Very Much Alive Weiß Kreuz Crawford x Schuldig by Tendai tendaikudou @ yahoo . com http://bokunote.viskeimusume.com Archive: Probably, but write and ask me please ^^ C&C: Very much welcome so long as it's not flaming~ Warnings: Crawford x Schuldig. NC-17 - s'right, there's violent weirdness with sexual undertones (at least there are sexual undertones in my opinion). If you can't deal with those things, don't read it, or read it and then talk to your friends about what a bad person I am XD Some spoilers for the end of the original series but not really all that bad. And probably what most people would consider OOC'ness since Crawford most likely has the sex drive of a block of wood. Enjoy!~ ~ Alrights ^^ This fic is directly inspired by the song "Return ~Coming Home~" by the Cruxshadows, which I heard while watching the first decent Weiss Kreuz AMV I've ever encountered. Here's the particular passage that made me think of what happens in this writing: "And though they tell you I am lost, And their words report my death is come: The fates have left me breathing still. Very much alive." Now, if you're one of those people like me who runs to download the song so they can get the full reading experience, don't be surprised if you don't think the rest of the song fits this fic. I know it doesn't for me, I just liked this verse. So don't listen to it and think "Man, that Tendai chick is stupid. What was she thinking?" because I warned you! That out of the way, this fic is dedicated to Matrim, who suggested an all-Schwarz pairing rather than Schwarz x Weiss and then ran around going "yayyyy!" when I said I'd do a Crawford x Schuldig. Once again, though, I have to apologize because it seems like every fic I do with her in mind veers off into someplace unexpected XD I promise, someday I will write you full-on smut and not weird mind games. Really. This takes place about a year after the end of the first series. It either comes before Gluhen or completely ignores Gluhen's existence, take your pick depending on if you loved or loathed the second series. Requires some knowledge about the last episodes of the first series, but you might be able to piece it together even if you haven't seen the show. ~ I woke up to a hand around my neck. Now, there are times at which I don't mind that. Breath-play has its place in the scheme of things, but I usually prefer that to happen during sex. Waking up choking and gasping for air is an entirely different experience and one to which my first reaction was a pedestrian "what the fuck?!" rather than "oh yeah baby, do it harder". The sheets felt wrapped around me like something out of one of those hentai movies with schoolgirl-raping tentacles, but I wasn't sure whether that was the case or whether I was gripping them so hard in my desperate struggle to get oxygen that they seemed like they were holding me back. Panic does some pretty fucked-up things to one's perception of the outside world. Tentacle-beast sheets or not, I still had to deal with whoever was choking me. Having one's air cut off isn't conducive to seeing clearly, especially when it's dark outside, so I got a brief flash of a profile when whoever it was tilted their head downward and that was all. Everything else - curtains, dresser, lamp - were fuzzy shadows out of the corners of my eyes as I arched off the bed, finally disentangling one hand from the sheets long enough to pry at the strange one with a death-grip on my neck. "Get off, fucker!" That's what I tried to say. All that came out were a series of wet gagging noises that weren't nearly as effective as an epithet-filled order. The guy just laughed. I knew it was a man at that point because the hand I'd tugged at ineffectively was anything but female. The laugh clinched it - low and smug and fuck if I hadn't heard it before. I knew that the person attached to it was dead though, so I was pretty sure that it was just my oxygen-starved brain teasing me for a few seconds before I collapsed dead on the sheets. Then I saw the brief flash of a streetlight outside reflected off of something like glass, the shimmer of eyes beneath it. Oh fuck. I knew who it was then, and he knew I knew, probably because of the moan I gasped out from under his fingers. The immediate result of that recognition was that the hand on my throat loosened just enough for me to gasp in a breath. That first one almost hurt as it exploded into my lungs, and I coughed hard a couple times. He didn't let me up though, just kept his hand on my neck and said nothing. After a while I got my breath back and spoke. "Crawford?" The only answer I got was the faintest tightening of those fingers around my neck. He always was more of the silent type. Refined businessman or not, I always ended up getting more beatings from Bradley Crawford than lectures, though I do remember him lecturing Nagi other than the time in the clearing. Maybe he just knew that I would mock words, but remember bruises. His more physical punishments usually worked, at least for a few days. But right now, I didn't want that. I wanted an explanation of why he'd suddenly come back from the dead and why he'd tried to kill me in my sleep. I couldn't get into his head. That wasn't really a surprise, I hadn't ever been able to before unless he wanted me to, but now I found it even more maddeningly frustrating than I had back in the old days. Maybe I'd hoped that in the time between all of us drowning - or almost drowning, in the case of myself and apparently him - that his defenses had slipped. Ha. Another example of why people wouldn't consider me the most logical man alive. Crawford would never let his skills go dull. "Just..fucking..say something!" I was starting to get pissed now. Not just frustrated like I was a few seconds ago when I couldn't worm my way into his head, but angry. First he shows up in my bedroom and tries to kill me, and now he's just sitting there silent while I get myself all worked up? Fuck that! Maybe it was stupid, but I started to struggle. I said before that I'm not all that logical, this was just another fine example of that. He didn't strangle me, though. That was odd. I cut myself off in the middle of delivering a stream of invectives targetting him, his mother and a number of different hoofed animals and just stared at him. Well, at his profile at least because the streetlight outside the window wasn't giving me any better light to see him by. There were a few moments of silence and then the sound of fabric rustling and the feel of a body moving downwards. He stopped when he was hovering over me and dropped his head to lay cheek to cheek with mine, lips against my ear. This was a familiar position. When Bradley Crawford whispered, it usually meant that the person on the receiving end had done something so stupidly wrong that Crawford couldn't control his anger long enough to speak out loud. I'd only been subject to it a few times and each time I was closer to scared than I'd ever been in my entire life. When he started to whisper this time, his voice was as refined as it always was, roughened only slightly by the obvious rage. "What shall I say, Schuldig? Should I ask if you're happy to see me again?" His hand tightened around my neck again when he asked the latter question, and I glared at him. I've never been smart about how I respond to threats from him, always relying on bravado and sarcasm, and this time was no different. The hand just tightened when I glared and only slackened its grip when I slid my eyes away to stare at the wall. I could hear the smirk in his voice when he continued, breath falling maddeningly on my ear. "I always knew your sense of morality was warped." I didn't get it. He could be cryptic and mysterious at the worst of times. I made the mistake of glaring again and the fingers crushed my throat until I figured my windpipe was about to go. Fuck, I was going to have bruises in the morning. Not that I minded, really, but it's bad enough having to deal with the constant whisper-flow of peoples' thoughts in my head without those thoughts being about me. My eyes shifted again, glared at the window and the dirty glow of the streetlights through the dingy glass. "You left me to die, Schuldig," came the low whisper again. Oh yeah, that. Strange how things like that can just slip from one's mind. It wasn't that I'd actually intended for him to die - a building was collapsing, I was underwater and I think I was to be forgiven if my thoughts went to getting myself the fuck out of there rather than saving the man who regularly beat me bloody. Crawford had never been the forgiving type, unfortunately. The forming bruises on my neck would attest to that in a few hours. I started to sit up. Was shoved down. Fucking precognative powers of his. I hated him at that second more than I ever had in my life, which was saying something since he wasn't beating me and I wasn't officially under his control anymore. However, in our world officiality really had no bearing - whoever had the upper hand was the one in control, and in this case Crawford had the upper hand in both the figureative and literal senses. "Well you didn't, did you?" I spoke without thinking, and my voice had a petulant tone to it. Whiny, although I hate using that term because he used to. I squirmed under his hand and he let me, for a few seconds, before the fingers clamped down with the same relentless grip. His fingers ran over my cheek and I shuddered. The man could convey power better with a gesture like that than he could with any beating. His breath was hot, and I suddenly realised how cold the rest of the room was in comparison. Or maybe it was just the shivering wariness (or was it anticipation?) that was skittering down my spine and into my stomach. I paused, went silent and waited for him to speak. I knew it was coming, he was just trying to shut me up. Crawford never liked having to talk over anyone. "I didn't, which is too bad for you." His voice was more a purr than anything else at that point, and if I had been someone other than myself, someone other than a somewhat-jaded pervert, I might have blushed. As it was, it was just Crawford going after a weakness. Beatings left me sarcastic, lectures made me fall asleep. Sex, however, was the perfect way to get my attention. "I had the chance to do quite a bit of thinking when I was trapped in that building Schuldig. You'd be amazed at the clarity of thought one has as they're watching their impending doom come closer and closer." Obviously not too impending, I thought with a faint irritation to myself, because he was still fucking there and I was still trapped and left in the dark as to what he wanted. Revenge? It didn't make sense, Crawford wasn't the type to get his revenge like this. He would have just shot me, fried my brain, and had done with it. "I still had enough of the link with Nagi at that point to know he'd gotten out safely," he said thoughtfully and drummed his fingertips against my adam's apple like it was a writing desk and he was pondering some particularly tricky paragraph. It made me want to cough, but I suppressed that need because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Childish, I know, but when one is on a bed with someone's hand at their throat, what else is there to be? "Farfarello got out safely as well, from what I saw. But you..you, Schuldig, were a mystery," he said and tapped his fingers again. The urge to cough once more, and a growing anger surpassing the childish irritation I'd felt before. I wanted to reach up and break his wrist, but it's amazingly hard to get the jump on someone who can see into the future. So I layed there and listened like a good little ex-subordinate. 'Ex'. Ha. "I talked to Nagi recently, did you know that? Apparently he spent a good two hours tossing aside rubble in an effort to get to me before he realised that I'd escaped. It nearly killed him, if he's to be believed, and you know as well as I do how serious he is about things like you. But you, apparently, felt it a better idea to flee the scene and leave me to die," he hissed and the hand was back around my throat, squeezing until I saw white flaring at the edges of my vision. I struggled then, really struggled for the first time since I'd figured out who it was. I wasn't going to die like that, strangled in bed by Bradley-fucking-Crawford of all people! "Be still!" he said sharply and slapped me for the first time then. For a second I know I looked wide-eyed and surprised. It was unlike Crawford to go from the sophistication of squeezing someone's breath away to slapping them like an angry pimp. He either went one way or the other from the beginning - calm and sophisticated or enraged and brutal. My cheek burned. So did my pride. The latter was worse, compounded by the fact that I was still too surprised to move after his unexpected gift of pain. "In the military, Schuldig, deserters can be executed in times of warfare," he went on as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. The tap of fingers pressed lightly again on my throat and I suddenly couldn't restrain a shiver. I could see the satisfaction on his face even in the dim lighting, that he'd made me react in that way. Suddenly I just wished that he would kill me and get it over with. I didn't quite understand what his point in all of this was, if it wasn't to do that. And the thought that I just didn't understand was almost if not more frightening than the reality of the man on top of me with his hand around my throat. "I thought about killing you. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? The voices would be out of your head and I wouldn't have the satisfaction of watching you suffer for the rest of your life. Because I will watch you Schuldig, you know I will, and you know that you'll never know I'm there." The hand stroking my neck was almost tender with his last sentence, it petted me like an evil genius would a white Persian cat and I had to force myself not to respond to the fake affection it promised. "What are you going to do?" I finally asked and swallowed, could feel the movement of my throat under his fingers and hated it. I looked away again after that, in disgust at the apprehensive tone to my voice and the fact that I wasn't swearing as incoherantly as I used to back in the old days. Old days. Strange how long ago a few years can seem, isn't it? He didn't answer me. That bothered me. When he wasn't speaking, my mind started to work and came up with things far more horrific than he could ever think of. I had and still have an active imagination, especially when it comes to all things brutal. While I was lost in that world of blood and beatings and unspeakable torture, he was turning me over. Again, it was useless to struggle. He would just knock me out and do it anyways. At that point, he was straddling the base of my spine, on his knees I thought, but I couldn't be positive because I didn't want to look back and see the cold expression I was sure was on his face. It was a relief to have his hand off my throat, but it came into play again when he ran both of them down my arms to my wrists. My own hands were limp when he lifted them up and placed them by the rungs of my bed. "Hold on," was all he said. He was either going to fuck me till I died or beat me until the same ending came about. I hoped it was the first. Call me perverted and twisted in the head, but I'd rather go out feeling good than feeling, say, a cane slashing into my ass. But no matter what was going to happen, I still figured I might as well listen to him. My fingers wrapped around the iron rungs and held on tightly until I could see my knuckles whitening even under my already-pale skin, the skin of a redhead who's spent far too much time indoors for years or decades. I heard the snick of metal on metal and my mind got to working again. He wouldn't go that far and just slit my throat, would he? It was efficient, yes, but the drama of the last fifteen or twenty minutes wouldn't make sense in that case, given who he was. Crawford was not one for drama unless it was leading up to something that was in itself dramatic. I was so engaged in my confused thinking that I didn't feel whatever it was moving over my back until it was too late. At this point, I know it must have been a knife, but at the time it felt like he was digging a fucking Scottish broadsword into my shoulderblade. My hands gripped tighter out of instinct alone, my mind was screaming for them to let go and rip whatever it was out of his hands and they just wouldn't listen to me. But I didn't make a sound. I was, and still am, oddly proud of that fact. He didn't break me completely. Slick warmth was pooling at the base of my spine after five minutes of this, and I realised with a dizzy sickness that it was blood. What was he doing, carving the whole history of our relationship in my back? It felt like it. Either out of delerium or boredom I started to imagine what each stroke meant. That there, was when I'd met him. The next was the first time he'd hit me. Then the only time that I'd hit him back, and the particularly deep one after that was what he'd done in return for me hitting him. I'd never done that again. I wasn't that stupid, despite what he said. Whatever it was, it was vertical and aligned down the left side of my spine. I kept thinking, it made me less likely to realise that someone carving into my back hurt so badly I wanted to wail like a two year old. My hands were so tight that they hurt, and I entertained the thought that he would have to pry them off of the head of the bed with a crowbar when all this was finished. I laid my head down on the pillow and looked towards my left side. I could see his knee, and the slow drip of blood in rivulets down my side that sank into the white sheets of my bed and stained them with a rust-toned reminder of what he was doing at that point. I still didn't make a sound. The only reaction I had was to tense and finally breathe out for what felt like the first time in ages. What would it be like, I wondered as his carving moved down closer to the base of my spine, if he just cut through my backbone and left me a paralyzed lump listening to the voices in my head for the rest of my life? The sudden fear struck me that that was exactly what he was going to do and I tensed up harder, almost gave into the instinct-urge to buck him off my back, his foresight be damned. But as soon as my mind had decided in its panic to act on that, he was finished. I felt dizzier than I had a few minutes ago. Blood loss, I imagined with a sick feeling. What had he done, scraped half the skin of my back off? I wasn't to find out, apparently, since when I moved he shoved me back down again with a hand on my back - the un-cut side, thank god for small mercies. Even I have my breaking point. "Not yet," he purred and I tried to find some comfort in his tone but failed miserably. Something thudded to the floor, the knife I assumed. I stayed still, I could just picture him digging his nails into whatever fucked-up art he'd done in my back and I knew I would scream. Perversely, it was a desire not to scream more than fear of the pain that motivated my lack of movement. After that, things went hazy. There must be a better term for it, but that's all I can think of. It felt like I wasn't quite there, and I know I passed out at least once because the glaring green numbers on the clock beside my bed had gone too fast for me to have been awake. At some point in the delirium he spoke: "This will remind you what you did. Every time someone sees you undressed - and they will, I know that your habits haven't changed so much - they will see what I've left and wonder what it's for. Their thoughts as they try to figure out what it's for will fill your head as a constant reminder of the fact that you left me to die." There was a sensation that felt like lips on the back of my neck, to this day I'm still not sure whether I dreamed it or he actually kissed me. At that point, nothing he did would have surprised me. I must have passed out again, because when I woke up he, and the knife were gone. The sheets had been changed and I was laying on pristine whiteness again, the only reminder of what had happened a dull ache in my throat and the indescribable throb of my shoulder. After what seemed like an hour, I finally stood up and finally made a sound at the pain. Not the childish whimper I'd been afraid of uttering when he was there, but a moan of humiliated discomfort. But I forced myself over to the full-length mirror in the corner of the bedroom anyway. I turned, and looked at what he'd carved into my back. A word. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed until I thought I would cry from the hysteria, and looked at the word he'd sliced with his usual neatness into my back. Uragiri. Betrayal. I couldn't stop laughing ++ Anime Home Fics Home