with ye.\"

It seems as if the very concept of anyone competing with his attention for that particular habit of his confuses the hell out of Farfarello. His handsome face, normally so cold, so stoic, so dazed, is sharp and lost, both at once. For a while I thought that taking his attention away from the desecration of the Catholic church would be a good idea. Christianity as a topic tends to send him into his rages faster than anything else, and I tried to distract him for a good three months with other things: books, video games, alcohol, sex. The latter two didn\'t work out too well. It seems that--ironic enough, to me at least--our Irishman can\'t stand the taste of alcohol, and he definately can\'t hold his liquor once you get the shit down his throat. As far as sex... I had been fairly certain that he\'d rip my dick off and feed it to me. Now, I\'m not so sure, but I digress.

See, a part of Farfarello, or Jei--whatever\'s left of him--wants to let go of his hatred and continue his life as a very jaded Catholic. He\'s willing to except that there are loopholes in the Catachisms that he was taught, that there exist contradictions within the Bible that no one can explain to him. He wants to chalk it all up to his limited ability to understand something so divine and move on, but as I\'ve said before, a bad habit can be a real bitch to break.

What is new to him, here, is the very notion that something could take over in his mind that hatred, that destructive energy, and turn it into a creative one, and it was a mere mortal of all things that inspired said change. It was me.

So now we sit in an uncomfortable silence, just looking at each other, and I\'m waiting for the front door to burst open, for Brad and Nagi to storm into the house and drag Far to his cell, yell at me for giving him his blade, scream about the blood in the carpet... Anything to break this spell we\'ve fallen into.

And I\'m not disappointed, because Farfarello decides to make himself useful. He closes the distance between us, and though hesitantly, in a brief display of dominance, presses his lips against mine. The action is clumsy, experimental at best, and it\'s novel to me to see someone so naturally graceful and sure of himself walk on unsteady ground, but it\'s all I can ask of him. I can take over from here.

Throwing all caution to the wind, I lift my arms from around his waist and cup his face in my hands as he pulls back. His scarred visage is awash in that awkward confusion, still, and a tinge of curiosity. He looks so young, so innocent, and for a moment I\'m willing to entertain the idea. For a brief span of time and heartbeat, we aren\'t killers, anymore. We\'re two teenagers laying tangled on the living room floor, caught up in one another, taking virginal and clumsy steps towards a new relationship.

For a breath of my life, I\'m free from the ever-present push of voices inside my head.

Farfarello allowed me clearance to advance this the moment that he closed the distance between us, and I can see the docile look on his face. I close my eyes and kiss him once more, and this time it\'s more than just a meeting of mouths. This time he\'s concentrating, he\'s trying to make heads or tails of what we\'re doing. He\'s paying attention, because something in the back of his ordered mind tells him that he\'ll be getting a lot of experience at this, and he\'ll need every bit of it.

Smart kid.

His lips are full, soft, pressing oddly against mine, not yet comfortable with the pressure, but he\'s moving. He\'s warm, God is he warm, and I can feel his eyelashes against my cheekbone, feel his pulse quicken against my chest. Far might not register bodily pain because of the onslaught of emotional torment that he totes around, but he can sure as hell recognize pleasure. It chases away every hurtful idea that\'s floating around in his head, replaces it with something heated and tangible, and he grabs ahold of the sensation like a drowning man to driftwood.

If he is my escape from the constant noises of the outside world, then I am his only true link to the world I seek to escape from. I want out of the real world and into a quieter one, and he wants out of his world and into a real one.

He feels safe. He feels warm. He feels dozens of things that he hasn\'t experienced in over a decade, and he whimpers against my mouth, a soft, pathetic sound, and presses against me. The link is raw, wide-open to our emotions, and it\'s awe-inspiring to me the range of feelings that pass over him in mere seconds. He\'s confused by his body\'s reaction to my behavior. He\'s angry at himself for feeling so weak. He\'s lightheaded because of how good this feels. He\'s afraid that if he can\'t reciprocate my feelings for him that I\'ll abandon him.

That last thought hits me hard, makes something in me constrict that I didn\'t know existed and Farfarello\'s skilled dissections couldn\'t uncover.

\...\...\" I trail off, words lost on me, for once, and I settle for running a hand through his hair, pressing my cheek to his as he pants above me, eye wide.

His lithe form is shaking, his hands clenched into fists on either side of my head. He\'s on sensory-overload from a simple kiss, and it\'s frightening to watch him lose control so easily. He\'s terrified that he\'s losing control so easily, and it occurs to me at that moment that anyone else would be lying dead beneath him at this point. I am the only person that he\'ll crumble around. I\'m the only person that he lets through his walls, past his defenses.

That\'s as close to love as he can give me. It\'s all I need.

I kiss his closed eyelid, feel his lashes flutter involuntarily against my mouth. I cover his trembling lips with my own once more, tracing the soft r of of scar tissue that bisects the lower one, tugging it lightly between my teeth, and when my tongue seeks entrance to the hot cavern of his mouth he obliges without hesitation. I\'m in control, and he simply responds. It\'s a good feeling.

I could sleep with every stranger in Tokyo over the course of my lifetime, any virgin I picked out of a crowd, and nothing would compare to the feeling of fear that eminates from his willowy frame. It\'s morbid and beautiful, both at once, and I can\'t get enough of it. No one has ever needed me before. Farfarello isn\'t even certain that he likes this newfound dependency, but he doesn\'t lie to himself. He acknowledges its presence with a mental groan and promptly loses himself in my proximity.

My hands slip down his cheeks, one tracing the scar on his lip, trailing it down the dark line that cuts through his chin, to the back of his jaw. The other drops to his side, sliding under the sweatshirt to rest against his hip, my fingertips running absently over the warm, well-worn leather of his belt and the metal stng ing it. I\'m so lost in his euphoria, drunk on his newly-discovered pleasure in my touch and his subtle trepidation that neither of us notice that we aren\'t alone until Brad clears his throat rather loudly.

When Farfarello\'s lips leave mine he growls in annoyance, and I know that the action is not directed towards me. He\'s glaring at our ty ley leader like the man\'s asked him to join the clergy, and I can\'t help but chuckle. I run a hand down his back, over the hood of his sweatshirt and to the hem, to soothe him, and he relaxes. He\'s still in \'overgrown housecat\' mode, I guess.

As I meet Brad\'s chocolate eyes I can see that he is none-too-pleased with me. \"Why is that knife out of my study?\" he asks calmly, indicating the stained blade that I\'d tossed across the living room earlier. I sigh, rubbing a hand over my eyes. This isn\'t going to end well.

\"I took it out.\"

He arches an eyebrow and crosses his arms over his chest. \"And why would you have done that?\"

Brad Crawford is a condescending bastard, sometimes. \"Because I felt like it. Do I need a reason?\" I snap. \"I\'m a grown man, Brad. I can make those kinds of decisions without your permission.\"

Our industrious leader is always a step ahead of me, it seems. If he weren\'t a Pre-Cog he\'d be shit-out-of-luck. \"No, you let Farfarello take it out, and he cut himself. I knew that an hour ago, Schuldich.\"

Nagi steps into the apartment, locking the door behind himself, and he flushes slightly at the sight of his teammates sprawled out across the living room floor and each other. I ignore him for the moment. \"Then why act shocked? I\'ll clean the carpet tomorrow, all right?\"

The Oracle sighs angrilly. \"No, Schuldich,\" he grits out my name, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. \"You\'ll clean it now. And then you\'ll take Farfarello to his room and lock him in for the night.\"

That does it. I feel Far tense against me and I push him aside gently, standing to my full height before Brad and shaking my head. \"I take a lot of orders from you, but I ain\'t takin\' that one. And I won\'t lock him up. He\'s not the family pet. He\'s a person. We\'ve had this argument.\"

\"Yes, we have, and he always ends up locked in his room.\"

This is actually a nighty occurence in our apartment. I do something I know I\'m not supposed to do, Brad tries to issue a punishment, an argument escalates to violence, and I lose. It\'s a pattern that I know I can\'t change, but even so I feel my anger boiling and Nagi raises his hands, ready to halt the brawl in its tracks, but before I can take a swing at Brad I feel strong hands take my wrists from behind me, and Farfarello\'s soft brogue is filling my mind.

Give \'im wha\' he wants. Let\'t go.

Normally I would have snapped at that, would have zapped Far and then tackled Brad, but I decide to acquiesce him this time. Quietly, still glaring at our leader for all I\'m worth, I let Farfarello drag me to his cell. He pushes me down onto his bed resolutely, then kneels between my knees to remove my boots. I gaze down at him in the dim light that filters in through the window. \"What are you doing?\" I inquire quietly, and he glances up at me.

\"Keepin\' y\'out\'a trouble.\"

I smile, nodding, and when my boots land on the other side of the room I stretch out on my back. He\'s watching me, gazing down at me thoughtfully. I throw an arm over my eyes and lie there for a few moments, and then shift uncomfortably under his eye. \"What?\"

A frown takes his lips, lopsided because of his scar, and he moves his gaze to the window. \"If y\'leave me I won\'t hesitate t\'kill ye.\" His voice is low, deathly honest. He never lies, anyway.

I lift my arm, gazing at him in surprise. He\'s regained that innocent, unsure look about him. I reach out, grabbing his hand, tugging him towards the bed. He lets himself stumble, fall, lets me catch him in a tight embrace. Our Berserker is pliant in my arms, his own holding onto me almost desperately. It\'s odd to see him like this, so uncertain, so dependant, and I decide that I want that feral creature that we\'d taken from the asylum in England back. That\'s the Farfarello that I fell in love with. This is a part of him, yes, but I need to know that I haven\'t broken him.

\"Mark me,\" I whisper to him, my lips moving over the body-warmed silver metal in his ear. \"Make me yours.\"

It\'s a dangerous thing to suggest to a trained killer, but I know that it\'ll placate him. I\'m not too afraid of him harming me, and some small part of me wants to bear some sign of him. He bears my mental signature. It would be only fitting that I carried some shard of his handiwork, as well.

His eye is questioning, searching my face for any trace of misgiving, of mockery, and finding none he sits up atop me, reaching behind him to my calf. His slender fingers easily find the butterfly knife that I keep strapped to my leg, and he flips the weapon to attention with a quick flick of his wrist. Carefully, slowly, he takes the hem of my shirt and pushes it up, exposing the taut surface of my stomach to his eyes and the cool air of his room. My mind begins second-guessing itself, wondering if maybe this wasn\'t such a brilliant idea, but I want this. I trust him.

Some rebellious part of my common sense sends me a visual of a feral snarl curling those full lips and the knife protruding from my stomach, but I block it out. He sits back, thinking to himself, and I decide to stay out of his mind. I want his actions to be completely free of my tampering. His straight, even white teeth tug at his scarred lower lip, and then he\'s placing the blade between those teeth, using both hands to unbutton and unzip my pants, his eye locked with mine.

His thoughts are clear even without seeking them out; if I want him to stop, he will. But I don\'t, and hence his fingers work the button free, drag my fly down audibly, and then he\'s pushing himself onto his knees, backing down my legs until he can tug my pants down with him, and they fall to the floor at the end of the bed with a muffled rush of cloth on carpet. He\'s seen me in my shorts before, but never in this context, and it\'s odd.

He\'s honestly never thought about me in a sexual context, I realize with a start, and now I can\'t help but listen to the thoughts pouring through our link. He\'s thinking about my lips on his, and how it made him feel, and he\'s wondering if it gets stronger, be. I. I know the answer to that, but I let it go for now. We have time.

Instead I watch him push my knees apart, my eyes trailing over his slender form as he kneels between my thighs, taking the knife from between his teeth, and his eyes rake over every exposed inch of my skin. Slowly, he leans down on his elbows, laying against the mattress, and then his mouth is pressed to the sensitive skin at the inside of my right thigh, and I gasp at the contact.

Now I can\'t help but put this situation in a sexual light.

His lips are gentle, curious, and his tongue flicks lightly against my skin. He curls one arm around my thigh, the other still brandishing my blade, and he presses the cool metal to my flesh. My eyes fall closed at the sensation of inexperienced kisses to my thigh, and I hiss loudly as the blade digs into my skin, once, then again, the cuts perpendicular to each other. Blood trickles down my leg and onto the sheets from the cross carved into my skin, and the wounds sting.

I can tell without looking that they\'ll scar, and that makes me strangely content.

Farfarello\'s mouth presses to the cut, and I cry out in surprise as his tongue runs over the cuts he\'s made, washing away steadily seeping blood, soothing his abuse with gentle care. My hands thread through his close-cropped silver hair and he makes a soft sound, a sigh or moan.

\"Mine,\" he whispers into the skin, and then he gets to his knees once more, fishing around over the edge of the bed for my pants. He returns them and I replace them, breathing faster than normal as I struggle with the button, and he straddles my hips once more, batting my hands away. I lay back as he restores my clothing to its original order and close my eyes. Moments later he\'s laying atop me again, face buried in my neck, curled against me. \"Mine.\" His voice is a soft exhalation of breath against my skin, and then he\'s sleeping, and as I wrap my arms around him I rest my jaw against his forehead.

Giving the mental finger to the voices pounding steadily on my shields and my craving for nicotine, I slip into Farfarello\'s crimson-colored dreams.

+++

End. Well, I might write a sequel. Do you want one? \'S up to the reviewers, I s\'pose.