A/N: This was written for a challenge given out on the Writing Junkie Forum. For the life of me, I cannot remember the name of the challenge though... I think it was created by MidnightNimh, though I can't say for sure.
"That can't be your name." Ofdensen states, a sceptical expression on his face.
"Well it isch. Take it or leave it, aschhole." William crosses his arms over his chest and glowers at the suit wearing man on the other side of the desk. He doesn't feel the need to elaborate to this lawyer. Doesn't feel even the slightest urge to explain - despite the fact that this is the first time in almost seven years that anyone has argued him on this point.
William isn't stupid. He knows that the younger man doesn't actually care about it or want a story. He's just worried about the appearence of this Dethklok group that picked him up earlier that morning.
Ofdensen purses his lips together and looks back at the paper in his hand. In messy scrawl the new potential bassist has put his name down. Bottom left corner, right where it should be. The blue ink is legible, though just barely, and there shouldn't be any issues with it.
Except that Ofdensen just cannot get himself to believe that anyone could be named William Murderface.
"I suppose that this, ah, is fine. As long as it is your real name?" Ofdensen tells him. He gets a half-hearted nod in return. "Well alright then. Your audition will take place sometime in the next hour. Until the rest of the band is, ah, ready to listen to you play, please feel welcomed to the beverages and snacks set up in the recording studio."
X_X_X_X_X_X_X
The audition goes off without a hitch. Nathan is still doubtful about having William as their bassist and Magnus seems to take the entire ordeal as a personal insult. Pickles just grins and nods and offers the other man a beer.
Like the rest of Dethklok, William is forced to sign a contract. One that essentially signs away his very life, soul, and being. He signs it William Murderface. Innitials it WM. And, when Nathan gives the papers a dubious look, snashes his teeth together and gives them all the finger.
So they stop asking him about it and go on their ways. Ofdensen takes it upon himself, as he always does, to check in on the newest addition to their little make-shift family.
No matter where he checks, he can find no trace of a family that goes by the name of Murderface.
X_X_X_X_X_X_X
As the years pass, the band shrinks and grows. Magnus leaves them, only to be replaced by a rhythem guitarist by the name of Toki Wartooth. The band faces hurdles, faces death and murder and destruction, and pulls through them all without loosing fame. Often, the accidents end up aiding them in their rapid rise to stardom.
Through it all, Charles Ofdensen stands by them. He protects them. Takes care of them. Learns their quirks and their fears; and then he does his best to find out what caused them so he can prevent it from happening again.
Ofdensen is the first to discover about the abuse that took place in Toki's past. From that point on, he makes sure to keep his wooden cross in one of the drawers of his desk instead of on the wall.
The manager is the only one who learns about Nathan's dyslexia. Ofdensen keeps it to himself and Number 432, who he orders to leave a pair of reading glasses in the frontmans room.
When he and no one else notices the rapidly waning health of their lead guitarist, he orders a trip to the doctors. When the report comes back showing signs of severly low blood sugar and fatigue, Ofdensen forces Skwisgaar to have more tests run. Then he helps the Swede adapt to a new eating style and makes sure that the rest of the band understand what is going on.
But Ofdensen reaches a roadblock when he tries to find the past of the last two members of Dethklok. Yes, he knows that he could just ask their families but, to that manager, that is unacceptable.
Instead Ofdensen changes up his routine and starts researching just a little bit differently.
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Ofdensen starts with William, simply because he knows less about the bassist and has gotten himself curious. He gathers up everything that he knows about the older man, from the name of the park that Pickles and Nathan found him in all the way down to the address of his grandmothers house. Then the manager really has to look; sifting through the dead-ends and the false leads.
Eventually Ofdensen finds himself in a back alley in New York City. There used to be fights held there every other week and a man named William Burns was always the star of the show. Vicous, people called him, vicious and utterly insane. This Burns man was a winner though. Never once lost a fight, even when the only blood to be shed in the arena came from him.
But, Ofdensen is told, there was something off about Burns. From the very first match he competed in, when he stumbled into the roped off arena with tattered clothes and a too-thin face, all the way to his last. Burns was always ruthless, always acting like the fight he was in was one for his life, as though his very being depended on winning and the handful of money he would recieve if he did. Often, one older man explains, Burns looked like it did.
When the former fighters and gamblers refuse to give up any other information willingly, Ofdensen has to take a different approach. He has to fight the former champion, a big fellow by the name of Timothy Desh, for his answers.
So Ofdensen does and the fight ends quickly. Desh doesn't get back up - and the fact that there is no blood doesn't mean that he is still alive.
Answers come easily after that and Ofdensen learns how, over the course of two months, eight fights, Burns kills three people. The first time he snaps someones neck. The second time it is a fumbled open palm to the face that does it, slamming the opponants nose up into his brain. The third time earns Burns a nickname. William Burns headbutts a man hard enough that his neck snaps clean - kills him in a rage like they have never seen in another fighter. People start to call him Mad William Murderface after that.
When he learns this, Ofdensen has to stop and take in a deep breath. He has known from the start that William had fudged his name. Never knew why and still doesn't, not really. But sometimes knowing something and hearing something can be two very different things.
At first, the manager thinks of the band. Worries that, if word gets out that everything William has signed is under a false name, the entire band will take the hit. They will lose fans, lose business, lose their careers and their dreams and their goals. Then Ofdensen stops and thinks of William. Wonders why he would go by this insulting nickname instead of the name he was given at birth. Thinks on it for just a moment. Then, once again, he takes action. Leads are few and far between but eventually the manager can piece together the shatter puzzle.
Learns that William was kicked out of his grandmothers home at the age of thirteen. That he came to New York purely on accident but stayed because he thought he could make a living there. That, for fifteen years, he slept on park benches and in dark alleyways and under bridges. For fifteen years he earned just enough money to survive by fighting and stealing. When the fights left too many untreated injuries and the pain grew to be too great, William spent another three years wandering through the back streets in a haze. No one can rightly tell Ofdensen how the man survived in those three years, because it certainly wasn't do to another humans kindness, but when he returned to the arena it was with a new limp and an even bleaker view on life.
What really stuns Ofdensen is when he realizes that William wasn't born with a lisp. No, William recieves that lisp in a fight. His opponant cheated and slipped on a pair of iron knuckles. Slammed William right in the chin, knocking out two teeth, cracking three others, and completely shattering his jaw. The homeless fighter has no hospital record, having never gone for any injury that he recieved.
So, curiousity sated, Ofdensen returns to Mordhaus. With a stern face and a steady arguement, he makes William resign each and every document. Then, each and every morning, Ofdensen orders a klokateer to take three white pills down to the bassists room - somedays vicodin, somedays ibuprofin, somedays something stronger, but never in the same order.
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Pickles is a different story from them all. The drummer's past is easy to trace, from Snakes 'N' Barrels all the way to his small hometown in Wisconsin. The trail is carved into stone, into history, into every bottle of alcohol drank and every joint smoked.
After all, the man is an icon. A living legend. A survivor of the eighties and a savior of the two thousands. From a brief stint as a vocalist to a lasting legend as a drummer, Pickles' life has been written about from almost every angle. Except, Ofdensen realizes, not a single one explains why the man started drinking and smoking and acting out. Not a single one even tries to.
So that is where Ofdensen starts.
The search goes quicker than the one for William's past. Money goes a long way. So does a threat at gunpoint, for those a little more stubborn. Ofdensen learns the truth with little issue.
From former schoolmates, he learns of the bullying. Of the shouted words and the graffitied insults and the openly said threats. Of the lockers he was shoved into, the names he was called, the bruises he was given.
From former teachers, Ofdensen learns of the abuse. Getting on the bus with a limp, wincing when he sat, squinting up at the chalkboard with two black eyes. Underweight and underloved, they describe him as being. From kindergarten up to highschool.
From Andy Trith, Pickles next door neighbor, the manager learns of the causes. That Seth claimed he burnt the garage down at only six. That his father was a drunk, a nasty one, with a grudge out against his youngest son. That a simple schoolyard kiss, between Pickles and Andy himself, is what prompted the slurrs at school. The drummers father, Andy tells him, found out about the kiss when Pickles was eleven. Things got worse then.
Ofdensen clings to that muttered sentence, clings to it like it was a life-line and joins Andy Trith for coffee at Starbucks one day. Asks questions and gets sorrow filled answers, watches regret flood the blond's face, hears the tremor in his voice as he talks.
Talks about the day that Petey O'Toole became Pickles The Drummer. About the scars on the red heads lower back, left by a leather belt and given by a drunken hand, and the way that Pickles hands used to shake for days afterwards. How beer became a way to cope with the insults and the threats and the pain. How it became a way to escape the Hell hole he lived in, if only for a little while.
Then Andy's voice cracks and his eyes start to water. He wrings his hands together. Picks up his cup then sits it back down. Speaks with a tremor in his voice and a longing and loss in his eyes.
Ofdensen says nothing as he listen. He doesn't think he can even if he wanted to. Not when that word leaves Andy's mouth, stretching out in the silence of the small town shop, sending the normally steady managers stomach up into his throat - raped, Andy says, and then he just stopped answering to Petey.
That was the answer that all those reporters and journalists missed. That was what pushed the drummer over the edge, what drove him to leave his hometown and everything in it behind. It was what created, in every sense of the word, Pickles The Drummer.
When Ofdensen returns to Dethklok and the 'haus, it is with the knowledge that there is not a boy under his protection that has not already been tainted. Has not already seen the horrors that the world can produce and felt the stinging lash of Fate's cruel whip. So he goes into his office and picks up the phone. Dials a number that is all too familiar and all too used. Gives the man on the other side the address of the house that Pickles grew up in. Then hangs up knowing that there will be one less piece of scum on the earth come morning.
On the news the next day, a reporter with bright red lipstick and bleached blonde hair speaks of tragedy in Wisconsin. Sometime during the night, it seems, someone broke into Brett* O'Toole's home and beat him to death.
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The world is a vicious place. It is filled with diseases and disabilities. It is covered in bigots and haters. Tainted by the breath of killers, abusers, rapists, and thieves. Cursed with viruses that can never be cured and will bring death. Wraught with those who don't care, don't see, and don't try.
Few and far between, one might find a spark of light. A soul that, even though it has been beaten and burned, has not yet broken. A person that stands strong even when they should have succumbed to the darkness long ago.
Charles Ofdensen does not consider himself one of those lights. He has killed without mercy or reason. Taken from those in need, given to those who don't, kept more for himself than he will ever admit. Tortured and maimed and haunted men and women all over the world. And he knows that his will to stay alive just to live, for himself and nothing else, died long ago. It vanished from existance with the bright-eyed, spectacled boy who went by the name of Charley.
Now, he is nothing but a thin sheet of glass that stands for one reason and one alone. To protect the five flickering lights that call themselves Dethklok. For the band, for his boys, he will continue to stand on both feet. Continue to fight the world, from those on two legs to those only seen beneath a microscope, in order to keep them safe.
Charles Ofdensen has seen the world and the terrors it is filled with. He knows that all five of his boys have too. And he is determined not to make them face it again - and if they must, he will not let them do it alone.