FicWad

You don't even know what you can do. Nobody does, really.

I've heard it, here and there, in the dim echoing corners of your mind that you don't bother to keep locked. Crawford knows, I'm sure of it, or else he would not put up with your restlessness and your disobedience; he would break you as he has broken all of us. Would it make you laugh to know he is afraid of you? Why else is his leash so tight on me, and on our dear mad comrade, and so remarkably loose on you? It is certainly not your pale pretty skin, your fragile dark eyes.

I have never found such delicacies lacing Crawford's synapses. If I did, little one, I would be sure to share them with you. It would only be fair. But it is not the collar of mein Herr that chafes you so. Your own sense of duty binds you to us, and your archaic native honor. So quaint. You leave your mind casually bare to me, perhaps because you do not care or because it is not worth the bother, knowing I will take what I like if it pleases me.

Or maybe, little boy, because you are not afraid of any of us. Not the leader who grasps our leads, not foolish old men in far countries, not ancient ritual or darkling god.

I find the one thing you do fear, on the naked page of your mind, and it almost makes me laugh. I could think I was being tricked, that you put such a thing there merely for my distraction. But no. You would not weave so pitiful a snare, and though it might please me to think otherwise, I know that I am not worth your trouble.

Cotton candy, that one. Sticky peppermint sweet. Sharp. Like stick candy sucked into a fine translucent point.

You fear for her safety.

Such innocence, little one. I would not think you capable of it. Or is it only the affection of violence that you know, pressed against cold walls in the darkness, rough voices in your ears, hard hands across your face?

But such things you put in places beyond my reach. Crawford is too wise to use you in such a way, but I almost wish he was not. It would be pretty, and his mind is more transparent than yours. Or would you let me pry out such secrets for myself? Crack the porcelain of your frozen face, and drive myself into your mind until the fullness of me there broke your reason. It would be sweet, then, to see what you could do. Although perhaps too dangerous a game even for me.

And though I could make it my face that you see in your mind, in your moments before sleep, it is better now to leave the little girl there. Pure emotion can drive even the most plebian of men into realms far beyond expectation, and you are much more than that. I would not taint such an experiment with crass intervention.

And here, tonight, when we will be done at last with these tiresome women, perhaps you will find out exactly what you can do. It is not enough, Nagi, to halt bullets in midair, to bring the shinkansen to an instant halt on its single rail without spilling so much as a drop of tea from a salaryman's thermos. These are things you know you can do, and they give you no pleasure or power. They never have, serving only to drive you further from the society that, of all of us, you most wanted to fit into. The Japanese do not look kindly on distinction, do they? What is it they say? /The nail that sticks out gets hammered down/?

But what of those locked rooms in your mind? What doors will burst open, what power will shake the heavens to save her? Can your mind seal torn skin, mend the tiny gaping openings of sundered veins, force a stilled heart to beat again?

I think perhaps it can.

I too see something of the future, even as our leader does; I can lift the driftings of his own precognizance right out of his mind.

What then will you be capable of, my pretty little boy? When the death of the one thing you hold dear is no longer a source of fear for you, when you know that all Crawford's predictions and Farfarello's madness and my little games are nothing to you, when you know you can bring the heavens crashing to the ground with your slightest thought?

How terrible, how beautiful your mind will become. And then /liebchen/, I will see if you will let me walk there and taste your consciousness, sweeter than honey from the fingertips of God.

~owari~