Animal

The flowers were just beginning to droop in his hand as he entered Orsei Manor. He’d tried to find Maelie at her place, even at her room in the Skybound in order to apologize. He… well he wasn’t even sure what he would be apologizing for, but Cardinal had said that when partners argued, it was best to apologize and bring flowers; so he had intended to do just that.
 
Her butler had turned him away, saying the lady was not at home and so, ill at ease and discomforted, home he went. Every instinct in him warned him that she was dangerous, that there was something he was missing. It wasn’t anything she did, no, but in the way she carried herself, the way she moved, it was teasingly familiar and yet alien at the same time.
 
“Sir?” Bastian asked him as he entered, the tone in the elderly half-elf’s voice setting him on alarm.
 
I can't escape this hell
So many times I've tried
But I'm still caged inside
Somebody get me through this nightmare
I can't control myself
So what if you can see the darkest side of me?
No one would ever change this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal
(This animal, this animal)

His eyes roamed over the room slowly as the cold, logical, side of him took over, despite the prowling of the hunger in the back of his mind. It had been a few days since he’d broken down and hunted some stray rats to keep the maddening and endlessly gnawing feeling at bay – and as a result, some part of him prowled and paced behind iron bars of will.
 
Something was wrong. Bastian had brought him into the bedroom and while nothing seemed to be amiss at first glance, his eyes tracked to the small details – things others might have missed; the way the curtains on the window sills were disturbed, the way the valences on the bed had shifted from the wind, and most damming of all the small, metal, lockpick which the butler handed him.
 
It was not altogether different than his own, save for the fact that it was pulled from the lock on the windows.
 
Someone had been here.
 
I can't escape myself
(I can't escape myself)
So many times I've lied
(So many times I've lied)
But there's still rage inside
Somebody get me through this nightmare
I can't control myself
So what if you can see the darkest side of me?
No one would ever change this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal
 
There was only one person who would have broken in here – only one criminal brazen enough to have tried. Either it meant the Fox knew who he was – or had been perilously close to finding out.
 
Something inside him snapped. The hunger overcame him and he felt his fangs descend in his mouth, despite the thin press of his lips together. His jaw began to ache as he clamped it shut in sudden, desperate, effort.
 
“Sir?” Bastian asked softly, and when Victor looked at him the elder half-elf frowned.
 
“Leave me,” he said quietly through tight lips. He could tell something was wrong – something not normal, something dangerous.
 
The butler did not need to be told twice.

Somebody help me through this nightmare
I can't control myself
Somebody wake me from this nightmare
I can't escape this hell

The shadows around him became a living thing as he moved through the passages of the Manor and down into the cave. He’d always been comfortable in the dark – he had been born in darkness after all, but something in it called to him tonight. If the Fox discovered who he was, she could hurt the ones he cared for – and he knew without a single doubt that Maelie and Cardinal would be first; especially with their brand new home and lavish keepings.
 
He paused to look down at his hand as he dressed, frowning as the shadows moved and coiled around his fingers like some serpentine spirit. He could feel it, moving inside him, and the roiling burning hatred that was his hunger burning in his skin.
 
It had never been this bad before, some rational part of him noted, even as the hunger fed him images of Cardinal and Maelie’s bloodied bodies, the masked thief standing over them. Images of Alex and the monster hunting confidantes, of Arinelle being laid open by some demon or Kevan gored on the horns of a formless and nameless beast – all because if he was unmasked, revealed, exposed, he could not protect them.
 
And so for the first time since the curse had manifested… he let the hunger overtake him.
 
So what if you can see the darkest side of me?
No one will ever change this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal
(This animal I have become)
 
Victor might not be able to tell Maelie everything she wanted to know, but Nevermore could keep her safe. And perhaps that was all that mattered.
 
Somewhere out there, a Fox was hunting, he thought as the mask settled over his face, and never more would she be able to harm those he loved.