Just outside the inn

[Jean-Jacques]

His auras flares red, covering the mist,

“I am surprised you can even stand up straight with the weight of your hatred and prejudice set upon that shoulder”

He squares his body to Anton and stands just a couple of feet away,

“You persevere to goad my fists, is it the victory of provocation you seek?

He snarls, something, something primeval rushes across his aura and he faces Anton and spits at him

“Such a trifling victory , I do so hope you enjoy the sense it brings”

[Anton]

Bath, 1880

"I would never deliberately put you in danger," Dorian bit out. "I would have found a sufficient plan - a way out."

Anton, who was known only as The Spider back then, doesn’t look up as he hears the Nosferatu enter the room. His private chambers in the Asylum are deep, only Dorian knows the way to them. The Spider knows what it would have cost Dorian to come to him, after their first public disagreement in their new lives. He waits, curious to see if the other vampire has come to vent his wrath, or to seek counsel.

Forgiveness would never be on the table, not for Dorian. He would never see his actions as incorrect.

Spider said, "Why did you destroy what George was trying to build? I thought you were Clanmates, that you were there to support him in this Council?"

"...I did not intend to destroy it," Dorian admitted. "I only wished that the Brujah be removed.”

"- Which -" Dorian spat. "I imagine, given Lilliana's spellbinding performance, will no longer be an issue. What other vampire do you know who would literally rend the flesh from a human, or tear from it the still-beating heart on some vague insult? Their Clan is unpredictable... unfit for public consumption. Do you disagree? After what we witnessed?"

"Your hatred for her rendered her into that state. Don't you think? Wouldn't you agree you provoked her?"

As he spoke, the Spider leaned back, allowing his shoulder to rest against Dorian’s fingers. He tilted his head back further, looking up at the Nosferatu. Obfuscated as usual - well perhaps this time he'd allow the vanity.

"Of course I provoked her." No hesitation. Dorian looked down at his friend. "It needed displaying; her temperament is unlike anything. Her clan's temperament is unlike anything. Brujah reactions are too dangerous to be left alone. As with a dog, when fallen to mindless behaviour, it is taken out and it is shot."

The Spider rested his hands on his thighs, spreading his long fingers out and smoothing the fabric. The motion was slow, deliberate - teasing? Or testing?

"Do you doubt how useful such rage and strength could be?" he asked.

Dorian glanced distractedly down. "No. I do not. I had extensive time with a variety of Brujah subjects during the purge, and there is no doubt in my mind as to how 'useful' their rage can be. Or rather, how destructive." He jerked his chin. "Useful or no, it is a tool that need summon some measure of control. I was not expecting her to break so soon. I would not have pushed more, had I known." A pause, at Spider's expression. "All right, I would have, but you must admit that that lack of control is poor. My insults were not so barbed as to elicit that! She killed that girl! That clan has no reason nor rhyme beyond its anger; they're worse than yours for their pattern."

"Why Dorian, are you implying there is something wrong with me?” Spider's eyes widened, full of faux innocence. That wandering hand in his own lap was nearing its destination now, fingers trailing lazily to the top of his thigh. His blood moved, visibly swelling the organ beneath his fingertips.

Dorian's expression froze. "I didn't mean that."

"You did," Spider corrected, actually looking up at him with none of the earlier teasing. "Your rage will be your undoing, perhaps - our - undoing, doesn't that worry you?"

*

Years later, Anton considered the irony.

His hands balled into fists, from where he was stood opposite Jean Jaques. "Better alive with my prejudice than dead without it," he snarled. "Like everyone else who said they could trust the Brujah. Where are they now? You're so fucking lucky that you've got this second chance and what do you do with it? Mock everyone. You're not so safe as to get by that way, no matter what you think of your... situation."

"I'm not going to fight you," Anton said in disgust. "I'm not the idiot here. While we're at it why don't I just list out the things I'm good at that I'd soundly beat you over the head with? Make it just as unfair? Perhaps chess?" This said a little hysterically. "Psychological reasoning? Socratic dialogue? Any dialogue? Even that seems cruel, since I tend to refuse to enter a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."

[Jean-Jacques]

Jean-Jacques slightly adjusts his stance, one foot moves behind the other, his glare doesn't leave Anton,

“Oh yes, let’s just sit down for a discourse on Voltaire, or Plato, or whatever text is your latest ass wipe...”

His laughter is full of menace, calm, but deep set with a depth of emotion

His face briefly contorts, a grimace accompanies the snarl on his features

Something behind even his own ken, beyond his reach from deep within is unleashed pulsing from him as he utters his next words...blood rushes to hitherto imprisoned powers and with the shackles broken passions fly from his very blood.

“Run back to your dad, little one, and shove that tail between those legs as you go!”

[Anton]

As Dorian shakes him off, The Spider settles his face into a blank mask.

"The group appears to want to work together, rather than fight like the Elders want us to. Can we continue this meeting?"

But Dorian's not done. "The atrocities of 1880 were not Elders' doing alone, how can you say that? How much can you push a Childe to enjoy blood sport before it's realised that this desire of theirs was there all along? Part of a brutish personality? In fact, I recall the Brujah Elders trying to prevent their wayward Neonates wreaking such havoc!"

"All of our kind are capable of atrocity," Spider says. "It is that which we name Beast, is it not? The purpose of this meeting is becoming lost to your private rage, do you not think this conversation is better discussed later? Perhaps you should retire, if those present fill you with such loathing?"

"Some more than others," Dorian snapped, but in Lilliana's direction. "The only reason mine is 'private' is because the others - those who would ensure its public continuity - are all dead."

"She may be acting the part of the Toreador or diplomatic Ventrue now, but it's Brujah heritage to be angry, to exert such pitiful rein on their tempers. It's just a matter of time! This is not unreasonable loathing but common sense. The Beast responds to anger; hers is in a more precarious a state than any of ours. And yet you ask that I retire?"

It's quick, but there nonetheless: a flash of surprise, and possibly hurt. Dorian's expression swings through several iterations of the same point before shuttering, his gaze moving away from Lilliana to rest on Spider.

*

Grief and anger and futility went through Anton at each insult's closure. He could feel violence - right there at the edge of him - and for one blissful moment as Jean Jaques bid him run off to "Dad" (a concept that almost made Anton laugh; because how had it come to this?), he could feel his entire skin livening, his pupils blown wide and hackles raised as his depth of focus flattened. He wanted to fight.

... Which is when he realised what had happened.

Is that...?

It takes Anton a moment to even realise that a discipline's been fired - at him. So familiar is he with the use of this disgusting hallmark -

- but is doesn't matter because it's taking effect -

He remembered their hands, three Brujah, sour and hot and moist over his mouth and nose. He remembered Terry saying 'You keep that wriggling up you're gonna make me come -' and the one called Dez laughing and his face staring at Anton and not seeing him.

- and the space around Anton wasn't empty anymore. It felt like cold arms and hands prompted him, little pressures at his elbows and wrists, the small of his back, behind his knees. Some part of his brain was grabbing at questions about the necessity of this, about how he couldn't actually fight and oh god not just as when - But his body, moved by the cold invisible hands and arms, was already gearing up to ignore it all.

His clenched fist had gone big and heavy. In his mind was a mishmash of all the times he'd imagined confronting a Brujah and saying plenty of things and doing plenty more. But it was hard to imagine doing any of those things now. Now that one was here, across from him, using that on him, doing those things would... It was as if those things weren't big enough. Nothing he could do would be big enough.

He didn't remember taking that step forward. But he must have. And he fought fire with fire. Reflexively, everything was thrown forward into that second lash of dementate, its source now from Anton, and with several years more experience behind it.

Anger is beyond reason, an obliterating giant stupidity to which all your history of jokes and nuance and ideas and caresses is nothing, simply nothing, yet some people create a space it can't occupy, an alternative dimension where the decision to yield is held like a pearl in a paperweight beyond reach or harm. Some people he wasn't a part of. For miles and miles of his envy in that moment, as he spat and tossed forward his own power, Anton hated those people.

He'd never been very good at resisting Dementation, but then, who was these days? Valeria forbid its use of her line.

[Jean-Jacques]

The wave of emotion didn’t so much as knock Jean-Jacques backwards, rather it lifted him and carried him toward Anton on the crest of a wave of tumult,

Anger pulsed, no it was a different, somehow focussed, his rage, his senses blocked all stimuli, the night was all black, Anton shone like a glowing angel before him, glowing with a red aura, his very beast willed his body as it initially lurched, then moved with practiced ease to engage with the only thing in vision...

There was no floor, no sky, no inn, there was only a laughing foe, mocking him,

To any that may have observed, The Brujah moved with the reactions and speed of a practised fighter, in his own mind time was slowed, his blood coursed across his muscles yearning and urging the violence that his whole being now craved.

Before Anton could even raise a hand in instinct, Jean-Jacques fell upon him, fists clenched and tearing into the fray.

[Anton]

Anton stumbles back under a hiccup of noise - no anger anymore: the sound is wounded and confused and small, just a choked animal note of stress.

He yelps as he goes down, pain shooting through his chest and head. It's a terrible thing, the compression of time in a fight, no casual apparatus between the two states: upright; on the floor. For a few seconds Anton hung there midair as on mindless pause under this new nude insistent reality. Then all his abstractness shrank back to sudden, tight, bristling consciousness, and his back hit the ground. Hard.

The rain hammers - it soaks them through. They're scuffling fiercely. Anton's head must have hit something because the world is spinning, passing in long wet lines. He tries to scramble up - can't - is draged back down.

There's something hot and blinding striking all across his body as he tries to throw an arm out numbly to shield his soft organs. A singular, silly reflex.

Something like this happens and you realise you've been waiting for something like this to happen. It turns out things can't go on as they have been and you admit you'd been thinking things couldn't go on as they have been. At which point you can yield or fight. Wars start like this. Various cultures gamble that decadence and death will win them rebirth, and they watch themselves slide into it, knowing it's an all-or-nothing bet.

But. But then he'd reached cognitive dissonance. No rancour, just the limber body calmly alert. And as his own madness came up and swallowed him in the pain Anton realised - Oh. Oh.

Oh no. Oh god please no no no -

Anton's eyes fall half closed and hazy, as his expression wipes clear. The neonate emptily takes on the next flurry of attack, as if entranced. Air escapes him in a tight wheeze.

[Jean-Jacques]

It is almost with disappointment that Jean-Jacques stands and drags Anton to his feet, well not so much feet and dangling in front of his assailant.

He throws him to the ground and stares down and the wretched pile of bloodied kindred..

He wipes some blood from his own face before moving to grab Anton by his jacket...

“Is that it, really, is that it?”

[alanwrotethis]

Niketas exits the building, his long coat in his arms.

He sees the scene, one bloodied neonate in the hands of another.

He makes a quick mental calculation, decides he is, in fact, done with being coy this evening.

"No! No, no NO!"

He holds up his coat as Elder Keane reaches him.

"I... oh fuck this, Anima," he mutters, throwing his coat at Jean-Jacques. The coat twists in the air, arms coiling, lifelike as it moves to ensare the muscled kindred.

[Posh-Tim]

Keane meets up next to Dukes and see's what has happened. Without thinking he runs toward Anton, just as he did the last time this happened, to impose himself between the Malkavian and the Brujah. Only he hadn't been too late last time...

[Jean-Jacques]

As the door opens, Jean-Jeacques hesitates, and turns a blood smeared face towards Dukes as he utters his entreaty to halt...

In the blackness a voice, no it wasn’t you fool, yes, no, the internal argument rages unseen

Then the blackness moves, his face looks briefly confused..

A stifled yelp of surprise as the blackness envelopes him and a brief moment on his feet before he trips over the coat tails and commences an attempt to pin the darkness in a half nelson...

Only the coat isn’t obliging, not actually caring about joints and pain isn’t helping.

“What is this darkness that assails me, the devil itself!”