CHAPTER 7
BARTY had no idea how long he had walked, still carrying his partner in his arms. He'd kept them off the main woodland path, fearful they might be visible to anything else in the Forest that was lurking in the shadows, wolf scouts, other vampires, of which, if it were just him and him alone, he could handle them, but with Layla wounded and in his arms and in no shape to be able to help if it came down to defending themselves, he could not afford to take the chance of running into anything unsavory.
Layla had not spoken a single word to him since he'd gotten her out of the cave and had returned briefly back to their own campsite to hastily pack up their belongings and set out again on their way, and this worried him, though he did not ask about it.
She remained in his arms, trembling. More pains had ravaged her body as he walked. Barty had felt Layla tense in his arms as each one had taken hold of her. At first, his partner had tried to put on a brave face and fight against them, holding her breath as if the vampire thought she could make them stop that way.
Then, the wizard could sense the witch's slow, heavy, and long sighs during the last few, as Layla realized that there was no use.
Pensively, Barty came to a halt once they reached a forest clearing, scanning the vicinity in every direction, though it was difficult for him to see. Nervous with concern for her, he was hardly able to breathe himself as he gingerly lowered Layla to the ground.
He made certain his partner was steady on his feet before daring to remove his supportive grip from her arm. She braced herself against the nearby trunk of a tree, her face pained.
"Why are we stopping?" Layla gasped in a voice that sounded like she was close to choking and more uneasy as she fumbled for the bottle of water that Barty silently handed her so she could rinse her mouth out of the blood that was continuing to gather in her throat.
She rinsed, spit, and handed the bottle back to him with a grateful nod.
Only when Barty was satisfied she wasn't going to continue to choke on her own fluids did he offer his answer.
"I need to find something for you to eat. You've lost a lot of blood that needs replenishing, Wydman, or couldn't you tell by the hole in your chest?" Barty heard himself explain in a soft and subdued voice that almost did not sound like himself, though the sarcasm and contempt were dripping from his voice. For a moment, he wasn't even sure he had spoken at all. "To keep up your strength," he replied. He tried to smile, but it felt strained.
Layla numbly shook her head. "I'm not hungry, Barty," she told him, an edge to her voice and her expression clearly showed him nausea that her stomach was feeling right now.
Barty frowned, secretly growing even more concerned.
"But we don't know when we'll get another chance. We can't just Disapparate out of here, we have to keep walking," he reminded her, trying to stay calm for her sake, though she was making it increasingly difficult for him to do so.
She merely looked at him incredulously. "I ate the other night. Your elf was kind enough to bring me a cup of chicken's blood. I will be fine, for another night or two," she told him with a sneer as she looked coolly at Barty.
His offer denied, Barty resisted the urge to balk at his partner and focused instead on continuing his urgent efforts for something he could propose to care for her needs.
"Rest then, for a moment," he grunted, motioning towards a pile of fallen timber a few feet away. How he wished it were a stack of goose feather-down pillows instead.
Eager to soothe the burning need in her screaming muscles, she accepted. Barty darted forward to take the witch's arm gently and led her towards a log that sat next to a tree so she could have something rest her back against as well. Helping her to sit, he then perched himself on a stump a few feet away, not wanting to go to the effort of using his magic to conjure chairs.
Layla leaned heavily on the roughly covered bark tree trunk. The scratching of the wood through her clothes was almost a welcome distraction from the pains that were ravaging the gaping holes in her body in her chest and her leg.
She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and let out a long deep exhale, her blood-stained hands clutching her chest and at fistfuls of her now ruined shirt that she suspected would not be able to be mended even with magic. She'd likely have to burn her clothes.
"Are you alright?" Barty questioned, growing more distressed as the seconds passed for her condition. Layla bravely nodded without bothering to open her eyes to look at them.
The tension between the injured vampire and stricken wizard was undeniable, and unbearable, too.
Still keeping her eyes sealed tightly shut, Layla summoned enough strength on her throat to speak to him, though her voice was little more than a reedy, weak-sounding rasp.
"Why are we going west?" she questioned, very softly. She had seen they weren't heading east in the direction where she had discovered the last known location of the vampire clan.
Of course, that had been some time ago, two years ago, and they could have since moved, but she had been certain they were on the right track in finding them.
"What?" Barty grunted in a near whisper.
He had not the time to make a plan for their escape from the werewolves' campsite, much less keep his concentration on their mission for the Dark Lord. His new and sole purpose was ensuring Layla received the medical attention that her body needed to heal much faster. In his mind, that meant the one place that he knew she'd be safe. His home. Severus could tend to her there, and Winky could assist the Potions Master of Hogwarts where able.
Layla opened her eyes and her blood-shot, cracked irises that were now red and filled with blood at the edges regarded Barty with no small amount of trepidation.
"We're not continuing our search for the clans," she pointed out, her words clumsy and blunt.
His partner's statement was more of an accusation than an inquiry.
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew they had hit their mark as she witnessed something within Barty Crouch Jr. shift and give way to something ugly.
She saw the man's eyes narrowing, forming into a cold, formidable glower that seemed to drive a dagger straight through her heart. His eyebrows came together in frustration, his nostrils flaring like that of an angry bull's.
His gaze never looked away, and yet he seemed to be losing his resolve somewhat under Layla's unreadable expression as she flat-out refused to revert her gaze. There was no fear, no malice, no desperation, no plea that he could discern in the vampire's eyes.
Before she could fathom what was happening, the wizard stalked forward, his footsteps making audibly loud crunching sounds in the snow.
She let out a startled gasp as his hand shot out around her arm and pulled her forward, so close that the tip of her nose was almost touching his as he thrust his face close to hers.
"You could have died!" Barty gave her a slight shake as he screamed, angry tones that were slowly turning to hoarse whispers as he looked at her. "How…can you be so…so calm about this, Layla?!"
His strength drained away, and there was a sudden glimmer of concern for her in his otherwise manic dark brown eyes, the likes of which she had not seen before, that he threw her back against the tree.
In a blink of an eye, he pulled his wand, and in his confused anger, he destroyed the closest thing he could find, which in this case, was a tree. Splinters of wood rent through the air as the angry shout of the Exploding Charm reverberated in the forest clearing they found themselves in.
Layla sharply turned her head to the side and flung her arms up over her head to shield her face, giving out soft heaving coughs and struggling to catch her breath as she continued to feel the warm trickling of blood seep out of her. She felt the pain of her wound sting and immediately clutched at her chest.
Finally, after several minutes of watching the wizard lose his composure and destroy two or three more trees in the process, he calmed, walking back towards her, breathing hard. He clenched and unclenched his fist simultaneously, wishing to satisfy his itch that sought for blood.
"I—I'm sorry," Layla whispered in a horrified voice, not sure what else to say as Barty lifted his gaze to her and for a moment, his heart skipped a beat. Her hearing picked up on that. She rested quietly against the trunk of the tree he had originally guided her to, a bloodied hand on her wound, and the other on her neck. "I—I know I didn't…keep watch very well…I—I was trying to get more kindling for the fire, for warmth. I…those damned wolves, they—they just…showed up out of nowhere, I, I'm sorry…"
Her voice cracked and she trailed off, unable to finish her thought.
Barty angrily shook his head as his heart pounded loudly in his chest. Hard, rhythmic drumming that he could hear in his ears. His hand shot out of its own accord and clamped down on the witch's shoulder. Though he could not deny he felt a certain relief having her with him once again, he was on edge now. Every nerve in his body was on high alert.
Every noise, even the faint rustling of the branches of the trees in the wind had the hairs on his body standing on end. He knew there were sure to be more scouts from the werewolf Pack on their trail if they didn't get a move on, to say nothing of there was no telling what Layla's wounds would do to her body, but it was not that which he feared the most.
It was that he feared the body now in his grasp would be stolen from him. Waking to discover her missing had been the only time in Barty's life he had known real fear. It was a terrible feeling that seized his heart, waking up to find no sight of his new partner. He remembered standing there, frozen and blinded by the feeling of this new emotion.
As he had looked for her and had found her in the cave with a stake buried through her heart, he'd felt the horrible sprouting of betrayal, devastation, sadness, and anger. The feeling of uncontrollable rage spiraled through his body until the wizard could think of nothing else. It was the rage he felt now that he clung to. He was a patient man. He need not give himself away too soon.
Had Layla been trying to run away from him and had managed to accidentally stumble across the wolves while on her way out of the Forest, was that it? He knew she was desperate to return home to her father.
He imagined killing his Layla. He stared up at the sky for a moment and imagined hogtying this blood-sucking succubus, beautiful though she was, to a tree and letting the sun take her. Or better yet, throwing her down the old well in his home's backyard and letting the sun claim her there if he put Shield Charms up in place to prevent her from scaling the walls of the well.
He imagined plunging his blade into her chest, sliding the edge across her vulnerable throat, enough to weaken her considerably. And his imaginings flitting through his mind felt good. Barty felt his muscles twitch and he yearned for her blood. He yearned to punish her for what Layla Wydman had done to him tonight, for making him feel like this.
Even when she had roused from her state of semi-unconsciousness, Barty fought the urge to kill her. The more Layla apologized to him now, the angrier he felt himself becoming.
He wanted to believe her. He remembered earlier, how she had shared with him her painful memories, how she had taken his arm and let him take the lead, how just her icy touch calmed and soothed the wild raging fires in his heart. He wanted that back, but this leech had ruined that for him. It was something Barty wasn't sure he could ever forgive.
As he glared across the way at this vampire, a part of him wondered if he actually hated her for this, for being so stupid as to wander off alone, without waking him up. A part of him thought perhaps…she deserved to die.
And he wanted to do it. He wanted her to die. But he did not only wish to kill this parasite, oh, no. He wanted to torture the witch first. He wanted Layla Wydman to suffer. Always, Barty had enjoyed killing, but never had the wizard desired to draw it out before, until now. He saw no point in prolonging the suffering.
But with her, he wanted it, needed it so badly, it ached. She needed to suffer, to bleed, to scream his name, to cry for mercy. But when it came down to it, and even now as he kept his grip firm on her shoulder with one hand, raising his wand to her chest with the other, holding his wand against her soft flesh, flesh he wanted nothing more than to tear into, he could not do it.
It was her eyes that caused the shift within his countenance, teeming with sadness. She looked almost scared. It shook him. Barty wanted to make it stop, what he was feeling, but at the same time, he wanted to hurt her. It was a horrible conflict, the likes of which he had never felt before tonight. It yanked at him, tore at him. Threatened to eat him alive.
These conflicting emotions only lasted a moment. His decision became clear enough to him as Barty felt the desire to kill quietly dissipate, but those few seconds to the agitated and vexed Death Eater felt like an eternity. He needed Layla with him. He needed her. Wanted her. Wanted her to love him more than he wanted to kill her for this mistake.
It was the strongest desire he had ever felt. Stronger than killing, even. Words were almost impossible to describe it.
Angry though he was with her, Barty knew he could not kill her. At least, not yet. Not when he felt like this. As he watched her struggle to keep her composure and keep from allowing her face to showcase the pain she was clearly in, he felt the rage return tenfold. The more this feeling, this draw to her grew, she was like a drug that he constantly needed a whiff of, the more he thought he hated her. Hated her and loved her at the same time. He hated the prickly little vampire for making him feel these things, these old foreign feelings he had not felt for another witch since Alice's rejection of his feelings.
But this…this was almost so much worse than that ill-fated morning under the Whomping Willow in their seventh year of Hogwarts, when Alice had told him that she fully intended to marry Longbottom after they graduated, that her going out with him was a snow's chance in hell and it would never happen.
And now, here Layla stood, wounded and suffering and in a great amount of pain, on the brink, and making him feel this myriad of emotions he had desperately sought so hard to bury deep within himself over these last several years following their graduation, and he hated the vampire for this.
But once again, he could not bring himself to kill her, could not send this witch to her death. And so, he reached out to touch her, the feeling he enjoyed so much now filling him, and calming his anger.
Killing sometimes felt like this, but still, this, her, was different.
He gritted his teeth and allowed the worst of his anger to cool before speaking to her. Though the details of how this had happened were the least of his concerns for the moment, he still wondered how Layla had managed to get herself into this bind without him waking and hearing any sort of a fight.
"Why didn't you call for help?" he demanded in a voice that made Layla flinch away in both hurt and surprise, a voice that she could only describe as a growl. "I would have helped you, so why didn't you?" he asked, shaking her slightly.
"There—there were too many of them, Crouch, and they didn't notice you." He heard a frown in Layla's soft voice. "I was too far away from the campfire to alert you quietly without making any kind of noise. If I'd called for you, those damned dogs would have heard. They'd have gone after you, I—I couldn't let it, Barty…"
"I could have handled it," Barty pulled back and stared incredulously into the vampire's eyes, which were wide and round and brimming with wonder and tears. "Don't you ever do that to me again, do you understand?" he growled, hardening his expression, and ensuring his tone was desirous of the emphasis he wanted to give. "You and I, we're supposed to be partners on this assignment, Wydman, we look after one another, defend each other when necessary. You were lucky those wolves didn't have more time with you, that I was able to find you when I had! You—you could have been hurt even worse than you already are, maybe even bloody killed!"
Layla frowned and her shoulders slumped as she shook her head.
"Sunlight, Crouch, remember?" she fired back, sarcasm dripping from her tone. "I…I didn't want you to get hurt. You're mortal, I—I didn't know what else to do, Crouch, I—I didn't mean for this to happen, I—I was afraid, a-and not thinking very clearly, and well…judging by the way you handled them back there, you proved what everyone always feared about you, Crouch, didn't you just?" she sighed, glancing down at the ground as though ashamed. Her expression hardened as she steadily lifted her gaze to him. "You proved how stupid I was back in school to ever think kindly of you. To think that you and I had…been friends."
Barty reeled backward, looking as though the vampire had slapped him, hardly daring to believe this witch's words. The anger was now a seething pit inside him, bubbling and threatening to rise to the surface again if he couldn't maintain control of his emotions.
Oh, she knew exactly what sort of poisonous venom would hurt him the most, and this sort did not come from her fangs. But her words only served to anger him further, and he stood resolutely in place, keeping a vice on her arm.
"And yet, here you are, needing my protection, Layla, whether you're aware of it or not," he said, his voice sharp and cold. "You could have woken me, tried talking to me! I don't give a damn whether or not I'm a mortal or not, Wydman, I can handle a few disgusting werewolves, and the two of us together have a greater chance for success at taking them head-on than you did alone," Barty angrily snapped.
"You think I don't know that?" Layla still could not bring herself to meet Barty's piercing gaze. "I—I just figured…since I probably wasn't going to make it anyway, there was no point in getting you involved too. It was better those wolves took me than both of us."
"I needed to be involved, Wydman!" Barty shouted as he heard his voice increasing in volume to match his mounting anger. "You cannot risk your life like that! Not for me, not anyone!" he cried, the edges of his lips curling in a feral snarl.
"You did!" Layla was all but scowling at him now, her brows knitted together in worry and concern. "You followed me deeper into the Forest and faced five grown bloody werewolves all on your own, just to try to save me! You knew there was a chance you'd be killed, but you did it anyway! I did the same thing you did! I took the same risk!" she shouted, her temper erupting to life as her face flushed with color.
"No, it's not the same risk, far from it, Layla. I knew you were innocent, but I never took you to be naive," Barty growled. "There is a substantial difference between the small risk that I took in saving your life and what you did, Wydman. You weren't just risking your bloody life, you were sacrificing yourself to your sworn enemy. You don't know what they could have done to you, Layla, I know you've not spent time around wolves, considering your two species' history, but I have," he pointed out.
Barty vehemently shook his head as his mind's eye showed him visions of the horrible unspeakable things Layla had narrowly avoided becoming a victim of, thanks to him.
"You all but handed yourself over to them for a free snack!" Barty shouted.
"I—I didn't!" Layla cried as the furrow of anger between her brows deepened the angrier she became. "I ran, Barty. I—I tried to lead them away. I hoped the Forest would help me lose them. I could have gotten away. I didn't, but I know I could have. It was a chance I took, in order to keep you from dying. Exactly the same chance as you took on all six werewolves to reclaim me from them. You didn't want me to get hurt worse than I already was, so you slaughtered those dogs for me. I didn't want you to get hurt, so I tried to lead them away from you. It's the same thing," Layla protested wildly.
"We aren't arguing about this!" Barty shouted as the volume of his tone increased further, and he could hear now that he sounded furious, so furious, in fact, that if he had not known himself, he would have pitied anyone who attempted to contradict him at this point.
The vampire did not deserve to be yelled at, particularly not after the vicious cruelty she had just endured at the claws of those wretched werewolves, but Layla needed to heed his words and take him seriously.
"The moment you spot something you think is a threat, even from a distance, you need to let me know. Immediately. It's not a matter of deciding whether to fight it alone or attempt to lead whatever it is away. There's no choice to be made. You're to tell me, so the problem can be taken care of, especially now until we can get your wand fixed, you hear?"
Layla shrank back against the trunk of the tree she was leaning against slightly at hearing how clipped Barty's tone was.
"Yes," she whispered in a small and meek voice. Layla was quiet for a moment, wishing she possessed the strength to bolt to her feet and run, but knowing she couldn't. Instead, she glared at Barty. "Is my failing you tonight why we aren't continuing our search?" she asked as her heart sank, though she forced herself to raise her chin in a defiant manner. Her suspicions were growing with each word he spoke.
Barty leaned as near to his partner as the vampire would allow him. Confused, the wizard could not follow the direction of her thoughts.
"I do not understand," he told her. "All I want is to get you back home, to let Severus take a look at you, and then we will resume looking for the clans. All I want is to get you to safety, and see your wounds treated."
"Is it?" Layla indicted. Her mistrustful stare tore him to shreds.
"Of course," Barty snapped as he looked at her, wounded and worried at the shift in her attitude.
"Or maybe that was the plan all along," Layla angrily accused.
"Plan? What? What plan?" Barty stared at her in bewilderment with raised eyebrows.
"Yes. Plan!" Layla shot back. "Between you and the Dark Lord," she argued suspiciously. "To kill my father," she cried, curling her hand into a fist as she still clutched onto a fistful of her soaked and ruined shirt, trying her hardest to tie the garment into a knot with shaking fingers to stem off the bleeding as it continued.
"To kill your…" Barty tried to repeat the vampire's words. "Layla No, that's not…that's not the plan at all."
Words would not even form as he searched the witch's ashen face. Never had he seen Layla react to anything before with such cynicism and wariness in all the time he had known her. Something was wrong. Before Barty could press their conversation, Layla grimaced and tightened her grip around her chest as another pain shot through her heart.
She turned her face away and tried to breathe deeply but could only moan as her body underwent the difficult but slow process of healing itself from her many hurts. It only took a moment for Barty to reach her. He knelt beside her, wanting desperately to help her, but not knowing how. Without even thinking, Barty absently stretched out his hand and laid it tenderly on top of her knee.
In the middle of her agony, Layla tensed and drew backward away from Barty.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed, the terror in her voice shrill and unmistakable.
Barty jumped, yanking his hand back as if he'd been burned. He was upset and angry at what had seemed to place such fear and doubt in her heart as to his intentions towards her and his ability to keep her safe. At the moment it took for him to return his eyes to her face, he realized that he was one of the ones who'd hurt her, not just the brutish beasts he'd saved her from hours ago. All he could do was watch as Layla's discomfort grew worse. She moved one hand from her chest to grasp the solid block upon which she sat, her knuckles growing white with the effort.
Barty could not help but feel a surge of jealousy in his chest, wishing it were his hand for which the vampire had reached, wanting to offer his partner comfort, wanting her to touch him, but she did not reach for him. After several minutes, her spasm had finally subsided, her body stopping its shuddering long enough to allow Layla to look at Barty with terrified eyes, her mind returning to her suspicion of the Death Eater's true purpose.
"You're just going to make me think that I can trust you." She spat the word trust as though it were poison on her tongue. She voiced her fear as she trembled. "Then you're going to kill my father and make me watch since I failed the Dark Lord, aren't you?" She nodded to herself, sure of her accusation. "You're going to let the Dark Lord slaughter the only family that I have left."
To his horror, she began to cry, stricken and overcome with fright.
"What?" Barty growled, growing increasingly more worried for Layla. "Where in the bloody hell is this coming from, Wydman?" he barked, hardly daring to believe the words that had just come out of her mouth. "Right now, all I care about is you. Merlin's Beard, you just had a bloody stake buried through your heart!" he begged. "You're my partner," he swore as he looked worriedly towards the gaping hole in her chest, how her hand that covered it shook so badly, it was a wonder she was still conscious.
Layla scoffed at him, rejecting the Death Eater's appeal, and scowled.
Suddenly, she could no longer hold back her anger.
"There's no…need for false concern around me, Crouch," she sneered. "I know what you think of…of monsters like me, Crouch, don't think I don't. Rosier told me what you said a few weeks ago when he came into Borgin's shop," she interrupted Barty before the flustered wizard could plead his case. "He told me what you said." She glared at Barty Crouch Jr. with fire and hatred brimming in her eyes.
"What? Said what? What did I say?" Barty questioned, a surge of annoyance and frustration seeping its way into the surface of his voice. He was bloody freezing cold, and he knew the longer they lingered out here in the open, the worse her condition would become. His mind struggled to comprehend it all. "Wydman, you're not making any sense. Help me understand," he begged, wishing she'd confide in him, and then start to trust him.
Through the tears now streaming down her face, Layla eyed the Death Eater guardedly. She began to explain the reasons for her despair.
"Evan Rosier came to see me a few weeks ago and said that…" her words caught in her throat. "When the Society for the Tolerance of Vampires was founded a few months back, that you laughed." Layla looked at Barty hatefully and shuddered, not wanting to give a voice to the disgusting reaction which his friend and comrade had taken upon himself to report to her.
She flinched as she realized that Rosier, the bastard, must have known that the Dark Lord was keeping tabs on her and had already had Crouch in mind for her guard, and was merely goading her by telling her this to see how she'd take it, likely for a good laugh at her expense later behind closed doors.
She took a deep, choking breath and spat the words at the wizard.
"You said vampires were nothing more than cancer, worthy only to be cut from the face of the earth and killed." She dropped her face into her hands and made an odd disparaging noise at the back of her throat that sounded like a soft sob.
Barty's face drained of what little color was left, unable to believe what he was hearing. Hatred surged in his veins for Evan Rosier, and he wished he would have killed the pathetic little man when he'd had the chance when he'd ended his engagement to Layla before she'd been Turned into a creature of the damned.
His thoughts reeled at the evil his own colleague had spewed at this witch.
This was why she'd not been able to look at him moments ago, this and the fact that his master was holding her father hostage as a bargaining chip was the cause of the witch's distrust in him, even now, despite risking his life to save her from those wretched werewolves.
He vowed to himself that Evan Rosier was going to die for what the wizard had done. He wished to take the vampire's hand, to hold the young witch close, but he dared not, not yet.
He knew he would have to earn her confidence, and her trust, and love.
"Layla, you never did strike me as daft, so don't start now," Barty barked meanly in a voice that was calloused with ire. "I did not know about any of what was said between you and Rosier," he growled. "Evan never said a word to me, and I said no such thing about your kind," he told her, trembling. "The last news I heard of you was that you had been attacked, that you went missing from London without a trace. I tried to get word of you, but the Dark Lord never left me alone," he recalled, growing irate.
Layla sat against the fallen timber, shaking in stress and pain, her eyes still closed as she blinked a nearly frozen tear that trickled down her cheek.
"Look at me," Barty growled. "You know what Evan Rosier was to you, Wydman, what kind of an arse he was to you. He had every right to try to get you riled. He's more a monster than any dragon which had ever slunk through this world," he described, hatred and jealousy in his tone for the wizard who had once possessed Wydman's love and had thrown it away so casually without a care in the world. "Don't take in his words, don't give him the satisfaction of knowing he got to you."
Slowly, Layla opened her eyes to look at him. He paused a moment, simply relieved that he had her attention.
"I knew you when you were…normal," he stammered, swallowing down hard past a lump forming in his throat. "You and I, we were friends in school, weren't we? I would give my left arm before I'd say anything like that about you, no matter what you've become now," his voice trembled. "What do I need to do to prove to you that I'm a man of my word, Wydman, that you're safe with me, that you and your father will be safe, that I won't let anything happen?"
Barty looked at her, stricken with anger at the thought she might refuse. Layla watched the wizard cautiously. His words and the seemingly bereaved manner in which he spoke to her now suggested that Crouch was genuine.
She'd seen the pain in his eyes before. The night of the Prewitt girl's rejections, when Alice had told Barty she was going to marry Frank Longbottom, he had stalked back to the Slytherin Common Room in a rage, and it was only after trashing the room that she felt comfortable enough to approach and lent a shoulder for him to cry on.
He had opened his emotions to her that night as they'd sat by the fire in the Slytherin Common Room and trusted her so implicitly that Layla could not help but feel a bond beginning to grow.
That night, they had come so close to being something more than just friends.
She sighed sadly. That had been a long time ago. Before she had been attacked, before she was a blood-sucking abomination who did not deserve to live, before she was kidnapped at the Dark Lord's orders by a man she thought she trusted, before her father's life was threatened. Before. Before. All of that, it had all been before.
She had been through too much in her life not to be more vigilant these days with her trust.
Her father's life was far too important for her to make the same mistakes that she had in the distant past.
Barty looked at his partner with something akin to compassion forming in his eyes. There had to be something he could do to ease the witch's mind that would surely set her at ease. Rising to one knee, he carefully withdrew his wand.
Layla instinctively tensed in dread and fear, not sure what the wizard intended to do, a reaction that infuriated him, but he forced himself to shove aside his anger down into the pit of his stomach.
He softly laid his wand on the ground at the vampire's boots and lowered his head in a show of respect for their former friendship.
"Layla Erena Wydman," he began. "You and I were friends before this, and I hope...despite everything, you and I could...pick back up where we left off, he stammered, speaking through a mouth that was bone dry. "My wand for as long as the Dark Lord has appointed us partners is yours," he pledged. "I pledge my wand, my loyalty, my protection, to protecting you and your father," he stared into her dark eyes earnestly, hoping for some small glimmer of affection within them. "I will shield the both of you, and guard each of you with my life," he swore his passionate oath at her feet. Layla's eyes, for the first time since their reunion, showed him a small measure of softness, but only a careful portion.
She remembered his lament the night Alice had broken his heart. He seemed to want what every other wizard and witch wanted out of this life. A semblance of normalcy. Someone to depend on, to trust, even love. She breathed a little bit easier at the wizard's apparent devotion, though most of the vampire still remained keenly attentive and anxious as to Barty's intentions. Barty nodded to his partner when he had finished and began to pocket his wand.
Suddenly, a few yards from the clearing came the audible baying howls of more wolves. There were more than just five of them this time, and from the sound of the curses that rent through the air, it would seem this lot had discovered the mutilated bodies of their fallen Pack mates.
Barty and Layla glanced towards one another, temporarily panicked. There was no way Barty could fight off as many as it sounded were approaching their position. They held their breath and waited. Closer and closer, the Pack came until the group of wolves was almost upon the small clearing that now hid the two suspects.
Barty instinctively positioned himself in front of Layla and held his wand at the ready. Layla could only quiver in dread and pain, unable to even inhale. They scanned the distant trees that hid the clearing for any approaching enemies that were advancing on their position. Barty was afraid the sound of his heart racing wildly in his chest would give them away as they waited.
Thankfully, to their relief, the werewolf Pack did not see them. The scouts raced past their hiding place, seemingly on their way to search for the murderers of their kin elsewhere. Barty and Layla knew there would be more scouts following this dispatch and were eager to be gone from this section of the Forbidden Forest.
"Layla. We can't stay out here any longer. We need to go. Now," Barty growled with emphasis on his last word, standing and holding out a hopeful hand to Layla to help the witch up. His heart soared when she took it.
Layla rose carefully to her feet, aided by Barty Crouch Jr.'s vice grip.
Before she could take a step forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder by the wizard, a pained grimace plastered its way across her face, yet another pain ripping through her body.
She reached out to grab the tree against which she had been leaning for support and stumbled over the fallen log, losing her balance, and nearly plummeting to the ground. She would have too, if Barty's reflexes hadn't been lightning-quick and he hadn't moved to catch her as she fell, holding the witch in his protective embrace until she could straighten up on her own. Their eyes caught one another's gaze.
For a moment, there was nothing between them, and it was as if the many missing years between the pair of former friends had never happened.
Then, they were reminded of Layla's foolishness as she groaned with the pain in her chest and leg. Pulling herself out of Barty's grasp, her mouth agape in shock as her eyes traveled to the ground. Barty followed the vampire's look down to the snow by their feet and realized the cause of her distress. A large puddle of blood was seeping out of the hole in her leg. The werewolves that were tracking them would be able to follow the scent.
"We have to go," she cried out in fear. Her eyes showed the panic her heart was beginning to feel.
Not wanting to linger any longer, Barty wound an arm around Layla's waist threw one of her arms over his shoulder, and supported her weight as he helped her to walk as carefully as he could. They could not linger here, and they could not continue down the path they had been traveling along, as there were sure to be more scouts from whatever werewolf Pack lived in these woods and waiting for them.
Instead, Barty had no choice but to take them deeper into the Forbidden Forest with Layla tensing as she tried her best to put on a brave face and keep moving forward, not looking back.
They both knew there wasn't much time. Layla's condition was only worsening if he could not get her the medical help that she so needed.
They would have to find a place to shelter for the night, alone, and in the middle of nowhere.