Doctor Valack sat with a content smile on his lips as he listened to the storm that raged over the grounds of Eichen House. With each boom of thunder that followed a strike of lightning, screams carried across the air from the patients in the facility. Not all of them were exactly thrilled by the natural phenomena before them, but he was.
He believed rain to be a symbol of rebirth, the earth being cleansed with each downpour that replenished its lands. The people he was up against didn't believe in such a concept, but rather resurrection. They'd lived for over a century with the sole purpose of reanimating what once was.
Valack considered himself an optimist in their presence. He saw potential in life. A way to improve it. People just had to be willing to look with their eyes to see the truth.
His hand drifted to his forehead, a movement of pure muscle memory. The skin there was wrinkled because of his age, yet smooth too considering what had once rested there. It was almost bittersweet to him, feeling as though he'd lost a dear friend.
Valack removed his attention from the sounds of the natural war outside and focused on the girl in front of him.
Her strawberry blonde hair was soaked, as well as her clothes, from the rain outside. Her body glistened with sweat, a product of the fight that occurred during her failed escape tonight.
The orderlies and security at the facility had done a terrible job in restraining her, though Valack was hardly disappointed. The girl's actions tonight proved the depiction of her catatonia was nothing but a lie, which meant she was ready to endure certain amplifying procedures. Of course, Valack still wasn't ecstatic over the idea of having to reveal himself to her just yet, so he had put a few precautions into place.
One of the advantages given to him by the people he was up against was the gift of frequency. With it, he could manipulate the natural and supernatural world to his will and bend reality. So, rather than seeing the doctor himself, the girl saw the projected image of a dead lover.
"Aiden," she whimpered under her breath at what appeared to be a hallucination.
She tilted her head to the side in hopes that the image would go away. Valack didn't give her the privilege of ignoring him and moved her head back in his direction, seemingly bringing her face to face with death.
"Tell me about that night," he coaxes her gingerly, his hand caressing the sides of her face as he plays into his own casted illusion. The girl doesn't react, she can't react. Valack knows she's trying to fall back into the act of being a helpless catatonic teenage girl despite being anything but.
"What do you remember about the man with the talons?"
Valack is trying to get her to talk about that night. The first night.
It was the beginning of the end.
"No one saw him again, did they?" Valack adds.
"No," she confirms in a hoarse voice, a product of her raw throat. She had spent so long not saying a word and tonight had changed that as she quite literally screamed for her life, and the life of her friends.
"But that was the start of it, wasn't it? The beginning of senior year," Valack continues to question her, forcing her to recall a time in her life when everything and everyone she loved fell apart.
"What happened after that?"
She doesn't respond and instead stares at the doctor with hollow eyes with a gaze that passes right through him.
"You're not Aiden. You're not real," she breathes out.
Valack sighs as he leans away to reach for a transmitter nearby, turning the dial down. He no longer hides behind the guise of frequency and freely shows himself.
The girl is hardly surprised.
"Tell me. Tell me what happened to them. What happened to your friends?" Valack asks her. His camouflage is gone but his purpose remains the same.
The girl's head falls back as she stares blankly at the splotchy ceiling of her cell. A familiar sight to her after all this time.
"I... I don't remember." Her voice is void of emotion but in her eyes, Valack can see she's lying.
Before he lost the privileges of his third eye, he had seen what became of them. How brothers ended up on opposite sides of what they believed was right, when lies and broken promises led to death, and when the people the girl cared for became strangers to themselves and each other.
He knows she remembers it all, and in her memory lies the key to salvation. This was the only way to stop what was coming; she was the only way to stop what was coming.
"It started just after you began senior year. What happened?"
"I don't remember," the girl repeats, adding to Valack's growing frustrations. He had spent too long waiting for this moment for it to be stolen from him.
He leans closer to the girl, forcing her to see nothing but his face and focus on him. He decides the only thing he can do is to break her will down piece by piece, not bothered by what the consequences of that could be. Not now. Not when he's this close.
"What happened to Kira?" he questions.
The girl holds back any form of reaction.
She pretends not to be pained by the memory of a kitsune she cared for who slowly lost her mind and control of her powers. Especially since that was something that directly led to the man beside her sitting free of his cage.
"Tell me about Parrish," Valack continues, well aware of the fires that followed the deputy and turned a seemingly harmless man into something truly demonic.
The girl remains strong, clinging to the comfort of being numb.
"And Malia... What happened when the Desert Wolf finally found her?" Valack smirked, knowing what the elder coyote was capable of and how she would have no reservations about using her violent skill set against her own daughter.
It didn't bother him that he was using the turmoil that fell onto a group of teenagers to his advantage because he didn't see them as children. He only saw them as soldiers in a righteous war that had begun long before they, and even him, had been born.
"I know you remember what happened to Stiles."
The girl can't help but crack as she's reminded of the boy who Valack knew was surrounded by blood. Some of it is, and some of it not. It stained his hands nonetheless, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't wash it away. He would never wash it away.
"I can't remember," the girl trembles.
She shakes her head to scrub her mind clean. She didn't want this. She didn't want to face the existence of death anymore, especially not when it came to the people she loved.
Valack didn't care.
There's silence between the girl and the doctor for a moment. He can tell she hoped that meant the end of his relentless questions, so he uses that thought to create a false sense of safety for her as he whispers the words that finally shatter her own facade.
"What about Jacqueline? What happened when fate finally caught up to the huntress?"
Death and carnage followed the aforementioned girl and Valack had always seen how it was inevitable for her to be consumed by it. He knew of the premonition the girl in his company once had of her being swept away by an endless abyss of water. She'd been comforted to believe it wasn't real, but they all knew the truth now...
"It was real," she cries, clenching her eyes shut as a stray tear slides down her face, the action filling Valack with pride. It isn't for her though, it's for him, because he's getting exactly what he wants.
"Tell me more. Tell me about what happened to your friends."
The girl reverts back to her silence and Valack bitterly understands his plan has worked against him as she clings to the memory of her fallen friends to bring her strength. He lets out a hefty sigh before standing, wanting the girl to sense his disappointment in her.
"That's alright. There are other ways to get to the details."
The doctor scans the layout of various tools and contraptions laid out on a table in front of him. He picks up a drill with a cylindrical bit attached to it, then walks back to his darling patient to show her the apparatus.
"This special device is designed for trepanation. The medical art of drilling into the human skull," he says with a smile, nothing but evil in a gesture that was meant to be comforting.
The drill comes to life, the bit spinning menacingly as Valack approaches Lydia Martin, the banshee of the McCall Pack; a harbinger of death, and his last hope for revenge.
"Let me show you how it works."
~
||| A/N |||
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