tampered | Log: Complete

Current Location: Warehouse, 9th floor

Log: Complete

When: Saturday, January 20, evening
Rating: TBD, PG-13 minimum
Characters: Walter Dornez (

dark_butler) and Lacroix (

master_lacroix)
Summary: Walter seeks an older vampire to assist him with the damage Millennium and Pyramid Head have wrought.
Log:

Walter didn't hesitate after his exchange with Lacroix over the network. He hadn't seen Alucard or Arthur since the night before and he didn't want to see them yet.

Better to see Lacroix first. Better to try to get a better handle of himself. Better to adjust to the idea that the Alucard he'd loved was in the City along with the Alucard he hated.

He hadn't been to the warehouse before and found it singularly unaesthetic. Interesting. There were a variety of interpretations on just what that said about Lacroix, but he decided to withhold judgement until he had a chance to get to know his would-be mentor a bit better.

Soon enough the old elevator opened to allow him out onto the 9th floor and his meeting with the vampire.

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Lacroix stood quietly by the window looking out at the City. He had been waiting for Walter to arrive. He had known it would only be a matter of time before the young vampire sought him out. The sudden appearance of Walter's little friend had worked perfectly for Lacroix to plant the seeds of need within Walter. The need to seek his help, the need to gain control, the need to learn all that he could...among other needs.

"So you have decided you want the storm calmed then?" Lacroix asked, turning a penetrating gaze toward Walter.

He was well aware of the mass of emotions Walter felt especially those directed toward him.

Walter nodded and approached the window and Lacroix. "I have. I cannot wait any longer."

This latest turn with Alucard had cemented that. There was no way he could have both Arthur and the tiny vampire living two flats down from him if he could not control himself without such extravagent effort.

"I'll do what is required."

That was all Lacroix needed to hear to mentally smile. It was lovely when the pieces of a puzzle fall into place or in this case when the pawns shifted across the board under his influence.

"You realize that if you let me into your mind there will be no secrets that you can withhold from me?" he warned, stepping closer to Walter.

No, I thought it would be all hearts and flowers, Walter thought acerbically. His lips twitched slightly knowing that Lacroix would also be privy to that thought.

He tilted his head up at Lacroix, hating that he was still so short. "I can't say I'm happy with that, but I said that I would do what was required."

Lacroix suppressed a laugh at Walter's mental sarcasm but outwardly his expression remained neutral. He slightly reached out and touched Walter's mind pulling a random memory to the surface. Which happen to be Walter's first intimate experience with a certain redheaded woman.

Now she's quite beautiful. Lacroix spoke directly into Walter's mind, waiting to see what the young vampire's reaction would be to being forced to remember things suddenly.

It certainly wasn't a memory Walter minded, other than the fact that Lacroix was acting as a voyeur in a very intimate moment. It took an act of will to not fight the intrusion. He'd been working to protect himself for months and now he was letting someone he barely knew go wandering through his mind and memories.

Damn, he was desperate.

"She is," he answered aloud, wanting to keep something outside his head.

Lacroix had been aware of the young hybrid woman through research on the network but seeing Walter's experience with her first hand made him think of Nicholas and Janette. Perhaps he wouldn't turn her over to the mad doctor after all. Time would tell in that case.

"That was just me randomly fishing through your memories. Now shall we get down to the heart of your problems?" Lacroix said, before focusing on Walter's mind and pulling up the memory of him being tortured by Pyramid Head.

Nasty business there. Lacroix had seen worse tortures performed but he had to admit the creature played perfectly on Walter's fears and guilt.

Back in the tunnel in the dark and the pain and the guilt and the pain and the silver and the guilt and the pain that was as much the emotions as the physical torture.

He'd tried to let Lacroix do what he had to do, but he couldn't stop the reflex that made him fight the memory and the one drawing it from him.

Lacroix felt the back flow of Walter fighting the memory which made him refocus and redirect the memory making it even more vivid...more painful for Walter to experience.

You can not run from this memory, Walter. It is but one of the things that keeps your mind from mending. Lacroix said mentally.

Suddenly it was as if they were both inside the memory as Lacroix stood next to teenage Walter and they both witnessed older Walter being tortured by Pyramid Head.

"He feeds off your guilt. But as a vampire guilt is deadly inside itself, it eats away at your very being. If he had not gotten to you, the madness would have still hit you eventually. He merely brought it on prematurely," Lacroix explained as they watched the gruesome scene of Walter being hung upside down.

The flood of pain was there, but he was both distant from it and experiencing it immediately. God, he'd seen the mess that his chest had been, but he'd not thought about it, pushing that back rather than look at the grisly wreckage of his torso.

And all that was still secondary to the damage Pyramid Head had wrought that he couldn't see, only feel and remember.

"I felt it there, the madness," he said without looking away from the spectacle. "But he's not responsible. He's a symptom, not the disease."

Lacroix nodded pleased. Walter was an apt pupil indeed. "Yes, now you are beginning to understand. Shall we go back a little further?" Lacroix asked, as he focused once again on Walter's mind and pulled forth a new memory.

This time the memory of Walter's battle with Alucard while his old comrades watched in shock and clear hurt etched on their faces.

Was that it?

Say it! Say it! The world had been filled with minds all turned toward urging Integral to that decision and he'd been the one who had forced her to issue the execution order for someone she'd looked on as a father.

What he remembered most was the fierce delight he'd taken in that moment. The only thing that had gotten through his glee was Seras. Her simple thank you had given him a moment's pause. After everything, she still remembered what he'd been enough to thank him when Integral was issuing his death edict and Alucard was looking at him with barely concealed disgust.

He'd been ready for anything except the girl. He understood Integral and Alucard's reactions, but the girl had left him unbalanced.

"Innocence does have a way a cracking a hardened shell," Lacroix said, slightly amused. "You felt elation up until that moment. Yet curiously guilt was absent until the girl spoke. Let's push a little further back."

Lacroix shifted Walter's memories around a frightening rate as flashes of several scenes passed before their eyes. Until finally Walter was facing the memory of the mad Doctor and his laboratory table.

"Is this where the guilt begins?" Lacroix asked, wanting Walter to really think about that particular moment in time.

Oh, you've been one of ours for decades, Butler. The madman and his spectacles and his casual disregard for the human man strapped to a table that was less than scrupulously clean.

But he wouldn't have to worry about infection soon, would he? A denial from Walter, a laugh from the doctor.

And proof. Detailed while the man worked. Information passed on, small sabotages, the explosive in the gun he'd made for Alucard.

The doctor loved to hear himself talk, patting himself on the back for all those years of treachery his subject didn't even remember.

Still talking as the first injection flowed into his veins. Telling him what a traitor he was, talking about his loathing for vampires, insinuating the danger to Integral from the nosferatu. Those words falling on unwilling but enthralled ears and sliding down into his mind to lodge and take their footholds.

The man was mad, but he was brilliant.

"He really worked a number on you." Lacroix was impressed. Perhaps he would allow the doctor to keep his intelligence for much longer.

"You must come to terms with this as well. The guilt you feel from the truths he forced you to see have taken root. This is one of the main things that is driving your insanity now. He lives in your head as long as you let him.

Tell me Walter why do you believe that you sold your soul to him and the Major?" Lacroix said pulling Walter back from the memory to the present. The young vampire would need a break before Lacroix dove back in again.

"I should have been stronger. I should never have submitted. I should have died before I let the werewolf take me." Even as he answered, he knew that it wasn't rational, but pride had always been what put the steel in his spine and his achilles heel.

"If you believe what the devout say, pride is a sin. Though I have never met a 'righteous' man that didn't suffer from the pride affliction. Now did you allow yourself to live because you were afraid of death or because you were following someone else's order?" Lacroix asked, pulling forth one of the memories that Pyramid Head had used against him.

The memory of Integral ordering him to come back alive at all cost.

Oh, he'd been afraid. He'd most certainly been afraid. But he'd been ready to die from the time he took his first assignment from Arthur.

As the doctor had so ably demonstrated, there were things other than death to fear.

But he'd agreed when Integral gave her order. He hadn't been sure he'd be able to follow it, but he'd never shirked from an order a Hellsing had given him.

It was a point of pride.

But it also seemed too easy to accept it that way. As though he should have found another way to fulfill her order. He should have done better.

Lacroix laughed through Walter's mind. You hold on to guilt because it is a point of pride? How quaint. No wonder you are going mad.

Suddenly Lacroix shifted the memories to Poland 1944, the mission that started Walter down his path to betrayal. Let's have a look shall we?

Back when he'd truly been the boy he looked like now.

Back when Alucard had been his partner and he'd trusted the vampire to watch his back, just as he'd watch Alucard's.

Until Alucard and his coffin had run away, locking him in that dining room with the werewolf. The creature had kicked a hole through Alucard's stomach and the vampire had run away leaving Walter to deal with him alone. After he'd nearly been killed by it once already.

He'd never trusted his partner again, even if the rift that was created that night took years to widen.

And then the doctor had had his first crack at Walter... such a familiar scene, only Walter changed between this one and the one they had looked at before. Little else had, from the less than hygienic conditions, to the doctor's self-satisfied rambling while he worked, to the pain that had accompanied the "man's" work.

And he would never have been in those straits if he'd just been able to trust Alucard.

Lacroix held back a smile. This was almost becoming too easy now. "You let guilt eat away at what's left of your soul for the choices you have made but almost all your choices are a direct result of this one moment in time.

You have become the thing you hunted. Death is not a luxury open to you any longer. So what is left to you? Reliving your glory days where you inevitably were let down by your partner or facing your fears and guilt head on, correct? Your guilt is a point of pride I should think allowing the past to overtake you would be the coward's way out. Are you a prideful coward, Walter?"

Yes, it was time for Lacroix to do a little poking and prodding of his own.

Prideful, yes.

"I'm not a coward. I'm here, aren't I?" He was unaware that his body had drawn itself straighter, his chin lifting defiantly.

"And I don't want to live in the past." Which was a lie.

Lacroix sighed and stepped so close to Walter that their faces practically touched. "Tell that to someone who isn't in your head. I told you already that you would not be able to withhold anything from me."

Proving his point, Lacroix recalled the memory when Walter and Arthur were first reunited in the City with emphasis on the nostagia that Walter had felt during that reunion.

"You have your Master and your partner back wouldn't it be so easy to allow yourself to forget? Taking the easy path...becoming a coward?" Lacroix whispered in Walter's ear. "You know if you embrace the vampirism fully and release your guilt...You could have your little friend, the red head woman and your old master with your memory still intact. I haven't lived nearly two thousand years because I felt remorse for every single wrong I committed. It's an art rest assured but it is something that can be taught if you are open to it."

And thus Lacroix began to spin his seductive web on Walter's mind, forcing Walter to remember intimate encounters with both Alucard and Rayne switching back and forth between the two. All the while Lacroix still stood in Walter's personal space.

From memories of agony, to this. Walter swayed slightly before catching himself with a hand on Lacroix's arm. If he'd been human, he would have been panting, heart pounding; as it was, he was still, barely aware of the vampire in front of him immersed as he was in memories he didn't want to fight.

He didn't want to forget Rayne or Alucard or this.

And he wasn't a coward.

Lacroix smiled moving behind Walter and pulling him into an embrace while lightly grasping the younger man's neck. "You have had the honor of being with immortals as a human and a vampire. You have always had a killer instinct even when you were mortal. Whether you believe this is right or wrong you are one of us now.

So tell me what do you want yout undead life to be? Do you wish to be a vampire driven insane by mortal guilt or do you wish be a true immortal who does as he alone wills?" Lacroix whispered softly into Walter's ear.

Walter closed his eyes, still in the grip of the memories - pale skin, friction warming cool flesh, warm breath, cool fingers, and more, so much more.

And Lacroix. Not a memory, but there. Right there. A real body pressed against his, immediate vulnerability while a vampire had hold of his neck, and the fact that Walter had given himself into this man's hands.

The words filtered through the sensation, and remarkably or not, his whispered response was not assent or denial: "There's no such thing as immortal."

"Really? You sure about that? How many times have you died?" Lacroix asked, pulling Walter back from the memories. His hand moving up the young vampire's neck to his chin while his lips brushed against Walter's ears. "You still think like a human and that is what holds you back."

The words I spent my life killing immortals didn't make it to his lips. He'd died three times and he was still moving, still feeling, still standing in this man's, this vampire's embrace, well aware that the cause of his arousal was more than just the memories.

He hunted. He killed. He slept in the coffin without whinging.

He lived with guilt. And self-hatred. And the solid belief that he should be dead.

But he was three times dead. When did he stop fighting an immutable reality that he would die when God, or whatever passed for God, was good and ready to let him die?

Lacroix knew exactly what he was doing as he used Walter's memories to bring him to this point. He could feel the young vampire melt into his embrace. "You wish for death yet it doesn't come. You openly seek death and still it denies you. Perhaps it is a sign that you should embrace the chance you have been given," he said softly.

Slowly he released his grip on Walter's neck and placed his hands on the young vampires shoulders, while leaning back toward Walter's ear. "You told me you wish to learn and I can see that the desire is there. But my question to you is can you stop thinking like a human long enough to take my teachings to heart?"

Stop thinking like a human.... How could he say yes or no? He'd never thought particularly like a human even before.

Could he be more like Alucard? Like Lacroix showed himself to be? He had looked down on Seras because she would not even drink blood or comfortably sleep in her coffin. He'd even allowed the staff to prepare food for her in the hopes that she'd make herself sick enough to come to her senses.

Wasn't he doing his own version of that?

He could make a break. He could not allow himself to be less.

He knew that Lacroix must be following his thoughts. He could do this. His pride demanded it. The same pride that had brought him low could raise him up.

His answer was a nod. It was all that was needed.

Finally he was getting it. The young vampire was seeing through the haze and Lacroix was delighted. Now it was time to see how much improvement Walter had made as Lacroix retreated from the young vampire's mind. This would be the test to see how much more work needed to be done to mend Walter's mind.

"How do you feel?"

That wasn't an especially easy question to answer. Tired. Wrung out. A little lighter.

He hadn't expected an overnight cure, but he'd had some epiphanies.

"As though we've been doing this for a few years."

Lacroix let go of Walter's shoulders and stepped back pleased with the young vampire's answer. "Good, you've made some progress. I think you have earned a break. I am rather famished. I think I should like to go out for a bite," Lacroix said with a slight laugh. "Care to join me?"

Walter ran his hands through his hair and rolled his shoulders before nodding. "It would be my pleasure."

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