Schwarz Fic: Part 2

[twopoint]

Title: Vorovskoy Zakon
Author: two-point
Pairing: Crawford/Schuldig
Rating: R
Word Count: 8,717 (God, Schuldig’s long-winded)
Summary: Schuldig’s misplaced Crawford, in February, in Moscow. Pre-series fun including iconography, acquisitions, frozen rivers, exposure therapy and German composers. Memento meets Eastern Promises without the Turkish bath scene (might add that later). And I thought this would be a drabble. Silly me.
Disclaimer: Not mine, made no money, but I did have to pay a substantial bribe to Schwarz.
Comments: Beta duty by Vedith. Poor dear, what a deadline. I’d hug you, if you didn’t mind the touching. Can I give you a sarcastic kiss instead?

 Part 1

Vorovskoy Zakon: Part 2

Bach played in Unger’s office and Bach played in a concert hall in Moscow. The variable was missing.

Schuldig crawled into Goltsblat’s mind. A childhood memory this time; a small boat that might sink any moment, and a grey haired man with a cap by the engine. Young Goltsblat and his father secured the boat to an overgrown embankment and walked into a forest, trees heavy from rain. Goltsblat trailed his fingers across bark, wandered deeper into the woods, and thought of one day living in a city. He heard something behind him and turned to find an ancient woman, head wrapped in a scarf and a shawl hanging in tatters. Her eyes were amber like light reflected through a glass. She held her hand out for Goltsblat to take it.

 And there, another moment for Schuldig’s collection, a decision that changed everything; Goltsblat ran, as fast as his feet could carry him, back to the boat.

Schuldig looked at Goltsblat from the corner of his eye. He studied the day-old, grey, beard and eyes, lost in the music. A face that had seen the future offered by a gnarled hand and fled to decide his own fate. If Schuldig were free to choose a master, he wished for one with memories of mushroom picking in a haunted forest. He wished for one with memories.

Goltsblat noticed Schuldig peering at him, and he smiled crookedly, knowingly.

Schuldig hated concerts because they kept him from speaking. He decided to get Goltsblat well and truly drunk afterward so the man might stop thinking esoterically and offer up a useful clue as to where Crawford had ran off to.

Schuldig stared at his watch and shifted in his seat. Schuldig hated concerts because he never knew when they would be finished and there were too many minds drifting in a seasick haze around him. The air was too thick, too hot. He’d do anything to be roaming the frigid streets.

 After an intermidable period of staring at the organ, Schuldig noticed something that started as a low, familiar buzz beneath the cello’s moan, so quiet that Schuldig would have missed it if he weren’t imprisoned in Bach hell. That, and he happened to be thinking, again, of Crawford’s breath on his hand.

So, the oracle lived. Schuldig closed his eyes to figure out where.  He pressed as close as he could against Crawford’s thoughts, like curling against warm skin: let me in, let me in.

The one time in Unger’s office was the last time Schuldig had access to Crawford’s head. He’d spent the past two years trying to pry the deadbolt. Bank vaults had nothing on Crawford; Schuldig had actually battled one of those and won. 

Schuldig curled his fingers around the edge of the arm rests. There had to be a different way. He’d always relied on force. Pressure didn’t work with Crawford – like a Chinese finger trap, force only worsened the restriction.

 Schuldig cleared his mind and tried again.

He approached the background noise of Crawford’s thoughts as he would trail a target, slowly, quietly, with easy deliberation. When Schuldig was close enough that he could feel Crawford, real as breath, though he couldn’t see him, Schuldig did something he had honestly never done in his life. He asked permission. If it’s not an inconvenience , I would like, if you want . . .there.

The acquiescence was not absolute, but a limited consent that allowed Schuldig to see through Crawford’s distorted vision.

And he saw – a tongue nailed to a table. Having a passing interest in the subject, he quickly discerned that it was not Crawford’s.   The realization filled him with equal parts regret and relief.  The tongue was attached to a head that was attached to a body, or what was left of it, slumped against the table.

 Schuldig’s second impression, once the initial delight of being in Crawford’s head subsided, was that it didn’t take a genius to know that a telepath was a handy tool to have around once a victim’s speech was incapacitated. Schuldig hoped his displeasure and disbelief were evident.

A flash of white. The one eyed freak was in the room with Crawford. And Schuldig was at a fucking concert.

Crawford did the mental equivalent of grasping Schuldig’s elbow, pulling him to the side.

And before Schuldig could say, I’m sorry, or What the hell are you doing without me, or I trust you, Crawford slammed him with desire. And this time, with Bach in the background, it was not merely the desire to live.

If it was meant to be a distraction, Crawford’s method worked. Schuldig tried to open his eyes, to ground himself in the crowded blankness of the concert hall, with little success. The desire had weight, heavy and dangerous like liquid metal.

He watched through Crawford’s eyes, felt through Crawford’s hands, and he wanted, as Crawford reached for the gun at the small of his back, to taste the graphite on Crawford’s fingers.

Schuldig felt the recoil and the vault slammed shut.


 

The bow drew the last note out as Schuldig opened his eyes. His ears rang from the hollow, cello silence in the concert hall – and from gunfire. 

Goltsblat did not turn to him, but he spoke beneath the applause, “I would like your opinion. Would you dine with me?”

Schuldig had a habit of agreeing to anything when his attention was elsewhere, like a prisoner who would fix his signature to any falsehood in order to be moved to a quieter cell. The trait was uncannily dangerous in his profession, but serendipity often worked in Schuldig’s favor.

“Of course,” Schuldig said, though he couldn’t stop reeling over the accomplishment of getting into Crawford’s mind. But he was still no closer to solving the mystery of Crawford’s location. The probability of finding the room with the table, one of thousands in the city, would break Baye’s theorem. 

“My driver is busy but the restaurant is just around the corner. Do you mind walking?”

“That’s fine. . .” Schuldig said, absently. And Crawford never worked alone. They had no orders, none that Schuldig had seen, to gather information. Schuldig was the primary point of contact between the organizations and their unit. Always. Did Crawford arrange a bogus scenario in order to test the new – what was Schuldig supposed to call him – employee? Subcontractor? Did Farfarello know that his contract would be signed in indelible ink?

Schuldig followed Golstblat’s crooked, yet elegant, shoulders across the lobby. 

“Where’s my tip?” the coat check guy said as he handed Schuldig’s over.

“You have your tip through my favor, thief.” He forgot to add that the hundred the guy took from Schuldig’s pocket was counterfeit. Every street vendor had a counterfeit detector, most wouldn’t take a folded dollar.

It was still cold outside.

“You’re German?” Goltsblat asked.

“Mostly.”

Goltsblat’s least important facts were kept in the forefront of his thoughts, like a properly unusable sitting room filled with objects and antiques. 

Schuldig quickly became grounded in the cold air. He checked his cell phone. No call.

“I grew up in Sosensky. My father fished the river and my mother, mostly, painted. What of yours?”

“My father traded commodities and my mother, mostly, drank.” The admittance wasn’t wholly false.

Goltsblat appeared to walk without an escort but Schuldig sensed half a dozen eyes trained in their direction and a car followed them at a casual distance, as if searching for a place to park.
 

“Here we are,” Goltsblat said.

The interior was too hot, too close. Schuldig was sick to death of extremes. He found himself wishing for a position in a geographical grey area, somewhere that saw snow rarely enough to value it.

The restaurant was endlessly long and narrow; the floor carpeted in arterial red. Candles burned in the center of the numerous, empty tables, throwing dragon-tails of shadows against the luminous polish of the dark wood-paneled walls.

Schuldig followed Goltsblat to a table in the very rear of the never-ending room. His hand absently brushed the wall as he sat and he was puzzled to feel heat radiating from it, as if he touched the side of a stove. He sat and used the cover provided by the edge of the table cloth to check his cell phone. 

Curiosity satisfied, somewhat, at least he knew that Crawford still breathed, the situation only reinforced Schuldig’s belief that Crawford was one of those irritating people who kept laughing when everyone else had stopped. The most satisfying food grew stale with overuse, and it was possible to analyze something so deeply that it lost its beauty.

Goltsblat greeted the restaurant staff as he would welcome long absent children. The thick, hot walls muted the sounds of the city, so much so that Schuldig suddenly had the novel impression that his life up to that moment was made of someone else’s memories and choices. He tried the false present tense on for size and found that with a few adjustments the fit was comfortable and well-made.

Goltsblat thought about the food that he would order; he also thought about wine and looked forward to the first taste because he felt that wine’s flavor carried the ghosts of the soil where the grapes were grown. The vor moved through his life with his desires and tastes enclosing him, as if those things were the fiber filling the walls of a soundproof room. Schuldig would like to steal that trait, if he could.

“I’ve arranged the real estate,” Goltsblat said.

“Within hours, I’m impressed,” Schuldig held the cell phone, set to vibrate, in his hand beneath the table.

“Anything is possible when the structure is well managed.”

“So I’ve been told,” at some point, Schuldig figured, he should stop fucking around and do his job. Whatever Crawford’s plan, there was slim hope that it entailed Schuldig making small talk like a girl for hire. “As you know our employers are willing to pay whatever is required to see that their newly acquired Russian assets are secured.”

“The mines.”

“The mines. It would be unfortunate if the corporations with nearby mining interests made a habit of snooping around to satisfy their curiosity. We have no plans to revitalize the local diamond industry, or to search for new deposits, just yet. If you could spread the word that the mines are now closed . . .”

“Somehow I don’t see the mines being closed to save the land from further damage.”

“You never know; we value historic preservation.”

They silently watched the wine being poured.

“So you plan to sit back and wait for the highest bidder?” Goltsblat asked.

“The mine is no longer on the market – you will let that be known. As I said, it would be unfortunate if a newly graduated MBA were sent out to satisfy his company’s curiosity.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Or anyone, for that matter.”

“What does your organization plan to do with the mine?”

“I have no reason to know.”

“What is your position within the organization?”

Schuldig could meet the question with affront, or satisfy Goltsblat’s curiosity. From what he was giving off, Goltsblat had no interest at all in the structure of Eszett. “I gather information.”

“This and that?”

“Yes. And other things.” Actually, Schuldig just did what he was told to do, which one time found him waiting for a package, in a hotel lobby, for six hours. But he was deeply fond of hotel lobbies, so the job wasn’t too bad.

They drank and Schuldig watched Goltsblat eat a large amount for a very long time. They spoke around the organization. Goltsblat revealed several lucrative opportunities of the import/export type. Schuldig took messy mental notes and waited for his cell phone to vibrate, he’d finally just rested it on his leg beneath the table.

Another bottle of wine was opened. Schuldig learned more than he ever wanted to know about the history of icon making. The wine allowed him to feign interest.

No distant hum in his head, no call on the cell phone. Another bottle of wine was opened.

Goltsblat’s tattoos were twisting icons creeping past the starched, southern boundary of his cuff. The tattoos fascinated Schuldig more than the old man’s mind. On the vor’s pinky, a rare alexandrite ring changed colors as it passed near the bright candle in the center of the table. The wax pooled red on the white tablecloth, red like the floor.

“You’re waiting for your associate?”

“Russia is very large,” Schuldig said, and smiled. He pictured the country as a vast maze of apartments and rooms and blood splattered tables; alleys banked with grey snow.

“You keep checking your phone,” Goltsblat added in explanation, lest anyone mistake him for a mind reader.

“I’ve misplaced him. He’ll show up again, probably somewhere I’ve already looked.” Schuldig liked Goltsblat, genuinely, the way he admired hotel lobbies. Things passed purposely through Goltsblat, no need to linger.

“I think your organization could benefit from the current political and economic situation in my country. Would you consider staying on, as a liason? I’ll double whatever you’re currently receiving.”

Schuldig had never been offered a job before. He saw no harm in playing with the details, “What else?”

“Car, apartment, summer house, and I wouldn’t lose you, unless you needed to be lost.”

Schuldig laughed, “Unfortunately, I’m not the one who is misplaced.”

“Are you certain?”

Presumptiveness pissed Schuldig off. Knowledge based presumption was another thing entirely, and Schuldig excelled at it. “When you were young, you went mushroom picking with your father and you encountered an old woman in the woods. Who was she?”

Goltsblat’s bloodshot eyes widened, “I imagined that woman. She was nobody.”

“Even if you imaged her, she was someone. Who was she?”

“A ghost.”

“What did the ghost offer you?”

“How did you . . .”

“That’s what I do,” Schuldig shrugged. “Answer me, I need to know.”

“She frightened me. She offered her hand to me. I’ll never know what her intention was.”

“But you admit that she knew something that you didn’t. And that something frightened you.”

Goltsblat stared at the candle. When he finally spoke, the words were carefully chosen, “I ran because it felt safer to choose my own fate than to have it handed to me.”

“Would you make the same choice today?”

Goltsblat nodded and twisted the ring around his finger, “I would.”

The cell phone hadn’t buzzed, but Schuldig moved to gather his coat. Goltsblat watched, but his mind was in the woods.

“You’ll have my answer tomorrow,” Schuldig said and looked at his watch. “Later today, I should say.” 

He was halfway to the door at the end of the endless room when Goltsblat pushed away from the table and called out for him to stop. Schuldig turned and waited.

“Take this,” he pressed the alexandrite into Schuldig’s palm.   “It’s worth more than the mines.”

“Why?” Moments like these were the reason why some knowledge of the future, whatever scraps Crawford could spare, would make Schuldig seem less foolish.

“I never gamble without being able to cover my losses.”

Schuldig stared at the ring, slipped it loosely onto his index finger, and left.

The street was still cold, even more so after the furnace walls and wine. Schuldig decided to walk. 

He’d wandered in blissful silence for a while until he felt someone creeping up behind him. Schuldig slowed so the stranger could catch up.

The mind was desperate and starving, and the voice, when it spoke in Russian, was cracked.

“Give me your shoes.”

Schuldig spun around, “What did you say?”

“I said, give me your shoes,” the thief held an ancient, small gun; the slide permanently jammed.

Schuldig stared at the man’s dirty nails, and a brand new type of anger spread through him. “Wait a minute. The Cartier watch, the Trussardi coat, the Armani sunglasses,” he took these off his head and threw them at the guy. “Not to mention the ring that could buy a small country. And you want Crawford’s fucking shoes?”

The man froze and trembled as Schuldig pulled a better functioning firearm from his coat. “If it weren’t cold as shit, I’d give you the shoes.” He pressed the warm metal to the man’s head and swam in his thoughts for a while before pulling the trigger. Blood on snow never ceased to fascinate him.

Another moment for Schuldig’s collection. He crushed the sunglasses into the warm sludge.

Later, Schuldig stood in the street beside the Royal Meridian and stared up at the dark windows of the suite. 

In the lobby, he stopped by the front desk.

“I forgot my key,” he’d left it on the side table when he bent down to take off his boots earlier.

The night porter handed him a replacement.

He quietly opened the door to the suite and marked his progress inward with a trail of whatever was most convenient, like bread crumbs to lead him out of the forest. He left the shoes at the door, his coat beside the mantel, his belt beside the significant mirror, his shirt on the knob of the door leading to Crawford’s room, his holster on the floor beside the bed.

He placed his watch and cell phone on the night stand and slipped under the heavy covers. The sun rose late in the city, still some hours of night remaining. He pressed his knees to the back of Crawford’s knees; he pressed his mouth to the back of Crawford’s neck. Crawford smelled clean, like soap. 

“You’ve been drinking.”

“I have,” his voice was muffled against Crawford’s skin.

“You’re freezing.”

“I walked.”

“To clear your mind?”

“To ruin your shoes.”

Neither said anything for a while; Schuldig focused considerable energy toward getting warm.  Crawford trapped their fingers together and pressed his mouth to Schuldig’s palm.

“Good, you found the ring.”

Schuldig opened his eyes, “I didn’t know it was lost.”

He tried to take his hand back but Crawford turned to face him. They stared at each other in the misguided belief that one might give in. Crawford cheated.

Crawford tasted like toothpaste. Schuldig tasted like wine. They were destined to never mix well. Except for (Schuldig became pliant) the moment he (hooked his leg over Crawford’s hip) felt Crawford (and pulled him closer) come apart in his hands. Telepathy had nothing to do with it.

Nor was Schuldig immune. He spoke into Crawford’s mouth, “I forget, occasionally, what this is like.”

Sometime later he lay staring at the grey sky outside the window, his head hanging off the bed. “Why did you leave me?”

“I needed to do some things without you,” Crawford twisted the ring around Schuldig’s finger.

“Why? Did you see me leaving?”

“You won’t leave me.”

“I might,” Schuldig sat up on his elbows to better see Crawford slouched against the headboard. “You said yourself, one action changes everything.”

“It’s good to know you remember something, of course it’s always the thing that is most useful to you in the moment.”

“Goltsblat offered me a job.”

“He values your. . .” Crawford trailed off.

“Mind. He values my mind.”

“Of course,” Crawford bit his lip to keep from laughing.

Schuldig crawled over to him and tapped a finger rhythmically against Crawford’s forehead, “I’m an opportunist. Let me in.”

The early morning shadows were deceiving, but Crawford might have looked at him fondly. 

Schuldig laughed, “Please?”

“What do you want to see?” He pressed his thumb to Schuldig’s mouth. Schuldig bit it absently, thinking.

“Something useful.  Something other than the various ways I can die. Something that I need to know,” he pressed his cheek into Crawford’s hand and waited. He was no longer cold.

Crawford looked at him and through him. After what seemed like forever, he pulled Schuldig closer and agreed with a kiss.

Schuldig’s approach depended on the situation. He could, if he wished, trespass without a sound; he could rummage quickly and leave the drawers overturned, or he could break down the door and start shooting. The latter two were not comfortable experiences for the victim.

Crawford’s kisses were often as sharp as his words, sarcastic and mocking – but not then. Schuldig straddled him and caught Crawford’s face between his hands as if he could physically keep him from changing his mind.

Befuddled by permission, Schuldig couldn’t decide the best way to approach. If it were pleasant enough, he might be invited back. So he entered the way their mouths met, slow and pliant and absolutely present. Crawford’s breath caught.

What Schuldig found in the orderly maze of Crawford’s thoughts were all the things he’d misplaced since they met. Schuldig saw himself recently arrived and lost in a hallway at Rosenkreuz. He saw himself arguing with Unger. He saw a knife slice bleeding down his cheek. He saw himself walking down a street. He saw his hands.  The thoughts were carefully collected memories, not visions. And they were fresh, like familiar photographs.

He saw himself, looking left and right for Crawford, beside the Yauza River. He saw himself sitting, freezing, on the bench. He saw himself standing, staring at the elevator, in the hotel lobby. He saw himself walking into the Conservatory. 

Schuldig drew back far enough to stare evenly at Crawford, “How long did you watch me?”

“Farfarello picked me up where he dropped you off.”

Schuldig tried to move away but Crawford grasped the back of his neck and drew their mouths back together. He pulled back far enough to say, “I’ve always liked watching you,” before showing Schuldig the preferred recollections that he’d saved for last.

Much later, Schuldig half-slept against Crawford’s thigh.

“I need you to do something tomorrow,” Crawford said.

“It is tomorrow.”

“Later today then. You need to kill Goltsblat.”

Schuldig sat up and stared at him.

Crawford didn’t wait for a question, “If you don’t do it, you’ll die.”

“There’s only so many times you can use that line, Crawford.”

“If you don’t do it, I’ll kill you myself.”

Schuldig frowned, opened his mouth to tell Crawford that he’d decided to make his own fate rather than have it handed to him. But then he realized that the request told him more about Crawford’s intentions than the catalog of memories he’d been handed. Schuldig could be satisfied with missing pieces.

Instead he said, “I want to be free to do as I please.”

“Good,” Crawford said as he pulled Schuldig down beside him, “because I have a plan.”