Fic: You Hold Your Truth So Purely | Harry Potter/Bones
Title: You Hold Your Truth So Purely
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6200
Disclaimer: Neither Harry Potter, nor Bones, are mine.
Summary: Post-HP/between S5 and S6 of Bones. Luna Lovegood/Vincent Nigel Murray
Vincent Nigel Murray won the lottery and went traveling, looking for adventure. He ran into Luna in England, and found it.
Beta'd by the lovely menacherie - all mistakes are mine.
AN: This is a holiday gift fic for the fantastic weasleytook. (/birthday fic)
The pairing itself came about when we were discussing the darling Mr. Nigel Murray, and who he could possibly be paired off with. The answer, of course, was Luna Lovegood. They're actually about the same age, in fact. Could they be more perfect? Anywho, dahlink, I hope you enjoy it half as much I enjoyed writing it ♥
You Hold Your Truth So Purely
I
Vincent Nigel Murray is a man of refined tastes.
All right, well, Vincent Nigel Murray is a man of fine wines and…and…
Vincent Nigel Murray has just won an awful lot of cash, and he’s putting it to good use. By traveling. Because, honestly, when one has spent such a terrible amount of time filling one’s head with a ridiculous amount of detail about the world around oneself, it becomes incumbent to spend some time in that world, and…
And…
Everyone left, and then he won the lottery, and what was he supposed to do? Continue working with Dr. Saroyan, drudging away over those who’d been dead for decades, when he could be exploring the world all around him, outside of the lab, outside of safety and restrictions, and-
Well, yes, he enjoyed his job, he did, but he’d grown rather used to the chaos, and without it, without Dr. Brennan, and Agent Booth, and Dr. Hodgins, and murder and mayhem and mystery…
Well. Anyway. Where was he?
Ah, yes. Traveling. Seeing the world. Getting up to all sorts of hijinks and adventures and coming to-to epiphanies about life and himself in the most unexpected of places, and not at all sitting in a diner outside of London, wishing he were back home (home?) with everyone else. Because that would be rather sad. And a waste of an adventure.
And Vincent Nigel Murray does not waste adventures. He is simply Not That Sort.
What he is doing-
Well, all right, yes, yes he is sitting in a small café outside of London, sipping his mug of tea at the counter, but he has guidebooks in front of him, and he is planning. He’s visited a few friends, but far too many of them have wives, now, and that’s just, well. Clearly he’ll not find the adventure he’s looking for with them.
So instead he’s looking at maps and guidebooks and drinking the tea which, honestly, is a bit scorching. But still, it’s not as if he has any use for the taste buds in his tongue. And surely all 8,000 (to 10,000) did not simply burn up as the result of one spluttering sip.
He can’t, after all, be dulled for the food of-of Bangladesh! Bangladesh? Perhaps Morocco? He’s not sure if he’s the Moroccan sort, but then, maybe he won’t know until he’s tried? Maybe Australia, instead. But then he knows all too well, in far too much detail, the sort of creatures that live in Australia, and perhaps not...
He pauses in his musings to take another sip of his tea. (Surely 2000 remaining taste buds would not be such a tragedy. And really, who makes tea at this temperature?)
He scratches his neck distractedly, and then frowns into his mug. He’s the oddest feeling…
He turns and looks, and yes, yes someone is indeed staring at him-a blonde woman with grey eyes who doesn’t even attempt to look away. Instead she tilts her head a little to the side, examining him thoroughly. He knows that look, he’s seen it often enough in Dr. Brennan or Dr. Saroyan’s eyes. Even Hodgins would get that perplexed, thinking look as he sorted things out.
Now, Mr. Nigel Murray might not be James Bond, or even have any inclinations in that direction, but he has money, and time, and the leisure with which to make mistakes. And he is, after all, in want of an adventure, is he not?
So he saunters (and does not at all stumble into the corner of the table between them), and pauses next to her booth, the mug of tea beginning to singe off his fingerprints, no doubt. (He is exaggerating, of course; the degree at which fingerprints would actually singe off is far closer to-)
“Hello,” she says. Her eyes haven’t wavered from his face on his entire walk over. Her voice lilts a little, soft and unexpectedly warm in places, dreamy in others.
“Might I buy you a…a cup of tea? Or something?” He winces a little on reflex, feeling how badly he’s bungled everything up, but it’s the or something that seems to get her, because she’s smiling a little now.
“You’re very sweet,” she says, “But I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.”
Now, of course, he’s even more intrigued. He leans an arm on the edge of the booth and drinks her in-the way she’s soft, all curves and flowing lines, except for the sharp edges of her raised eyebrow and the way her eyes flick to the door behind him when it opens. She’s about his age-maybe a year or two younger, he thinks, and then pulls himself back from doing the reflexive creepy too-detailed examination of her, given that she’s not, in fact, a dead body, and girls in the past have told him it made him seem serial-killer-y. (Which is not a word, at all, no excuses.)
“Maybe I don’t mind being in danger,” he says, except even as the words leave his mouth he can hear how utterly un-debonair he sounds, and he actually does mind danger, and he’s not sure why he’s pretending he can take a page out of Booth’s book, except there’s a pretty girl and a promise of maybe-adventure and my God he’s an idiot, isn’t he?
Her lips quirk up a little at the edges, again, and she shrugs like maybe he can sit down, if he wants. He does want, so he stands terribly awkwardly in place for a couple of beats and then sits, hoping he hasn’t read the signals too wrong. She glances back at the door as it opens again.
“Did you know,” he says, before he can quite stop himself, “A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions, at the same time?”
“So can Mirizai,” she says, glancing back at him, and then she freezes, teeth pressing into her bottom lip as she shakes herself from distraction. “Oh,” she says. “Right, you’re a Muggle.”
“I’m a what?” he asks, confused, and she looks even more put out.
“Right,” she says. “This is why I don’t come around these parts, because I’m no good at this. Not that Muggles are the only ones who don’t believe in Mirizai,” she says, sighing into her palm as she leans forward.
He looks at her, at the way her blonde hair hangs around her face, at the way her luminous eyes have returned to study his face with no thought to decorum.
“I’m Vincent,” he says, “Vincent Nigel Murray.”
“I shouldn’t say my name,” she says. “Well, maybe just the first name. But I don’t want you to get into trouble. They’ll throw you to the Nylles, and they’ll wipe your memory clean, and that’s just cruel, isn’t it?”
“It…it does sound quite cruel,” he says carefully. Because, honestly, of course he’d meet an odd duck like her, especially now that the feeling still hasn’t returned to his tongue, and the guidebooks he bought he’s left strewn all over the counter like he’s some foreign tourist who can’t even manage his own belongings, and why? Why is he here? There are 195 countries (not counting the various territories and colonies that don’t usually qualify in any statistical count), so why did he choose to come home?
“Luna,” she says, finally. She ducks her head a little and grabs for her glass of orange juice, and he’s distracted from all his scattered thoughts by the line of her neck as she swallows. She pulls the glass away and licks the traces of juice off her lips. “There are people after me,” she says. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
So yes, Vincent Nigel Murray has found a woman that is most likely mad, and at the very least a bit off-kilter, but she does something to his insides when she looks up at him with those soft, intelligent eyes, and he wanted an adventure, didn’t he?
Well, he’s found his damsel in distress.
“Let me help,” he says.
The door slams open behind him, and before either of them can say anything else she’s yanked his arm and pulled him back through the kitchen. Something explodes inches from his head, and he lets out a startled shriek as she pulls him past kitchen staff and then out another door until they’re in an alley.
“I’m sorry!” she says, “They saw you with me, though, and-”
He’s not exactly thinking clearly, but he lets her pull him farther down the alley towards the street.
“I’ll hail a cab,” he says, and she looks up at him with a frown.
“What’s a cab?”
There’s noise behind them, and she turns, pulling out a long thin stick, but they’re finally back out on the street, and for the first time in his entire life there’s a cab when he needs one, and he shoves the both of them into the back and shouts up the name of his hotel, which is the very first place he happens to think of and not at all a clever way of getting the girl back to his.
(Although, at this very moment, she’s lying half-sprawled on his lap from where they tumbled in together. He only narrowly avoided decapitating himself on the way in.)
“You don’t know what a cab is?” he asks, which, yes, considering circumstances might not be the most important question, but honestly, who doesn’t know what a cab is?
“Is this a cab?” she asks, and then she snaps her fingers and her eyes light up and he forgets what they were talking about for a heartbeat. “I remember cabs!” she says, “I do, actually, we learned about them in class!”
“In class?” he asks, because what, and what, and-
“Oh,” she says, biting her lip again, and he blanks out as she looks up at him, soft curves and something harder underneath, something like resolve and certainty to her core. She slides the long thin piece of wood back into her veritable suitcase of a purse, and then pulls herself together until she’s sitting upright on the seat instead of sprawled on him.
He can see the driver glancing at the two of them in his rearview, eyes amused, and he thinks of the mess they must look, and sorts himself out, too. His guidebooks, he realizes, he left back on the counter.
“Where are we going?” she asks, looking out the window at the other cars, clearly intrigued.
“I-my hotel,” he says. “Or wherever, I just said-”
“No, quite right,” she says. “I had to leave mine, and most everything I had this morning.” Her eyes are still focused outside, but it feels, somehow, like she’s looking at him, waiting.
“Who’s after you?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
She waits a beat, and then she does look back at him, grey eyes wide and thoughtful, her gaze steady.
“I found the Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” she says. “I knew they were real.”
II
He stares at her for a moment, clearly confused, but there’s a lift to her chin that’s practically a statement of intent.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “The Crumple-Horned what? That’s not an actual word, is it? It’s not. Is it? What is that?”
“What are they,” she corrects, sharply, something possessive in her voice that floods in on top the level certainty.
“What are they?” he repeats. It’s not just for her sake-he collects facts and trivia and information like they’re air, slotting them upstairs where he can keep track of every detail and organize every compartment. He needs certainty, and he can have it in truth, whatever truth that ends up being.
“They’re animals,” she says. “They’re very special, and people thought they didn’t exist. But I found them.” Her voice drops a little, her eyes slipping to the edges of the window to trace along the buildings as they slide past. “She let me touch her,” she says. “She was more gentle than I’d thought she’d be.”
She falls silent, and her lips press together as if working to keep whatever else there is locked away. His voice is soft when he says her name.
“Luna?”
Her shoulders pull in a little, and her next breath catches in her throat. He puts a hand on her shoulder, the fingers curling around the gentle slope of her skin.
“They killed her,” she says. “To protect the secret. And now they’re after me.” She turns back to him, and he can see the tears hiding in the edges of her eyes. “I’m going to save the rest of them,” she says.
“Who killed her?” Vincent asks, because yes, he’s been used to dealing with murderers in the vague sense of dead bodies and science intervening to find the culprit, but he’s not certain he’s prepared for the bad guys to be coming after his own physical body.
“I don’t know,” Luna says. “Maybe whoever owns the land. I didn’t see them.”
She seems to curl in a little more on herself, and Vincent leans toward her, drawn like a moth to a flame.
“It’s going to be all right,” he says, and then frowns at himself, and the utter inanity of his words. “Here, come inside,” he says as they pull up to his hotel. He grabs several bills out of his wallet and shoves them at the driver with a distracted “Keep the change,” and then ushers her upstairs.
When Luna walks, it’s something graceful, like she glides or moves, somehow, without the necessary expenditure of effort normally required. It’s distracting, Vincent finds, as he nearly runs into a potted plant. (Luna doesn’t notice.)
He takes her into his room and sits her down in a chair and then fumbles through a minibar, coming up with overpriced snacks that he drops on the table in the vain hope that something will comfort her in some way.
“All right,” he says. “Should we call the police? We should call the police. I have a friend-a friend?-who used to work for the FBI, he might be able-but then, he’s not in the US right now, and-but Dr. Saroyan would probably-”
“You don’t have to help me,” she says, eyes abnormally wide as she looks up at him, and for a moment his tongue refuses to form coherent words.
“Of course I’m going to help you,” he says. “We should call the police.”
“Vincent,” she says, her voice sharper than he’d expected, stopping him in his tracks as he went for his phone. “There’s something you should know.”
“About these Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?”
“They’re magic,” she says. Her voice is clear and level, and her eyes don’t waver from his face, and it takes him a moment to process what she said.
“I’m sorry?” he asks, clearly taken aback, but undeniably polite to a fault.
“They’re magical creatures,” she says. “The police won’t be able to help.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting down in the seat across from her. “It sounded as if you said they were magical.”
Luna blinks languidly. “I did.”
“Yes, but see…” he pauses, momentarily flummoxed. Of course the lovely damsel in distress he brought back to his hotel room would not only be odd, but would in fact be completely mad. “Magic isn’t real,” he settles on at last.
She smiles, slow and lingering as she looks up at him, her blonde hair fallen slightly into her face, her-hang on, are those radish earrings?-glinting away in the light from the window.
“Of course it’s real, Vincent,” she says. She leans forward a little, and he can’t quite find it in himself to pull back from the mad girl. “I’m not supposed to be telling you this,” she says, her voice hushed and yet simultaneously amused.
“It’s not, though,” he says. He drags a hand through his hair, leaving it perilously on end, and tries not to imagine Agent Booth’s smirk if this story were ever to come to light. (In fairness to Agent Booth, Hodgins would no doubt be more annoying. And Sweets-oh Sweets-he must never hear of it.)
She pulls out the thin piece of wood that she’d earlier brandished, and his eyes focus in on it, noting for the first time the similarity it has with common notions of witchcraft and wands.
“Oh no,” he says, half-underneath his breath.
And then?
And then she waves it in a clearly thought-out pattern, and whispers something underneath her breath, and the bottle of soda perched on the table rises and hovers several feet in the air.
After a small incident wherein he falls back with a cry, upsetting his chair and landing, sprawled, on the carpet, which she kindly does not laugh at, they have another talk.
“That can’t be real.”
“It is real, Vincent.”
“I shouldn’t have told you my name, this isn’t-I don’t-this can’t be real.”
“Vincent-”
“Do it again.”
She does it again.
“That’s just-that’s-how did you do that?”
She explains about magic, and he listens, intent and curious and mostly open-minded. He asks questions and she answers them. He expresses dismay and disbelief, and she shrugs and continues.
“A whole hidden community inside Britain? And everywhere else? People would know, wouldn’t they?”
Her smile is impish as she looks at him. “Magic,” she says, her voice lilting in a gentle fashion.
“So these…so these Snorkacks…they’re magic?”
She nods.
“Aren’t there-I don’t know-some sort of magical authorities, or police, or something?”
“I think someone inside is helping them,” she says, “They always seem to know where I am. That’s why I had to leave the hotel. I was supposed to meet my friend, who’s an Auror, at the café, but they found me first.”
Vincent frowns. “Hang on,” he says, “How’d you know I wasn’t one of them? How do you know I’m not one of them right now? I could’ve been dangerous!”
Luna grins at him, and the sheer unexpected devilishness of it takes him aback. “I just knew,” she says. “I can tell those sort of things.”
“You can tell these sort of things,” he says, deadpan. He’s not exactly believing her. But then, he hasn’t run away, either.
He’s…curious. Maybe. Or something.
(He’ll figure that out later.)
III
“So,” he says, “What are you going to do about this?”
“I should talk to Harry,” she says. “He’ll know what to do.”
(Vincent does not have a sharp flash of jealously for this Harry character. That would be ridiculous.)
“He’s the one you were going to meet?” he asks.
Luna nods. “He’ll worry since I didn’t show up,” she says.
“Couldn’t he be, I don’t know, a turncoat or something?” Vincent asks. “You’re sure he’s not bad?”
This, it seems, is considerably amusing. “He’s the boy-who-lived,” she laughs.
Vincent doesn’t even want to know.
“All right,” he says, “Where does he live?”
There’s a knock on the door before she can answer, and they both freeze.
“Maybe it’s room service?” he suggests in a whisper. Luna frowns up at him.
“What’s room service?” she asks. Vincent shakes his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, grim, “I didn’t order anything.”
“I don’t have my broom,” she says, worriedly glancing at the window. “And if they’ve someone inside they can track me if I apparate.”
Vincent looks at her, and once again valiantly lets it go. “Fire escape,” he says, tugging her over. He looks out the window and then swallows thickly. “I hate heights,” he moans.
She puts a cool hand on his cheek. “Will you be all right?”
He draws in a breath and forces himself to pull his eyes away from hers, vainly hoping he’s not blushing. “We should go,” he says, grabbing his cell phone and the laptop bag and then following her out.
Luna seems entirely too interested in studying the fire escape, but he urges her along as he hears the door swing open behind them.
“We can unlock doors,” she tells him distractedly as his feet finally connect back to the lovely, lovely ground.
He pulls up sharp, looking intrigued, and then shakes his head. “Later,” he says.
She grabs his hand in her own and pulls him along down alleyways and busy roads alike, hurrying, almost running, and he’s caught up in the way she looks over her shoulder, fear bright in her eyes, bottom lip caught between her teeth. When she finally stops, her chest heaving in breaths, he bends slightly over, winded.
Her cheeks are flushed pink with exertion and her hair is tangled around her face as she leans back into the wall; mad or not he has a hard time looking away from her. He realizes, after a moment, their hands are still clutched tightly together, but when he starts to let go she doesn’t release him.
“Do you believe me, Vincent?” she asks, and there’s something aching about the way she looks at him, as if she’s expecting him to say no, as if she’s already accepted his refusal to take her words as truth.
“Luna,” he says, because she just told him something mind-bendingly mad only a bit ago, and he can hardly be expected to believe her just like that. He doesn’t even know her. “I’m a scientist,” he says, like maybe that will explain anything.
“I don’t know what that is,” she says, her voice soft, her lips curling up slightly as if she’s amused at the way this is playing out, and still she doesn’t let go of his hand.
“It means I need facts,” he says. “It means I need truth.”
“I’m telling the truth,” she says.
“I need proof,” he says, apology thick in his voice, and here he is, ladies and gentlemen, one Vincent Nigel Murray, unable to look an adventure in the face.
“Proof of what?” she asks. Because she has to know what he doesn’t believe.
“This is real?” he asks. “This-this world within a world-how can it be real, Luna?”
She smiles a little sadly and lets go of his hand.
“It’s all right,” she says. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”
“You didn’t-Luna, you didn’t drag me into-I just-”
“I’ll figure out a way,” she says.
“What,” he says, angry at himself for sounding jealous, “What, will you go to Harry?”
“If I go to him,” she says, “I’ll put him and his family in danger. And I don’t want to give them a chance to hurt any more of the Snorkacks.”
“You want to go to Sweden, don’t you,” he says. Not a question, because he can see the way she stands, steady, ready to take on the world. He’s seen that look before.
“Vincent-”
“We’ll send him a letter,” he says. “Before we leave. So he’ll know where we’re going.”
“I don’t have an owl,” Luna says, her face scrunching up a little as she looks at him in confusion.
Vincent blinks. “In the mail. A letter. He has an address, doesn’t he?”
“To Floo to?”
“You don’t have a passport, do you?”
“We could fly there, but I haven’t a broom, and I don’t want to go to Diagon if they’re tracking us.”
“I…” he pauses, utterly confused. And then, because it’s been a long day, and he’s been a bit slow on the uptake, “His family? Harry has a family? He’s married?”
“We?” she asks, realizing what he’d said. “You’re coming with?”
They look at each other, perplexed, for a long moment.
“You don’t have to come,” she says. “Not if you don’t believe me.”
“I know,” he says. And then, with a hint of irony, “But I’m looking for adventure in my life.”
She smiles at that.
In the end, Luna uses a spell to transform an envelope into a passport using Vincent’s, while he jots a quick note to Harry and mails it off.
For the moment, they’re ignoring the finer details, like what the other’s actually talking about.
IV
They’re walking out of the subway to the ferry when she lets out a small cry. He looks where she’s looking and sees the figures in the dark clothes-robes?-sweeping up the opposite sidewalk.
He panics for a moment, and then, barely even thinking, he turns and presses her against the wall, his lips lowering to hers. His touch is soft and chaste at first, but then she twists her fingers in his shirt and leans in, opening her mouth to his, and things like danger and fear escape his mind completely as he kisses her. He can feel her smiling into his mouth, and the way her soft, fine hair slides between his fingers, and it’s hard to pull away for breath, hard to take his hands off of her. He leaves them on her waist, breath hitching as he takes in her red lips and the shine in her eyes.
“I-they always-in the movies-” he says, and then stutters to a stop, eyes wide as he looks down at her.
“Vincent,” she says, her voice low and curling up towards him, “You haven’t recently pet a Garakinn, have you?”
“I-I don’t believe so,” he says, frowning a little as she slowly starts to smile.
“So are you saying, then, that I’ve managed to kiss you incoherent?” she asks, looking entirely too pleased with herself, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet as she looks up at him.
Thoroughly distracted from whatever danger they might originally have been in, Vincent smiles lopsidedly back at her. “I don’t know,” he says, “We mustn’t be hasty. One time does not an experiment make-perhaps if we try again…?”
Luna grabs a handle of his shirt and tugs him back down to her level.
“From what you’ve told me,” she says, “Experiments are quite important.”
(They almost miss the ferry.)
V
They check into a hotel under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Booth. (He isn’t playing grown-up, he isn’t incurring the wrath of Booth, he says the first name that comes to mind, and yes, yes he might have been thinking of spies and superheroes and stupid bravery when he opened his mouth, but still. Booth will never know.)
Upstairs, Luna takes a long shower, luxuriating in the hot water after trailing through less than clean places, what with the trains through various countries, and that last ferry ride to Sweden. They hadn’t stopped for rest, sleeping in turns on the train, avoiding run-ins with whoever was chasing them down, stopping for casual kisses against the station walls on the way to grab something to eat.
Vincent turns on his computer and tries to sift through any news reports that might have anything to do with anything. For the moment he ignores the emails from Hodgins and Lance and a few other friends.
After that, he gets sucked into a few games of Jewel Quest.
He’s leaning over the computer, frowning and concentrating completely when the bathroom door opens. He glances up and promptly forgets everything else.
Luna is standing in the doorway, wrapped in a thick complimentary robe, her wet hair spilling out around her face. Her eyes are luminous in the low lighting.
“Why did you go to America?” she asks him, her bare ankles distracting him despite the fact they’ve not been considered risqué for decades.
“I’d always wanted to go to America,” he says, shrugging a little. She smiles, then, and it’s brilliant and completely unfair what she can do to him.
“I wanted to visit there,” she says, leaning a little against the doorway. “The tall trees and the plains and the deserts-so much packed into one country.”
“Are Bigfoots real?” Vincent asks, his voice strained as he watches her hair spill back, revealing the gentle lines of her neck. “Given the amount of supposed sightings, and-”
“They aren’t real,” she says, stepping closer, her body swaying a little as if to some imaginary tune that only she can hear.
He swallows thickly. “You should-you could-if I go back, afterwards, after this, you could come, maybe.”
“In Canada,” she says, sitting next to him on the bed, her robe brushing against his arm, “There’s an animal called a Deric. It lives in caves and you can only see it if you’re wearing red.”
“This is what you do, isn’t it?” he asks. “You find creatures that don’t exist.”
“They do exist,” she says, her voice soft, leaning against him. “I believe in them.”
He takes her hand in his.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” he says. “But I believe in you.”
She looks away, and when she finally meets his eyes her own are dark. “People don’t believe in me,” she says.
He cups her cheek, leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I do,” he says.
VI
They creep out of the hotel in the middle of the night. Vincent has a flashlight, and once they’re far enough away from the houses, Luna whispers Lumos.
He swallows back a gasp as light spreads out from the tip of her wand, and she takes his free hand in hers.
She leads him unerringly forward, following some path or trail that he can’t begin to imagine. Deeper into the forest they go, and he thinks of the few things he has on him, and how little it means out here. As if she senses his thoughts, she glances back at him, her hair framing her face and her soft smile.
“Trust me,” she says. And he does.
She doesn’t pause or hesitate or look around at all. She pulls him forward, and he follows.
When she at last stops, they’re standing between thick trees. The both of them have stumbled a few times on the uneven ground, and their clothes are wet with rain.
She calls out, a long, trilling noise, almost like a waltz, that echoes into the night. He stands by her, eyes straining in the darkness. She waits, and waits, and waits, and calls again.
This time, a low noise echoes back, and then it’s there.
She’s there.
Crumple-horn, purple ears, large and terrifying and unnatural…
And gentle.
Luna slips her hand free and walks up to her, her steps careful and steady, eyes wide as she brushes a hand down the animal’s face.
“What’s keeping you here?” she asks softly.
And the animal calls back, head bucking up slightly, breath huffing out.
“You have to leave,” Luna says. “It’s not safe here.”
Vincent is having trouble breathing. He believed her, he did, but this-this-
“Luna,” he says, but she runs another hand down the animal’s side.
When she looks back at him, her cheeks are wet with tears.
“We have to free her,” she says.
He wants-he wants to help her, to save her, to save the both of them, to hold Luna until everything is better. But he doesn’t know magic. He doesn’t know what this creature is, or what it can do. This isn’t his world, and he doesn’t know how to help.
“I-” he says-“Mockingbirds can replicate any sound. Lobsters-Luna, I don’t-”
“They can’t have her,” she says, wiping a sleeve across her face.
“What spells could keep them here?” he asks, because he doesn’t have any facts or trivia that could help, he’s nothing to offer her, nothing but-
“Can you check?” he asks. The Snorkack huffs out another breath and shakes its head.
“Check what?” she asks.
“Check for a-a leash, or-or-”
“If they…” she’s frowning, “If they bound them to an object-something big, and tall, to reach a wide area…”
“Luna-”
“I need my broom,” she says. “I need-how do you do this?” she asks, rain falling on her face, in her hair, “How do you live like this?”
“Luna,” he says, and he steps closer, closer to the animal, closer to her, until he can catch her in his arms, wrap her up as she sobs into his chest, the both of them impotent, the both of them helpless.
And then the Snorkack gently butts her head against Vincent’s side. He lets out a low yelp and darts to the side, pulling Luna with him, but the Snorkack continues, huffing out another breath and nosing Vincent.
“I think…” he says, bewildered, “I think she wants us to follow her.”
Luna shakes her head, her wet hair heavy on her shoulders. “Ride her,” she corrects. “They can run faster than we can.”
“Ride…?” Vincent says, eyes wide, but the Snorkack huffs and tugs on the bottom of Vincent’s shirt, pulling him off-balance and closer.
Vincent climbs aboard.
It turns out, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks can run much faster than Vincent was expecting.
When she finally pulls to a stop, they slide off her back. Luna’s pulling twigs and leaves from her hair, while Vincent is trying to stop shaking. And then they both freeze, looking up at the tall obelisk in front of them.
On its surface are carved sigils and lettering in flowing script.
“Is this it?” he asks.
Luna isn’t a violent sort of person. He can tell that. He just knows that.
She pulls out her wand anyway, her eyes fierce, her lips pinched together, pulling the tangled mess of wet hair behind her with her free hand.
“We’ll find out,” she says-and then-
“Reducto!”
The obelisk blasts to pieces, the shards pitching down onto the ground around them, and Vincent drags her back and away as the pieces fall, and the ground is uneven and trembling with impacts and they stumble to the ground, Vincent above her as if he can protect her, as if she needs to be protected.
When the dust settles, she leans up and kisses him, fingers tangling in his wet hair. She kisses him like she’s relieved, and she’s grateful, but there’s something else there, too, something that tastes like hope and future, and he kisses her back like she’s all that he’s ever been looking for.
They pull away when the Snorkack huffs along Vincent’s back, and he scrambles away with a surprised yelp that has her laughing at him.
“It’s all right,” she says, brushing a hand along the Snorkack’s nose as it leans down to her. “It’s all right,” she says, “You’re free now.”
The Snorkack huffs and then licks her cheek, and her eyes are practically glowing in the night, lit only by the moon and the stars and the flashlight that’s rolled along the ground between them.
It’s a long walk back, in the rain, but Luna rambles about anti-apparating fields and Vincent lets the words wash over him, content to wait until later to ask. Content to know that there’ll be a later.
They’re holding hands as they walk out of the woods. There’s an estate in the distance, and crowds of people in robes. One of them breaks free when he sees them.
“Luna! You’re all right!” the man says.
“Harry,” Luna smiles. “You got our letter.”
“I did,” he says, “We were all worried about you, especially since we couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“You caught them?”
“We’ve caught them,” Harry says. “They’ve got cages of endangered-magical and not-species. They even had a small dragon! Charlie’s coming out to take care of it, and help with some of the others.”
Luna smiles. “Good,” she says, “He’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”
Harry pauses, hesitant. “And Luna…you said you’d thought you saw…?”
“I was mistaken,” she says. Vincent turns to look at her, eyes wide, but she hooks a hand on his arm and leans into him. “I still believe they’re out there, somewhere, but they’re not here.”
Harry frowns at her a little, like maybe he doesn’t quite believe her, but then he looks at Vincent, and the way Vincent’s leaned into Luna’s touch, at the soft look on Vincent’s face as he looks down at her, and Harry lets it go.
“Well,” he says, “If anyone can find them, it’ll be you.”
She smiles up at him. “Thank you, Harry.”
VII
“So what’d you do with the money, anyway?” Hodgins asks, glancing up at him. The blender spurts on, shredding insects, and Vincent waits until the noise dies down before shrugging a little.
“I traveled,” he says.
“Don’t tell me you blew through that much money in six months!” Hodgins says, eyebrow inching up. “What’d you do, make bad investments? Bet on the wrong horse? Stay in only 5-star hotels?”
Vincent smiles.
“It’s not all gone,” he says. “I’m saving the rest for other adventures.”
“Adventures?” Hodgins asks. “Don’t you get enough excitement here?”
Vincent shrugs, an easy smile on his lips. “Not quite.”
Afterwards, he goes home to his apartment. He packs a picnic.
Luna apparates in half an hour later, babbling about wild Blue-Tinged Gymms. He double-checks his cell’s on hand, and then grabs the basket and her hand. She presses a kiss to his lips, and then they’re gone.
In the mountains, he spreads out a blanket, and she leans against him.
“What were you looking for in England?” she asks, scanning his face for answers, but he smiles, and she softens, grey eyes bright with something like peace.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Answers, maybe.”
“Sometimes there aren’t answers,” she says.
He leans in and kisses her. “Sometimes,” he says, “There are.”
Finis
AN: Vincent and Luna are both very near and dear to my heart, and hopefully this is half of what their romance could be.
.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6200
Disclaimer: Neither Harry Potter, nor Bones, are mine.
Summary: Post-HP/between S5 and S6 of Bones. Luna Lovegood/Vincent Nigel Murray
Vincent Nigel Murray won the lottery and went traveling, looking for adventure. He ran into Luna in England, and found it.
Beta'd by the lovely menacherie - all mistakes are mine.
AN: This is a holiday gift fic for the fantastic weasleytook. (/birthday fic)
The pairing itself came about when we were discussing the darling Mr. Nigel Murray, and who he could possibly be paired off with. The answer, of course, was Luna Lovegood. They're actually about the same age, in fact. Could they be more perfect? Anywho, dahlink, I hope you enjoy it half as much I enjoyed writing it ♥
You Hold Your Truth So Purely
I
Vincent Nigel Murray is a man of refined tastes.
All right, well, Vincent Nigel Murray is a man of fine wines and…and…
Vincent Nigel Murray has just won an awful lot of cash, and he’s putting it to good use. By traveling. Because, honestly, when one has spent such a terrible amount of time filling one’s head with a ridiculous amount of detail about the world around oneself, it becomes incumbent to spend some time in that world, and…
And…
Everyone left, and then he won the lottery, and what was he supposed to do? Continue working with Dr. Saroyan, drudging away over those who’d been dead for decades, when he could be exploring the world all around him, outside of the lab, outside of safety and restrictions, and-
Well, yes, he enjoyed his job, he did, but he’d grown rather used to the chaos, and without it, without Dr. Brennan, and Agent Booth, and Dr. Hodgins, and murder and mayhem and mystery…
Well. Anyway. Where was he?
Ah, yes. Traveling. Seeing the world. Getting up to all sorts of hijinks and adventures and coming to-to epiphanies about life and himself in the most unexpected of places, and not at all sitting in a diner outside of London, wishing he were back home (home?) with everyone else. Because that would be rather sad. And a waste of an adventure.
And Vincent Nigel Murray does not waste adventures. He is simply Not That Sort.
What he is doing-
Well, all right, yes, yes he is sitting in a small café outside of London, sipping his mug of tea at the counter, but he has guidebooks in front of him, and he is planning. He’s visited a few friends, but far too many of them have wives, now, and that’s just, well. Clearly he’ll not find the adventure he’s looking for with them.
So instead he’s looking at maps and guidebooks and drinking the tea which, honestly, is a bit scorching. But still, it’s not as if he has any use for the taste buds in his tongue. And surely all 8,000 (to 10,000) did not simply burn up as the result of one spluttering sip.
He can’t, after all, be dulled for the food of-of Bangladesh! Bangladesh? Perhaps Morocco? He’s not sure if he’s the Moroccan sort, but then, maybe he won’t know until he’s tried? Maybe Australia, instead. But then he knows all too well, in far too much detail, the sort of creatures that live in Australia, and perhaps not...
He pauses in his musings to take another sip of his tea. (Surely 2000 remaining taste buds would not be such a tragedy. And really, who makes tea at this temperature?)
He scratches his neck distractedly, and then frowns into his mug. He’s the oddest feeling…
He turns and looks, and yes, yes someone is indeed staring at him-a blonde woman with grey eyes who doesn’t even attempt to look away. Instead she tilts her head a little to the side, examining him thoroughly. He knows that look, he’s seen it often enough in Dr. Brennan or Dr. Saroyan’s eyes. Even Hodgins would get that perplexed, thinking look as he sorted things out.
Now, Mr. Nigel Murray might not be James Bond, or even have any inclinations in that direction, but he has money, and time, and the leisure with which to make mistakes. And he is, after all, in want of an adventure, is he not?
So he saunters (and does not at all stumble into the corner of the table between them), and pauses next to her booth, the mug of tea beginning to singe off his fingerprints, no doubt. (He is exaggerating, of course; the degree at which fingerprints would actually singe off is far closer to-)
“Hello,” she says. Her eyes haven’t wavered from his face on his entire walk over. Her voice lilts a little, soft and unexpectedly warm in places, dreamy in others.
“Might I buy you a…a cup of tea? Or something?” He winces a little on reflex, feeling how badly he’s bungled everything up, but it’s the or something that seems to get her, because she’s smiling a little now.
“You’re very sweet,” she says, “But I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.”
Now, of course, he’s even more intrigued. He leans an arm on the edge of the booth and drinks her in-the way she’s soft, all curves and flowing lines, except for the sharp edges of her raised eyebrow and the way her eyes flick to the door behind him when it opens. She’s about his age-maybe a year or two younger, he thinks, and then pulls himself back from doing the reflexive creepy too-detailed examination of her, given that she’s not, in fact, a dead body, and girls in the past have told him it made him seem serial-killer-y. (Which is not a word, at all, no excuses.)
“Maybe I don’t mind being in danger,” he says, except even as the words leave his mouth he can hear how utterly un-debonair he sounds, and he actually does mind danger, and he’s not sure why he’s pretending he can take a page out of Booth’s book, except there’s a pretty girl and a promise of maybe-adventure and my God he’s an idiot, isn’t he?
Her lips quirk up a little at the edges, again, and she shrugs like maybe he can sit down, if he wants. He does want, so he stands terribly awkwardly in place for a couple of beats and then sits, hoping he hasn’t read the signals too wrong. She glances back at the door as it opens again.
“Did you know,” he says, before he can quite stop himself, “A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions, at the same time?”
“So can Mirizai,” she says, glancing back at him, and then she freezes, teeth pressing into her bottom lip as she shakes herself from distraction. “Oh,” she says. “Right, you’re a Muggle.”
“I’m a what?” he asks, confused, and she looks even more put out.
“Right,” she says. “This is why I don’t come around these parts, because I’m no good at this. Not that Muggles are the only ones who don’t believe in Mirizai,” she says, sighing into her palm as she leans forward.
He looks at her, at the way her blonde hair hangs around her face, at the way her luminous eyes have returned to study his face with no thought to decorum.
“I’m Vincent,” he says, “Vincent Nigel Murray.”
“I shouldn’t say my name,” she says. “Well, maybe just the first name. But I don’t want you to get into trouble. They’ll throw you to the Nylles, and they’ll wipe your memory clean, and that’s just cruel, isn’t it?”
“It…it does sound quite cruel,” he says carefully. Because, honestly, of course he’d meet an odd duck like her, especially now that the feeling still hasn’t returned to his tongue, and the guidebooks he bought he’s left strewn all over the counter like he’s some foreign tourist who can’t even manage his own belongings, and why? Why is he here? There are 195 countries (not counting the various territories and colonies that don’t usually qualify in any statistical count), so why did he choose to come home?
“Luna,” she says, finally. She ducks her head a little and grabs for her glass of orange juice, and he’s distracted from all his scattered thoughts by the line of her neck as she swallows. She pulls the glass away and licks the traces of juice off her lips. “There are people after me,” she says. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
So yes, Vincent Nigel Murray has found a woman that is most likely mad, and at the very least a bit off-kilter, but she does something to his insides when she looks up at him with those soft, intelligent eyes, and he wanted an adventure, didn’t he?
Well, he’s found his damsel in distress.
“Let me help,” he says.
The door slams open behind him, and before either of them can say anything else she’s yanked his arm and pulled him back through the kitchen. Something explodes inches from his head, and he lets out a startled shriek as she pulls him past kitchen staff and then out another door until they’re in an alley.
“I’m sorry!” she says, “They saw you with me, though, and-”
He’s not exactly thinking clearly, but he lets her pull him farther down the alley towards the street.
“I’ll hail a cab,” he says, and she looks up at him with a frown.
“What’s a cab?”
There’s noise behind them, and she turns, pulling out a long thin stick, but they’re finally back out on the street, and for the first time in his entire life there’s a cab when he needs one, and he shoves the both of them into the back and shouts up the name of his hotel, which is the very first place he happens to think of and not at all a clever way of getting the girl back to his.
(Although, at this very moment, she’s lying half-sprawled on his lap from where they tumbled in together. He only narrowly avoided decapitating himself on the way in.)
“You don’t know what a cab is?” he asks, which, yes, considering circumstances might not be the most important question, but honestly, who doesn’t know what a cab is?
“Is this a cab?” she asks, and then she snaps her fingers and her eyes light up and he forgets what they were talking about for a heartbeat. “I remember cabs!” she says, “I do, actually, we learned about them in class!”
“In class?” he asks, because what, and what, and-
“Oh,” she says, biting her lip again, and he blanks out as she looks up at him, soft curves and something harder underneath, something like resolve and certainty to her core. She slides the long thin piece of wood back into her veritable suitcase of a purse, and then pulls herself together until she’s sitting upright on the seat instead of sprawled on him.
He can see the driver glancing at the two of them in his rearview, eyes amused, and he thinks of the mess they must look, and sorts himself out, too. His guidebooks, he realizes, he left back on the counter.
“Where are we going?” she asks, looking out the window at the other cars, clearly intrigued.
“I-my hotel,” he says. “Or wherever, I just said-”
“No, quite right,” she says. “I had to leave mine, and most everything I had this morning.” Her eyes are still focused outside, but it feels, somehow, like she’s looking at him, waiting.
“Who’s after you?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
She waits a beat, and then she does look back at him, grey eyes wide and thoughtful, her gaze steady.
“I found the Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” she says. “I knew they were real.”
II
He stares at her for a moment, clearly confused, but there’s a lift to her chin that’s practically a statement of intent.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “The Crumple-Horned what? That’s not an actual word, is it? It’s not. Is it? What is that?”
“What are they,” she corrects, sharply, something possessive in her voice that floods in on top the level certainty.
“What are they?” he repeats. It’s not just for her sake-he collects facts and trivia and information like they’re air, slotting them upstairs where he can keep track of every detail and organize every compartment. He needs certainty, and he can have it in truth, whatever truth that ends up being.
“They’re animals,” she says. “They’re very special, and people thought they didn’t exist. But I found them.” Her voice drops a little, her eyes slipping to the edges of the window to trace along the buildings as they slide past. “She let me touch her,” she says. “She was more gentle than I’d thought she’d be.”
She falls silent, and her lips press together as if working to keep whatever else there is locked away. His voice is soft when he says her name.
“Luna?”
Her shoulders pull in a little, and her next breath catches in her throat. He puts a hand on her shoulder, the fingers curling around the gentle slope of her skin.
“They killed her,” she says. “To protect the secret. And now they’re after me.” She turns back to him, and he can see the tears hiding in the edges of her eyes. “I’m going to save the rest of them,” she says.
“Who killed her?” Vincent asks, because yes, he’s been used to dealing with murderers in the vague sense of dead bodies and science intervening to find the culprit, but he’s not certain he’s prepared for the bad guys to be coming after his own physical body.
“I don’t know,” Luna says. “Maybe whoever owns the land. I didn’t see them.”
She seems to curl in a little more on herself, and Vincent leans toward her, drawn like a moth to a flame.
“It’s going to be all right,” he says, and then frowns at himself, and the utter inanity of his words. “Here, come inside,” he says as they pull up to his hotel. He grabs several bills out of his wallet and shoves them at the driver with a distracted “Keep the change,” and then ushers her upstairs.
When Luna walks, it’s something graceful, like she glides or moves, somehow, without the necessary expenditure of effort normally required. It’s distracting, Vincent finds, as he nearly runs into a potted plant. (Luna doesn’t notice.)
He takes her into his room and sits her down in a chair and then fumbles through a minibar, coming up with overpriced snacks that he drops on the table in the vain hope that something will comfort her in some way.
“All right,” he says. “Should we call the police? We should call the police. I have a friend-a friend?-who used to work for the FBI, he might be able-but then, he’s not in the US right now, and-but Dr. Saroyan would probably-”
“You don’t have to help me,” she says, eyes abnormally wide as she looks up at him, and for a moment his tongue refuses to form coherent words.
“Of course I’m going to help you,” he says. “We should call the police.”
“Vincent,” she says, her voice sharper than he’d expected, stopping him in his tracks as he went for his phone. “There’s something you should know.”
“About these Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?”
“They’re magic,” she says. Her voice is clear and level, and her eyes don’t waver from his face, and it takes him a moment to process what she said.
“I’m sorry?” he asks, clearly taken aback, but undeniably polite to a fault.
“They’re magical creatures,” she says. “The police won’t be able to help.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting down in the seat across from her. “It sounded as if you said they were magical.”
Luna blinks languidly. “I did.”
“Yes, but see…” he pauses, momentarily flummoxed. Of course the lovely damsel in distress he brought back to his hotel room would not only be odd, but would in fact be completely mad. “Magic isn’t real,” he settles on at last.
She smiles, slow and lingering as she looks up at him, her blonde hair fallen slightly into her face, her-hang on, are those radish earrings?-glinting away in the light from the window.
“Of course it’s real, Vincent,” she says. She leans forward a little, and he can’t quite find it in himself to pull back from the mad girl. “I’m not supposed to be telling you this,” she says, her voice hushed and yet simultaneously amused.
“It’s not, though,” he says. He drags a hand through his hair, leaving it perilously on end, and tries not to imagine Agent Booth’s smirk if this story were ever to come to light. (In fairness to Agent Booth, Hodgins would no doubt be more annoying. And Sweets-oh Sweets-he must never hear of it.)
She pulls out the thin piece of wood that she’d earlier brandished, and his eyes focus in on it, noting for the first time the similarity it has with common notions of witchcraft and wands.
“Oh no,” he says, half-underneath his breath.
And then?
And then she waves it in a clearly thought-out pattern, and whispers something underneath her breath, and the bottle of soda perched on the table rises and hovers several feet in the air.
After a small incident wherein he falls back with a cry, upsetting his chair and landing, sprawled, on the carpet, which she kindly does not laugh at, they have another talk.
“That can’t be real.”
“It is real, Vincent.”
“I shouldn’t have told you my name, this isn’t-I don’t-this can’t be real.”
“Vincent-”
“Do it again.”
She does it again.
“That’s just-that’s-how did you do that?”
She explains about magic, and he listens, intent and curious and mostly open-minded. He asks questions and she answers them. He expresses dismay and disbelief, and she shrugs and continues.
“A whole hidden community inside Britain? And everywhere else? People would know, wouldn’t they?”
Her smile is impish as she looks at him. “Magic,” she says, her voice lilting in a gentle fashion.
“So these…so these Snorkacks…they’re magic?”
She nods.
“Aren’t there-I don’t know-some sort of magical authorities, or police, or something?”
“I think someone inside is helping them,” she says, “They always seem to know where I am. That’s why I had to leave the hotel. I was supposed to meet my friend, who’s an Auror, at the café, but they found me first.”
Vincent frowns. “Hang on,” he says, “How’d you know I wasn’t one of them? How do you know I’m not one of them right now? I could’ve been dangerous!”
Luna grins at him, and the sheer unexpected devilishness of it takes him aback. “I just knew,” she says. “I can tell those sort of things.”
“You can tell these sort of things,” he says, deadpan. He’s not exactly believing her. But then, he hasn’t run away, either.
He’s…curious. Maybe. Or something.
(He’ll figure that out later.)
III
“So,” he says, “What are you going to do about this?”
“I should talk to Harry,” she says. “He’ll know what to do.”
(Vincent does not have a sharp flash of jealously for this Harry character. That would be ridiculous.)
“He’s the one you were going to meet?” he asks.
Luna nods. “He’ll worry since I didn’t show up,” she says.
“Couldn’t he be, I don’t know, a turncoat or something?” Vincent asks. “You’re sure he’s not bad?”
This, it seems, is considerably amusing. “He’s the boy-who-lived,” she laughs.
Vincent doesn’t even want to know.
“All right,” he says, “Where does he live?”
There’s a knock on the door before she can answer, and they both freeze.
“Maybe it’s room service?” he suggests in a whisper. Luna frowns up at him.
“What’s room service?” she asks. Vincent shakes his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, grim, “I didn’t order anything.”
“I don’t have my broom,” she says, worriedly glancing at the window. “And if they’ve someone inside they can track me if I apparate.”
Vincent looks at her, and once again valiantly lets it go. “Fire escape,” he says, tugging her over. He looks out the window and then swallows thickly. “I hate heights,” he moans.
She puts a cool hand on his cheek. “Will you be all right?”
He draws in a breath and forces himself to pull his eyes away from hers, vainly hoping he’s not blushing. “We should go,” he says, grabbing his cell phone and the laptop bag and then following her out.
Luna seems entirely too interested in studying the fire escape, but he urges her along as he hears the door swing open behind them.
“We can unlock doors,” she tells him distractedly as his feet finally connect back to the lovely, lovely ground.
He pulls up sharp, looking intrigued, and then shakes his head. “Later,” he says.
She grabs his hand in her own and pulls him along down alleyways and busy roads alike, hurrying, almost running, and he’s caught up in the way she looks over her shoulder, fear bright in her eyes, bottom lip caught between her teeth. When she finally stops, her chest heaving in breaths, he bends slightly over, winded.
Her cheeks are flushed pink with exertion and her hair is tangled around her face as she leans back into the wall; mad or not he has a hard time looking away from her. He realizes, after a moment, their hands are still clutched tightly together, but when he starts to let go she doesn’t release him.
“Do you believe me, Vincent?” she asks, and there’s something aching about the way she looks at him, as if she’s expecting him to say no, as if she’s already accepted his refusal to take her words as truth.
“Luna,” he says, because she just told him something mind-bendingly mad only a bit ago, and he can hardly be expected to believe her just like that. He doesn’t even know her. “I’m a scientist,” he says, like maybe that will explain anything.
“I don’t know what that is,” she says, her voice soft, her lips curling up slightly as if she’s amused at the way this is playing out, and still she doesn’t let go of his hand.
“It means I need facts,” he says. “It means I need truth.”
“I’m telling the truth,” she says.
“I need proof,” he says, apology thick in his voice, and here he is, ladies and gentlemen, one Vincent Nigel Murray, unable to look an adventure in the face.
“Proof of what?” she asks. Because she has to know what he doesn’t believe.
“This is real?” he asks. “This-this world within a world-how can it be real, Luna?”
She smiles a little sadly and lets go of his hand.
“It’s all right,” she says. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”
“You didn’t-Luna, you didn’t drag me into-I just-”
“I’ll figure out a way,” she says.
“What,” he says, angry at himself for sounding jealous, “What, will you go to Harry?”
“If I go to him,” she says, “I’ll put him and his family in danger. And I don’t want to give them a chance to hurt any more of the Snorkacks.”
“You want to go to Sweden, don’t you,” he says. Not a question, because he can see the way she stands, steady, ready to take on the world. He’s seen that look before.
“Vincent-”
“We’ll send him a letter,” he says. “Before we leave. So he’ll know where we’re going.”
“I don’t have an owl,” Luna says, her face scrunching up a little as she looks at him in confusion.
Vincent blinks. “In the mail. A letter. He has an address, doesn’t he?”
“To Floo to?”
“You don’t have a passport, do you?”
“We could fly there, but I haven’t a broom, and I don’t want to go to Diagon if they’re tracking us.”
“I…” he pauses, utterly confused. And then, because it’s been a long day, and he’s been a bit slow on the uptake, “His family? Harry has a family? He’s married?”
“We?” she asks, realizing what he’d said. “You’re coming with?”
They look at each other, perplexed, for a long moment.
“You don’t have to come,” she says. “Not if you don’t believe me.”
“I know,” he says. And then, with a hint of irony, “But I’m looking for adventure in my life.”
She smiles at that.
In the end, Luna uses a spell to transform an envelope into a passport using Vincent’s, while he jots a quick note to Harry and mails it off.
For the moment, they’re ignoring the finer details, like what the other’s actually talking about.
IV
They’re walking out of the subway to the ferry when she lets out a small cry. He looks where she’s looking and sees the figures in the dark clothes-robes?-sweeping up the opposite sidewalk.
He panics for a moment, and then, barely even thinking, he turns and presses her against the wall, his lips lowering to hers. His touch is soft and chaste at first, but then she twists her fingers in his shirt and leans in, opening her mouth to his, and things like danger and fear escape his mind completely as he kisses her. He can feel her smiling into his mouth, and the way her soft, fine hair slides between his fingers, and it’s hard to pull away for breath, hard to take his hands off of her. He leaves them on her waist, breath hitching as he takes in her red lips and the shine in her eyes.
“I-they always-in the movies-” he says, and then stutters to a stop, eyes wide as he looks down at her.
“Vincent,” she says, her voice low and curling up towards him, “You haven’t recently pet a Garakinn, have you?”
“I-I don’t believe so,” he says, frowning a little as she slowly starts to smile.
“So are you saying, then, that I’ve managed to kiss you incoherent?” she asks, looking entirely too pleased with herself, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet as she looks up at him.
Thoroughly distracted from whatever danger they might originally have been in, Vincent smiles lopsidedly back at her. “I don’t know,” he says, “We mustn’t be hasty. One time does not an experiment make-perhaps if we try again…?”
Luna grabs a handle of his shirt and tugs him back down to her level.
“From what you’ve told me,” she says, “Experiments are quite important.”
(They almost miss the ferry.)
V
They check into a hotel under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Booth. (He isn’t playing grown-up, he isn’t incurring the wrath of Booth, he says the first name that comes to mind, and yes, yes he might have been thinking of spies and superheroes and stupid bravery when he opened his mouth, but still. Booth will never know.)
Upstairs, Luna takes a long shower, luxuriating in the hot water after trailing through less than clean places, what with the trains through various countries, and that last ferry ride to Sweden. They hadn’t stopped for rest, sleeping in turns on the train, avoiding run-ins with whoever was chasing them down, stopping for casual kisses against the station walls on the way to grab something to eat.
Vincent turns on his computer and tries to sift through any news reports that might have anything to do with anything. For the moment he ignores the emails from Hodgins and Lance and a few other friends.
After that, he gets sucked into a few games of Jewel Quest.
He’s leaning over the computer, frowning and concentrating completely when the bathroom door opens. He glances up and promptly forgets everything else.
Luna is standing in the doorway, wrapped in a thick complimentary robe, her wet hair spilling out around her face. Her eyes are luminous in the low lighting.
“Why did you go to America?” she asks him, her bare ankles distracting him despite the fact they’ve not been considered risqué for decades.
“I’d always wanted to go to America,” he says, shrugging a little. She smiles, then, and it’s brilliant and completely unfair what she can do to him.
“I wanted to visit there,” she says, leaning a little against the doorway. “The tall trees and the plains and the deserts-so much packed into one country.”
“Are Bigfoots real?” Vincent asks, his voice strained as he watches her hair spill back, revealing the gentle lines of her neck. “Given the amount of supposed sightings, and-”
“They aren’t real,” she says, stepping closer, her body swaying a little as if to some imaginary tune that only she can hear.
He swallows thickly. “You should-you could-if I go back, afterwards, after this, you could come, maybe.”
“In Canada,” she says, sitting next to him on the bed, her robe brushing against his arm, “There’s an animal called a Deric. It lives in caves and you can only see it if you’re wearing red.”
“This is what you do, isn’t it?” he asks. “You find creatures that don’t exist.”
“They do exist,” she says, her voice soft, leaning against him. “I believe in them.”
He takes her hand in his.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” he says. “But I believe in you.”
She looks away, and when she finally meets his eyes her own are dark. “People don’t believe in me,” she says.
He cups her cheek, leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I do,” he says.
VI
They creep out of the hotel in the middle of the night. Vincent has a flashlight, and once they’re far enough away from the houses, Luna whispers Lumos.
He swallows back a gasp as light spreads out from the tip of her wand, and she takes his free hand in hers.
She leads him unerringly forward, following some path or trail that he can’t begin to imagine. Deeper into the forest they go, and he thinks of the few things he has on him, and how little it means out here. As if she senses his thoughts, she glances back at him, her hair framing her face and her soft smile.
“Trust me,” she says. And he does.
She doesn’t pause or hesitate or look around at all. She pulls him forward, and he follows.
When she at last stops, they’re standing between thick trees. The both of them have stumbled a few times on the uneven ground, and their clothes are wet with rain.
She calls out, a long, trilling noise, almost like a waltz, that echoes into the night. He stands by her, eyes straining in the darkness. She waits, and waits, and waits, and calls again.
This time, a low noise echoes back, and then it’s there.
She’s there.
Crumple-horn, purple ears, large and terrifying and unnatural…
And gentle.
Luna slips her hand free and walks up to her, her steps careful and steady, eyes wide as she brushes a hand down the animal’s face.
“What’s keeping you here?” she asks softly.
And the animal calls back, head bucking up slightly, breath huffing out.
“You have to leave,” Luna says. “It’s not safe here.”
Vincent is having trouble breathing. He believed her, he did, but this-this-
“Luna,” he says, but she runs another hand down the animal’s side.
When she looks back at him, her cheeks are wet with tears.
“We have to free her,” she says.
He wants-he wants to help her, to save her, to save the both of them, to hold Luna until everything is better. But he doesn’t know magic. He doesn’t know what this creature is, or what it can do. This isn’t his world, and he doesn’t know how to help.
“I-” he says-“Mockingbirds can replicate any sound. Lobsters-Luna, I don’t-”
“They can’t have her,” she says, wiping a sleeve across her face.
“What spells could keep them here?” he asks, because he doesn’t have any facts or trivia that could help, he’s nothing to offer her, nothing but-
“Can you check?” he asks. The Snorkack huffs out another breath and shakes its head.
“Check what?” she asks.
“Check for a-a leash, or-or-”
“If they…” she’s frowning, “If they bound them to an object-something big, and tall, to reach a wide area…”
“Luna-”
“I need my broom,” she says. “I need-how do you do this?” she asks, rain falling on her face, in her hair, “How do you live like this?”
“Luna,” he says, and he steps closer, closer to the animal, closer to her, until he can catch her in his arms, wrap her up as she sobs into his chest, the both of them impotent, the both of them helpless.
And then the Snorkack gently butts her head against Vincent’s side. He lets out a low yelp and darts to the side, pulling Luna with him, but the Snorkack continues, huffing out another breath and nosing Vincent.
“I think…” he says, bewildered, “I think she wants us to follow her.”
Luna shakes her head, her wet hair heavy on her shoulders. “Ride her,” she corrects. “They can run faster than we can.”
“Ride…?” Vincent says, eyes wide, but the Snorkack huffs and tugs on the bottom of Vincent’s shirt, pulling him off-balance and closer.
Vincent climbs aboard.
It turns out, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks can run much faster than Vincent was expecting.
When she finally pulls to a stop, they slide off her back. Luna’s pulling twigs and leaves from her hair, while Vincent is trying to stop shaking. And then they both freeze, looking up at the tall obelisk in front of them.
On its surface are carved sigils and lettering in flowing script.
“Is this it?” he asks.
Luna isn’t a violent sort of person. He can tell that. He just knows that.
She pulls out her wand anyway, her eyes fierce, her lips pinched together, pulling the tangled mess of wet hair behind her with her free hand.
“We’ll find out,” she says-and then-
“Reducto!”
The obelisk blasts to pieces, the shards pitching down onto the ground around them, and Vincent drags her back and away as the pieces fall, and the ground is uneven and trembling with impacts and they stumble to the ground, Vincent above her as if he can protect her, as if she needs to be protected.
When the dust settles, she leans up and kisses him, fingers tangling in his wet hair. She kisses him like she’s relieved, and she’s grateful, but there’s something else there, too, something that tastes like hope and future, and he kisses her back like she’s all that he’s ever been looking for.
They pull away when the Snorkack huffs along Vincent’s back, and he scrambles away with a surprised yelp that has her laughing at him.
“It’s all right,” she says, brushing a hand along the Snorkack’s nose as it leans down to her. “It’s all right,” she says, “You’re free now.”
The Snorkack huffs and then licks her cheek, and her eyes are practically glowing in the night, lit only by the moon and the stars and the flashlight that’s rolled along the ground between them.
It’s a long walk back, in the rain, but Luna rambles about anti-apparating fields and Vincent lets the words wash over him, content to wait until later to ask. Content to know that there’ll be a later.
They’re holding hands as they walk out of the woods. There’s an estate in the distance, and crowds of people in robes. One of them breaks free when he sees them.
“Luna! You’re all right!” the man says.
“Harry,” Luna smiles. “You got our letter.”
“I did,” he says, “We were all worried about you, especially since we couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“You caught them?”
“We’ve caught them,” Harry says. “They’ve got cages of endangered-magical and not-species. They even had a small dragon! Charlie’s coming out to take care of it, and help with some of the others.”
Luna smiles. “Good,” she says, “He’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”
Harry pauses, hesitant. “And Luna…you said you’d thought you saw…?”
“I was mistaken,” she says. Vincent turns to look at her, eyes wide, but she hooks a hand on his arm and leans into him. “I still believe they’re out there, somewhere, but they’re not here.”
Harry frowns at her a little, like maybe he doesn’t quite believe her, but then he looks at Vincent, and the way Vincent’s leaned into Luna’s touch, at the soft look on Vincent’s face as he looks down at her, and Harry lets it go.
“Well,” he says, “If anyone can find them, it’ll be you.”
She smiles up at him. “Thank you, Harry.”
VII
“So what’d you do with the money, anyway?” Hodgins asks, glancing up at him. The blender spurts on, shredding insects, and Vincent waits until the noise dies down before shrugging a little.
“I traveled,” he says.
“Don’t tell me you blew through that much money in six months!” Hodgins says, eyebrow inching up. “What’d you do, make bad investments? Bet on the wrong horse? Stay in only 5-star hotels?”
Vincent smiles.
“It’s not all gone,” he says. “I’m saving the rest for other adventures.”
“Adventures?” Hodgins asks. “Don’t you get enough excitement here?”
Vincent shrugs, an easy smile on his lips. “Not quite.”
Afterwards, he goes home to his apartment. He packs a picnic.
Luna apparates in half an hour later, babbling about wild Blue-Tinged Gymms. He double-checks his cell’s on hand, and then grabs the basket and her hand. She presses a kiss to his lips, and then they’re gone.
In the mountains, he spreads out a blanket, and she leans against him.
“What were you looking for in England?” she asks, scanning his face for answers, but he smiles, and she softens, grey eyes bright with something like peace.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Answers, maybe.”
“Sometimes there aren’t answers,” she says.
He leans in and kisses her. “Sometimes,” he says, “There are.”
Finis
AN: Vincent and Luna are both very near and dear to my heart, and hopefully this is half of what their romance could be.
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