HaPpY ApRiL FoOlS I hope you enjoy this chapter you don't know how hard it was for me to not write the most schlocky and cliche-filled joke chapter ever written ending in the sentence and then they all And Then They Fucked

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

On the third day of Alastor's unhinged adventures, he woke up with a particular, distinct thought: what the hell am I doing? Even though Alastor was aware that he was a very psychologically complex creature, he had not as of yet truly discovered his depths, and therefore could not completely understand himself. He did not fully comprehend that the whole situation with Anthony had sent him into a cataclysmic, chaotic state similar to that which precedes a psychological and spiritual breakthrough.

Rampant, sloppy murders that he never committed; the frequenting of bars that he didn't want to go to; the feeling that he was killing just for killing, the most unjustified thing of all, even though the people that he murdered truly deserved it and where the scum of the Earth; the feeling of invasion to his nature, his art, all of these things could've served to teach him something beyond what he already understood of himself. However, in more aspects than one, he was very far gone.

And so, ignoring the call of something like enlightenment, when he woke up on the third day, this creature of habit, for a creature of habit he had become, he suddenly wondered why he was not sticking to his habits, why he was not at work, why he did not function as the well-oiled machine that he had created himself to be.

He woke insanely early in the morning that day as if his internal clock could no longer tolerate not working, not doing the things that he was used to doing. Between the break that had occurred with Anthony and the fact that he wasn't going to work, Alastor felt downright empty inside, like he had nothing to do for the first time in years.

And for a person like Alastor, there was nothing worse, because too much free time would lead to paranoid, negative thoughts, things that he would rather avoid, and that he typically quelled with his voracious ambition and skill. That very morning, he returned to the radio station.

A part of himself, the least conscious part, wanted to convince him that this was for the best, that the absolute best thing that he could do for himself was to go back to work simply, and that the fact that he was itching to work, and itching to do something, spoke to something like a healing process.

He did not realize that he was doing exactly the opposite… at least not consciously, for in the back of his mind the pressing urgency of his existential dread kept on lurking, prodding at him incessantly. At the station, everybody was overjoyed to have him back, clapping his shoulders, and making jokes about how he looked really good for having been sick for a couple of days. Alastor felt himself becoming frightened by how easily the mask came on.

He knew exactly what kind of mask he would put on for each different person, knew the different cadences that he would use in his voice for different types of situations when to crack a joke when to supply a compliment. He could feel the script of his life having been written in impermeable ink, and him following it down to a T.

He suddenly understood that for years and years, he could live this life, perform this character, kill all these people, and never be found out, and never change. He was that good, he had made himself that good, made himself immune to challenge - but he was also scripted. A silent longing seized his chest when he realized that the only time when he had not been truly following the script of what it was natural for his character to do, was with Anthony.

He bit the feeling down and buried it so deep his smile seemed to sparkle even more brilliantly than it usually did, lustered as it was by his stifled memories, which now so painfully did feel like memories. Already, Anthony had acquired something of an unreachable quality, a haziness that could only be attributed to dreams.

He returned to that original state of being, the vision in Alastor's mind, the boy in the room, smoking and smiling and painfully unreal, endlessly out of Alastor's grasp. Despite his violently ignoring his feelings, he couldn't help but notice something bubbling at the back of his existence, a future usurping presence. He couldn't shake away the vivid memory of how well he had been performing with Carmelita - right before it all went to hell.

It seemed that things always reached their peak, their perfect state of existence, before completely collapsing. He shook the thought away, convincing himself that he was overthinking too much, and about things of no real relevance, at that. It would've been utterly impossible for anyone to notice that Alastor was experiencing quite a bit of mental turmoil.

He could try and push down his emotions and his thoughts, all of his memories of Anthony, and his thoughts relating to him, the moral and psychological, simply the utterly complex situation that he was in - but it still existed, and Alastor was not the type of person to lead an existence in which he could ignore something that was right before him, something that he knew.

He came and went from the station, and did all those things that he typically did, falling right into the habits that he had had before meeting Anthony, which were not so different from when he did go out with Anthony. The only thing that changed was the weekend, which was when he typically saw him together with their group of friends.

Now, it was likely that none of them would ever talk to him again, and that Anthony himself was not even available, probably locked up by Montenegro in some facility or other, trying to detox him, but never trying to help.

The days passed in a monotonous grey haze, and by the time Friday rolled around, and Alastor had to do his weekend specials, he could feel that there was something inside of him that was about to snap.

Strangely enough, he didn't think that it came from the same place which urged him to kill. He didn't think that he could simply lose a human being out in his cabin, chop them up, and live all of their sins by the beautiful consumption of their brain, and felt himself become liberated.

What he needed was something very different, something more real, some personal, something that would rattle him a bit. He didn't know what had come over him if he needed to be rattled - him! He was a person that avoided rattling at all costs. But there he was, needing to be rattled in the absence of an Anthony to shake him. However, it seemed to him that he had lived his life in a way that established that there was nothing that could change him up, even if it tried its absolute best.

And then, walking back home in somber silence on his Friday evening, feeling the vacancy of time, if anything else, that Anthony had left, the thought came to him: the one thing that could reduce him to a shaking pile, other than Anthony. His brain immediately refused to partake. The thought was so dangerous, so utterly nerve-wracking, that Alastor wouldn't even allow himself to think about it, he wouldn't even allow himself to think, in the privacy of his brain, that the possibility of it existed.

On Saturday, headed for another meaningless day, during another 'special' show, the thought simply wouldn't abandon him, and it seemed to gather more and more force the more that he ignored it. Suddenly, it seemed that the more intrusive parts of his brain were utterly convinced that this was the thing that he needed to do right now.

He could not ignore his insane idea and had to go through with it. He was in total mental disarray, so nobody would've been able to tell from the outside, laughing and enjoying his show as they typically did. His façade never did crack, although on the inside he was holding a tempest that could've killed them all. Another night, another walk home from work, another empty moment that he felt that, in another time, might have been filled with something. The streets were crowded with people full of intent, going someplace or other, likely to a party or a bar.

Alastor walked alone as their shadow, utterly ignored, his posture uncharacteristically crooked. In the silence and obvious loneliness that he typically found in the crowds, Alastor truly wondered what it was about Anthony that had struck him so terribly. He realized that he had never really asked himself that question.

Of course, his initial interest in the boy had been mainly to do with the fact that he had already seen him in a vision, added to the fact that he was Montenegro's son. But even he would have to admit, as he tried to explain to Anthony, that he had meant so much more than that, that he had genuinely not only desired his company but grown to need it.

He looked around at all the people that were walking around him and knew for a fact that they could not stir within him what Anthony managed to do without any effort, just by being himself in Alastor's presence. Alastor had always felt a sort of distance between himself and other people, a chasm that nobody dared reach, even before he had turned murderous and crooked inside.

Even with Anthony's friends, they could feel the distance that they put between him and them. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was certainly an obstruction. Anthony didn't have that. Anthony was the type of person who didn't create any type of chasm between people, saying what he wanted, and doing what he wanted.

The only chasm present inside of him was with himself, and his disconnection from other people came from there. The matter was that Anthony said things to Alastor that nobody had dared to say to him in years. He had almost made him feel like he did when he still considered himself to be human. Sometimes, he would say such outlandish, controversial things, that Alastor almost felt like a part of his family, in the sense that people usually didn't hide the things that they thought from their family - Anthony gave people true access to him despite the apparent walls that he put up.

He had also asked questions, rather intrusive questions, at least more intrusive than Alastor was used to. From any other person, he would've clammed up entirely and lied about his interests and anything else that was true inside of him. But when Anthony wanted to dig in, Alastor allowed him, and in allowing him, he opened himself up to a reality that might not accept him, or that might dislike certain things that he did. Thankfully, Anthony never judged him, though he did question him, which was what nobody else dared to do.

Yes, there it was, what all of Alastor's thoughts recently had been leading up to - Anthony held him accountable.

He held him accountable for not living, for allowing himself to become musty and crusty in the way that he was. Alastor had mastered the art of putting on a mask, putting on a show, just as he had thought on Friday. He knew that he could go on exactly the way that he had been doing for years because he had already surpassed in ability all those around him. But that was not an excuse to become rusty, to stop learning, to become something else, potentially better.

Anthony was in a constant state of turmoil in part because he was constantly changing, thinking, constantly considering other people, and looking at the impossibility and inconsistencies of life in the eye. Granted, it made him a little mad, but he was the liveliest person Alastor had ever met. Alastor had put himself in a box.

And now that Anthony was gone from him, no longer there to hold him accountable for the mediocre, meaningless existence that he had been carrying on with, who was there to slap his face into meaning? He remembered all those people who had shaped him, their unique look on the world, their philosophies, their strengths and weaknesses.

Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, and even the Dursleys had shown him a side of humanity that he otherwise would've never truly seen. Molly. Guidry. Anthony. Who was left to him? Who did he not outlive, who did he not abandon, who was left? He suddenly buckled over in the street - there was only one way to reconnect, to force himself to face himself, to do away with the existentialist bullshit that was plaguing him to no end, that would not be done away with by putting on bandaids of meaningless murder and lethargy.

He felt sick to his stomach at what he was about to do - but what choice did he have? What else was there to be done with him? Something needed to happen, he could not linger in the doorway of insanity and allow it to unravel him. He could feel the nerves and knots stringing his stomach into a state of havoc as he reached his apartment, with the terrible knowledge of something that he knew he would do, but that he dreaded with every fiber of his being.

But he was nothing if not diligent, and deep down, he had known that this would happen, that he could not simply ignore the side of the n that showed his past, his mercy. He quickly made his way up, opened the door, gently yet impatiently stroked a meowing Harry, and then immediately made his way to the landline, feeling the sweat begin to build at his temples for the first time in years. His heart beating hard in his chest, his palms sweaty and disgusting, he picked up the phone, and misdialed Adelaide.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

He didn't know what he had been expecting when he phoned Adelaide. He supposed that some part of him had been expecting her to berate him, or tell him off, almost as a mother would. There was no real, sound logic as to why he thought this, other than the fact that he closely related Adelaide to Mrs. Cormier and Mrs. Guills, two women who, in his mind, would've chased him around the country with a slipper if they knew how he had been leading his life.

But Adelaide was a woman grown and a woman who had established herself, and her personality. Alastor had almost completely forgotten that when they had met, she was slightly younger than him, a shy, timid girl, scarred by the constant death that surrounded her, like an oppressive blanket that she could never quite get rid of, and that she always feared would continue to come down upon the heads of those that she loved.

And it did. Alastor didn't know which death exactly had been the one to permanently mark Adelaide as the person that she was right now. Maybe it had been the Cormiers, maybe it had been before that, maybe it had been everyone.

She, too, like Alastor, bore the lonely, terrible mark of the survivor, outliving all those she loved around her. From what Alastor could tell, she had also established her life as one of loneliness, no with partner, no kids, no friends, just living alone in that old house that she had always been in since her parents died. Alastor supposed that he didn't do anything much different, no friends, no partner, obviously no children, just him and an admittedly good cat that he called by the name that he had had in a previous life. What a joke.

However, he was in such a state that he forgot what Adelaide was truly like, but in the sole and brief interaction that they had truly had, when he had dug himself out of that swamp, there had not been a single note of judgment in her eyes, a single bitterness as she looked upon him, and saw a murderer. From then on, Alastor had always been sending her money from the excessive quantities that he received from the radio, quantities that he would've never been able to spend himself.

Adelaide had never rejected his money, and they kept a somewhat diplomatic relationship whenever he wired it to her. But they didn't talk. Alastor felt that he was violating some sort of secret code they had had until now, but he could think of no one else, no other place that could break him like the old Guills' house.

There would be no hiding from himself there. Realistically, he had been overthinking Adelaide's reaction. Of course, the fact that he found her with no real necessity, and on top of that asked her whether he could visit her, was rather strange to her, out of the ordinary. They had never really had a conversation other than that initial one that they had had.

And yet, of course, she told him that he could come over. Well, she didn't seem exactly enthusiastic about the whole thing, but she almost felt as if he didn't even need to ask her whether he could come, for that house felt almost as much his as it was hers.

Alastor felt incredibly relieved when she gave him the 'yes', and he decided to keep the conversation short, not that Adelaide was a particularly talkative person, to begin with. With that established, he told her that he would probably be arriving shortly, sometime Sunday since he didn't know how long it would take him to get there.

He thought of apologizing for the short notice, but he couldn't even feel her indifference over the phone, at least her indifference as to the short time, though he was estimating that she would be feeling some curiosity, and would have questions for him when he went.

That was what he dreaded most, and that was what he needed the most, as well. The moment that he put down the phone, his curt but effective conversation with Adelaide over, he went to his room to pack. He would drive all night if need be - he wouldn't have been able to sleep, anyway.

He was quite quick in packing everything up, changing himself into some more appropriate clothing because he was going to the middle of the swamp, and he didn't want his precious suit to get dirty.

He still packed it, just in case, but it was more for emotional support than anything else. With his singular bag packed, his change of outfit, the black orb that he always kept close to him, and Harry scooped up under his arm (he had no idea who he could leave him with, or how he could take care of him from a distance, so he had decided that the cat might as well come, too), he promptly left his apartment and rushed over to his car, the night suddenly seeming lighter, more freeing instead of cloying and terrible as it had before.