tampered | Log: Complete

Log: Complete

When: Sunday, February 18, Wrath Day
Rating: To be safe, let's go with R
Characters: Walter Dornez

dark_butler and Lucien Lacroix

master_lacroix
Summary: Wrath, depression, and despair only feed Walter's conviction that Lacroix is behind Kagura's disappearance and that the vampire needs to answer for it and pay.
Log:

If asked, Walter would have been unable to say if it was rage at Lacroix, or at himself that drove him forward. He had always known that monsters such as he tainted and harmed all of those around them. This just proved it.

His first stop in his hunt for Lacroix would be the Raven, since that had been his location in the post where Walter had confronted him.

In the back of his mind lurked the understanding that Lacroix could just break him with a thought.

He should stop. Think. Plan.

Those were luxuries for someone not spurred on by the curse of Wrath and the shard of despair that insisted that he act immediately since there was no hope for anything anyway.

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Lacroix was not surprised when he sensed Walter's presence nor was he surprised by Walter's intentions. Such insolence over a human! A human that was little more than a puppet now.

His anger toward Divia combined with the Wrath the city had so kindly bestowed upon him wanted him to crush Walter for even thinking he could oppose him. His will be done. This chessmaster would not let his carefully planned game come to ruin because of Divia and certainly not because of any curse.

Lacroix sat in his office, a glass of blood in hand and waited for the upstart to come to him. I won't be gentle this Walter. I will make it painful. Divia be damned.

Walter stalked the club, nostrils flaring. He could smell Lacroix everywhere, not to mention the unpleasant after-aroma of Valentines, but he focused in on the most recent trail of scent, following it to Lacroix's office.

He didn't bother knocking. The vampire had to know Walter was there. Especially with the fury he'd wrapped himself in to warm against the cold of the betrayal. He had known that Lacroix was using him, but he'd allowed himself to hope....

He pushed the door open to slam against the wall and strode into the room, angry eyes resting on Lacroix.

Lacroix did his best to restrain the rage he was feeling. He continued to sit at his desk, glass in hand and did not react to Walter's intrusion. Instinctively his mind tuned into Walter's as he prepared to take the younger vampire down if he even attempted anything foolish.

"Hello Walter, feeling a bit bold today?" Lacroix asked, dryly.

"Feeling a bit sick of your games," Walter answered. "I don't need another person in the queue to manipulate me."

Lacroix's equanimity was infuriating. It also made the vampire seem more guilty in his eyes.

If he had any chance of succeeding against this vampire who knew his mind so well, he had to act immediately. A quick kill was not his first choice, but the only one that had any chance of working.

"Is that so?"

Losing all sense of tact Lacroix crushed the glass of blood in his hand, shattered pieces of glass and blood spilling onto the desktop. The action signaled the mental onslaught he directed toward Walter.

Forcibly he pulled forth every painful memory of Walter's to the surface. Making sure that Walter was feeling each one enough to keep him from moving as Lacroix effortlessly moved to pin his student to the wall.

"Really Walter you disappoint me! I thought you knew better than to try something like this!"

He did know better. He just didn't care.

And then he didn't care about anything as he was buried under the avalanche of remembered hurts.

Somewhere, some detached part of his mind thought, Too slow. Next time.... Next time he would not speak, he would just act.

"Never said I'd do what you wanted," he forced out.

"I never asked you to do my bidding and there will be no next time Walter," Lacroix said, through gritted fangs.

His grip around Walter's throat increased as he pressed his face closer to the younger vampire's. "You're pathetic. You want power, you want knowledge, yet you lack the will to obtain it! No, let me have my humans! Let me pretend I'm still one of them!" he said, mockingly never once letting up on the mental onslaught.

Physical pain was nothing. The only thing he needed air for was speech.

He'd come so far, he'd thought, but he was overwhelmed by emotions that did nothing to help him fight off Lacroix's attack.

He jabbed stiffened fingers into Lacroix's side, aiming for ribs to break and grind while throwing a wordless denial at the other vampire. He did not pretend to be human - he knew what he was.

Lacroix flinched from the pain of Walter's blow but his grip do not loosen nor did his mental onslaught. The memories intensified as he added in a new one. Kagura's memory of the night she was attack to be exact. Forcing Walter to feel her fear, her panic, her confusion, and her pain; Lacroix leaned forward again.

"You know what you are yet your friendship made her suffer. You knew that price would eventually be paid," Lacroix said, coldly.

You made her suffer!

Kagura's tears showed red on his cheeks, but he dug his fingers in harder, twisting, drawing on his own pain to force it into the one attack he could manage. He'd reach through Lacroix's skin and bone to pull out his heart if he had to.

Lacroix's gripped around Walter's neck faltered but his mental onslaught did not as he grabbed ahold of Walter's hand pulling it away from his side.

"No, someone else did that. But you will never know who," Lacroix said forcibly as he began to pluck away some of Walter's memories. One by one locking them away within Walter's mind so deeply that it would take the young vampire ages to recover them.

Walter's lips skinned back from his teeth at those words, eyes casting a red glow that actually reflected off of the pale white skin of Lacroix's face.

With the vampire's hold on his throat loosened even slightly, he lunged forward teeth bared for a bite.

He wasn't thinking so much as reacting. Most higher thought was buried under what Lacroix was doing, but that left instinct, and a bloodthirsty instinct at that.

Walter's fangs managed to graze Lacroix's neck before he pull back and grabbed ahold of Walter's neck again. Small tendrils of blood trickling onto his collar.

"Nice try," he muttered, shifting more of Walter's memories around. Finally redirecting the rage toward one of the former Millennuim members that started Walter down his path of pain and betrayal...the werewolf. Yes, the former Captain would be the perfect distraction.

Walter still struggled, now seeing a different scene than The Raven's office. His throat ached from the choking the werewolf had inflicted on him. There was blood everywhere, almost all of it Walter's doing, but he was trapped in this room, locked in with this creature whose grasp he couldn't escape.

He thrashed harder and jerked his leg up in one of the few kicks such close quarters allowed - low blow be damned.

Lacroix barely sidestepped Walter's kick while pushing the young vampire back through the office door onto the floor out in the emptied main area of the club. He had every intention of letting Walter stay trapped in the past memory as Lacroix's anger got the better of him.

Lacroix stepped out of his office and strengthened the memory in Walter's mind while maintaining his distance this time.

Walter scrambled to his feet and backpedaled from something that existed only in memory. He was breathing hard, unneeded breaths coming in rasping gasps.

"Bastard." He snatched up a chair and swung, spinning with the force of the swing that didn't connect as he'd expected. He caught himself and shook his head, almost seeing the club before the memory crashed over him again.

Enough! echoed through Lacroix's mind as he felt Divia's presence nearing. That call had been enough to break through the rage as he regained his composture and released Walter from the memory. By this point Walter would longer remember how or why he was even there anyhow.

"Are you okay now, Walter?" Lacroix asked, masking his anger once again while taking on the mask of mentor.

Walter dropped like a puppet with its strings cut before shaking his head and pushing himself up to look around for something - the werewolf.

No werewolf.

And he was... not human anymore. The aches from his long-ago injuries began to recede. He was... where?

The only thing familiar was the voice speaking to him. Okay now? From what?

"Lacroix? What happened?" Was he losing his mind again?

Lacroix grabbed a towel off the bar and began to wipe the blood stains from his neck and collar. "You had a rather nasty episode there. The weight of what you did under yesterday's curse took its toll on you. Have you regained your faculties now?" Lacroix asked, allowing a hint of concern to touch his voice.

"You're not going to attack me thinking I am someone else again?" he added, while straightening his suit. The damage that Walter had inflicted beginning to heal itself in the meantime.

"I attacked you?" Walter watched Lacroix clean himself up while the fact that Lacroix was cleaning up blood that Walter must have drawn.

He'd gone for his throat. Lacroix had helped him and he'd gone for his throat.

Walter shook his head and looked around. There wasn't much damage, at least.

He stood up, a bit unsteady at first, and went to pick up a chair that was out of place, seemingly carelessly tossed aside.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I don't remember... anything. I don't remember coming here at all."

"There is nothing to forgive you weren't yourself. My apologies for getting rough with you but I had no choice," Lacroix said, still playing the role of concerned mentor.

"Give it time, your mind needs to rest. You've had a stressful time of it these last couple of days. Your memory should begin to recover on its own," he added reassuringly.

"You got rough?" Walter took stock of himself, but other than a lingering soreness in his throat that he attributed to the memories of Poland, he felt unharmed.

"How?"

"I wasn't aiming to injury you, just restrain. You should probably leave today's curse of Wrath has Divia on a war path which means I'm her number one target again. I wouldn't want you caught in our crossfire," Lacroix said simply.

Walter nodded and straightened his clothes, reminded by their pathetic state that he had not yet been home since his rampage through the City the day before.

What a long couple days it had been.

"I'll just wish you good luck. I rather need you around."

Ah, obliviousness is the irony fairy's breeding ground.

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Log: Complete

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