InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Or let us live forever"

vee lestrange is not her mother's daughter. (eyesopen) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2012-08-12 19:59:00

Entry tags:

ch: heir: harry potter, ch: heir: verena lestrange, p: giles, p: kit

Who: Harry & Vee^heir
What: Dropping the pretenses
When: Sunday, 12 August; after this
Where: Harry's Grecian house
Warnings: Language, Angst

Vee couldn't sit around and wait for her sister's reply. She could barely see two steps in front of her as she sobbed, the grief overwhelming and consuming her just as it had done that fateful day and nearly every day after that. She thought she'd felt as terrible as she could manage on the one-year anniversary, Harry's birthday, but this was worse, so much worse. No amount of firewhiskey, no amount of denial would ever erase how she felt about what had happened. Nothing could make her forget. And even if she forfeited her memories of that day, nothing would fill the hollowness left behind by what had happened that day.

But somewhere amidst her gut-wrenching sobs that made her double over and ache, she got angry. Angrier than she'd been this whole time. Angry at herself. Angry at Harry.

There was only one way that she could pull herself out of her own grief, she felt, and that was to latch onto that anger and do something about it. Yell maybe, scream into a pillow. Or maybe yell at Harry. Scream at him until he understood his error. Understood what he'd cost her, what his death meant for her beyond just losing him or her sister. She'd lost everything and, in turn, deserved nothing.

Vee didn't even know how she'd gotten there but, looking like a right mess, she found herself at Harry's door, pounding on it with her fists. It felt good, so good, the way the unyielding hardness of the door made her fists hurt and her skin scrape. "Harry," she yelled, uncertain of the level of hysteria in her voice, "open this door. Fuck. Harry. God, Harry, you son of a bitch. Open this door, right now."

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heirypotter
2012-08-13 12:41 am UTC (link)

Harry was exhausted and sore from his race earlier, but still awake. Very awake by the time Vee arrived. He had only just read Arayna's latest journal entry, so Vee's angry assault on his door didn't come as a total surprise. He could only assume Verena had told her sister the full details of how she'd died. There was probably nothing he could write to Ara that wouldn't make things worse, although sooner or later he would have to. He owed her that much, at the very least. But Vee needed him too, and if what she needed was someone to hate, well, he could be that person for her. Merlin knew he deserved it.

Opening the door, he nearly broke at the sight of her, at the anguish and anger written all over her face and the knowledge that he'd done this to her. "I'm here, Vee." He said softly. He stepped slightly aside, leaving the invitation unsaid.

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eyesopen
2012-08-13 12:56 am UTC (link)

Anger swelled and overflowed at Harry's words, at the sight of him. "No, you're not," Vee countered angrily, not accepting the invitation just yet but twisting just so in order to be face to face with him. "You're not. You're not here or there because you left because you left. And I protected you, I fought for you and I killed for you," she said, a sob catching in her throat.

"Fuck you and your secrets. Fuck you and your plans and your noble causes and your goddamn hero complex. Fuck you, Harry," she raged, hands coming up forcefully against his chest, open palmed. The tears weren't coming, but they were there again, just behind her lids, clouding her vision, making it impossible to breathe as the urge to cry welled in the back of her throat.

She brought her hands against his chest again as she continued. "It's your fault. Your fault. I wish I'd never met you. I wish I'd never fallen in love with you. I wish I'd never known there was a different choice than the life they wanted for me," she yelled, but it wasn't true. None of it was true. She didn't regret loving him even if she regretted what that love had cost her. She didn't blame him entirely, not for her actions, at least. "It's all ruined. All of it, here, there. I have nothing, nothing," she managed as her throat constricted painfully. That wasn't true, either. Cecily was so much more than nothing, but grief was blinding and near-sighted.

Her hands found his chest again and, before she'd consciously made the decision to do so, she'd pulled back her right hand and connected it hard against his cheek, the sound reverberating in her ears as the skin of her hand burned. Realizing what she'd done, she pulled back, stricken with shock, and the momentary break from her angry tirade was enough to let her grief wiggle back in over top of her misplaced anger and break her again.

She bit her lip as the tears fell, then. Shaking, she said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Crumpling back against the door frame, she brought her hands up to her face and sobbed into them.

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heirypotter
2012-08-13 01:21 am UTC (link)

And what could he say? He didn't move as she raged against him, beat her hands against his chest, forced himself not to flinch as her slap took him hard across the face. And looked her in the eyes the whole time, because he didn't have the right to turn away.

But if her anger hurt, it was the grief that finally shattered the little control he'd had over his own emotions. "No . . . I'm sorry. Sorry I didn't tell you. Sorry I . . ." but there weren't words for all the things he was sorry for, most of them all boiling down to the fact that his very existence had been a curse on everyone blighted to come in contact with him, right from the start. Most especially those he loved. But his grief wasn't what mattered now. Reaching out to Vee, he placed his hands on her shoulders, offering comfort but not forcing it on her by pulling her into a full embrace, though there was nothing more that he wanted to do.

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eyesopen
2012-08-13 02:56 am UTC (link)

Harry didn't have to pull Vee into an embrace because she moved into it of her own volition. She needed something to ground her, something to keep the earth beneath her from splitting open and swallowing her whole. She sobbed too loudly into his shoulder because her sister was going to hate her now. She was dead and she hated Vee, two things she'd always been terrified of.

She had no right to forgiveness and it was unnatural for her to be able to be consoled by Harry or even have her sister alive enough to hate her. She'd take Arayna being alive over her not hating Vee any day, but that didn't make it all so hard to handle.

There were no words, really, and nothing that could really even be said even if there were words. All of the anger had drained and what was left was raw, biting grief that choked her and consumed her in darkness far more daunting than that which she'd feared inside of her.

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heirypotter
2012-08-13 03:18 am UTC (link)

He held her body tight to his, as much to keep himself from collapsing as to support her, because Vee's sobs were a knife in his heart. And he was weeping too, letting loose with a grief that had been slowly fighting its way to the surface since his arrival in this place, as the last pieces of a lifetime's worth of armor he'd built around his heart finally fell away . . .

Grief for those he'd loved. Vee. Ara. Mum. Dad. Severus. Sirius Black, damn his stubbornness. Theo. Pansy. Even Draco, damn it. And grief for those he'd killed. Charity Burbage and Lavender Brown and Kingsley Shacklebolt and Vincent Crabbe and the Frobishers in Leeds for whom he'd only been in time to slit their throats while they were still writhing in Fiend Fyre and gods only knew how many others who'd died by his hand or his order or merely in his name, Weasley's brothers included, damn it. Grief for the human wreckage war left behind on both sides, the 'good' and the 'bad.' Grief for his daughter, the only hope he had left. Whom he'd left just as his parents had left him . . . almost. But not alone.

Cecily.

"Vee." He really did collapse then, sinking to his knees, garbling nonsense.

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