Beautiful Stranger

I hate Schuldich. I hate his attitude, his awful cloths, his cigarette-stench, and the way he kisses our leader's butt all the time. I hate him especially when he makes me a part of his schemes, using me and my powers for his dirty plans. I can't refuse him. Not because I like it so much, but because I have to obey, obey him and Mr. Stick-shoved-up-the-ass Crawford. At least Crawford is sane... He doesn't go around and look for his next mind-game victim, like that annoying German. Like just moments ago.

I enter my room and flop on the bed, thinking back at the space-room, Schwarz's mission room. Schuldich put in front of me pictures of you and of our boss, Takatori Reiji, and told me to synchronize the pictures and put the result into the computer. As soon as my eyes fell on your sweet face and smiling form, I felt such warmth coming from you. You were shining. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the task at hand but my mind raced with your image. It made up the image of you embracing me, engulfing me and protecting me with glowing snowy wings.

When I finished synchronizing the pictures, I hardly said anything and before anyone could notice, I stole your picture and fled back to my room.

Here and now, on my bed, all I do is stare at your comforting image. How can it be? I ask myself. How can just a picture of you radiate so much warmth and make me feel those things I feel? This strange need to be held close... I shift and turn to lie on my side, holding your picture in front of my face, my eyes never leave yours. I marvel at those eyes and wonder about them. What do they look like when they are in raging fury, in great pain or extreme pleasure? What do they look like when you want to tell someone that you love them? What are they hiding behind those shimmering blue rivers?

And those lips, sweet as the smell of the rose they were colored with when you were created. How do they taste? How hot is the air they breathe out as they form the words I've never heard from anyone? How soft are they when they kiss one's forehead to bring comfort, like they have done to me on my vision in the space room?

I curse. How can you make me feel so many things when you don't even know me... when you... when you aren't even smiling at me...?

I sigh and roll over, burying your picture under my pillow. This is all wrong. I'm not supposed to have those feelings. I should hate the world, do hate the world, and hopefully, when the time comes, I'll kill everybody who has made my life as nasty as it has been. Yet, this feeling now overcomes me, the need to protect you. You are my enemy, my opposite, and yet I want to protect you. Why do you make me feel this way?? How dare you raise those emotions in me?! Are you trying to keep me away from my goal to revenge the world for what they did to me, Weiss?

I should have known there was a sick logic behind that pretty smile of yours! Bastard!

I reach under the pillow and pull the picture from there, but before I can tear it apart, your smile softens me. All logic is gone, sick or other. I shove your picture back to its rest under my pillow and close my eyes. I guess this is the one battle you will always win and I will always lose, Bombay. I wonder about you... if only.. I could get to know you...

888

I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes again it was darker outside, and Schuldich and Crawford were home. I can hear them all the way up to my room, bickering and fighting about something. You are mentioned, and at that I sit up and listen more carefully, curious.

"Oh C'mon, Brad! I just wanted to play with him. Such a sweet mind he was, innocent and inviting for a small game..."

"She was our boss's daughter, idiot."

"Ouka-san was just an annoying little girl. She was his sister. Therefore, she had to die, but not before she told him."

Ouka? Your sister? Murdered by Schuldich?

"Mr. Takatori will kill you for that."

"I'll stop him before he would even think about it. Maybe erase his memory of the fact she's dead."

"I'll block his mind then. You deserve to be beaten by him."

I stop listening. That can't be. If she's your sister and the boss's daughter, then you are his son. Then how come you fight against him? How is it that you don't look like him or as cruel as him? Were you abandoned by him and moved to the enemy's side? Like... like me...

I use my weak telepathy to reach Schu's mind. In his fresh memories, I see you hugging the blue haired girl, embracing her limp body as her blood stain your hands and arms. You're crying and screaming her name. I can feel it - your pain. I can feel it. Such pain I can't bear, that I pull myself away from Schu's mind.

I hug myself. What is this pain? Your cry is still echoing in my mind. Cold shivers attack my skin. My throat tightens at the bottom of it, not letting the air get through to fill the emptiness I suddenly feel under my chest and tummy. My vision blurs and a drop falls on my chest. Weakness takes over me and I know that I'm about to fall, but the shock stills me. I'm ... crying...

TBC