damned_institute | Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

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Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

Though perhaps not entirely as successful as he wanted it to be, Homura walked away from lunch feeling satisfied with his efforts. Roland and Fai both had shown interest in the goal, and that was enough for the moment. Homura could be patient, had already been for five hundred years, and felt no harm in waiting another five hundred if he had to. He would have his goals realized, no matter what obstacles he faced, be they from the prison or those trapped within.

But now was time for business of a different sort, and the demi-god made his way to the Sun Room, near the common board. He made sure he could be seen from the entrance to the cafeteria, knowing that one stranger and one member of his own group both wanted to meet with him. It worked out well enough, especially given that the stated purpose of the History Club was simple.

Revenge and escape.

For now, Homura had no intention of revealing that it'd grown more complicated than that.

[Waiting for L and Junior]

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"Well, you're going to have to pencil me in, whether you like it or not."

Schuldig dropped onto the couch across from Aya, deliberately blocking the sunlight that the former florist had turned his face towards like a flower in one of their bouquets. He wasn't going to have the man go to sleep on him...although he seriously doubted Abyssinian trusted him nearly enough to close his eyes around the telepath.

More was the pity.

"As much as I'd love to harass you just for the hell of it, we need to talk." He hoped that his unusually serious tone would catch the man's attention and prevent him from either lashing out or stalking away immediately.

Wonderful. Just the person Aya had wanted to see. He sighed as Schuldig moved to block his sun, and reluctantly tilted his chin down to look at the telepath.

There could have been any number of reasons why Schuldig wanted to 'talk', and Aya would not entertain the man by going through them for him. Instead he concentrated on wondering what the hell it was that Schuldig wanted. Weary and tired, he promised to himself that if this was some kind of game that the German was playing, Aya would hit him, right here, and right now. However, he did not feel compelled to open his mouth and tell that to Schuldig, trusting that there was enough demand in his cold stare for the telepath to get to the point.

"No game, unfortunately." Schuldig studied Aya briefly. "Believe it or not, I don't have the time or energy to waste on playing today, either." He tugged the collar of his shirt down enough to reveal a glimpse of the bandages across his chest. "Believe me, I wouldn't have bothered coming over here and risk being attacked by you at the moment unless I had a damned good reason."

And speaking of that reason, Schuldig saw no point in wasting time getting to it. "Kudoh," he stated, rather flatly. "As none of you in Weiss are blessed with telepathy, I can understand how you all might be unaware of his mental state, but consider this my rescinding your right to ignorance. He's been lapsing in and out of passive-aggressive suicidal depression ever since he got here, and since none of you have even looked up from your own issues long enough to take notice, I'm the one who's been stabilizing him. Do I need to elaborate on how ridiculously ironic that is?" He raised an eyebrow at Aya. "When he's not bordering on driving himself insane - and I'm being quite literal; I had to pull him out of a conversation with the air, with Asuka, during that field trip into town - he's taking unnecessary risks at night half-hoping he'll be killed, or drinking and drugging himself into a stupor like he did last night."

Schuldig sat back, experimentally stretching one arm along the back of the couch - it pulled on his injuries, but it didn't hurt so much that he couldn't handle it. "Now, I'm keeping him around because he's of far more interest to me alive than dead, but you and your friends presumably have even more reason to preserve the idiot than I do and mostly you've just been making him worse. It's getting to the point where not even a psychic babysitter can field his fits alone." He fixed Aya with a glare that was no less threatening than any Abyssinian was capable of. "So for fuck's sake, shake some sense into him. He doesn't listen much to me, and saving him's starting to make me look like I'm going soft."

Aya listened to Schuldig babble, and babble it truly was. Perhaps fortunately, his mood at the moment was more apathetic than it had been since he had entered Landel's. Schuldig was here to accuse him that he did not know what was going on with Yohji? The irony could not have been any richer even if the telepath had been accusing him of betraying his own teammates. Aya knew well enough. He had known since the day one when he had seen Yohji in the chapel. He had known in Koua academy as well, he had known before the last mission when he had advised Mamoru not to allow Yohji to enter Weiss, when he had told Yohji to get professional help. He knew. But the knowledge, however, didn't magically provide him with a solution.

He tilted his head as he regarded Schuldig, lacking any hostility that would have usually colored his thoughts. He wondered if the German really was as blind as he seemed to be. Supposedly it was possible, as knowing what others thought wouldn't necessary mean you'd understand them any better.

"It's a bit of surprise for me that I need to tell you that I've tried. Several different approaches, which none of them seems to have worked too well. Truthfully, I'm at loss here." Aya loathed the idea of admitting to Schuldig of all people that he lacked ability to take care of something like this. But there was no point denying it. "I can't get through to him. I can't even convince him that he's not on my hitlist because he betrayed Weiss."

Aya snorted, letting his gaze drift up again. If he would have had time for his own issues, he would have been thinking Kikyo more, maybe even figured out why he felt growing uneasiness around Ken. But there was no time between someone getting stabbed and other one falling apart. Schuldig, who knew him only from the time when he had been hellbent on spilling Takatori blood and keeping his sister safe, would probably be confused to know that Aya was the person trying to keep the team together, but having lived and breathed Weiss for his whole adult life left no other possibility.

"Do you think I haven't seen him fall apart before?" he asked quietly. "I couldn't do a damn thing then either." It wasn't important obviously if Aya or Weiss trusted Yohji, Yohji didn't, had not trusted them, Aya before either. Kudoh had no idea how many sleepless nights he had caused Aya along the years with his egotistic anxiety. And Aya rather kept it that way for reasons completely of selfish origin.

"Possibly it was sarcasm," Schuldig replied acidly. "Perhaps I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by letting you keep up the pretense of not having known, rather than forcing you to admit that you knew and haven't done a damned thing to help him." Truthfully, though, that wasn't the case; he hadn't known, not until the subject had floated to the surface of Aya's mind; this place made it too hard to dig for anything that wasn't on the surface. He hated it, to be taken by surprise like this. "So you tried and failed. What do you want, a gold star for effort? Do you think saying 'well, I did all I can do' will make him kill himself any less, or have you simply gotten comfortable with what's going to happen?" He scowled at Aya. "Honestly, and you wonder why Weiss never got the better of Schwarz? You're all so miserably passive. You won't move without orders, without clear incentive, without words written in fire in the sky. And if something doesn't work, you fall to pieces, give up, run away...or just sit there, like a dog staring at a door waiting for someone else to open it for him. Schwarz works better on every level than Weiss could ever hope to, and given that you four claim the moral high ground, I find that revolting."

He shifted irritably on the couch. "Do you really expect me to believe that I am better at stabilizing him than any of you could be? A sadistic telepath who used to be his enemy as opposed to his friends and teammates? Or is it just that I'm making more of an effort than any of you?" Fuck; his wounds were throbbing. Whatever drugs they might have given him for pain had long ago worn off. "Either find something that works or write him off entirely; frankly, I don't care which, but I'd like to know if I'm supposed to keep monitoring him all by myself or if I can actually focus on other things occasionally. But don't give me such pathetic excuses; they might fool you, but I'm not nearly dense enough for them to work on me."

Aya couldn't help but quirk a brow at that. His expression borderline unbelieving as he listened to Schuldig share a piece of his mind. It had been too good to believe it was all about Yohji, after all. No, there just had to be a way to squeeze in some childish contest of 'who's got the biggest dick'. Schwarz seemed fond of those. Aya had honestly never spared a thought for who was the 'better team', he had been too focused on stopping the assholes from whatever mayhem they had been keen on accomplishing.

"No, Weiss doesn't do babysitting, this is true. How can you trust someone to guard your back if you have to make sure they're not a threat to themselves? I suppose that's something your team does. How you ever get anything done that way? As a teammate, I trust him. I can offer him help, and he can refuse. I can't live his life for him."

The remaining brow climbing up to match the first one, Aya tilted his head slightly to look at Schuldig through a thin veil of crimson hair fanning over his eyes. Schuldig seemed worked up. For a sadistic telepath who didn't care one way or another, he was pretty angry. Perhaps it was experience that made Aya peaceful. "Death is inevitable. I can't save him from everything. If he chooses to give up, I can't do much more than strap him up and force feed him, which I can't do here. First he needs to want to be helped. I've made it perfectly clear to him that I'm on his side on this, and will support him if he chooses to get a grip. As for you a being better choice, I never said that. I'd rather you stay the fuck away from him. But that is something he chooses for himself."

"That you don't view this as another aspect of watching your teammates' backs is exactly why Schwarz functions and Weiss doesn't," Schuldig countered flatly. "I'm the telepath, so believe me when I say this, Abyssinian - Weiss' issues look about as shallow as a teen's sobbing about not being able to go to the prom compared to what Schwarz has been through. The difference is that we actually acknowledge that we're fucked up, and we support each other when we can't stand alone. Weiss denies that its foundations are weak to begin with and then collapses like a house of cards every few days or so, and then you're idiotic enough to rebuild exactly the way you were before and expect something different to happen. Not one of you can stand on your own but nothing on earth will stop you all from trying, and no amount of failure seems able to induce you to do things more intelligently."

He waved a hand in an aggravated gesture. "All right, so you've given up on him. Fine. It's less effort for me to keep looking after him than it is for me to try and change your mind just to shift off some of my workload. But don't think you can say 'well, he lives or he dies, it's not my problem' and think you can dictate who sees him - you've already waived your involvement in anything that concerns Kudoh. But when the rest of your team disintegrates around you, will you still be so blasé? Or would you make a little more of an effort if it were Siberian destroying himself before your eyes?" He snorted. "It won't matter; you won't be able to help Bombay or Siberian any more than you've helped Balinese, so you'll tell yourself it's inevitable so you can keep living with your impotence. And then, when they're gone, it'll be your turn to be the abandoned one, suffering alone with no one to support him...and, then, maybe, I'll rescue you as I did Kudoh, if you're lucky. You two always were my favorites."

Schuldig seemed to also know a lot about things he had no recollection about. Weiss obviously had a different set of rules. First of them being that personal tragedy was personal, and not shared property of the support group. Weiss wasn't as dysfunctional as Schuldig would think, but Aya didn't see any reason for him to go into details why that was. Obviously the Schwarz telepath thought otherwise. Aya couldn't have cared less.

It was a bit ridiculous to suggest Aya would have jumped any less for Yohji than Ken. The truth was that Aya never had had to 'babysit' Ken. He had been there for Ken to fall back on if he would need it, and would continue to do so. Unlike Omi, Yohji had put the team to risk. He was a liability in more ways than one. And still Aya had stood up for him. It hardly was because he didn't care. And so...

"I never said anything about giving up on Kudoh, either. The thought had never crossed my mind." And as far as Schuldig seemed to be only eager to point out his invented weaknesses of Weiss, they had very little to say to each other. "If that was your message, I think this conversation is over."

"If it's babysitting to keep your teammates from killing themselves, no wonder you cared enough to ditch them five or six times," Schuldig observed, rolling his eyes. "As if you have any room to talk about being a liability, with your tendency to just abandon the rest of your team at random intervals - there isn't one of you in Weiss who hasn't nearly gotten the rest killed somehow, or thought of just leaving the others behind to go off on his own, and you've always been the worst of the lot." He extended a few fingers, dagger-like, in Aya's direction. "And, for the record, saying 'well, whether he lives or dies, I won't interfere' means that you've washed your hands of any responsibility as to his life and whether or not it continues, particularly when I've made it perfectly clear to you that he will die without someone's intervention. How do you define giving up on someone? Are you giving yourself points for being a devoted friend because you haven't actually quit Weiss and walked off soulfully into the horizon this time?"

The telepath eased himself up off the couch. "I don't know why I expected help from you, when your primary skill beyond hitting things with swords is walking away from problems and letting other people deal with them, but thanks for nothing all the same. I liked my Weiss better."

Aya had to wonder if they came from different universes after all. He had walked out on Weiss the last time more than five or six years ago, and every last one of those times he had came back. Schuldig's numbers were also royally fucked. The fact that Schuldig's information about him was also five or six years old was not enough to explain. It was pointless to even think about answering that. Completely pointless.

"You're not supposed to like Weiss, Schuldig," he said calmly. It felt slightly odd that the German came across this childish after all the years Aya had thought of him as someone he ought to fear to some extend. It was really hard to accomplish that right now.

"But, since you insist being an ass. I'll give you this," maybe having something to argue about would make it easier to storm off. Goodbye, Schuldig. "I've been the leader of Weiss for some years. And came back the moment Weiss was reformed, even if it meant I had to take a gun to my own head to do so. You obviously know nothing about me. I don't know why you expected help from me either, I don't excel in the mindfuck department."

He shrugged slightly, focusing his sleepy gaze at the German. "And Schuldig, just an advice for the future, even I know that you're not asking for help when you come with your guns blazing like that. If you were really thinking about Yohji, your approach would have been completely different."

Despite his desire to get rid of Schuldig, Aya was prepared to block a hit or two. He always was when in close proximity to Schwarz.

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Day 31: Sun Room (Fourth Shift)

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