Thaddeus

Chapter 26

Thaddeus stood in a dark, narrow alleyway, watching as Alastor walked off in the other direction with narrowed eyes.

About twenty minutes ago, Ashur had told him to wait in this alleyway, wait for him to go grab someone. At worst, Thaddeus thought it would have been Truman, instead, to his surprise, it was Alastor. What was even more shocking was that Alastor had tried to apologize.

Ashur stood by his side, so Thaddeus turned to him. Of course, Thaddeus was absolutely relieved to have Ashur back with him, even after learning what Ashur had. It was what made Thaddeus so shocked that Ashur would bring Alastor of all people to him.

"So when were you going to tell me that you and..him were talking?" Thaddeus almost had a growl in his voice, it made Ashur take in a breath. "He wants to change," Ashur said, "give him a chance, he can help us!"

Thaddeus turned and began walking, the motel he and Ashur were staying at wasn't that far from here. "Bullshit!" Thaddeus exclaimed as Ashur trotted up by Thaddeus's side. "That man is incapable of change, he doesn't want to help." Thaddeus added.

"He spent the longest with Zagen, and all that old man did was use him. I think he can help us take him down." Ashur said, almost pleading at this point. Thaddeus only felt himself becoming colder inside, he grumbled.

"He tortured you, tortured me, killed my mother, also tried to kill me countless times, do I need to go on?" Thaddeus seethed, clenching his fists at the thought of everybody Alastor had done.

"Didn't you kill his girlfriend?" Ashur shot back, earning him a quick glare from Thaddeus. Thaddeus sighed quietly. "I wasn't trying to hurt him when I did that...okay, maybe a little- but I really just didn't want to get arrested. That would've meant being locked away and I can't do that again."

The two made it back to the motel, and even as they entered their room, Ashur didn't stop trying to convince Thaddeus to work with Alastor. "I know you don't trust him, but I wanna ask you something. Do you trust me?"

Thaddeus stared at Ashur, who returned it with a pleading look. "I do trust you, Ashur," Thaddeus replied after a moment, "but I don't trust him and I never will."

"You don't have to trust him, not right away at least, just trust me. Let him stick around for a while." Ashur said, sitting himself down on one of the twin beds.

Thaddeus could feel his paranoia growing, he didn't like any of this, not one bit. He was convinced Alastor was using Ashur for something. So he started closing the curtains of the window by the door, then made sure that was locked. Ashur sighed as he watched him.

"He's not gonna pop out and attack, he's with us, Thaddeus." Ashur couldn't have stressed this enough, however, Thaddeus was far too non-trusting for this. He'd already been betrayed before, he would make sure that didn't happen again.

Thaddeus didn't reply to that for a minute, and even when he did, he responded with something else. "You have absolutely no idea how much relief you gave me when you came back to me, it's for that reason that I can't trust Alastor. I'm not risking anything like that to happen to you again. I've known him longer than you have, he's up to something, I know it."

Thaddeus had begun pacing back and forth in the room, muttering to himself occasionally. Ashur seemed to give up for a moment, leaning back against the headboard of the bed. But then, after a deep breath, Ashur had something more to say. "Look, it's late, maybe we should talk about this in the morning- it's just, it's just that you keep thinking that you have to protect me from Alastor, but you don't. Alastor doesn't want to work with Zagen anymore, he's not a threat."

Thaddeus exhaled tiredly. "I can't risk that, it's too much of a gamble." He said, rubbing his forehead before lowering his arm.

"Why not?" Ashur asked, trying to be a bit more aggressive though it kind of sounded more like a desperate kid's plea. "Alastor could be our best shot at learning how Zagen runs things-" That's when Thaddeus cut him off, finally ending his pacing in front of Ashur's bed.

"I can't risk it because if I lose you, I lose everything!"

That seemed to shut both of them up, and they just kept silent after that. Thaddeus was thankful for it, he hadn't exactly expected himself to say what he did. Some time went by and Ashur had fallen asleep, meanwhile, Thaddeus knew he wouldn't be able to. He was tired, sure, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something horrible was coming. He kept thinking Alastor would just randomly show up and attack.

So he decided to sit down at a desk, beginning to flip through the last notebook he'd managed to grab from Fernec's house. It was what he'd use to distract himself, he'd either re-read what he already wrote for hours or find more to scribble down.

This notebook was the one he'd made for Zagen, which was slightly disappointing. Thaddeus thought he'd picked up the one he'd had for Alastor, but obviously, he didn't.

He already had his suspicions that maybe Zagen and Alastor had found the other notebooks from Fernec's house, the problem was that Thaddeus had multiple notebooks for Zagen and Alastor, the one he had now wasn't the only one. It worried him, what if they knew about all he'd done to study them?

Letting his mind descend further into panic and chaos, Thaddeus continued looking through the notebook, just focusing on the pages.

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Have you missed my horrible endings? Heh heh heh.

This was really just supposed to be Thaddeus's reaction to Alastor wanting to get out of Zagen's hold, I don't think I've covered everything from his perspective just yet, but I'll work it on it as we write along.