FicWad

Title: Survival Sins
Genre: Angstyness
Pairing: Schuldig, Ran - Crawford/Ran
Comments: Allusions to serious themes, including rape, incest, and other general nastyness. Nothing explicit, not even sex. :)
Status: One-shot + cute thing at end. I may revise it at some point




The boy is limply exotic in his arms. Schuldig runs a hand down Ran's chest, then up his side to his face, a passing study in beauty. Perfect, some would say, but it doesn't hold his interest. His hand threads into coarse, thick locks. Schuldig had been apathetic about the murder of the bland father, but he quite enjoyed the explosions and fire. He remembers them, their fierceness makes him covet the boy's hair. He drops Ran to the bed and lays upon him, watching the red mingle with his pale green. He'd dyed it to impress Nagi, the newest member, a teenage whim to assert individuality. It was refreshing not to be the youngest; Nagi's hesitance gives him confidence. A lazy moment is spent twirling the hairs together before his eyes slide shut and he dives into Ran.


The boy has a beautiful mind to match the body. Bright in some areas, dark and shadowed in others, Schuldig appreciates its structure. The things that need to be hid are near the back, already halfway buried by this boy, Ran's own subconscious doing damage control. There are dangerous thoughts in there, terrible memories that he would be better without anyway. Ran had loved his father very much, and it would hurt him to find him dead. The father had always been troubling to Ran, always keeping him uncertain of where the boy stood, simultaneously scorning and supporting all the boy's attempts to win his pride. Schuldig saw that Ran had loved his father very much.


A sound from outside. Schuldig doesn't remove himself right away, lingering, and instead reached out with his consciousness, assessing the situation. The visitor seems to be Crawford, and Schuldig pushes Ran's thoughts from his mind, sitting up to focus on the man. Ran shifts, pressing to Schuldig as he moved away, an unconscious action to which Schuldig pays no attention. Crawford falters a moment, interesting, and Schuldig's eyes become trained on him as the man glides into the room and stopping only a few paces shy of the bed.


"So?" and Schuldig notices how intently the man addressing him is looking at his lap. At the boy through him.


"It's a waste." Schuldig sneers, prettily, he knows, but Crawford doesn't look "If he wakes up and figures out what happened, he'll berserk. Too emotional. A suicide case, at best." He throws back his hair, flinging open his arms, taking up as much of the room as he can, overshadowing the bed's other occupant. "I'll wake the girl, and this one will be the offering." He stood from the bed, shoving the boy from his lap, and started towards the door. "She's strong, always stronger than this one, and she'll make sure your whiteys will-"


Crawford had grabbed his arm, but his gaze has never left the redhead. Schuldig had taken off his shirt earlier, skin made it easier to reach the minds, and Crawford isn't wearing gloves. Schuldig had never felt Crawford's skin. A chance, and he stares in shock at the man, slowly creeping into his mind. It's a forbidden place, and he's forever been curious, and he is frightened. Schuldig doesn't dare go very deep, simply enmeshing with the foremost thoughts. Crawford is thinking of Ran.


The realization strikes him hard, and he abruptly twitches away from Crawford's touch. It hasn't taken a second, and Crawford's stare never strayed. Ran starts to slide from the bed, and the man moves forward, pulling him back on the bed, into his lap. It isn't sexual or affectionate in any way, but Schuldig now knows better, and his eyes are wide. Crawford glances up from the bundle in his arms, and he finally looks at Schuldig and in that instant, there are no lies. Then Schuldig ducks his head. Crawford takes it as submission, a dropping of the subject, and speaks. "No. The girl, she's too young. Barely older than Nagi. She isn't worth that time. Chain her mind, and give her to Esset." It is a statement, but it's also a taunt, patronizing. Schuldig is aware that during certain parts of the year, he's the same age as the sister. Ran is only two years older himself, he knows, eighteen to his sixteen. Schuldig had always hated being called childish. Crawford said that proved he was a child. "This one, this man, he will lead Weiss, and lead to our freedom. You can make him capable."


The elder man sees Schuldig's silence as acquiescence. He shifts, passing a hand across Ran's abdomen, and since Schuldig knows, he presses his lips onto Ran's temple, his chin, his mouth, his hand drifting lower, groping and caressing. Ran is compliant, accepting curling in the lap, and vaguely moans under the attack. Ran can't fight back, Schuldig can't help but feel sensitized, and while he's always had a certain fondness for rape, this disgusts him. Schuldig schools the hate from his eyes, "I can do it." He says, looking where Crawford's face would be. "But, it will take awhile" Crawford pulls back, decadently half-dazed. Schuldig imagines the man flashing an indulgent smile as he leaves, but when their eyes meet, Schuldig sees nothing.


Crawford sedately shifts Ran away, "Just don't hurt him. He is the key to escaping Esset." Schuldig's head is back down, listening to the soft swush of the door across the carpet, and Crawford's heels as he treads back down the hall.


Now, Schuldig blanks out, deadening himself as he looks back at the boy, his task. Crawford called Ran a man, but Schuldig knows Ran better than anyone alive. Ran's a boy, happy, alive, and loving. Weak, worse than when they had found Nagi all alone and crumpled. Nagi has potential, Schuldig thinks, but this boy loves long, loves easily, loves with all of his life. Loves his father who scorns him, his mother who ignores him, his sister who outshines him in every way.


But, Schuldig thinks, love is trust and trust makes you vulnerable, and vulnerability influences beyond all compare. Crawford, despite what he saw, Schuldig believes to be invulnerable, thus stubborn as all high hell. He wants Ran, and so Schuldig will deliver Ran. He has no choice, and for the moment, Ran belongs to him, and that presents limitless opportunities.


Ran loves without end, effortlessly and undoubtedly. Schuldig can change that.


A smile creeps onto his face, but the eyes remain flat as he stalks back to the bed, resettling himself over the boy. Ran is still sensitized; Schuldig feels a renewed wave of revulsion as Ran arches toward him. Schuldig submerges into the mind quickly to quell any other lingering runoff, and the boy stills under his touch. He's pleased with reaction, his new doll, and goes to shut off those endorphins completely. Pleasure, he decides, would not be needed in his new toy.


The love is there still, however, and this frankly, annoys Schuldig. Love is weakness, but Ran doesn't really have much to fill the huge space that love takes up. There isn't much anger, hate, despair, greed; all the usual suspects that Schuldig coaxes up to utterly consume his victim. But Ran doesn't have much to work with, and really, he deserves an extra-special punishment for catching the eye of Bradley Crawford who never gives Schuldig a second glance.


Schuldig screens himself out, searching, and a caress alerts him to the shaded patch of subconscious he'd admired earlier, and he takes a moment, short, to admire it again. The unintentional is very hard to undo, but Schuldig is a master, and Ran is past gone. The entire mind is flooded with jealousy and anger, but that is a brief flash of release for Schuldig, because in the next instant, there is so much desolation and anguish it comes close to breaking him. Ran it seems is a master at denial, and he knew, as children understand everything, exactly what was happening with his father's vacillating warmth and coldness, his mother's threatening looks of disgust, his sister's gradual awareness and her own subsequent repression.


Schuldig feels rubbed raw by this sudden offensive from a doctile mind, and isn't ready when the pain comes. Memories of harsh words, torture, and betrayal in the worst way. Ran can't fight back, Schuldig can't help but feel sensitized, and while he's always had a certain fondness for rape, this disgusts him. Again the hate comes, but at a father he's never had, could never, ever love.


Ran loves so naturally, genuinely, and Schuldig hates him too for that, but really, it's all he had, no other choice but to love. Love is vulnerability, a powerful weapon. Schuldig decides it is a proper punishment. First Crawford, then for the pain, the boy had so much coming to him.


He's worn out, but Ran's subconscious is concentrating on repairing its barriers. Quick work pulls out the memories just enough, leaving more of the beautiful, strong sister who is secretly sickened by Ran, the mother who made him feel less than worthless. As father retreats back behind the wall and Schuldig smiles in his head. Ran would love as he would, knowing that no one would ever love him back, and to expect that invited only pain. His sister Aya, at least, would love him for his blood, no matter how much he'd shamed himself.


Schuldig pulls out, and chuckles at the thought of who else would love his blood.


He breathes shakily, and he must've bitten his tongue at some point, as his own blood drips to a pale white chest, a smear where his head had been resting on the collarbone. Schuldig is tired, unsteady, and this amuses him, splaying his hand on the chest to wipe the red around, trailing it up the face to blend into the hair. He spits into the other hand, looking into the mirror as he wipes it into his own hair, red mingling with the pale green, making him beam hazily at his reflection. He lifts his other hand from the head it cupped to mix some more, but a groan from the bed makes him look down to the tormented face tarnish with blood. It is so much more appealing than the one he remembered from Crawford's imaginings.


Ran can't fight back, Schuldig can't help feel sensitized. He's always had a certain fondness for rape.


*


Ran awoke to pain the next morning. His body ached all over, and there was blood in his fingernails when he raked his hand through his hair. He was in a hospital, but he couldn't remember how he'd gotten there. He was thankful when the memories came as if he'd summoned them.


Father, the broadcast. The explosion, with his parents inside. Aya. The man in the car.


He ignored his body's severe disapproval as he jolted from the bed and into the hospital halls. It was a short, furious sprint searching rooms until he found her, five doors down. She lay there unmoving, apparently unaware of his presence, and he collapsed at the food of her bed onto his knees.



The doctors had answered his half thought questions, painting an austere future for his sister. She'd been so strong, so admirable...


No, she still is strong, beautiful, wonderful. She loves him even though he has done nothing for her, however hard he tries and fails. She loves him though she shouldn't, but here he is sitting on a bench alive, while she is near death.


It isn't right, his mind screams. It should be Ran who is dying, Aya who is living. Ran is a waste, and it isn't right. You live while she should, so live for her. Ran feels surer about this than anything else, ever. Anything that happens is his punishment for his horrible sin of surviving.


**


Schuldig awakes sated and content, his favorite way. His body aches, and there is blood encrusted in his hair, but the memories of yesterday have faded, and he only calls back those he wishes. He sets down at the breakfast table taking acute pleasure in the way little Nagi recoils at his appearance.


Crawford walks in late, his suit less than immaculate, and as Schuldig stands to gloat, he slugs the younger man across the jaw.


Schuldig faintly licks at the blood as he pulls himself off the floor. Crawford is glaring straight at him, attention and displeasure plainly focused.


Schuldig smirks, tilts his head to preen. "Mission Accomplished."



**


End




Little thing I needed to write for this to be complete (though if people ask, I may just go ahead with the sex scene. My roommate urged me to end the scene with the rape line, and I like it, but I can do more before, if it's the will of the viewers at home). I'm not sure what the term 'omake' is, I have a hard enough time with English, thank you very much, so tell me if this is it:




Five more minutes pass. Rinse, the water scalding like he prefers, but it makes his breathing even harder than it was before. Schuldig reaches for the conditioner.


In the past few weeks, he hasn't been able to get Ran out of his head. He dreams of that hair, the pale skin marked by developing bruises and blood. Red, red blood, red like fires and explosions and Ran's hair.


Schuldig is fixated on that red, and his hands become tense, harsh in their movements. It's mildly painful, but Schuldig needs to endure. He needs to get this out of his system.


Finally, he's satisfied, content, and he takes deep breaths as the water pours over him. He steps out of the shower to glance in the mirror.


In another part of the house, Bradley Crawford stares intently into space, before his gaze focuses. A small smile emerges, and he soon dissolves into quiet sniggers which have no hope of being heard over the grief-stricken shriek of 'Orange!' that echoes throughout the house.


"Serves him right."


**At this point, after you've read it, I'd like to say that this is my first finished WK fic. Please please comment!