Red Stars

(This was written for the Weiss Day fanfic challenge on LiveJournal. The intended recipient was Mami-San, of Patterns of Blood fame.)

-o0o-

And they'll say "all the salt in the world couldnt melt that ice"
I'm the one who gets away
I'm a New Jersey success story
And they'll say "Lord give me the chance to shake that hand"
Jimmy Eat World - Big Casino
-

It started with a dream. Fiery red hair, flashing blue eyes, and biting sharp words. He couldn't hear what was said; it was muffled in the way dreams often are. He knew what the meaning was, however. 'Do this thing and I'm going to leave.'

And his own, inexplicable reply: 'Leave then.'

A dare. A taunt. How unlike him. He never picked on those weaker than him, which was almost everyone. Who was this stranger who kept appearing in his nights?

Shoving such thoughts to the side, he rolled over and out of bed. Three A.M. Two hours before his alarm was set to go off. Knowing he was to get no more rest that night, he simply stood up, and padded towards the bathroom for a shower. The moment he stepped out of his bedroom, he realized something was wrong. The house was quiet.

The house was never quiet. His mother always slept with her television on, and his father snored like a bear. It was enough to give his self-confidence pause, and he turned away from the bathroom towards the stairs. Another pause above the landing, and he surveyed his house. Large, affluent. He'd always been proud of living where he did, of being who he was. His mother, Rosalia Crawford, had married down initially, as she was fond of saying. His father had made her proud by rising through the ranks to become CEO of the company, in the top five of the Fortune Five Hundred list. She was a fashion designer, and Crawford was still in school for business, intending to enter into his father's company when he graduated.

Something flashed briefly in his mind, unclear, but bringing with it the feeling that everything he'd worked so hard for was going to change. Another flash, and he saw the headline of the New York Times: "CEO and Family Murdered." It was dated the next day. Or rather, later this day. He'd dealt with this his whole life, this strange knowing. Rosalia was fond of telling him that it came from her side of the family; she came from a deeply entrenched Italian family, who could trace their lineage back to the golden days of Rome itself, before Italy was Italy and when a single city ruled the world.

It had always amused her that they now carried on this tradition by living in New York; another city from which one could rule the world. He'd always loved his mother. He was going to miss her.

He shook off the reverie, and took a single step down the stairs. The house exploded into frantic activity, men in dark clothes springing from every corner. He found himself immobilized by something he could neither feel nor see.

"Brad Crawford," someone announced, and he looked down at someone who had stepped from the sudden crowd to face him directly.

To his acute embarrassment, he said the first thing that sprang to mind. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir."

The man chuckled; all the others were silent as stones. "Indeed I do. You may call me Finder for now. You're coming with us."

This rankled, rubbing Brad's instincts the wrong way. He'd assumed that it was a ploy on the part of one of his father's jealous underlings; kill the family, move up in the wake of their passing. He'd assumed that he was to be killed as well.

"No no," Finder said jovially. "We need you. It is only the trash that has been disposed of." He spoke as if Brad had said it aloud. Unease turned to worry, which then transformed into panic. Who were these people?

A light switch clicked, and the living room was bathed in light. Brad's heart leapt up into his throat. His handsome, powerful father and ageless, beautiful mother lay in pools of blood, their bodies in pieces. Bile rose to the back of his mouth, but the strange paralyisis that gripped him prevented him from bending over to expel it away from his body, and he swallowed it back down despite the churning of his stomach. His mind spiked with pictures dizzyingly, but he couldn't see any of them and the brightly lit room was fading as something pressed against his mind, shoving him into darkness. As his eyes closed and his mind became quiet, he heard one last thing.

"We are Rosenkreuz."

*,*,*

Brad came to in a small, uncomfortable bed in a small, strange room. He blinked a few times to clear his mind and eyes of whatever still clouded them, and then realized he wasn't alone.

Jerking upright, he scowled at the blurry, orange and black figure perched on the end of the bed.

"Guten Morgen, oh Kurzsichtiger!" he chirped happily. Brad's scowl deepened at the gibberish. "Zeit aufzustehen! Den neuen Tag begrüßen und so."

"What the hell did you just say?" he demanded, and looked around to see if his glasses were in attendance nearby. Finding them on a small bedside table that contained a small lamp and a bible, he slid them onto his face and ran a hand through his hair. Images tumbled through his mind - waking up at three in the morning, the dream, his parents -

His parents...

Grief flooded him for their demise. Their messy demise. His parents were good people, they didn't deserve to die like that. The twiggy thing on his bed was speaking again.

"Oh, du sprichst kein deutsch? Okay! I don't speak good English. You teach, yes? Oh, your parents. Sad business." He spoke with a heavy accent, and belatedly Brad realized that it was German. He had been speaking German. Why the hell was he speaking German?

"I speak native language. You in Germany, yes?"

Brad took another look at the sprite. He was in his early teens, maybe, with vibrant, shaggy orange hair that fell in an uneven mess around his face and ears. His voice was just beginning to crack and change, and squeaked every so often as he spoke. "Germany?" he asked suddenly, catching up with what it was saying. "No! I can't be in Germany, I have school, my job, my... parents."

The boy nodded sadly, unfolding himself from the bed and standing gracefully. "Parents dead. Refused. School? School here," he said, and pointed to the ground. "Work here too," he added wryly, but Brad didn't hear him. Already another image was swirling into his mind.

"Do it and I'm gone."

"Leave then."

"Ah, precog!" the thing shouted with delight. "I see now. Precog, unstable, useless after twenty five. They think you different."

"They think I'm different?" Brad repeated numbly. This was too much. "Who does?"

"Rosenkreuz." The simple answer set off another wave of visuals behind his eyes. There was something about this place that made him uneasy. He'd never had such powerful or clear visions before, and they were piling on top of one another.

"Air here good for ... for... " The sprite wracked his mind for the English word. "Psychos?" he queried, and Brad felt laughter bubble up inside.

"Psychics?" he asked, and the thing nodded.

"Psychics, yes. We all psychic here. Air good for power. Rosenkreuz built here during World War, train psychics for Hitler." As he spoke, the red-haired boy flit around the room dizzyingly, straightening up Brad's things. Following after him with his eyes, Brad realized that just about everything that had been in his bedroom was here, arranged in almost exactly the same way. There were noticeable absences, such as his television and cell phone, but the rest was the same. Another vision rode up behind his mind, blanking out the physical world.

'Schuldig, you and I - we're leaving Rosenkreuz.'

'Hahahahaa... .... You're serious!'

'Yes. Trust me.'

'We can't go against Rosenkreuz, they'll destroy us. If you think I'm going along with this crazy scheme of yours, you've got another thing coming. I'm outta here.'

'Leave then. I'll do it with or without you.'

'Ch. See ya. Maybe.'

"Schuldig?" The boy turned, smiling widely.

"Herr Crawford knows my name!" he said. "I don't see your visions. What do you see?" He eagerly came and sat on the bed, leaning forward like a child excited by the prospect of a bedtime story.

"I don't... know," Brad said. "I've never had visions like this before." He already hated this place. If he was going to be interrupted every five minutes by visions, he'd never get anything done.

"No worries," Schuldig said cheerfully. "They train you, you learn how... er... control? Ja, you learn control over powers. You see me when I first come.." He laughed at himself. "Man, I a mess."

Something was happening, Brad realized. The more he spoke, the better his English became. "What are you?" he asked suddenly. Schuldig smiled, almost shyly.

"Telepath," he said, and there was a voice inside Brad's mind, but it didn't come from him. /I hear you when you think./

His back hit the headboard behind him, and his head slammed into the wall, he moved so quickly away from the other boy. Schuldig's face rearranged itself into a pout.

"You're mean," he said. "Now you have one week free. Learn school, teachers, classes. I wait outside until you are ready." That said, he sailed out the door, humming to himself.

Brad's quick mind was already catching up with the circumstances he now found himself in. Schuldig had said he'd be schooled - had dangled that word in front of him that he'd always yearned for: Control. Control over his visions, the control he'd need over his own mind in order to make sense of them. He wondered what the boy meant by unstable and useless after twenty five, but decided that it was something he could ask about later.

His abrupt orphaning and relocation were still settling themselves into his mind. He'd been asked once, if he were to be suddenly transplanted into a foreign country in which he didn't speak the language, would he survive? He'd always prided himself on his adaptability. Now it seemed this would be put to the test.

Taking another look around his room, with all his familiarities, he shook his head, and dragged himself up out of the bed, running his fingers through his hair and spiking it up. The next order of business was getting himself dressed. He was still wearing the loose pajama pants he'd been in when he'd woken up in the middle of the night after a dream - a dream that he now realized had been about the boy he'd just met.

/Five minutes, Herr Crawford, or I drag you around school in your pajamas./

He must have been going crazy, he realized. He'd gotten out of bed and fallen down the stairs, hit his head, and now he was dreaming again. Telepaths were fictional. There was just no logical explanation for the voice of the kid inside his mind.

/You think I can not hear you out here? And what about you, precog? Seeing the future isn't logical either./

He ignored the voice, pulling open the top drawer in the beaureau. It contained several pairs of black socks, and to his embarrassment, underwear. Belts and ties were shoved into the back, behind the unmentionables. It went against his nature to put on clean clothes without showering, but there was no tub or shower stall in his room. Wordlessly, he drew the necessary articles out of the drawer, and moved down to the next one. It presented a neat array of tee shirts, long sleeved tee shirts, and muscle shirts - all black.

Rosenkreuz, I present to you - Schwarz.

He shook his head, chasing away the unfamiliar voice. It didn't echo the way Schuldig's did, and he recognized it for what it was - a vision. Or an auditory hallucination, Brad thought to himself humorously, pulling out a tee shirt. The final drawer contained jeans and slacks - still black. He decided on the slacks; Schuldig had been dressed to the nines, after all. Maybe there was a dress code here.

Tossing the clothes he'd collected onto the bed, he turned to the closet next. Within it were rows of jackets. Dress jackets, winter jackets, hoodies, denim jackets, just about everything imaginable, as well as rows of button-down shirts in both long and short sleeves. There were shelves as well, along the top and bottom of the small inset; these displayed shoes of various imaginable types. Several sets of dress shoes, boots, winter boots, tennis shoes...

They'd thought of everything, it seemed. He withdrew a pair of boots, adding them to the pile on the bed.

/Two minutes, Herr Crawford,/ Schuldig reminded him. He dressed quickly, taking the hint. When the boy opened the door, precisely two minutes later, he took in the choices Brad had made and nodded his approval.

"Good, good," he said. "Quick learner. They'll be pleased." Without further comment, the redhead lead him out of the room and down the hall, pointing out various rooms, and giving him directions.

"What did you mean?" Brad asked several hours later when they breaked for lunch. Schuldig looked up at him curiously, his mouth half-full of food. "You said precognitives like myself were... unstable. Useless. What's that mean?"

Schuldig swallowed, looking thoughtful. "Ehh," he started. "The power. It crushes the mind. Too much. Many prescients end up in the ward, or as test subjects for other Talents. My best friend's mother was a prescient. Before she lost her mind, she told them that they'd pick up a boy from America. She said he'd be different; handle the power better, or differently. Anyway, it could be you. No way to tell until you're older." He grinned wryly again, almost smugly. "Anyway, Herr Crawford, you'll learn all this in class, and-"

Brad held up a hand, forestalling whatever he was about to say next. "What does that mean?" he asked, and Schuldig ran his hands through his hair, mussing it.

"What does what mean?" His head was whipping around as he spoke, never looking directly at the newcomer. Brad wondered if he'd ever given himself whiplash.

"Herr... Crawford," he clarified. He'd taken French in high school, and later Italian. German was a complete mystery to him.

"They'll teach," Schuldig said. Brad shuddered; he'd never get used to the kid answering thoughts he hadn't spoken out loud. Schuldig grinned again. "Ehh," he said, and Brad was finding that he intensely dislike the noise. "It means... you would say... Mister Crawford."

"I'm too young to be a mister," Brad said. "Find something else to call me." Schuldig nodded sharply.

"Yes, herr-uh... Boss," he caught himself. Brad lifted an eyebrow, puzzlement clear in his expression.

"Boss?" he prompted. Schuldig gave another winning smile - or what would have been winning, had it not been too wide and too not-innocent.

The little German nodded. "They give me to you," he explained. "Said, 'Follow Herr Crawford, make sure he gets to his classes and keeps up. Tell us if he starts losing it,'" he quoted. Brad shoved his glasses up on top of his head, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. Mysteries on top of questions on top of enigmas.

"Losing it," Schuldig said again, not understanding his confusion. "Losing your mind going crazy gone apeshit-"

"I get it," Brad interrupted. Schuldig happily used the silence to fill his mouth with food. Not that it stopped him from talking.

/So, I work for you now. I make sure you do what you need, and help if you need, and that makes you my Boss./

Brad sighed. "Does this mean I can order you to stop reading my thoughts?" he asked, not really expecting an affirmative. Schuldig proved him right a moment later, shaking his head. He swallowed the noodles he'd been devouring, and then gave a hearty belch.

"Can't stop," he added. "It's like sitting in the middle of a flock of birds and trying not to get shit on." He waved his hand in the air as though he were waving away birds. "Thoughts everywhere." He began batting at the air, like he was swatting bugs away from his face, and nearly hit the person sitting nearest him at the next table over. Brad sighed again, deeply.

He disliked the kid already.

*,*,*

It was early on the day of his twenty second birthday; something he'd stopped celebrating since his parents death three years prior. The only reason he even remembered the day was it was required on all forms submitted to his superior. It was three years to the day that he'd come to Rosenkreuz, and Schuldig had been there for each of those one thousand and ninety five days, without fail, at seven oclock sharp.

Glancing at the clock, Crawford sighed. 6:59. One more minute to another day filled with Schuldig. At seventeen, the youth was maturing into a fine, if somewhat sadistic man, at least by Crawford's standards. He was intelligent, witty, a stern fighter, and as 7:01 came and went, and there was still no sharp report on his door, Crawford felt something that was almost worry. Closing his eyes, he felt for the familiar mind.

Schuldig. Where are you?

It was almost a full minute later when the rushed, /Busy Boss, see you later,/ whispered across his shields. Scowling, Crawford straightened the tie of his black uniform and exited the room, for the first time in three years unaccompanied by an exuberant teen.

---

Later on that same day, Crawford finally caught up with his subordinate. "Where were you today?" he demanded, and Schuldig flashed him a grin that was too wide and innocent to be anything but mischievous.

"Miss me, Boss?" he asked rhetorically, and gently rerouted them down a different hallway than the one they usually took. Crawford wondered at the change in directions, but it had been three years, and Schuldig had never steered him wrong once. Irritated the hell out of him, angered him, and drove him almost to the point of murder, but never wronged him.

"Of course not," Crawford snorted, though even as he said it he recognized the lie in his own words. He had missed the red-haired teen. Often though he'd wished the younger man out of his life, his constant presence had become a balm to the prescient, filtering out the useless and trivial. He usually stood between Crawford and any one who wanted to get near the prescient, deciding if they were up to his standards of 'worthy'. Together they'd risen through the student ranks quickly, earning the praise of sour, doughty old professors notorious for their tempers. The highest of Rosenkreuz had spoken to the pair, thanking them for their hard work, and dropping hints about the great things to come.

More and more students were graduating into the hands of Estet, and the Hand of Rosenkreuz were all but busting the seams on their tailored jackets with anxious pride to see Schuldig and Crawford join their ranks. It wasn't something the prescient was looking forward to, but he kept those feelings hidden deep down. He knew that a move to Estet's power would only further his plans of escaping this madhouse that had been behind his parents' murder and the wrenching of his life away from him. Schuldig was still adamantly against it; he'd been born here, had lived his entire life under the strict thumb of the Hand.

"You're a hard man to track down," Schuldig interrupted his thoughts, continuing, as though they'd been having a full conversation the whole time. "You have no idea how hard I worked for this."

Intrigued despite himself, Crawford lifted an eyebrow. "You, working hard?" he jibed. "Call the good doctor, Schuldig, I believe I'm about to have a heart attack." He put a hand over his heart mockingly, and Schuldig threw his head back and laughed.

"Come on, Boss. You and I both know there's no heart in there to stop." The telepath wandered into a room, and then back out, shaking his head. "Wrong one," he said, and found another. "Aha."

Crawford followed after him, trying to pretend that Schuldig's words hadn't stung, even the slightest, and failing just as miserably as he had at lying. The sight that greeted him within the strange room gave him pause, redirecting his thoughts away from Schuldig's genial snark.

A table had been set for two, a bottle of wine chilling between the two plates. A hearty, delicious-looking meal was resting on the flatware, and Crawford felt his stomach contract; he'd been skipping meals more and more often lately as he became so overwhelmed with preparations to go back to America, and he hadn't realized he was hungry.

This wasn't the usual slop served in the mess hall, though. It must have been specially made, possibly bribed out of one of the cooks. "Schuldig," Crawford said warningly, and the redhead bounded ahead, smiling widely.

"Happy Birthday, Crawford," he said, and pulled a chair out before gesturing to it. The precognitive sighed deeply.

"You know I don't celebrate my birthday," he began, but Schuldig cut him off, and pointed to the yellow headband Crawford had given him two months before.

"But you'll celebrate mine? Come on, it's a special occasion. Three years, your first real mission outside Rosenkreuz, and you're twenty two today. Just pull the stick out of your ass for once, and have a good night."

Relenting without further argument, Crawford seated himself at the table, and was amused when Schuldig poured them both a glass of wine before sitting down.

"I didn't think you drank anything but beer," he commented, and Schuldig smirked.

"Special occasion, remember?" He began delicately cutting into the fillet. Crawford noted that Schuldig was much more perceptive than everyone gave him credit for; Crawford was violently allergic to fish, and Schuldig had served him with a steak instead.

"So what am I to do with it?" he asked lightly. Schuldig stopped chewing, and swallowed, giving him a look that clearly said he'd lost his mind.

"Eat it, you jackass," he said elegantly. Crawford allowed himself a small smile.

"Not the food," he clarified, pretending to be busily slicing into the steak. "You told me to take the stick out. Where should I put it?"

This gave Schuldig pause for all of five seconds before the telepath threw his head back and howled with laughter. It wasn't more than a minute before Crawford also felt a chuckle slip out, and before much longer than that, they were both leaning against the table, weak with mirth and laughing over nothing like school boys.

---

The next morning dawned too early. Crawford blearily rubbed his eyes, and wondered where the hell he was. His head was pounding, and his mouth felt like he'd been rubbing it with someone's old gym socks. He remembered enough about things he'd heard to realize he had a hangover, but having never experienced it before, he realized it was worse than any stories anyone could have told.

His stomach rebelled as he tried to move, and he gave it up almost immediately. No one had ever mentioned paralysis as a side effect of drinking, but he couldn't move. He tried desperately to remember what had happened the night before, but his clear memories cut off around the time they'd sat down for dinner. This reminded him that he'd begun the evening with Schuldig, and he wondered briefly where he was. A quiet groan and a movement to his left answered this question before it was formed.

Crawford looked down, and was greeted by a splash of orange hair against the pale cream of his bare chest. Under the orange was another body, entwined with his.

"Oh, dear God," Crawford breathed, and Schuldig stirred, looking up at him from under hooded lids.

"You called?" he asked smugly, and stretched. Crawford felt the movement along the entire length of his body, which was stirring with the remembered pleasures of the night before. Schuldig smirked again, wider, and wiggled his way down under the blankets. Before Crawford had a chance to protest, the telepath had wrapped his mouth and hand around the most sensitive part of him, and the words were choked off in a surprised groan.

-

Schuldig had gone back to sleep afterwards, mumbling something about being kept up all night, but Crawford lay awake, wondering how the hell he was going to tell Schuldig that he was leaving for a three year deployment to America, where he would put his skills - hard earned through three vigorous years in Rosenkreuz's twisted idea of training - to the test. The teenaged terror must have known it was coming; Crawford assumed that that was the reason for the surprise dinner. Apparently not, however, for as his memories returned to him, so did the knowledge that neither of them had spoken a word about his upcoming trip into the field.

'Field' as it were, was a misnomer. It conjured up images of traveling to darkest Africa to shoot lions and elephants for sport, when in reality it entailed inserting himself into the business ladder and climbing his way up through the ranks of body guards. It wasn't a job he relished, but he understood that it was necessary, like pushing papers in the lower office before making CEO of the company.

Finally, he could ignore it no longer. Soon, they would be bashing the door in, wondering what the hell he was doing, and then he would have no choice but to explain it to Schuldig. Better to get himself moving now and face the telepath's wrath later. He shimmied out of the bed, taking a moment to cover his companion with the blankets. "Boss?" Schuldig mumbled sleepily, cracking one eye open.

"Go back to sleep, Schuldig," Crawford said sternly, and the red-head flopped over into the warm spot he'd vacated, and went back to sleep. The prescient was hit with an unusual pang deep in his chest, so unfamiliar that it took him several long moments to identify it.

Loneliness.

He was actually going to miss the bratty little telepath. Shoving it away with a silent scoff, he dressed quickly, and picked up the small suitcase that had been prepared for him. He armed himself, sliding the nine millimeter into the side-holster beneath his jacket, and slid extra magazines into his pocket, shifting them around until they didn't clink and give themselves away. He'd boxed in high school, but dropped it in college in favour of more political pursuits; Rosenkreuz had trained him extensively in hand to hand combat - not because he was expected to fight, but as a bodyguard, he would need to know how to protect both himself and others, seeing as how his 'gift' - as they called it - was not specifically geared towards self-preservation in the way the kinetic gifts were.

At the door, he turned for one last look at the sleeping telepath. See ya, kiddo. He shoved the sentimentality away as uncharacteristic of the solid, unflappable body guard he was meant to be, and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind him and locking up whatever he felt - about the telepath particularly.

*,*,*

The time had flown by for Crawford; another three years had passed quickly, bringing his total time in Rosenkreuz's employ up to six total. He hadn't thought about his time in Germany in a long time, but as the departure time from Newark International airport loomed closer, he found his thoughts returning to it.

The sudden shift from German back to English had been a welcome surprise. He'd learned German, as well as perfected both his French and Italian while attending the 'school', and over the last three years in America, had slowly been learning Japanese. His contact in New Jersey had been surprised that he was even bothering; most Rosenkreuz operatives sent to Japan were Japanese, and no one could see the reasoning behind it. Crawford himself couldn't have explained it when asked; he simply knew that he would need it someday, and continued learning. There was, he also knew, another reason for his abrupt return to Germany. He was coming up on his twenty-fifth birthday - the age that most precognitives went mad. He'd visited some of them in Rosen's hospital wing, and was privately horrified to think that it could happen to him. Some were placid, mindless things that stared into space in whatever direction the nurses placed them. Others were volatile, angry people who railed blindly against walls they could not see.

He'd never feared anything in his life. Not even the day Finder came for him in his New York home was frightening. But he was afraid of his gift, suddenly, afraid of what it might do to him.

He'd become very adept at concealing his emotions, both from others and himself over the years. To show weakness in Rosenkreuz was to ask the others to tear you apart. In his job as bodyguard, it was frowned upon to appear anything less than studiously calm. He shoved his fear into the back of his mind, and didn't think on it again.

As he boarded the flight from Newark, a mild pricking started at the base of his skull. It was the sensation that usually preceded either a vision, or an attack, and he was braced for either of them. Neither came immediately, but he didn't relax his guard.

At the plane change in Heathrow, the prickling turned into a headache, which brought with it the undeniable feeling of walking into certain doom. After discreetly checking with various people, he was satisfied that the plane wasn't going to explode, or suddenly drop out of the air, but the feeling persisted.

-

Going directly from the airport to a private car, he closed his eyes and listened to the German conversation flowing around him, re-familiarizing himself with the language. It wasn't long before they were pulling down the drive that lead to Rosenkreuz's front gates. When he'd first arrived, he asked how the building could be so left alone by the majority of people - if one didn't know it was there, one passed right by it. Crawford and Schuldig had often stood by the walls, watching cars drive directly past it without seeing anything. The answer had come from one of the Hand themselves - having caught the two by the gate, he was more amused than anything else, and answered Crawford's questions freely. It was the air, or the dirt, he'd explained. The same thing that magnified Gifts while on the grounds gave off an aura that caused normal people to veer around it. It was avoided, and local rumours said there were bad things in the forest surrounding the building. Not even the most curious or brave of people could stand to walk very far into the woods.

Crawford reflected on these moments, and realized with a mild surprise that it was the first time he'd even thought of Schuldig in almost two years. Uncharacteristic guilt had plagued him for several months after arriving in America, guilt that he had left Schuldig without a word - Schuldig, who had followed him like a small puppy for three years without complaining, answering his questions about Rosenkreuz and helping him adjust to the transition from 'the real world' into the darkness that shrouded the organization. Now, thoughts of the telepath brought the prickling back in such force that it was almost a physical sensation, and he rubbed the back of his neck as the car parked.

His door opened, and he stepped out into the garage, his mind swamped with dizzying swirls of colour as his gift readjusted itself to the atmosphere that surrounded all that was Rosenkreuz.

A figure stood silhouetted in the light streaming from the elevator that would bring him to the main floor. Crawford ignored it in favour of realigning his mental order.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," drawled the figure. It was vaugely familiar, and he stepped forward, revealing a shock of orange hair held in check by an atrocious yellow headband. Crawford stood rooted to the spot in surprise, before his memories caught up with reality.

"Schuldig," he acknowledged in a cool greeting. The telepath's lips twitched into a wide smirk, an icy reflection of the goofy smiles he used to give out freely.

"Crawford," he stated. "You seem to be doing... well." There was nothing pleasant about the pleasantries. Crawford felt he was facing the inquisition. He'd always towered over the telepath, but three years had brought on a growth spurt of several inches, and he was able to look into Crawford's eyes without looking up. He was still slender, wiry, and the precognitive suddenly felt bulky. His work had demanded muscle at time, and he'd begun working out, his shoulders filling out to a width that often surprised him in the beginning.

"As are you," he said guardedly. Schuldig chuckled without mirth.

"You know, when one leaves their one-night stand for three years without a word, isn't it customary to have some sort of reunion? Tears? Laughter? Shiny declarations of love?" As he spoke, Schuldig moved silently in a circle, his eyes never leaving Crawford's. The precognitive turned with him, unwilling to let the red-head get behind him.

"You weren't just a one-night stand," Crawford asserted, wondering if he was going to be forced to deal with an angry telepath for the next ten years, and if they would give him hazard pay for it. The Schuldig he'd left behind three years ago had been care-free and generally happy. This new Schuldig was a complete stranger, one he didn't feel completely comfortable with.

Schuldig smirked, snorting quietly through his nose. "You're a complete stranger, too," he said, speaking through his nose. It irked Crawford, and the smirk widened. "Still don't like me listening in on your thoughts?" he asked rhetorically. "Nothing I can do about it. You shoot them out like arrows. When you learn to control them, I'll stop reading them."

"It wasn't intentional," Crawford said, stopping short of an actual apology. "But it wasn't a one-night stand."

Schuldig stepped into his personal space, looking up into his eyes. "So you were going to keep fucking a teenager?"

Refusing to be intimidated by a kid five years his junior, Crawford's lips twisted into a smirk. "Says the former teenager who lured me into dinner before we..." he leaned in close to Schuldig's ear, murmuring the word. "Fucked. I'm through with this conversation. Nothing happened between us three years ago."

He stepped around the slightly smaller man, and continued into the elevator without looking back.

-

Standing before the five shadowy members of the Hand of Rosenkreuz had always been a vaguely terrifying experience for the prescient. Standing there tonight, he only felt a vague sense of accomplishment. He was nearly twenty five, and showed no signs of the prescient's madness, the onset of which he was told started anywhere between six months prior to the twenty-fifth birthday to six months after. Still, to be less than two weeks away gave him six months of relative freedom, and a chance to decide what to do with himself should he prove unreliable. This fear too, the unnamed terror that plagued him when he'd first left for America, had dissolved. He knew without a doubt that he would survive his twenty fifth year fully intact both mentally and physically.

"Crawford." The Speaker stood forward, a little apart from the other four. "You have passed Rosenkreuz's required schooling both locally and abroad. We welcome you into the service of Estet. Oracle is how you shall be known to them, and you will accept into your group only those you deem worthy."

Crawford bowed his head politely at the speech. The Speaker went on, slightly more informally.

"We... appreciate your talents. We look forward to many years of faithful service. And we would also... appreciate... if you would take Schuldig with you."

Moments before, Crawford would have been willing to grant them anything. He was feeling good that they were seeing promise in him. They thought he was going to make it, too. But this...

They were asking him to take Schuldig off their hands.

"If I may ask, Speaker...?" he prompted, and received a nod. "Where am I to ... take... him?"

Eyes glinted from beneath a dark hood. "Anywhere. Just get him out of here. America. Asia. Anywhere."

Crawford, who for six years had prided himself on not being surprised by anything, was stunned into silence.

The Speaker stepped back onto the dais with the rest of the Hand. "We will present you both with orders in one week. You have this week free to do as you wish."

"Thank you, sirs." Crawford bent at the waist perfunctorily, still startled beyond words. Stiffly, he straightened and walked from the room. As the doors closed, he thought he could hear a faint cheering coming from the darkened room he'd just left.

-

Schuldig was waiting for him in his old room, perched eerily on the end of his bed like a gargoyle looming over a castle's parapet.
"Got your orders yet?" he asked smugly. "Wanna fuck before you go?"

Crawford didn't stop for a moment. He'd known the moment he touched the door knob that the telepath would be waiting within, and although he hadn't known the exact nature of the barb that would be flung in his face, he'd been expecting something. With utter placidness, he shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere. We are leaving in a week." He continued into the room, noting that his bags had already been delivered. Ignoring the telepath, he opened the nearest one and began sorting through the clothes, picking out what he was bring with him, and what he would leave behind. He'd already been told that so long as he lived, he would have this room here at Rosenkreuz. It was unusual; generally the Gifted who were sent out from the facility to foreign countries had their rooms given out to incoming 'students' and were alotted new rooms upon their return to Austria. Crawford's room was actually his and no one elses, save for the time Schuldig spent in it.

Belatedly, he realized he had never seen Schuldig's quarters. It stood to reason that the telepath had his own room - he'd spent his entire life within the confines of Rosenkreuz.

"Not true." Schuldig came out of his silent reverie with a distinct lack of the histrionics Crawford had been expecting. "Not true," he said again. "One, I spent the last two and a half years touring France with a group of Seekers, hunting down new talents to be recruited." Crawford silently replaced 'recruited' with 'abducted' and said nothing as the red-head contiued speaking. "And," he added, icy blue eyes glittering beneath the yellow head-band, "I'm not going anywhere with you."

Crawford snorted. "I'm not particularly happy about it, either." Without stopping what he was doing, he briskly continued explaining. "I just came from a meeting with the Hand. They've informed me in no uncertain terms that it really doesn't matter where I go, so long as you come with me. Since I've never had a complaint, I can only assume this is a punishment for you, and not myself." Content with what he'd done, he surveyed the room. It hadn't changed in three years, and wouldn't for another three, if this continued in thirds the way it had. Irrationally, he wanted it to change. He didn't want people to come in here and look around at the things he'd held onto since he was nineteen, and think that they were the representation of who he was. Over the last three years, he'd been taught that one's personal possessions were a reflection of who one was; it didn't matter if you were a scoundrel or a freak, if you had nice clothes and drove a nice car, people thought well of you.

In that vein of thought, he went through the knicknacks and posters that had been on his walls as a teenager, and discarded most of them. Schuldig watched him silently, like a predator stalking it's prey. Crawford had no doubt that the eruption was coming, and just needed something to set it off. This icy rage was also disturbing; it was something he himself would do, not the telepath who wore his every emotion on his face. To that end, he finally looked Schuldig in the eye, and was rewarded with a cool smirk.

"We're going to Japan," he announced. And we're going to tear Estet and Rosenkreuz down."

There were no less than five full seconds of utter silence, and then came the explosion he'd been expecting. With both vocal and mental attacks, Schuldig pounced on him.

"You've lost your goddamned mind you heartless bastard! What the hell makes you think we could fucking take on Estet, much less Rosenkreuz! I'm not fucking going anywhere with you because you're just another stupid crazy precog and you belong in the fucking medical wing with all the other little potatoes they're growing in there!"

Having broken through, Crawford stood there looking mild, allowing Schuldig his outburst. "You work for these fucking people you asshole, they made you. If not for Rosenkreuz you'd be just another statistic on the morning news right now and your stupid Gift would be splattered all over the walls of your stupid bedroom."

Crawford held up a hand. Despite his helpless fury - even Schuldig knew he would not beat Crawford in a hand-to-hand fight - the several years of following Crawford around, hanging on his every word won out over the last three years of simmering anger, and he got a handle on himself. "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Crawford calmly, and in a mirror of him, the rage drained out of the telepath, dissipated in that barrage of swearing.
"I mean, they told me the day you arrived that your American family had made enemies of it's neighbors, and that they were going to kill you all, which was why you were taken the way you were. You think all precogs get their own personal slave, just for being who they were? Hell the fuck no. Usually we scope out who we're taking in, approach them, brief them on what to expect, and if they refuse, we let them go, unless they're someone we need, like you."

Schuldig's continued use of the word 'we' was bothersome; Crawford shoved it aside in favour of actually listening to what he was saying.

"So we had to get you with no preparation, no idea what state your Gift was going to be in, and then your parents threw a fit, and Johnston - Finder, to you - had them killed, and then showed you to make you more accepting of being here, and then I was told all of this and assigned to follow you around and make sure you didn't go off the deep end after losing your parents and being taken halfway around the world."

"Precognitives are notoriously unreliable," Crawford cut in, lifting an eyebrow. "Clearly I was going to run screaming into the forest because I was suddenly in Germany, and my absolutely unstable mind wouldn't have allowed me to do anything less. Schuldig, you were there for three solid years, and we got drunk, and even if I'd never intended to take you to bed am I to be crucified because I took an attractive friend up on a drunken offer before I left for who knew how long?" He'd said too much. He'd vowed never to do anything he had to apologise for, but here he was, apologising to Schuldig for what had been a drunken tryst, a mistake but putting it that way in words would just set Schuldig's short fuse off again. "And we're going to kick the feet out from under Estet, and Rosenkreuz because they're going to kill us if we don't."

Even as the words left his lips, the physical world swam before his eyes, and darkened, replaced by something only he could see, some future drama playing out in the depths of his mind. It made no sense; he saw a young boy with blue eyes and brown hair, and a one-eyed man covered with scars, and they were all fighting, even himself, with another group of young men and suddenly the vision swayed and skewed and he was drowning, ocean water was rushing into his mouth and lungs and eyes and he couldn't see but he was being pulled down and he couldn't breathe -

"CRAWFORD."

Sucking in a deep breath - of air, not water, not drowning - Crawford blinked, feeling uncharacteristically ruffled. He focused on blue eyes, for once registering something other than wrathful anger within them.

"What the hell just happened to you?" Schuldig demanded, and stepped away from him. It galled to admit, he realized, but Crawford had absolutely no idea what had just happened to him, and admitted as much. Schuldig settled himself back on Crawford's bed, eyeing him warily.

"We have to get away from Rosenkreuz," he said again. Schuldig shook his head slowly.

-

"I'm only going with you because they doubled my pay," Schuldig said in a conversationally nasty tone of voice. "And you still haven't told me where the hell we're going."

Crawford lifted his eyes skyward, almost reduced to a prayer for patience. The telepath hadn't shut up for nearly two days running. A nameless anxiety that rose in the back of his mind pushed them away from Rosenkreuz nearly five days ahead of the Hand's schedule, but Crawford, through his work in New Jersey and his very existence, had achieved some status among the Talented at Rosenkreuz, and the Hand gave into his request for a flight to Japan immediately.

"My own damn mother's on that counsel, and you've got them kissing your ass. What the hell did you do?"

Information about Schuldig's life was received in dribs and drabs. The first few years after his arrival, Crawford had become accustomed to the telepath's secretiveness, though it hadn't been any easier to bear when paired with his newfound attitude.

Rolling down a window in the back of the fancy car driving them to the airport, the telepath pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"Don't smoke those in here," Crawford said automatically, not really paying the younger man much mind. Schuldig sneered at him, and lit it anyway.

"Whatever you say-" he took a long drag, and exhaled the smoke at Crawford's face. "- Boss."

A dozen things flashed through Crawford's mind to say - "Don't call me that, put that out, I'm not your boss, those things'll kill you, blow that out the window -"
He said nothing, merely tightening his lips and turning his face away from the cloud of noxious fumes. Schuldig laughed quietly, a mirthless chuckle of victory, and kept smoking.

-

An hour into the plane trip, Schuldig was fidgeting endlessly with his hair, clothes, the seat, the things in front of him, everything within arms reach. After an hour and a half, Crawford was fed up with it.

"Schuldig. Either stop moving or I will shoot you." Schuldig glanced up, momentarily horrified, but must have seen something in Crawford's face that said he wasn't serious, for a moment later his lips twitched into a wide smirk, and he leaned back. Crawford wasn't amused; he'd been entirely serious.

But Schuldig did stop wiggling.

-

Their arrival in Japan was veiled under a driving rainstorm that started up just as the plane touched ground. Schuldig stared in horrified awe at all of the short, dark-haired people milling around, and all of the signs that were written in languages he couldn't understand. Fortunately, Crawford had learned much of the language already - it was his learning of the language that had made the decision to come here instead of somewhere else; he was tired of America, didn't speak any Spanish, and France was 'too close' by the orders of the Hand. He'd been given a thin file before boarding the plane, and read over it while Schuldig slept fitfully beside him.

Target: Takatori Reiji
Parameters: By any means possible arrange Target's ascent to Prime Minister of Japan.

A small list of details beside the picture of an ugly man followed. Crawford wasn't happy about the job; there was no telling what sort of unsavory people he would be forced to deal with here in Japan. At least in America, he'd known who he would be dealing with.

Schuldig interrupted his internal dialogue with an almost panicked tug on his sleeve. "Crawford, I can't understand anybody," he whispered. "What the fuck are we doing here?"

"We're going to make a mountain out of a molehill," Crawford said firmly. "And you'll pick it up quickly. You learned English fast enough."

"Feh," Schuldig snorted. "I had a basic understanding of English. And you thought in English all the time, so it was easy to pick up the words from your mind." Schuldig moved closer, shying away from the herds of people wandering around. "It's like being inside a speaker, noise everywhere, and none of it makes sense."

"Let's get out of the airport then," Crawford suggested. Schuldig's anxiety meant that he had to be the one in charge, and he stepped up to the plate admirably. "First you'll need to learn Japanese. I'm not translating everything for you. We have a spacious apartment here in Tokyo; whatever time is not being used for furthering the cause of Rosenkreuz will be your own. Make sure you're ready for work at all times and do not become hungover or worse."

Schuldig glared at him; parts of the speech had been taken verbatim from the things all field leaders gave to their new recruits. "I'm not a freshman, Crawford. And what put you in charge?"

The American graced him with a chilling smile. "Rosenkreuz."

*,*,*

Six months into their assigned term in Japan, Schuldig was speaking like a native, and had learned to love sake. He complained daily of the press of humanity against his mind, but Crawford reveled in the freedom from overpowering visions. The ocean had come to him several times since the episode in his bedroom at Rosenkreuz, but never had it affected him so strongly.

Schuldig still hated him, and did everything within his power to make life miserable in stupid, childish ways. Smoking inside the house, using all the hot water, taking half a cup of coffee and dumping the pot out, hiding all of his ties, various things Crawford would have expected out of a young teenager to vent anger, not a man of nearly twenty one.

They'd insinuated themselves into Takatori's inner circle, and with Crawford dangling promises of greatness while Schuldig kept an ear out for the dissenters, the man was becoming vicious with glee.

-

"I'm going out tonight," Crawford announced. Schuldig looked up from his Japanese study book, cocking an eyebrow.

"Got a date? Find a new fuckbuddy?" he suggested. Crawford refused to let the jibes dig too deeply; he'd apologised for the event six months ago, and it was none of his business if Schuldig chose to hold onto the grudge for so long.

"No. Takatori has asked me to accompany him to a program he enjoys-" Crawford's eyes misted over, the image of a red-haired boy weilding a sword passing quickly through his mind. When it was gone, he was left with the impression of fiery red hair and a fierce violet gaze.

Schuldig scowled; he'd never been able to read Crawford's mind when in the midst of a vision, though that didn't stop him from poking around with Crawford's thoughts whenever he actually could. "What was that about?"

Crawford toyed with the idea of telling him, and then shook his head. "Nothing important," he answered finally, and left. As the door closed behind him, he heard the thump of Schuldig's book hitting the floor behind him. Have a good night, Schuldig, he thought pointedly. Another thump against the door, but at least nothing had shattered.

-

The program ended up being something called "Human Chess" in which desperate men were pitted against one another with a random assortment of weapons.

"Crawford here is from Germany, you see," Takatori was saying. Crawford turned his attention from the gathered crowd of gawkers back to the small group of people waiting for the 'show' to begin. "He's been wonderful so far. We'll go places together, I assure you that."

"You're very fortunate, Takatori-san," said the woman in the white hat, and Crawford's scalp tingled. She wasn't going to survive the night, he knew, and wondered if he should tell her. Since her death would have no impact on Takatori or his businesses, he shrugged it off, and returned his attention to the chessboard far below them.

A streak of red caught his eye, and he focused on the boy weilding a stick - a stick that hid a sword. It was the swordsman from his vision - the vigilante, the little white - Weiss - knight. The German word whispered across his brain, and suddenly he straightened, the only outward sign. Rosenkreuz was going to kill them - they were too good of a team, too uncontrollable, too bent on their own ideas - but if they could cultivate the Weiss, nurture them along their path of self-destruction, the eight -- six, he reminded himself - of them would win.

Schwarz, he decided, and turned just in time to see his Vigilante swinging a sword towards Takatori. Placing himself between the two, he swung the boy over his shoulder slamming him hard into the ground. Looking down at him as he struggled for breath, Crawford smirked. You're going to help us, little Weiss, whether you know it or not.

He lead Takatori to the roof, where they escaped in a helicopter set aside for just that purpose. The little Weiss caught up to them there, and in a fit of rage, threw his katana at the helicopter. Crawford could hear Schuldig laughing in the back of his mind, but it wasn't real time, it was a vision, Schuldig's head thrown back, dressed all in white, laughing.

White was not the telepath's colour. Before arriving back at the apartment, he went out and bought him a green coat.

-

"They think I'm the devil," Schuldig murmured, smirking widely at all who looked at him, which was nearly everyone. Dressed in a long green jacket with wild orange hair, he attracted attention of all sorts. Crawford leaned over, smiling coolly at a passerby.

"Now why on Earth would they think that?" he muttered back, taking a small sip of the wine he held.

"They think that my hair is the colour of fire, and so it must have been burned that colour in Hell." Crawford snorted quietly in spite of himself.

"Then they're right. You're the devil," he agreed.

"What does that make you? The antichrist?" Schuldig shot back, a little louder than he'd intended. An increase in the volume of muttering from nearby party-goers had him shrinking back down on himself.

Crawford's smile was too wide. "No. I'm God, of course."

"Of course," Schuldig said smoothly. He excused himself with an even wider grin than usual, a sure sign that trouble was on the way. The vague image of a small blue-eyed boy with light brown hair flickered through his mind. There was something important about him, something that had been overlooked. Crawford didn't like hearing about things that were going wrong; it meant that he was wrong.

As Schuldig wound his way through the crowd, Crawford tracked his progress by watching the fiery reddish orange of his hair weave amongst the varying shades of black and brown. It looked like a flaming red star set against the backdrop of the blackest night.

Takatori arrested his attention then, introducing him to the men who surrounded him daily. Crawford gave them only half his attention at best, still trying to decide what his impetuous team-mate was up to. After a few minutes, the telepath returned, still smiling. What was that about? Crawford inquired mildly. Schuldig just waved him off.

/Having some fun, is all. Spreading hate and discontent and all that./

Crawford decided that the blond boy would come in later, since he hadn't come in tonight. Schuldig cocked an eyebrow at him. /I didn't know you liked blonds,/ he sent snidely. Crawford deigned not to answer, instead concentrating on shielding his thoughts from view the way he'd been taught, but rarely employed.

He'd been told that he would have two layers of mental shielding. The first, inner layer was the strongest - it kept his mind from falling apart under the strain of visions of the future, and was something that most precognitives lost by their twenties - hence the onset of insanity. These core shields would never be taken down or broken into - the only way in was when they collapsed on their own.

The outer shielding was an at-will sort, that he could actively bring to mind to block out the intentions of ill-bearing telepaths. They'd explained that it was different for every person; some people imagined water, some people pictured a brick wall, some decided that their thoughts were all locked up in an impregnable safe, but whatever the methods, the intent and result was the same. He'd also learned that differently Gifted people had differently working core shields. If he were to suddenly trade core shields with Schuldig, had been the example, they would both go insane - telepathic core shielding was meant to keep the mind and personality of the 'path separate from those of the thoughts he was constantly in contact with, whereas precognitive core shields were intended to keep the psyche standing under the pressure of forbidden knowledge. Crawford tended to think of it in terms of horizontal support versus vertical support, but when he'd tried to explain that to his tutor, an ancient old telepathic woman whose father had fought in World War 1, and helped build Auschwitz, she had just looked at him like he'd suddenly started speaking French, and he'd given it up.

Schuldig looked irritated at having been cut out of Crawford's thoughts, but didn't press further.

-

Later on in the week, Schuldig found another way to press buttons. Crawford was relieved that his clothes had stopped turning up in cupboards, but the newfound habit the telepath had of staying out until all hours of the night were beginning to grate. His telepathic gift gave him unique insight into what irritated Crawford the most, and he acted upon it with relish. Finally tired of the antics, Crawford cornered his younger teammate and confronted him.

"Have I done anything lately to piss you off?" he asked bluntly. Schuldig just gave him another of those smugly irritating smirks, and remained quiet. "I've told you this before, Schuldig," he added. "If we remain with Rosenkreuz, they're going to kill us."

The grin vanished, but Schuldig remained silent, warily watching him.

"I've seen it," the prescient continued, staring hard at the flaming reddish orange hair that spilled in continuous waves around Schuldig's pale face and down his shoulders and back. "I've seen it, but I don't have the power to do it on my own." It was an admission he'd been loathe to make. But he valued his own skin, and without Schuldig, he had no chance and he knew it. The telepath, raised in Rosenkreuz, knew their workings inside and out. He knew the people, and he knew their methods. Crawford still hadn't forgiven them the death of his parents, and the life he'd been creating for himself, regardless of Schuldig's admission that they were all to die within that week anyway. He didn't like the idea that a group of people he'd never heard of had been keeping tabs on him, had gone through the trouble of sneaking into his house at night and abducting him. Not even the six years between that event and the present time had changed anything. Crawford was, at least, able to realize that it was vengeance he was after, short and simple. He'd taken care of the men that had absorbed his father's company after his death, the original perpetrators of the plot to kill the Crawford family before Rosenkreuz stepped in, but the last lingering debt to be repaid haunted him at night.

"You're going to have to do it on your own," Schuldig said finally. Crawford stared hard at him until he ducked away, waving.

"I'm off," he said cheerily, as though they hadn't just been having a silent war with one another.

"I'll be back in two days," Crawford said suddenly. It had come into his mind with alarming clarity - the way to bend Schuldig to his will without making it seem like that. The way away from Rosenkreuz, because he'd been right - he couldn't do it alone.

But that didn't necessarily mean he had to do it with Schuldig.

*,*,*

When Crawford arrived back at their flat, two days later, he found Schuldig in front of the television, smoking. A full ashtray in front of him revealed that he'd been at it for some time.

"Schuldig, I have asked you not to smoke in here," he said firmly. His heart wasn't in berating the telepath, though, and they both knew it. Schuldig turned around, eyes narrow.

"Who else is here?" he asked. It was Crawford's turn to bestow a smug smile.

"You don't know?" he asked, and a thin boy of about thirteen stepped out from behind him. His face was an expressionless mask, nothing betrayed in his body posture or his eyes.

"What the fuck is that?" Schuldig asked loudly in German, taking a long drag on his cigarette. The short, half-smoked paper lifted itself gently out of his hands, and squashed itself, as though it had run up against an invisible wall in the air. Schuldig's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You brought another psychic in here? A kinetic? Doesn't Rosenkreuz usually announce new members of the family before they send them?"

Crawford flicked his gaze at the boy, who looked bored with the spate of words he didn't understand. "They would. Nagi did not come from Rosenkreuz."

Schuldig's eyes widened to the point of roundness. "You went against Rosenkreuz and picked up a stray psycic off the fucking street?!" he shouted, nearly hysterical. "You've lost your damned mind!"

"Shut up, Schuldig. Nagi, you and I - we're leaving Rosenkreuz."

This was said in Japanese, and the serious boy looked up at him. "I understand."

Schuldig suddenly bent double, laughing. After a few minutes, when Nagi moved into the house to begin looking through his new home, the telepath sobered. "You're serious!'

Crawford nodded. "Yes. You didn't trust me. I found someone who would."

"And I keep telling you that we can't go against Rosenkreuz, they'll destroy us. If you think you're going to con me into going along with this crazy scheme of yours, you've got another thing coming. I'm outta here."

Crawford had been expecting this. "Leave then. I'll do it with or without you."

Schuldig rose off the couch, and retrieved a suitcase from his bedroom. Crawford had them both in a constant state of readiness to leave, no matter what the time or day. "Ch. See ya. Maybe," he added, walking out the door, and out of Crawford's life.

Suddenly, as though the strings holding him up had been cut as the door slammed closed behind the fiery telepath, Crawford slumped against the wall behind, taking a deep breath. He'd done it. He'd acquired the telekinetic, and chased Schuldig out, and now all that was left was take care of Takatori and leave. Now that all his plans were coming to fruition, why did he feel like he was making a mistake? Like he'd miscalculated somewhere.

Vaguely, he recalled the vision he'd had of the fight between himself and seven others. Nagi had been there, as had the red-headed swordsman. Schuldig was there, also. Perhaps that was the key. "Damn," Crawford muttered, and buried his fist in the wall. Nagi poked his head out of the bedroom, drawn by the noise.

"Crawford-san?" he asked politely. If Crawford hadn't seen first hand the burning rage that simmered beneath that polite, Japanese exterior, he would never have believed it. That was good, though. Rage fueled power, and kept fear at bay.

"Just go rearrange that bedroom the way you like. If he comes back, we'll get a bigger apartment," Crawford said in his best no-nonsense voice. Nagi ducked back into the room, and the sound of the dull thunks coming from inside told the prescient that he was doing as he was told.

The next thing to do, he mused, was to get Nagi registered with Rosenkreuz, and report the split with Schuldig. No time like the present, he thought with dry amusement, and pulled his cellphone from his pocket in order to do just that.

-

Schuldig was gone three months.

In those three months, Crawford had seen to Nagi's training, turning his unguided power into a force to be reckoned with. He'd also 'acquired' another member of their little crew - a supposed madman from Ireland with more sense than half the Hand of Rosenkreuz did. With Crawford dealing with delicate matters, such as Takatori, and Nagi dealing with the computer aspects - he'd shown a surprising aptitude for electronics, despite having grown up on the streets until being picked up by the orphanage - and Farfarello handling the physical side of things, they weren't a bad team. Takatori refused to allow either Farfarello or Nagi near him - Farfarello was too wild looking, with his shaggy white hair and multitudes of scars, and Nagi was much too young - and so Crawford often left them to their own devices while he primed both Takatori and the vigilante assassin team Weiss for what he was planning.

-

"Tell me of this telepath."

Farfarello's words were not unexpected. The answer was.

"I'm a loud, annoying, irritating son of a bitch who can't follow orders." The voice came from the doorway. Schuldig stood there in all his glory, looking not a day changed from the top of his wild orange hair to the bottom of his ragged green jacket.

Nagi poked his head out from the kitchen at the unfamiliar voice. His lips curled in disgust to see the telepath's return, but Farfarello looked interested. Crawford made a mental note to remind the Irishman that Schuldig had been there long before he was, and wasn't to be touched.

"Nice," Schuldig said, breezing past them and into the empty bedroom that Crawford had been calling 'the guest room' despite their distinct lack of 'guests.'

He wasn't supposed to be surprised by things. This hadn't been in the plan, Schuldig's just turning up with no apology, no excuse, no nothing but the inexplicable return.

The vision rose up in the back of his mind and swamped him again with all the force it had that first time he'd seen it in Rosenkreuz - the earthquake, the building collapsing around their ears, falling through the floor.

It had changed. Instead of hitting the water as hard as cement and feeling it filling his lungs, getting into his eyes, washing away his glasses, he floated gently down, able to tread water with the rest of them while the debris sank. Nagi's power, his brain supplied through the muddled future. What changed?

Fearing a showdown, Nagi and Farfarello gathered behind Crawford, ready in his defense should Schuldig prove to be an enemy agent, despite what Crawford had told them. That Schuldig had always been there when he'd needed him, no matter what. Irritating, unpleasant, know-it-all telepath. What changed the vision, he wondered again.

Schuldig had changed it, he realized with the certainty that came without visions. Like the fiery stars the ancients had seen as harbingers of doom, Schuldig's hair shone like a comet in the night sky, a red star bringing not doom, but salvation. But what changed him?

Schuldig exited the bedroom he'd defiantly claimed as his own and stood before the trio, staring them down. "I'd rather throw it in with you if I'm gonna throw it in at all." This was said in German; there was no way Nagi or Farfarello could have known what he was saying. Crawford found himself answering in German as well, pictures of the first ragged days in Rosenkreuz flickering through his mind.

In time with his memory, Schudig offered a wry grin. "Den neuen Tag begrüßen und so," he said. Crawford extended his hand.

"Welcome back, Schuldig."

Schuldig took it firmly, shaking it once.

"Good to be back, Boss."

-end-