Aloysius isn't a terrorist (abcroaker) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-05-17 15:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1980-05] may, aloysius croaker, lavinia travers |
Who: Aloysius Croaker & Lavinia Travers
When: 16 May 1979, after this series of owls
Where: The Cottage Aloysius prepared for Lavinia's safe-keeping.
What: Lavinia faces the consequences of Jo being hurt.
Rating: R
Status: Complete
Aloysius walked along the corridor towards Lavinia's room feeling very much like an executioner even though he wasn't going to kill the girl. He had his wand in his hand and a vial of pain potion in his pocket. He'd arranged for there to be a vial with every meal for the next few days. The girl was going to need it.
He didn't feel anything. He'd locked up every single one of his feelings except for implacable resolve. He didn't want them right now. He certainly didn't need them right now. He had made a promise to Travers and perhaps he shouldn't have made it in the first place but it was done and now there were consequences to mete out. It was entirely logical after all. He couldn't back away now or Travers would think he could get away with anything. Give the man an inch and he would take a mile and Jo would suffer. So in turn Lavinia had to suffer for her brother's mistake.
Logical.
He unlocked the door to Lavinia's room and walked in, locked it behind him. "Sit down on the chair and place your hands on the table," he said emotionlessly, gesturing towards the small table and chair.
Lavinia looked startled at the intrusion. The man, for all his barbarism, had always knocked first. She had just said goodnight to Gaius and was readying herself for bed, not that she could really ready herself without any sort of pyjamas or a vanity or anything that she was used to having at home. Instead, she'd gotten into a regime where she washed her face, straightened out her dress, and sat for a good twenty minutes before bed, trying to calm herself for the comforting dreams that necessarily would come.
When he entered, she felt fear spill across her insides. He looked. Well. He looked resolved, and though that in and of itself wasn't frightening, there was something about that resolve that she knew was bad. She didn't know how she knew, or why she was fearful, but she could sense that something in the air wasn't right and she wanted something. Some kind of explanation to cling to.
His command did not fall upon deaf ears -- she was painfully obedient, even in these horrendous circumstances. Standing, she moved to the table, though she did not sit immediately.
"What has happened? What is wrong?" Her heart pounded against her ribs and her face was smeared with uncertainty. He shouldn't have been here this late. "What's wrong?" She repeated.
Aloysius simply watched the girl walk over to the table. He didn't feel anything even in the face of her obvious fear and uncertainty. He couldn't right now. He wouldn't allow it. He'd done this sort of thing with his emotions before though not for anything remotely like this. He'd done it the morgue when he'd had to autopsy bodies, especially children. Completely divorced himself from his emotions to protect himself, so that he could do what he needed to do.
"Please sit down and place your hands upon the table," he repeated, still in that flat emotionless tone. "The quicker you do this, the quicker I will leave."
Lavinia was shaking now, visibly, painfully. Oh god. Oh god why was he here? "Please," she whimpered, though she obeyed -- what else could she do, being who she was? -- and took a seat at the table. Her hands remained balled in her lap first. "Please, please tell me why first. I promise I'll do it." She didn't know if that was a real promise or not but she had to know. He was scaring her with his matter-of-factness. At least before, when he'd been annoyed, he was feeling something. She was sensitive to that -- had to be -- because of Gaius. She tried very hard to circumvent his anger at all cost, and it made her very aware of what he was feeling at all times.
This man was feeling nothing. "Please." She had no reticence begging.
Aloysius watched her impassively as she sat down though when she refused to place her hands on the table, he didn't even feel irritation. Just a continuation of that implacable resolve. He raised his wand and with a quick flick and a barked word he bound her to the chair. He then reached down and grabbed one wrist, yanking her hand up onto the table and placed it there firmly then binding it in place before repeating that with her other hand. Once that was done, he straightened and placed the tip of his wand against her left wrist.
"I am sorry about this," he said with that eerie calm. There was something in him that insisted that she be given an explanation for what was about to happen. "Your brother was given very strict instructions. He was to ensure that Miss Savage remained unharmed and well until we could exchange you for her. He was also told that anything that happened to Miss Savage would happen to you. Given how much your brother cares for you, I thought that would be more than sufficient to ensure that both you and Miss Savage came to no harm."
He looked down at her wrist. "Unfortunately your brother has not kept his end of the bargain. You may have noticed Miss Savage's journal entry where she mentioned her wrists having been healed. If they needed to be healed then they had been damaged. Your brother allowed that to happen. He did not protect Miss Savage and therefore he has not protected you."
He cocked his head to one side and it almost looked like a certain distant sympathy entered his eyes. "I am sorry. Truly. I had hoped that you would be able to return to your brother unharmed but unfortunately he failed to keep both you and Miss Savage safe."
With that he cast the bone twisting curse on both of her wrists.
All it took was the binding to the chair, and Lavinia was terrified. "No, no please," she begged, unsure what it was she was attempting to forestall. "Please, please, I have been good, I have, I promise, please, please." And she didn't struggle as he jerked her hand onto the table, even though her chest was practically exploding with fear. Oh god, she didn't know what he was going to do but she was scared and she didn't know how she was supposed to react. She'd begged, but maybe that wasn't what he wanted. Maybe he wanted her to just obey and behave.
Placing her other hand atop the table, she looked up at him with a terrified hopefulness. Please be what he wanted. Please.
But he was speaking, and she had to struggle to understand the words through her filter of desperation. Miss Savage. She didn't even know who that was right now. Gaius. Protecting. She didn't know what he was talking about, and her face was twisted in terror. "Please," she whimpered, lips already wet with tears. "Please please please."
To no avail. He finished speaking words she didn't understand, and his wand glowed.
And then she was screaming. All she could feel was pain in her wrist, like nothing she could understand. She was sheltered and babied by Gaius to the point that the worst she'd ever suffered was a scraped knee, a misfired charm.
She couldn't even beg. All she could do was sob -- hysterical, terrified, wet noises.
She didn't even struggle.
Aloysius stared down at her impassively though there was a tiny part of his mind that knew he'd be throwing up for quite awhile later on and that he'd better make sure he was done with all that before he went back to his basement because Pepper had been surprisingly calm about everything to do with Jo even though Aloysius was sure that Pepper knew he was up to something. But if he came back still feeling like he needed to vomit and Pepper saw that, Pepper might decide to ask the questions he hadn't asked so far. He wasn't going to be able to hide everything but as long as he looked and acted relatively normal, he suspected Pepper might leave it alone.
He let those thoughts drift away and ended the curse. He immediately cast the healing spell that would return the bones to their proper positions and fix anything that was broken. He put his wand away in his robes for a moment and pulled out the vial of pain potion. He took hold of her chin gently and turned her head to face him.
"Open your mouth," he said gently but firmly. "This is just a pain potion. If you swallow it, the pain will go away."
She cried.
And though she wanted, in some deep place she didn't access, to tell him to go to hell and she didn't want his stupid potion, she opened her mouth, wet and racked with sobs as it was. It hurt. God, it hurt, and she nursed her wounded wrist with her good hand, trying to comprehend the pain that was screaming up her arm. Why had he done this to her? It wasn't Gaius, it couldn't have been Gaius, so it had to be some other reason. She'd done something wrong. Or maybe he was just evil. Maybe that. That made sense.
Her thin shoulders shook, and she tried not to struggle.
Aloysius poured the potion down her throat then returned the empty vial to his pocket. He pulled out his wand and headed for the door.
"I suggest you contact your brother," he said flatly. "Tell him what happened and tell him to make sure Miss Savage is not harmed again, not by him and not by anyone else. I do not wish to harm you again and I am quite sure that both he and you wish the same."
A bitter, mirthless smile twisted his lips for a moment. "Perhaps he will listen to you."
With that he stalked towards the door, pausing only to unbind Lavinia and then let himself out of the room, closing and locking the door behind him. He stalked down the corridor and straight out the front door, heading for the nearest set of bushes. His face twisted into a sickened expression of self-disgust and self-loathing as he promptly emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground.
Lavinia sat at the table long after he'd walked out, curling up into the wood of the table and crying over her wrist. The pain potion changed nothing but the uppermost physical pain. She was still left with the dull ache of his handiwork, the psychological trauma of having been exposed to such cruelty. She'd never suffered this sort of thing before. She didn't know how she was supposed to react. So she simply cried, and when she believed that the man was out of earshot she howled and howled in self-pity and fear.
Finally, after what seemed like hours and was likely only thirty minutes, she dragged herself off of the chair and into her bed, where she dragged out her journal and opened it up to Gaius's last comments to her. Around this, she curled, waiting minute after painful minute before she finally found her quill. Before she finally tried to extract some comfort from her far-away brother.