Wizardry

(I'msorryI'mrubbishIloveyouwillyouforgivemepleaseIloveyoucanthey
havehotchocolateandbecuteIloveyouplease?)

Their baggage lay at their feet. Some of the suitcases had been opened and the contents rifled through. Other duffels had been pierced and out through the holes secrets flowed freely in torrents of red and purple and green. What still lingered were parcels neither party wanted to inspect for fear that they’d still be out in the cold, that by confessing to it, by letting each other judge and those who watched silently in the shadows judge ... they’d achieve nothing. They’d still be sat on the bridge, their skin chilled by the breeze dancing off of the river. They’d still be alone. Despite the company.

It seemed to be their defining fault. Merlin, they’d loved -- but what had they gotten from that? Very little, indeed. Heartbreak and little solace. It had brought them here, to a bridge with swirling water so like that cliff that Albus had contemplated his life over. Here they were: bruised, knocked around but still breathing. Still fighting. Why was it so hard to fall, to jump, to just let it happen? Because there was still something. They were both so sure, weren’t they, that there was still something? Something worth living for. They didn’t run. Or, if they did, not far. At least.

It was the past tense she hated. He’d loved her. She hadn’t loved him? She had but couldn’t? Could no longer? Had she at all? Had she taken that ability to love from him? Had she stolen that? What right had she to do that, to let him?

Athena lifted her hand and set it gingerly on Albus’s wrist, her fingers icy against his equally bitter skin. She didn’t have any words for him. She felt robbed of them, as though she’d expelled the last of what she could manage. All she could do was look at him, study his face and take him in - breathless and lost - wondering where her husband was for her just as she was sure he must have wondered after his almost-lover. Where were they? How did they come to leave them with each other?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, gently. His should’ve been the fairytale. The family. The girlfriend. The wife. The kids. It all should’ve been right and perfect because that was what his father had fought for. She was suffering for her father’s crimes, she was sure of this. She suffered of her own volition. What had Albus done? He’d been someone he didn’t want to be. He’d resented. Hated. But that came with the territory. The fame. So why punish him.

Athena looped her little finger around his and squeezed it gently before letting her hand fall slack once more. She’d guard his words, she realised with sudden clarity. She would take them and house them and hide them and they’d be theirs between them and only them. Their secret. Just as she knew he’d take hers and press them away some place in his mind and keep them but forget them as a reality but make it so as it was theirs. Only theirs. These moments.

“You have so much more to give, Albus,” Athena murmured. “It shouldn’t have to end here. On this bridge. For either of us.” Athena sighed, her voice heavy with resolve as she swore: “It won’t.”

Time elapsed as it always did in a half-companionable, half-awkward silence but with the sound of their breathing softly riding on the back of the breeze, Athena could feel a heaviness begin to grasp at her eyelids and she leaned that little bit closer to Albus as fatigue began to set into her frame.

“We need to get out of the cold.” It was a true enough statement, lest St. Mungo’s be both their destinations in a few nights to come, suffering from fevers and Merlin only knows what else. “Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?”

It was more than just an offer of a hot drink and, no doubt, a change of warm clothes and perhaps a sofa for the night. No, it was an olive branch that had been growing between them, sprouting unseasonable leaves and promising a bounty of fruits. It was an offer of friendship which had been sealed by the handbags and luggage spilled out between them. But it was also a desire to forget. For a moment to get out of the cold, out of the reality and observe a falsehood they both understood: normality. Yet, little would be normal in bringing home to her wing of the great Rookwood manor a man who understood how abnormal they both were. She didn’t care, though. They’d spilled their guts to each other, to the world, to themselves, to the silent observers. Now they needed the palpable comfort they sought.

((OOC: I'm the epitome of rubbishness, so lets just agree to forget this whole huge-timegap-between-replies business, and get on with it :PAlso, this post is weird, and rambling, and short-ish, and I wrote it in a half-trance listening to rainy music. I'll get better, promise ))



The cold hand on his was enough to jolt him out of the drifting, meandering world that both of them had so inadvertently wandered into; he twisted his head, looking down for slow, long pondering moments at the moonlight-washed image: pale, long, white fingers of a woman's hand encasing a roughened wrist. One, a pureblooded tapestry, a hand that had so clearly once been involved in nothing but delicate waving and spellcasting, kissed and admired from afar by gentlemen; now with a hard white spot on the base of her thumb, abraded cuticles, which spoke of a mother's labour and love. The other, a man's hand, yet an artist's hand, strong but being comforted, long scratches across fingertips that spoke of silent nights being whiled away, plucking the guitar. As she watched his face, he watched their hands; and that spoke everything, really.

"I'm sorry."

Me too.

The little finger of the woman's hand arched around, and curled under the man's; in a parody of the cute, tender gesture that teenagers used. Their hands were so much older, yet could almost be mistaken as young and naive and adolescent at that age. It wouldn't, though. This wasn't some strained-sugar moment plucked out of a movie. This was one human, promising the other, that life wasn't too much of a burden. That the overtaxed, fraying muscle and nerve and sinew of their shoulders could yet bear some more.

Those hands looked cold and white under the moonlight, like those belonging to dead people. But deep within the coarse skin, the tough, numbed tissue, the dry bone: blood flowed. Thrumming and gushing and living, even if the people in whose veins it flowed had forgotten to.

Then the other hand darted away, and that was one more image, one more moment to be shelved in the library of memories; waiting and watching until the people dared to take them out of the dusty archives, dust them off, and realise what they meant.

"Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?

He straightened up. Felt his knee joints pop, quietly. Shook his head from side to side, a few scattered, messy hairs straying on his forehead. Stopped it suddenly, in a half-aborted motion. Albus's mind felt........clear. Ish.

Then because it was clear, and because it seemed obvious, he crooked his head to the left and laughed. Small, little amused sounds that seemed foreign in this atmosphere. All too soon, they stripped the air of its haze, its wizardry. And lo and behold, they were just two young adults in their twenties, sitting on a cold, damp bridge, talking about hot chocolate.

Of all things, hot chocolate.

In the first breath of warmth all night, Albus spoke, "I would love it."