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Die Fürsprache (bait and switch)	By : quietladybirman Category: Weiß Kreuz > General Views: 2425 -:- 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.

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Die Fürsprache

(bait and switch)

a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

________

+ sacrament

Schuldig catches the drifting threads of Ken's thoughts and lets them brush lightly against his own though sheer force of habit, but the unsophisticated, linear cast of the boy’s mind does not appeal to him. Ken is an uninteresting diversion, his thoughts all too commonplace; Schuldig is too used to constrained fear to find it inspiring. They all think like that; though the particulars may be different the story Ken is whispering to him remains the same. Prosaic. He wants rather more from Weiss than Ken is imparting and, momentarily, allows himself to feel rather let down. He lets Ken's mind go. The other is proving far more appealing.

The presence of the third party, he can tell, will be stimulating. Youji’s mind is curvilinear, his thoughts possess a surprisingly sinuous quality. Though his mind is clouded with pain, Youji’s fear and grief and frustrated rage remain seductive. There is an edge to his anxiety, too, which Schuldig hadn’t been anticipating – something normally kept well hidden in the back doubles of the brain has slipped its leash and started to wander. It seeps through the young man’s mind like smoke and, like smoke, it stains and taints everything it touches.

Comprehension isn’t long in coming to Schuldig and, when he grasps the import of that soft, twisting tainting, he smiles ferociously. He perceives its meaning for all Youji has scrupulously refused to let himself do anything of the sort, and he runs his thumb along the swell of Ken's lower lip, letting his free hand slip beneath the hem of Ken's top and trace its ticklish way along the planes of his abdomen. Ken twists in his grasp, trying to pull away and hissing softly in discreet pain as Schuldig rakes his nails across his chest: Youji’s internalized wince is almost as appreciable.

“Let go, you sick bastard!” Ken snaps. He hates the way panic insinuates itself into his voice.

“Get off him,” Youji whispers ferociously, and he tries to pull himself to his feet again but pain traps him just as surely as if Schuldig had seized him by the lapels and forced him back to the floor. Jesus Christ, he is thinking, why you, Ken? Of all the people who could have walked in on this, why did it have to be Ken? Grasping for hope, he casts wildly about himself for his comm. only to discover it lying shattered a few feet away. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

“I don’t want to,” Schuldig says reasonably. “What are you going to do about it?” What can you do about it?

Another slap to the face. Youji, though he wants to recoil, holds his ground; he is, he knows, just as trapped as Ken is. Pain only reinforces his helplessness and all Youji can do is ignore it. “If you hurt him, Schuldig,” he says dangerously, and the assertion sounds hopelessly pathetic though he looks and sounds furious, and he means every word, “I’ll kill you.”

Schuldig merely laughs. “Promise?”

Youji stares at him. His look is pure poison, promising a world of agony should Schuldig prove so stupid as to come within his reach. He is livid. He wants to grab Ken by the arm and punch him, then lead him away from here where he has no right to be. Take him home. He’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake! Youji doesn’t think he has ever wanted anything so much as he wants to see Ken safe now. He is angry and guilty and, oh God, he is frightened – he knows Ken too well.

It has never occurred to Ken to consider himself irreplaceable. Always one of many, he holds his life lightly. Youji knows all too well that he wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing himself if in so doing he would save a friend…

It doesn’t surprise Ken when Schuldig unties the shirt at his waist and tosses it negligently away, but he tenses when the man reaches for the hem of his top. Ken's tee-shirt is torn already; the shot he took in the side has seen to that. Though he struggles and tries to lash out it proves only too simple for Schuldig to tear it unceremoniously off and cast the ripped, dead thing to the floor. The cold makes him gasp. He feels exposed and when he gazes at Schuldig (the man isn’t looking at him; he barely seems to exist for Schuldig) the look in his eyes is an admixture of resentment and fright and discomfiture. He doesn’t know how he should be feeling.

Ken blushes, and conscientiously gazes at nothing at all, and tries to pretend he is alone.

He doesn’t get away with it for long. Schuldig, though he doesn’t take his own eyes from Youji’s for more than a moment, has an uncanny talent for knowing when Ken’s attention is wandering. He understands it for a desperate attempt to shore up failing defenses. He knows the boy is playing games with denial, and he disapproves. He has, he thinks, drawn this out long enough. When Schuldig glances at Ken it is only for confirmation of what he already knows. He sighs. Shakes his head. Ken never sees the blow coming.

The punch snaps Ken's head back; it nearly knocks him from his feet. Only the wire that binds his wrists keeps him from falling. He chokes back a yelp as his own weight has it suddenly biting into his forearms and he fights to regain his footing, ease the pain. Droplets of blood cling to the wire looking for all the world like beads strung upon a bracelet and Schuldig’s fingers knot themselves into Ken's hair as he roughly yanks the boy’s head up, forcing him to meet his eyes. Ken scowls at him but his own eyes are now nothing but fearful. He can taste blood on his lips.

“No. Look at me, Ken,” Schuldig says brusquely. Then his own interest slips, again, from Ken; he turns, smiles lazily at Youji. “Does he always have this much difficulty following orders?”

Youji says nothing, but his silence is furious. He is disgusted with Schuldig. Disgusted, too, that all he is doing is watching; his mind rails at him, demanding action, exhorting him to spring on the Schwarz, wrap his hands around his hateful throat and slowly choke the life from him, but the body is treacherous and refuses to comply.Youji’s arms are clasped across his abdomen, pressing against the soft, sure pulsing of his own blissfully liberated blood as it seeps soft and steady between his fingers; his leg throbs, a rivulet of blood traces its way down his thigh. The entire limb feels numb and foreign. It hardly feels like his leg at all.

He wants to turn away. He tells himself nothing will happen if he turns away, that all he has to do is refuse to watch and Schuldig will stop. Where would the fun be without an audience? He closes his eyes and pretends, pretends he is miles away and this isn’t happening, and somewhere in the shadows Asuka smiles and presses a kiss to his cheek and makes as if to flee… even then Youji could never have been worthy of Asuka’s sacrifice. He certainly isn’t worthy of Ken's. He wanted you to live. And you, Ken? Don’t you think I want you to live?

(God damn it, Ken, not you too!)

Like a cracked record, life spins back on itself: the needle catches in the groove, the phrase repeats itself over and over and over until, contextless, all sense is bled from it. Ken always did have familiar ways.

“Now don’t you start.” Schuldig says warningly, and there is no mistaking the threat in his voice. He doesn’t need to punctuate his remark by raking his nails down Ken's back, scoring an ugly pattern of raised red welts across already scarred skin, but he does. Youji feels a perverse kind of pride in his friend when Ken refuses to react.

Which is of course no good at all. Schuldig needs Ken responsive. What he refused to give freely would have to be seized by force. Ken obviously hadn’t let himself realize quite what he had consented to. High time, Schuldig thinks, that he did and, just for a moment, he regrets Farfarello’s absence. This situation would, he knows, have stimulated his teammate just as much as it does him. Farfarello would have been prepared for this. He, regrettably, is not; the wire is gone, his own gun no use at all, he has no interest in Siberian’s clumsy weaponry – nothing for it but to improvise. Smiling, he slips off his belt.

Ken pretends indifference only because indifference is safe. He tells himself this means nothing and he isn’t afraid because maybe, just maybe if he keeps telling himself that, it will be true after all. He doesn’t even allow Schuldig the momentary satisfaction of anticipatory fear. He merely closes his eyes (he is tired of their betrayal) grits his teeth and tenses – is that right? would it make more sense to try to yield to it? – and braces himself.

It hurts just the same when Schuldig strikes him.

Pain is elusive. You can prepare yourself but you can’t ever prepare, not really. The human mind never can truly recall what it is to suffer. Ken's head snaps up at the first blow, his eyes opening briefly as he bites back a yelp. After that he makes no sound, biting his lip to stifle a scream, to force it back inside – this is nothing, he can’t break already, he’ll need to scream so much more later – though the pain continues just the same. He struggles to ignore it. What’s pain? Pain, or so Ken tells himself, is nothing he can’t handle. He has to handle it. He wants to die well.

Schuldig is only professional. He takes no pleasure in the beating for its own sake; he is, again, too used to it. Ken's back is already scored with welts, slowly running blood where the buckle of the belt has scythed through already damaged skin. He strikes again, the belt cracking heavily as it tears the air in two.

Finally Ken gasps and it is no relief at all. He allows himself that small lapse only because it is better than crying out and Youji flinches at that single soft sound, hissing in sympathetic pain. Schuldig steps back a pace, regarding the emotions that mark his face with the air of a connoisseur. Youji’s reactions – his desperate empathy, his rage, his grief, his fear – are far more interesting than those of the boy he is torturing. Ken is candid, unconflicted; he only hurts. The blonde’s hands grasp the railing he leans against so tightly it is as if he means to snap them in two. He is tense, preparing for a confrontation he has to know will never come. His eyes, normally only languid, are a study in fury.

“Jesus,” Youji hisses viciously, and even he doesn’t know why he speaks. “Jesus Christ.”

Schuldig smiles at him, and carries on.

An unmarked length of time later – less than a minute may have passed, or it may have been as many as five; Youji long ago stopped counting, stopped caring – and Ken nearly loses his footing again, stumbling and very nearly pitching forward. The sudden pain as the wire tears into his wrists brings him up short and he forces himself back upright. Unsteady now, his head held low, Ken holds himself like a man battling pain. His eyes, when he opens them, are dazed. Reaction, Youji realizes, is setting in.Schuldig steps forward, letting the bloody belt slip from his fingers and to the floor where, serpentine, it coils up on itself. Idly, as if he barely realizes he is doing it, he runs his slender fingers along the abused skin of Ken's back and smirks when Ken instinctively tenses.

“I know you’re frightened,” he murmurs; a soft, seductive thing, that whisper. Youji has to strain to catch it though he knows Schuldig intends for him to overhear. “I know you’re hurting. Stop pretending otherwise. This would be so much easier if you’d let yourself give in.”

At first Youji thinks Ken isn’t going to answer but he raises his head, searching for Schuldig’s face. “Fuck you. I'm not pretending.” His voice is barely louder thanSchuldig’s, and his pain bleeds subtly into it.

“Oh, no?” Schuldig asks scornfully. “Do you really think you can hide from a telepath, Kenken?” He can feel Youji’s gaze upon him, the both of them. Don’t touch him! Oh, and the simplicity of it all… the starkly possessive edge to Youji’s fury delights him. “What’s the matter? Jealous?”

“Go to Hell, Schwarz.” Youji retorts, his voice curt and furious, and knows he is hiding nothing.

Ken tries to slip back into stubborn silence. He shies away when, once again, Schuldig snatches for his chin, angling his head back toward him. This time the redhead’s touch is perversely gentle, and it hurts. He doesn’t mean to speak. “God… why are you doing this?” He sounds plaintive, frightened, he sounds like a child.

Of course Schuldig knows what he is really asking. Why not just kill me? “Because that, Ken, would be far too easy.”

He traces his fingers around the edges of the scars that veil Ken's back, still easily discernable under the raised and bloody weals scored across it. He understands their import, and nods almost imperceptibly. Youji draws breath to cry out a warning. Nothing he can do to stop him but if Ken is at least prepared— Schuldig is faster.

Ken recoils when Schuldig’s lighter snaps into life bare inches from his face. With a single violent motion he pulls free of the man’s grasp, ignoring the pain the action costs him, and nearly, nearly, screams. Schuldig, prepared for it, grabs him by the back of the head, yanking Ken back toward him and forcing him to stand still. He doesn’t lower the lighter. The flame flickers and dances and Ken closes his eyes and tries to avert his head. Mary Mother of God not again, I can’t go through that again, I just can’t… He almost forgets to care what Schuldig might think of him for it. Even with his eyes closed Ken can still feel the heat on his cheek. That bastard, he thinks feverishly, that twisted bastard!

But what are phobias and fears if not tools to be used against oneself? Schuldig comprehends everything. He knows how Ken used to start when Youji lit his cigarettes, if he didn’t catch himself; how he still turns away from open fires, far enough from the flames that he feels their heat only incidentally, understands his inability to differentiate between fire that warms and that which does nothing but burn. Even in the field he can only ever pretend indifference—

Schuldig simply watches. Impossible to tell what he might be thinking. Youji wouldn’t even like to hazard a guess as to what he has planned – is this purely psychological? He allows himself to hope that it might be but that hope lasts only moments, only until Schuldig takes and lights a cigarette. Letting the lighter burn as if he has merely forgotten about it, he takes a slow, languid drag on the cigarette for all the world like he were lingering over a lazy Sunday-morning cup of coffee. “You don’t like fire, do you.” He says matter-of-factly. Ken can tell he isn’t looking for answers. In his own horribly eloquent way he has answered already.

“Don’t,” Ken hears himself say, and he hates the plea in his voice. It isn’t worth pleading for anything.

“What kind of an arrangement do you think this is?” Schuldig asks in perfectly feigned surprise. Even the look on his face, Youji thinks, is faultless, a replica so perfect it can hardly be sincere. “No deal, Ken.”

Youji doesn’t see Schuldig move, but he hears Ken scream.

Schuldig steps back slightly, flicking the spent cigarette casually to the floor, his smile that of a scientist who sees his own hypothesis successfully proved. Ken is vague-eyed and horrified, looking right at Youji without once comprehending what he is seeing. Seeing something completely different, something years old which still haunts him and which, with the stimulus of all-too-familiar pain, has grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him into terrified submission. That look tears Youji in two. Youji wants nothing but to take Ken in his arms and hold him. Take his pain away.

And it is a fantasy. Impossible even to think it.

“You’re sick.” He spits. The look in his eyes says Schuldig has signed his own death warrant. Furious, and single-minded in his fury, Youji Kudou is not a man to cross lightly. He makes a dangerous enemy. Maybe Schuldig doesn’t realize it; maybe he just doesn’t care. All that matters is the moment and for now at least Youji can do nothing. He can hate him, but he can do nothing about it. His frustration is seductive.

“So I’ve been told.” Schuldig’s indifference says this is nothing new. It doesn’t matter; Ken is only more of the same. Lightly, gently, he runs one hand up the boy’s side, twists his fingers in his hair and yanks his head back, exposing his throat. “That’s cute, Weiss. Real cute. But I really wouldn’t have thought he—” flatly contemptuous, that single word, “—was your type.”

Youji starts. His fingers tense around the railings which support his body. “What’s that got to do with anything? Let him go!”

“Don’t be stupid. Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Schuldig turns away from Youji, erasing him with a single contemptuous frown in favor of gazing contemplatively at Ken as if he is some kind of puzzle that needs to be solved. He studies Ken’s closed eyes, the flatly artificial arch to his exposed and vulnerable throat, the subtle rise of his bare chest as he draws breath, as if he is wondering what to do with him; the boy shifts his weight slightly, desperately and futilely trying to ease the pain and he makes, without ever once meaning to do anything of the sort, a small soft sound, midway between a gasp and a whimper. Schuldig’s eyes narrow slightly as an obscene, even carnal calculation creeps slowly over his face.

Oh, God. Youji stares at him, at them, furious horror slyly insinuating itself into his eyes. Oh, dear God, no. He struggles to regain his footing, dragging himself up using the railings and standing, leaning heavily against them and grimacing with hard-repressed pain. Has to move. Has to…

Two paces and his leg gives way, the torn and ravaged tissue refusing to support his weight and spilling him from his feet. Losing his footing, Youji slumps over and slides down the shallow stairs, landing heavily and awkwardly to lie at their foot, his coat twisted up beneath him. He can’t help feeling – incongruously, knowing full well that it is a perverse thing to be worrying about now – it is an undignified thing for him to have done. He pushes himself up again, supporting himself on his forearms; he refuses to lie helpless at Schuldig’s feet. Pride at its ugly worst, the exact kind of thing Ken would have laughed at him for if this had been a normal situation, if everything was okay. Youji feels a gout of blood rush warm and sticky down the side of his thigh; he has done nothing but make matters worse.

He calls Ken's name anyway.
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Die Fürsprache (bait and switch)