lonely twin solitude
In the end, they lose the key to each other's dissonance, and the red thread that once promised them 'together' fades into the dirt and the grass and the grey reality.
/
They can feel summer lurking on the edges of dark – heat is the scent that lingers on skin, frighteningly burn like losing stars, and the restlessness that itches in their bones is there more than ever. It sizzles and crackles in the corners, licking up parading blue elephants.
It's summer again. Maybe the last one.
She's here again.
/
On the first day, she drags in her boxes that are only meant for show. They'll put them in a corner again, let them collect dust and waste space, never open them until the end of summer. They're merely grimy museums putting relics of an unwanted past on display.
There's nothing in them, nothing.
(Only – do pieces of yourself, scattered between bubble wrap and cotton spilling out of children's toys, count as nothing?)
/
On the second day, she wakes to the dawn and feels hopeful, as always. But these kinds of feelings, she's learnt to shove in a box and hide it behind her back, keeping it forever locked.
She drags herself out of bed, slices the shafts of daylight into quarters, and fries it up with the summer heat and the eggs and whatever else she can find in the kitchen. She taps the pepper shaker and sprinkles some pepper – just the way he likes his omelettes.
He's almost like a cat, she thinks, plate in her hand as she knocks on the forever locked door like his heart. She can't hear his thoughts through the wood anymore.
"James? I made breakfast."
There isn't any answer.
She wonders if there ever will be.
/
On the third day, she lulls herself to a fitful sleep, listening to the ballad of the languorous rain as it pours, dreaming of better days when she didn't have to sleep with her hands around a mug of coffee to keep out the cold, when she could still remember the curve of James' smile and the spark in his eyes.
When they were happy. When memories were reality.
Before it ended.
/
On the fourth day, she tries a little harder, because maybe it's going onto her report card, right next to the cigarette burns and the blotted ink (not by tears, never by tears). She unlocks the door with the magic that couldn't unlock people, and drags him out from the bed, long limbs tangled in bed sheets and all, sleep-drunk as he is. She makes him takes a shower, a proper one that's long enough for putting masks up, leans against the door and scratches at the peeling wallpaper where she imagines the past skulks on silent socked feet.
They eat lunch together, one of those rare times in a summer, even though they're both itching to escape – him to the sanctuary he'd built out of binary codes and anonymity, her to her addictions and fortress under blankets. It's agonizing, but she tries, because if she doesn't, what else is there to do?
Later, when he practically trips to get away from the table, leaving her alone with the bare shafts of sunlight filtering through the gaps in the curtains, she wonders whether there was any point at all.
/
By night, she succumbs to her old weaknesses, shadows that creep up on her in the dark. She's lasted long enough, and exchanges the Dreamless Sleep for caffeine and permanent panda eyes. Her mother would cluck and admonish her, but she isn't here, and that's all that matters, because people who aren't here shouldn't be thought about.
She hunches in the corner of her small room, resting her head against the wall as she sips her lukewarm coffee. She tries to think of stupid things, of meaningless things, but all she can think about whenever she's enclosed in these walls are the changes, the cracks in a picture perfect family.
She hates them sometimes, her parents, for bringing her in this world when they weren't sure of the present, in the first place. It's an ugly, unreasonable thing to feel, and it's easier to have mere fragments of resentment floating about in her mind than to have the whole coherent thought strung up by her hurt. But she does ponder it – the blood from them that gives her life, the heart than came from the pain of her mother
But that's really all it is, now. Ponderings. Mere thoughts, fragmentary of an inquisitive mind left too long to relax. All the hatred, it's all gone now, evaporated with her fragile hope back then. There's nothing left now, only the cold center of a snowball in her heart, the coldest part that causes the accumulation of snow that piles up on her, layer by layer of iciness.
It's like the flat, and the reason she hates it. The whitewashed walls with no graffiti or crayon stick figures on it, pristine and white and pale. The stark bareness of the rooms, with only the minimum residing on its floors. It's a metaphor for what they've become.
But mostly, it's just James.
/
She watches an hourglass steal away her pieces of time, guised in the air bubbles that catch the light. She watches the world fly away, through the looking glass of the water. She's drowning, the water barring her from the rest of the world, a suffocating wound creeping into her ribcage.
But she feels more alive drowning.
She dreams while her hair floats on the surface like bloodstained seaweed curling for prey. She wonders what it's like to die – hypothesizes his reaction if James walks in and sees her glassy-eyed and floating, face down in the water, hair swirling around her like dead plants, body prone and cold and still.
She could. She could just stay down here forever, trap herself in a mere physical manifestation of her own prison, drown and be alive for once. Not a dreary existence.
Far away, though, she hears the muffled Ding! of the oven, the painful wrench to reality. There is discord in the peace, and she rears her Medusa head once more, breaching the water, the weight slip-sliding off her lungs.
She practises being dead and alive.
/
They strike off days and sleepless nights, her cradling her cup of coffee and leeching the warmth from it, him burying himself in html tags and tangling himself into the wires. They are both walking brands of their own self-destruction, letting the dark fester and grow and root their barb-wire tentacles into their souls. They are the insomnia addicts, feeding off the ghosts that haunt them when night comes, hiding from the lure of sleep. They are the music makers, ramming their screams into each other's ears to keep away the night.
She's glad, somewhat, that at least in their own isolated island; they still have each other to cling onto, even if it's just to drag each other down because they are afraid to be alone.
/
They weren't always like this, splinters of a whole left behind by a world that flew away too fast. He used to smile at the sound of laughter, chase after all their female cousins for petty kisses, and tackle Teddy to the ground. He used to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
But now all he does is builds up walls and barbed wires, pushing people away. He hardly speaks anymore, let alone laughs (how she longs for the sound of it). He's a lonely princeling on his self-constructed, apostrophe-shaped planet made from the trash they never could let go of.
She's drowned herself in her own pathetic pool of self-pity, blindfolded herself from the world because it is easier. She turns down apocalyptic paths just for the sake of avoiding the yellow bricked road that leads to a future she can't bear to think she deserves. She plasters banana-skin smiles on her melting face when she's hurting, the one-way stop to the land of the lost. And she can't find her way back, she's fallen off the map. It kills her inside, the in-words that never synch with her out-words, until there's nothing left but to run into brick walls just to ram her head into them, anything to stop pain.
They're just both bruised and battered, remnants of an imaginary war that never was, and ohgod so tired. Tiredhungrybruiseddead. They're worse than the grandpas and grandmas out there, just sitting on bathroom floors waiting for their own death.
They're splinters, forgotten. And it's for the better.
/
James cries himself to sleep almost every night. She notices these sorts of things only when she's too tired and sore to be caught up in her own suicide missions. She hears those sounds that seep through the doors and knock on the floors. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he's grieving.
(But that's because, she's grieving the same things too.)
She wraps her shaking fingers around her glass bottle and takes a swig, hot Firewhisky scalding her throat as it plunges down. It's such a relief (however temporary) to feel some warmth inside her own coldness. She feels lightheaded, and somehow the sounds creep away, scuttling on their daddy-long-legs into the night.
But she can still hear them.
Also into you. The ghosts swim inside in a maelstrom within her addiction, irradiant as they reach out with twig-like arms. They stretch upwards in their distortion, digging into her eyeballs till they bleed salt.
/
She relapses sometimes, falling down the ring around o'roses, into the multifoliate rose of which the layers and layers that builds up swallows her whole as it closes in winter. Cold. Dew drips down the ceiling walls like blood or falling sunlight or sewage water, and every time the petals curl tighter.
It's just the accumulation of flashbacks that come in deep water, flooding her mind until she'd breathe easier underwater. They always hit her like a wave, and build up upon her like layers of snow, cold and pressing her down into the dirt.
She spends four days sitting at the soft, blue, battered old sofa in the living room, a bottle of Muggle whiskey at her chest to fill up the whole where her heart should be, staring at the ceiling where the stars should be. Hours slide by so slowly, in the heat of summer unabated by her incessant Cooling Charms. The heat only brings by more unwanted visionaries, so she curls under the curtains where the bright sunlight can't hurt her eyes.
Why does she come back?
/
She is Cinderella, falling into eternal sleep in the moat around the castle, seeking in her dreams the glass slipper that will untwist the lock.
Or she is Rose Weasley, seeking solace in a bathtub of all places, spinning the end of her own unfairytale.
The porcelain is cool against her back, the polished surface of her ready-made coffin. The solitude down under makes it easier to observe the cracks in her life, through the angle of the water surface. Refractions, the relapse of things breaking down into fragments that stab and bites; that are not ever whole. Reflections, the re-dissection of her own thoughts that float on the surface as crimson ink.
She thinks about just staying under here, building her fort from the blankets that make up her misery. She thinks about never surfacing; about drowning. Dying.
It's not terribly morbid. It's only that she's dead inside, and people will all that emptiness inside them with dreams. And Rose dreams too much.
She thinks about death a lot.
But she thinks of Jamie more.
/
"The laundry," he murmurs, not even looking up from his screen as he walks into the kitchen where she's cutting up fruits.
"What?"
Words feel unnatural in her throat. Silence is usually a common companion in this time, and speaking has become unfamiliar.
"It's piling up."
She bites on her tongue to chew in half the retort that she had been ready to fire at him. He's sick, she always reminds herself. Just like her, really.
He collapses on the couch in a heap, lounging on it indolently with the Magictosh balancing precariously on his lap. She figures he's just too lazy to walk back to his room. Setting down the plate of apples neatly cut into crescent moons, she trudges off to check the dirty laundry, footsteps heavy.
After she dumps all the filthy clothes into the machine and turns it on, she drags herself back to the couch because she wants to take a nap, ensconcing herself in a nest of pillows. She doesn't expect James to be still there though, and especially not for him to have fallen asleep, too-long eyelashes that are wasted on such a guy curling against his cheek, the chin of his long face tucked against his chest.
She rolls her eyes. Then she turns on the fan and closes the curtains, before stalking off into her room, where she's sure she won't exit until evening, when she has to make dinner.
(Even if she'd like nothing more than to lean against his shoulder and doze off like they did so many summers ago.)
/
The water snake coils around her prone body, where she lies on the cool surface, the bright light making her eyes water; an imitation of a surgery room. She can even hear the crisp slicing of metal upon metal crackling by her ear.
Beneath the water, her eyes dart around furtively in a way reminiscent of fishes, glancing through a candle wax suspended world through the thin walls of an hourglass. Her gaze rests upon the towel just within arm's reach, and her wand right beside it. It wouldn't be too hard, to just Transfigure the cloth into something sharp. It would be almost ironic.
But no, she's too tired. And what's the point, when she feels dead already – isn't it enough?
She curls into herself, small, lithe frame moving naturally with the water, as her hair drifts on top the surface like fierce red rivulets of blood, streaking outwards from a dark sun. Her eyelids flutter shut, and it's blackout.
The water snake rests in her guts after all.
/
It was going to end up like this no matter what, anyway.
James, he's too wrapped up in his own self-condemned misery to care.
Her parents, they were the one who were afraid to look at a daughter who would break so easily, a daughter who did shatter after everything.
Hugo… that's her fault, he was her fault. He should never have become like this.
They all shouldn't have.
/
She wakes up to dawn, like the beginning. She wakes up to soft sheets and hot chocolate in a mug from better days by her bedside, to gentle morning glow and security. It hasn't felt this way for too long, and through the tangled mishmash of inane thoughts, she wonders if she did really drown in the water, submerged, and if this is heaven, finally.
"You've been out for hours."
Jamie's there, and maybe it's the effect of blacking out and the waterlogged lungs, but she can't quite make him out through the fuzziness that clouds her eyes. He's too bright, head haloed by the morning light.
"Sleep, get some sleep," he merely tells her quietly, in response to her dazedness. "Sleep," he says, and strokes her hair just like last time.
She falls asleep to warmth and security blankets.
/
She gets well soon, recovering from the fever brought on by the late nights and the recklessness and the water. Nothing changes much, except she's more grateful to James, and starts to push down her ungrateful anger even deeper down. She cooks and washes and reads and sleeps a bit more, settling back into their old routine. Even now, she still can't discern what disrupted it all – they follow the invisible script so diligently every summer.
She packs away the rest of her sadness into broken boxes and neglects to think about the emptiness that burns within her. She forgets about all the empty places.
She practises her spells. It's her final year after this summer, and she wants to graduate in top shape.
It will all end soon. All her pain and misery and confusion. After Hogwarts.
She can't ever be free, but there's always the matter of comparative superlatives.
/
It's night again, and the first month starts to die into the fading light. She can feel its groans as it keels and breathes it last, walking on silent socked feet so as to not wake the ghosts. She's in a mood for irregularities, some twisted display of sharing her joy at the ending of yet another month, and just Alohomoras his door open instead of leaving food like he's some sort of stray cat.
It's a mistake, almost the worst.
It's just the vulnerability in his face, so wide and open and innocent, as he lies sprawled out on the pillows on the floor, snoring softly, random pages loose from books and magazines littered across the floor, the Magictosh blinking from the corner. It's so... heart-wrenchingly sad, somewhat.
She won't wake him up. She wants to bathe in the luxury of such an illusion for a little while more.
The tray is placed on a low coffee table in the corner of his room. She makes her way to his sleeping form, navigating through the treacherous maze of haphazardly scattered junk. Leaning against the wall, her eyes rake over his finely-sculpted features – the arrogant turn of his nose, the 'mischievous curvature' of his profile.
Asleep. It gives her comfort to know he won't hear him.
"Hey, James," she tries, to test.
No response.
Her voice drops to a whisper; she curls and uncurls her fists in indecisiveness and frustration.
"I hated you when they first told me to come." She takes a breath before continuing.
"Even if it the whole business with Aunt Ginny was supposed to affect you more… I was the one who was more childish, it seemed. You were different. You chose your own brand of self-destructivity, and I hated you for it, because you pulled away from me when I needed you most."
She stops, and hugs her knees close to her chest, in a familiar posture she hopes to bring her warmth.
"I was so lonely. I was so sad. I just…"
She chokes on the truth that she's just realised now.
"I just couldn't stand to be around happiness. It made my own gloominess grow, and I wanted to be with you because it made me feel… superior."
Still there is no sound.
She buries her face in her hands.
"Despicable," she whispers at last.
/
"You like books, right?"
His voice makes her look up, right into his eyes so blue like oceans. Her brain stutters to catch up for her moment, and the first thing that falls out of her mouth is a feeble, "What?"
"Books," he repeats, and slides an old, battered copy across the table to her. "I found this one under my bed yesterday," he explains shortly.
She picks it up, flipping the ancient pages open. "'Sherlock Holmes'?" she muses out loud, to which he just grunts in response and slumps further down in his seat.
She tries a smile. It feels odd on her face, but it is a smile nevertheless.
"Thank you," she says.
Both are genuine.
/
She watches the rain fall outside in melancholy. Her palms are pressed flat against the window pane, the coldness freezing to her bones. A blue blanket swathes her frame like a cloak, the frayed ends dangling around her knees that kneel on the sofa near the windows.
Drip, drip, drip. Melodic, rhythmic, soothing. She could fall asleep to the sound of it. She's just starting to drift off when she hears his footsteps approaching, matching the beats of diamonds hitting ground.
"There isn't any Wiz-Net connection inside," he mumbles and collapses into the seat next to her, Magictosh on his lap.
They sit together and watch the ballet of the rain unfold, and for once she likes the silence and the peace.
/
This is how it starts, with the slow build-up, the accumulation of feelings left in the sun to tan and become tangibly touchable. It's a strange sort of relationship that resembles so much their awkwardness in younger years, yet strained sometimes by the scars left by a different future. But it's alright.
This is how it ends, with their growing closer. Safety and security. If you get too close you will get burnt.
/
Leaving tomorrow, that's what she keeps telling herself, when she finds herself sitting at the breakfast table far too long just to make sure he's truly still asleep.
Leaving tomorrow, that's what she silently vows, as she washes the billionth dirty mug, but grabs for the wet cloth anyway.
Leaving tomorrow, she tries to hold on to that thought, as she watches Jamie's pianist's fingers type and click and dance across surfaces.
Leaving tomorrow, she remembers, as what she said yesterday.
/
Thunder and lightning scream overhead, in a way that makes her wince, as her mind snaps back the Aunt Ginny's shrill screeches. She knows he will be sobbing into his pillows again tonight, the wails veiled by the cackling thunder, his tears mingling with the falling sky. Quietly, she tiptoes around the tired graves into his room, slips under the sheets and snuggles up to his warmth.
"It's okay, shh, shh…"
(She tries not to take too much notice of the fact that he doesn't push her away this time.)
Blanketed by the shrieks of thunder, lightning and rain, nobody else can hear this; nobody else can see this. Their bones crack dryly under their sheets; their hands fumble for anchors to hold on to.
A storm is brewing, she breathes, as James seems to quiet, his shock of brown hair tickling her shoulder as his head comes to rest there. Their bodies collapse in onto each other, desperately searching for some warmth.
It'll all end soon.
/
The summer is reaching an end again.
It all ends here. Their heartbreak, their own haunting, her self-destruction. Her frivolous mission of shattering others for her own happiness. She'll go back to Hogwarts, never return. She'll find an apartment somewhere else, never come back to the sanctuary that holds her memories within its walls.
She can't stay.
Because…
It'll all end here, too. Her feelings that might have finally gotten through to James. The hot days spent by the windowsill listening to the rain, the nights spent observing the stars in a silent war of who succumbs to sleepiness first. Something she's been looking for all these years; something she's actually found three years ago.
And Rose never liked finishing a good book.
She hated endings so.
/
Which was the reason she was rewriting her beginning.
It never really was the last.
/
The next summer, she comes back and this time remembers to unpack the boxes. And there, amongst an ancient, withered manuscript entitled Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, snapshots capturing moments in time unexperienceable again, she finds the red thread meandering through like a happily burbling river.
She smiles and tucks it away into her luggage. She'll save it for Hugo, for Albus and for Dominique, until, like her, they realise the most important thing—
They already have it. For where the line ends is up to them; and where it begins starts from their hearts.
A/N: Trying out a different style D: I don't think I pulled it off very well. What an odd little piece. Also, do not own - you get the drill.
Review?