Author's Note:

This fic was much more popular than I'd expected it to be O.O Thank you all!

Anyways, here's the next installment of The Path of Madness! Please enjoy! And if you could review, that'd be great... thanks, Lovelies!

xxx

CHAPTER TWO:

End the Madness, Dr. Drevis

After the confrontation of the blonde-haired youth, Aya, without saying a word to Maria, turned and left, staccato steps leaving sharp echoes down the dim hallway. The maid watched this with dismay, not missing her Mistress's dark, yet blank expression as she did so. Knowing that there was nothing she could do to ease Aya's somber mood, Maria only inclined her head slightly, turning her emerald gaze to the worn wooden floor, and whispered, "Happy Birthday, Mistress," if only to grant herself some small form of the illusion that she could help in any way.

Meanwhile, the young Drevis girl was preoccupied with her own thoughts, which were rapidly swirling about her mind in a complicated mental tempest. She decided, hazily, to barricade herself in her bedroom until her raging mind calmed itself. The door locked with a click, and Aya sank into the soft embrace of her bed, finally deciding to dissect the information that had been oh-so-suddenly dumped on her.

Her future doll was dead. That certain tidbit of information almost made the young woman want to crawl up under her bed and wallow in her despair in the dark. Her birthday had been ruined, in her opinion. She'd so looked forward to this new doll, this lovely new doll, but she'd been cheated. Aya's features shifted to accommodate a small frown, and she furrowed her slim eyebrows. Cheated, yes, that was the word. Her present had been taken so suddenly, so cruelly, away from her. And there was nothing she could've done to stop it. At least, that's what she told herself.

Aya decided to turn her thoughts to the icing on her birthday cake of shocked despair: the golden-haired boy from the depths of her memory, the one who'd saved her from her father, had returned. About this, she was unsure what to think. She knew that she should probably be ecstatic that he had risen once more, but instead she felt a cold dread where her light hearted happiness should have been. It was for one reason, one reason she knew very well, and one reason that the boy hated stated so clearly. He wanted to change her, to change her path. He wanted to take away the last bit of father that she had left. Aya's frown slowly blossomed into a full-fledged scowl, an expression so unfit for her dollish face. There was no way she was going to allow the boy to ruin the life she was happy with. No way. Even if it made her mother sad... her mother just didn't understand what doing this meant to her, Aya supposed. To her, it was more than just allowing her father's former lifestyle to envelop her and corrupt her with its dark tendrils. It was keeping a part of him with her, the part that it seemed he loved the most about himself. If that boy were to take that from her... well, Aya felt that she would be lost as a person.

It was with thoughts of the fair-haired, scarred youth that the raven-haired young woman drifted off into a silent, dreamless, aphotic slumber.

xxx

She awoke to a headache. An aching, throbbing headache.

Aya sat up with a strained, pained sigh, her eyes still closed, as though they were a shield from the pain in her temples. She massaged her forehead, trying to relieve at least a bit of the ache. She knew perfectly well what she needed to do, though.

At last, she opened her eyes, preparing herself to stand up and fetch her book from her desk. However, she never got to. Aya's cobalt eyes widened and her breath hitched at the sight before her:

The flaxen-headed boy sat at her desk chair, perusing her father's former book with half-masted eyes that were shaded with a look of... distaste? He flipped a page, his eyes narrowing further, reading the text by the natural light of the sun, partially grayed out by overcast.

It was all she could do not to get up that very moment, rush over and snatch her precious memento from that boy's hands. But, she remembered that, as a young lady, she should present herself with more decorum, especially with what was such a delicate situation, even if the boy himself did not realize it. So, with meticulous composure, Aya rose from her bed and stepped over to where the boy sat, enveloped in her father's book on anatomy. With all the placidity she could muster, she crossed her arms to hide their quivering, and tried her best to ignore her pounding, incessant headache as she addressed the boy, speaking as though chiding a small child instead of someone she knew was older than herself.

"I never said you were allowed to rummage through my things. Please put that down and leave," her voice was breathy, a not-quite-whisper, barely masking the pain in her skull. Unintentionally, her lips were pursed and her pretty eyes were narrowed in irritation, not because that's the kind of person she was, but because that pain in her head was just so strong...

At once, the boy's eyes drifted from the book, settling on her agonized glare. The disgust had faded from his gaze, replaced with an unreadable stare, one that immediately set off a red flag for Aya. She knew right away that he would not comply.

Her prediction proved correct, in a way. "I was only attempting to understand what you find soothing about such a heinous piece of work, Aya," he murmured simply. Then, he stood, and looked down into Aya's widened eyes. Down... It struck her then that the boy had... grown since their last encounter, although he was, by definition, a corpse. Was this an effect of her mother's power? Or just a mind trick being played upon her by the boy? Either way, it was something she certainly hadn't expected, or noticed beforehand, for that matter.

The blonde bo- young man (she supposed) continued, "Furthermore, I am not leaving. Not yet. We need to talk, Aya." Those words sent a chill down the young woman's spine. They sounded so... cryptic.

Holding fast to her ladylike composure as best she could, Aya cleared her throat. "If you insist," she began, an odd tightness creeping around the edges of her tone. She was nervous, and she knew that the other had noticed. She didn't expect him not to. "we will talk, then," she finished.

The young man was silent for a moment. Then, he began to pace around Aya's room. With every one of his light footfalls, Aya felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the back of her head. Her eyes never left the book he still held in his pale hands as he moved about. The raven-haired young woman unconsciously bit her lip in anxiety. She needed to retrieve that book. But she knew that he would not return it to her easily, so she absentmindedly continued to watch the book, gears in her brilliant mind whirring at top speed.

She was jerked from her cogitation when he spoke again, not halting his pacing route. "This needs to end, Aya."

Aya wasted no time in answering, although her response was rather faint. "What needs to end?"

That seemed to set him off. He whirled on his heel, turning to face Aya with unbridled frustration visible in his one amber eye. She was taken aback by this, and took one miniscule step backwards at the sight. It had never occurred to her before that he was capable of becoming this upset.

The youth held up her father's red book and gestured to it angrily. "This, Aya!" His voice was rife with intense feeling, so much so that Aya was struck with the full force of his thoughts, his emotions. They came rushing at her, and filled every crevice of her mind.

Realization began to sink in, and Aya furrowed her dark brows together anxiously. He was really serious about this. He really did plan on obstructing her path, didn't he? Yesterday, she'd just tried to convince herself that his appearance meant nothing, and that everything would blow over soon. But she could tell, just by that look in his eye, that he meant business. He would not leave until he'd changed her, no matter how much she protested or feigned ignorance.

Nothing, not even the hideous monsters that had haunted her father's house, scared her more than this sudden, unwelcome understanding.

A look of horror overtook her countenance, and, seeing this, the youth's eye lost the majority of its intensity. He sighed a taught, wavering sigh and spoke once more. "Do you remember Jean Rooney?" he asked suddenly.

Aya nodded, returning to biting her lip, remaining silent.

He went on intensity returning to his voice with each passing word, "Do you have any idea how her family felt after she never came home?" He did not wait for her to answer. "They were devastated, Aya. No, beyond devastated. You ripped another human being from life, from her loving family, and for what? For what, Aya?" This time, he fell silent, awaiting a response.

There was a pregnant pause before Aya managed to stutter out a semi-coherent response. "T-to... to carry on f-father's work!"

He shot her an incredulous, pained smile, if one could call such an expression a smile. "Do you have any idea how you sound, Aya? Do you? If you're trying to please your father, you're going about everything the wrong way!"

Aya frowned. "If I had wanted to fulfill father's wishes, I wouldn't have tried to escape from him back then!" she exclaimed. Her voice softened, she continued. "No... this is for me. I want to keep father's memory alive."

"Is this how you 'keep his memory alive', Aya?!" he cried. "Do you remember him as a psychopath? A heartless, remorseless killer?"

"Shut up!" she screamed. Her eyes had begun to fill with tears for a reason that she could not explain. Could it have been because... everything the boy said was true? No! Of course not, she told herself. He was wrong, wrong, dead wrong...

Once she'd felt that she'd regained control of herself, she continued on, in a most uncharacteristically menacing tone. "My father was not a psychopath! He was not heartless! He was a good man! He really was! Everything he did was for the sake of preserving beauty!"

He matched tones with her evenly, not conceding in the slightest. "And he did so by murdering the innocent!"

That was it for Aya. Suddenly feeling weary, she sat down in her empty desk chair, and, like a dam bursting, tears began to flow freely from her eyes. "Stop it... stop it... stop..." she murmured, almost incoherently as she sobbed, gripping her own arms as though to stop herself from falling apart. His arguments were piercing her reality, tearing apart what she thought was right, what was okay. And suddenly, she felt a cold, horrible feeling in her chest, one that she hadn't felt ever before. Was this what remorse felt like...?

"Aya..."

She looked up with her red-tinted, streaming eyes. The youth's eye was expressing nothing but sympathy now. There was no anger, no irritation, no ill-will. Only gently sympathy. "Aya... remember what he did to the others. Look at what he did to me. Think about what he wanted to do to you, his own flesh and blood. I know it hurts, but you have to listen to me, alright?" A pause. Aya lowered her head again. The blonde young man continued speaking. "Your father... I know you loved him, but just think, Aya. Think about everything he did. Not to you, but to everyone else: your mother, and all those people. This isn't the right path to travel, Aya." Yet another, longer pause. His hesitation unnerved Aya further, but not more so that what he said next. "And you know that too, don't you?"

As much as Aya wanted to react, to yell, to scream, to sob, anything, she found that she was just too weary. Her body would not respond to her commands. The two remained silent for what seemed like an eternity.

At last, when she felt she could move, she looked up to respond to the boy, but instead, she saw that he had vanished. She was alone in her room. She noted with a blank realization that her father's book, too, had gone, pilfered by the youth for whatever reason. To her astonishment, though, she found that she was not upset by it in the least. She felt... nothing. Unaffected by the loss that usually would have sent her into a panic. And what's more, she noticed that her headache was gone too.

Perplexed by this, Aya rose from her desk chair and meandered absentmindedly over to a window, shaded by heavy curtains. She pulled them back, allowing the gray morning light to flood into the room. She stood there, staring out into the dreary, quiet outdoors. As much as she didn't want to, she began to think about the boy's words. And the more she did so, the more she felt like her whole world was crumbling around her.

What was the truth? What was right? Had her whole life so far been nothing but a lie? Had everything she'd worked so hard to achieve been nothing but a selfish form of appeasement? Who was she, really? Was she really a psychopath? And more importantly, was this the right path for her?

All of these questions flurried about the young woman's mind until she could stand it no more. Aya leaned her forehead against the window and began to sob uncontrollably. It was all so unfair! What right had this youth to come back into her life, only to destroy everything she ever knew? Who was he to know right from wrong? For all he knew, he could be the one in the wrong here!

But another part of her begged to differ, and the cold, dreadful feeling in Aya Drevis's chest grew as she realized that now, she was faced with a choice. But he most difficult part of this ultimatum was the fact that she hadn't a clue whether or not the path she'd chosen was the truth or the mad, mad lie.