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tampered2007-06-28 10:40 pm
flammenschwert.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-06-28 10:40 pm
Log; Complete; Backdated
When: Wednesday, 20th of June
Rating: PG-13 (some violence, mentioning of violence, some cursing)
Characters: Walter Dornez![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dark_butler, Radu Barvon flammenschwert
Summary: A traitor judging a traitor.
Log:
Radu frowned tiredly when he lit his cigarette on a blue flame from his hand. The stench was biting, but he was hesitant to go outside and discard of the corpse pieces. They were lying in a small heap in the corner of the room, two arms and two legs that had been fresh when he had found them in front of his door, spreading a sour smell of beginning decay that not even the smoke and opium-scent in the air could mask. He should have felt sick by now, but the mild daze the opium had left him in calmed his mind and distracted from this inconvenience. For a while, at least, he was happy to forget that what he had brought upon himself this time was likely to end even more disastrous than the treason he had committed in his home world. That he had betrayed an organisation he had sacrificed all that he had for, that he had run off unprepared and without even a sufficient supply of haemoglobin capsules, that somebody still knew where he was and had made their position clear enough with the anonymous deliveries. He had drunk raw blood before, but there was a grave difference between draining a person, and being forced to lick blood off a decapitated, dead leg.
The tobacco sizzled in the blaze when Radu took a long, deep drag, dropping the ash into a glass already filled to the rim with crushed cigarette stubs and ash. Maybe he should stand up and do something about this disgusting smell, but every possible movement seemed far too much of an effort right now, and every unnecessary mental activity in his semi-drugged state would only invoke thoughts he did not want at this time or any other day.
Walter followed the call of a traitor's thoughts. He knew the flavor of that one well. The traitor wanted to be judged, shriven. Whether he knew it or not. That was what he was there for, that was what judgment was for. Let the judged learn, let them move on, let them start anew.
If they went astray afterwards, that was no one's fault but their own.
Walter came close enough to feel the outer edges of the judged's mind and began the first investigations that would lead him to the gates in the man's mind. Once he found the gates, it was his task to throw them open and force the sinner to face his sins.
In the deep of self-pity, unspoken doubt and regret, the presence of another, of something unknown, came to Radu's awareness in a sudden, sharp realisation. His head snapped up, eyes clearing slightly from their drugged daze, staring at the door and trying to focus. He was well used to having another's presence in his mind, to the feeling of being watched, mocked, manipulated without his knowledge - but this did not feel like Dietrich's wires connecting with his nerves, this did not feel like Dietrich at all.
"Marionettenspieler?" he whispered nonetheless, pulling himself up on his feet uneasily, fighting for his momentum for an instant before leaning his weight against the wall. It was too silent; the kind of silence that was strained and corroding and filled with foreboding. The unnerving heat of stress burned in his veins, fired up by a nervous heartbeat.
He collected his senses again as much as his state allowed it, and steadied his stance. His left hand holding on to the decaying surface of the wall for minor support, a blue flame blazed up in the palm of his right. Brow furrowed in tension, he hissed through gritted teeth, "Who is there?"
Interesting. But then, all the Judged were interesting. The doubt, regret, and self-pity weren't enough to cement Walter's decision to proceed with the act. He could not torture someone whose true sin was not doing enough good for their peace of mind.
His silent steps brought him up the hallway toward Radu's flat. To his sensitive vampiric senses, the stench of decaying flesh slithered out under the closed door mixed with cigarette smoke and something else, something he hadn't smelled in decades. Opium?
The emotions and the environment did not push Walter away, rather they drew him more. This person needed the forced introspection of Judgment.
In his mind, and in Radu's, he walked down a different hall even as his footsteps carried him closer to Radu's flat in the dubious reality of the City. He needed to find the gates in Radu's mind and force them open. Behind those gates would lie pain, the guilt he hid and hid from, and a chance for him to be shriven.
Something was coming closer. Radu could not tell what it was, but something there, something like a creeping shadow, was approaching within his mind, and he could not tell how much of this feeling was real and how much drug-induced paranoia. The fist engulfed by flames was clenched to the point of the knuckles protruding white under the skin, fingernails digging deep into temporarily desensitised flesh. The Methuselah bit his lip, throwing a nervous glance across the room, before making a decision.
He was afraid, yes; he was scared and he knew he was doomed, he knew that this escape was but a temporary condition, that the ones hunting him would find him, that they knew where he was, and that this all was just a farce. He had not expected to really be able to part with them, had he? Where was his enthusiasm about sacrificing everything now - where had it been when something more than the confirmation had been asked of him? Now, with something unknown lurking outside his refuge, something that he could feel had come for him, it occurred to him too late that there was something feeling wrong and tainted about what he had long considered his idealism and pride, leading him to his failed rebellion and betrayal; but after they had failed, after he had died for a cause that was destroyed now, why was he still continuing to play these games?
The best weapon against paralysis and fear - he had learnt a long time ago - was to take action, to take the rules of the game into his own hand. He brushed his thoughts aside with far too much practise, and forced himself out of his rigid stance. Silently, with mechanically slow motions, he he turned and advanced the door.
Walter tasted the fear and it was as heady a draught as the freshest virgin blood in its own way. The fear of one who deserved to be afraid. The taste of a traitor on his tongue. Walter could judge a traitor. The vampire had earned that right through his own treachery and his own judgment.
He could feel the traitor's intent and smiled before he closed the last few feet between himself and the door to Radu's flat and....
Knocked.
Such a prosaic, normal thing.
But inside the traitor's mind, he was standing at another gate and pulling from within himself the keys that the Executioner had passed to him - the keys that would open this gate to show Radu his sins and take him on the journey Walter had come to escort him on.
The knocking let Radu freeze mid-motion, pulse pounding in his temples. Shit. What to do now? He felt like a child caught in the middle of a prank for a second. And slowly, his fear was replaced by anger; a process he had trained himself so well at, that it worked almost without his own input. Anger was easier to deal with than fear or honest emotion - a form of denial that still hurt, no matter how accustomed he had grown to it, and seemed to choke something inside him. His stance steadied again, the flames around his hand dying down.
Hardly supressing a snarl, eyes flaring with rage, he hissed, "Who's there?" He realised his voice was hardly audible just seconds later, and firing up his anger again, took a deep breath and repeated louder, "Who is there!?"
No, no, Walter didn't want him calm - not false calm of rage, not true calm. Walter wanted the traitor's thoughts in a maelstrom, his emotions in upheaval.
Rather than answer, he knocked again, taking the time to feel the gate in Radu's head. If he timed this just right and threw his all into it, he could throw the gate wide open when Radu opened the door to his flat. He had a feeling that the paralleled actions would make it harder for the traitor to deny what he saw. Not that you could ever be sure of anything with those who were so practiced in self-deception.
The lack of response and the repeated knocking that greeted him instead were nerve-grinding. Radu swallowed, clenching his teeth and raising his fist again, another spark of blue fire flaring up. His resolve was weakened already, and he could not concentrate in his condition, weakened from insufficient blood-supply and dazed from opium. It took him another deep, far too hasty breath, before he tore himself out of his paralysis and rushed towards the door, no more attempt to disguise his approach. All his instincts screamed against it, his pounding heart pumping adrenaline through his veins that seemed far more fitting for a flight than for a fight, and he wanted to turn back and retreat as far from his unknown visitor as possible, but he could not.
He tore the door open almost violently enough to tear it from its hinges, and then just stared. A man he had never seen before, a face he could not recognise, and yet he seemed so much in place there - far too much. His hand, surrounded by fire, was still lifted and ready for an attack, but this instant, Radu had forgotten about it. His mind and heartbeat racing, Radu felt the security of aggravation fall from him at alarming speed, and without giving him the chance to do anything about it. This man was a stranger, but he was there for a reason, and the reason was just - so much his presence made clear. There was only one possibility that Radu could come up with, and it struck him like a stab in his heart. Eyes widening, he took an involuntary step back, before breathing, "Who are you?"
Walter matched the step back with a step forward — and on another level, key in the lock, gate thrust open, sins laid out behind that open gate just waiting for their perpetrator to recognize them and own his judgment.
"I'm here because you called me, Radu." The name was there for him. If Walter looked hard enough, everything about the man would be his to know, but that wasn't Walter's charge or his intent. What he needed to know about Radu was only what Radu needed to know about himself.
"I am your Judge." Although Radu would be his own jury and executioner.
Behind the Judged, the gate was wide open. Walter took another step forward to see if Radu would take another instinctive step back.
"Traitor." Walter took another step. "Murderer." Another step. He knew the blue flame was there, and certainly vampires had no love of fire, but Walter appeared unconcerned by it. "On the other side of Judgment is a chance at redemption."
Radu retreated instinctively for each step Walter took forward. Even with his hand still raised ready to attack, his mind was far too occupied to even realise he was moving. The man knew his name. He knew his name, he was not - a normal human being, so much was certain, and he knew... He knew.
"The Orden sent you, right?" Radu yelled, or meant to; his voice was shaking more than he had feared. He was not sure where so much fear was coming from, but Walter carried himself with a grave determination that was enough by itself to impress the Methuselah. What really held him captive in his fear, however, was this unnatural something about the man, an uncertain aura he could not grasp even with his normally superhuman perception; and no matter the effect it had on him, he could not tear his gaze away.
"I didn't mean to..." He heard his voice speak, strained and shaking, trying to explain, whether to his companion or to himself. "I didn't betray them, they... I had a reason, they LEFT ME NO CHOICE!"
"The Orden did not send me. You called me. Your guilt called me." Every frantic thought of Radu's gave Walter more to work with, more of a roadmap to the man's psyche.
His lip curled when Radu protested that they'd left him no choice. "There are always choices. Choose to die. Choose to live. Choose to kill. Choice is what makes us what we are."
His hand came up, but the wires he used as weapons stayed coiled inside his rings. Instead, he gestured and the room grew darker, rot creeping along the walls, decay creeping into everything fast enough to watch.
The gate was wide open - wide enough to influence the plane they were on to a limited degree. His other hand swept behind his back and the door to the flat slammed shut with a resounding echo too deep for a mere high rise apartment door.
"See your guilt, Radu. Stop running from it." All it would take would be a little more. Walter recognized the scent of the opium now. How generous of his victim to open the way for him before he'd even arrived.
"My-" Radu's voice trailed off when he became aware of the change. The sound of the door slammed shut - and it did not even occur to him at the moment that it seemed to shut on its own - separated him from the relative security of the outside world with dreadful finality. Outside, there had been dangers, but here, inside this rotten, small old room, he was alone with his judge; alone with his sins. His hand rose to cover his mouth while he watched wide-eyed and in nameless terror the rot spread on the walls, the room transform into a sickening image of his mind.
"I did what was best for my country - my people," he whispered, predominantly to himself, only holding back a nauseated choke. His words continued to flow like a mantra, currently the only thing to help calm the panic rising inside him persistently. "I didn't know he would be chosen, I didn't want to kill him," he lied with shaken belief, "but I had to, I had to do this for our people, I - I had no idea something like this would happen, I didn't want to betray them, but I had to, I had to, I had no choice..."
He did not realise how he had extended the interpretation of his betrayal, how he had unwittingly admitted to what was still haunting his mind. He did not realise it yet, but deep inside, for a reason he could not fathom, he believed the man. He had not been sent by the Orden, and he was not here for this reason. Radu had called this by himself, but as always, he was not ready for the demons he had invited. The hand covering his mouth had clenched, fingernails clawing into his skin.
"Stop it-" he choked, pushing his regrets and memories away in a pathetic attempt. His hand came down in a violent motion, flames blazing up from the fist again, and collecting all his resolve for a last time, eyes shining in manic fear and rage, he threw a sphere of glowing heat, burning forty times as strong as normal Napalm, at his Judge. "STOP IT!"
When human, Walter had been fast enough to dodge bullets. Becoming a vampire had exaggerated that ability to the point of seeming teleportation. "If you did what was best," the vampire asked from behind Radu now, "why are you lying?"
The sphere splashed into the door behind Walter, and the door and wall seethed as they melted. Walter focused and another gate swung open in the destroyed door and wall. There would be no escaping the judgment through that opening, when on the other side was revealed what most tore at Radu's guilt.
Let Radu see what he lied about even to himself. Let him relive and remember. The scene was set. All that was needed was the judged.
Radu would have stopped, startled, at the speed of his opponent, but- Walter's words cracked something crucial in his mind. He stood still, motionless, not even lowering his hand after the failed attack, and stared at the newly opened gate in the wall. From his eyes, Walter had disappeared in the midst of the flames, even if he could hear his voice from behind him. The situation was all too familiar.
I didn't want to kill him.
Brass-coloured eyes stared firmly into his from a face burnt beyond recognition. Pale hair and lavish robes hung down blood-stained and torn to shreds, revealing flesh that was swollen and torn open, a burnt mass of black and red on the body of what looked like a boy of thirteen years - an adult man in a child's body. His tovarăş; his comrade, his brother. The sun had done to him what Radu had failed at - but attempted. The boy's eyes were all that remained unspoiled; flashing with hatred, pain, and anger, betrayal, despair, disbelief, and a faint, pleading hope. The child's lips did not move, but his eyes spoke clearly than he could have spoken with words, begged for an explanation, no matter what would come then.
Radu's will faltered. He could only stay there, still paralysed, with widened eyes and shallow, quickened breath, colour draining from his face as his memory showed him the moments he had turned a gun at his brother, had aimed to burn him to ashes, to kill and mutilate him in thousand ways that were stopped not by his mercy, but by the help of others. Again, he saw Ion's eyes, wide with horror, disbelief, nameless pain, when Radu had turned to him, stepped over the bodies of a dozen men burning to death, had smiled, and told him all about his plans and betrayal. His comrade's pain had hurt him - he had enjoyed every second of it.
There. That was what Walter had been aiming for. The truth. This one was so practiced in lying to himself.
"What punishment for he who turns on his brother, be it a brother of blood or spirit?" Walter asked. "God set the first fratricide to wander the Earth with every man's hand turned against him."
Walter might serve another god now, but he had a lifetime's dedication to his past religion to draw on.
The scene rewound - the sun falling back below the horizon, the burning undoing itself, the death rewinding until Radu could again face his moment of choice when he let his tovarăş fall out of his reach forever.
This choice - he understood what it meant, and yet he could not bring himself to make a decision. There was Ion on the one side, Ion who was his brother, who had first called him, a mere servant, his friend, who in all his self-centred ignorance was so innocent and just had no idea what things were like outside his golden cage. But then there was the Empire, the blind Empress preferring negotiation to war, a coexistence that would cripple their nation and throw them into the arms of the enemy, there were people like Süleyman, the Duke of Tigris, who had visions and experience and were made to rule but left powerless to watch their country's downfall. There was Dietrich and the Orden, their ideals and devotion to a cause that tempted with freedom from all the ties of politics and society and the court, and there was this empty, fake, and yet so comforting promise - "I'll be your friend and support you until the very end."
Radu's mind was torn; he could not choose. Let his comrade fall or save him? Betray his country or betray the Orden, the ones he owed loyalty from birth or the ones he had chosen, his "family" or "friends"? But it was all a farce. Ion was a puppet blind by choice and for simplicity; the Empress was a monster, but a source of faith and identity for his people. Süleyman was a hero, but a monster in his own right, a visionary just as much as a tyrant, and Dietrich meant another form of slavery in exchange for the former. The Orden was change - but was he ready for change?
He felt nothing for either of them. The consequences - they were what mattered. But what did he want? He wanted something, he hated how things were, but was there any alternative, had he had any idea, or resolve to carry one out, before running off to destroy everything?
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not yet, give me more time, not yet..." His mind was racing with the pressure of a choice to make. What did he want? What was it that he wanted? What was it that he wanted gone, what did he truly hate? It would be easy to let him fall. It would be just as easy to save him. He could not decide if he did not even know what it was that he wanted, other than the things that were - gone.
"You betrayed a reality because of ideals you couldn't even hold firmly?" Walter asked, following Radu's thoughts, but not fully understanding their context yet. Radu felt guilt and he felt pain. What Walter could do for him to facilitate was just to make the pain un-ignorable and the guilt unendurable until the man was forced to face them in their starkest truth and face that stark truth about himself as well.
Walter's words burnt right into the centre of Radu's guilt-ridden mind. For a moment, he felt breathless. "No..." he whispered numbly. He could see Ion before him, and for the first time, realised the nature of the accusation in the boy's eyes. The real weight of the simple question "Why?" Why betrayal, why murder, why this hatred and rage, and why always destruction? He was trembling, harder than before, his arms folded tight around his body. "NO!" he screamed, eyes closed to escape the image of his accuser and his judge, his voice strained and shaking enough to give him the feeling something inside him was tearing open. He could hardly breathe from the pressure of despair choking him. "No - that's not - I was serious about it, I believed in what I fought for, I - I died for my beliefs-"
He told himself all his carefully chosen lies again, but this time they sounded hollow, even to himself. His voice cut off in a strangled choke, which may just as well have been a sob. It was true, he had fought and died for this - but for what? What was it that had brought him so far, to betray all he knew, to destroy the people who loved him and who he - not loved, but should have loved? There were no feelings for his cause left, and maybe they had never been there. There were no feelings for any of the people he had met. What he had lived and died for was his own pain, rage to fill an emptiness inside him with - an emptiness he had trained himself to develop to begin with.
He fell to his knees in an unflattering motion, just giving in to the numbness that seized his limbs. His torso bent forward, one hand covering his face, the other clawing desperately into the rotting floor, he was shaking and rocked by dry sobs. This was not true. This could not be the truth behind all that he had gone through. This could not possibly be what he had wasted his life for!
"Why?" Walter knelt behind him and reaching to catch Radu by his hair, to force his head upright to see the scene that had been set before them. "Why did you do it? Can you justify your betrayal without lying?"
When his head was pulled up again, Radu tried to struggle free, reddened eyes trying to avoid the images before them, but to no avail. It was as if he was home again, at the court, watching from the far away lower ranks as his tovarăş was standing at the Empress' side, eyes shining with pride and blind faith - and he felt so sick to his stomach that he had had to avoid his eyes that were filling with tears of anger and envy; eyes that now again filled with tears, of despair, of embarrassment. His breath coming in short drags, he swallowed hard before he could speak.
"I hated this bastard!" he blurted out between gritted teeth, still trying to escape Walter's grip and the images before him, his voice low and strained, hardly more than a whimper. And while he spoke, his voice rose and let his words degenerate into a desperate screaming. "He had everything - power, talents, a noble bloodline, he could have done whatever he pleased and he would get away with it, he was the pride and hope of our country personified, the Empress would listen to him, his words would matter and he would be chosen to represent our people, he but not me! It was not my fault that I was born into the wrong family! It was not my fault that no matter what I did, no matter what I thought, it would not interest them, even when I would have deserved to have a word at the assembly! I - I deserved it, I would have done so much more with it, so much better with it than him, I would have deserved it so much more than he did! Why couldn't they at least let me speak!? Why couldn't I be noticed even once, why-" Cut off abruptly, it took him a moment to fully understand what he had meant to say, and in a low, pained whimper he ended, "Why couldn't I be more like him?"
"Jealousy," Walter pronounced flatly. "You were a traitor not for ideals, not for the betterment of your people, not for anything loftier than jealousy." But there was guilt in this man. It was the guilt that had drawn him, and the guilt that was the path to his redemption. He'd gotten the truth. He tightened his grip in Radu's hair until it was a marvel he wasn't tearing scalp. Could he get repentance from this man without having to torture it out of him the way the Executioner had?
"Where was your lack of choice you protested earlier?" he asked coldly. "You had a choice and you betrayed someone who loved and trusted you."
Let the scene move forward. Let Radu witness the death he claimed was unavoidable. If he fought his culpability still more, Walter was ready to put him in the burning place of his betrayed tovarăş to experience every moment of agony he'd brought to the other man. All it took was opening the right gate for Radu to experience all without a single blister actually rising on his precious flesh.
Walter understood better than the Red Pyramid that not all torture had to be physical.
At the weight of Walter's words, Radu's shoulders sank. There was a truth in the accusation that for all his carefully constructed system of lies and denial he could not disregard. He was not normally a person who cried. He had never cried in his life, not that he could remember, and it had only been at the moment of his death that he had had tears in his eyes, because yes, he had been afraid. He had been afraid, he had not wanted to die, and in this one moment, all the deaths that he had brought carelessly had come back to him for just a second, and he had felt an idea of what he had done. This guilt was gone now, but the feeling that started slowing his pulse with dread was painfully similar. Although he gave up fighting against Walter's grip, he let out a sharp hiss when the vampire tightened it. A Methuselah's strength was, no matter how superior in his world, still far inferior to that of the actual undead.
The scene before him changed, and with reddened eyes half-lidded in a horrified daze, he watched the face of his tovarăş illuminated by the rising sun in the middle of their fight, only to be eaten away with terrible slowness by nanomachines in his blood that were hyped and hungry from the influence of UV light. The slim figure was bending forward, hands covering a face burnt beyond recognition, screaming his agony out like a wounded animal. Ion would survive this ordeal. Ion would reach out, extend his hand, scream his friend's name while the Inquisitor's weapon would blast a hole into Radu's chest, rip out his lungs and heart and the better part of his spine, while the bullet from an android's gun would pierce his forehead with deadly aim and blast blood and skull fragments and parts of his brain out through the back of his head, while he was tumbling and falling and sinking into the sea to die - and come back to haunt the boy lead by the Puppetmaster's threads.
Radu winced and tried to flinch from the image as far backwards as Walter's grip allowed him. His breath felt searing in his lungs, and while his lips formed to mutter words in a silent, frenzied torrent of words, the only sound that really left his throat was a low, trembling groan and laboured drags of breath. He could not take the images any longer. His hands shot up to seize and claw into Walter's arm and pushing against his shoulder, trying to pull away from him and escape. The tears that had gathered in his eyes were starting to run down now, an unfamiliar and embarrassing feeling if he had been paying any attention to it now. A convulsed sob escaped him, and with a breathless effort, he managed to whisper, "Please..."
"How many people have begged you 'Please,' Radu?" Walter asked implacably, ignoring what were, for now, pointless struggles. Until the fighting turned to fire or the Judged produced unexpected silver, there was little Walter had to be concerned about. "Your tears are for yourself. What of the lives you destroyed all because you couldn't rise above your jealousy?"
There were other sins Walter could use to illustrate. How many years of pleading, tear-streaked faces for this traitor? Push the memory of Ion aside for now and let a spill of harm done by Radu display for them instead. This one hid behind forgetfulness and excuses. Let them see how long he could last when memory betrayed him as surely as he had betrayed others.
A jerk ran through Radu's body and he screamed, collecting all his strength in a last effort to shake Walter off, which failed as completely as the others before. Then at last, his grip gave in, his arms fell down weakly. All those faces - why did he still remember them? Why did he still see Pietro Borromini, the Vatican-spy who had programmed the Iblis-system for him, staring at him with eyes in which a sparkle of hope was just dying out, to be replaced with sheer and nameless horror when the man realised that his comrade had not come to save him from his prison cell, but to execute him and any danger of being found out? The man had died drained of blood and burnt to death, but it had been acceptable, he had been a traitor to his people, a supporter of terrorists, a collaborator of murderers - he had been like him. The other deaths came back to him - soldiers who died in an inferno of flames, men blown in pieces by explosions, people he had lost count of, he had murdered without so much as looking at their faces. A trembling seized him and he muttered helplessly, in a choked voice, "I thought I was... I didn't think they - I didn't know - didn't know they were like us, I didn't think it mattered-"
Walter had heard that protest from others. I didn't think... I didn't know... I didn't think it mattered.
"Shouldn't your victims lives matter? You thought yours did, but did it? Does it? Hiding from yourself and the world in a haze of drugs because you know that if you begin to think...." Walter let it hang. He didn't have all the pieces to the puzzle that was Radu, but he found that the man was quite willing to hand him the pieces if Walter left spaces that needed to be filled.
To this question, Radu could only offer a shaking, hesitant nod. "I... hated dying," he whispered between choked breathing; an almost unintelligible torrent of words in the same low volume and frequency as his laboured breathing. "I didn't want to die, I said I was ready to die but I had no idea it was so terrible - dying is terrible." He closed his eyes and, his arms folded across his torso, hands clenching the opposite upper arm, rocked his body slightly back and forth a time or two, while his trembling grew worse. He swallowed, but it hardly helped against the sore feeling in his throat, constricted by a choking strain of stress and occasional uncontrollable fits of sobbing. His voice almost too hoarse to be intelligible, he continued shaken and more to himself than to Walter, "I didn't mean to - I didn't want to betray them, I chose them, but I just - he betrayed me first, he wanted to feed on me, and he-"
He could not continue. He had been sure the Orden had betrayed him, but now - no, he could not continue even this trail of thought. It was to them that he owed his life, it was Dietrich who had saved him time and time again, who had resurrected him and rebuilt his body twice, who defended him in an organisation that he had failed to prove his worth yet, despite all the chances he had been given. It was Dietrich who was searching for him now, Dietrich who was responsible for explaining his subordinate's insubordination to his own superiors, Dietrich's support which he disregarded to dwell on small malicious teasings which he really deserved. Just like it had been Ion whom he had provoked to proclaim what he could interpret as ignorance and egoism, Ion whom he had hurt and dishonoured with betrayal and insincerity, Ion who had chosen to trust him against all odds and had earned hatred and pain from him in return. Mirka Fortuna, Ion's grandmother and the Duchess of Moldova, who had - even if strict - raised him at her court and given him opportunities far above his rank, and whom he had paid back by ambushing her, killing what he had thought was her, and blowing up her mansion to frame her grandson. And all the lives he had taken thoughtlessly, the suffering he had brought to people because they were in his way - he had never forgiven his mother for leaving him, but how many children had he deprived of their parents, how many of them had died a pointless and brutal death because of a detail that had gone wrong in his plans?
He had never stopped to consider it before, and now the weight of deeds that could not be undone crashed down on him with a heaviness he could not carry. Walter's grip was all that still held him up, and while the sharp pain in his scalp was an almost pleasant distraction from the pain inside him, it could hardly do enough. For the first time in his life, he clung to himself and cried, his whole body shaking with sobs, shed tears for a brother and a mother, a duchess and a queen, a country, a friend, mercy he had wasted, for betrayed feelings and for nameless, faceless Terran he would have considered less worthy than cattle any other day. He would have found it embarrassing, humiliating to be seen like this, but it was not like he could escape Walter, escape his judgment, and even if - it did not matter any more.
There. Walter nodded to himself with satisfaction. This was judgment. It wasn't enough that Walter punish Radu - people could go through punishment imposed by others and come out the other side feeling justified, martyred. For Walter's judgment to serve its purpose, Radu had to punish himself in full understanding of his crimes.
Radu had been punishing himself before with his lies to himself and his self-destruction and drugs, but it wasn't useful. Suffering should have reason and purpose.
The gates remained open, but the scenes faded until the only thing that showed on the other side of the hole Radu had created with his fire was a blackness deeper than mere darkness. If you went into that blackness, you would soon claw your eyes just for the flashes of false light your brain would create, and it would not be enough.
He lowered the weeping man to the floor and rose to look down at him.
He had had more sympathy for Tayuya. This one... did not elicit such feelings, but Walter would always understand things about Radu that no one else would.
There was no martyredom in this judgement, no opportunity to feed on self-pity and his own misery, no satisfaction in the illusion of having a right to hate and destroy because of his own fate - no excuses. What Radu was confronted with was not another evil oppressor who would give him yet another chance to fight against chains and repercussions he had constructed in his own mind, and manipulated to come into being. He was facing nothing but his own deeds, his past, and the lies he had spun around it, the full dimension of his self-treachery and pathetic attempts to escape from this reality. He did not realise that Walter had let him go, or that the images forced upon him had stopped - that his judge left through a hole of darkness that would have taken the rest of Radu's sanity away had he thrown a glance inside it.
He was left alone in his refuge in the end, with his own demons, a shaking wreck on the floor, crying like a child and breaking his fingernails because he clawed too hard into the floor. There was no comfort or triumph left this time; the judgement left him empty, alone, desperate, and he knew well enough by now that this despair was all brought upon him by himself. Soberness came far too quickly and took away the merciful daze his drugs had left him in.
Rating: PG-13 (some violence, mentioning of violence, some cursing)
Characters: Walter Dornez
dark_butler, Radu Barvon flammenschwertSummary: A traitor judging a traitor.
Log:
Radu frowned tiredly when he lit his cigarette on a blue flame from his hand. The stench was biting, but he was hesitant to go outside and discard of the corpse pieces. They were lying in a small heap in the corner of the room, two arms and two legs that had been fresh when he had found them in front of his door, spreading a sour smell of beginning decay that not even the smoke and opium-scent in the air could mask. He should have felt sick by now, but the mild daze the opium had left him in calmed his mind and distracted from this inconvenience. For a while, at least, he was happy to forget that what he had brought upon himself this time was likely to end even more disastrous than the treason he had committed in his home world. That he had betrayed an organisation he had sacrificed all that he had for, that he had run off unprepared and without even a sufficient supply of haemoglobin capsules, that somebody still knew where he was and had made their position clear enough with the anonymous deliveries. He had drunk raw blood before, but there was a grave difference between draining a person, and being forced to lick blood off a decapitated, dead leg.
The tobacco sizzled in the blaze when Radu took a long, deep drag, dropping the ash into a glass already filled to the rim with crushed cigarette stubs and ash. Maybe he should stand up and do something about this disgusting smell, but every possible movement seemed far too much of an effort right now, and every unnecessary mental activity in his semi-drugged state would only invoke thoughts he did not want at this time or any other day.
Walter followed the call of a traitor's thoughts. He knew the flavor of that one well. The traitor wanted to be judged, shriven. Whether he knew it or not. That was what he was there for, that was what judgment was for. Let the judged learn, let them move on, let them start anew.
If they went astray afterwards, that was no one's fault but their own.
Walter came close enough to feel the outer edges of the judged's mind and began the first investigations that would lead him to the gates in the man's mind. Once he found the gates, it was his task to throw them open and force the sinner to face his sins.
In the deep of self-pity, unspoken doubt and regret, the presence of another, of something unknown, came to Radu's awareness in a sudden, sharp realisation. His head snapped up, eyes clearing slightly from their drugged daze, staring at the door and trying to focus. He was well used to having another's presence in his mind, to the feeling of being watched, mocked, manipulated without his knowledge - but this did not feel like Dietrich's wires connecting with his nerves, this did not feel like Dietrich at all.
"Marionettenspieler?" he whispered nonetheless, pulling himself up on his feet uneasily, fighting for his momentum for an instant before leaning his weight against the wall. It was too silent; the kind of silence that was strained and corroding and filled with foreboding. The unnerving heat of stress burned in his veins, fired up by a nervous heartbeat.
He collected his senses again as much as his state allowed it, and steadied his stance. His left hand holding on to the decaying surface of the wall for minor support, a blue flame blazed up in the palm of his right. Brow furrowed in tension, he hissed through gritted teeth, "Who is there?"
Interesting. But then, all the Judged were interesting. The doubt, regret, and self-pity weren't enough to cement Walter's decision to proceed with the act. He could not torture someone whose true sin was not doing enough good for their peace of mind.
His silent steps brought him up the hallway toward Radu's flat. To his sensitive vampiric senses, the stench of decaying flesh slithered out under the closed door mixed with cigarette smoke and something else, something he hadn't smelled in decades. Opium?
The emotions and the environment did not push Walter away, rather they drew him more. This person needed the forced introspection of Judgment.
In his mind, and in Radu's, he walked down a different hall even as his footsteps carried him closer to Radu's flat in the dubious reality of the City. He needed to find the gates in Radu's mind and force them open. Behind those gates would lie pain, the guilt he hid and hid from, and a chance for him to be shriven.
Something was coming closer. Radu could not tell what it was, but something there, something like a creeping shadow, was approaching within his mind, and he could not tell how much of this feeling was real and how much drug-induced paranoia. The fist engulfed by flames was clenched to the point of the knuckles protruding white under the skin, fingernails digging deep into temporarily desensitised flesh. The Methuselah bit his lip, throwing a nervous glance across the room, before making a decision.
He was afraid, yes; he was scared and he knew he was doomed, he knew that this escape was but a temporary condition, that the ones hunting him would find him, that they knew where he was, and that this all was just a farce. He had not expected to really be able to part with them, had he? Where was his enthusiasm about sacrificing everything now - where had it been when something more than the confirmation had been asked of him? Now, with something unknown lurking outside his refuge, something that he could feel had come for him, it occurred to him too late that there was something feeling wrong and tainted about what he had long considered his idealism and pride, leading him to his failed rebellion and betrayal; but after they had failed, after he had died for a cause that was destroyed now, why was he still continuing to play these games?
The best weapon against paralysis and fear - he had learnt a long time ago - was to take action, to take the rules of the game into his own hand. He brushed his thoughts aside with far too much practise, and forced himself out of his rigid stance. Silently, with mechanically slow motions, he he turned and advanced the door.
Walter tasted the fear and it was as heady a draught as the freshest virgin blood in its own way. The fear of one who deserved to be afraid. The taste of a traitor on his tongue. Walter could judge a traitor. The vampire had earned that right through his own treachery and his own judgment.
He could feel the traitor's intent and smiled before he closed the last few feet between himself and the door to Radu's flat and....
Knocked.
Such a prosaic, normal thing.
But inside the traitor's mind, he was standing at another gate and pulling from within himself the keys that the Executioner had passed to him - the keys that would open this gate to show Radu his sins and take him on the journey Walter had come to escort him on.
The knocking let Radu freeze mid-motion, pulse pounding in his temples. Shit. What to do now? He felt like a child caught in the middle of a prank for a second. And slowly, his fear was replaced by anger; a process he had trained himself so well at, that it worked almost without his own input. Anger was easier to deal with than fear or honest emotion - a form of denial that still hurt, no matter how accustomed he had grown to it, and seemed to choke something inside him. His stance steadied again, the flames around his hand dying down.
Hardly supressing a snarl, eyes flaring with rage, he hissed, "Who's there?" He realised his voice was hardly audible just seconds later, and firing up his anger again, took a deep breath and repeated louder, "Who is there!?"
No, no, Walter didn't want him calm - not false calm of rage, not true calm. Walter wanted the traitor's thoughts in a maelstrom, his emotions in upheaval.
Rather than answer, he knocked again, taking the time to feel the gate in Radu's head. If he timed this just right and threw his all into it, he could throw the gate wide open when Radu opened the door to his flat. He had a feeling that the paralleled actions would make it harder for the traitor to deny what he saw. Not that you could ever be sure of anything with those who were so practiced in self-deception.
The lack of response and the repeated knocking that greeted him instead were nerve-grinding. Radu swallowed, clenching his teeth and raising his fist again, another spark of blue fire flaring up. His resolve was weakened already, and he could not concentrate in his condition, weakened from insufficient blood-supply and dazed from opium. It took him another deep, far too hasty breath, before he tore himself out of his paralysis and rushed towards the door, no more attempt to disguise his approach. All his instincts screamed against it, his pounding heart pumping adrenaline through his veins that seemed far more fitting for a flight than for a fight, and he wanted to turn back and retreat as far from his unknown visitor as possible, but he could not.
He tore the door open almost violently enough to tear it from its hinges, and then just stared. A man he had never seen before, a face he could not recognise, and yet he seemed so much in place there - far too much. His hand, surrounded by fire, was still lifted and ready for an attack, but this instant, Radu had forgotten about it. His mind and heartbeat racing, Radu felt the security of aggravation fall from him at alarming speed, and without giving him the chance to do anything about it. This man was a stranger, but he was there for a reason, and the reason was just - so much his presence made clear. There was only one possibility that Radu could come up with, and it struck him like a stab in his heart. Eyes widening, he took an involuntary step back, before breathing, "Who are you?"
Walter matched the step back with a step forward — and on another level, key in the lock, gate thrust open, sins laid out behind that open gate just waiting for their perpetrator to recognize them and own his judgment.
"I'm here because you called me, Radu." The name was there for him. If Walter looked hard enough, everything about the man would be his to know, but that wasn't Walter's charge or his intent. What he needed to know about Radu was only what Radu needed to know about himself.
"I am your Judge." Although Radu would be his own jury and executioner.
Behind the Judged, the gate was wide open. Walter took another step forward to see if Radu would take another instinctive step back.
"Traitor." Walter took another step. "Murderer." Another step. He knew the blue flame was there, and certainly vampires had no love of fire, but Walter appeared unconcerned by it. "On the other side of Judgment is a chance at redemption."
Radu retreated instinctively for each step Walter took forward. Even with his hand still raised ready to attack, his mind was far too occupied to even realise he was moving. The man knew his name. He knew his name, he was not - a normal human being, so much was certain, and he knew... He knew.
"The Orden sent you, right?" Radu yelled, or meant to; his voice was shaking more than he had feared. He was not sure where so much fear was coming from, but Walter carried himself with a grave determination that was enough by itself to impress the Methuselah. What really held him captive in his fear, however, was this unnatural something about the man, an uncertain aura he could not grasp even with his normally superhuman perception; and no matter the effect it had on him, he could not tear his gaze away.
"I didn't mean to..." He heard his voice speak, strained and shaking, trying to explain, whether to his companion or to himself. "I didn't betray them, they... I had a reason, they LEFT ME NO CHOICE!"
"The Orden did not send me. You called me. Your guilt called me." Every frantic thought of Radu's gave Walter more to work with, more of a roadmap to the man's psyche.
His lip curled when Radu protested that they'd left him no choice. "There are always choices. Choose to die. Choose to live. Choose to kill. Choice is what makes us what we are."
His hand came up, but the wires he used as weapons stayed coiled inside his rings. Instead, he gestured and the room grew darker, rot creeping along the walls, decay creeping into everything fast enough to watch.
The gate was wide open - wide enough to influence the plane they were on to a limited degree. His other hand swept behind his back and the door to the flat slammed shut with a resounding echo too deep for a mere high rise apartment door.
"See your guilt, Radu. Stop running from it." All it would take would be a little more. Walter recognized the scent of the opium now. How generous of his victim to open the way for him before he'd even arrived.
"My-" Radu's voice trailed off when he became aware of the change. The sound of the door slammed shut - and it did not even occur to him at the moment that it seemed to shut on its own - separated him from the relative security of the outside world with dreadful finality. Outside, there had been dangers, but here, inside this rotten, small old room, he was alone with his judge; alone with his sins. His hand rose to cover his mouth while he watched wide-eyed and in nameless terror the rot spread on the walls, the room transform into a sickening image of his mind.
"I did what was best for my country - my people," he whispered, predominantly to himself, only holding back a nauseated choke. His words continued to flow like a mantra, currently the only thing to help calm the panic rising inside him persistently. "I didn't know he would be chosen, I didn't want to kill him," he lied with shaken belief, "but I had to, I had to do this for our people, I - I had no idea something like this would happen, I didn't want to betray them, but I had to, I had to, I had no choice..."
He did not realise how he had extended the interpretation of his betrayal, how he had unwittingly admitted to what was still haunting his mind. He did not realise it yet, but deep inside, for a reason he could not fathom, he believed the man. He had not been sent by the Orden, and he was not here for this reason. Radu had called this by himself, but as always, he was not ready for the demons he had invited. The hand covering his mouth had clenched, fingernails clawing into his skin.
"Stop it-" he choked, pushing his regrets and memories away in a pathetic attempt. His hand came down in a violent motion, flames blazing up from the fist again, and collecting all his resolve for a last time, eyes shining in manic fear and rage, he threw a sphere of glowing heat, burning forty times as strong as normal Napalm, at his Judge. "STOP IT!"
When human, Walter had been fast enough to dodge bullets. Becoming a vampire had exaggerated that ability to the point of seeming teleportation. "If you did what was best," the vampire asked from behind Radu now, "why are you lying?"
The sphere splashed into the door behind Walter, and the door and wall seethed as they melted. Walter focused and another gate swung open in the destroyed door and wall. There would be no escaping the judgment through that opening, when on the other side was revealed what most tore at Radu's guilt.
Let Radu see what he lied about even to himself. Let him relive and remember. The scene was set. All that was needed was the judged.
Radu would have stopped, startled, at the speed of his opponent, but- Walter's words cracked something crucial in his mind. He stood still, motionless, not even lowering his hand after the failed attack, and stared at the newly opened gate in the wall. From his eyes, Walter had disappeared in the midst of the flames, even if he could hear his voice from behind him. The situation was all too familiar.
I didn't want to kill him.
Brass-coloured eyes stared firmly into his from a face burnt beyond recognition. Pale hair and lavish robes hung down blood-stained and torn to shreds, revealing flesh that was swollen and torn open, a burnt mass of black and red on the body of what looked like a boy of thirteen years - an adult man in a child's body. His tovarăş; his comrade, his brother. The sun had done to him what Radu had failed at - but attempted. The boy's eyes were all that remained unspoiled; flashing with hatred, pain, and anger, betrayal, despair, disbelief, and a faint, pleading hope. The child's lips did not move, but his eyes spoke clearly than he could have spoken with words, begged for an explanation, no matter what would come then.
Radu's will faltered. He could only stay there, still paralysed, with widened eyes and shallow, quickened breath, colour draining from his face as his memory showed him the moments he had turned a gun at his brother, had aimed to burn him to ashes, to kill and mutilate him in thousand ways that were stopped not by his mercy, but by the help of others. Again, he saw Ion's eyes, wide with horror, disbelief, nameless pain, when Radu had turned to him, stepped over the bodies of a dozen men burning to death, had smiled, and told him all about his plans and betrayal. His comrade's pain had hurt him - he had enjoyed every second of it.
There. That was what Walter had been aiming for. The truth. This one was so practiced in lying to himself.
"What punishment for he who turns on his brother, be it a brother of blood or spirit?" Walter asked. "God set the first fratricide to wander the Earth with every man's hand turned against him."
Walter might serve another god now, but he had a lifetime's dedication to his past religion to draw on.
The scene rewound - the sun falling back below the horizon, the burning undoing itself, the death rewinding until Radu could again face his moment of choice when he let his tovarăş fall out of his reach forever.
This choice - he understood what it meant, and yet he could not bring himself to make a decision. There was Ion on the one side, Ion who was his brother, who had first called him, a mere servant, his friend, who in all his self-centred ignorance was so innocent and just had no idea what things were like outside his golden cage. But then there was the Empire, the blind Empress preferring negotiation to war, a coexistence that would cripple their nation and throw them into the arms of the enemy, there were people like Süleyman, the Duke of Tigris, who had visions and experience and were made to rule but left powerless to watch their country's downfall. There was Dietrich and the Orden, their ideals and devotion to a cause that tempted with freedom from all the ties of politics and society and the court, and there was this empty, fake, and yet so comforting promise - "I'll be your friend and support you until the very end."
Radu's mind was torn; he could not choose. Let his comrade fall or save him? Betray his country or betray the Orden, the ones he owed loyalty from birth or the ones he had chosen, his "family" or "friends"? But it was all a farce. Ion was a puppet blind by choice and for simplicity; the Empress was a monster, but a source of faith and identity for his people. Süleyman was a hero, but a monster in his own right, a visionary just as much as a tyrant, and Dietrich meant another form of slavery in exchange for the former. The Orden was change - but was he ready for change?
He felt nothing for either of them. The consequences - they were what mattered. But what did he want? He wanted something, he hated how things were, but was there any alternative, had he had any idea, or resolve to carry one out, before running off to destroy everything?
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not yet, give me more time, not yet..." His mind was racing with the pressure of a choice to make. What did he want? What was it that he wanted? What was it that he wanted gone, what did he truly hate? It would be easy to let him fall. It would be just as easy to save him. He could not decide if he did not even know what it was that he wanted, other than the things that were - gone.
"You betrayed a reality because of ideals you couldn't even hold firmly?" Walter asked, following Radu's thoughts, but not fully understanding their context yet. Radu felt guilt and he felt pain. What Walter could do for him to facilitate was just to make the pain un-ignorable and the guilt unendurable until the man was forced to face them in their starkest truth and face that stark truth about himself as well.
Walter's words burnt right into the centre of Radu's guilt-ridden mind. For a moment, he felt breathless. "No..." he whispered numbly. He could see Ion before him, and for the first time, realised the nature of the accusation in the boy's eyes. The real weight of the simple question "Why?" Why betrayal, why murder, why this hatred and rage, and why always destruction? He was trembling, harder than before, his arms folded tight around his body. "NO!" he screamed, eyes closed to escape the image of his accuser and his judge, his voice strained and shaking enough to give him the feeling something inside him was tearing open. He could hardly breathe from the pressure of despair choking him. "No - that's not - I was serious about it, I believed in what I fought for, I - I died for my beliefs-"
He told himself all his carefully chosen lies again, but this time they sounded hollow, even to himself. His voice cut off in a strangled choke, which may just as well have been a sob. It was true, he had fought and died for this - but for what? What was it that had brought him so far, to betray all he knew, to destroy the people who loved him and who he - not loved, but should have loved? There were no feelings for his cause left, and maybe they had never been there. There were no feelings for any of the people he had met. What he had lived and died for was his own pain, rage to fill an emptiness inside him with - an emptiness he had trained himself to develop to begin with.
He fell to his knees in an unflattering motion, just giving in to the numbness that seized his limbs. His torso bent forward, one hand covering his face, the other clawing desperately into the rotting floor, he was shaking and rocked by dry sobs. This was not true. This could not be the truth behind all that he had gone through. This could not possibly be what he had wasted his life for!
"Why?" Walter knelt behind him and reaching to catch Radu by his hair, to force his head upright to see the scene that had been set before them. "Why did you do it? Can you justify your betrayal without lying?"
When his head was pulled up again, Radu tried to struggle free, reddened eyes trying to avoid the images before them, but to no avail. It was as if he was home again, at the court, watching from the far away lower ranks as his tovarăş was standing at the Empress' side, eyes shining with pride and blind faith - and he felt so sick to his stomach that he had had to avoid his eyes that were filling with tears of anger and envy; eyes that now again filled with tears, of despair, of embarrassment. His breath coming in short drags, he swallowed hard before he could speak.
"I hated this bastard!" he blurted out between gritted teeth, still trying to escape Walter's grip and the images before him, his voice low and strained, hardly more than a whimper. And while he spoke, his voice rose and let his words degenerate into a desperate screaming. "He had everything - power, talents, a noble bloodline, he could have done whatever he pleased and he would get away with it, he was the pride and hope of our country personified, the Empress would listen to him, his words would matter and he would be chosen to represent our people, he but not me! It was not my fault that I was born into the wrong family! It was not my fault that no matter what I did, no matter what I thought, it would not interest them, even when I would have deserved to have a word at the assembly! I - I deserved it, I would have done so much more with it, so much better with it than him, I would have deserved it so much more than he did! Why couldn't they at least let me speak!? Why couldn't I be noticed even once, why-" Cut off abruptly, it took him a moment to fully understand what he had meant to say, and in a low, pained whimper he ended, "Why couldn't I be more like him?"
"Jealousy," Walter pronounced flatly. "You were a traitor not for ideals, not for the betterment of your people, not for anything loftier than jealousy." But there was guilt in this man. It was the guilt that had drawn him, and the guilt that was the path to his redemption. He'd gotten the truth. He tightened his grip in Radu's hair until it was a marvel he wasn't tearing scalp. Could he get repentance from this man without having to torture it out of him the way the Executioner had?
"Where was your lack of choice you protested earlier?" he asked coldly. "You had a choice and you betrayed someone who loved and trusted you."
Let the scene move forward. Let Radu witness the death he claimed was unavoidable. If he fought his culpability still more, Walter was ready to put him in the burning place of his betrayed tovarăş to experience every moment of agony he'd brought to the other man. All it took was opening the right gate for Radu to experience all without a single blister actually rising on his precious flesh.
Walter understood better than the Red Pyramid that not all torture had to be physical.
At the weight of Walter's words, Radu's shoulders sank. There was a truth in the accusation that for all his carefully constructed system of lies and denial he could not disregard. He was not normally a person who cried. He had never cried in his life, not that he could remember, and it had only been at the moment of his death that he had had tears in his eyes, because yes, he had been afraid. He had been afraid, he had not wanted to die, and in this one moment, all the deaths that he had brought carelessly had come back to him for just a second, and he had felt an idea of what he had done. This guilt was gone now, but the feeling that started slowing his pulse with dread was painfully similar. Although he gave up fighting against Walter's grip, he let out a sharp hiss when the vampire tightened it. A Methuselah's strength was, no matter how superior in his world, still far inferior to that of the actual undead.
The scene before him changed, and with reddened eyes half-lidded in a horrified daze, he watched the face of his tovarăş illuminated by the rising sun in the middle of their fight, only to be eaten away with terrible slowness by nanomachines in his blood that were hyped and hungry from the influence of UV light. The slim figure was bending forward, hands covering a face burnt beyond recognition, screaming his agony out like a wounded animal. Ion would survive this ordeal. Ion would reach out, extend his hand, scream his friend's name while the Inquisitor's weapon would blast a hole into Radu's chest, rip out his lungs and heart and the better part of his spine, while the bullet from an android's gun would pierce his forehead with deadly aim and blast blood and skull fragments and parts of his brain out through the back of his head, while he was tumbling and falling and sinking into the sea to die - and come back to haunt the boy lead by the Puppetmaster's threads.
Radu winced and tried to flinch from the image as far backwards as Walter's grip allowed him. His breath felt searing in his lungs, and while his lips formed to mutter words in a silent, frenzied torrent of words, the only sound that really left his throat was a low, trembling groan and laboured drags of breath. He could not take the images any longer. His hands shot up to seize and claw into Walter's arm and pushing against his shoulder, trying to pull away from him and escape. The tears that had gathered in his eyes were starting to run down now, an unfamiliar and embarrassing feeling if he had been paying any attention to it now. A convulsed sob escaped him, and with a breathless effort, he managed to whisper, "Please..."
"How many people have begged you 'Please,' Radu?" Walter asked implacably, ignoring what were, for now, pointless struggles. Until the fighting turned to fire or the Judged produced unexpected silver, there was little Walter had to be concerned about. "Your tears are for yourself. What of the lives you destroyed all because you couldn't rise above your jealousy?"
There were other sins Walter could use to illustrate. How many years of pleading, tear-streaked faces for this traitor? Push the memory of Ion aside for now and let a spill of harm done by Radu display for them instead. This one hid behind forgetfulness and excuses. Let them see how long he could last when memory betrayed him as surely as he had betrayed others.
A jerk ran through Radu's body and he screamed, collecting all his strength in a last effort to shake Walter off, which failed as completely as the others before. Then at last, his grip gave in, his arms fell down weakly. All those faces - why did he still remember them? Why did he still see Pietro Borromini, the Vatican-spy who had programmed the Iblis-system for him, staring at him with eyes in which a sparkle of hope was just dying out, to be replaced with sheer and nameless horror when the man realised that his comrade had not come to save him from his prison cell, but to execute him and any danger of being found out? The man had died drained of blood and burnt to death, but it had been acceptable, he had been a traitor to his people, a supporter of terrorists, a collaborator of murderers - he had been like him. The other deaths came back to him - soldiers who died in an inferno of flames, men blown in pieces by explosions, people he had lost count of, he had murdered without so much as looking at their faces. A trembling seized him and he muttered helplessly, in a choked voice, "I thought I was... I didn't think they - I didn't know - didn't know they were like us, I didn't think it mattered-"
Walter had heard that protest from others. I didn't think... I didn't know... I didn't think it mattered.
"Shouldn't your victims lives matter? You thought yours did, but did it? Does it? Hiding from yourself and the world in a haze of drugs because you know that if you begin to think...." Walter let it hang. He didn't have all the pieces to the puzzle that was Radu, but he found that the man was quite willing to hand him the pieces if Walter left spaces that needed to be filled.
To this question, Radu could only offer a shaking, hesitant nod. "I... hated dying," he whispered between choked breathing; an almost unintelligible torrent of words in the same low volume and frequency as his laboured breathing. "I didn't want to die, I said I was ready to die but I had no idea it was so terrible - dying is terrible." He closed his eyes and, his arms folded across his torso, hands clenching the opposite upper arm, rocked his body slightly back and forth a time or two, while his trembling grew worse. He swallowed, but it hardly helped against the sore feeling in his throat, constricted by a choking strain of stress and occasional uncontrollable fits of sobbing. His voice almost too hoarse to be intelligible, he continued shaken and more to himself than to Walter, "I didn't mean to - I didn't want to betray them, I chose them, but I just - he betrayed me first, he wanted to feed on me, and he-"
He could not continue. He had been sure the Orden had betrayed him, but now - no, he could not continue even this trail of thought. It was to them that he owed his life, it was Dietrich who had saved him time and time again, who had resurrected him and rebuilt his body twice, who defended him in an organisation that he had failed to prove his worth yet, despite all the chances he had been given. It was Dietrich who was searching for him now, Dietrich who was responsible for explaining his subordinate's insubordination to his own superiors, Dietrich's support which he disregarded to dwell on small malicious teasings which he really deserved. Just like it had been Ion whom he had provoked to proclaim what he could interpret as ignorance and egoism, Ion whom he had hurt and dishonoured with betrayal and insincerity, Ion who had chosen to trust him against all odds and had earned hatred and pain from him in return. Mirka Fortuna, Ion's grandmother and the Duchess of Moldova, who had - even if strict - raised him at her court and given him opportunities far above his rank, and whom he had paid back by ambushing her, killing what he had thought was her, and blowing up her mansion to frame her grandson. And all the lives he had taken thoughtlessly, the suffering he had brought to people because they were in his way - he had never forgiven his mother for leaving him, but how many children had he deprived of their parents, how many of them had died a pointless and brutal death because of a detail that had gone wrong in his plans?
He had never stopped to consider it before, and now the weight of deeds that could not be undone crashed down on him with a heaviness he could not carry. Walter's grip was all that still held him up, and while the sharp pain in his scalp was an almost pleasant distraction from the pain inside him, it could hardly do enough. For the first time in his life, he clung to himself and cried, his whole body shaking with sobs, shed tears for a brother and a mother, a duchess and a queen, a country, a friend, mercy he had wasted, for betrayed feelings and for nameless, faceless Terran he would have considered less worthy than cattle any other day. He would have found it embarrassing, humiliating to be seen like this, but it was not like he could escape Walter, escape his judgment, and even if - it did not matter any more.
There. Walter nodded to himself with satisfaction. This was judgment. It wasn't enough that Walter punish Radu - people could go through punishment imposed by others and come out the other side feeling justified, martyred. For Walter's judgment to serve its purpose, Radu had to punish himself in full understanding of his crimes.
Radu had been punishing himself before with his lies to himself and his self-destruction and drugs, but it wasn't useful. Suffering should have reason and purpose.
The gates remained open, but the scenes faded until the only thing that showed on the other side of the hole Radu had created with his fire was a blackness deeper than mere darkness. If you went into that blackness, you would soon claw your eyes just for the flashes of false light your brain would create, and it would not be enough.
He lowered the weeping man to the floor and rose to look down at him.
He had had more sympathy for Tayuya. This one... did not elicit such feelings, but Walter would always understand things about Radu that no one else would.
There was no martyredom in this judgement, no opportunity to feed on self-pity and his own misery, no satisfaction in the illusion of having a right to hate and destroy because of his own fate - no excuses. What Radu was confronted with was not another evil oppressor who would give him yet another chance to fight against chains and repercussions he had constructed in his own mind, and manipulated to come into being. He was facing nothing but his own deeds, his past, and the lies he had spun around it, the full dimension of his self-treachery and pathetic attempts to escape from this reality. He did not realise that Walter had let him go, or that the images forced upon him had stopped - that his judge left through a hole of darkness that would have taken the rest of Radu's sanity away had he thrown a glance inside it.
He was left alone in his refuge in the end, with his own demons, a shaking wreck on the floor, crying like a child and breaking his fingernails because he clawed too hard into the floor. There was no comfort or triumph left this time; the judgement left him empty, alone, desperate, and he knew well enough by now that this despair was all brought upon him by himself. Soberness came far too quickly and took away the merciful daze his drugs had left him in.
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You're just jealous you weren't the judge, Dietrich.He cried and you didn't see it! :DI'm calling this icon "BDSM Icon" now.Lol, mindfuck.Walter is damn hot when he's judging people.... yeah. ;-;
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What. Jailbait charme!no subject
I have to tell myself the young jailbait-y
oh so nicely hotone is over 18 to keep my conscience appeased. It works even better here, where he really is over 18 and I can be as naughty with him as I like. XDno subject
And signed again. ;_; Hell, I'd be content with 16. Or 15 at least. Just 14 sounds so damn wrong.
But all the posing. It works. ><... he is? You shouldn't have said that. Now I really don't feel guilty anymore.
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And of course he's over 18 here. In poly, he's from end-Hellsing canon and is now 70. So not guilt at all. ^________^
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*facepalm* Shit, true. I was more thinking of his young form now, physically.
That one makes me want to steal his cigarette. ♥no subject
The 14 thing is a mild squick for me, which is why I tend to play him older and when I write smutfic, I end up aging him past 14 for my own comfort.
I can't help that Hirano drew him so tempting and then insisted he was so young. ;;_;;
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Same here. I pretty much hate anything shota/loli with passion, but he's... just so damn tempting. >< Considering he kills people and all at that age, maybe this stuff isn't too hardcore by comparison, but it makes me uncomfortable, too.
And really. It wouldn't have killed Hirano to add one or two years at least to his age, would it? >_>
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