100 words to kill - weiß kreuz drabbles
in order of writing - newest at the top

Last and First
Characters: Farfarello, Schuldig, Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #96: 'Flashback'

He doesn’t turn around; just walks through the passport control entrance, arm around that little bitch, whispering in her ear. He doesn’t turn around. The world turns heavy and sharp-edged around Schuldig.

Security dumps the boy, all manacles, snapping teeth and rabid glare, on the floor and retreats. Fuzzy early morning thoughts are swamped by erratic static crackle; a wild, uncontrollable live wire twitching in a puddle of water. Schuldig’s lips curve slowly into an intrigued smile.

Crawford slides an arm across his shoulders, possessive in victory, murmurs into his hair,

“The Aum Shinrikyo will be blamed for the bomb.”

Note: The Aum Shinrikyo are the Japanese religious terrorist organisation responsible for Tokyo Subway sarin gas attack.

Invasion!
Characters: Schuldig, Nagi, Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #95: 'Ninja!'

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Schuldig snorted.

Crawford grimaced, folding arms across Armani-clad chest and turning to look out the window into the darkened warehouse below.

“What?” demanded Nagi, confused by the look of almost. . . embarrassment on Crawford’s face.

Schuldig smirked.

“Apparently we’re about to be invaded by comicbook villains.”

“What?” Nagi demanded again, eyes narrowing in annoyance at Schuldig’s obfuscation.

The telepath merely nodded down toward the warehouse where there was now, leaping from crate to crate like manic jumping-spiders, several dozen black-clad humanoid shadows.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” said Nagi.

First Words
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #91: First Meetings after the Fall of the Tower.
Characters: Crawford, Schuldig

Schuldig looked like something the cat had dragged in. Or rather, like something the cat had hunted down, batted around a bit, dunked, almost-drowned, dragged out and deposited - bruised, battered and breathless - on the shore. Crawford waited for words to accompany the pissed-off glare;

“Did you somehow forget to mention the building was going to collapse on us?”

Or,

“You could have warned me Balinese would almost garrotte me!”

Or even,

“I can’t believe you didn’t See her pulling a gun!”

Schuldig dragged a hand through tangled curls and snarled,

“You do know seawater absolutely wrecks my hair, don’t you?”

Waiting for romance
Characters/Pairings: Crawford/Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #76: "Unromantic"
Rating/Type: NC-17 for violence

The secretary hurried across reception, laden down with sweet boxes. Why couldn't Crawford catch a clue and give him Valentines' chocolates, Schuldig thought petulantly. It was an American holiday, wasn't it? Dedicated to the great god Mammon?

The secretary smiled brightly as she passed by him, into the office. He felt the euphoric rush of her disbelief and terror, heard her inhale to scream. The only sounds she made were the *squish* as his bullet entered her skull and the *thud* of her corpse hitting the ground.

Then again, when Crawford gave him fun jobs like this, who needed romance?

Gift of the Gods
Characters/Pairings: Krafortes/Opheilô aka Crawford/Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #73: "Historical AU"

Krafortes watched the town receding across the waves and sighed, disgruntled. It had been the perfect settling place - big enough to be truly civilised, not so big they caught the attention of the powerful or the high temples. At an echoing sigh he glanced sideways into Opheilô's pout.

"A little more warning on the 'packing and fleeing' would have been nice," the barbarian grumbled.

"Apollo speaks as it pleases him. Though I shall relay your dissatisfaction," Krafortes replied dryly.

Opheilô shrugged, uncaring of any implied blasphemy. They both turned back to watch the black gouts of smoke rising from Vesuvius.

Breakpoint
Characters: Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #65: 'Air'. Chronologically follows after Diversion by a few months.

Khartoum is filled with the maimed, the traumatised, the starving; Death not a light breath but a gale, squalling down every street of unremitting human misery. Schuldig drowns and drowns; curls up on his hotel-bed and cries. Like he hasn't for years, like his fucking heart is breaking and he can't stand it, he just wants it

All.

To.

Stop.

He drifts in apathetic slumber until the third day. After rousing to wipe the response team's memories he follows them down through the charnel-house and out of the quarantine zone, then disappears into the city like all the other Deaths.

SGS: 1. Departure
Characters: Crawford/Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #62: 'Crossovers'.

At the very last moment, Schuldig baulked.

“It’s safe,” Crawford said.

*Then it’s the one thing about this entire venture that is.* Schuldig cast a wary glance at their surroundings.

*I told you, it was necessary. World domination belongs only to us, remember?*

*But did you have to tell th-*

“I Saw it, Schuldig,” Crawford snapped, “This discussion is ov-”

“Anytime today thank you gentlemen,” the voice came from above them.

“Ja, ja.” Schuldig waved negligently at their watchers then continued, “But did you have to agree to them making me wear a uniform?”

Crawford pushed Schuldig through the Stargate.

SGS: 2. Arrival
Characters: Schuldig, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #62: 'Crossovers'. WK/Stargate Atlantis

“Which one’s supposed to be a telepath?” Rodney sneered.

“The redhead with the Austrian patch,” John replied, eyes on the meet-and-greet below.

Both men were young, fit, alert and for ‘businessmen’, disquietingly unfazed by Atlantis, the Stargate, the whizzy technology and the large number of weapons displayed. John strongly suspected their files weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

Then the redhead looked directly up at them and grinned, a white flash of Wraithlike hunger that set off every warning instinct John had.

*No ‘supposed’ about it all,* purred a voice in his mind.

“Oh. Oh my,” said Rodney.

SGS: 3. First Contact
Characters: Schuldig, Crawford, Rodney McKay
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #62: 'Crossovers'. WK/Stargate Atlantis

He pulled the trigger again and again and again and…

“It’s dead, Schuldig. Really, really dead.”

MacKay’s voice was distorted by a smothering, fetid mental miasma. He desperately needed to cleanse himself, scour away the clinging slime. There was a touch; he struck out reflexively, heard Crawford curse followed by a burst of clean white pain.

“Shield, damnit, shield!”

He grabbed at his shields, yanking them up - all force, no finesse - then found himself on his knees beside the Wraith corpse, worried faces surrounding him.

"Abscheulich!"

"But you found out what we wanted?" Crawford demanded.

What an Arschloch.

“Aber natürlich.”

SGS: 4. Delegation
Characters: Schuldig, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #62: 'Crossovers'. WK/Stargate Atlantis

Crawford snapped out of one of his little ‘fits’. Funny, John kept meaning to mention them to Carson, but always forgot about doing so until the next time he saw one.

“You didn’t really need that Kavanagh fellow, did you?”

“Why?” John quirked an eyebrow.

“Because in about three minutes time he’s going to get his brains puréed into guacamole.”

John followed Crawford’s gaze to the mess table where Kavanagh was currently berating a smirking Schuldig.

“Damn, but that jerk’s got a deathwish,” John muttered as he sped off to rescue the undeserving.

Crawford smirked. He did so love having minions.

----
Glossary:
Abscheulich - Disgusting/abhorrent/repugnent
Arschloch - Arsehole
Aber natürlich - But of course

Betthäschen
Characters: Aya/Yohji
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #61: 'Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen, or German Title'. Betthäschen or 'bedbunny', is colloquial for 'a good lay'.

Aya’s eyes thinned disapprovingly then flicked away as Yohji slipped through the kitchen door, a languid heaviness to his movements intimating pleasure given and received. There were quiet footsteps then the weight of Yohji’s forearms along the back of Aya’s chair; warm breath on his nape.

“Something the matter?”

“What, other than the fact security is jeopardized by your one night stands?”

“Jealous?”

“Of you wasting your life screwing anything that moves? Hnn.”

“I didn’t realise it bothered you that much,” Yohji mused quietly before turning and leaving.

Aya thought he almost - almost - felt the brush of lips against his hair.

Bluebeard's Wife
Characters: Schwarz
Rating: R for bad language
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #50: 'Movie Quotes' "Godzilla" [1998 version] Movie quote: "I think running would be a good idea."

Fifteenth floor.

"Don't go into the lab on the thirtieth floor," Crawford had said.

Schuldig had shrugged carelessly but taken note. Unfortunately so had Farfarello, that insane arschloch.

Tenth floor.

Schuldig shifted Nagi’s unconscious form to the other shoulder, gasping for breath. There was a blur of movement behind. He dodged. Scheiss, but they were fast! He ran.

Fifth floor.

Schuldig knew his life often resembled a B-grade horror movie, but really - six-foot tall carnivorous lizards?

Ground floor. Escape.

He slung Nagi into the backseat beside Farfarello, jumped in hurriedly, noticed the carefully-suppressed smirks.

“Fuck you both,” he snarled.

Heat
Characters: Schuldig, Crawford
Rating: PG
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #48: 'Use the first line of a book as your first line'. "Purity In Death" by J.D.Robb.

The heat was murder.

And murder was Schuldig as he paced through the heat. Too hot to stride energetically, too edgy to saunter as the irritated minds of the crowd scritch-scritched-scratched against his; an itch impossible to ease. So he left behind a swath of bloody noses, swooning bodies, and other, more darkly secret blossomings in his wake.

By the time he reached the hotel Schuldig was sweat-drenched, on the verge of a migraine, and feeling more than a little homicidal towards his new teamleader. The suite was empty. The note on the table read:

Take a cold shower. There’s Pilsner in the fridge.

Diversion
Characters: Schuldig, Aya, Ken
Rating: PG
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #46: 'Anywhere but Japan'.

London was meant to be a short stopover, but discovering two of his markers intrigued him enough to stay and find the kittycats. Schuldig spent a week playing old, old games with Abyssinian - sliding in and out of sight on the edges of his vision, picking a course delicately through his nightmares.

By the second week however, Schuldig tired of the dreary weather and booked himself a ticket to Paris. Perhaps he would return later, in the summertime. The kittycats weren’t going anywhere. Besides which, they were still more fucked in the head than almost anything he could do to them.

Sway [The High Priestess]
Characters: Nagi/Mamoru
Rating: NC-17
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #45: 'Tarot: The Major Arcana'

“Naoe!”

Nagi slides a hand down damp skin, over the curve of a hip, grips. One last rough shove and then he’s coming; control slipping briefly as waterglasses rattle on the bedside table.

His eyes stay open and he watches as the hardened shell of Takatori Mamoru cracks - then ruptures into shards onto the silk sheets beneath them. Omi looks up at him, gasping, laughing.

Nagi smiles; the warmth in his eyes merely a trick of the light, like moonbeams rippling across dark water.

Schwarz were too arrogant with the Summoning. They failed. He will succeed by more hidden means.

Hidden
Characters: Ken
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #43: 'Secrets & Lies'

"Tell us! Where is it?" Ken's captor twists his arm further up behind his back, weight crushing Ken into the carpet, rough fibres rugburning his face.

Ken desperately wills Aya to return, right now. He’s relying on him for a rescue.

“We’ve played nice so far,” his captor’s accomplice finally speaks, “You wouldn’t want us to get unpleasant, would you?” The accompanying smile is sweet, insincere and chilling.

“Just tell us where it is.”

Ken breathes in deeply. Strengthens his resolve. He doesn’t care what they do. He isn’t telling Yohji and Omi where his stash of Godiva chocolate is.

The little things
Characters: Crawford, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #35: 'Seven Deadly Sins'

Crawford reached for the last petit four, only to have it plucked from between his fingers. Schuldig tossed the little cake into his mouth, chewed twice and then swallowed in an inelegant gulp.

“You snooze, you lose,” he laughed at Crawford.

Crawford raised the hand hovering stupidly over the empty plate, pushed his glasses up his nose, smiled calmly, and decided not to warn Schuldig about parking his beloved red sportscar outside the nightclub later tonight. He was sure the scratches left by the garbage truck wouldn’t be that hard to have repaired.

Greed was good. But revenge was better.

Faultlines I: Phoenix
Characters: Crawford, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #35: 'Seven Deadly Sins'

From the observer's room Crawford had watched the Re-education Team break the telepath; make him beg for a non-existent mercy. He also knew the boy's pride would rise again, phoenix-like from the ashes - bright, passionate, flame-hot.

Esset really were inept fools. Why try to erase something you can make use of?

He looked at the figure crumpled on the floor, trembling with pain and fatigue. Crawford hauled the boy onto his feet, steadied him.

"Stand," Crawford ordered, "Or do you enjoy having those bastards see you on your knees?"

The look he received was part-glare, part-gratitude. It was a start.

Faultlines II: Feral
Characters: Crawford, Farfarello
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #35: 'Seven Deadly Sins'

"Don't mention God. Or religion," had been the doctor's last words.

Useless advice from a short-sighted mind.

Pure rage shone from the inmate's single eye - animalistic, but definitely not mindless. Nonetheless, Crawford held his gun to the boy's head as he unbuckled the straitjacket.

"You have a choice," he told him, "Death, or the opportunity for revenge."

Against whom, he didn't need to say.

The boy looked at the body slumped in the doorway. He smiled.

Crawford quickly scanned the immediate future. 'Farfarello' wouldn't test Crawford for a couple of hours yet. Good. He turned to lead the way out.

Faultlines III: Familiarity
Characters: Crawford, Nagi, Schuldig, Farfarello
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #35: 'Seven Deadly Sins'

From the sidelines the boy had watched the other children, sullenness masking his envy. They ignored him.

"What did you tell us about bringing strays home, Brad?"

Crawford rested a hand on the boy's tense shoulder.

"This is our new team-mate, Naoe Nagi. Nagi - Farfarello and Schuldig."

Farfarello stared coolly at the boy for several seconds before returning to reading; his equivalent of a warm welcome.

"Ooh! We can keep him then?" Schuldig transformed from smirking to bright-eyed interest, no doubt rifling through Nagi's mind.

"Yes, Schuldig."

"So Kind, do you talk? Want some ice-cream?"

Crawford felt Nagi relax a little.

----
Translation: Kind - child

Misery
Characters: Nagi/Tot, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #19: 'Happiness'

Rosenkreuz had been rough, but even their worst torture had nothing on the torments Nagi had suffered today.

Schuldig had always told him that falling in love with Tot would only lead to pain. And how Nagi wished – wished fervently – that he’d heeded the advice Schuldig had given him this morning (even if it’d been in the usual form of sadistic teasing). If he’d listened he wouldn’t be here, trapped in this nightmare.

It wasn’t too late to make at least one resolution however. He didn’t care how radiantly happy it made Tot, he was never attending a Hello Kitty convention again.

Schadenfreude
Characters: Crawford/Schuldig, Mamoru (Omi)
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #19: 'Happiness'

Crawford silently watched the car’s driver. Yes, Schuldig was still sulking. Mostly, Crawford thought, from disgust at himself for having saved Weiß from Giesel. And now they were off to negotiate the clean-up of Esset’s remnants with Takatori Mamoru - aka Bombay of Weiss.

Crawford sighed.

The car slowed just as he recognised the florist’s shop they were passing. And the girl outside… whatshername. . . eyes widened, face blanched in terror, watering-can clattering to the ground. Ah, that’s right - Sakura.

Schuldig waved breezily and accelerated, sudden grin accompanying the warm delight now lapping at Crawford’s shields. Crawford smiled. It was good to see Schuldig happy.

Schadenfreude - roughly, pleasure in the pain or torment of others.

Hinoki
Pairing : Aya/Omi
Notes: written for nemkess for the wk_100 Yuletide drabble exchange. Her request was "Aya/Omi - hidden feelings".

Aya always smells of Japanese cypress and lavender; a marriage of crisp, almost astringent masculinity and sweetly fading gentleness. Even his sheets smell like that at the beginning of the evening.

Omi remembers vividly the first time he entered this bedroom and became conscious of the fragrance as something quintessentially Aya. He now knows that Aya buys the bars of pale-yellow handmade soap from a small family business outside Kyoto, just as his mother had.

Omi often comes to this room nowadays, but never tells Aya the scent of hinoki always reminds him of rejection. Perhaps that's another of his mistakes.

Hidden
Pairing : Aya/Omi
Notes: written for nemkess for the wk_100 Yuletide drabble exchange. Her request was "Aya/Omi - hidden feelings".

It's concealed by the brusque demand for an injury report at the mission's end.

It's explained as the requirement to improve their cover's workskills when the books on Aya's favorite ikebana style arrive.

It's disguised as trust when Aya tells Omi about his sister; her favorite subjects at school, the J-pop bands she liked, the way she'd talk circles around him. How her silence slowly kills him.

It's almost revealed in words not quite spoken in the heat of pleasure. Those ones that start "Ai sh. . . "

Assassins, from necessity, are observant people. Just because it's hidden, doesn't mean it's undiscovered.

At the Dinner Table
Characters: Schuldig
Rated: R for disturbing content
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #12: 'Rewind' //telepathic communication//

He's watching through his fringe; a thin red veil between himself and the hostile silence of the dinner table. Silent but for those voices that never stop, never end:

//hould've married Erich, but I had to… think with your dick, this is what you get… too young to waste my life on a deadbea… whiny nagofawife … nutcaseofason… lousyarschloch… stupidsch//.

He just wants them to shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!

"Sei still!"

It's his voice screaming. Then the world goes blank.

When he opens his eyes again the room is silent once more, and a different shade of red.

----
sei still = shut up

Disguise
Characters: Farfarello/Schuldig
Rating: PG.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #11: 'Costumes and Cross-dressing'

He doesn’t need to wear the vest really. But in his own way, he is just as fastidious as Crawford. If he must wear this disguise, then it will be the perfect disguise; impeccably knotted tie, crisply folded handkerchief, polished shoes. Immaculate.

Schuldig appears behind him, white suit matching.

*Mmmm. Sharp enough to cut someone.*

A purr in his mind, with an accompanying mental wash of humor/arousal/possessiveness. He lets the latter pass unchallenged however, as the telepathic touch almost borders on physicality – the only corporeal pleasure he ever feels. There are other pleasures though.

Time to go play amongst the flock.

Sin
Character: Yohji
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #10: 'Written'

It’s written on your body, on your skin; a stain of ink, indelible. You could carve the flesh away, erase this ‘Sin’; but renouncing the word like that – it don’t make no difference. It’s emblazoned on your heart, branded on your damned black soul. Inscribed there by your own two bloodstained hands.

It’s what you’ve done, it’s who you are and have been and always will be. There’s no glass deep enough to drown its breath, no woman sweet enough to steal its taste. You aren’t ever going to outrun it. Don’t matter how hard you try.

When you gonna learn?

Contrition
Character: ?
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #10: 'Written'

Sister Maria knew they had finally broken the demon when she came to deliver the breakfast gruel, one bitter autumn morning seven months after his arrival. A glance inside the cell was all she needed.

Father Peter had spared no effort, had tried numerous ways to drive the Evil from the boy; sermons, exorcisms, night-long vigils, beatings, fasting…

The latter had left the boy’s body incapable of producing piss or faecal matter, so he had used the only liquid available to him; gnawed on his wrists so he could inscribe his contrition in crimson across the four grey walls:

schuldigschuldigschuldigschuldigschuldig

Nihonshu
Character: Mamoru
Series: Post-Gluhen
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #9: 'Alcohol'

These days the alcohol he drinks costs more per bottle than they’d have spent on beverages in a year, but a year ago.

At parties and other unavoidable ‘social events’, he drinks honkaku shochu - Japanese ‘whiskey’ - on the rocks, served in imported Baccarat crystal, heavy in his hand.

After meetings, the finest junmai daiginjo-shu - light, complex and fragrant - is presented to him in priceless heirloom sake cups; little mouthfuls of craftsmanship and tradition contained within masterpieces of art formed by the hands of long-dead potters.

Only when he’s alone does Mamoru permit himself to miss cheap beer and corner-store tumblers.

Dry comfort
Characters: Schuldig
Series: pre-series
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #9: 'Alcohol'

He’d found the vodka in a locked bottom drawer. Schnapps would have been preferable, but thieves couldn’t be choosers, nicht wahr?

Almost a full bottle, and he had every intention of finishing it off. There was a small chance of alcohol poisoning finishing him off. He couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

He figured he’d get a couple of days in the Tank if – no, when – they found out. But if he was stupid enough to worry about the ‘justified’ punishments, the unjustified ones would break him.

And a couple of days for one evening’s oblivion? Well worth the price.

Depthcharge
Characters: Schwarz
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #9: 'Alcohol'

Nagi waited until the telepath went to the toilets before asking,

“Schuldig doesn’t drink?”

“No,” replied Crawford, but seemed declined to continue. Nagi guessed he shouldn’t pursue it and returned to his dinner.

“A drunk telepath is a bad thing,” Farfarello declared unexpectedly.

Crawford winced. From the words or a memory, Nagi was unsure. But if Farfarello thought a drunk telepath was bad news, he was sure he didn't want to know.

Schuldig was returning to the table. From the thinned lips and cold glitter in his eyes Nagi guessed he’d been ‘listening’ to them. He wished he hadn’t asked.

Kicker
Rated: R
Characters: Schuldig/OFC, Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #9: 'Alcohol'

The girl kneeling before him fumbles with his zip. Schuldig giggles drunkenly but doesn’t help her.

“Pathetic!”

Looking up, the scorn on the face matches the tone.

“Ah, the Rozenkreuz Employee of the Month,” Schuldig sneers casually, “Was wollen Sie, Arschkriecher?”

The girl stands, turning in one quick, eel-like movement,

“Who the fuck are you?”

“The person who’s going to let you walk away from this alive if you leave right now.”

The haze diffuses enough for Schuldig to note the glitter of metal.

“Or maybe not,” Crawford continues as she slumps to the ground, a mindless sack of meat.

Was wollen Sie, Arschkriecher? - what do you want, arsekisser?

Effects
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus Snape, Nagi Naoe
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

Severus Snape held few illusions - about life, people, or himself. He knew just how dark, unfair and unpleasant each could be, and saw little point in pretending to believe otherwise. But it was rare to meet someone else who held the same viewpoint or who wielded it to such effect. He’d told the boy,

“You cannot endanger your housemates like that.”

Nagi’s indifference had been obvious. He was a silent grenade, set off in the Commonroom. Two months into term and Snape’s House had never been so focused or self-supportive. Severus wondered if finally, Slytherin had found a new champion.

Under the Influence
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Buffy Summers, ?
Rating: PG for character death
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

"Just stay still and die, you '80s fashion victim!"

"I don't think so, Miss-Last-Season's-Shoes."

"Last seaso... oooh, you are so dead, Miss-Clairol-666."

"Says she with the mousey-brown roots."

"Roots?!? I'll give you roots - six feet under roots!"

"Like, I'm sooo scared. Not."

"Well how about Mr Pointy here introduces you to the concept of 'scared'. And then the concept of ‘dead’."

"What-ever."

BANG!

Crawford finishes the point Warren tried to make - that Slayers are not bulletproof. Schuldig turns, annoyed at the abrupt ending of his fight, opens his mouth and,

"Not a word!" snaps Crawford, "Not another damn Valleygirl word!"

Co-operation
Fandom: DC Comic's "Hellblazer"
Characters: John Constantine, Schwarz
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

Demons come in many forms; the hideous, the sublime, the odd. They rarely come in groups however, except during wartime. Demons are solitary creatures, wired for domination, not co-operation. That innate flaw makes the Hosts of Heaven’s job so very much easier.

John is unconcerned when the first demon steps from the shadows; flame-bright, and proud as Lucifer.

The second demon reminds him of Satanas - the same powerful darkness reeking from his aura.

The third, one-eyed, demon has slunk from the seventh level? eighth level? and John begins to fear.

He barely has time to register the child-like form of the fourth demon.

Loki
Fandom: The Dark is Rising
Characters: Bran, ?
Rating: R
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

Once upon a time there were lofty mist-clad mountains and deep green valleys laced with dreams of magic and high adventure and friendship and love.

Economic slumps, disease and government indifference had stolen the mountains and the valleys. Time and entropy had dissolved the dreams; friendship now found only in a glass and a quick anonymous fuck in the toilets.

Bright green slid into the seat next to him. He looked, and his world shivered at the sight of almost-familiar flame-colored hair and bright, cruel eyes. The smile was wickedly encouraging.

“Hi, I’m Bran.”

“You can call me Schuldig. This time.”

First Meeting
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura
Characters: Sakura, Nagi, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

Card safely captured, Sakura slumped to her knees in relief. It had been much too close for comfort! But she hadn’t released the Wind Card, so where had that blast of…

“Are you all right?” asked a quietly concerned voice. She looked up into a youth’s soft brown eyes. His gaze was so intense, so intent upon her. Sakura blushed.

“Mein Gott!”

Behind the youth a redhaired gajin stood, looking her up and down, grinning with amusement. Sakura remembered the costume Tomoyo had dressed her in this time and reddened further.

“Well,” he continued, “At least her hair is normal.”

Aspects
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura
Characters: Touya, Yuki/Yue, Farfarello
Rated: R
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

Touya almost likes Sakura’s new boyfriend. Nagi’s quiet, polite, and looks after the little kaijuu very effectively. His ‘family’ is another matter.

The American is usually bearable, if annoyingly condescending. The German has invited violence several times however. Especially when he keeps touching Yuki. But the Irishman…

He still doesn’t understand. Perhaps it’s the hair? He’d thought it was bleached before discovering the lunacy had left its outward mark also.

Light slivers palely down long tresses into silver eyes and a delicate smile. Behind him, Farfarello grunts, nuzzles the back of his neck. Touya shifts restlessly between the waxing and waning moons.

Charmless
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus Snape, Brad Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

The two dark-haired men strode down the corridors, black robes flapping, children scattering like frightened sparrows before a pair of hawks. As they descended the dungeon steps, one spoke,

"Really, Crawford, I just don’t understand what you see in that… cretin."

"He has his... hmmm... good points, Severus."

“Well those ‘good points’ were banging the bed against the wall and didn't let me get any sleep last night.” His companion commented sourly, then continued, "Have you never heard of a silencing charm?"

Crawford grimaced.

"If those worked on Schuldig I’d have been using one permanently for the last several years."

Choosing
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Sorting Hat, ?
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

The red table discussed him in loud voices, full of boisterous bravado. His gaze passed over the yellow-clad students’ friendly smiles with barely a pause. The blue table assessed and dissected him behind poised intellectual facades. The green table eyed him with suspicion and cold appraisal.

//Hmm, what a smart boy! I believe Ravencl… //

//No.//

//Really, m’boy I do know wh… //

//And I know how to separate your molecular structure.//

//Hmmf! Well, if you’re going to blackmail me, it will have to be… //

“SLYTHERIN!”

Nagi stood up, unsmiling, removed the Sorting Hat and walked towards his new housemates.

The New DADA Professor
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Dennis Creevy, Natalie MacIntosh, ?
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #8: 'Crossovers'

The students gathered outside the DADA classroom fidgeted and whispered to each other in quiet, scared voices.

“C’mon, he can’t be that bad!” muttered Dennis to Natalie, who just shook her head and murmured back,

“You heard what he did to Malfoy! Not that he didn’t deserv… “

The door was suddenly flung wide. Tall, long-haired and even more flamboyant than Lockhart, thought Dennis.

“Ah! My next set of victims, er, students! Come in, kinder.”

And the accompanying smile was that of a psychotic kneazle.

“Just remember,” Natalie continued, “Whatever you do, don’t ask if he’s related to the Weasleys.”

Orchids
Characters: Aya-chan
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #6: 'Crime & Punishment'.

Aya’s speciality is growing orchids. They’re difficult plants to propagate, requiring patience and fastidiousness, but she enjoys cultivating their misleading beauty. In the wild most orchids only flourish in the moist shade, living, leechlike, on the bark of fallen trees rather than in the honest soil; sucking nutrients from the air and decayed vegetation and bird-droppings. Grown in perlite and peat, domesticated orchids present a much more acceptable façade.

Aya wants her brother to come home. She wants his past as unknown as hers. She tries to disregard the dreams that seep up like air bubbles through dark stagnant waters.

White
Characters: Schuldig, Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #6: 'Crime & Punishment'.

When he closes his eyes the world reverts to white; white walls, white pain, white static in his head.

Opening his eyes he can see in the mirror; white face, white suit, white empty smile. And behind his eyes a thousand atrocities forever locked in a little white room.

“The limousine is here,” Crawford appears beside him, expression of faint disapproval as he lightly brushes the small bruise on Schuldig’s cheekbone - the only outward damage the Re-education Team have left, “Are you ready?”

Schuldig nods. Tonight he’ll play puppet on their strings, because tomorrow…

Tomorrow they’ll paint the world black.

Closed
Characters: Aya-chan, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #6: 'Crime & Punishment'.

“Well, hel-lo Fujimiya Aya.”

The girl on the hospital bed didn’t reply.

Schuldig noted there was little resemblance between the Fujimiya siblings except for something around the eyes. He briefly considered having the doctors ask Abyssinian for Aya’s biological father.

He opened the door to her mind and found Aya walking through a nighttime festival-market; music, fireworks and crowds, loud and bright. It would be barely a moment’s work to take her hand, lead her back through the gateway into the waking world.

But it would be such a crime to put an end to all Abyssinian’s sweet, sweet pain.

Point of view
Characters: OMC, Nagi, Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #6: 'Crime & Punishment'.

Judging from the boy’s expression he didn’t want to be here. The bruised cheekbone backed that impression up.

“Hey, are you OK?” Hiroshi cast a dubious look at the boy’s scowling gaijin companion, “This isn’t a great neighbourhood for schoolkids this time of night. How about I escort you home?”

The boy laughed, a bitter humourlessness to the sound; then there was a cracking noise he didn’t recognise.

“Was that really necessary?” Crawford asked in irritated tones as Nagi floated the body into a nearby dumpster.

Nagi gave him a look back, expression coolly judgmental,

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

Reprise
Characters: OMC, OMC, Farfarello
Rating: R for ickiness. Not for the squeamish.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #5: 'Mistaken Identity'.

Okashita returned, skin an unattractive shade of sallow. His eyes flitted over the room but there was nowhere safe for them to alight. He fixed them on his partner.

“Why?” he asked.

Akagawa merely shook his head. Surprise at human brutality had long since been burnt from him.

“Perhaps they mistook him for someone else?” Okashita continued, “The local Yakuza boss lives on this street.”

“No,” Akagawa replied, “This is identical to the killing of that priest in Mitaka District. Come. We’ll wait for Forensics outside.”

He left, ignoring Okashita’s flinch as his boots squelched on something wet and spongy.

Collateral Damage
Characters: OMC, Nagi
Rating: PG for grumpiness violence.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #5: 'Mistaken Identity'.

It was only after the bullets ceased flying and the world finished falling that Shinji’s body registered he’d been shot. His world suddenly contracted down to the blossom of white pain, the scent of iron and the liquid slide of life spilling from between his hands.

Voices, feet, passed by him. Shinji reached out, managed to weakly snag a trouser-leg. He looked up into the serious face of a schoolboy.

“Help me, help me, please,” Shinji begged, “I’ve been shot.”

The youth stared down, dark eyes cold and uncaring.

“I believe you’ve mistaken me for someone who gives a damn.”

Unforgiveable
Characters: Yohji/Aya, Schuldig
Rating: R for heavily implied sex.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #5: 'Mistaken Identity'.

"AYA!" Yohji pounded on the door, "Let me in, dammit! What did I do?"

A laugh spun him around, torn between pulling his wire and shielding his nakedness.

"Don’t waste your breath,” Schuldig smirked, “It'll be a cold day in hell before he lets you in again."

"What did you do?" Yohji hissed.

"Oh, but that's the delicious irony of it all - for once I didn't actually do a thing," Schuldig was almost glowing with glee, “Let's just say at the moment of extremis you did call out a girl's name starting with 'A' and ending with 'A' - but it wasn't 'Aya'.”

----
Note: For those who’ve forgotten/don't know, Aya is a girl's name despite being used by one of WK's main heroes, and Yohji’s lost love’s name is Asuka.

Eritrea
Characters: Crawford/Schuldig
Rating: PG-13 for inference.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #4: 'Chromatic'.

“I’m ready.”

Crawford takes in the green jacket, red shirt, turquoise slacks and yellow bandana. His lips thin.

“No,” he says.

“What?” The puzzlement’s genuine.

“Did Rosenkreuz neglect to register the fact you were colour-blind? I am not going out with you dressed like the Eritrean flag.”

Schuldig’s eyes narrow.

“Then damnwell go by yourself! I’m not taking anything off.”

He stalks angrily from the room. Crawford watches him go until diverted by a different Sight.

“Well,” he smiles, getting up, “I guess I’ll just have to take it off for you.”

Later a sleepy voice murmurs, “Just where the hell is Eritrea anyway?”

In the dark
Characters: Omi, Yohji, Schuldig
Rating: R for character deaths and implied nastiness.
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #4: 'Chromatic'.

One shot puts an end to the faint whimpers. The boy’s chained body slumps to the warehouse floor in a manner that can’t be mistaken. Yohji screams behind his gag; rage, horror and tears flooding his eyes. Schuldig closes his own in near-ecstasy. The mental agony Kudo emits is exquisite. He rides it out until despair erodes into resignation. The flash of white teeth is the last image moonlight affords Yohji.

Schuldig considers the sprawled corpses; skin, hair and eyes drained to monochrome by death and night. He smirks. It seems that all cats are indeed grey in the dark.

Veiled
Characters: Farfarello, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

Second star to the right, straight on till

Mourning doves along the telegraph wire drop feathers of

Grey pavements that wind through a maze of

Shadow on the

Wallflowers bloom

Red fluidity, tasting of fear, tasting of

Iron purified and tempered by

Fire is the Devil’s only

Friend or enemy? Turn the other cheek to his Judas

Kiss of rain upon the village

Green door, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact

Centre.

Quiet, dark, warm.

Safe.

“Forget it, Brad,” Schuldig’s tone is flat, no compromising, “Nobody’s home. And there’s no way I’m following him in there.”

Lost
Character: Aya
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

Breakfast is fruit salad and miso soup today. The latter has your favourite spring-onion in it and you give Mother a bright smile. She drops a kiss on your head as she passes.

Aya looks guilty and a quick glance at the fruit-salad tells you why.

“You stole all the cherries again, didn’t you, Aya-chan?”

She shakes her head, innocently wide-eyed. You mock-frown at her. She giggles and says…

CRASH!

You start awake, disoriented in the darkness before reality registers in the slurred murmur of Yohji’s voice, the giggle of his lay-of-the-night. You want to cry. You want to kill someone.

Bereft
Character: Yohji
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

This girl, it’s her hair. Something about the swing of it, the gold shimmering in it.

The one last week, she’d used the same perfume. A subtle, jasmine-based fragrance that teased his senses, clutched at his heart.

The girl before her, it had been her stride – jaunty, self-assured, happy.

He knows he’ll cry out the wrong name at the wrong time. He knows that in the morning he’ll wake up alone. He knows how bereft he’ll feel. He knows it’s a vicious cycle that doesn’t help him heal. He damnwell knows all this.

But at the moment, Yohji just doesn’t care.

Nesting
Characters: Ken, Yohji, Omi
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

“Ken! You can’t be serious!?!” Yohji declares as he enters the lounge.

“Serious? About what?” Omi, following him, asks. Yohji waves at two large beanbags of a shade seldom seen outside the ’70s.

“Ken’s nesting again,” he replies “In incredibly bad taste, too.”

“They’re really comfortable,” Ken asserts, “We used to have a couple in the lounge when I was growing up. You don’t like them?”

The onset of hurt is displayed in large brown eyes. Omi glances between the two as Yohji drops onto the free beanbag, wriggles about.

“Yeah, OK, they’re comfortable. They can stay.”

Ken grins triumphantly.

Melting
Characters: Omi, Nagi, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

A distinctive laugh sends fear-bred adrenaline jolting through Omi. Across the park he spots a gaijin mussing his companion’s hair.

“Don’t do that!”

“Sorry, chibi,” the gaijin sounds anything but, “How about I buy you an ice-cream, then we go home?”

The boy shrugs, then demands,

“A double cone.”

Their voices fade away, arguing about flavours.

Omi tries to think through the shock of seeing his mortal enemies as people; people who are friends, with likes and dislikes and a home. Shock, and something like envy.

*Run along, Kätzchen. You’re lucky you caught me in no mood to play today.*

Normal
Characters: Nagi, Crawford, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

Today has been so overwhelming in some ways (and irritating in others) that it’s surreal how normal everything is when he enters the kitchen. Crawford stares over the top of the evening paper, enquires,

“I hope you did nothing to draw attention to yourself?”

As if he wouldn’t already know. Tch.

There’s a mocking laugh behind him.

“The kid’s at least two years younger than his new classmates - how can he help but draw attention?”

*Soooo,* Schuldig then purrs into his mind, *Meet any cute girls? Or cute boys? Wanna introduce me?*

“Pervert!” Nagi snaps.

Yes, he’s home all right.

Gone
Character: Crawford
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

His genetic family had long since discarded him, and he them. Domiciles have been relegated to unimportance for years now. People; trainers, lovers, enemies, team-mates, move in and out of his world evoking black and white and shades of grey, but are never allowed to become more than ephemeral connections.

He thought he had long since rid himself of the weakness that most people had, thought he had replaced it with ambition, with the determination and desire for freedom.

Which made it all the more surprising when he realised a certain shade of flame-red had become his touchstone in life.

Underneath
Characters: Schuldig/Crawford
Rating: PG
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

Everybody wants something. But most of the time they don’t realise what that something is.

Their subconsciousnesses are like a diary they don’t realise they’ve written; regrets, desires, longings; painfully scribed in lemon-ink, visible only under the flame of self-examination or telepathy.

Only the latter ever gets used.

Shall I tell you a secret?

They all want to go home.

Shall I tell you another secret? You won’t believe this one either.

Most of them refuse to recognise it when they’re there.

And late at night, when I’m curled up around one pompous, control-freak seer, I laugh at their despair.

Fairytale
Character: Omi
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #3: 'Home'

Once upon a time a little prince was stolen away by evil men and a spell cast to make him forget his identity. Forsaken by his uncaring family, a good duke rescued him. After years serving as the duke’s champion, the spell broke. The prince remembered, and with his friends, executed his family, who were renowned for their evil deeds. Shortly thereafter the good duke died and the prince’s friends left. Alone and bitter, he became duke and ruled until his death.

And the moral of this story is that people abandon you and power is the only worthwhile constant.

Not quite tamed
Character: Nagi
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #2: 'Weapon of Choice'. Post-Glühen

"Nagi-san, I only left for five minutes! it was dinnerti… "

Mikibo’s excuse petered out at a look from the head of security. Silence permeated the room. A slight rattling noise got louder and louder, until every item in the room was visibly shaking. Mikibo blanched, eyes wide and terrified.

"If this happens again," Nagi said icily, "You will regret it. Now get out of my sight."

Mikibo bowed and fled wordlessly. Nagi smiled. Omi had made him promise he’d never use his power on Kritiker personnel, but he’d found the belief that he would was almost as effective a weapon.

Fallen
Character: Aya
Rating: R for disturbing content
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #1: 'First Times'.

Of all his choices, it is one of the few he doesn’t regret. This weapon, this time.

The blade is a slender curve of shining malice, exquisitely balanced, sharpened by guilt and whetted by rage; a hunger waiting.

Its steel sings to him of centuries fallen like palest sakura blossom at the death of spring; past eras redolent with honour, pride and nobility. Fallen to the dirt; used, spent.

Summer ends, the flowers that came before are long forgotten. The fruit is ripe and sweet upon the tree.

Aya reverses the katana’s hilt in his hands and closes his eyes.

What you get for ignoring your team at dinner too often
Characters: Crawford, Nagi, Schuldig
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #1: 'First Times'.

Concentrating on his report, Crawford absently took a mouthful of his dinner and chewed. He froze, eyes widening. He was about to spit the food out when he noticed his team’s attention was fixed on him.

“Don’t you like it, Crawford-san?” Nagi asked timidly, “It’s the first time I’ve cooked Western food.”

He looked as if the slightest rebuff would make him burst into tears. Crawford swallowed.

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said and scooped up another forkful, chewing it almost gingerly.

*Don’t lay it on too thick, kid.*

Nagi shot Schuldig a slyly amused glance from under his fringe.

Intolerance
Characters: Schuldig, Crawford, Nagi
Notes: wk_100 Challenge #1: 'First Times'.

Brad was pissed.

Usually Schuldig found this entertaining - nine out of ten times he provoked Crawford deliberately. This however, was unfortunately one of those ten percent times it was accidentally.

“I was being friendly! You told me to get to know the little Dummkopf!”

“So you thought you’d poison him as a gesture of team spirit?”

“I didn’t think tha…”

“You didn’t think, full stop! He’s Japanese. His physiology isn’t designed for that sort of thing. Damn.”

Crawford turned at the sounds of Nagi throwing up again. Schuldig pouted.

“How was I to know he’d never eaten ice cream before?”