A/N: Here is part 4! Have fun and reviews are always welcome.

4. Eraser

Warm rays of sunlight fell on the still form of a man with long red hair, warming the pale face and giving it a healthier look. He felt the light press on his eyelids and squinted his eyes open looking directly into the face of the man he thought was dead.

“Welcome back. I hope you’re more coherent today than you were on Wednesday.”

He did not react to the comment, just had a blank expression on his face that showed no understanding.

“Schuldig?” The other asked, searching his face for any indication that the redhead understood him.

“I…ah…” he breathed silently, trying to figure out what was going on. “Brad?” He remembered how he had finished his mission and was heading to the hotel when he received a phone call that a friend had been killed and then someone had shot him. He remembered the intense pain, but nothing else beyond that.

“You remember my name, that’s something. Anything else?” The man asked a grin lighting up his face.

“You were killed in...Vienna,” Schuldig replied with a questioning tone, hoping it hadn’t happened. The blank expression slowly turned into a confused frown.

Brad nodded, understand that what he had told him earlier had been forgotten due to the high fever. “Because of my precognition the bullet just grazed me. I called Fryer to spread the message that I was killed in action. I thought it was an assassin hired by the company I had to investigate, but it seems to be someone else. You have nothing to do with my job and yet an assassin went after you. Someone is clearly trying to get rid of us.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet. I will know more when Farfarello returns. I’ve sent him to get the assassin who shot you.”

Brad was looking at him with a serious expression. Schuldig found the caramel brown eyes had a heated look that made him turn away quickly.

“How are you feeling?” Brad asked to break the silence.

Schuldig leaned back on the pillows and tried to breathe out, but started coughing in the middle of trying. “Exhausted and it’s too quiet.”

“You won’t be able to use your telepathy. Not until the pain killers wear off.”

“That sucks. I don’t like the silence.” He grimaced lightly. The voices were his constant companions and not hearing their soft hum in his head felt weird.

Brad smiled lightly. If the German started fussing than it meant he was on the way of getting better. “Well, at least you’re not in pain.”

“Yeah.”

They fell into silence again. Schuldig always felt uncomfortable in such a situation. At one point he wanted to tell the other man so many things, but each time they were alone like now he couldn’t get a word out. “Hey, Brad…”

The other man looked up. “Yes?”

“When Fryer called…I really thought you were dead.”

“Were you worried?”

Brad was smiling, not the usual fake smiles. It really looked like a real smile. Schuldig had seen the man smile one once, so he knew the difference. It was weird, but the same time it made his face look younger and Schuldig kind of liked it. “What kind of stupid question is that?” Of course he had been worried. For awhile he thought his only friend died.

Brad chuckled lightly for offending the younger man. “Thank you.” Schuldig was certainly the only one who would even spare a thought of his death.