Title: With Her Eyes Wide Open
Author: FragrantPowders
Beta: Emma/monifieth, all other mistakes you might find belong to me.
Pairing: Pansy/Luna
Rating: M/R
Warning: Bloodplay
Disclaimer: I own nothing. JK Rowlings owns it all. You know the drill - don't sue.
Author's Notes: For K. Angst and some darkness.
With Her Eyes Wide Open we are blinded
we yearn for happiness
but cannot find it
- Atlantis, Danish Musical
Trust me.
Pansy writes it slowly with her fingertip on the soft skin under Luna's navel (carefully flourishing the Ts and arching the M, finishing with an angry jab of her finger to indicate the full stop). Luna lies completely still, breath catching audibly at the sharp poke to the tender flesh, the silk blindfold shimmering in the flickering candlelight. It is blue (for Ravenclaw), the same shade of almost blackish blue as the night sky with its billion stars and round mysterious moon (Luna's hair is beams of moonlight framing her face).
What are you thinking about?
It is so much easier to write it on flushed skin than asking the question out loud. Pansy finds that she likes communicating this way, Luna not able to see the expression on her face as she forms her questions, not with her lips but with precious letters (Pansy is not used to querying anything or voicing her questions, she has always walked the way she thought she was told to go).
Luna's fingers wrap around her wrist slowly, pressing Pansy's hand to her breast. Through the thick material of Luna's cloak pressing against her palm, Pansy can feel the fast beating of Luna's heart under her hand (a quick bump bump followed by a less vibrant thud. It is the rhythm of a free heart, a heart that dares dream. Pansy loves the sound (envies it).
"I'm thinking about what the Daily Prophet wrote about the massacre on all those Muggle children yesterday. I'm trying to figure out when they will catch you and if you ought to be caught."
Luna pauses, her hand letting go of Pansy's. Pansy takes her hand back, unsure what to do with it (where to place it, can touch tell the story?). Luna cocks her head, the blindfold ruffled from the movement. "Do you deserve to be caught?"
Pansy's own heart skips a beat at this (honesty is another thing she has not often faced) and she folds her hands in her lap for a long moment, afraid to let Luna know of the way she is trembling (Pansy can be strong, but not when she is following a path she is not familiar with). As she looks down at her hands, clean and pale, she asks herself the same question. Does one deserve to be caught when she has done everything by doing nothing?
I want to show you something.
Pansy finishes this sentence in a hurry, the dot probably shaped more like a comma. Then she gets up slowly, looking at Luna over her shoulder. The girl does not move, nor does she try to remove the cloth blinding her (the wrinkles in the material must be irritating, Pansy would have taken it off, probably just as blind with the cloth gone). There is something very close to a smile on Luna's lips and Pansy realises that she wants to lean down and steal that smile away. But she does not have the time for that, not now. She needs Luna to understand. Or maybe she needs herself to understand, to make Luna explain.
From one of the pockets in her cloak she reveals a long, oval package wrapped in the same blue silken material as Luna's blindfold (once this was her favourite evening dress, but the Aurors will not care if it holds all the memories in the world; they will destroy everything that is her). As she unwraps it she thinks about her father and her mother and her cousins and all the other members of the Parkinson family. If there is any reason as to why Pansy is where she is now, they are a great part of it. She told herself she did it for them, to save them (she thought she did it to save herself, because that is what teenage girls do when they do not know how nothing is black and white but only shards of a broken fairy tale).
Pansy could find many reasons like that as to why she has done what she has done, but none of them are really her reasons, only words spoken by other people in the same situation.
The knife is all she has left from her life as an innocent (if she ever was one, she is not so sure about that anymore).
The knife blade was crafted by one of the most talented Elfish blacksmiths who have ever existed, while the handle is made from the roots of the ancient Ivory Willow in the Parkinson gardens back at home, decorated with pearls and emeralds (green, symbolizing the Family House). This knife has been in family property for centuries, her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather giving it as a wedding gift to his young virgin bride the day the Parkinson family was started. By now the story itself is only a tale once told in a gentle voice by her mother to lull her to sleep, but the knife itself is real.
The mattress adjusts to her form as she sits down again on the edge of the bed, Luna still lying in the exact same position as when Pansy left her there.
She swirls the knife between her fingers in a steady rhythm (getting used to the feeling of it, to its heaviness and its form). Luna's breathing has returned to normal, but Pansy can see in the way her lips are slightly parted that her concentration is fixed on the soft sounds coming from Pansy's direction (and still she trusts Pansy - blindly).
I will not hurt you.
Luna's hands curl into fists as Pansy pokes the dot. Pansy smiles, getting to her knees and leaning over Luna's fragile form. The girl was always thin, but oddly noble-looking (Diana, the moon goddess), almost as much of a Pureblood as Pansy herself. Smoothly she pushes Luna's cloak down over her delicate shoulders, baring her breasts and her upper arms (skin unmarked and pale as purity, not milk mixed with oil like Pansy's).
Luna's nipples harden at the sudden change in temperature and had it been any other night Pansy would have taken her time with Luna's body (because it is magical) but tonight she has a task to fulfil.
With a deep breath she presses the point of the knife to the skin under Luna's curved breasts. Luna freezes but does not fight it (she never did, not in school, not ever – she always saw something else in everything, something beautiful). Slowly and carefully Pansy starts writing, the knife easily cutting through skin and flesh (Luna cringes slightly, but the whimper stays as a tremble in her bottom lip and as wetness on her cheeks at the edge of night blue fabric).
Pansy is fascinated by the blood which starts to run down Luna's stomach, collecting in a small pool of red (precious ruby red; courage) in her navel, this is the ink she will use to make Luna understand (explanation, please?). This is what she has to do as to regain her sight completely.
I LOVE YOU.
(For each letter she understands that she will never be able to find an explanation for what she has done – the past cannot be changed – and these words are true and enough of a reason to do what she will have to do – the future lies uncovered.
Pansy is not sure how long it takes her to carve her message into Luna's skin, but in the end the full stop is formed with an almost gentle stab. Luna shivers as Pansy dips her finger into the red liquid, writing her last statement (her last will and testament) on an invisible line, beautifully following the glistening wound-letters:
I'm not sure where I meant to end up, but it wasn't here.
She looks at her fingers, Luna's blood catching the light and reflecting it in reddish flicks. It tastes metallic as she licks it off her fingertip, making sure there is not the smallest stain left (she has too much blood on her conscience as it is).
Luna's breath is silent sobs by now. Pansy watches her without moving, without writing and without speaking. Their communication was always like this, silent and deep-felt (Luna has that effect on people, she knows how to say what she needs to without giving away many words). It is this thought (of how they were and how they are and what they will never be) that makes Pansy lean down, pressing her lips softly to Luna's.
The kiss is innocent (pure in a way no kind of blood will ever be). When Pansy draws back she takes the blindfold with her, Luna's eyes suddenly exposed; wide and tearful and oh so blue (blue as the sky, blue as freedom, blue as something that no longer exists) when they meet the light unblinkingly. She does not look down to survey the mess of blood and open cuts on her chest and stomach, instead she holds Pansy's gaze. Pansy reaches out, taking hold of Luna's wrist, pressing the handle of the bloody knife against her palm and closing her fingers around it.
"What do you see when you look at me?"
The question could have been written in blood among all the others formed on Luna's skin, but Pansy thinks it deserves the words (the trembling voice, full of unshed tears). This question she needs to ask. Out loud where her tone and pronunciation will tell Luna how much it means to her to know, for once to know and be sure.
Luna sighs, sitting up slowly, looking down at the knife in her hand. Pansy thinks the dagger looks as if it belongs there, fitting Luna's frail grasp on reality perfectly. Finally Luna looks up again, meeting Pansy's eyes.
"I see, but I don't see forever," she says simply (Luna-logic, once Pansy would have laughed, now she merely nods, understanding).
They both know that when Pansy leaves this house she will be locked up for a crime she may and may not have committed, but that is not what is important (Pansy is dead inside anyway). Luna sees, Luna understands. This is all that matters, because Pansy's purpose has been non-existent all along. Even when she was unmarked the world had cut a map into her heart (her soul is a map of ways to go, none of them her own). She has followed the only route she could make herself take and it is too late to turn back.
"Follow your feet," Luna tells her as she opens the door. "They will lead you home, wherever that is."
Pansy smiles; her home has burned down and so has all the bridges leading to it. Her feet will take her to nowhere, because when Luna closes the door behind her she will shut Pansy out from the last place she would ever call home.
As Pansy walks away she realises that Luna's blood and the blood of so many people dead is not what really soils her hands. But her own blood will always mark her, because she killed herself the day she chose to go the way reality had imprinted on her soul (the way that lead her through floods of blood). She realises that she never looked for her dreams (not really, you have to be brave to dream). She realises that she needs no excuses because there are none; and the one reason that she seeks the shadows of the forest is that her feet will take her to the only thing she has left to love (freedom).
Luna is not the only one who sees.