Gaius 'no more Mister Nice Gaius' Travers (excelsior) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-05-12 16:35:00 |
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It had been a long day at work for Gaius, who was still feeling the effects of the last battle in spite of having been deemed completely recovered. For some reason, stress seemed to irritate even the oldest and most minor of injuries he'd sustained in the last year, leaving him craving a cup of tea and a warm meal at the end of each day. Working in the Rehabilitation Centre had been rewarding in its own right, but sometimes he found himself wishing he could go back to the monotony of bill collecting, which had been far easier and less of an emotional marathon. Of course, bill collecting wasn't going to get him anywhere and he couldn't complain about the substantial pay-raise he'd been given after taking his current position. And they'd made progress -- real, tangible progress. Josephine Savage was being successfully molded from terrorist to soldier, bit by bit, and it was all his doing. While it had been somewhat humbling to see how easily manipulated the human mind actually was -- and a bit alarming, if he thought about whether or not he'd ever been manipulated, a question that could only be answered with a vehement 'yes' -- he was proud of himself for being able to wield these tools for the betterment of his country. Regardless, it was tiring work. So, when Gaius finally arrived home that evening, he was expecting for things to work as they usually did. A routine was one thing he'd been pleased to keep after trying to process such a massive shift in his work life. He was normally happily received as well, which was a pleasant thing to which he could return. He was particularly hungry on this night, for some reason, and looking forward to whatever it was that Seraphina had prepared for dinner. He could smell it from the doorway as he entered the house, calling 'I'm home' to announce his presence and waiting for the inevitable appearance of his little sister, who would normally greet him and hang his cloak for him. But after several moments, she still hadn't appeared from the sitting room and the rest of the house was silent, as though no one were there. Perhaps she hadn't heard him. "I'm home!" he called, louder this time. "Gaius?" his father's voice replied, hesitant and far weaker than he was accustomed to hearing. "I think you ought to come in here." Something was wrong. His father rarely acknowledge him when he came home from work unless he had a problem with which he needed some assistance -- a book he couldn't reach, a financial conundrum he couldn't reason or a story about something Lavinia had done earlier in the day that warranted his immediate attention, none of which were things he cared to deal with when he'd just walked through the door. But even on those occasions, his little sister had been there to say 'hello' and the absence of that particular part of his routine was the most disturbing of them all. "What is it?" he asked, shrugging off his cloak and reluctantly hanging it on the hook himself. He paused there, hands on the shoulders of the robe, waiting for his father's answer. He could hear some hushed whispers, which he assumed belonged to his father and eldest sister. The longer the silence hung between the sitting room and entryway, the more unsettled he became. So, he finally made his way into the room containing two-thirds of his family, sitting next to each other on the sofa with somber expressions on their faces. His father looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes, features wrought into an expression of distress. Seraphina sat quietly next to him with a book face-down in her lap, looking worried as she wrung her hands together. He'd only seen her this way once, after he'd gone to to the Lestrange Manor to receive his punishment from Bellatrix. There was still a faint scar on his cheek from that evening, the shade of which always seemed to deepen along with his cheeks when he was flushed. He imagined that now, when the colour in his cheeks reflected his own worry, growing rapidly and coiling in the pit of his stomach, the scar was more prominent than usual. There was one thing missing from this scene and the continued silence kept his hastened breaths loudest of all in his ears. "Where is Lavinia?" he asked, glancing between his father and sister. The two simply looked at each other, Seraphina reaching to pat the back of their father's hand in some sort of comforting, encouraging gesture. The silence lingered still and Gaius felt himself growing impatient, frantic in his thoughts. "Where is she?" he demanded, keeping a cool resolve as he took a step further into the room, the creaking of the floorboards occupying the gap between him and his family. "Tell me where she is." "They took her," Quintus said, voice barely a whisper. He avoided his son's gaze, looking down at his knees, his hands, the floor -- anything to prolong the bought of rage he knew he would face once he explained. Some part of him was ashamed for so willingly sacrificing his daughter, but another reasoned that he already had a daughter who was bright and intelligent, that the loss of the the second one wasn't such a great tragedy. His life was worth more than the child's, though he knew that Gaius wouldn't see it that way. When another footstep brought him closer, Quintus stiffened, frightened of the inevitable shouting that would rob the evening of peace once and for all. "Took her?" Gaius repeated as he stepped closer, directing his incredulous expression toward his sister when his father looked away. "Took her?" He finally stood still as he reached the center of the room, feeling as though there were a barrier between the three of him that prevented him from moving any closer. They were at a standoff until they told him more -- he had too many questions to which he wanted to demand answers, such as 'who had taken her?' and 'what would anybody want with her?' She was just a girl, insignificant in the larger scheme of things, but important to him nonetheless. If this was his father's fault, and it seemed to be, judging by his guilty behaviour, then Gaius could not be held accountable for what he would do to him. "I couldn't stop them," Quintus answered, his hand trembling beneath his daughter's. "They were going to kill me if I hadn't..." The man trailed off, letting the silence flood the room again. He looked to Seraphina, hoping that she might give him the words he needed to diffuse this situation. Instead, he received another sympathetic pat on the back of his hand, though it was enough to show him that she was as nervous as he. But he'd already known that -- she'd made Gaius's favourite meal for dinner, hoping that it would appease him, keep him from reacting badly to the news. In spite of all their discussion on how they would tell him, Quintus was on his own, without a plan, a spine or a reason that would be good enough for his son. "Then you should have let them kill you," Gaius said, narrowing his eyes at the two of them. He was cold, isolated in this house without his sister. His father and sister had each other, but Lavinia had been his to look after and the closest thing he'd had to an ally in this family of narcissists. While he had never harboured any deep-seeded grudge against his father, he had never been able to respect a man who let others tread over him without protest, and yet still managed to make himself appear as a martyr for the status quo, some one with whom his daughter could sympathise, whom his son could ignore. He'd lived a great deal of his life already and all of it was meaningless -- he'd never contributed anything to society the way his son had. As appalling as his mother had been, Gaius was grateful for having taken more after her than his father, who could have watched the world annihilated around him without lifting a finger and would have crawled to the dead bodies after, seeking sympathy. Shock registered on both his sister and father's faces at the indifference in Gaius's tone -- how could one of their own be so cruelly apathetic to the fate of their father? Seraphina released her father's hand and stood, crossing the distance between the sofa and her brother with footsteps softer than his had been, keeping the silence much closer to its maximum. She reached for her brother's hand when she was close enough, just as she had with her father moments before. Holding it in her own, she looked up at him, knowing that if she did not appeal to his sense of reason that things would turn sour with more fervor than any of them could reign safely. "They said they wouldn't hurt her," she said, smoothing her fingertips over the back of his thumb. "Please do not be angry." "You believed them?" Gaius said, sweeping his hand out of his sister's grip and taking a step away. He set his jaw and took a moment to breath, hoping that he could maintain some semblance of equanimity in front of them, but their nonchalance about this situation was making it increasingly difficult with each moment more he gained to process the fact that his sister had been abducted -- taken -- and his father had let it hapen. "Please leave, Sera," he said, pointing to the staircase with one hand as the other curled itself into a clenched fist. "You don't need to see this." Both sister and father balked, moving forward in protest simultaneously. His father's face shone genuine alarm and fear at the idea of being left alone with Gaius when he was in this state -- he did not know the details of his son's extracurricular activities, but he knew that he was capable of doing things, committing acts of which he could barely conceive. He did not know what fate he would meet once the buffer between himself and his son, but he always feared the worst. If that were the case, he would not be the first undeserving man to die at the hands of his emotionally impeded son's misdirected wrath. He paid his face in his palms while his daughter reached for Gaius's arm in spite of her already having been dismissed. "Please, Gaius." "I said, 'leave'," he replied, an edge of cool, impending malevolence apparent in his voice. He pulled his arm away from her one last time and fixed her with a look that displayed, for the first time this evening, precisely just how severe his displeasure was. She did not want to see this -- he did not want her to see this. And it appeared to have worked, since only a few moments passed before she resigned, casting her father a plaintive glance before disappearing heavily up the stairs to her room, leaving the two men alone alone with their unasked and unanswered questions. "You don't have to do this," Quintus said, edging forward on the sofa as soon as Seraphina had cleared the room. His face was drawn with anxiety and his hands clasped across his knees. His breathing was becoming shallow with each moment that Gaius stood wordlessly preparing himself. "They were two Unspeakables -- they wouldn't show me their identification. They bound me. Stunned me. There was nothing I could do." Gaius was unmoved by his father's attempts to placate him and turned to present him with his back. He didn't want to look at him right now. Were it anyone else -- anyone with with even a bit more common sense, he'd have commuted himself to severe injury or death by turning his back on him, but he knew that his father would do nothing to protect himself. He would merely plead, that aggravating whine, until he put a stop to it. The more he thought about it, the more he loathed his father for his weakness, his inability to stand up for any belief or any person, regardless of how much they meant to him. Seraphina had always been his favourite of the two daughters, but Gaius doubted that even if Sera had been in Lavinia's place that his father would have put up much of a fight to keep her. He didn't want to imagine what was happening to his sister right now, but that his imagination would run away with him was inevitable. Clearly the two that had taken here were not Unspeakables of the Ministry sort. He didn't want to consider who they were -- perhaps vigilantes or members of the frightening new terrorist group from which they'd acquired Miss Savage a few weeks earlier. He hoped she was warm, safe, being fed and kept clean, but the likelihood of that seemed narrow when one considered the sort of filth with whom they were probably dealing. It seemed more plausible that she was being tortured, browbeaten and otherwise mistreated. The thought caused a tightness in his chest that limited his lung capacity. There was some unfamiliar feeling pooling there with each breath he took, but he willed it away along with the scenarios he was creating in his mind. She must have been frightened, terrified, hoping that he would come and retrieve her. She belonged safe at home, not Out There, where she could be so easily taken advantage of. She was young, sheltered, proper and innocent -- but for how long? The feeling his chest rose from his lungs into his throat where it lingered, constricting his airway and drawing stinging tears from the corners of his eyes. One of those filthy Mudbloods could have been pillaging her innocence while he stood in his sitting room, contemplating what, exactly, he was going to do. His inaction was costing Lavinia with each minute that passed -- if he ever saw her again, would she be the same sister he'd left behind that morning to go to work? Would anything ever be the same after this? He blamed his father and the callous negligence, the cowardice that had helped create this situation. With a brisk sweep of his sleeve across his eyes, Gaius decided that he'd spent enough time thinking -- it wasn't helping anything. Instead, he turned to his father -- the feeble excuse for a man who had caused him nothing but shame and embarrassment up until now. Now, he had caused the loss of that which meant most to Gaius, and he couldn't stand by while his father, the coward, escaped unharmed at her expense. Turning around, he discovered that his father had spent the last few minutes crying, feeling sorry for himself, no doubt. "Father," he said, reaching into his pocket for his wand. "Hold still." He need not have said anything, for Quintus had no intentions of moving. He wouldn't run, he would simply beg for mercy and appeal to the ideals of whatever sort of father/son relationship they were supposed to have in hopes that his son would re-think what he was about to do. Falling forward onto the floor, he crawled to his son's feet and stared up at him, eyes welling with tears anew. "Gaius, please. I'm a good man. A good father. I've always provided for you. I don't want to die." He began sobbing, taking fistfuls of his son's robes and pressing them to his eyes to hide his face. Gaius's mouth drew into a thin line as he stared down at his father, who had simply added insult to injury in his attempt to save himself. He was the one who, since he had completed his NEWTs, had worked tirelessly to provide for their family while he'd spent his earnings on wine and books, squirreling the rest away in some place unknown the him. He'd practically raised his sisters while his father had spent evenings saturated with depression and self-pity. He'd been useless as far as men and fathers went -- what little obligation Gaius did feel toward him was that which stemmed from their blood. He was his father, whether he loved, despised or was indifferent to him, and that was the only thing tying the two of them together. "I'm not going to kill you," he said, taking stern steps away from his father until he was out of the man's grasp. "But maybe if I give you some sense of the kind of treatment she's receiving right now, you'll let yourself be killed the next time." And with that, Gaius flicked his wand, turning his father over onto his back on the sitting room floor. The man sputtered, struggling to right himself, rolling his eyes upward to find his son, but Gaius kept him pinned in place. "I said, 'hold still'." "Son," he said, letting out a harsh breath that ended in a high whimper. His eyes revealed the terror he felt, unsure of where his son was standing out of the range of his peripheral vision and what, exactly, he was planning to do. He wanted to beg him once more to spare him, but he knew it was no use. His son had made up his mind before and there wasn't anything he could have done or said to change the plan of action he'd already calculated. Even if Gaius hadn't already expected this sort of theatrical production, he still wouldn't have been stirred by his father's pathetic attempts. Even his penchant for manipulation was something he'd clearly taken from his mother, since his father had no concept of the subtlety it took to successfully delve into that which motivated a person, drove them to do what they did. Once that had been neutralised, there was no end to the ideas that could be inserted in its place. Some one should have told this to Quintus before he tried to beg for a life that Gaius had no intention of taking. "Crucio." Gaius muttered. The man instantly seized and let out a wail of pain, his body convulsing as waves of excruciating torment swept over him. Heaving, he cried out once again through his sobs, begging for Gaius to stop, to be reasonable. He clawed at his arms, screaming as something terrible crawled beneath his skin, wrenching through his bones and blood so painfully that Quintus completely lost control of his body and released the contents of his bladder out onto their sitting room floor. He bit his tongue, chewed his lips and groaned through the agony, pounding his fists on the floor until his knuckles were raw and bleeding in an attempt to find anything to distract himself from the pain, even if only more pain. Upstairs, Seraphina could hear everything and she, too, sobbed for her father from beneath the pillow she held over her ears in a futile attempt to dampen the sounds coming from the sitting room. What had their family become? What monsters had they all become? She could never look at her brother the same way again -- not without fear striking her at her core or seeing flashes of the horrors she imagined taking place below her. How could she have allowed this to happen? Why hadn't she been more insistent when he'd sent her away? Her father was paying for her lack of perseverance, now, and she thought she might never forgive herself. It lasted for twenty-seven minutes, after which he finally stopped, his forehead and neck slick from the sweat of concentration. His father was a repulsive, stinking mess, having torn himself apart as much as Gaius had. Once it was finished, he simply wanted to be away from the man -- away from the evidence of what he'd done. Returning his wand to its place in his pocket, he wiped his palms on his robes and left the room, following Sera's earlier footsteps up the stairs. The house was once again in silence, save for Quintus's quiet whimpers from the floor. Now, Gaius would have prefered the absolute soundlessness, the serrated tension and self-seclusion. He just wanted to be alone. "Clean him up," he said as he passed by his sister's open door and walked into his own bedroom, closing the door behind him. On the chair in the corner of the room were the remains of Lavinia's cross-stitching from earlier in the day, where she'd been sitting, watching him put on his tie before work. Trying not to look, Gaius spilled himself out onto his bed, burying his face in his sheets where nothing but his shame could find him. What had he done? What kind of person was he becoming, that he could stand torturing his own father for nearly a half-hour? He was no better than their father, after all, but worse in a far more horrifying way. He was becoming that which he hated in so many of his colleagues -- the propensity for violence, the apathy after causing some one pain and the emptiness of remorselessness. That he did not feel guilty was the most harrowing realisation of the ordeal, one that filled him with fear and isolation -- there was no one to whom he could turn with Lavinia gone. And it had never occurred to him before now just how lost he would be without her. |