"Please tell me you're joking," Fate sighed, exhaustion overwhelming his voice as his jaded figure slumped down onto one of the chairs in Luke's office. The leather was cracked in more than several places, white peaking through the darkness at such a dismal rate that the black fabric barely peeled, "we did not just risk getting beaten up like hell just because you wanted to tell a girl that your little brother loves her."

Luke rolled his eyes, slumping down onto one of the larger sofas in the corner and sprawling himself all over it in a manner that was similar to an overgrown tentacle. He had lifted his shirt up to reveal one of the bandages wrapped around his chest, picking at it as if the fabric irritated him. "In case you hadn't noticed, Elijah, I did get beaten up like hell."

Fate gritted his teeth, hearing the scratching sound as the bones inside his mouth grated down on one another. "The fact that you continue to call me that when I have told you so many times not to just goes to show how you know full well that I don't care about your physical or emotional wellbeing." He wasn't a fan of presenting an emotion to his captor that wasn't cold civility or mocking amusement but, in some circumstances, he just couldn't help it. The urge to rip the guy's throat out was far too tempting for him to ignore. Only the people he cared about got to call him Elijah. Because Elijah wasn't him, not really. It was the better part of him. Or the worst. Probably the worst when he considered how it was Elijah that got him into this mess in the first place.

"Don't you see, Fate?" Luke's tone had taken on one that was a little too psychotic for Fate's liking, his voice calm and insane all at once as he gave his supernatural prisoner the sort of incredulous look that really, really made Fate want to punch him. "It's all part of the game." In his imagination, Fate was smashing Luke's head into the fading wood of the table, shoving him into the splintering panels of the floorboards and thrusting his bones in all sorts of horrendous directions. "Now that Eleanor knows he is in love with her, she will be more likely to fall in love with him. Which means they will become closer and, thus, he will fall for her further and it will kill him even more when I kill her."

Fate put his head in his hands, elbows pressed on the desk so much that it creaked as he closed his eyes and prayed for this bloody nightmare to be over. It was the stupidest thing he had ever done, praying, especially seeing as when people prayed he was often the one they prayed to. The only person above him in rank was a complete dickhead who was probably laughing his ass off right now as he watched him suffer down below. Everything was a game to Luke. Even the rotting hole that was his 'headquarters' as he liked to put it. Fate had often pointed out that he could easily get him a much better place. But the sicko had insisted on a rundown warehouse and an even more rundown building because it 'enhanced the mood' and would terrify his brother to an even further extent once he arrived. "You're insane." It was a statement that he felt the need to repeat to him a lot, a sort of phrase that summed up all of the hatred and concern he had for him in the space of two words.

"Insanely smart. It's all in the mind, Elijah, all in the mind. I'm going to make him suffer just like he made me suffer."

"He didn't make you suffer, Luke. He didn't do anything that you didn't ask him to."

"He did this to me!" The scream was guttural and raw, exploding from his throat and resounding around the room, walls cowering away from the sound and regurgitating them back out into the empty space in an attempt to get rid of it. It was almost demonic, the sort of echo that would flash black and white all at once if it could be seen. Taking flight and harrowing itself into all of those that could hear.

Fate stood up when he felt heavy breathing above his head, extending so that he was towering above Luke who was now leaning with shaking forearms on the desk, eyes shifting between black and their neutral colour as he struggled to contain the beast crawling and scratching within him. Fate looked him in the eye. Pushing the chair back and folding his arms across the vast expanse of broadness that was his chest. He leaned closer. "It was not his fault, Luke. And you know it. It was your own damn fault for being so bloody stupid. And I don't even mean for taking his blood. For letting it get to your head. That bastard was trying to get to you, Luke. Why couldn't you see it? You didn't have to fall for it. He set out to destroy you for dating his daughter and that's exactly what he did! You believed him over the girl who loved you back. Liam had absolutely nothing to do with it and you know it. You're just too scared to go after the real monster because you're still afraid of Jameson Reed."

"I...I'm not-"

Fate leaned back, pulling a printed news article out of the top drawer and placing it on the desk for the both of them to see. He then walked over to exit the room, nodding as if to confirm his statements when he saw the wide eyes and increasingly heavy breaths emitting from a certain redhead as he stared at the faded piece of paper. "You are scared, Luke. I can see it. And that's okay. But you don't have to give into it. Because that is what makes you a coward. You are a coward, Luke. That's why you wear that necklace around your neck all of the time."

"I...I...I don't-"

"I know exactly what it is, Luke. You can't lie to me. The old Luke treasured that thing like it was the most precious thing alive because it showed that his brother still loved him, despite what he was becoming. And that, that Luke, the one that cried when his little brother gave him a necklace containing his blood to keep him alive, that was the Luke I came to help. And, maybe, if that Luke was still around, you wouldn't have to blackmail me to stay."

And, with that, he left, leaving a broken boy with a battle in his head and tears causing colours to bleed into each other on the newspaper article placed on his desk.