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Dragon Cycle	By : RubyRoh Category: Weiß Kreuz > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 6229 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own WeiÃŸ Kreuz, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Dragon Cycle – Chapter 28 – The Abandoned Dead

Author's Notes: It’s been *mumble* years since I tackled this fic, but it nagged at me through all those years that I hadn’t finished it. So I got to work recently, and now it’s complete. This is the next chapter in this story.
No beta was used for this chapter so any grammar, punctuation, spelling, translation, characterization, etc. mistakes are purely my own work.

********
Aleksandra Pastukhova never knew what hit her. Schuldig was in her mind before Schwarz were out of their car. He was ready and waiting.
When Schwarz arrived at her door, she opened it to them without the need for them to knock. She had put up some resistance, but she was not a strong telepath and she was hopelessly mismatched against the man directing her actions.
Crawford and his team entered her room as she went and took up a seat facing them. Outwardly she appeared calm. Internally, it was a different story. She was horrified at this turn of events.
No! No! she shrieked silently. So soon? How!
Now the team were in her room, Schuldig let go his control of her in favour of wandering her mind once more. Farfarello closed the door and Pastukhova stared at the Irishman as he turned and moved closer. When he stopped moving, she turned her attention to Crawford.
“Who are you? What do you want?” she demanded, rising to her feet.
Crawford gave her his coldest smile. “You have no idea who we are? Really?”
“Get out of my room!” she demanded. Clearly she had decided on bravado as the best form of attack.
Schuldig glided through her rattled mind picking up information as he went. Oh so much information to be had. Oh! He prevented her from calling to Verena for help.
Hush. Hush, he soothed. Surely you know you’ve been abandoned?
Her scream at the unexpected sound of him in her head was cut short. Farfarello snickered and reached into his vest, withdrawing a knife. The Russian watched him warily.
Crawford drew up a chair opposite her and sat down. “I would have thought someone brave enough to go up against Ezsett wouldn’t be panicked so easily,” he said conversationally.
“I didn’t…” she began then deliberately shut her mouth. The look in her eyes hardened along with her resolve. “You deserved it. All of you!” she spat. “And more! So very much more!”
Crawford offered her an insincere smile. “See? Now we’re making progress,” he approved.
“Go to hell!” she snarled.
“You first,” he replied easily. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you explain to us why you thought this was a good idea and how you honestly expected to succeed?”
“How does it matter?” She gave her head a sharp shake. She looked away from him. Schuldig could sense defeat creeping over her. Well, well, he thought to himself, and without any real help from me. She wouldn’t last 30 seconds back at Rosenkreuz. At least this made his information gathering mission easier.
Pastukhova sat down heavily and refused to look at anyone.

*********

Crawford watched her closely. He was unsure how much of her capitulation was being fuelled by Schuldig. But in the end, it didn’t matter. However it had come about, he was grateful not to have to waste time with a battle of wills.
Pastukhova had slumped a little in her seat and her gaze was directed at the carpeted floor. Her hands lay limp in her lap. She hardly appeared to be breathing.
“From the beginning,” he prompted when she seemed disinclined to speak.
She brought her gaze up to meet his and gave a short, tired laugh. “You have a telepath reading my mind. Get him to tell you,” she challenged.
Not complete capitulation then, Crawford thought.
“I’d rather hear it from you,” he clarified.
Her gaze drifted away from him and rested floor again for long minutes. Crawford waited patiently.
“Where’s the point?” she asked eventually, sounding utterly dejected.
Crawford said nothing, he simply waited her out. Eventually she drew a slow deep breath and pulled her gaze back to him.
“We had a plan. It was a grand plan! And when Verena explained it to me – set it out for me – it seemed so achievable. She called it the Dragon Cycle. We would start off as hatchlings, tackling the weakest of Rosenkreuz’s teams; if we succeeded then we would become like dragonets and take the next step, going against a slightly stronger team, and if that succeeded…” she gave her hand a flick, “well you get the idea. Verena said there were six levels: hatchling, dragonet, juvenile, young adult, adult and finally Wyrm, the strongest of all to go against the best Rosenkreuz had in the field. Oh, she made it sound so achievable.
“And we believed it, we believed her. We believed we could pull it off. Lots of smaller, weaker Talents joining together to defeat the ones who had stolen us from our previous lives, who had terrorized us, tortured us, and in the end judged us wanting, and discarded us.”
She gave a rueful smile. “It was never going to be something done quickly or easily. It took us months, years to set things up, to locate Talents and convince them to join us. We did have some concerns about the stronger teams but Verena believed in us and in the plan, and we convinced ourselves we could defeat the stronger teams so long as we continued to follow her lead. This was the way to really hurt Eszett, she told us. The small fry were retaliation for those we’d lost to Rosenkreuz along the way – those who’d died within their walls, or worse, become like monsters so that we no longer knew them.”
She stopped a moment, lowering her eyes and blinking rapidly. Drawing a steadying breath, she lifted her gaze and let it roam over the men before her. There was a hardness back in her eyes. “Who became monsters like you,” she said, her tone malicious. As her gaze lingered on Nagi, it softened. “Even children,” she mourned.
There was silence during which time her eyes never left Nagi. “I forget myself,” she said eventually, “Men of Rosenkreuz aren’t the sentimental types. No matter how young those ‘men’ are.” She sounded as though her words hurt her somehow.
After long moments, she gathered herself and looked back at Crawford. “Still,” she went on in a more even tone, “you’re not here to discuss such matters. So, where were we? Well, yes, I’m sure you’re aware that not every Talent is found and embraced by Rosenkreuz.
“Some of them are clever enough to hide and stay hidden. Some are simply overlooked as unworthy. As discussed, some have already lost loved ones to the brutality that is Rosenkreuz and they have vowed to keep out of that organization’s dark clutches. Some of those are more than willing to help train up lesser Talents and make them stronger. You just need to seek them out, organize the training, then group them according to Talent and strength.
“Naturally, even trained, these Talents would be no real match for those teams who had come out of Rosenkreuz. That was where I came in. I’d had some Rosenkreuz training before they decided I was useless except for office work. And, of course, Verena knew about the links, and you don’t need much training at all to be able to push static down a link. Get enough low grade telepaths pushing enough static and you can literally blow someone’s mind.
“Verena ran everything, but she was still part of an active field team, so she was restricted in what she could do. That, also, is where I came in. Second in command. I was ‘dead’, after all, so it was easy for me to move about, recruiting, training, lending a helping hand wherever it was needed.” She gave a small smile. “And it worked…for a while, at least.” She drew a deep breath and let it out heavily. “When the first teams died, we were elated. Not at our success, because we knew we would succeed, but because they were dead and in that, we had wounded Rosenkreuz – albeit only slightly. But we knew that as we progressed, the targets would get bigger and that would begin to hurt Rosenkreuz more and more.
“We knew that even from the first attack, they would be looking for us, but we had planned for it. We had teams in different countries so we would plan an attack, carry it out, disband that team of Talents, and I would move to the next cell in another country and repeat the process.” She gave a short, hard laugh. “All those beneath Rosenkreuz’s contempt taking down their teams. It was joyous.” She stopped then, seemingly lost in past memories.
“Until it wasn’t,” Crawford prompted.
She looked across at him as though only just remembering she wasn’t alone.
“Yes,” she admitted ruefully. “Until that time. Wyrm was a step too far.” She moved her gaze to Schuldig. “You were much too fast for us, Mastermind. I will admit that I was panicked. I knew that, ordinarily, slipping into minds and interfering with a Talent was risky because of the signature. But with their minds blasted there would be no chance of the signature surviving. In this case,” she shook her head, “you were all still alive.
“Verena assured me all was not lost, and I continued to trust her as I had from almost the first time I’d met her. I think now, looking back, her logic was not so sound and we, unfortunately, were too ready to believe in her.”
“How was it achieved? Interfering with my Talent?” Crawford wanted to know.
She gave a slight shrug. “Verena explained it to me like this. She was akin to a concreter. She could construct a heavy, impenetrable Shield when she had to protect a mind, as she did with Schuldig. And she knows how to deconstruct a Shield. She went to work on you weeks before the attack.
“I know that when she legally Shielded your mind, she allowed you to feel a very slight difference so you thought that was normal for how she worked. The truth of it is that she can make her Shield like a gossamer layer, not even noticeable to the mind’s owner or to any visitors to that mind.” Her gaze flicked briefly to Schuldig before returning to Crawford. “Behind that Shield, she set to work, slowly and patiently breaching your Shield eventually to the point where I could enter, do what was needed and leave. Once that was done, she repaired her breach oh so carefully. She said that your telepath hadn’t tried your mind while she was there but, even if he had, he wouldn’t have found the breach because it was hidden behind her Shield.” She gave a sigh. “So, that’s how we did it.” Then she fell silent and looked back at the floor.
“And how were you dead?” Crawford enquired, picking up her earlier remark.
“Planning,” she replied. She raised her gaze to him. “I *am* a telepath, even if Rosenkreuz didn’t consider me a very good one. But I am enough of one that I can persuade unsuspecting minds they’ve seen something that may or may not have happened, that they know a tour group member that they’ve never seen before.” She shrugged. “Planning and deception. Simple.”
Crawford felt he’d heard enough. He knew Schuldig could fill in any missing details. He didn’t want to prolong their stay too much longer. If Eszett were not already hot on her trail they would be soon.
“Verena,” Pastukhova said softly. She gave a desolate laugh and shook her head. “I cared for her, you know,” she said, directing her attention back at Crawford momentarily. “Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to let anyone in that hell hole know how much I cared. It was possible to keep some secrets. And I believe she cared for me. She was the only one who tried to ease the pain when those monsters did what they did to my brother. She talked me out of suicide; she told me there was a better way.” She sighed. “And there was – almost.” Looking across at Crawford again, she said, “I should hate you, but I just don’t have the energy to care anymore.
“Verena, though, I still care for her. But as I’ve been told,” she tapped a forefinger to her temple as she spoke, “she has abandoned me. I don’t blame her. The way she will suffer if Rosenkreuz capture her is beyond imagining. For me,” she shrugged. “I’m a realist.”
“You know Eszett is coming for you,” Crawford said.
It was a statement, not a question but she answered all the same.
“Of course they are.”
There was nothing left to say. Crawford rose and she looked away. There was not one bit of fight left in her.
They were waiting for the elevator when they heard the sound of a gun shot from the direction of her room.
“*Wunderschönen,“ Schuldig smiled to himself.

*********

“…so she hid amongst a group of passengers going ashore in the port before their final destination, then she simply slipped away,” Schuldig concluded filling the blanks of Pastukhova’s story. “Not hard to do, as she said.”
He wasn’t sorry to be out of the Russian’s mind. It had all been there for him to see: the seething fury, the determination to exact revenge, the endless search for those Rosenkreuz had discarded, the training, the tests, teaming Talents to get the best results and working with those Talents to improve them and make them worthy adversaries for the Rosenkreuz elite. If it hadn’t been all so misguided and futile, Schuldig might have admired their determination.
As it was, the end result had been death for the Russian, as it would be for any of those who were unfortunate enough to be tracked down by the agents of Rosenkreuz. Verena would endure a short, fear-filled life on the run and no doubt Rosenkreuz would enact a change in procedure and begin disposing of any Talent they had no use for.
He settled deeper into the passenger seat of the car. He’d spent long enough in minds not his own lately. He’d learned quite a bit from the Russian but in the end she’d told them quite a bit, too, so there wasn’t much he’d needed to add. Crawford didn’t seem interested in the minutiae and Schuldig was happy to leave it all behind as well.
Although, he mused, there wasn’t much to look forward to in the immediate future. The remainder of the vacation at Takatori’s mountain retreat lay ahead. How many days were left? He’d lost count. No matter. Crawford would know. And on the bright side, they no longer needed Stärke to babysit them so auf wiedersehen Stein, you vindictive fucker.

*********

Crawford sat back in his chair and began to read over his report. He’d made a brief phone report when they’d gotten back to their car at Pastukhova’s hotel, advising of Verena’s betrayal and mentioning the Russian’s part in the plot, adding that, by the time they’d reached her hotel, she had taken her own life.
Now they’d been back at Takatori’s lodge for hours and he was finalizing his official report. It hadn’t been difficult to write and, with a bit of glossing over here, an omission or two there, and a tweaking of the facts where necessary, the report would pass any inspection it was given.
There had been the slight problem of Schuldig rendering the remainder of Stärke unconscious and abandoning them at the side of the road but, as explained in the report, the telepath felt he’d had no choice. Verena had been a member of Stärke and he’d no longer been certain he could trust any of them. When Stein refused to wait for Schwarz and drove off, causing Schuldig to lose touch with Verena, well, what else was he to do?
Crawford read the report over and, satisfied it said all there needed to be said and nothing more, he sent it off.
He stood up, stretched and went to the small bar. Pouring himself a drink, he wondered if he might grab a nap. They’d been up all night and it was now almost midday. He’d earned a nap.
The phone on his desk rang. Takatori.
Moving to the phone, he picked up. “Sir.”
“Pack your bags, we’re going back to the city,” the old man grunted down the line then hung up.
Crawford put the phone down, looked at it a moment, then swallowed the rest of his drink before conveying Takatori’s message to the rest of his team.

*********

*Wunderschönen -- Beautiful
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Dragon Cycle