Into the Wild: Karkaroff's Story

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Chapter 2: The Fight Begins

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Lying on the dingy bed, Karkaroff finally took notice of the beating that his body had taken. Bandages covering scrapes and cuts dotted his body, and his legs, chest, and head all throbbed like a drum line. He felt as if his entire body had been put in an enormous vice and squeezed like a lemon. He was dizzy with pain. He closed his eyes, willing it all to end.

Suddenly, there were images and colors floating in front of his eyes, like a 360-degree panoramic movie. He screamed until the echoes had filled the world and his head. He could not take this, he wanted OUT! Out of his body, out of his own mind.

He watched, mystified, as the curtain around his bed was pushed aside to reveal his father. His father, son of a wizard and a Muggle, had died seventeen years ago. He watched as his dad, holding a bottle of vodka in his right hand, picked up Igor's wand, held it backwards, and poked clumsily and drunkenly into the air.

His father never understood his mother. It was not malevolence that led to this; rather, it was an effect of the mass quantities of alcohol that he consumed. Nearly permanently drunk, once Ilona had explained to him her family, her past, and her heritage, he would accept it without question and forget it without hesitation. Igor could not recall a 24-hour stretch of time when his father was not amnesiatically drunk. It was only a matter of time, then, before Aleksei forgot why he was wearing this plain-looking gold ring on his left hand, or who these strange people were in the photographs in his wallet.

Karkaroff remembered the day he understood the difference between mudbloods and wizards. It was the day that his drunkard father did not come home. He was six years old.

The form of his father standing in that hospital room, fuzzy around the edges, faded and was replaced by a stronger, more vivid hallucination.

He did not want to watch; he willed it to end. But no matter how hard he dug his knuckles into his eyes, it still played on. The young Igor did not know how it had happened, but suddenly he was in much deeper than he'd ever bargained for. He was scared. Those first ones, they were sport, they were child's play compared to the horror that he was facing. He could not turn back, and he could not go forward. He was staring at the first murder he'd committed for the Dark Lord.

They were all so much stronger and more sure of themselves, the others, they got him into this, he cried to himself. Yes, yes they did, he answered, but you were the one who spoke the curse. It was your wand that pointed, and your mouth that uttered Avada Kedavra. It is your fault. Your guilt.

The pain of that memory physically wrenched him out of his hallucinating stupor, and another scream left his murderous lips. The woman unceremoniously stabbed a sharp metal thing in his arm, and Karkaroff blacked out once more on the dingy bed.

*****

Igor Karkaroff, bloodline purist in theory, mudblood and mugglehater in practice, was released from the hospital into the Muggle world some days later, pronounced healthy.

He had had several days in the hospital to mull things over and come up with a plan of action. He would hide in this labyrinth of muggles, for not only did he have nowhere to go in the Wizarding world, no one would ever suspect the known Death Eater of hiding there.

After leaving the hospital, he found a deserted alleyway and collapsed on the hard ground, exhausted. He slipped into a dreamless sleep, his back resting against the aged stone of London buildings.

He awoke abruptly, engulfed in a bright light shining down upon him. 'What the hell?' was his first thought; 'Have I died?' was his second. 'If I am dead,' he questioned on the third go-around, 'then why are all these people standing around me looking so angry?'

When he finally came out of his groggy stupor, he realized that a strange, muggle-crafted, directional light-emitting device was pointed at him.

Someone was growling, "You can't stay here, son. You're gonna hafta shove off. Keep moving, keep on moving."

After making sure he had no filial relationship with this man, Igor made a show of lifting up his mattress and glanced over at the man who seemed to be in charge.

He was wearing blue all over, with a great deal of things tied to his waist. Something silver sparkled at Igor in the lamplight from near his breast pocket. For all his gruffness, he seemed to be a pleasant man. Very slow, but friendly. Just the man he was looking for.

"Say, sir," this last word took a considerable effort to say to the lowly muggle, "I'm in a real tight spot. Can I talk with you alone?"

He felt the dirty muggle's eyes travel over him, sizing him up.

"Yeah, sure - I'll meet you guys," he turned to his miniature posse, "by that lamppost."

The herd of even slower-looking men turned and ambled over to the indicated post like sheep. Karkaroff, after making sure they were out of earshot, turned back to the man in charge.

"Thanks a heap. You see, I'm a skilled, useful man, down on his luck. Is there any way you could maybe help me out? You know..." he implied, setting down his mattress.

"Well, I really wish I could..." but at a whisper from Karkaroff, the man's eyes drifted out of focus.

"You were saying?" he prompted.

"Yes, yes, sure." The man stuck his hand toward Igor. "Welcome to the team."

"Now, why don't you call your men back over here and you can explain the whole thing to them? They can work out all the details for you, yes?"

And with that, Karkaroff was hired onto the London Police Force.

*****

Training went quite smoothly, for Karkaroff was both skilled and practiced in the art of pretending he knew what was going on when in fact he was completely in the dark. Most of his training was learning silly rules and laws - not needing to know any of that, he distracted himself with remembering his favorite muggle-torture games.

During those first few weeks, he had discovered something profound to distract him. This was to the great fortune of his sanity, which was balanced precariously at that time.

He would have swallowed a sphinx whole before he ever would have thought that the muggles had had it in them. He marveled at how a race of people so bumbling, so inept, and so clumsy could create something that was so elegant, functional, and deadly. He was not a man easily swayed, but after seeing the beauty that the muggles had engendered, he was forced to alter his former beliefs about them. He had discovered guns.

He had been stubbornly unimpressed with everything at the Academy up until the moment that he held the Desert Eagle in his hand and pulled the trigger.

He felt the hammer make contact with the bullet, the internal explosion, the kickback force, and the barriers of his narrow, magic-centric mind exploded with the gunpowder trapped in the steel of the bullet. He grokked the movement of the projectile through the barrel, then through the air, being freed.

And then, midair, he tweaked it - he nudged it a tiny bit, off of the path governed by physics and aerodynamics, and onto one governed by something much more powerful - Igor Karkaroff.

His chief, staring disbelievingly at the perfect bulls-eye ripped out by Igor's bullet, asked, "Are you sure you've never done this before?"

Karkaroff just smiled at him, too high on what he had experienced to destroy it with words, feeling the weight of the Eagle still in his right hand.

For the first time in many, many years, Karkaroff felt truly, deliriously happy.

******

Months of training went by, with Karkaroff escaping to the shooting range whenever possible. He had developed a feeling towards this phenomenon that could only be described as love. He continued in this pursuit, feeling free, for once, until something happened that made Karkaroff realize he hadn't distanced himself from the Wizarding world as much as he had thought. Unexpectedly, during the middle of another useless lesson, this one on "Breach of Conditions of Consent Concerning Reasonable Use of Force" or some rubbish like that, Igor happened to glance up, and saw one of the people he wanted to see the least in the entire world. If he was not number one on the Most Wish I Could Die Burning With the Fire of a Thousands Suns Before I Had to See Him Again List, he was at least in the top ten.

That sleazy blonde hair and stupid black mink cape were recognizable anywhere.

Karkaroff instinctively dived beneath his desk, but peeked out to see what that racist, arrogant bastard was doing in a place like this.

Then he looked down at himself, but didn't let his logical half even begin to ask him that same question.

Lucius was speaking to the chief of police about something. Wait, correction. Lucius was speaking at the chief of police about something and was holding his cane at a funny angle, pointed at him. The chief was nodding dumbly at whatever Lucius was saying, and was looking blankly off into space.

Snatches of their conversation reached Karkaroff beneath his tiny wooden desk, but all he could make out was 'imperative...operation...completely silent...petunia...' Karkaroff knew that they weren't talking about flowers. They were talking in code, those horrible, rotten, scumbags! And he had just started to forgive the chief for being a muggle, too! Oh, if he only knew what they meant by 'petunias' - that was the key.

His snorts of anger and frustration drew the attention of those classmates who had not already turned to watch the epileptic psycho underneath the desk.

Lucius seemed to be satisfied with their discourse, and he turned to go, briefly wondering what all of the Junior Cops were staring at. Igor busied himself with inspecting the linoleum beneath him, feeling rather revolted at the collection of dust, hair, and flakes of skin that he found.

Click, click, click. He heard Malfoy's overly polished shoes tapping out his slow, graceful steps out the door.

After it had snapped shut, a weight like a neutron star dropped in his stomach. They knew - he'd been found out. Found out! His plan had failed! The stupid muggles had sold their information to the Dark Lord, and now they were coming to kill him! Kill him! Ha! Petunias, his pet hippogriff! He was the flower, he was the key, and soon he would be dead.

Panic seized his heart as the once-unthreatening face of his chief (he wanted to hurl! All that degradation and humiliation for nothing!) poked underneath his desk, with a few remaining, unmistakable traces of the Imperius curse on it.

"Alright, there, son?" he asked, slowly and deliberately.

Alright? Why did he care, the two-faced cheap sell-out?

"Son?"

"Um...well...yessir. Sorry, sir."

But he was onto them. It was all part of their plan. They knew that they couldn't take him down now - not even the entire British Army could take him down unless they caught him off his guard.

But he knew what they were up to, he smelled their game. He just needed to stay two steps ahead of them, at all times.

And, he thought with a snort that distracted the class again, he knew what that required. As one man with only half a nose, thanks to him, was so fond of repeating, "CONSTANT VIGILENCE!"