Fic: Don't Condemn Me to Live (HP First Order)
Gotta get that one last fic in before the year ends!
Title: Don't Condemn Me to Live
Fandom: Harry Potter (First Order)
Characters: (main)Marlene McKinnon (others: Gideon Prewett, Camillo Figg (OC), Loah Figg (OC), Adi (Arabella) Figg, Caradoc Dearborn)
Warnings: (I don't get to use this much) Character death, angst
Word Count: 1200+
Author's Note: The title is a line from Torchwood. The story was written while listening to Anthem of the Angels by Breaking Benjamin, Rejoice by Katherine Jenkins, Last Kiss by Taylor Swift and How Do I Live by Trisha Yearwood. I would blame the angst on that mix of music but this was really all my own fault.
Author's Note 2: Incidently, canon has Marlene being killed first but this story wouldn't be nearly as good if I stuck with that timeline....
When Marlene checked in at after full dark, there was still no word. Gideon just shrugged as if he was tired of finding different ways of saying We haven't seen or heard from him and have no idea where he might be. It had been forty-eight hours without any sign of Caradoc Dearborn.
And forty hours since her heart had turned to ice.
Adi plied her with warm soup and hot bread weeping butter but Marlene couldn't stomach the thought of eating anything. Not when there were still leads to follow. She only needed a change of clothes and a hot shower before she was off again. These were not the moments to stop and reflect on just how messed up her life was right now. Besides, the less she ate, the more her stomach complained and her brain spent more time thinking about food and less on the fact that Cara hadn't contacted her.
It was hard to enter the room they shared, even harder to see the mused sheets that he'd wanted to straighten. She'd convinced him to shower with her instead of going about his normal waking routine so that there had only been time for one last kiss before they'd gone their separate ways. There was the shirt he'd worn, carefully draped over the chair while her dirty clothes were scattered along her side of the room. Who would chide her about picking up after herself?
She crumpled in the corner of the room, away from anything that she might accidentally move out of place. This was her shrine to those too-few glorious days she'd had with Cara. They had been perfect together. Utterly and devastatingly perfect. He liked his things tidy and she didn't mind them scattered about but they'd learned to live with each other because they hadn't been able to live without each other.
The stifled sobs came out in moans of pain as she contemplated living without him. Their job had never been an easy one, tracking down Death Eaters and protecting both the Wizarding and Muggle populace from not only that evil but the evil that people so often brought upon themselves. She was here because McKinnon's had always been on the front line of the battle against evil and she had picked the Order before her father could pick a front line for her. But not Cara. He had been part of the Order because he wanted to help. No one had convinced him to be here. It wasn't a family legacy for him. Cara did it because he wanted to. She wondered, if he was able to make the choice again, if he would chose the same path.
Sunlight was streaming into the room by the time she came back from the dark places in her soul. She had expected to be back on the hunt by now but maybe she had needed this. The pain wasn't so bad anymore. In fact, she couldn't feel much of anything now that she was numb again. Better to fall apart in private than in front of people who might want to comfort her. That was the worst of this. She had no where else to go but here, only to be surrounded by memories and well-wishers. While she knew that they had lost a friend when Cara had gone missing, they didn't seem to understand that she had lost her heart.
Pulling off her dirty clothes, she slipped into the shower and quickly dried off. She pulled on a pair of soft cotton trousers, concerned that they didn't fit the way they should. Too tight in the waistband. There would be time for clothes shopping later. Instead of pulling on one of her own shirts, she picked out one of Cara's from his carefully folded pile. It smelled like the detergent that Adi used but she could imagine that it still smelled of his spicy scent. She had to bunch the material over her face to keep from screaming. So she wasn't as numb as she thought she was. No matter. She was still in control. Still breathing. Still painfully alive.
Several people attempted to waylay her as she tried to leave the house. Cam succeeded only because he was bigger than she was and got to the door first. Instead of talking, he wrapped his arms around her so that she could barely breath.
"Should have been me," he whispered for her ears only. "I should have been there but he told me to stay home. It should have been me."
Marlene wanted to tell him it was alright, that she didn't blame him and would he please let her go so she could leave before something else came up and she was forced to talk about what she was feeling at the moment. No one wanted to hear that right now. There was enough pain in the room without adding her own. But he was holding her too tightly so that no words came out. She began beating at him, her tiny fists doing nothing to him but still he grunted as if she was actually hurting him. She, who couldn't use her wand with nearly the accuracy of the rest of them and had to resort to her mind and the patterns she saw when she looked out, was hurting Camillo Figg? Not likely.
Another set of arms pulled her away, trapping her arms beside her. "It's going to be alright," Loah, Cam's brother murmured as he held her tight.
Someone was screaming. Who dared make that much racket in the quiet room? No. No. Nonononononono.... She was the one making all the noise, her throat raw and hurting as she twisted and turned, trying to seek a way out of these bonds of flesh and blood. If she could just get away, she would be able to stop. Everything would become numb again. But he would still be gone. She would still be the only one looking for him because she was the only one who really believed that he wasn't coming back. They all were holding on to some deluded hope that he would walk in the front door. Didn't they see that they were wrong?
"I have to find him," she was screaming, far louder than was necessary. "Let me go. Let me go."
"Get the sedative, Quinn. I don't think she's going to go down without a fight and I don't want to use magic. Not in her condition. It might hurt the baby."
Still she begged but no one was listening. When she felt the prick of a needle, she surrendered but only because her body stopped reacting. This was worse, she realized. Far worse. Nothing was numb inside her head where she found herself trapped. She was all alone with her memories of her Cara. Every smile and every caress replayed on an endless stream of a time she should have treasured more.
If only... but maybe this wasn't so bad, after all. She took Cara's outstretched hand and stepped into the field of flowers where they'd had their first kiss then decided she wasn't going to worry any longer. Maybe she didn't have to give him up, after all.
Title: Don't Condemn Me to Live
Fandom: Harry Potter (First Order)
Characters: (main)Marlene McKinnon (others: Gideon Prewett, Camillo Figg (OC), Loah Figg (OC), Adi (Arabella) Figg, Caradoc Dearborn)
Warnings: (I don't get to use this much) Character death, angst
Word Count: 1200+
Author's Note: The title is a line from Torchwood. The story was written while listening to Anthem of the Angels by Breaking Benjamin, Rejoice by Katherine Jenkins, Last Kiss by Taylor Swift and How Do I Live by Trisha Yearwood. I would blame the angst on that mix of music but this was really all my own fault.
Author's Note 2: Incidently, canon has Marlene being killed first but this story wouldn't be nearly as good if I stuck with that timeline....
When Marlene checked in at after full dark, there was still no word. Gideon just shrugged as if he was tired of finding different ways of saying We haven't seen or heard from him and have no idea where he might be. It had been forty-eight hours without any sign of Caradoc Dearborn.
And forty hours since her heart had turned to ice.
Adi plied her with warm soup and hot bread weeping butter but Marlene couldn't stomach the thought of eating anything. Not when there were still leads to follow. She only needed a change of clothes and a hot shower before she was off again. These were not the moments to stop and reflect on just how messed up her life was right now. Besides, the less she ate, the more her stomach complained and her brain spent more time thinking about food and less on the fact that Cara hadn't contacted her.
It was hard to enter the room they shared, even harder to see the mused sheets that he'd wanted to straighten. She'd convinced him to shower with her instead of going about his normal waking routine so that there had only been time for one last kiss before they'd gone their separate ways. There was the shirt he'd worn, carefully draped over the chair while her dirty clothes were scattered along her side of the room. Who would chide her about picking up after herself?
She crumpled in the corner of the room, away from anything that she might accidentally move out of place. This was her shrine to those too-few glorious days she'd had with Cara. They had been perfect together. Utterly and devastatingly perfect. He liked his things tidy and she didn't mind them scattered about but they'd learned to live with each other because they hadn't been able to live without each other.
The stifled sobs came out in moans of pain as she contemplated living without him. Their job had never been an easy one, tracking down Death Eaters and protecting both the Wizarding and Muggle populace from not only that evil but the evil that people so often brought upon themselves. She was here because McKinnon's had always been on the front line of the battle against evil and she had picked the Order before her father could pick a front line for her. But not Cara. He had been part of the Order because he wanted to help. No one had convinced him to be here. It wasn't a family legacy for him. Cara did it because he wanted to. She wondered, if he was able to make the choice again, if he would chose the same path.
Sunlight was streaming into the room by the time she came back from the dark places in her soul. She had expected to be back on the hunt by now but maybe she had needed this. The pain wasn't so bad anymore. In fact, she couldn't feel much of anything now that she was numb again. Better to fall apart in private than in front of people who might want to comfort her. That was the worst of this. She had no where else to go but here, only to be surrounded by memories and well-wishers. While she knew that they had lost a friend when Cara had gone missing, they didn't seem to understand that she had lost her heart.
Pulling off her dirty clothes, she slipped into the shower and quickly dried off. She pulled on a pair of soft cotton trousers, concerned that they didn't fit the way they should. Too tight in the waistband. There would be time for clothes shopping later. Instead of pulling on one of her own shirts, she picked out one of Cara's from his carefully folded pile. It smelled like the detergent that Adi used but she could imagine that it still smelled of his spicy scent. She had to bunch the material over her face to keep from screaming. So she wasn't as numb as she thought she was. No matter. She was still in control. Still breathing. Still painfully alive.
Several people attempted to waylay her as she tried to leave the house. Cam succeeded only because he was bigger than she was and got to the door first. Instead of talking, he wrapped his arms around her so that she could barely breath.
"Should have been me," he whispered for her ears only. "I should have been there but he told me to stay home. It should have been me."
Marlene wanted to tell him it was alright, that she didn't blame him and would he please let her go so she could leave before something else came up and she was forced to talk about what she was feeling at the moment. No one wanted to hear that right now. There was enough pain in the room without adding her own. But he was holding her too tightly so that no words came out. She began beating at him, her tiny fists doing nothing to him but still he grunted as if she was actually hurting him. She, who couldn't use her wand with nearly the accuracy of the rest of them and had to resort to her mind and the patterns she saw when she looked out, was hurting Camillo Figg? Not likely.
Another set of arms pulled her away, trapping her arms beside her. "It's going to be alright," Loah, Cam's brother murmured as he held her tight.
Someone was screaming. Who dared make that much racket in the quiet room? No. No. Nonononononono.... She was the one making all the noise, her throat raw and hurting as she twisted and turned, trying to seek a way out of these bonds of flesh and blood. If she could just get away, she would be able to stop. Everything would become numb again. But he would still be gone. She would still be the only one looking for him because she was the only one who really believed that he wasn't coming back. They all were holding on to some deluded hope that he would walk in the front door. Didn't they see that they were wrong?
"I have to find him," she was screaming, far louder than was necessary. "Let me go. Let me go."
"Get the sedative, Quinn. I don't think she's going to go down without a fight and I don't want to use magic. Not in her condition. It might hurt the baby."
Still she begged but no one was listening. When she felt the prick of a needle, she surrendered but only because her body stopped reacting. This was worse, she realized. Far worse. Nothing was numb inside her head where she found herself trapped. She was all alone with her memories of her Cara. Every smile and every caress replayed on an endless stream of a time she should have treasured more.
If only... but maybe this wasn't so bad, after all. She took Cara's outstretched hand and stepped into the field of flowers where they'd had their first kiss then decided she wasn't going to worry any longer. Maybe she didn't have to give him up, after all.