Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Hallowed Be Thy Name ❯ Hallowed Be Thy Name: Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

*Disclaimer: If you're reading this, you already know. I don't own Schwarz, or any other characters. ;_; Oh well. I 'borrowed' them and emotionally tortured and tormented them for my own cruel pleasure and your reading delight. ^^; It shifts in and out of Brad's POV; don't get lost, now, kids... And remember - don't feed the wild bears. But please *do* feed me, the author, with your comments, criticism, and even flames if you like. The fic is calling out to you: Review me! ^_^

(This time, italics like this serve the purpose of denoting thoughts until a few paragraphs down they serve the purpose of a flashback.Telepathic communication denoted by /.../. Get it? Got it? Good.)

Hallowed Be Thy Name: Chapter Three

I swallowed to try and get rid of the coppery taste of blood and the sour flavor of alcohol lingering cruelly in my mouth. I felt weak and my head in started off on a slow, dizzy, disoriented spin. Farfello grinned at me like a child with a new toy. The darkness began to take on a new heaviness, weighing on my shoulders and pushing at me from all directions. I could feel my mind shutting down, going into overload. Involuntarily, my body slouched forward, my head slumping in defeat on Farfello's shoulder. I tried to jerk away, but found my body quickly weakening.

"Amen…"

I watched Farfello reach for my arm and pull it up toward him. A cold metallic pain stung my arm. I watched, dizzy, as hot blood spilled freely out of my wrist, unable to care. Everything faded into a dizzy blur and I only stared as blood trailed down my arm. I could only look on in blurred apathy as Farfello's tongue caressed my flesh, licking away errant drops of blood like crimson candy, before fixing themselves on the wound itself and sucking my blood, an elixir of life, out of my veins. I felt myself slipping out of consciousness. My eyes rolled back into my head, into the perfect darkness and oblivion I found there.

I walk down a dark, empty hallway. Blood coats the floor, splatters the lower panels of the walls with its cruel, dark brownish-crimson paint. I nudge a pallid, scarred, impossibly thin fishnet-clad arm aside with one foot and step over the rest of the destroyed body. An androgynous face, framed by long, blood-splattered hair, stares blankly at me. Even in death, the glassy blue eyes smeared with tearstains and smudged black eyeliner manage to look as if they still bear the weight of the world. Two beautiful boys lay broken, destroyed, on the floor. A bare arm, its wrist cut deep and clotted almost black with blood, reaches out to its fishnet-covered companion. The beautiful boys join hands even in death.

Continuing down the narrow hall, I come to a closed doorway on the right. As I watch, my hand slowly turns the doorknob. I've become an observer in my own body, watching past events unfold like a movie on a screen. I swing the door open.

In the corner, a beautiful redheaded boy, wearing only a black tank top and pants, kneels. His head swivels to look over his shoulder, and I see that his wild emerald eyes are glazed over with agony and tears. Just above his elbow he tightens a studded leather belt, tying off and preparing to shoot up. I know his intent is to overdose on the heroin that was once an escape from him. His tears stream down his cheeks in perfect little silver rivers. His graceful hand reaches out and takes one of the prepared syringes laying on a towel they appear to have been wrapped in. I find my voice.

"Stoppen sie."

Desperate, feral eyes, emeralds set in deeply sunk eye sockets, glare defiantly. His eyes are bloodshot, and the redness makes his irises appear an even more vivid green. He turns away again, and stroking his arm, he finds a vein and shoots the first dose of heroin.

"Nein."

I cross the small room in a few steps and kneel. His body tenses at my nearness to him, but despite this I reach out and place a firm hand on his shoulder. I feel his muscles and joints working below the flesh as he flinches and tries to release himself from my grip. I hear a voice echoing in my head.

/I know you wanted to take us away. They've been after us for months./ The English surprises me.

"Who?"

He finally speaks in a tired, strained voice. "The government has been after us. We promised when they came for us that we would die before we let them take us. Before we'd let anyone take us."

"It was my duty to come for you. So they couldn't take you away."

"I don't care. I made a promise and I'm going to keep it." More tears pour down his cheeks. "Bittan and Sunde didn't want to. I made them. I got inside Bittan's mind and made him kill Sunde and himself. It's my fault."

/Desire? Sin?/

I reach my hand out, try to loosen the belt on his arm, and his elbow strikes my midsection. I grab the towel and wad the whole bundle up, flinging it carelessly across the room. He watches this, calmly, and then reaches into his pocket and digs out a razor blade. Before I can stop him, he buries the cold blade in the flesh on his left wrist. I force myself to hit him, to make him drop the blade. "You don't have to do this."

"Stop it." His beautiful eyes turn to me. "I do. I forced them to die. I made them keep the promise. I have to keep it, too."

My eyes search his. "It was my order to kill them. They would have died at my hands if not yours."

"Stimmt. I'm aware of that, you know. I'm a telepath, jackass. And you know that. Don't insult me."

"Please," I sigh. "Please just come with me."

"Nein."

I resort to brute force, harshly grabbing his upper arms and pulling him up to stand. He picks up the razor blade before I can stop him, and takes another shot at his left wrist, trying to deepen the cut, trying to sever the vein and bleed himself to death.

"Goddamn it, stop!"

It is then that I notice the many scars covering his arms. Many have faded to white, but a few are still pink. All are thick and raised. I know that the blade is nothing new to him, now, that he had obviously used it for years as a release of pain. For the first time in years, something has pierced my cold heart, and I feel sympathy for the boy so much like me at fifteen. I shed a tear for him, the first tear in five years, since Takatori took me away from all I knew and began training me in the ways of a killer.

Our gifts are cruel to us.

I shake him, and the razor blade, slick with his blood, slips from his fingers. "Mutterbumser. I didn't ask you to care." I restrain him, holding him tightly, and I feel his body shaking with sobs. "Let me die, god damn it, let me die! Mein Gott..."

He sinks to his knees, almost bringing me to the floor with him. I hear him speaking between the sobs. His head is lowered, his wild, fiery-orange mane a matted, tangled mess that curtains his face. He picks up the razor blade again, digging into the vulnerable flesh of his right wrist now. Blood flows down his arms, and he tucks himself down into his thighs, back arched slightly in the air. I kneel beside him, trying to uncurl him and carry him away from this hell.

"Vater Unser im Himmel..."

"Christ, let's go! I'm not leaving you here to die." I know my words are futile, my efforts in vain.

"Geheilight werde Dein Name. Dein Reich komme, Dein Wille geschehe..."

He seems to be ignoring me now. There is nothing I can do.

"Wie im Himmel, so auf Erden. Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute..." His body can't hold itself up anymore. He falls from his knees and onto his side, his body limp, but he doesn't seem to notice. I see him gently rocking. I know he is forcing himself into a trance. He still prays, though I see in his eyes that there is no God for this beautiful boy, that whatever God he once had faith in had died a long time ago.

"Und vergib uns unsere Schuld, wie auch vergeben unseren Schuldigern..." I bend and slide my arms under his lanky, emaciated body, feeling ribs and sharp joints that shouldn't stick out. I feel a bony, hollow body ravaged by addiction, torment, and hunger; in his short fifteen years, I know that he has already experienced things that most people never have, and never will.

"Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen..."

It breaks my heart. Not many things could penetrate the cold, apathetic shell I armored myself with; few things could evoke any true feeling in my heart. But to see this boy, still a child, already a broken spirit - it destroys me. I see the abuse I have taken and the hardships I have endured reflected in his pale, thin face; it manifests itself in the innumerable scars he had put on the outside, to match the ones on the inside.

"Denn Dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit, in ewigkeit..."

I carry him down the hallway, ignoring the blood staining my clothes and his tranced-out muttering. For a moment I am grateful that he is in his trance, that his eyes and his mind will not see the deaths he had forced on his friends; yet, I feel somehow wrong in not allowing him to pay his last respects. I carry him from the shabby, filthy apartment to the sleek black car waiting for me, taking him away from all he had ever known, somehow feeling wrong in doing so regardless of the fact that I had saved him from an inevitably short life of torment.

But am I really saving him, or am I forcing him to use his abilities to kill other people instead of letting him die as he wished? Am I merciful, or cruel?

I slide out of my bloody jacket and try to wipe some of the blood away. A second glance tells me that he isn't going to die, not from these wounds. He's stopped bleeding, aside from a few stray drops of blood that well up at my touch. My fingers feel for his pulse and find it, a slow, steady pounding. Alive, but I have no idea how long he'll be in this trance. A strange thought brushes my mind then: he didn't say amen...

I ignore it, and vow to myself that nobody will ever hurt him again, that I will protect him at all costs.

To be continued...

*Bittan means desire; Sunde means Sin; and of course, Schuldig means guilty but we already knew that, didn't we, Weiss kiddies? ^^ Stimmt means "correct".

Lord's Prayer in German is thanks to http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-german.html and the mighty gbeans on Sorcerynet's finest, #fanfics. W00t for IRC! So if it's incorrect, don't send me flames and tell me I'm a foreign-language idiot, it's not my fault. ^^; I speak French, not German.