benjy fenwick, terrible idea. (![]() ![]() @ 2016-06-21 21:42:00 |
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"Will you please turn that off," Antonin whispered to Marcus as they pulled on their Death Eater masks. He'd just started playing the 2DOLZ feat Dumbo Tik Tok Remix, which seemed to only loop the line "The party don't start til I walk in" again and again. It was accurate, though; the party was about to begin. Marcus had their special guest, Nina Westenberg, along with them, who had been imperiused to join him for lunch, and now would be imperiused to help them kill Lily Potter. It was all very simple. "They have you in here working all by yourself?" Antonin asked from behind his mask as they strode into the St Mungo's apothecary, the blinds across the windows snapping shut and the door slamming closed. "What idiot scheduled that?" he laughed. Antonin had scheduled that. "I think things will be closing early tonight." Not again, was Lily’s initial thought when the two Death Eaters came into her apothecary and she sighed as she backed away from the counter, wand out and then at the ready. Her eyes darted from mask to mask to familiar face to repeat the process over again. “Hasn’t Ke$ha been through enough?” she asked pertly. “Now she has to suffer through Death Eaters butchering her music?” It was very hard to offend – no, it was very easy to offend Marcus, but it didn't mean he didn't take it to heart every time. And it just so happened that Lily Potter had chosen to insult his excellent remixing skills, which was one of the top 5 things he listed as his greatest qualities, to add insult to more insult. "First of all," he couldn't help but say, because he had to defend his and Venus's prized work (bronze medal in the Remixing Olympics, hosted by the Dolohovs), "this is some good shit. It's not our fault your Mudblood ears can't understand that." He knocked over a vial from the nearest shelf for effect. It sizzled and bubbled on the floor without any impact, so that sucked. Still, he persevered. "Second, we're setting the mood." “I think it’s just shit, actually,” Lily shot back as she slid her phone out of her pocket. She kept it low and hidden by the counter as she fumbled her way by memory and brief stolen glances to her messages and then the emoji keyboard to send off a handful of SOS emojis to Benjy. She kept talking the whole while. “And it’s a terrible mood. I mean, do you even know who P. Diddy is? Or Mick Jagger? You’ve probably only even heard one Ke$ha song, too. Everyone knows Blow is better mood music.” It was all nonsense, but she finally found the send button and her eyes finally snapped to where Nina stood, searching for some indication she was okay. Nina was fine. Nina was great, actually. She couldn't remember the last time she felt this calm, her normally racing mind utterly still for once as she just embraced the feeling of calm that wrapped around her like the warm blankets they gave to their patients. She didn't know why she was with the Dolohovs, and she was at least vaguely aware that she didn't like them, but in the moment it didn't seem to matter. "Hey Lily," she greeted, her voice pleasant and yet oddly flat as she ignored the banter. She lifted her wand and muttered "Steleus," casting a sneezing hex at her friend, calmly following the order in her mind to hex Lily Potter. Antonin was actually glad that Lily had insulted Marcus's remix. Not because he agreed, of course -- any product that his children made was clearly perfection, and he would destroy anyone who argued otherwise -- but he also knew how offended and angry this would make Marcus. This was the sort of rage he wanted to see when they were out doing their Lord's work. … But then their imperius-bound friend merely hexed Potter with a sneezing spell. While Antonin was curious as to how many times in a row a person would have to sneeze in order to sneeze themselves to death, that was an experiment for another time, in a much less public location. They were on a timeline. "CRUCIO!" Antonin yelled, aiming his wand at Lily. The sneezing was effective, though, because Lily sneezed and sneezed and then her world was nothing but pain that seemed to come from nowhere, but that was only because she’d sneezed through the incantation. She might’ve locked her jaw against the pain, so she wouldn’t give the Death Eaters the satisfaction of hearing her scream, but the sneezing, again, made life difficult and with the sneezes came the screams. The barrage of spells aimed at Lily Potter made a sort of nice symphony, Marcus thought. If he had time, and actual studio equipment handy, he would put out a remix version of her agonized screams so she could enjoy it. That would teach her to not insult his hard work again. But he didn't, so he had to settle for the next best thing, and to that end, he pointed his wand at the row of potions behind her, and a second later, they all exploded in a loud spray of sharp glass as it flew all over her. There was at least something in Nina's mind that was still coherent enough to recognize that the sound of Lily screaming was not good. It wasn't even a matter of friendship or concern for her fellow Order member so much as a compulsion to heal. To fix whatever was causing the screaming, no matter how calm she felt about it. But she also had orders to hex Lily, so she lifted her wand again and this time muttered, "Silencio." Nina’s quiet incantation was immediately followed by a loud BANG as the doors to the apothecary slammed back open. There stood a familiar shock of dark curls in Healer robes, and Benjy wasted no time in even looking about the room before he pointed his wand at the shorter of the two Death Eaters. “Deprimo,” was immediately followed by a sticking charm, which would hopefully keep one of the Death Eaters out of the picture while he assessed the situation. Benjy’s gaze flicked from a vacant-eyed Nina, to a bleeding Lily who was covered in potions and shards of glass, to the second Death Eater. Rounding on the masked figure, his jaw tightened as a shield charm shimmered down in front of him. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Antonin.” The sound of the doors slamming open was enough to steal Antonin's attention away from concentrating on the cruciatus curse that he held on Lily. Fenwick. When wasn't it Fenwick? "Welcome to the party, Ben," Antonin greeted their new guest, as he yanked the doors shut again behind him. He didn't bother with denying that it was him; what was the point when everyone in the room who wasn't with the Death Eaters wouldn't be leaving it. "It's a shame, you know," Antonin continued, firing a flaying curse in Benjy's direction. "You are a very good Healer. You could've amounted to something. Eventually. But you just keep sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, don't you." “Yeah, crazy me, objecting to all your murdering,” Benjy retorted as the flaying curse bounced off his shield. His wand slashed through the air as he countered with a light blinding spell, his eyes darting over to Nina and Lily. “All right, ladies?” he asked, keeping his wand trained on Antonin. "Hi Benjy," Nina said with a slight smile that didn't extend beyond her lips, the rest of her face remaining as blank and impassive as ever as she immediately obeyed the compulsion to release Marcus from the floor as soon as the thought appeared in her mind. Yes, of course. It was terribly rude to leave him stuck like that, she thought as she flicked her wand in his direction and then lifted it towards Lily again. "We're cursing Lily," she explained pleasantly. "Goddamn it," Marcus said as he was finally free, thanks to a little help from Nina. How embarrassing was that to not only be caught off guard like that and then be stuck there as everything was happening. That wasn't the Marcus Way! It wasn't the Dolohov way! He was going to have to have a talk about reshaping his brand if this kept up. But he wasn't about to let that happen, because that was way too much work, and he was ready to get back to it anyways. Fueled by this new course of action, and the embarrassment that was still clinging to his body, he stomped over to where Nina was and immediately swatted at her, extending his arm to shove her away. "What's the point if you won't even CURSE HER," he grumbled, turning his ire at her. "You know what –" He cast a throwaway Blasting Curse at her, uncaring of the fact that she was under his Imperius (Imperiused people were supposed to help them, not stand there sending Sneezing Curses at their horrible enemies), before finishing his sentence. "Get out of my way!" There. He felt a lot better now. Nina cried out as her body slammed into a wall of potions and then fell to the floor, her skin bleeding and burning, although still she tried to push herself back to her feet and rejoin the fight for some reason she didn't understand. Unthinkingly, Benjy charged forward, ducking into a crouch once he reached the counter, multicolored streaks of light sailing over his head. There was still some distance between the counter and the wall Nina was slumped against, and one of the Death Eaters managed to hit him with a flaying curse as he skidded over to her. He bit back a howl of pain as skin was stripped from his shoulder, leaving it bloodied and raw. None of that mattered. A bubbled shield charm settled around Benjy and Nina as he ripped a corded necklace from around his neck, sucking in a breath as a dark red spot began to bloom across her robes. He tapped his wand to the pendant attached to it, then pressed the cool metal into Nina’s palm, wrapping her fingers around it. That would get her to safety. That would keep her from involuntarily hurting anyone else. “So, Antonin,” Benjy said slowly, quickly glancing at Lily before turning his attention back to the Death Eater. “Let’s just put all our cards out on the table—” He hurled a severing charm at the man’s leg as he mentally counted to thirty. He just needed them to leave Nina alone for thirty seconds. “—you had a vigilante hanging around your hospital and you just kept him around for what, fun? Was it my pretty face? You can be honest, we’re all friends here.” By that point, Lily had caught her breath and managed to lift Nina’s silencing charm. “They’re not my friends,” she ground out, grimacing through the pain. The mess Marcus had made of her back hurt, but those were also potions she hadn’t needed and as they seeped into her bloodstream, they were starting to make her feel woozy and off. “Especially not you, Marcus.” She’d put one and two together when the other Death Eater didn’t deny being Antonin. The remixes had been another giveaway. While Benjy focused his spell on Antonin, Lily focused her wand on the one she assumed to be her co-worker. She aimed a tripping jinx at his feet and sent a nearby shelf of potions spilling down over him. "I don't know who this Marcus is," Marcus lied badly, affecting an Irish accent all of a sudden. "He sounds like a great guy, th–" He never got the rest of his self-defense speech out before the tripping jinx hit him and he fell to the ground – he was really spending too much time there, at this rate – and he felt, rather than heard, the potions toppling on top of him, the sizzling as they hit the ground, the bubbling as they splashed over his robes, the glass that cut into his skin, landing in his hair. To be honest, he was content with laying there until he figured out a better plan, one that would make Lily Potter regret the day she thought she could work in the same place as he did, but the burning sensation he felt spreading from the center of his scalp to the rest of his head jerked him up and one hand to his hair made him realize what had just happened – namely that half his hair was burnt to a crisp, falling out in weepy, ashy strands. "That's it," he said, flinging anything he could spot around them at Lily, just to bombard her with flying chairs and shelves and cauldrons even a calendar that had somehow been unearthed and trap her into a different corner of the apothecary. "No more Mr. Nice Marcus." "Why'd you come back to work in a hospital for a boss you hate who you suspected to be a Death Eater? The same reason, I suspect," Antonin countered, keeping his wand aimed on Benjy. He fired a blasting curse to try to knock him away from Nina -- there was no time for mudblood triage -- not realizing the business with the portkey that was going on. The spell sailed over Benjy's head and a shelf full of potions exploded into green and pink and plaid smoke. "We're really not that different, you and I," he continued his villain monologue, firing a purple curse from his wand that looked (and felt) like lightning, followed up by a bone-setting spell that would do just the opposite if it worked correctly, twisting and moving the bones in Benjy's legs out of alignment. Glass and viscous liquid rained down on Benjy, slicing and burning and discoloring patches of his skin. He slashed his wand to cast another shield, but he was too slow— “Oh, are you fucking kidding—” he began, offended by such textbook TV Tropes villain speech. But the rest of Benjy’s words died in his throat, drowned out by a scream of pain as Antonin’s succession of spells struck true. It was hard to gauge what was worse: the blinding white-hot heat of the lightning curse that seemed trapped under his skin, or the dizzying pain as his legs buckled beneath him, the bones shifting into unnatural angles. From the floor of the apothecary, Benjy drew in an unsteady breath as he glanced over to where Nina had been sitting. Gone. Safe. Now, he just needed to help Lily. Raising his wand, he kept his eyes trained on Antonin as he ground out, “Nah, I don’t know about all that. I mean, I’ve not even killed anybody.” Holding Antonin’s gaze, Benjy aimed his wand not at the older Death Eater, but at his son. “Yet,” he added, punctuating the word with a non-verbal Laevaganum. When properly administered, it reduced internal swelling of the organs. The spell had not been properly administered. In the end, it was a bad day. Nothing had gone right, except for the theme song walk-in, but even after that, it had sucked because someone had viciously insulted it, and from then on, it just went downhill from there. It was a Healer's spell, with a Healer's precision, without a Healer's good intentions that hit Marcus, and it was this, more than anything else (although, if anyone brought up the remix insult, it would still be a close contender) that solidified the bad day. He stumbled back, crashing into an already destroyed shelf, as he clutched his abdomen. "D–ad," he managed, a blinding pain bursting all over. He tried to roll over but found he couldn't. He called for his dad again because he was a Healer, the best one, and he would fix this. It was shocking, really, that Antonin could have managed to make out Marcus's voice over the explosions and spellfire that thundered through the room; in that moment, though, it was all that he could hear. He flung a haphazard blasting curse at both Benjy and Lily, trying to knock them out of the way so that he could concentrate on his son, and dropped to his knees beside him. "It's okay. It's okay; I'm going to fix this. Can you tell me what hurts?" Antonin asked, unable to see anything immediately wrong, but knowing that something was. It wasn't like Marcus to not bounce back. He was a fighter. He could do this. Marcus's hands were on his abdomen; that was a clue. Antonin could work with that. "I need you to stay calm for me, all right?" he requested, his own voice clearly struggling to follow his own advice, a parent desperately needing to stay strong for their child but failing in cracks and shaking breaths. "You're going to be fine. I just need to figure out what he did. WHAT DID YOU DO?" he shouted back accusingly at Benjy. “What did you do to your patients?” Benjy flung back, his voice as sharp as any blade. His shoulder throbbed; there was the metallic taste of blood at the corner of his mouth. A few inches away from his hand, a potion knocked over by Antonin’s blasting curse burned a smoking hole through the floor. “What’s he done while he’s been here and not hand modeling or making socks or whatever the fuck—” A thought occurred to Benjy as he struggled to straighten up against the wall of shattered potion ingredients, horror spreading across his face. “The Muggleborn flu, was that like, a father-son bonding experience, or what?” He didn’t wait for an answer, opting to hurl a Confundus Charm at Antonin while he looked to see if Lily was in one piece. But Lily, battered by the multiple barrages of spells, but more or less in one piece, was looking back at him to see if Benjy was in one piece. She had mixed feelings about the scene unfolding before her, Benjy’s ‘Yet’ ringing in her ears. He’d done something that would kill Marcus and with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she realized she didn’t care about that either. “You people’ve killed people we care about,” she said harshly, her attention on the two Death Eaters again. “I guess now you’ll know what it feels like.” Okay, full offense, Marcus literally didn't have time for this. Couldn't everyone hold off on their chit-chat and self-righteous defense until after he was all better? He tried to say something to that effect ("I'm the priority here, thanks!" or a suggestion to just kill both of them) but all that came out was a gurgle that was incomprehensible and a groan that hurt even more than whatever was happening inside him. He curled closer to Antonin, hand tightening on his stomach in a gesture to point to where it hurt most, even though he didn't know what hurt most, how to decide between that, and whether he was going to be able to stay awake until his dad fixed him. "Because those people DON'T MATTER!" Antonin yelled back, never turning his attention away from Marcus. Laevaganum. He could fix that. He knew how to fix that. He'd fixed it millions of times over his career. "Shhh shh, I know, I know, it's okay," Antonin assured Marcus, using the most gentle, the most precise spellwork he'd ever practiced. ...And then it was gone. The counterspell vanished behind some cloud of confusion, the magic he needed right there at the tip of his tongue but trapped behind the effects of Benjy's spell. In his desperation, he'd left himself completely open, and the Confundus Charm took full hold. "It's all right, son. It's going to be all right. It's fine. You're going to be fine." He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus past the spell's effects. He needed to get this. He needed to fix this. He didn't know how to fix this. With her judgmental comments about their side hobby out of the way, Lily realized she didn’t care to sit around and watch Marcus Dolohov die. She crawled over to Benjy, over the scattered bits of broken glass and a floor slippery with potions. Her entire body was on fire, but Benjy was worse off and they needed to get out of there while the Death Eaters were distracted. Lily brought her finger to her lips in an instruction to be quiet that Benjy probably didn’t need, but she gave it anyway. Her eyes darted over his body to assess the damage. Her healing skills with a wand were rudimentary at best and potions could only do so much. And when she really thought about it, she found her head was too cloudy with potions and the cruciatus to remember much magic anyway. They needed Nina, but Nina was at the safehouse. They were in a hospital full of healers, though, and the door wasn’t too far away if she didn’t think too hard about how hurt they both were. So Lily hooked her arms under Benjy’s and with an apologetic wince, she started to drag him across the floor. If his dad had figured out a way to fight past the Confundus, Marcus wouldn't have known; he could barely hear the shouting that had happened earlier and his vision was fading too fast for him to focus on the blurry movement of his dad. But there was no way he could miss the churning agony, every time each of his organs spliced apart, every time they burst open, every time they whittled at the thread that kept Marcus alive and breathing. Maybe it was too late to do anything. Maybe his dad knew that and was trying to protect him that way. He was always trying to protect them like that. "Dad," he whispered, faint and disappearing. "The – song." Antonin didn't want to play the song. He didn't want to know why he could remember what Marcus was talking about there, and not the bloody spell that would fix this. He didn't want to admit that it was time for that. But it was what Marcus wanted. And all Antonin had ever wanted to do was to give his children what they wanted. He reached into the pocket of Marcus's robes and pulled out the rose gold cell phone -- he'd remembered to turn it on silent this time and everything -- and scrolled down to the song they'd discussed, but that Antonin had never wanted to hear: the 2DOLZ Stay Alive (Reprise) (Unclocked Remix) feat Matt Morrison and James Corden. It was during James Corden's freestyle rap that Marcus closed his eyes and it was during Matt Morrison's beatboxing that he stopped breathing. “Lily.” Benjy’s voice was low, urgent, and strained. He had acquiesced to being dragged, his thoughts too scattered from pain to protest. But now, he realized, they were running out of time. He cast a glance over to the door, which was close, but still seemed impossibly out of the reach. “I think you should go on and get help.” One side of his mouth twitched up into a smile; it looked more like a grimace. “I’ll hold off Dolohov until then.” “I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Lily insisted quietly as she kept dragging Benjy, her breath coming in short, strained bursts. “I won’t.” But he was getting so heavy and she wasn’t sure she’d make it to the door. “We’re almost there, I swear.” It was said more for her own benefit than for Benjy’s. “I just need…” She was too tired to finish her thought and simply let go of his arms to step back and catch her breath. She just needed a second. "I don't think that either of you are going anywhere," Antonin replied, stopping the music coming from Marcus's phone, then returning it to his son's pocket. He'd want to keep that with him. He'd want it this way. He slowly rose to his feet and turned to the two exhausted Order members, thankful for the mask that hid everything he was feeling on his face. A violent slash of his wand ripped one of the shelves away from the wall, shoving it in front of the door to block their escape. "Is this what you wanted, Fenwick?" he yelled, another curse smashing wildly near him and Lily. "Is this you saving the day from your big, bad Death Eater boss?" Antonin aimed his wand at Lily, casting a quick levicorpus spell at the redhead before flinging her to the other side of the apothecary behind a counter. "You're going to lose. Each and every one of you is going to pay for what you've done." Warning bells started to blare behind Lily’s skull the very moment she found herself lifted into the air. She immediately thought of Severus because that was his spell and she cast her eyes wildly about for him. Then, suddenly she was back where she’d started, the moment where she’d been flung through the air and into more shelves somehow lost to her. “No, no, no,” she managed to moan because she’d left Benjy alone. She started to pull herself to her feet, using the counter for leverage. “We’re not losing,” Benjy told the Death Eater, sounding much more confident than he felt. His ears were ringing from an explosion; he could feel something warm trickling down his back. All of his pain had converged into a steady beat of hot, throbbing pain. He was vaguely reminded of the click-click-click of Dolohov’s Newton’s Cradle. His gaze flicked over to Lily, struggling to stand, but still alive. Gears were turning in Benjy’s head, rapidly formulating a plan to blast the doors open. But first— “Depulso,” he snarled, with an angry snap of his wand. Spells were still sailing over his head, but a Banishing Charm should buy them some time. “Do svidaniya, motherfucker.” His attention snapped to the door, and Benjy raised his wand to fire off a blasting curse, but a streak of purple light hurtled past his ear, connecting with a box on the shelf behind him marked FLAMMABLE! Oh, Benjy thought. There was a deafening roar, and then world around him erupted into purple flames. Oh, he thought again, and it was his last thought. The blast knocked Antonin back as well, the Death Eater sailing away from the door, away from the explosion, away from what remained of Benjy Fenwick. His ears were ringing, the wind knocked out of him, and all he could focus on was Marcus lying there, still unmoving. "Lily Potter. Come on out, Lily. It's your turn," Antonin taunted the girl from where he lay on the flat on his back on the ground, casting the Morsmordre into the air. One down. Lily had only stayed because of Benjy and now that Benjy was everywhere instead of there, there was no reason for her to stay. Slumped over the counter, covered in both everything that had ever been brewed in that room and everything that had made another person tick, she felt on the verge of hyperventilating. But she was still alone with a Death Eater and that Death Eater still thought he was going to get a crack at her. He wasn’t, though. She wasn’t going to give him the chance. Once the brilliant green of the Dark Mark filled the room, she pointed her own wand at Antonin. “Expelliarmus!” she shouted and when his wand came soaring into her open palm, she finally gave into her flight instinct and ran for the open doors. She ran and ran until she crashed into one of the other Healers. “Help,” Lily whispered as her store of adrenalin ran out and her vision started to go dark around the edges. “Please.” But it was too late. |