[1st] Week 275: Rainier

[Inks]

Word Count - [1,627]
Word Count (+ extras) - [1,895]
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Rainier

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"Rainier!"

Joseph stood framed in the doorway of the large, fanciful house Rainier had bought to serve as their home base in America, hand clenched so tightly around the ornate, copper-brown doorknob that his fingers ached. Water and blood streamed from the man, forming a puddle that spread from his bootheels <nobr>out across the clean hardwood floor.</nobr> Behind him a storm was raging; rain pounded against the cobblestone streets in sheets, swept along by the heavy winds that accompanied it, and, though it was still early in the afternoon, clouds darkened the sky.

"Rainier!" Joseph shouted again.

"Shut the door behind you, Joseph." The reply came from the sitting room – down the hall and straight ahead. Now that he was looking, Joseph could see the tell-tale flickering light of a fire, could hear the snap and crackle of burning wood. "I'd prefer to keep the flood outside, if that's all right by you. ...And don't slam the--"

With a wordless snarl, Joseph slammed the front door shut; the decorative glass panels framed within the door's heavy wood rattled from the force.

From within the sitting room came a sigh.

Joseph made his way there, trailing blood-muddied water along with every step; he kicked over one of the straight-backed chairs that decorated either side of the doorway connecting the foyer to the sitting room, paused, and then kicked the other over too before entering the room.

Rainier was sitting perpendicular to the large fireplace set into the room's left-side wall, cross-legged in a lounge chair made of expensive leather and lacquered redwood. <nobr>The grand chandelier overhead was unlit,</nobr> leaving the room to a gradient made of firelight and shadows; a rug in front of the fireplace glowed in hues of orange and yellow, and the objects nearest the fire threw shadows across the rest of the room. The chair across from Rainier, currently unoccupied, cast its shadow over Joseph's lower half as he stepped forward.

Fully-dressed in a waistcoat, vest, and slacks, his greying hair combed back and his beard as thin and neatly-trimmed as ever, the older man cut a severe figure in the firelight. His chair was facing the entryway. He'd likely been expecting Joseph's mood upon arrival. A hardback book was open in his hand, but his sea-green eyes had been intent upon Joseph from the moment he was within sight.

"You look half-drowned," Rainier chided, his gaze sweeping up from the water Joseph was dripping on the floor to the henna-red hair plastered to his face. "And your clothes are in tatters. Why don't you dry off and change before we-- ...Joseph, you're not going to be able to push that over. It's nailed down."

Joseph abandoned his attempt at forcing over one of the many bookshelves lining the right side of the room. "You set me up!" he shouted, and instead swept a shelf's worth of books out onto the floor.

Rainier expression was disapproving. "Is that a no to drying off, then?"

"You," Joseph repeated, storming across the room, "set," leaving bloody-wet footprints in his wake, "me," and stopping only once he was looming over Rainier, "up!"

"Hm," Rainier said. He leaned over slightly, taking in the mess Joseph was making, then leaned back, looked up, and met the other man's eyes. " ...And?"

The immortal reached out and seized him by the lapels, hauling him upright and shaking him. Standing, Rainier had at least two inches on him, but <nobr> it wasn't like his looming had been intimidating the telepath anyway.</nobr>

"What's the point of giving me missions," Joseph growled, "if you're just going to go ahead of me and ruin everything before I even get there?"

Joseph's hands closed into fists; Rainier had teleported, leaving nothing for him to hold on to. The redhead twisted around. There the old man was, arms crossed, standing where Joseph had stood not a minute ago. "Temper tantrums are unbecoming, you know." Rainier stepped forward and set his book on the cushion of the other chair. "Although I find it interesting that you're so eager to pin your failure on me."

"It was your fault!"

"Was it? Last I checked, warning someone of their impending murder doesn't mean they won't be murdered."

"It does if they pay a bunch of constables to guard their estate on the day they're supposed to be murdered," Joseph said. "Don't act like you didn't expect that to happen!"

"If they were in the way, why didn't you just kill the watchmen?"

"Don't play dumb," Joseph said. "You know exactly what I did! The watchmen, and the backup that arrived after that, and <nobr>the bystanders out on the street, and--"
</nobr>
"Yes, yes, and the innocents and the women and the children. You managed to kill everyone except, it would seem, the man I asked you to. And poor you, by the time you were in any state to notice, it was too late."

Joseph said nothing.

"See," continued Rainier, starting towards Joseph with slow, even steps, "this is where the conversation should have started. Not with some argument about what I did wrong; what you did wrong is much more significant."

"That's a matter of opinion. I've been doing things wrong since I was born." Joseph watched Rainier approach, still glaring. "You only just started sabotaging me." His head was buzzing with the need to fight, flee, do something – anything but keep listening to the other man. His fingers itched to reach for one of the many weapons still on his person. Judging by the dark gleam in his eyes, Rainier knew it.

"So you really do want to know why. A shame you didn't earn your answer for today."

Joseph didn't shrink away when Rainier reached out to clap him on the shoulder, <nobr>but it was a near thing.
</nobr>
"Isn't it obvious, though? It's boring if all you do is succeed," Rainier said plainly, with a smile that was somehow more enraging for its sincerity. "Sometimes you need to fail. ...And if all your failures are as revealing as this, I'll have to set you up more often. Was it the women or the kids that--"

Joseph attacked him. Of course he did. He did it before he'd even realized his hand was moving, his mind blank, his thoughts buried beneath a frenzied litany of kill kill kill kill kill.

Rainier vanished, and the slash of the jagged-toothed little dagger Joseph had pulled cut through empty air. The immortal immediately threw an elbow back into his blind spot.

The strike almost, almost connected. His arm brushed the other man's clothes, but Rainer was gone again in an instant. Joseph's wet boots squeaked against the floor as he turned, dagger raised in a defensive position – and then Rainier kicked the backs of his knees.

Rainier caught Joseph's hand as his legs buckled beneath him, and twisted before the immortal could react. His wrist broke with a clean snap.

The dagger dropped into Rainier's waiting hand and he let the other man go. He stepped back out of striking range as Joseph regained his feet, chest heaving with pain and adrenaline, hand held to his chest as black energy curled around it.

"Or was it something else?" Rainier continued smoothly, as though he'd never stopped. "Something one of the police officers said? Maybe something you saw?"

"Why even ask?" panted Joseph, his back to the roaring fire, eyes dark with shadows.

"I already know," Rainier said. Joseph flexed the fingers of his newly-mended hand. His pulse rapped against the inside of his wrists, in his chest, in his neck. Kill kill kill. "I'm asking you because you don't."

Joseph lunged for him again. He managed to dodge two of the man's strikes, one aimed at the back of his neck and the other at his sternum, and nicked Rainier's arm with the razor-thin edge of his knife (designed for throwing) as he retreated.

Then Joseph was on his back so fast that <nobr>his head was still swimming with vertigo</nobr> when Rainier appeared on top of him.

"I would say that I have hopes that one day you won't be driven to violence like this," Rainier said calmly, intimately, as he pinned Joseph to the floor. "But that would be a lie." He leaned in, keeping just out of reach as he said, "This is who you are. This is who you will always be."

"Rainier," Joseph panted, "do you really think that--"

Rainier drove the dagger from before into Joseph's throat. "--that I have anything to say that you haven't already thought about? That I can do anything to you that hasn't already been done before?" he finished for the immortal, torqueing the knife <nobr>just to watch him twist and writhe and clutch blindly at Rainier's shirtsleeves.</nobr>"You know I do, and you know I'm right in thinking so. I know more about you than you ever will, Joseph. What questions you want to ask. What questions you never want to know the answers to. What you think you want from life, and what you really want but are too afraid to ask for. What calms you down. What makes you act like this.

"I," he breathed against Joseph's face, "understand you. I'm the only one who ever will. And you might not realize it yet, but what I am doing is important. Where no one else could, I can help you."

You can't help me, Joseph thought, dazedly, as he died, because you're just as crazy as I am.



--




<nobr>Joseph sat in front of the fire for a long time </nobr>after Rainier had gone, staring off into the flames until they dwindled and burned themselves out. And he sat there for a long time after that, too. He sat through the night, and when morning came, it found him still sitting there, bloodstained and awake.