lakshmi patil (patill) wrote in disorderic, @ 2018-04-09 16:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | keats avery, lakshmi patil, madeline savage |
WHO: Lakshmi Patil & Keats Avery. Later, Madeline Savage.
WHAT: Keats deals with another problem.
WHEN: April 9th, evening.
WHERE: Lakshmi’s flat, London.
WARNINGS: Creepiness! Violence! Torture! Death!
Tired and upset, Lakshmi’s keys clicked in the lock to her flat’s front door. It creaked open and Lakshmi pushed through carrying a bag of groceries. Her keys dropped onto the table by the door, and then she made her way further inside. Her boots came off, and then she retrieved her wand from her cloak pocket and levitated her groceries into the kitchen. Then, she turned on the light switched and reached for her phone. The groceries could wait for a few moments, and she sorely, sorely needed a glass of wine to help her along the path to getting to sleep tonight. She was halfway through a return hext to Maddie when she noticed that she wasn’t alone. Adrenaline spiked, and she screamed, dropping her phone onto the carpeted floor of her living room. The Death Eater that had been sitting on her couch turned to face her, cringing at the sound of her screams from behind his mask. “Ugh, can you please keep it down? We don’t need to notify the whole neighbourhood, now do we?” Keats bemoaned, lifting his wand in what he hoped was a threatening manner as he got to his feet. “Your Netflix recommendations are terrible, by the way.” For some who had never faced an actual Death Eater in regalia before the whole scene was vivid and terrifying. “What are you doing? What do you want?” she managed to get out even as her voice squeaked from fear. She wasn’t a fighter; she only had the knowledge her nieces tried to impart on her over the holiday and she could scarcely remember more than one of those face to face with the masked and robed individual. She took a step back, heel pressing against where her phone had fallen. “What do you mean terrible?!” Somehow, that was easier to focus on than anything else. “The Crown? Jurassic World? Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Where’s the overarching theme? Where’s the cohesion? Also, what’s with all the depressing murder shows? Weird. Do you have a thing for law enforcement or something?” Keats said, then—realising he’d gone off on a tangent—he cleared his throat. He was about to commence with the threats when the ending of Great British Bake-Off chimed in in the background. He turned, disappointed. “Oh no. Not the souffle!” Lakshmi took the time the Death Eater had turned to watch her show to crouch down and try to pick up her phone in trembling hands. Maddie. John. Jasper. One of them. The hext with Maddie was still open, and she went to type — she looked up and say the Death Eater’s attention returning and panicked. Typing gibberish, she instead jammed her forefinger into the ‘call’ button before scampering away, still crouched, and with wand pointed the man. “Just leave.” Keats whisked around to find his prey scampering away. He stumbled after her. “No! I need to talk to you! Get back here!” The woman had no desire to get any closer to her attacker, and kept backpedaling on the floor until her hand landed on the wet, slightly muddy boot she’d taken off a minute earlier. Grasping it, she swung and threw it towards the Death Eater. Then, her mind finally kicked into gear and she cast a disarming charm at the man. Without seeing if either landed, she scampered to her feet and ran towards the kitchen. “Ugh!” Keats cried out, cringing as the muddy boot hit him in the head. The disarming charm missed him and sent a picture frame soaring back at her instead. “You can’t just throw things at people! And you shouldn’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong! I’m trying to help you! I don’t want to have to hurt you! Merlin, this is going to stain.” If, perhaps, the situation were different Lakshmi may have been listening, but as it was she was gripped in the fear that was associated with Death Eater attacks. The picture hit the wall inches away from her shattered the glass in the frame before dropping to the ground. Nothing the man said was registering beyond the fact he was inside her flat, and dressed in the robes and mask that typically heralded torture and murder. Her murder. “Shut up shut up shut up!” she yelled, willing him to leave and also willing Maddie to answer her phone and hear what was going on before it was too late. She waved her wand at her bag of groceries and sent various items — oranges, a ham, a carton of milk — towards the man as he rounded the corner into the kitchen after her. “Ouch! UGH! Owww! Stop!” the Death Eater whined, as he was hit with all of those items in quick succession. That ham was going to leave a bruise. The milk carton hit him in the head and exploded all over him; he hoped lactose couldn’t be absorbed through his skin—how did that work, anyhow? He was not a scientist. He blindly slashed his wand at her, whipping a drawer open and sending a shower of spoons at his intended victim. “Leave or—” the spoons ripped from the drawer and smacked all over her, their handles and concave eating surfaces hitting her shoulder and cheek as she averted her gaze. It was probably good that her sentence was interrupted as she had nothing to say. Her own wand wave and sent the forks right back at the masked man. “Ow! Fork this!” Keats yelped, as several forks stabbed him right through his Death Eating robes. Now he was getting impatient. He conjured a lassoing spell at her and grabbed her around the ankle. He tried to pull her across the floor. Perhaps if she wouldn’t stay still long enough for him to lecture her, he’d make her stay still. “I’m not leaving until you shut up and listen to me!” Lakshmi had just turned on her heel to make for the dining area through the secondary exit of the kitchen when the rope snared her leg and she went down roughly, elbows and chin taking the brunt of her fall. The pain shot through her arms and jaw, and she could tell she’d bitten into her tongue from the metallic taste in her mouth. “I’m not listening to anything!” she shouted, one hand grasping the handle to the refrigerator door in an attempt to keep the Death Eater from dragging her towards him. She knew what was coming, she wasn’t stupid! Not after what had just happened and her own feelings of tremendous guilt surrounding it all, the part she played. She pointed her wand blindly behind her and shouted another spell her nieces had drilled into her: “Stupefy!” The stunner glanced off the light fixture just above Keats’ head, causing it to swing. A bulb smashed and showered him with glass. It wasn’t enough to make him leave, but it was enough to make him let go of the rope. “I said STOP!” he bellowed, far angrier than before. He’d had enough of this. “Maybe I should kill you after all.” He hissed, sending a bone-shattering spell Lakshmi’s way. The spell flashed from the Death Eater’s wand and suddenly the hand she was using to grasp the fridge door handle erupted into pain as the bones fractured and then shattered apart. All she could do was give an anguished, throaty scream in pain as she curled it protectively against her chest, not daring to look and see the broken bones sticking out from the skin. It was more pain than she’d ever been in before in her life. With both her knees and one good hand (still clutching her wand), she crawled away from the Death Eater towards the dining room while the tears rolled down her eyes. “Did you kill him, too?” Keats made a disgusted face behind his mask at the sight of the compound fracture and tried not to throw up. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Are you going to listen now, or do you need more persuasion?” he asked, before levelling a half-hearted Cruciatus at her retreating form. The answer was no, but even as Lakshmi made her way to the dining room the Unforgivable caught her in the back. All her nerves lit up at once, burning with an intensity she’d never felt before. She didn’t feel herself drop, or hear herself scream, but she must have despite how mercifully brief it was. Her hand trembled a lot when she raised her wand again to summon all of the pots, pans, and dishes from her cupboards directly into the Death Eater. Then, she stumbled to her feet and took off as fast as she could manage deeper into the flat. The contents of the cupboard collapsed onto the Death Eater, burying him as they knocked him down onto the floor. “You’re done!” he shouted after her. Dizzily, he shoved the pots, pans, and dishes off of his prone body and attempted to stagger to his feet. Swaying, he raised his wand skyward. “Morsmordre!” he declared. Lakshmi had no clue what arcane magic the Death Eater had just cast, she wasn’t versed in the incantation to some of the Death Eater’s most secret, hideous things. She only cared about putting more distance between herself and the man about to kill her. She stumbled through the dining room, and back around through the living room. There, she stumbled again and dove for her phone and saw the call was connected. “Help!” she screamed, about a foot or two from the device, but it was likely not the clearest given how emotional and hoarse she voice was. Keats was too stunned to pay much notice to the device, and stumbled after her, half-crazed, his vision blurring in front of him. “Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a blood traitor by the toe,” he called after her in a sing-song voice. “You’ve got plenty of toes—maybe I should send some pieces to your nieces.” Then, just because he was feeling theatrical, he conjured some snakes and sent them after her. Having rolled to sit on her rear now Lakshmi could see the snakes, but mostly she was finally focusing on what the Death Eater was saying. “Leave my nieces out of this, you bigoted prick!” Her wand sparked and sent the snakes banishing backwards at the man. With a quick flick of his wand, he severed the snakes into tiny, bloody chunks. “You know what?” Keats said. “I don’t think I will. Perhaps they can learn from your mistakes.” Another flick, and the snake pieces were thrown back at her as he decided what exactly he was going to do to make her pay for her insolence. For a long time Maddie had thought she’d been on the receiving end of a pocket dial from Lakshmi, but when a very clear summoning of the Dark Mark was followed by Lakshmi’s scream, Maddie apparated straight into her living room. A quick glance around the room didn’t help Maddie’s sense of panic, but she took a breath and pushed it down. This was her job, and there was a friend she needed to protect. “Incarcerous!” Maddie flung a set of arresting chains at the Death Eater before glancing to Lakshmi. “Get somewhere safe,” she said through gritted teeth, following it up with pulling up a preemptive Shield Charm. “Try and get a hold of Jasper. Or Dawlish.” Meanwhile, Keats had managed to wriggle his wand arm free. With considerable difficulty, he vanished the chains and turned to the former Auror. “You,” he growled. “You don't know when to listen either, do you? Crucio!” Any moment of utter relief Lakshmi, covered in bleeding chunks of snake flesh, felt at an Auror and friend popping into her flat went out the window moments later when the Death Eater cast the Unforgivable at Maddie. She screamed again, then back-pedaled on the ground shakily with only one good hand to find her phone as directed. Maddie was caught off-guard by the curse, gritting her teeth as her body shook from the pain coursing through her and she automatically went down on one knee. She wasn't going to give this asshole the benefit of her screams. "I've survived better Death Eaters than you." A sweep of her arm sent a banishing charm towards the Death Eater, and she pushed herself to her feet. "Ones who didn't bother hiding behind their masks anymore." She flung a suffocation curse at him, holding it carefully so she could get him to the point of passing out, not dying. Keats was likewise caught off-guard by how well she handled the curse, and cast a shield too late to protect himself from the banishing and consequent suffocation. He smacked into the opposite wall and collapsed in a heap, trying—and failing—to gasp for breath. He clawed at his throat to no avail. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. "Is this seriously something you think is okay?" Maddie started approaching the Death Eater, determined to unmask him before he inevitably fucked off. "Just breaking into someone's house, someone who has never done anything to you, to terrify them? Or were you here to kill her too? How do you honestly justify to yourselves terrorising people like this?" Her control over the curse slipped, the careful lid she usually kept on her decades old rage starting to crack. They'd threatened her, her friends, they'd killed Gawain and Andy and Flick and Ted and Dedalus and Byron, and here they were trying to kill her friend. This was not going to happen. The rage fed into the curse, without Maddie entirely realising how much it was intensifying. Keats wanted to answer: he hadn't wanted to kill her, no; he'd only wanted to scare her so that she'd leave well enough alone and then no-one would have to. Unfortunately, there was no way to explain himself when he couldn't breathe. He'd always had weak lungs— weak everything really—and once the curse intensified, his body gave out without much further protest. Before his life slipped away from him, he thought of only one thing: everyone was going to be so disappointed in him. “Madeline!” Lakshmi’s voice was shaky, but it cut through the tension in the now relatively silent apartment all the same. She was clutching her phone in her good hand now alongside her wand, not having managed to get Jasper or anyone yet. Everything had happened too quickly and… and. “You’re going to — I think he’s unconscious!” Maddie blinked a couple of times, Lakshmi’s voice drawing her back out of the rage spiral she’d started to descend into and breaking her hold on the curse. The Death Eater was too still, too silent, and she didn’t trust it. She shook her wand out and approached warily, glancing at Lakshmi briefly. “Stay back,” she warned, before reaching in to yank off the mask concealing the identity of — “It’s Keats?” Maddie stared at the Death Eater in front of her, perplexed by the face in front of her. How had they sucked Keats in? As she stared she realised that he hadn’t drawn breath since she’d pulled off his mask, the boyish features she’d thought so adorable once completely still. “He’s not breathing.” Panic overtook confusion, and she raced to remember her first aid charms. “Lakshmi, he’s not breathing. We need Nora. He’s not breathing.” But Lakshmi was still too stunned by everything that had happened, and now that she’d seen the Death Eater’s face — his face — as someone she’d trusted, a friend she seemed paralyzed. “Keats?” she questioned as if she was asking the dead man who’d tried to murder her confirmation. “He’s not!” Lakshmi exclaimed needlessly, but he’d been strangled for a long while now and… and… she didn’t know. If she knew any medical advice, it had gone out of her mind like most of the dueling knowledge her nieces had put on her. “Nora, right, Nora!” The Ravenclaw fumbled for her phone with her one hand, but the device was already slick with the blood from her shattered hand which she suddenly realized how agonizing and throbbing it was. Still, she persevered “It won’t be quick enough — CPR?” But it was probably already too late given the force of that curse around Keats’ neck, wasn’t it? That chilling fact started to spread, given rise to a whole new set of emotions that conflicted given Keats Avery just tried to murder her. "CPR. Yes." Maddie abandoned her wand to try the muggle resuscitation technique, trying to breathe the life back into Keats and get his heart started again. But no matter how much she breathed, or pumped his chest, nothing changed. He didn't suddenly gasp for breath, his heart didn't start beating again. Maddie eventually slumped back, staring once more at the body. "We need to…" She looked over at Lakshmi. "What do you want to do? You shouldn't be connected to this, the Averys…" Maddie went pale at the thought of the retaliation Gerald and Dante would take for this death. Lakshmi couldn't be caught up with that. Unfortunately, Lakshmi was rather useless with the whole resuscitation aspect. Emergency situations were absolutely not her forte; she spent the whole time Maddie was pressing against the Death Eater’s chest pacing with tears rolling down her cheeks. Over her injuries, over the enormity of what had just happened, over Keats, who now was synonymous with the bigotry, genocide and terrorism she thought he wasn’t part of. “I don’t know.” Lakshmi tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “I don’t know, there’s —” she gestured towards the window. The ominous green glow was there. She knew what it meant; she’d seen it in the papers and photographs on the Winternet both as a child and in the last two years. The Dark Mark. “They’re going to know anyway, and I… don’t know.” It was her house. Even if they didn’t know Keats was coming here, and that was if, they’d know he died here. Okay. Maddie had to think. She couldn't keep panicking. Someone would report that Dark Mark soon enough, and the DMLE who respond. They didn't want to be here for that, because they would definitely not care about the truth of what happened. Just that the Death Eater was dead. She stood, pulling herself together as she did. "Pack a bag," she instructed Lakshmi. "Assume you won't be coming back here for awhile. You've got five minutes." She stared down at the body again, her mind racing through the next steps. She could get ahead of this and protect Lakshmi as best as she could. Nodding mutely and trying to fight her nauseated trembles, Lakshmi didn’t argue. She didn’t know how to pack up her life in five minutes, but she knew she didn’t have any say in the matter. Death Eaters didn’t and wouldn’t care. One of their own was lying dead in her living room. She’d make do. She had no other choice. |