Work Text:
The third day Claudia missed school, Vincent went to her house to look for her.He hated the place, and not only because of Leonard. It was dank and filled with candles, with an air of piety which was smothering. Vincent didn’t blame her mother for running away. In fact these days he often wished the woman had taken Claudia with her, even though he sometimes admitted he would miss her if she were gone. But she wouldn’t answer the phone either, and that led Vincent to some unpleasant dark imaginings he couldn’t shake.
He actually made a phone call to the hospital to check Leonard’s schedule first. They probably weren’t supposed to give out the information but “Dr. Victor Maxwell,” somehow convinced them. His successful subterfuge would have made him happier if he weren’t worried that the man had finally killed his daughter. But even here that would be too hard to cover up… wouldn’t it?
Claudia did answer the door, and when he saw her face she understood immediately. Make-up, had she owned any, would not have been enough to disguise the bruises and especially the black eye.
He sighed. “He did something the dress doesn’t cover again?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. “If you’re only here to make unpleasant comments—“
“Is there a pleasant comment one can make about a man beating up his child? His shift just started. Let me in, would you?”
Claudia opened the door reluctantly and Vincent walked in and led her to the couch to sit down. Even their coffee table was covered with candles, and the mantelpiece held a variety of religious objects. “You have to get out of here,” he said after a deep breath.
“I can’t. He is my father.”
“Are you out of your damn mind? One day he’ll kill you and then it will be too late.”
She looked so stricken when he said it that he took her hand and tried to calm her a bit. “It will be all right,” he said, though it wouldn’t.
“He’s just a little angry right now because I’m growing up. He’s worried about boys bothering me and… he doesn’t believe anything I say about it.”
Vincent winced at the idea that he had somehow had anything to do with this. He pulled her against him, being very careful of her face. “I never even… we’ve never—“
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
Under better circumstances he might have been amused that for once she let him escape blame. “You can’t live like this,” he began, but she only shook her head where it lay on his shoulder.
Unfortunately he was still holding her when Leonard opened the door.
Vincent expected words before fists but he misjudged the depth of Leonard’s anger. He ran straight for them, pulling Claudia up by the hair as Vincent vainly tried to calm him.
“We didn’t… Nothing happened…”
But Leonard wasn’t listening; he never did, and he began to strike Claudia’s face again, still pulling hard at her hair. Vincent could tell she was trying not to make a sound, but then she cried out “Please no!” and Vincent couldn’t stand it. He ran for the mantelpiece and grabbed a ceremonial dagger, hoping he could somehow threaten Leonard with it. When he turned he saw Claudia on the floor, with her father kicking her head.
Thoughts swirled in Vincent’s head: that a person could die from a kick to the head, that Leonard Wolf was a monster, that he himself had barely had a chance to even share a kiss with Claudia. When she started yelling, “Father, don’t” something broke inside Vincent. He ran forward and stabbed Leonard in the back. It was harder than he thought it would be, and it took all his strength to push the dagger into the man's body. Leonard made a guttural cry and fell to the floor with his head on his daughter’s belly. Claudia clambered out from underneath him, screaming “You’ve killed him.”
Vincent was suddenly in a situation he was totally unprepared for. “It was self-defense. Defense of you.”
Claudia was busily checking her father’s neck for a pulse, but Vincent could already tell by the glassy look of his eyes that he was dead. He put the bloody dagger down on the coffee table. “Don’t touch that; don’t touch anything. We’ll call the police and tell them the truth. They’ll be a better help than the church will.”
He was on the telephone already when she screamed again and he turned to see her standing with her arm upraised holding the dagger. “My father is dead! You killed him!”
She ran at him so fast he barely had time to think, except to wonder if this had been his destiny all along.