August 19th, 1892 — Daphnel Home, at about 1-2AM

TW: This thread will mention what Jasper witnessed; gore, blood, suicide.

After the ordeals of the park, the insufficient help that arrived, and some light questioning, Jasper took the road home with Peppermint. It didn't feel right to be returning home, alive and (physically) well when that young man would be returning in a casket. Metaphorically speaking, he really wasn't sure the proper care would be taken for him to be returned home in a... presentable state. Whatever that meant. What Jasper thought, was that it would be cruel for his mother to receive him like that. If he even had a mother — perhaps what drove him to end his life was that he was an orphan. Then again, he did seem to have someone care for him. It broke Jasper's heart to think of that girl (Queenie), who'd witnessed someone who appeared to be the subject of her affections die.

The walk back home wasn't enough for him to clear his head. He couldn't stop replaying the scene in his head. It was as though his brain relished doing so, as much as the pit in his stomach didn't get any smaller. He kept thinking how, at any point, someone could have done something differently and changed the course of events. He could have used his wand to disarm the man, instead of gape helplessly at him. He could have tied Peppermint to a tree, cast a shielding charm around her, and fetched Victor. He could have done many things differently. Instead, he'd been useless and the man's death weighed on him.

Even at that hour, there was a servant at the foyer to welcome him. It really wasn't rare for the three adult Daphnel children to return at this hour during the Season. There were likely balls still in full swing. Another pang. It was so bizarre to think that there'd been people enjoying themselves while someone, somewhere, was dying.

Jasper asked for his brother and the servant told him where to locate him. He handed Peppermint over to them and headed there.

He opened the door quietly, unsure how to proceed. He had so much to share, yet he didn't know how to begin. "Hey," was the only thing he could muster, in a soft, sheepish tone, before his eyes started stinging uncontrollably and he found himself furiously blinking tears away.

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Victor Daphnel

  

Victor had returned home from a party he'd only attended for Bea's sake, as a chaperone, which she in turn had only attended for their mother's sake, so as not to "lose" an evening on the marriage mart while their mother was otherwise engaged with dinner. It had been a waste of everyone's time and Victor was glad to be home. He was in his bedroom, in the process of getting undressed for the night, when his brother came in. This was unusual. Jasper being awake at this time wasn't anything odd, nor was his wanting to talk with Victor about something, but there was seldom anything pressing enough to be discussed in Victor's bedroom in the early hours of the morning.

One look at his brother was enough to tell Victor something serious was going on. This wasn't the expression of someone who'd just had a lackluster experience at a dinner party. Whatever was on Jasper's mind was effecting him deeply. His brother looked haunted.

"What's the matter?" Victor asked. He finished undoing his cufflinks and returning them to their place in the wardrobe, then paused what he was doing so that he could give full attention to his brother.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

"I saw a man die, Victor," Jasper replied with a trembling voice and entered deeper into the room. He stood before a chair but instead of sitting down, he grabbed onto its back.

After saying that, he was hit by the realization that he'd seen someone die. He'd seen something horrible and bloody and irreversible. He'd seen something that only happened in the literature of the macabre, in front of his eyes and he'd been unable to stop it. No, he'd been useless, because in hindsight, there were many things he, a grown man with a full magical education at Hogwarts could have done.

He wished there was a way to go back in time and use his knowledge of how things had played out to stop it. He would have taken his wand out immediately and cast Expelliarmus on the knife. He would have used Stupefy on the man if need be, to make him stop hurting himself.

He was angry with himself and that didn't make his crying better. He was crying now, forcefully and uncontrollably and the embarrassment he felt, at the back of his mind, for being a grown man crying, wasn't enough punishment for his inaction.

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Victor momentarily froze at the admission. He'd seen people die at the hospital, but that didn't mean the experience wasn't still sobering. He'd been shaken the first time it had happened, too — perhaps just as much as Jasper, though he'd certainly carried it differently. Jasper had always been sensitive, though; it wasn't as shocking to see him in tears as it might have been were he someone else.

Victor swallowed heavily but said nothing. He moved to his bedside table and retrieved a bottle he had stashed beneath it of high quality whiskey someone had given him for his recent birthday. He summoned a glass from across the room and poured his brother a healthy drink, then held it out to him. Jasper would want to tell him more about it, Victor assumed, but he could take his time collecting himself and speak when he was ready.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jasper hesitated then took the offered drink. He sat down at the chair he'd been leaning against before. He stared at the amber liquid for some moments, before finally drinking from it.

He wanted to say so many things but he didn't know how to begin and what to say and how to say it. He had the tendency to tell long-winded stories with frequent breaks for additional information he thought important for his listener to get the whole picture.

He drank from the whiskey again, hoping the buzz would hit him soon.

"It was terrible, Victor," he began and closed his eyes. At least by now, the violent crying was past and he was left with hot red eyes and a growing headache. "He had this knife and he started cutting himself with it. And he wouldn't stop no matter what we told him. He kept cutting himself. And then this girl came and she must have been his lover because she was crying and-" At the reminder of Queenie's reaction to Silas' imminent death, Jasper's eyes started prickling with tears again. It would have been bad enough for her to learn of his death, let alone witness it!

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Oh, wow, that was... Victor didn't actually know what he'd imagined that Jasper had witnessed, but he certainly hadn't pictured such a bloody and emotional end. He supposed he'd expected that someone might have had a heart attack, or stumbled and hit their head on something, or even succumbed to an illness they'd never had treatment for and had been suffering from a long time. Something still visceral and real, but decidedly more mundane than what Jasper described.

"He must have been deranged," Victor remarked, sitting down on the end of the bed facing his brother. He shook his head in disbelief as he tried (and mostly failed) to imagine what such a scene would be like. "It's terrible that a woman had to witness that. It's terrible that anyone had to witness that," he added with sympathy directed at his brother.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

When he wasn't drinking from his glass, Jasper was staring at it solemnly. He nodded slowly at his brother's remarks, yet he found the term 'deranged' somewhat unfair. He hadn't been as close to the man as the other bystanders but he'd also noticed how... bizarre his movements had been. His calmness. Even if someone had planned such an end for themselves, the execution would be equally shocking for them.

"He - was different," Jasper commented. "He didn't seem to feel any pain. He wasn't screaming in agony." Nobody could just do the things that boy had done on himself and remain calm and composed and determined to continue the harm. He could have drunk a potion to numb any pain before starting the deed. That was some consolation at least, that he hadn't suffered that much.

It was still strange, though. Why not choose a less painful death, like poison? There were potions that could kill a person in an instant. Something didn't feel right and the fact that Victor's remark was a reasonable enough explanation for the man's action didn't help. 'He was deranged' was explanation enough for people not to care about the true motivations of the man.

"What if he was cursed, Victor?" He drank from the whiskey again, emptying the glass. He extended the glass-holding arm towards his brother.

He couldn't handle this sober.

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Victor wasn't sure how much credence to give to his brother's retelling of the ordeal. Normally he would have trusted Jasper to approach things rationally; he was a researcher as a profession, after all, so his intelligence was beyond doubt. What he'd just witnessed was sure to be harrowing, however, and the human mind could easily run away with itself when faced with things it didn't understand, or didn't want to understand. It might have been true that the man hadn't screamed or reacted to the pain at all, but it could just have easily been a defense mechanism that Jasper's brain had devised to protect him from the traumatic memories of what he'd witnessed.

He took the glass from his brother and walked back to the bottle. This time he brought it back with him when he came to the edge of the bed, and summoned a glass for himself as well; it seemed they were going to go through much more of this than just a few fingers to fortify his brother's will. "It's possible," he allowed, because of course it was always possible in a magical society that someone might find themselves cursed. "What did law enforcement think about it?" He assumed they would have been summoned to the scene if it was really as gory as Jasper described, even if there hadn't necessarily been harm committed against anyone other than the dead man.

It occurred to him as he passed the glass back that his brother might have had anyone reason to be concerned, if the victim had really been cursed; perhaps he didn't need to brandish a knife at anyone in order to cause them harm. "Do you think you might be cursed?" he asked, looking his brother over more thoroughly. "Is that his blood on your shirt?"

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jasper closed his eyes, recalling the aftermath of the man's actions. Law enforcement had arrived, and he and the other bystanders had been questioned, but it wasn't like a national emergency was announced. If anything, the officers of the law had seemed... indifferent about the ordeal. They hadn't said much, merely nodded at their descriptions and then told them to return home.

"Um, they didn't really tell us anything," he replied. It was entirely possible that they hadn't shared their thoughts with them because this was an investigation. The truth was that they didn't seem like they'd go above and beyond to investigate things. Jasper didn't want to tell his brother that, it would only give him more reasons to say 'He was deranged' and leave it at that.

Jasper took the second round of whiskey in a gingerly manner, eager to get himself drunk so that the traumatic memories might disappear, but Victor and his questioning wouldn't let him relax. "I-uh-I don't know. Can't you... test me somehow and see?" He started unbuttoning his shirt, as if removing it would also remove any cursed placed upon him.

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That wasn't really the way things worked, and if they'd been having this conversation in the light of day Victor likely would have said so. He couldn't test for "cursed" any more than a Bugs healer would be able to test for diseased; the label was too broad to be useful without further hints towards what might be the matter. Jasper was already having a difficult time, though, so Victor was inclined to agree. It might be mostly a placebo, but if it gave his brother some peace of mind, it was worth the effort.

"Yeah, give me a second to see what I have on hand," he agreed, standing up to move towards his desk and rifle through one of the drawers. "Did anything suspicious happen when you were interacting with him? Did he give you anything, or say something you couldn't understand? Do any magic?"

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   Jasper Daphnel [Soph]

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Fabulous set by Lady!

He had been useless throughout the entire interaction, that was what had happened! Even the young women had stepped forward and tried to do something, whereas he'd just stood there, trying not to lose control of Peppermint's leash.

"Peppermint was barking at him," Jasper replied unhelpfully. Had the man said anything? He had, though it hadn't been directed to him and it was had to make conversation anyway, with all the conundrum.


"Oh! He told me to control Peppermint and to leave him alone." Was that enough for him to curse him? Jasper felt bad, suspecting a dead man of having cursed him but guilt alone wasn't enough to put him at ease with this new worry that he might be cursed.

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Victor listened to his brother, but nothing he was saying was particularly useful when it came to the task at hand. Not that Victor minded. His brother probably wasn't cursed anyway (Victor would have cared more about pressing information from him if he thought it likely) and talking through things in whatever order they occurred to him might help him process what he'd been through that evening.

"That's probably not enough of an interaction for him to have done anything to you," Victor pointed out. He was attempting to be soothing, but since he was also rifling through his desk drawer as he spoke the effect might have been diminished somewhat. "Here, hold this to your forehead for a minute," he said, tossing a smooth stone from the back of the drawer over to his brother, who hopefully was paying enough attention to catch it.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

"Ah!" Jasper made as something found him on his shoulder. His hand instinctively went to touch the hit spot, then he saw the gemstone which had ultimately landed on the seat next to him. By now at least, he was drunk enough to make (morbid) jokes: "Well that proves I'm not cursed." In his head, being bothered by pain was a sign that he wouldn't want to hurt himself.

In any case, compliant as he usually was, he brought the stone to his forehead. With his other hand, he fumbled into his pocket to procure his pocket watch.

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Victor looked over at his brother's comment and was momentarily puzzled by his reaching for his pocket watch. When he realized, he couldn't help but chuckle, despite the heaviness in the air. "Not a literal minute, you dunce," he said, tone full of affection. "It's a figure of speech."

Victor turned in his chair so that he was facing Jasper. He'd drawn his wand after tossing the stone Jasper's way and now twirled it idly in his hand. Victor had a habit of fidgeting with things any time he had to wait for something. The stone reacted to magic, so if there was anything actively effecting his brother's mind it should have started to glow. So far it hadn't reacted. This didn't necessarily mean they were in the clear; curses could lie dormant for hours or days or even years before something triggered them, and this rudimentary diagnostic wouldn't detect that. Given what Jasper had said about the situation so far, though, Victor didn't think that likely.

"You're not cursed," he pronounced, putting his wand back down on the desk and opening his hand to indicate Jasper should throw the stone back to him. "Do you want another drink?"

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jasper smiled sheepishly; he was prone to take things in their literal sense. He sighed in relief when his healer brother proclaimed him Not Cursed. If Victor was saying that, it was enough for Jasper to feel at ease.

"Yes, please," he replied and downed his half-empty glass so he could hand it out to Victor for a refilling. At that moment, half-drunk as he was, he could almost pretend that this was a random brotherly meeting for drinks.

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