Title: Escape
Author: Lori
Rating: PG
Summary: At the end of the war, there is a need to get away.
Spoilers: Up to HBP
Disclaimer: God, I wish they belonged to me.
A/N: Ficlet inspired by a beautiful quote from I Wrote This For You. This is me trying to do angst and (maybe) failing miserably. I don't know. Whether this foray into angstiness is successful remains to be seen so R/R please! :)
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She is tired. The events of the last few days - nay, the last year - had somehow managed to bleed into each other, an amorphous blob of pain, euphoria and ennui. A tricolored haze of blood red, charcoal black, deathly white. A polysyllabic murmur of the names of the lost, so many friends, strangers and foes.
It has been over for 12 days and 21 hours. Already, she could signs of rebuilding everywhere she went. The world was moving on. But she finds that she herself cannot do the same. Cannot rebuild who she was before the war. Cannot rebuild the walls of her heart. Not yet. Like a child, she wishes she can rub away at her eyes to erase all that she has seen. Wishes that sleep could take away the ache she felt in her bones.
She is so very tired.
Such is how it stands when she walks into his room. It is midday but the room is dark and she can sense, but not see, him lying on his bed. Without a word, she crosses over, a faint creaking of the old floors the only proof of her progress, and lies down next to him. Their shared pain brings them together, the invisible strings binding them so tightly she can almost feel the marks on her skin.
She cannot see his face in the darkness but she knows what's there. A stubbled jaw, a face drawn and thin, haunted green eyes - he looks like how she feels. She smells his scent of spice and burning leaves, a muted version of himself, who once was spring and air and green grass and broom polish. If she could mourn one more thing, it would be the loss of this, his innocence, his joie de vivre. Then again, they have not been innocent for a long, long time. Unconsciously she reaches for his hand and squeezes it slightly in hers. A sigh finally escapes him but still they stay silent.
His voice, gravelly and soft, breaks the stillness. "I was thinking of going away."
She is not surprised. She has been expecting this for days. "I see" is the only thing she says.
"Come with me."
This, however, surprises her. "What?"
"Come with me," he says, his voice firmer.
She stiffens and her fingers fall slack. She doesn't answer before he takes her hand and brings it to his lips. His eyes, she could almost see something different in them. He rambles, "We can go away, far away from the ruins and the publicity. We can go to somewhere they haven't even heard of Voldemort. Somewhere warm and sunny and anonymous. It'll just be you and me."
She pulls her hand away abruptly as memories of the last few months come flooding back. Pinpricks of light in the distance while hiding in a forest primeval. Holding his hand, fingers tangled, anchoring each other. Hearts beating in synchrony beneath scratchy borrowed sheets. Her whole world coming down to a small patched-up tent and him, always him. Falling in love, quietly, softly, like an autumn leaf dropping to the ground. The swift, cold winter that came with a blur of red hair and her lips on his. That overwhelming feeling of suddenly being lost.
She swallowed her tears then, packed up her heart and tried not to scream aloud whenever she caught a flash of red in the corner of her eye. Still, she didn't leave; poured salt in her wounds instead and went back to her position as the faithful lieutenant. It was what he needed, what he wanted, with a third of their whole planted 6 feet under barren soil. After a while, she managed to convince herself she was over him.
When she finally speaks, even she does not expect the bitterness in her voice. "You and me? Shouldn't it be 'you and Ginny'?"
He honestly looks confused. "What does Ginny have to do with this?"
"Harry, usually when one goes away, they bring their girlfriend, not their best friend." She almost laughs. Had a bottomless pit not opened in her gut, she probably would have.
Through a sliver of light from the window, she can see him tense as he sits up and looks at her. "Girlfriend? Ginny isn't my girlfriend, hasn't been for a long time. Whatever gave you that idea?"
She has never been so thankful for darkness as she feels the heat of a blush on her face. "I thought- I mean, I saw the two of you…I guess I was wrong," she finishes feebly.
He nods, speechless for now. She glances at him with his mouth slightly agape, and looks away. Fiddling with the hem of his quilt, she suddenly remembers her mother playfully laughing at her inability to keep her hands still whenever nervous. Her heart seizes for a second as her brain fills in the gap in her thinking. Her dead mother. Her dead parents, for that matter. Wanting a return to safer ground, she blurts out anything to fill in the silence.
"Have you thought about this seriously? Where would we go? How would this even work?"
He seems to rouse from his trance and a ghost of a smile flits across his face. "Simple. You throw a dart at a map, we'll go there and start new. Somewhere else in the world that's not here. Somewhere where we haven't said things that we can't unsay and done things which we can't undo."
He turns to her, his gaze unwavering. Looking into his eyes fully, she sees what is so different with them now. There is something behind his emerald gaze - a banked fire, a dammed flood. To her surprise, he brings his thumb to trace her lips. His voice drops a register. "There we can say new things. We can do new things. And those new things we say and do will be more important than the old things. In fact, in the spirit of the trip, let's start right now."
His lips capture hers before the last syllable is out. An odd thought flickers across her mind, that she could spend days with a dictionary yet never find the words to express all that she feels. When he pulls away, however, she feels the word "bereft" fits quite nicely. On his face is perhaps the first grin she has seen in months.
"Let's leave. Please, Hermione. Leave with me." She hears his unspoken words behind the soft voice and realizes that he doesn't have to say the words. I love you too.
Her soft, whispered "Okay" is buried in his chest as he draws her to him. She knows, deep inside, it will take more than a trip to repair them. It will take far more time and effort to erase the scars on their souls. There will be tears and nightmares, angry silences and the kind of guilt that could burn them from the inside out. She knows they can't predict what was to come but as always, they'd face it together. For now, she burrows himself closer to him and lets herself escape in his arms.
Finis