AN: This took me way too long to write, because I wanted it to be perfect and because I am a huge procrastinator. Sorry for that.

I am having way to much fun with the dark parts of this story, I love me some angst.

Warning: Talk of violence, mental health issues

Chapter 5: Void and Null

The ride back to his hotel was mostly a blur. Kol broke pretty much every traffic law in existence, speeding along as if he had a death wish all of a sudden.

Adrian couldn't bare to look at him and he balked at the thought of continuing the evening as if nothing had happened at all. As if they hadn't just horrifically burned someone.

He couldn't get it out of his head.

The smell of it, Eddie's screams.

And the way he had felt, the way he had just so carelessly allowed Kol to hurt him. The way he had wanted him to burn.

Kol parked the car in front of the hotel. He didn't seem stressed by the attack at all. No, in fact, he seemed annoyed that Adrian was upset by it.

"Here we are Ivashkov, if you want to be a drag and go straight to bed then out you go." He waved his hand dismissively.

"Fuck you." Was all Adrian could say to that. He left the car without another word and Kol raced off into the night. That was it. Hell would freeze over before Adrian would ever talk to him again.

His hands still shook by the time he was in his room and his head throbbed painfully.

There was nothing physically wrong with him. The blood had cured his bruises and hangover splendidly. It was the darkness. The madness. The attack on Eddie had drawn it out into the open and now it had gotten a sniff of freedom and it wanted more. Adrian could feel it thrashing inside of him, like some kind of animal that wanted to get out. It had never felt like that before. He had never felt like that before.

The only thing that seemed to help was laying down on his bed and laughing.

He laughed until his throat cramped and he couldn't barely croak out another sound. It wasn't just crazy, it was insane. He was insane.

God, his head was so heavy. So full. It pressed against his eyes and when he closed them he could feel just how tired he was. So tired that he seemed to fall asleep instantly.

It happened before he could do something, not that he knew of anything that could stop it. He was pulled into a spirit dream.

He recognized the feel of it, though he had never been on the receiving end of one. It was a feeling like a waking dream, of reality and fantasy fusing together. He could best describe it as stepping out of a cold room into the warm rays of the sun, you knew you should feel warm, but the cold still lingered if only for a moment and in that moment you were both fire and ice, awake and asleep.

He was in the one of the squares at Court. It was night time, but instead of it being full of people, it was deserted. Adrian's heart sank.

He didn't need this right now. He was enough of a mess as it was.

Behind him someone cleared their throat.

He wondered if he could pull himself into another spirit dream, inception his way out of this situation.

"Adrian." The person behind him said sternly and it wasn't who he had expected to hear at all.

He had though it would have been Lissa, he had dreaded that in fact. Despite everything, he couldn't think of facing her now. Somehow the thought of letting her down weighed heavy on him. Maybe cause she was such a saint and he ... well he was not. But the person who had pulled him in and who was now standing in front of him, her arms crossed and her face a mask of pure anger, was Sonya Karp.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" She practically barked at him.

"I do appear to be partly in yours, so yes." Adrian quipped as he tried to make sense of the matter. What the hell was she doing inside his head?

Her expression turned even more murderous. "Eddie called."

And suddenly it all became so very very clear.

Apparently the Let's get Adrian back to his miserable self program was a team effort that everyone at Court was involved with, even random teachers and guardians in training. Who knew, maybe they had involved a couple of janitors as well. How fucking helpful. Adrian could just picture them all sitting in a circly, wringing their hands together, talking about what had to be done.

"You attacked him." She spat, clearly pissed at his continued silence.

For a moment he felt a pang of guilt.

It looked bad, the way he had just left Eddie there. He should have healed him or at least he should have dropped him at the club where some kind of vampire first aid would be available. But no, he had just left him.

He should have acted differently. But he couldn't.

It was the madness, that monster inside of him that had controlled him. He couldn't have stopped, couldn't have helped because it wouldn't let him.

Never before had it drove him to something like this, to violence, never before had it made him crave other people's pain. That wasn't who he was. He knew he wasn't a good person, he was a drunk and a slacker, but he wasn't a sadist. He wasn't evil. But at that moment, he had been just that. He had been no better then a Strigoi.

And for that he felt an almost unbearable guilt. Guilt for not being able to control the darkness, guilt for being just as weak as everyone thought he was.

But he'd go to hell before he would tell Them that. He wasn't going to be their pathetic little project they wanted to fix. Poor weak Adrian.

And so he finally said, pretending to be as casual as could be: "He shouldn't have come."

"Shouldn't have come? Shouldn't have come?!" Sonya screeched angrily and as she did the dream seemed to shiver. "Do you know how big of a mess you are in? First you were just some runaway brat we were all willing to help, but now you have assaulted a Guardian! No, not just a Guardian, a friend!"

"And?" Adrian asked, trying to ignore her words, but she was right. There would be consequences, big ones even. Adrian had never heard of a Moroi attacking a Guardian before, but he imagined he wouldn't get away with just a slap on the wrist.

"And! You can go to jail for this! You should be glad Eddie called us and not the Guardians."

Oh yes, he should be glad that they were babying him, protecting his pathetic little self from the real word. Really fucking grateful. He should just go back to Court and kiss their asses, that's how thankful he should be.

For a moment he wondered just why he was getting so upset about this. His friends were trying to help him, trying to look out for him and despite what he was saying, he could use their help. But it just infuriated him. He didn't want their help. He didn't need their help.

"Let the Guardians come get me. I don't care. I'm not afraid of them. You know how much damage a spirit user can do, Sonya." It sounded like such a stupid fake threat, but it felt good saying it. Especially since it seemed to turn Sonya's righteous anger into a look of shock and horror.

"You don't know what you are saying." She stammered.

"I do actually. I've been training." The only training he had been doing was building his alcohol resistance and aspirin intake, but she didn't know that.

"You let it in, haven't you. You've let the madness consume you."

Was she wrong? Was this, provoking her for no reason, not a sign of insanity. He sure as hell didn't feel sane. But what of it? Why couldn't he be insane. Maybe it would be better if people thought he was. Maybe then they would leave him the hell alone.

"You're right Sonya, I did. I let it in."

"Adrian." She tried, stepping forward, but Adrian slid away from her.

"I wasn't a coward like you." He went on, really getting into the performance now. "I didn't pussy out and became a Strigoi to stop it."

Just as he had thought, Sonya flinched at that verbal jab. He let out the most fake maniacal laugh he could muster. It was performance worthy of a community theater, but Sonya seemed to buy it. Who knew, maybe he had a future in acting after all. He sure had the looks for it.

"It's liberating really. It's like I have all the lack of morals a Strigoi enjoys, without being a cold disgusting corpse. Honestly, I think this was who I was always meant to be. Crazy Ivashkov. Adrian Psycho Ivashkov, it's a bit of a serial of a serial killer name, isn't it, Adrian? Don't look so scared Sonya, you should be happy. I could have never done it without you lot. My dear, dear friends."

"Adrian." She said again and she approached him like he was a dangerously wild animal. "Just stay at the hotel. Stay there and we will come get, we will get you help." She even talked in a calming way.

"That will be fun. Go ahead, come get me, I could use the entertainment. Better yet, send in Belikov, I'll have such fun horribly maiming him."

He knew he was crossing a line, but he couldn't help but take running start and leap over it. He took control of the dream, used his mind to create the image of a beaten bloody body, floating in the air. Sonya screamed.

The dream evaporated almost immediately and when he woke up his head was on fire.

He finished of the bottle of aspirin but even that didn't seem to help.

What the hell had he done?

He couldn't even remember why he had acted the way he did in the dream. Most of it was a haze.

"Fuck." He muttered as he remembered the last thing Sonya said. She knew he was at the hotel, she probably cut of the dream to send in a team to grab him. And when they did they would send him straight to the nut house. He had practically signed sealed and delivered a death threat.

He hadn't just burned his bridges, he had nuked them from orbit.

He had to leave immediately, if he wanted to be able to sleep in a room that didn't have mattresses taped to the walls.

But where could he go? Not another hotel, since they probably were tracking his credit cards.

He didn't know anyone in the city ... well expect for ...

"Dammit."

There was nobody else he could turn to. Kol was going to have a fucking field day.