Author's Notes: This is not particularly much of anything. I just wrote this to get into the character for an RP in which I play Farfarello. This is a one-shot, but it might develop into something more. I hope not. I rather like it this way.

Farfarello's perspective. Poetic license has been taken full advantage of. Please Enjoy.

Disclaimers: I do now own Weiss Kruze, but God, I wish I did. (And yes, I know it's spelled wrong. I'm too lazy to look it up on Babel Fish.) Please don't sue me. My job doesn't pay that much.

Cello Prose

It's been a rough day, we just got back. Crawford locked himself in his study, I have no idea what he might be doing in there; praying, wanking, reading science fiction, going over schematics, letting his predictions wash over him, checking his email for new offers…who knows? Schuldig would, but then, he'd only sneer at me if I asked, and I don't want to deal with another one of those tonight.

Currently our resident redhead has planted himself in front of the television, I think he's watching some action flick by the way he's laughing at the explosions. He's smoking too, I can smell the smoke. I should tell him to open a window…or Nagi can tell him…yeah, Nagi.

As if Nagi would bother. He locked himself in his room the moment we got in. He's probably immersed himself in his internet friends to work off the leftover adrenaline. How he does it is a mystery, though. I don't think I could ever sit that still and stare at a screen for how long he does it every day. The child needs a life, Schuldig agrees, Crawford has even pointed that out, but Nagi ignores us when we suggest he go out and have fun. He's too serious, too young…poor little mass murderer…

We all have our ways of escapism, getting away from the world of politicians pulling our strings, away from the bodies that accumulate at our feet. It doesn't bother me so much, but sometimes I can see it in their faces. They get this look, like when Nagi crushed his first victim, like when Schuldig shot his pimp, like when Crawford has misplaced his glasses, they look so…lost, victimized. As if they were rape victims set out on the streets to live life again with their dark secrets, as if they have no place in our dirty little underworld.

Some days I wish I could save them. Some days I laugh at them. It depends on the mood I'm in, but usually I ignore it. They prefer no one notice and I feel no urge to point out their weaknesses. "Strengthen the team", Crawford says, "Don't hurt the team for any reason." There's no reason not to listen to him, for now we'll go on as we always have, Crawford in his study, Schuldig and his crappy action films, Nagi and his internet. Hermits, crazies in the city, we're nothing like a family. I don't think I would enjoy being here quite as much as I do if we were.

I have my own release when Crawford hasn't locked me in my cell to calm down. He didn't see the need to do so tonight, it wasn't very hectic, not much energy to be spent. I go to my room and shut the door quietly to dim the sound of Schuldig's movie and the rapid typing of Nagi's fingers from his room (he types so loudly sometimes), and settle down on a stool in the corner. I pull the instrument to me and rest it against my chest and shoulder, adjusting it comfortably and tuning it carefully. The strings are taunt against my fingertips, metallic and strong. I finally have the notes right and I reach for the bow, rubbing some fresh resin against the coarse horsehair and checking its strength. Still tight, but then, I just replaced it last month.

My palms, rough with calluses smooth against the rich, finished wood of the neck, finding the grooves that they've worn into the wood. They curl and curve around making shapes and pressing the strings down to change the silent notes I can hear. My other hand grips the bow white-knuckled for a moment before loosening again, flexing my wrist. I look down to make sure my footing is correct and scoot my right heel a little further back to help support my weight when I lean a little more away from my center of balance on the stool, towards the instrument. Everything is set, my fingers on the neck focused and sure, my bow resting against the strings like a knife at the throat of my victim, my head tilted slightly to the left, almost resting against the cool wood that comforts me.

I shut my eye and pull the bow across the strings. The wretched screeching note is loud enough to make my ears bleed. I'm sure it has grabbed everyone in the house's attention, but I've shut the door, they won't stop me until I'm done. I need this. I adjust my fingering and pull the bow across the strings again, longer, rougher, louder. My tune begins.

I heard this song in chapel once. I bastardized it, twisted the lilting Gaelic to an almost tuneless musical rant. I want to make the angels' ears bleed; I want to make them cry. It's a frenzy of notes, a barrage of mixed tunes and hymns like bullets, beautiful in its bestial, demonic way. It is beautiful and sinful, like dark chocolate, like sex, like drugs, like death, like blood on my lips, my fingers, my cheeks. Blood on snow is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I see it every day, reflected in my teammate's eyes.

The music is high, screaming, low, sobbing; the music of the real world, a mother's child in the womb, dying, the scream of tires as they run down vagrants and whores and drug addicts on the street, the terror of rats and those who live with them when gunshots shower them, welcome them to Hell. I alone am brave enough to speak for the world, curse God's creations. If He is so great, why is there sin, death, war, famine, plague, despair, starvation, murder? Why are there children with ironically fat bellies dying of disease and starvation below the Sahara? Why are there holy wars that kill millions of non-believers? Why do I exist, how do I exist as a murderer? Why does God do this? Why does He test us so? He is not so great, so powerful, so forgiving. He is malicious, watching his ants suffer as he pours the boiling oil of humanity upon us.

The music slows, I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips, they feel raw. I have no idea how long I have been playing, but I know I've reached the end for the night. I pull my bow across the strings once more, reminiscent of my first ragged note and snap my hand across the vibrating metal, cutting the sound off sharply. I don't like to wait for the music to fade. I stare vacantly on a spot of the floor in front of me, where I dropped my socks, black against the dark blue of my carpet. I think of nothing important, ideas filling and emptying from my brain in a non-sequential line, quiet, I heed nothing but the second presence in my room. How long has he been standing there? He was surprisingly quiet, why didn't I smell him?

"I told you not to sneak up on me on my left side," I say quietly, cutting the silence with my broken-glass tenor, the lilt unmistakable and thick. It's a wonder how he ever learned English with me. I can sometimes hear him pronounce things improperly, the way I do; a result of my lessons.

He laughs, carefree, emotionlessly, I can hear him clapping quietly, applauding me. I hate that laugh; I wish he wouldn't do that here. I hear the rustle of hair as he flips it over his shoulder and shuffles further into the room, the creak of my bedsprings as he makes himself comfortable, coming into my line of sight. I look up and meet his eyes, blue, pale, shallow. He has the look of a china doll, perfect and sculpted…dead. A shock of copper hair pulled away from his white face with that hideous scarf, hair the same color as his freckles. He hates those spots, but I know they exist, and I like them.

"Something on your mind?" he asks. I don't know if he's trying to be cute or if he really means his concern. I don't feel anything prodding my thoughts, so maybe he isn't being sardonic for once…not likely. I relax my arm and place the bow in my lap, resting my head against the top of my instrument, feeling the coolness against my cheek, feeling something flake off of my skin.

"You're not funny, Schuldig," I say quietly, dangerously. I'm in no mood for his games tonight. I want to be left alone. He laughs again and I hear the bedsprings squeak again, feel the air around me shift. I open my eye (when had I closed it?) and see him standing before me, then slowly kneeling, bending down enough to make our height even. It's hard, I'm much taller than he is, since I sprouted after seventeen, and I'm sitting on the stool. He reaches out and smears his thumb over my cheekbone. When he pulls away it's covered in old blood like grease.

"You didn't even clean up? You're going to get that thing messed up and Crawford doesn't want to pay for another," Schuldig mock-scolded. He knows I would never do anything to my instrument to harm it. A little blood never changed its quality, not if it's mostly dried.

He motions to me and stands, knowing better than to rush me and reach for the instrument. He learned early on not to touch it. I sigh and push the wood away, setting it in its stand and draping the cover over it to protect it from dust, mostly to get him to shut up. Sometimes humoring him does that faster than physically throwing him out. He shouldn't even be here, isn't he worried I'll slice his throat open or something equally unoriginal? I don't know. I'm not the mindreader.

He's heading for the bathroom down the hall, the one we share. Nagi and Crawford have their own next to their rooms. Since I have to be supervised every day when I shave Schuldig was assigned. Nagi is too young and too likely to get hurt before he can react and Crawford doesn't want to deal with gore first thing in the morning. Schuldig resented it at first; something about not wanting to share the toothbrush holder, shampoo and schedule the shower times, but he adjusted easily enough. Just as well. I let him use my razor, he lets me use his hair products. He's picky, but his shampoo and gel are the best quality one could find. My hair has never been in better condition. Still, he doesn't like it when I leave stubble in the blade…as if he's any better, leaving hair in the drain and his blow-dryer next to the sink with a full bowl of water…the idiot. He'll kill himself one day.

"You going to shower?" he asks me and my eyes immediately rest on the drain. It's wet and bearing fresh hair. He probably wasted all the hot water in the time I was playing. I don't like cold showers, reminiscent of my asylum days, so I shake my head. He sort-of pushes me toward the toilet (we have the normal, sit-down kind you don't usually find in Japan) and I take a seat on the closed lid. He flushes out the sink and opens the tap for a new wave of steaming water, on a separate water heater just in case someone's desperate enough to sponge down. Usually that's Nagi when he gets especially dirty and to the bathroom too late. Schuldig always grabs the shower first. I think Nagi should throw him out into the hall, wet and naked and sputtering. Maybe it would make Crawford laugh…then again, maybe not.

Schuldig pushes a rag around in the water and wrings it out. I can't tell how hot the water is, but the mirror has already steamed up. I'm suddenly glad I don't feel pain when I feel the rag press against my forehead. It's too hot, I know that, but it doesn't matter.

"I can do this myself, Schuldig," I mutter. He ignores me and wipes whatever remains are on my face before unbuttoning my vest and washing down my arms. I don't know why he does this, maybe for the contact. I let him and assume it's therapeutic. No one needs a crazy telepath twitching for contact right after a mission. We're already tense enough. Schuldig wants to go out, have some fun, get lost in the drugged up crowds of bars and raves, have sex, manipulate, etc. Crawford forbade him from it since the first time he did, when he came back so doped up we had to send him back to rehab for two months. Crawford was not pleased. Schuldig was not pleased either, but accepted it, even though he uses every chance he gets to complain. He took to cleaning me up, sewing my wounds together and other basic first aid not long after that. Nagi's actually our first aider, but Schuldig has a steadier hand with a needle and doesn't get so frustrated when the skin beneath his fingers gets slippery with blood…must've been his experience with heroin.

Tonight, though, it's just a wash down. He pushes his fingers through my hair, shaking the stiff gel and blood clots out but otherwise not bothering with it. I'll take a shower in the morning and get the rest of it out anyway. He's mostly focused on my skin. Everything above my waist is scrubbed and scoured and made clean again, pink with the blood that rises to the surface under his rough ministrations. I wait, silently, patiently, polite enough not to break his focus, his train of thought. He's so focused right now, maybe he thinks better with a constant mind nearby rather than the chaotic flurry of Tokyo when it isn't. He always said I was calming, like a cat. I've never felt the urge to curl up in his lap, though, so maybe he's wrong.

He's washing out the rag in the pink water. I know he's finished, so I relax a little, let my shoulders slump, untense my muscles, flex my fingers, still raw. I watch him quietly, my eye following his movements with meticulous ease. He's smooth, flexible and balanced, though his moves can be surprisingly jerky at times. He'd too slender, I think he always will be, his shoulders not quite broad enough, but not effeminate. He's too male to be effeminate; his jaw is too square, his nose too long, his bones too thick. He has slim hands, slim hips, tapered fingers, and long legs. It must be hell shopping for him in Tokyo, where everyone is short and a little round.

It's hard for me too, but we have different tastes in clothes. I'm tall too, six feet, maybe more. I'm taller than Crawford by at least a few inches, but my build is thinner, stronger, more predatory, I suppose. Crawford is made like a boxer, strong shoulders, chin, fists, and stance. He's taller than Schuldig by half a head. His face is too American, like his accent. Too American, with big farmboy hands and big feet. But he doesn't have calluses anymore.

Nagi's just small. Small everything. Small shoulders, short, too thin, round face. Small hands, small feet. Tiny bow lips that hold no color. Lank black hair that has never fully recovered from whatever ruined it in the first place and huge blue eyes, the only thing that doesn't fit. They make him look so lost, innocent, much younger than he really is. I think he resents his appearance, wishes he were bigger, stronger, like Crawford or even Schuldig, but then, we've found his stature quite useful on occasion.

"How long have you been playing?" he finally asks, interrupting my thoughts. I blink, coming back to reality and focus on his face. He's not looking at me, wiping down the inside of the sink to get the blood out before it stains.

"Nine, maybe ten years," I answer, shrugging. It isn't important.

"That's a long time." Aye, it is.

"There were…interruptions."

"Ja, but I like it."

There's something I haven't heard before, not from him. I never pictured him as the classical music type, but then, I don't play classical music. I remain unsurprised and shrug again, rising from my seat and leaning down to straighten my pants. The steam is wrinkling them.

"I never pictured it as much of an Irish instrument," he says, reaching up to wipe the condensation off of the mirror glass.

"I don't know," I answer, standing behind him now, gazing into the glass at our reflections. He smirks at me in the mirror and I turn away, reaching for the door. He doesn't stop me, even when the rush of cool air shocks us both out of our respective reveries. I step out into the hallway and make my way to my bedroom. Schuldig follows and sits on my bed again. I am forced to take the only other seat in the room, the stool.

"Play me another song. Just one more tonight?" he asks. He never asks for anything. I shake my head.

"No. I'm done for now." He looks disappointed, but not furious. He reaches up to toy with a lock of flame-colored hair at his shoulder, his blue eyes dancing as he meets my gaze.

"You know, before I came here, I never heard a cello before," he says thoughtfully.

"You're so barbaric," I observe with a slight tinge of humor. He laughs, too loudly. I wish he didn't laugh like that for a second time tonight, but I still say nothing.

"Jawhol, maybe." And he laughs again, tossing his head back and reveling in the fake tide of amusement he dwells in.

He's such a bad liar. If he was as happy as he makes out, he wouldn't be so eager to hear my music. Poor bastard. I don't think I'll point it out right now, he's laughing again.

Fin Cello Prose

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Author's Notes: (…) Please don't kill me?