FIC: Unsaid (Harry/Tonks)
Title: "Unsaid"
Pairing/Character(s): Harry/Tonks
Prompt: look over there
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 532
Author's notes: Warning for implied character death.
He apparates with greater skill than me. I never can get through the initial spin without tripping up just a bit. Still, I get it right eventually, don’t I? I still wind up where I need to be- maybe not with as much style as some.
He tries not to run ahead of me, but he can’t help it. His gait has a lightening-driven urgency, and if it weren’t for my Auror training, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with him at all. It’s a bad idea for him to run ahead alone. In times like this I remember, for all his zeal and good intentions, he isn’t a trained Auror. He is a boy on a quest, and neither of us should be here.
“Wait!” I call, but the wind blows my words farther behind me as he runs forward through the night. He is heading for a collapsed building- a small cottage that looks as if it had been a toy for a tantrum-throwing child.
“This is the one!” he tells me as I catch up to him, stopping just outside of what might once have been a door. He is panting slightly- I am trying not to seem tired.
“It’s the house from my dream,” he continues. “There’s no Dark Mark, but- this is it, Tonks. Ginny’s here.”
His eyes are pleading, and I try not to remember the reason that I’m here- why I was the first person to know he’d had another vision. Had there been no hell-sent dream of a tortured Ginny Weasley, he and I would have needed to have a rather awkward conversation in the morning- one where I’d have to explain that I don’t handle grief so well. The words “comfort” and “use” and “sorry” probably would have been involved.
“Help me look for her!” he directs, seeming confused about where to start. Forgetting his magic, he struggles with trying to physically shove his way through the rubble.
With a swish and flick I move the heaviest portion of the fallen wall out of our way. I know what we’ll find as soon as the piece begins to move. Everything about this scene has become sickeningly familiar. I’d come home to something much the same just a few short nights ago.
Suddenly I remember that I am an Auror and we are in danger and we need to get out of here, but as I open my mouth to say this, I see her battered trainers and crushed body. I hear myself say clumsily instead, “Don’t look over there.”
Of course he looks and he sees and he screams and he reaches.
I grab him with both hands, pull his back against my chest, and wrap my arms around him as he struggles first and then stills. I can feel a thousand words welling in his chest as his hands grip my wrists and he throws his head back to rest above my shoulder. I brace for a scream.
Instead, he whimpers.
He sniffs.
He brushes his face with mine and I’m touched with an uncomfortable sense of duty.
Perhaps that morning conversation won’t be quite so awkward now.
Perhaps now he understands.
Thanks for reading!
-c4c
Pairing/Character(s): Harry/Tonks
Prompt: look over there
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 532
Author's notes: Warning for implied character death.
He apparates with greater skill than me. I never can get through the initial spin without tripping up just a bit. Still, I get it right eventually, don’t I? I still wind up where I need to be- maybe not with as much style as some.
He tries not to run ahead of me, but he can’t help it. His gait has a lightening-driven urgency, and if it weren’t for my Auror training, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with him at all. It’s a bad idea for him to run ahead alone. In times like this I remember, for all his zeal and good intentions, he isn’t a trained Auror. He is a boy on a quest, and neither of us should be here.
“Wait!” I call, but the wind blows my words farther behind me as he runs forward through the night. He is heading for a collapsed building- a small cottage that looks as if it had been a toy for a tantrum-throwing child.
“This is the one!” he tells me as I catch up to him, stopping just outside of what might once have been a door. He is panting slightly- I am trying not to seem tired.
“It’s the house from my dream,” he continues. “There’s no Dark Mark, but- this is it, Tonks. Ginny’s here.”
His eyes are pleading, and I try not to remember the reason that I’m here- why I was the first person to know he’d had another vision. Had there been no hell-sent dream of a tortured Ginny Weasley, he and I would have needed to have a rather awkward conversation in the morning- one where I’d have to explain that I don’t handle grief so well. The words “comfort” and “use” and “sorry” probably would have been involved.
“Help me look for her!” he directs, seeming confused about where to start. Forgetting his magic, he struggles with trying to physically shove his way through the rubble.
With a swish and flick I move the heaviest portion of the fallen wall out of our way. I know what we’ll find as soon as the piece begins to move. Everything about this scene has become sickeningly familiar. I’d come home to something much the same just a few short nights ago.
Suddenly I remember that I am an Auror and we are in danger and we need to get out of here, but as I open my mouth to say this, I see her battered trainers and crushed body. I hear myself say clumsily instead, “Don’t look over there.”
Of course he looks and he sees and he screams and he reaches.
I grab him with both hands, pull his back against my chest, and wrap my arms around him as he struggles first and then stills. I can feel a thousand words welling in his chest as his hands grip my wrists and he throws his head back to rest above my shoulder. I brace for a scream.
Instead, he whimpers.
He sniffs.
He brushes his face with mine and I’m touched with an uncomfortable sense of duty.
Perhaps that morning conversation won’t be quite so awkward now.
Perhaps now he understands.
Thanks for reading!
-c4c