For Aoi-chan, on her birthday.  Many happy returns of the day. :hugs:

April 24th, 2002


Cigarettes and Alcohol (with apologies to Oasis)

by Murasaki

I am not the sort of man who is given to spilling his thoughts and fancies
onto paper.  But my current circumstances demand that I take pen in hand and
tell my story--or at least the past few months of it, for within the course
of those months, my life changed dramatically.

It all started, strangely enough, with a full-throttle battle.

The Weiss assassins had oft been the ones to do our fighting for us.  The one
known as Abyssinian had killed Takatori for us.  They had killed the
triumvirate of Estet for us, leaving us free to steal the redhead's precious
sister away and draw them into battle.  Leaving us free, in general.  I had
seen all of that happening, had seen us engage them--there was no way that
Abyssinian would leave that girl in our hands.  But...I saw multiple
outcomes--such is the curse of my ability.  Either we would win, and they
would be dead or gravely injured, or we would be, or...

Of course, I didn't tell Schuldich any of what I had envisioned, and he
didn't ask me about it, save for when and where.  He was already nervous
enough about the venue of our future confrontation with Weiss, that I knew.
And I also knew why, for he told me late one night, whilst under the
influence of too much Vodka.

He was deathly afraid of water.  Had never even learned to swim.

Of course, he wasn't too pleased with himself the next morning, when he woke
up beside me and gleaned from my dreaming mind all of what he had said in his
alcoholic haze.  But I never taunted him with it; everyone is afraid of
something.  It only made him seem...more human.  I guess that's not a word
people usually associate with the four of us, but...It's true.  We are,
actually.  We just like to pretend otherwise.

Anyway...You all know the story of what happened in the cold dark of that
predawn night, so I will take it from there.  My memories of the events prior
to my rescue are sketchy.  I knew the building was going to sink, it was
obvious.  I tried to get to him, but that damned Balinese had him trapped on
the other side of the room, and the floor was crumbling fast; the chasm
between us was vast.  Too vast for me to cross, but not for him.  I yelled
for him to jump, for him to at least race to the nearest window and climb out
before they too were underwater, but...he was more or less rooted to the
spot.  I could hear him screaming with rage and fear in my mind.

And then I heard a tremendous rumble.  Saw the ceiling give way above us.

And then I knew no more.

A full day had gone by when I finally woke up.  I had been found floating on
what was left of a wooden door by some fishermen a few miles down the coast,
unconscious and hypothermic, but very much alive.  They had radioed the
authorities, and I was sent off to a hospital upon their landing.  My
injuries, surprisingly, were minor considering what had happened.

But how had I gotten there?  And where were the others?

More importantly, where was Schuldich?

My inquiries of the hospital staff proved fruitless.  I had been the only one
brought in from the 'boating accident'--my explanation of events.  A check of
the other hospitals also proved a waste of time.

Had I been the only one who had survived?

No, I couldn't have been, I'd reasoned.  While I hadn't had any visions of
meeting the others, I didn't *feel* as if I was suddenly alone.  Of course, I
knew that I wouldn't get any answers by lying around on my back in some bed,
so the first chance I got, I slipped out.  I'd only suffered a mild
concussion and a few cracked ribs anyway.  Nothing I couldn't handle.

My first step, after I had checked on my finances (still very much secure),
was to buy a laptop and set up operations somewhere.  I chose for my venue
one of the more upscale apartment buildings in Tokyo.  Secured entrance, and
well-heeled, distant neighbors.  The sort of people who consider a thousand
dollars worth of yen to be spare change.  My sort of people.

What?  I'm not above a bit of petty thievery.  A man has to make sure the
money's coming in from somewhere, and as I no longer had some paranoid
millionaire to "look after," well...

But I digress.  Excuse me.

I searched via the Internet for signs of him--for all of them actually.
Found Nagi's signature only a few days after I had began.  I had broken into
the website of a Swiss bank where we'd stashed some of our funds--a site that
he apparently had broken into only a literal moment before; he had forgotten
to clear his trail after he'd left too, something I found remarkable.  It
wasn't like Nagi to be so careless.

Unless...

I had mulled the possibility that he somehow knew I would be looking into the
same site as he that very moment, that very day, and had left that trail
intentionally.  And then, after I had gleaned all the information I possibly
could have, I erased all traces of his presence.

And I dare that brat to say I never did anything for him.

Anyway...I found that a sizable deposit had been made on the day after our
battle with Weiss, and a few hundred thousand taken out a week after
that--taken from Schuldich's own account.  That gave me hope, proved to me
what I already suspected.  Schuldich never would have been so trusting as to
give anyone the codes to access his account, not even if he were under duress
to do so.  It would have given him too much pleasure to know he'd confounded
his enemies.

Just like it gave me pleasure to know that I'd gotten a lead, however slim.

But, alas!  That pleasure wasn't to be experienced again for a long while.
Apparently, Schuldich, in his infinite love for game-playing, never let me
catch him again.  Not in the websites I'd broken into afterward (we had more
than one account), nor in the cafes (one of the few places he actually
enjoyed visiting) I frequented from one end of Japan to the other.

And then--just when I was beginning to think I would never catch a glimpse of
him again--the postcards started coming: the first being a picture of a bay,
wide and rimmed by hills.  Photographed at sunrise; the inky water looked as
if it were on fire in the East, all gold and ruby.  The front of it bore no
writing, but on the back, in scratchy Japanese lettering, were the words
"Wish you were here."  No signature, and a smudged postmark, though the stamp
was Indian.  A picture of a fish, to carry over with the watery theme.  The
significance of that photograph escaped me, even still I felt I had gazed
upon such a vista before, though where and when, I did not know.

It was two weeks before I realized it was the very bay within which we had
nearly died.

Needless to say, I didn't throw it away.  I instead bought a cheap, metal
frame to keep it in.  Carried it with me everywhere, setting it out upon the
various night stands beside all the hotel beds I slept in.  My work carried
me far and wide.  You'd be surprised just how much in demand a highly skilled
assassin is in this "Do unto others before they can do unto you" world we
live in.

And everywhere I looked--and I looked EVERYWHERE--he was nowhere to be found.


Three weeks later, my business took me to Venice, and there, on the very day
I arrived at my hotel, I received another card.

The postcard this time was a take off of a semi-famous painting, one I'd seen
once upon the cover of a book of poems.  That of a youth draped slightly
sideways across a bed in some poorly lit garret room, one arm dangling to the
floor, head turned towards the viewer.  Posed as if he had fallen there,
unconscious.

Except the model wasn't some nameless, underfed boy that the artist had
become enamored of, it was a man.  A redhead with a lean, rangy body.  All
legs.  Sly green eyes that were closed in an attitude of sleep.  Or death.

The subject was Schuldich, of course.  And, unlike the model in the original
painting, he was completely naked.  Not to brag or anything, but...Even if
he'd covered his face, or was half-bathed in shadow, I'd know it was him.

I'd know that gold nipple ring anywhere.

Needless to say, I suppose, but I took that card out many times to gaze upon
it in the days after I received it.  Put it in a frame when the edges began
to wear, and kept it by my bedside in all the hotels I stayed at during my
journey.  It's still in that frame now, but I've hidden it away.  I don't
want anyone to think I'm sentimental, hell, no.

Three more weeks went by without another card, and then...Paydirt.  I arrived
back at my hotel in London, (the Savoy, of course), one evening after a hard
day's killing, and just as I had gotten myself settled in the bar for my
customary nightcap, a bellboy approached me with a small silver plate.  Told
me that it had come just after I had stepped out.

It was a letter, in German, in his own nervous hand, telling his own
harrowing version of events.  Three pages, front and back.  I could smell the
sweet scent of cloves and the unmistakable aroma of marijuana on the paper--a
telltale sign he'd been smoking his two favorite mixtures whilst he wrote.
To paraphrase, he'd been too "distracted," as he'd put it, to reach either
the windows or the door.  But then, the floor had given way beneath him, and
everything else was rendered moot.  Somehow, someway, he'd gotten free of the
wreckage and into the water, and there he reckoned he lost consciousness.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the seaweed-strewn sand, and Nagi was
giving him mouth-to-mouth.

Nagi.  Nagi had saved Schuldich.

It doesn't sit too well with me to owe him anything--and now it seems I owe
him everything.  Damn.

At the end of the letter, he gave me instructions on how I could reach him,
should I wish to reply.  I followed them exactly.

I sent him a postcard I'd found in an art gallery in Washington, DC "Woman
Holding A Balance."  On the back, I wrote one word: Yes.

I left the card with the concierge.  I had the overwhelming urge to hide
somewhere in the lobby and watch for him, but I knew I would be breaking the
rules of the game if I did.  And then, I would probably never see him.

So I left.

Here, I will jump ahead in my story because nothing spectacular happened for
another three weeks.  Just the comings and goings of life.  And then, I went
to Berlin.

Ah, Berlin in winter.  How grey.  How cold.  How utterly...miserable.

I'd gotten my final postcard from him not long after I sent my one word
reply: Another photo postcard of a row of storefronts and cafes and the words
"Nollendorf-Platz" written on the back in his loopy scrawl.  I knew he meant
I should go there, and I did, armed only with a heavy wool coat and scarf I'd
bought from a Savile Row tailor I often frequent.  Oh, and the card too.

Of course, by now--or maybe even earlier on as you read this account--you
might have asked, "Why?  Why go to such lengths?"

Well, I'll tell you why--and the answer is quite simple.

I'm in love with Schuldich.  Was then, am now.  I only ever said it one time,
and I'll probably never say it again.  But he knew it--long before I ever
uttered it aloud.

And there he was, dressed in varying shades of blue, and sitting in at a tiny
wrought iron table, drinking espresso and reading 'Paradise Lost'--in German.
 I didn't know what to do, except to stand there at the window like a
pathetically lovesick boy.

For about all of ten seconds, at least.  I figure that's how long he could
resist thinking at me once he realized I was there.

:Well, are you going to come in or not?:

He didn't even look up at me, just calmly turned another page of his book.
He can be so damned infuriating, but that's part of his charm, you know.

So, I started to laugh as I pushed my way through the door.  Evil, sinister,
like I was up to no good (like usual).  A pair of old women in silk-rose
covered hats turned to look at me as I approached their table en route to
his, and I only grinned at them.  They looked away again, much flustered.

And then, he looked up at me.  And grinned.  He knew the joke and got it.
But then, he always did.

I took the seat opposite his without preamble, and a waiter automatically
came strolling up and set a cup of coffee, black, in front of me.  Just as
quickly strolled away again.  I cocked a brow at him as I lifted the cup for
a sip.  No sugar.

"You remembered.  Should I be touched?" I asked as I replaced the fragile
bone trinket back onto its saucer.

"No," he said, shutting up the dog-eared book and setting it to one side.  "I
only remembered because you're so predictable."

"Oh, am I?"

Those green cat eyes shifted away to the window.  The only time he can't meet
my gaze is when I catch him in a lie.

"I thought you were dead."

He turned his attention from the scenes of Berlin life to the half-filled cup
in front of him.  "I knew you weren't," he stated matter-of-factly as he
lifted it for another sip.

"Oh?"

He said nothing at first, scarcely moved.  Just stared at me then as if he'd
never seen me before.  "It's funny.  I can read your thoughts no matter where
in the world I go."

"Then you knew I was looking for you."

"Yes, I did."

"And you didn't bother to contact me, other than sending me all those clues."

He shrugged.  "I didn't want to spoil your fun."

I tapped my spoon upon the rim of my cup, and set it in the hollow of the
saucer.  "...That's what I like about you, Schuldich: You're so considerate."


I got a saucy, toothy grin for that.  Got his sock-clad toes on my crotch for
that too, actually.

"Ooh.  Bradley...Glad to see me, are you?"

"...You insufferable bastard..."

He chuckled, and his foot left off its massage of my groin, much to my
consternation.  I raked my hair back from my face, adjusted my glasses, and
subtly flipped him off.

Schuldich finished off the last of his coffee, dropped a few deutschmarks on
the table and gathered up his book.  Stood up, walked over to me and slipped
me some tongue.  Told me something mind-to-mind he'd never told me
before--had never told anyone, he confessed.

And then, I found him staring at me as if he wanted to fuck me right there.

:I'm bored, Bradley.  Let's go home.:

He straightened up, tossed his hair out of his eyes and strutted towards the
door, grinning cheekily at those patrons he'd shocked.

I waited there until, through the windows, I saw the weak December sunshine
make his hair glimmer like a tray of candles.

And then I left too.

~end~