InsaneJournal

“Mornin’, Marie,” greeted Walker cheerfully as he entered the bar, weary from a hard day’s work at his latest job. Ever since his first employer had found out just who his father was he had had a hard time holding down one from one month to another. This latest one was good, however, since his new boss didn’t give a damn so long as the job got done.

“Morning?” questioned the woman with an arched eyebrow. She shook her head at him as she wiped down her bar, saying, “Boy, your head’s in the wrong place right now. Its midday.”

Walker grunted at that as he sank down onto one of the stools, rubbing the ravaged flesh on his left thigh as it ached. It had been acting up a lot of late for some reason and he was starting to get very annoyed since he’d nearly tripped several times when it sent a gout of fierce pain through his leg.

“Eh, new job’s got my sense of time all muddled,” he said with a wave of his hand. Then he gave her a rakish grin, asking, “Can I have some breakfast even if it is lunchtime?”

Marie laughed and reached across the bar to ruffle his hair as if he were a boy. “But of course, my lad. I…” She gasped as Walker abruptly dived across the bar at her, sending them both crashing to the floor with his body shielding hers. There were several sharp thunk’s from above and she looked up around his shoulder to see throwing daggers buried deep in the wall. If she had been standing, they would have gone through her skull…

“Good, boy,” hissed a growling voice from the doorway. “You still remember what I taught you.”

Walker gritted his teeth and Marie started to say something, to ask if this attacker was his father as she suspected. But his large, calloused hand covered her mouth, his head shaking sharply and eyes pleading her not to make a sound. She nodded and he looked up, brown eyes hardening as he glared over the bar.

And as she watched with bated breath, Marie saw the pleasant young man she knew vanish, replaced by a cold killer. The killer his father had trained him to become but that he had refused to be.

“I remember what you beat into me,” spat Walker, rising slowly to his feet. He glared at the shadow of the man standing in the doorway and reached out for one of the throwing daggers in the wall. Another darted forward but he ducked and caught it, sending it hurtling back to embed in the frame of the doorway. The figure grinned at it then stepped forward, resolving into a short and wiry man with a snake-like grin. Dark, stringy hair was pulled back sharply from his rough, unassuming features and intense gray eyes fixed unwaveringly on his son. Marie peered at him as he appeared in the shards left of the mirror over her bar and wondered just where Walker’s pale tawny hair had come from and his brown eyes.

How had such a kind young man come from a cold-hearted bastard? Was it his mother’s doing? Walker had mentioned his father only just enough for her to gather that he was a monster but his mother…no mention at all.

Walker reached to his belt for his dagger and rested his hand on it, reassured at the feel of the leather-bound hilt under his palm. The old rage at his father simmered in his chest, ready to flare up into an inferno if but given the tender.

This man…this monster murdered his mother.

“Hello, Algis,” he hissed.

“This is how you greet me?” asked the man, spreading his arms wide as his snake’s grin widened. “Me, your dear father?”

“Well I would prefer to greet you as The-Worthless-Bastard-That-Sired-Me but I thought I should be polite.”

Algis snorted, sneering, “Politeness,” in a clipped tone. “Your worthless mother taught you that shit. I knew I should have killed her after how she reacted when I took you out. Woman could never hold for my work.”

Tinder was tossed onto the fire in his chest, firing it up into a small blaze. Walker gripped the hilt of his dagger, wanting desperately to bury it in the monster’s heart to kill him, rid his filthy presence from his life. But he knew charging forward recklessly would only get him killed so he would wait…he hated what the man had taught him, but he would use it to protect Marie. She was the only person that had given a damn about him since his mother had died and that made her important.

“You should have succeeded me, boy. Now half my contracts are gone because I have no one to take them on after me. I have lost everything because of you.”

Walker sneered at that, spitting, “And why should I give a damn?”

Algis smiled coldly and replied, “You either come and take your place as you should have…or I kill you and get another child on that woman.”

“Over my dead body!”

“That, my son, can be arranged.”

Marie gasped as the wiry man uncoiled suddenly, springing across the room with the grace of a cat despite his obvious years and scars. He drew a short, heavy blade from under his coat and lunged at Walker with the grin of an insane man on his face, gray eyes gleaming with a furious fire. The young man dodged the blow, ducking and rolling away from the bar along the floor. He rolled easily to his feet (though Marie saw him wince in pain from his leg) and grabbed the head of a chair, swinging it up off the ground to crash into Algis as he darted towards him. The chair connected and they both went down as father staggered into son.

Walker scrabbled for his dagger, lifting his right leg in an attempt to kick Algis off of him. Then he screamed, arching back against the floor in pain as a wiry hand pressed sharp nails into his ravaged thigh, the badly healed flesh sending out howls of pain.

“You can’t hurt me, boy,” he hissed into his ear. “I know all your weaknesses.”

Walker twisted, eyes watering from the pain, and still struggled to reach his dagger. He wasn’t going to die here! Not here!

Algis grinned and lifted his blade to his son’s throat…then spun around in time to be greeted in the face with Marie’s favorite frying pan come straight off the fire. He fell back screaming as flesh seared and Walker, grinding his teeth, forced himself up onto a knee then launched himself at the man. They went down in a tangled heap, his leg a dead weight now that held the older man down, and Walker reached for his father’s dagger that had fallen from his hand.

He hesitated for a moment and met the monster’s eyes (or eye, since one had been seared shut), hissing, “Did you ever love me for anything more than a successor? Or my mother?”

The man, still in pain, managed to grunt, “Just a…means…to an…end. The…both of you.”

Walker nodded at that and more tender went on the fire inside, feeding it into an unquenchable blaze.

“So I thought.”

“Boy…remember…killer’s always…end…up…alone,” hissed Algis with a gleam of triumph in his remaining eye.

Walker stared then let the rage feed him then, let it decide what to do next. And he drew the heavy blade across the monster’s throat before driving it as far as he could into his heart.

“Walker…”

He turned his head to the side, seeing Marie standing there with her pan hanging limply from her hand. She then set it aside and moved towards him as he tried to stand but ended up collapsing to the side whimpering in pain.

“Leg,” he hissed. “Gods, the bastard, my damn leg. He is dead, isn’t he, Marie? I killed him, right?”

The barwoman took that as what it was – a plea from a victim who wanted to be sure his tormentor was gone for good. She had heard it enough from the raped women she’d taken in, later driving off their rapists when they tried to come after them again. Kneeling, she touched his forehead and nodded, saying, “Yes, lad, you killed him.”

“Good,” he murmured childishly, sounding like a little boy. Then he grunted and tried to pull himself away from the body, hissing, “Get me away from him. I can’t be near him…don’t like being near him…”

“He’s dead, Walker,” she said soothingly even as she rose to lift him up as gently as she could. He grunted in pain from his leg as she dragged him back towards the bar, leaning him up against the side of it, then looked at her with sad eyes as she knelt next to him. “He can’t do anything to you anymore.”

Walker swallowed hard and shook his head as he stared towards the wall, refusing to look at the body. “Yes,” he breathed, “he can. To you I’m just a nice young man. But around him…around him…”

He paused, gasping with pain and what sounded like tears, then finished, “Around him, Marie, I’m just the same. I can’t help but be what he made me because of what he did to me and my mother.”

She blinked then hugged him then, his head pressed against her shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“You never have to be that again,” she whispered reassuringly. Then she remembered that last thing his father had said and ran her fingers through his pale hair. “And you will not end up alone, lad. I’m here for you…I’m here.”