Lovers in Madness

Sabbath was outside, crouched in front of Caden, who was sitting with his knees drawn up against the wall of the store. They both looked startled when Schu stepped outside.

Schuld raised an eyebrow and nodded to Caden. \"Yo, kiddo. Must be cold,\" he said, and with that, kept walking, finding it obvious that the two were involved in something that simply was not his business.

Caden blinked. \"When\'d YOU get here?\" he demanded, struggling toward his feet.\\

Kieran cuddled Dwyn and purred at him, rubbing his cheek against Dwyn\'s lovingly.

\"I didn\'t see you come in,\" he explained as he used the wall to haul himself up.

\"Appeared out of nowhere a lil while ago, as I\'m sure the lady here can tell you,\" Schuld said, pausing and turning. \"What\'re you doin\' out here?\"

Caden shrugged. \"It\'s pretty,\" he said, dusting snow off his coat. \"And Corus threw me in a snow bank. It just took me a while to get up the motivation to get out.\" He shot Schuld a grin as Sabbath shook her head knowingly, as if to say, \'kids these days....\'

Schuldig laughed. \"You wanna come for a walk with me?\" he inquired, tilting his head. There was something screamingly wrong in Caden\'s mind, but he wasn\'t sure he -wanted- to fuck around with the boy, or the boy\'s head.

Caden broke out a grin. \"Sure! Sabbath, will you tell dad?\" She nodded and shooed him off, brushing snow off her skirt and stepping back inside.

Schuld waited for Caden to catch up before he started walking again, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and igniting it with a thought. \"So what\'s up with you?\"

Caden shrugged. \"Eh, the usual stuff. Hanging around the house like a deadbeat mostly. This spring, though, I\'m probably gonna take off. Y\'know, see if I can catch the horizon and maybe get a ballad or two written about me.\" He skip-stepped in the snow.

\"That sounds cool. Which way\'re you headed?\" Schuld wanted to know, taking a drag off his cigarette and clomping determinedly through the snoe.

\"West and then south. I figured I\'d stop in Luskan and see if I can\'t get more current news on what\'s going on down the coast. Rumors come up, y\'know? And I think my dads know what\'s going on, but they don\'t exactly talk news with us a whole lot.\" He shrugged. \"I might catch a boat to somewhere. Always kinda wanted to do that, after listening to Uncle Sky...\"

Schuldig shuddered. \"Any man who willingly gets on a bunch of flimsy wood on a HUGE fucking ocean of water is completely insane,\" he declared. He -really- didn\'t like water, whether it was due to his pyrokinetic mindset or his complete lack of ability to swim.

Caden laughed. \"Dude, this is Uncle Sky you\'re talking about!\" he ribbed gently. \"Of course he\'s insane... he married Uncle Lethe.\"

\"He\'s not insane, just a fop,\" Schuld said. \"But it\'s still bloody insane. Who\'d want to see nothing but water for... gods only know HOW long? I\'d probably drown still on the dock,\" he muttered.

Caden chuckled. \"Which is why I\'m going and you\'re not,\" he pointed out. \"Some of us ain\'t scared of a little old thing like water.... \"

\"I\'m not SCARED,\" Schuld said defiantly, again breathing of his cancer stick. \"I just know better. I don\'t do water, but you\'re more than welcome to it. Bring me back somethin\' cool, huh?\"

He shrugged. \"We\'ll see.\" He paused to pick up a lump of snow and idly started to shape it. \"So, you guys came all the way here for christmas? How\'d you know where we\'d be?\"

\"Tuned in on Yuka-chan,\" Schuld explained. \"I\'ve known him since he was fifteen and the cutest little merc I\'d ever seen... it\'s easy to pick up on him, even from across dimensions. And Cross is loud no matter what, and I\'ve known him just as long. Longer, in fact.\"

\"Oh yeah?\" Caden tilted his head thoughtfully. \"Dad doesn\'t talk about you. \'Tousan does sometimes, but it just seems to never come up. I mean, not like we don\'t love you... I mean, stuff about way back when you guys first met.\"

Schuld shrugged. \"There\'s a lot of bad blood back there. I once locked your parents in a cavern system together, and Cross never forgave me, even though it\'s what got them back together.\"

\"Did you apologize?\" Caden wondered. He knew his dad had a hard time not forgiving someone who was genuinely sorry.

\"I did,\" Schuld said, running a hand through his hair. \"You know, the first time I met your dad... shit. You wouldn\'t believe me if I told you.\" Was Caden mature enough to know these old events, left buried for a reason?

Caden smirked. \"I dunno. I might believe more than you think.\" He shrugged and sped up a little, tossing his snowball from hand to hand. \"Then again, maybe not.\"

\"Well, I\'d just gotten the shit knocked out of me, and the prick who did it left me locked in a room in a tavern. Kreuz saved my ass and took care of me like a fuckin\' stray puppy. We actually had an affair back then. Bet he never told you that,\" Schuld said smugly.

Caden shook his head, but he didn\'t seem overly surprised. Inside his shields, which very much resembled a wildly fluctuating energy barrier that varied in thickness in different spots from moment to moment but somehow was still fairly strong, Caden figured that for his Dad to still feel resentment toward Schuldig like he did now, they would have had to have been lovers. Things were always more complicated when sex was involved.

Schuld could have broken through Caden\'s shields, but he would have had to actually bother to put some energy into it. In his old age he\'d gone soft, too, and now respected that thing known as privacy. That, and he was too lazy to make the effort of cracking that shifting shield. \"And then there was the whole thing with Yuka, and that was what did it.\" He shouldn\'t tell Caden this, shouldn\'t disillusion him. But he was an adult now and the world couldn\'t give him pretty lies all the time.

\"You and \'Tousan too?\" Now Caden sounded a little bit surprised.

Schuldig sighed. \"You\'re going to hate me, if you believe me,\" he muttered, eyes on the snow beneath his boots as they walked.

Caden thought about laughing that off, but Schuld actually sounded entirely serious, so he didn\'t. Instead, he scrunched his snowball in one hand. \"Well, you don\'t have to tell me,\" he said reasonably.

\"Naw. Might as well.\" Schuld sighed and took a deep breath. \"When I was younger I was... well, a fuckload more evil, to be honest. I used to pick up pretty little things and take them, hurt them, rape them, break them. Their fear and pain was fun to me. And then when I was done I\'d put them back, let them live in fear and horror that I\'d return, hating themselves for giving in. for they all gave in at one point. Except...\" He paused for a moment, taking a drag from his cigarette. \"Except for Yuka Jishou.\"

Caden nodded, listening. He was looking elsewhere, though, mostly at the snow around them as he packed the powder in his hands into a ball again.

\"That was one of the things that turned me soft, you know. That little Yuka was my favourite victim for a long, long time, and he forgave me entirely. It takes a lot to forgive like that.\" Schuld seemed to be talking more to himself than to Caden by now, but it was still audible. \"I was killed on Yuka\'s account once.\" And how odd -that- sounded...

\"So basically, you raped \'Tousan and Dad\'s the one who\'s never really forgiven you for it?\" he inquired, cutting through Schuld\'s narrative.

\"Pretty much. That, combined with me stealing his freedom and sending him through the Hall, gave him good cause for his grudge, I think.\"

\"Stealing his freedom...\" Caden repeated quietly. Remembering. ~Cay, one of the only things mortals have going for them in this world is free will and free choice. The greatest crime you can commit against another person is to enslave them, to deny them the right to run their lives. I know sometimes you might want to knock the idiots unconcious and MAKE them do the right thing, but you can\'t. Do you understand? You can beg, plead, cajole, and advise, but you can\'t force. Always remember... they have their choices and you have yours. So try to make them wisely.~

\"That is -exactly- what I did. Knocked him unconscious,\" Schuldig nodded, picking up on Caden\'s precise repetition of Cross\' voice. \"Locked him and Yuka into a basement and when they came out, my purpose was achieved. Although I must say, getting the Hall to cooperate was no mean feat.\"

\"Your purpose having been.... to get them together,\" Caden said slowly, trying to brush away the coil of unease in the back of his mind.

\"Back together,\" Schuldig nodded. He paused, looking up with a frown and glancing at Caden thoughtfully.

Caden pulled his own musings behind his shields. Really, they were closer to the veils Cross had always so easily dropped over his thoughts. The strength wasn\'t in the thickness of the shields, it was in how they disoriented and turned you around as you tried to find your way through them.

Schuld was a master of sliding through the most confusing of shields; he had been the first to anchor his shields in the astral and set them spinning to absorb intrusions. He wove his way through, taking a long moment to slip into Caden\'s mind and see where that emotional surge had stemmed from.

~So he forced them back together and Dad just... aquiesced? Doesn\'t sound like him. But everybody has their limits. But did he really do it because he loved \'Tousan or did he do it because he thought he had to? What did he want so badly to do that didn\'t involve \'Tousan? Did he.... does he love him at all or is he just sleepwalking, trying to avoid a mental war? And why in the gods\' names did \'Tousan forgive Schuldig? Which he obviously has. They\'re too close to be harboring resentment between them.....~

\"He didn\'t want to be in love. He avoided it like the plague,\" Schuld shrugged.

Caden shot him a sidelong glance that seemed curious, but was really suspicious. \"Poking around in my head?\" he chuckled.

\"Of course,\" Schuldig said, giving Caden a winning smile. \"I think you\'d have to ask them about it if you doubt their love.\"

He shrugged. \"Nah. You went off to another dimension. If Dad was unhappy, he would\'ve left... he can be really bitchy when he\'s mad.\"

\"Yeah he can. He threatened to kill me quite sincerely when I locked \'em down there,\" Schuld chuckled.

\"Well, he didn\'t,\" Caden said, then did a double-take. \"Right? I mean, he didn\'t.\"

\"Nope. Only been killed once, and that was by a different vampire Ice hangs out with.\"

\"Oh yeah.\" Caden rolled his eyes. \"Ice. I\'ve heard more about HIM... never met him, though.\"

\"Count yourself lucky,\" Schuld said sincerely. \"Imagine Dylanae after several hundred millenia of practice. Make it about a dozen times worse and quite a bit less foppish, and you have Ice. Not a nice guy. He\'s cool to sit around with,\" Schuld grinned, remembering many long party-nights spent with the vampire.

Caden chuckled. \"Wonder if Dyl\'s met him...\" he mused, then shook his head. Even as he did so, the steady train of his thoughts shattered into so many sparkling fireflies and dissappeared. \"So if Dad\'s always been so cold to you, why did you give him us? I mean... you\'ve got to know that he was the one who REALLY wanted children.\" ~And how could he not forgive Schuld when WE were the gift of apology? He says he loves us...~ Again, his thoughts were meant to be his own.

\"Because even if he holds a grudge, he taught me something I never would\'ve learned otherwise, and I owed him. It made Yuka happy, too, and your otousan\'s sure worth the effort. Besides, I was making you guys before he asked,\" Schuld said. Then he snapped his mouth shut, not quite sure if Cross and Yuka had ever told their children about all of that.

Caden hiked an eyebrow. \"You were, huh? Yeah, I head that \'Tousan didn\'t actually bear Corus...\"

\"Nope. It\'s a long, twisted story, but the short version is that I\'d been working with genetics - a highly advanced science, which, after a while, is indistinguishable from magic - and I was going to keep Corus. Did til he was two and your sister was born. And, of course, then I cracked and handed him over. Cross was... well, a bit pissed,\" Schuld said with a slight smirk.

Caden was silent, thoughtful. His boots crunched the snow as he debated with himself, thoughts flying in and out of that fluxing shield and vanishing half-formed. \"Does Corus remember?\" he asked finally.

\"I don\'t know,\" Schuldig said honestly. \"I gave him the best shields I could make when he was born, and I\'ve never needed to get past them.\" Corus was very close to Schuldig. \"Could always ask.\"

He shrugged. \"Nah. S\'none o\'my business... and I don\'t think he\'d take it well.\"

\"That\'s cool,\" Schuldig nodded. \"But what makes you think he wouldn\'t take it well?\"

He shrugged, but he didn\'t vocalize his own thoughts, and, knowing that Schuld was prying, he carefully disbanded every flicker of idea that took form in his mind before it could be recoginized.

\"You\'re getting pretty good at that,\" Schuld said with approval, ruffling Caden\'s hair. \"Illithids don\'t stand a chance.\"

Caden ducked away swiftly from his reaching hand, but covered it with dancing footwork and a teasing grin. \"Maybe I\'ll see one when I\'m out and around,\" he said slyly. \"I mean, I wasn\'t PLANNING on going to the Underdark, but now that you mention it, seems the whole place could use a good laugh.\"

\"Better\'n going to -sea-,\" Schuld grumbled, shaking his head disdainfully. \"Anything\'s better than delayed drowning.\"

\"Oh no, I\'m still going to sea. Hell, maybe I can find Dyl and see if he\'ll REALLY shove me overboard,\" he chuckled.

Schuld laughed and ran a hand through his hair. \"You\'re a masochistic little puppy, you know that?\" he said teasingly.

Caden shrugged. \"Nah. It just doesn\'t scare me. I mean, why should it? They can only hurt me until I\'m dead.\"

\"Not half as bad as Kie-chan, though, never figured him the type to be into the kinky shit. You ever do anything real kinky, or just the regular?\" Keeping anything of magnitude from Schuldig was effectively impossible, the chances of his finding out exponentially increased with each person that knew.

Caden paused, looking plainly confused. \"Kie-chan.... kinky?\" he repeated as if the words didn\'t belong in the same sentence. Which, in his mind, they did not.

Schuld glanced at him and smiled slyly. \"I\'m not surprised,\" he said, sounding amused. \"But you\'d be amazed at what he and his little friend have been up to. Didn\'t think he had it in him, really...\"

Caden blinked and then laughed. \"Oh yeah? Anything interesting?\" he inquired in a teasing, deceptively light tone.

\"Nothing you\'d find interesting,\" Schuld chuckled, jade eyes glittering. The mental image of Kieran and Dwyn was a rather pleasing one, actually, especially when blood was involved. Some things never changed.

\"Hey, it\'s my brother!\" Caden sounded hurt. \"Everything he does is interesting. Besides, I want to know... I just can\'t see him doing... well, a LOT of things I\'d think of as kinky.\"

\"There\'s a lot in that katzchen-eared head that nobody knows about,\" Schuld shrugged. \"Like the desire to be spanked, for one,\" he snickered. It was cute (in a deliciously sick way) to steal Kieran\'s fantasies and replay them to him in his dreams.

Caden twitched. \"Okay, maybe it\'s better I don\'t know,\" he muttered, kicking a clump of snow and crushing his snowball again.

Schuldig snorted. \"You still fucked up over breaking up with him?\"

Caden hiked an eyebrow. \"Hey now, let\'s PRETEND that\'s a secret, okay? I\'d rather not have his reputation ruined. He invites enough torment as it is, it\'d be worse if anybody around here figured out he was bi, worse yet if they found out he\'d been in it with his own brother.\"

\"What about you, huh? You okay?\" Schuld sounded honestly concerned, and though he knew Caden wasn\'t, there wasn\'t much he could do unless the boy let him.

Caden shrugged, the very picture of negligent distance. \"Sure. Why not? I mean, we both knew it wasn\'t gonna last anyway. And I guess if you think about it, the timing\'s kinda perfect.\"

\"Just remember, kid, no matter what you go through or how much shit you have to take, there\'s always somebody out there meant for you. The fun part is finding them. You\'ll find yours. I can see it in the stars,\" Schuld proclaimed dramatically, waving a hand at the sky.

Caden snorted. \"Yeah, right. Schuld, you and me, we\'re just specks down here. We don\'t shine, so we\'re invisible to those stars and somehow, I don\'t think they give a shit about us. We make our own way, stars be damned, and then we go back to dust and they keep shining.\" He shrugged and tossed the snowball... at a nearby building, not at Schuldig. \"You wanna head back? It\'s kinda cold.\"

\"It\'s not the stars so much as the Weave making sure there\'s hope for everybody,\" Schuldig shrugged. \"And I didn\'t really see it in the stars. The faeries told me.\" He stopped where he stood and stretched. \"On returning, then.\" He pulled off his duster, revealing a much-scarred pale torso, and offered it to Caden. It was easy enough to raise his body temperature to keep warm.

Caden shook his head, shoving his gloved hands in his pockets. \"No thanks. If anybody sees us walkin\' down the street like that they\'re REALLY gonna wonder,\" he said flippantly, turning and sauntering back in the direction they\'d come. He tried to recall if he\'d ever seen Schuld\'s skin before and realized he hadn\'t. \"So, what\'s with the scars?\"

Schuld craned his head back and shrugged. \"Long years on the streets, and longer with Estet. Had a hard life, took a lot of beatings.\" He said it like it didn\'t matter at all, like his being the victim was completely inconsequential.

Caden chuckled, his amusement at that washing through his mind and turning it orangish red.

\"So you sure you\'re going to be alright? There might not be anyone around to glue you back together if you crack and boil over, you know,\" Schuldig said lightly, pulling out a cigarette.

Caden looked at him, confused. \"Say what?\" But despite his rather flawless acting, there was a flicker deep in his mind. Something black.

Schuld sighed. \"I know you\'re not doing too good. You know you can always talk to me about it, right?\" He wouldn\'t delve all the way into Caden\'s mind unless it was really necessary, but there was a point at which privacy was tossed aside in favour of mental health.

Something welled up inside him at that, but Caden quickly threw a tendril of mental discipline at it, shattering and dissolving it, his face flickering in the attempt with the effort as he tried to wash the residue from his thoughts. Whatever the something was, it was strong... exceptionally strong, and certainly not positive. Either way, Caden blinked at Schuldig as if the man was crazy. \"I\'m FINE,\" he stressed. \"We were just screwing around anyway. You guys put WAY more importance on it than it had.\"

\"That\'s not the only thing I\'m talking about. You\'re breaking apart in there and there will come a time when you won\'t be able to hide it anymore. I know. I\'ve been there,\" Schuldig said quietly, watching Caden intently and keeping a close mental check on that pulsing dark ball way down in there.

Caden let out a laugh. The black thing coiled again, whispering brokenly, angry, but he shrugged it off and it seemed to have no real hold on him. \"Yeah, well, maybe it\'s not always easy being me. But I can deal... no time to mope about it, y\'know? Got things to do.\" He spun in a circle around a lamptpost. \"Especially if I want to leave anything when I\'m gone \'sides dust.\"

\"Look, Caden, I\'ve seen Yuka lose it, and frankly, I sure as HELL don\'t want to see you snap. I don\'t think the nearby landscape would survive,\" he said dryly, sounding perfectly serious. \"Go kill a shitload of orcs or something, some homocidal therapy, but let it out before it destroys you.\"

\"You\'re stuck on this, aren\'t you?\" Caden shook his head. \"Man, you ever think of how easy you\'ve got it being able to read other peoples\' minds? You never have to wonder if they mean what they say. You never have to wonder if... and you can annoy the hell out of a lot of people,\" he finished, abandoning a previous train of thought for a slightly less linear one. \"Anyway, come on. We\'re almost back.\" he broke into a cautious jog, not necessarily wanting to slip and land on his ass.

Schuldig laughed. \"Like a dog with a bone, I am. You can\'t lie to a telepath. And if Ori gives you any shit, smack him and tell me. He\'s not supposed to be rummaging through people\'s heads,\" Schuld said, striding along at an impressive pace.

Caden shrugged. \"Ori won\'t give me any shit. I\'m not interesting to him.\"

\"You never know with him. He gets pretty mercurial. Just like his da,\" Schuld chuckled, shaking his head.

Caden shrugged. \"No reason to pry. Not much goes on in here anyway,\" he joked, tapping his own head as he reached for the door to the shop. What was it about this claustraphobic, pungent, darkened place? He felt safer here, as though it was a refuge.

Schuld laughed and followed Caden into the shop, making sure to stomp his boots off outside before going in. \"I think it\'s got something to do with the aura of the place. Blessed, and all.\" They were indeed on a sort of holy ground.

Caden just shrugged, toeing off his boots and shedding his coat as he left the garments where Sabbath had instructed them to leave them. He slipped his hands in his pockets and trudged up the stairs, manageing to make noise despite socked feet.

Schuld followed, leaving his boots downstairs this time and slinking up the stairs behind Caden. At the top of the landing, Orion, who had barely moved but to wrap his fingers in silver and play with liquid metal, grinned and waved shortly. Yuka was telling Kagami something and Corus was snickering at Kieran, who was still attached to Dwyn.

Usually, Caden drew as much attention to himself as possible upon entering a room. This time he sidled to the side, offering his family a cheerful grin from underneath his bangs but no sound from his normally unclosable mouth.

Schuldig stopped next to his son and used the boy\'s head for an armrest. Orion ignored him good-naturedly, two pairs of jade eyes glazing as they conversed mentally. \"We\'re going to head out,\" Schuld finally announced. \"Find a hotel or something.\" Corus peered up at Schuld and grinned. \"We\'re at the halfling-run place down the road. You might as well stay there.\" Schuld nodded and winked at Cross. \"See you later, all,\" he said, scooping Orion off the floor and onto his shoulder. The boy meeped and clung, trying to look serious and not laugh..

Cross shrugged and smiled rather genuinely. \"Sure. Later,\" he waved. Once Schuld was at a safe distace, Caden fixed his father with a hard stare that would have frankly shocked anyone else who\'d seen it, coming from him. ~We need to talk.~

Yuka raised an eyebrow at Caden but didn\'t say anything, figuring it was none of his business at this point. Kieran hardly noticed, as he was busy trying to chew through his finger, not paying attention to much at all, and Corus and Kagami were quietly bickering between the two of them.

Dwyn quietly removed Kieran\'s finger from his mouth for his OWN chewing pleasure, hooded golden eyes shooting Kie a promising smirk. Cross nodded, rose, and brushed his hair back from his face. \"Try to stay sane without us for a minute?\" he reccomended, shooting Yuka a wink and slinging an arm around Caden\'s shoulders as they went back downstairs.

Yuka laughed softly and smiled. \"We\'ll make the effort,\" he said lightly, turning his eyes to Kieran. The nekojin was busy purring, not minding at all being gnawed on by Dwyn, and oblivious.

(And I can\'t find any more after that. >> Keep working on it, though... FEED THE REVIEW BEAST!!)