Under the Surface | By : jeisvenka Category: Weiß Kreuz > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1260 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Weiß Kreuz, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
Yohji hung limp against his bonds, breathing sharply as pain pulsed across his side. There was a soft patter as blood dripped from the cuff of his ripped pants to pool on the ground at his feet. He'd just spent the last several minutes exacerbating his wound, struggling in vain against the chains that bolted him to the wall, and now he was ready for a rest. His vision slowly blacked out, creating tunnel vision, and he realized with a somewhat delayed jolt that there was a light. A light at the end of the tunnel. Vaguely, his brain recollected something like this from visions of death, and vaguely he realized he was probably dying.
Don't go toward the light. That was the saying. But alas, as hard as he tugged, his wrists were still tightly shackled to the brick wall behind him, and he found himself unable to go anywhere, much less toward the light.
And there was a black blotch smack in the middle of in the light. Was that normal? He didn't recall that from any of the near-death experiences he'd heard about…
"You're not dying, kitten," an amused voice said, slicing into his eardrums and bouncing uncomfortably around inside his cotton-filled head. "Well, I mean, you are dying, just not quite as soon as you think..."
Something splintered against his mind, and Yohji's mind and vision cleared, the sudden intensity of the pain making him nauseous. Bile pressed against the back of his throat.
"There we go, that's better," the German purred, lifting the blond's chin to look into his wildly dilating eyes. Schuldig pressed against something that prevented the blond from fainting, and then unhitched him from the wall and carried him through the blindingly bright cell door.
Although Yohji had been jolted into an incredible awareness of his surroundings, this awareness was mostly consumed by the overwhelming pain grating against his raw nerves. He managed to dig his nails into one of Schuldig's arms along the way, but otherwise found himself unable to move, much less fight back, as he was toted down the hallway and thrown roughly into yet another dark room.
This time, though, the shackles were forgotten, and Yohji lay bleeding on the concrete floor.
Good luck, kitten, a voice whispered into his mind, and there was the foreboding sound of metal on metal as the door was slammed shut and surprisingly heavy bolts were shifted into place. You'll need it.
--
The high awareness had slowly faded, although he still found himself unable to succumb to blissful nothingness.
Time passed slowly, blood seeping out across the floor, dully reflecting what little light there was in the room. After a while, Yohji's arm started to go numb, and he decided it was time to move.
Head and muscles throbbing indignantly, he pushed himself onto his shaking knees, taking a moment for the first time to inspect his wounds. There were various scratches across his arms and hands, and then there was the obvious… a deep wound across his side, still slowly dripping with blood. If he didn't die right off the bat, it would get infected by the filth of the room, and he would still die. Is that why they'd put him here? To watch him die?
For the first time, he glanced around the room, eying the shadowy ceiling corners to look for cameras. There were bars over the window. There was a… bed? His eyes snapped back to the dark bed. In the lack of light, he hadn't noticed the lumpy rectangular object. The ominous form was clothed in black sheets and covers, and sat on top of a heavy dark metal frame that seemed slightly rusted over. It looked nigh unmovable.
Strangely enough, he couldn't see even a hint of a camera, and there were no places to hide them other than the bed, so he slowly dragged himself over to it, the pooled blood soaking into the few places his pants weren't already saturated.
As he wrapped his fingers around the lowest bar of the bed and pulled himself up, he realized with a jolt that the lumpy bed wasn't so much lumpy as shaped. And the shape wasn't so much random as balled in the center of the bed, the bunched-up covers slowly rising and falling, causing the folds to subtly change direction as they stretched and gathered around the draped figure.
The metal felt cold and dead against Yohji's fingers, his quest for cameras completely forgotten. Even the pain seemed secondary to this new terror, and terror it was, because who the hell would possibly need this much security? Unless, a voice piped up, it was another prisoner. Another prisoner, dying in here, same as him. And could he live with himself, if he knew he'd let another person die only a few feet away? What… what if it were another of the Weiss, and they really hadn't gotten away? The black bed clothes hid any possible sign of blood. He reached forward, pressing his fingers ever so gently into the fabric. Dry. He tried another place. Also dry. So the figure wasn't bleeding to death, at least.
"Hey…" he whispered, his chest aching as his heart beat vehemently against it. Nothing. Swallowing, he placed a hand across the highest point in the fabric and shook lightly, feeling a dull warmth underneath.
Finally, he felt something. A shimmer of movement, barely perceptible, and then the covers started crawling, the ball of flesh curling into itself, stretching the fabric tight around the tucked-in edges. Yohji resisted the urge to back up, his head swimming with pain and renewed nausea as his increased heartbeat pushed the blood out onto the floor.
"Are you…" Yohji resisted the urge to throw up, finally feeling the darkness closing in around him once again, "…okay…?" And then everything turned black, the small amount of light in the room flickering out of existence.
--
He woke to an empty room.
The figure on the bed was gone, leaving only a mess of disturbed sheets and covers, and light flooded in through the barred window, creating flaming streaks against the dark concrete floor. Yohji lay crumpled beside the bed, and his entire body screamed in agony as he forcefully detangled himself. After finally managing to pull himself onto the dark, sun-warmed mattress, he noticed something peculiar. Something snug was pressing against his abdomen. He lifted his stiff, blood-caked black tank-top (his black mission coat was mysteriously missing), only to find a clean, neat layer of bandaging.
The bed was surprisingly comfortable, and immediately Yohji found himself drifting off to sleep again, the black sheets absorbing the sun's rays and warming his cold limbs.
--
Wake up, kitten.
"No," Yohji murmured, fighting to remain in the darkness, unsure in his half-awareness of whether the voice was in the room or in his head. There had been no pillow, and his neck ached from the angle at which his head had rested on the sheets.
You've been asleep for days. Soon, your roommate will begin to tire of you taking up the bed…
Instantly, Yohji was awake and sitting upright, his senses tingling as he scanned the room for any other signs of life.
Nothing.
Although from the renewed pain in his side, he'd managed to reopen his wound. There was a low, beastly whine, and only after a few terror-filled moments did he realize the noise had torn from his own food-deprived stomach.
"What do you want?" Yohji growled, feeling silly for directing his anger at an empty room.
There was a low chuckle that sent shivers of electricity through his brain.
Who? Me? Why, I would love a cold beer right now, thanks for asking. From you? Nothing. I'm just a curious bystander. Now, what he wants… that I can only speculate.
"You're sick," he spat out quietly.
Sick indeed. Or rather, hung-over. But if you were referring t-
Silence. Yohji breathed quietly, mental ears pricked for the rest of the German's statement. But it never came. Instead, the seemingly overkill latches on the door screeched unlocked, and the heavy door rolled open, its hinges crying out sharply under the metal's weight. The blond leapt to his feet -- an unwise decision, as the room began to spin nauseatingly around him -- not wanting to be caught in a position of bodily weakness.
A pale hand snaked around the edge of the door, trying in vain to pry it open further, and a shock of white hair precluded the pale body that shimmied through the small crack between the door and the wall.
"Damnit… told him… grease the hinges…" murmured a raspy voice in irritation. After the form finally managed to squeeze through, Yohji's limbs were already frozen in place.
He couldn't fight him. Not like this. He would lose. He would die. He was going to die here.
Even though he'd already resigned himself to death, the possibility of a death as painful as this man could cause hadn't even entered his mind. He saw white fabric in the man's hand follow him through the door. Something with which to bind him? Rope? He would be toyed with, tortured, and then finally, finally killed. But then again, maybe he could kill himself first? He'd heard of prisoners bashing their heads into walls, splattering their brains in a final act of rebellion. Swallowing their own tongues. Perhaps he could dig his fingernails deep enough into his wrists or throat to bring about his own death. Either way, he had to act fast. His heart resumed its normal function, filling his body with lukewarm strength.
As if in answer, that shimmering golden orb finally turned his direction, and he found himself captured. Not by rope, or by chains, but by the man's powerful stare, piercing like daggers into his soul.
Any hopes of a quick and relatively painless death were swept from his range of possibilities, and a sense of dark resignation raged across his nerves.
He couldn't move.
Or rather, he could move, just not in the direction he'd planned. He found himself suddenly on his knees, out of control of his own body, pain and hopelessness thrashing through his system like chained wildcats. The concrete was cold and unforgiving before his eyes, because he simply couldn't raise himself up to look at the other man again, and the hand that finally fell across his head felt like a branding iron burning into the skin of his scalp.
I'm not going to kill you.
Just a feeling. It wasn't like Schuldig's mental voice, which prodded and twisted against his language receptors. The feeling was more like water, washing across his nerves, cooling his terror, and he simply knew.
Although logic still slaved desperately to call the rest of him into action, his body wasn't listening. His muscles had relaxed into pliancy, and his heart was beating as though he were peacefully watching the flowers sway in a breeze outside of the Koneko. The pain had subsided to a sort of dull ache in his limbs and side, and was easily ignorable. So he did.
A hand pushed him up against the side of the bed, and he felt his shirt being tugged upwards. His eyes, which had been staring half-lidded at the nothingness across the room, now turned to watch as a pair of hands pulled away the blood-soaked bandages. His wound looked mean and still trickled blood, but he couldn't be bothered by it, and it was soon covered up by a new set of white fabric anyway.
One of the pale hands rose upward, and he tried to watch it, but it soon disappeared from his line of sight, tucking under his chin and pushing his face upwards. He writhed slightly, still stupidly trying to catch a glance of the missing appendage, when his eyes fell upon something much more interesting.
The face had lowered itself to line up with his vision, and rose again as it realized Yohji's eyes were finally following what they were supposed to be.
"I have three more days," said those perfect lips, and Yohji found himself staring at them dumbly as they moved. "Four, counting today. And you have to be healthy by then, or you will die."
And then it was gone. The pale hands, the perfect lips, the golden eye, the white hair… everything. Gone. And in its place, the pain and nausea and overwhelming terror returned, and logic once again reigned supreme.
Yohji dry-heaved until he finally managed to throw something up, and then passed gratefully into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
--
He says I'm not allowed to talk to you this way anymore.
Yohji ground his eyes shut, trying desperately to escape the horrors that assaulted his senses. He'd passed out right next to where he'd heaved before, and the taste and smell almost made him puke again.
Thankfully, though, the pain was considerably less than before.
"I'm getting really sick of waking up this way," Yohji said weakly, using the thick bed frame to drag himself away, into the shadows underneath the bed.
Well, like I said. Not allowed anymore, kitten.
He sighed into the stale concrete, finally feeling the lack of pressure that Schuldig had created in order to communicate, and felt relatively peaceful now, in spite of things.
The night before was a dream, he reasoned. Farfarello didn't come in and… change his bandages. None of that happened. A really weird, freaky dream. His mind was thoroughly fucked up. Probably Schuldig's doing.
But then again, what caused Schuldig's change? Not that he minded. It was nice to have some internal peace and quiet. 'He says' Schuldig couldn't talk anymore. Who was he?
There was the screech of the door, which was now becoming a familiar sound, and Yohji turned his face to see two black boots pattering toward him. He groaned softly, trying to push himself further underneath the bed. The boots stopped directly in front of him, gracefully sidestepping the obstacle Yohji had created the other night, and there was an indignant sound as the man's black pleather pants stretched to accommodate him bending down.
"He," said a familiar nasally voice, and Yohji found himself being yanked out from under the bed by his elbow. The flame-headed German placed him on unsteady feet and half-dragged him out the partially open door. They were halfway down the hallway when Schuldig finally finished, "is currently out buying you some food. We usually eat out, so our fridge consists of beer and frozen shrimp."
Yohji was allergic to shrimp.
"Exactly. And as much as it pains me to say, you can't survive on beer alone."
The movement filled his tired muscles with strength, and he dug his heels into the ground, the German almost tearing his arm out of its socket as they both jerked to a halt. "I thought you weren't supposed to talk to me anymore."
Schuldig scowled, trying to resume their pace, but Yohji stood his ground firmly, glaring at his enemy.
"Hey, don't forget who exactly would be dead right now if it weren't for a certain enemy of yours."
"I thought you said-" Yohji ground out in irritation, his teeth clenched together.
"I'm not allowed to talk to you. Mentally, at least. I can listen whenever I please, and talk to you out loud whenever I please. He just wants me to give your brain a rest, is all."
"Who is he?!" Yohji practically yelled, and Schuldig laughed, his expression like a fox kit toying with an injured rabbit.
"Now that's a cute image," Schuldig purred, "you would make an adorable rabb-"
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Yohji's hand shot out, whether to hit or strangle or kill, he didn't know. What he did know was that his attack overreached. Well, overreached would be an understatement.
He found himself flying through the air, pushed by an equally familiar force. The end of the hallway apparently opened up into a sort of living room, which had a extremely well-padded couch. This well-padded couch, which thankfully caught his fall, unfortunately wasn't made of marshmallows or clouds, so his wound still ripped painfully. Yohji stifled a cry, but still bent double around it, knees curling up in spite of his mental orders for them to find solid ground to stand upon.
"Oye, oye! Nagi, he's injured!" Schuldig's said mock-sympathetically.
"I can see that," the boy replied evenly, his face appearing as he calmly walked from the hallway into the living room, looking down on Yohji as if he were an insect that needed squashing. "Isn't he supposed to be dead?"
A shock of red hair appeared, followed by a sneering face. Schuldig shrugged, "That was the plan."
"What changed?" the child asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Crawford won't be happy about this."
"Who's gonna tell him?" the German asked playfully.
"He'll be back in three days, Schuldig. He'll be able to see for himself."
"That's three days of fun, Leibe."
Yohji couldn't find his breath. The air was crushing him, pushing him down into the couch. Nagi's hand was stretched out in front of him, and between his fingers the blond could see those unreflective black eyes.
"No. We'll kill him now, and you'll clean up the mess you made."
"Hey, I didn't make this me-"
There was a sudden deafening silence. No breath. No speech. No movement. As if the Devil had stolen all sound from existence.
"What the hell is going on?" asked a cold voice, cutting through the silence like a dagger, and the air rushed back into the world. Yohji wheezed, his lungs screaming as they filled, and he rolled onto the floor, gasping for oxygen. He turned his eyes upward as soon as possible, fully expecting the unexpected.
And still, he found himself stunned.
Farfarello was at the front door, keys still in hand, his face contorted into an expression of inhuman rage that Yohji had never seen before, and never, ever wanted to see again.
"You're… you're awake?" Nagi gasped, his voice finally sounding like the 15-year-old he was. Both Nagi and Schuldig were turned away from where Yohji kneeled, crumpled on the ground once again.
"I was trying to tell you," Schuldig murmured, inching away toward the hallway.
"Stay where you are," Farfarello said evenly, his calm voice clashing against his expression.
"Hey listen, I was just-"
"I don't want to hear it."
And Schuldig, king of speaking-when-not-desired, shut up.
Farfarello, as if he'd finally had enough of tearing apart his teammates with his stare, stepped forward (the two others parting like butter before him), reached down, and picked Yohji up.
Just like that. As if Yohji weren't a full-grown man. As if he didn't weigh as much, if not more, than the Irishman. As if they weren't sworn enemies. As if… as if… it weren't just… wrong.
But Yohji didn't say any of this. The sight from before had chilled him into silence, and besides, his lungs were still sore from his most recent near-death experience.
They were going back to the cell, Yohji realized now. That dark cell. And it hit him like a ton of bricks, the immediacy making his vision explode into lights…
…he had to pee.
Farfarello stopped suddenly, his face relaxed as he looked down at Yohji's face. And he knew. That's what chilled Yohji the most. But he didn't dare ask anything, even though questions kept popping into his brain like firecrackers. Maybe Farfarello and Schuldig shared some mental link? But this feeling… the same feeling that had crept into him the other night (for he now knew the other night HAD happened), the feeling of painlessness and peace and uncaring stupidity… it was unlike anything the German had ever dished out. An entirely different breed, as if Schuldig had been scraping at his skin, and Farfarello were attacking his very soul.
They resumed their movement, and Yohji saw the dark room slip past. They were going somewhere else, then? The hallway had many doors, and the one they opened gave way to another room, this time smaller, brighter, and filled with only two things, one of which looked like heaven on earth. A toilet.
Farfarello set his charge down, his hands pausing only for the moment required to steady him, and then left. He shut the door behind him, and although Yohji knew he was still right outside, he proceeded to empty his bowels with complete satisfaction, as is the way bowels are traditionally emptied.
Maybe it was better having somebody to read your innermost desires? He would've rather peed in a corner of the dark prison than begged Schwarz to use the bathroom.
"Take a shower while you're in there. You smell something fierce," the raspy voice murmured, barely audible. It came from about waist-height, and Yohji knew he was seated outside the door.
A flicker of rebellion pressed against his psyche, but then his own blood and vomit-saturated smell almost sent him into another round of heaving, so he took the man's advice.
When he stepped out of the shower, he found a fresh pair of clothes on the sink, and his old ones had disappeared from where he'd tossed them on the floor. He dressed quickly, taking very little time to dry himself, feeling unsettled that he hadn't noticed the other man's entrance. Anger bubbled up at his own lack of awareness, and he flung the door open, only to find Farfarello situated against the far wall of the hallway.
His single eye, which had been staring blankly at the floor, moved up in greeting, and Yohji found his rage tugged away from him. He rummaged around inside himself, looking for it again, but it had vanished.
"What the hell are you trying to pull, Farfarello?" Yohji asked calmly, since calm was all he could find.
"Farfarello?" the brows knit together in confusion, then spread apart again with understanding.
"No, Farfarello's asleep… I'm Jei."
-- To be Continued --
Thanks so much for reading! Any and all signs of life are appreciated, don't be shy! I don't bite unless I'm asked to :)
~JeiSvenka
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