Disclaimer: See Ficlet 1.
Author's Note: These two ficlets are a return to more soul-sucking angst. Feel free to skip if you don't want to put yourself through it.
This first one was inspired by Goldy's "There Goes the World" (which is even more soul-sucking and brilliant than this fic- I highly recommend it if you love angst.)
What Is Not Meant To Be
He watches her walk away from him, her step is firm but to him it seems as if she's moving in slow motion. Everything is moving in slow motion, this entire moment being drawn out in one long, seemingly-unending agony.
He never knew before that the sight of someone's back could kill.
Now he knows. It can. Because the sight of her back is killing him. He can feel it. The sight of her back, getting further and further away from him, is like a hand reaching in and tearing out his heart, squeezing it until every last drop of his life-blood is out, staining the ground in red.
And he hears again his voice, echoing in his mind, and somehow he knows the echo of that moment will haunt him forever. It wasn't meant to be. We can't be. It just wasn't meant to be…
He knows what he said is true, knows she knows it too. She would never have walked away from him otherwise.
It wasn't meant to be…
Those 5 words killed his soul. The realization of its truth-he doesn't even know what that did to him except to think, distantly, numbly, that it is probably very similar to what a Dementor's Kiss does. Only a Dementor's Kiss doesn't leave agony in its wake. Soul-less people cannot know this searing agony. It is the curse of having a soul, to know this pain. To remember, to think, to feel… To dream only to have the dream be shredded… To love only to know the love is doomed…
It wasn't meant to be…
The words would haunt him for however long he has to live. For a moment, he is sickeningly sure that somehow, despite all this, he will still live for many years to come. And he doesn't want it. Life-or rather this semblance of life consisting of breathing, eating, occasionally sleeping, performing the mechanical actions of existing in the world-is unbearable. But somehow he's sure this existence will continue for years to come. It is only fitting, after all. In life, he was never lucky enough to have the easy way to go; he's sure the pattern will hold now and death, the easy, merciful release from this blank existence, will be denied him for a long time to come.
Years to be haunted by his words to her, years to be haunted by the look in her eyes as she accepted the truth of his words, years to be haunted by the heartbreak in her voice as she whispered, "Goodbye."
It wasn't meant to be…
But there had been a time when he'd thought it might have been… When he'd hoped that maybe, after all the bad in his life, he'd be permitted this one happiness to make all his other sorrows seem insignificant…
And he'd been happy. God, he'd been so happy! To love her, to look at her, to smile at her… It had all been bliss.
Bliss that had been snatched away all too soon to be replaced with- with the stark uncompromising truth.
He was who he was; he couldn't escape his destiny, his doom. Just as he couldn't escape the power that came with it.
Power. He lets out a bitter little laugh that grates harshly on his own ears. Power.
Some idiots long for power, seek it. Little do they know. Power had been the one inescapable curse of his existence. Power- unconscious power at the beginning, but slowly, insidiously, consciousness of it had seeped into his mind.
Power. And the knowledge he had it- poisoning his mind, slowly but surely overtaking the part of him that fought to remain unaffected, the part of him that wanted to care about things like rules, ethics, good and evil. The part of him that still felt love…
It had begun with little things. Manipulation here, some magical persuasion there… Little things, really. But the smallest pebble can still cause wide-spread ripples in a pool of water.
Little things but they began to grow, piling on top of each other, chipping away one by one at his scruples and his soul…
Until one day he'd looked at himself in the mirror and found he no longer recognized himself.
One day when he'd come face to face with the knowledge that he had to go. It was the last gasp of his old self asserting himself. The only good thing he could do.
It is ironic, in one of Life's endlessly bitter, cruel ironies, that while power had poisoned and destroyed every other part of him, the part which loved and felt pain somehow remained.
And so even now, when he stands a shell of what he once was, seeing her pain will haunt him. Seeing her walk away kills him.
Because he still loves her.
It is the one thing even power such as his cannot fully destroy, warp or mutate. Love.
He still loves her and it is because of that one part of him that cannot be killed, he is leaving now. The one part of him that is triumphant now, as he does the one good thing he will ever do, even as it is the part of him that is being shattered by the pain of doing this.
It wasn't meant to be…
She is gone now, out of sight and he resists the urge to simply close his eyes and see where she is. She is gone. And he will not, cannot, taint this one good deed with a use of his power. She is gone. He will never see her again. It was the only way for him to do this. End this completely. He can never, will not allow himself to, see her again, whether in person or in that vague realm of his mind where his power resides.
She is gone.
He closes his eyes and soon he is wandering one last time the grounds of Hogwarts before he finds himself, where he intended, in the wilds of New Zealand. Far from civilization and as far from her as he could get.
He doesn't know if he will stay here. All he knows as he looks around at the sky, the vast open spaces, the distant mountains surrounding him, is that he will never return to England. He may stay, he may go, but he will remain alone.
It is the only thing he can do.
He is who he is and he was meant to be alone.
They were never meant to be…
~*~*~*~*~
Author's Note: This ficlet was inspired by the ever-so-brilliant Lori and her AU PoU-verse cookie, "Caretaker", posted at the PoU Yahoo!Group.
Rated PG-13/R. Read at your own discretion.
His Ecstasy
Sometimes she wonders why she does this.
And then she sees him, the black hair that no comb in the world could make lie flat, the green eyes that are usually filled with so much pain and emptiness, the scar on his forehead that represents everything in his life he's ever lost, all that he's suffered… and she knows…
It's because she loves him in her own way though she knows nothing will ever come of it, has loved him since she was growing up and hearing of his life, hearing of everything the Boy Who Lived did… Then it was only a crush, her first schoolgirl crush… She got over it but she remembered it all again the day she met him for the first time. And somehow seeing him in person made her fall back in love with him. Is it his hero status? Yes, in part, she has to admit it. There's something thrilling about knowing that she knows what it feels like to feel the Hero of the Wizarding world moving inside her… Has seen him at his most vulnerable, the moment of his climax…
She never thinks of that moment as his ecstasy for she knows that, for him, being with her never is and never can be his ecstasy. His ecstasy, his perfect passion, is not for her.
She knows it and yet she opens her door to him at nights when he visits, welcomes him into her bed and into her body.
And tries not to look into his eyes, usually shutting hers, as his hands, his lips, roam over her body… Even as she moans and cries out, sometimes crying out his name- she tries not to look into his eyes.
If she looks into his eyes, the moment and their time together is ruined.
She had always heard it said that a woman can tell when a man looks into her eyes and sees someone else. She'd never quite believed it, had always been skeptical of that sort of strange instinct…
Until the first time he kissed her, tentatively as if he wasn't sure what he was doing or why or whether she'd let him… He'd kissed her and then when the kiss ended, she'd looked into his eyes, looking for-what? Not love, she hadn't expected love, and yet what she did see was unexpected and oh, so painful…
She'd seen- blankness. And a longing, so pure, so strong, it nearly made her gasp with the force of it-but the longing wasn't for her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name, as surely as she knew his name…
She didn't know- then- who the longing was for, but she did know that it wasn't her… She knew that when he kissed her and he closed his eyes- her face wasn't what he saw in his mind… She knew it even the first time they had sex, the first time she let him ease some of her loneliness and eased some of his as well…
After that first time, she'd promised herself, never again… Surely she respected herself too much to sleep with a man who didn't love her, who was really only using her for some physical relief despite the friendship they had…
He'd come back several nights later though. He'd come back and confessed that he'd been using her that way and apologized. Part of her had wanted to say, "I forgive you but now I don't want to see you again." But instead she heard herself say, "I knew it when it happened, and I don't mind." She'd felt herself move to sit next to him, felt herself put her hand on his thigh and lean in to kiss him, closing her eyes tightly so she couldn't look into his eyes again…
That was really the beginning of it…
And that night she'd discovered who he saw when he closed his eyes, who the longing in his eyes was for…
She's never told him, knows she never will, that he cried out her name in the throes of his climax…
He cries out her name when he comes, sometimes murmurs it when he's pressing kisses to her skin, and often murmurs it when he drifts off to sleep beside her, spent from their sex… He cries out her name… "Hermione…"
And every time, she shuts her eyes tighter, closes her ears and her heart-- and just feels with her body the sensations he evokes.
She knows he's grateful for her and that he still feels guilty about using her… She knows he likes her, cares about her even, considers her something of a friend…
And somehow, because it's him, that's enough.
And so she closes her eyes, her ears and her heart… and never allows herself to consider the what-ifs…
And all she wonders in the times she allows herself to think about her, is whether she knew before she died, just how much the Boy Who Lived loved her… Whether she knew that his heart and soul were hers, so completely that even now, years after the fact, he cries out her name in climax… Whether she knows now, somewhere, somehow, that every kiss, every caress, is really for her…
She will never, can never, ask him, just as she will never and can never tell him the truth- that she knows perfectly well who he really loves and will always love.
But she wonders…
She does not cry when she hears the news that he's gone. She finds instead that in some strange way, she's happy… Happy for him, because now he is at peace. The bleak years that he lived after her death are over now, and he has gone to join her…
She knows that wherever they are, they must be together… A love like his can have no other ending.
And so she does not cry, hardly mourns.
She smiles despite tears that are suddenly in her eyes… For she knows that now, he is truly happy… She knows that by joining her, he's found his ecstasy…