Elphias Doge (dodgy_doge) wrote in lockewood, @ 2011-06-20 23:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | albus dumbledore, elphias doge |
Who: Albus Dumbledore and Elphias Doge
Where: Dreamland
When: Night
What: A dream... and then after the dream
Status: Complete!
It was a bed not Albus’s own-- and yet, it hummed with a note of familiarity. A warmth enveloped his senses that he was sure he ought to know, but had trouble placing. No, it was his bed, but not his alone. Quite suddenly the space around him seemed entirely too vast, too empty; there were supposed to be arms around him. Or at least, he thought so. That seemed right. So much of himself felt blurry, as though he was in a constant state of flux, extending beyond and then retreating within the confines of a physical form.
And yet, he was sure he ought to know where he was.
His fingertips found something sticky and wet, hot and-- a soft cry of shock clipped across his lips as he glanced down. A deep red ribbon sliced from the center of his chest, down to just above his navel. Freshly cut. Bright red blood streams trickles down in stripes along his sides. A sheet was bunched around his waist, his bare chest exposed. The whole of his body felt entirely too cold.
There should be someone-- someone who was to help him with this. Surely, such a wound, so clean and precise, he could close. But he didn’t. He waited. Someone else, there was supposed to be someone else. Albus’s head fell back against the pillows, chin jutting up toward the ceiling as he tried to suck in a steadying breath. Somehow, this wasn’t the same devastating, mind-dominating pain it had been the first time.
“I told you not to move,” Elphias scolded gently, kneeling at Albus’s side with a large bowl of water and cloths. “And don’t touch.” Gently, Elphias washed away the blood, the cloth brushing Albus’s skin like a whisper. It didn’t occur to Elphias that this was wrong, that this wasn’t normal, that Albus would never be in such a position and that he would never call on him to make it right. In this world, this was normal. This was life.
“The things you let him do to you, even after all this time.” Elphias shook his head and rinsed the cloth in the soapy water, turning it pink. “You know better, Albus. You know I would never do that to you. You know that I love you too much to let any harm come to you.”
As soon as Elphias spoke, the words sounded true, even if his couldn’t recall having been intentionally obstinate. His hands, fingertips damp, fell away from his chest just before he made a soft hissing sound at the drag of fabric, however light. Despite the sting, the pain of it in general seemed to diminish.
Part of him wanted to argue just a little, to point out that it had hardly been intentional, but he knew that wasn’t Elphias’s real qualm. Albus turned his head toward Elphias, the tightness in his features softening as the corners of his mouth lifted just a bit. His nearest hand, he dipped into the bowl of water. Gellert, he thought, would have enjoyed the sensation of Albus’s bloodstained touch, especially with his own blood, and Albus would likely have no less enjoyed providing it-- but there simply weren’t enough words to catalogue the differences between Gellert and Elphias.
With Elphias it was different, and because of that, Albus wanted different things. He wanted his hands clean when they touched Elphias. So he let his fingers brush the back of Elphias’s hand beneath the warm water, made a shade or two darker by Albus’s hand. “I know,” he said quietly, both to the notion that he knew better, and to his awareness of the proofs of Elphias’s love. He was only half teasing when he asked, “Don’t you think it’s a dangerous sort of allowance, how certain I am that you’ll always piece me back together, regardless of how much I tend to tear myself apart?”
“I don’t care,” Elphias answered seriously, losing and finding himself in Albus’s eyes as he washed the blood away from Albus’s fingers, instincts guiding the cloth. “Because I always will.”
In the next moment, the bowl was gone, Elphias sitting by Albus’s knees, on the bed, sunlight streaming in through the window. “You’ll never get it, you know. No matter how deeply you cut, you’ll never be able to cut it out. It stays with you. It’ll always be there. And so will I.”
The wand in his loose grasp didn’t feel as alien as it should have. He had seen it so many times before, between Albus’s fingers, and it belonged there; it had been the one to do this, it had to be the one to undo it. Elphias held he wand over the bottom end of the cut and slowly followed the path of red, the skin beneath it coming to knit itself back together seamlessly. “Love doesn’t have to hurt, Albus. Love can heal, if only you’ll let it,” he said as he worked, the splash of red shrinking before his eyes, leaving nothing but healthy skin behind.
“If you’ll let me, I can make you whole.” Only an inch of red remained, above Albus’s heart, but the wand stopped its movement, unable to go further without his consent.
Albus’s gaze fell, lashes practically meeting his cheek; he wanted to believe in the idea of love absent pain, but it was quite the stretch for him. Even what should have been the simplest sort of love inspired an ache-- it hurt, every time he thought about any member of his family. It hurt, every time his thoughts strayed toward Gellert. And he knew he hurt Elphias, was hurting him, somehow, even now. Love braided pain and ecstasy together, and Albus couldn’t tell if that was truth, or just his own perspective.
Because even this hurt, however faintly. The mending of his flesh throbbed, even if the sensation wasn’t exclusively unpleasant. Yet, it dwindled, it came to a halt, and Albus’s breath nearly caught. He wanted to simply say yes, to agree-- to consent, to comply. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to let Elphias.
His clean hand, he pressed to Elphias’s cheek, the pad of his thumb skimming along Elphias’s cheekbone. “Say it again,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper as he looked up at Elphias, as though he feared the weight of too much volume would cause it to break. “Tell me you love me.”
The request ached in his chest. He knew. He already knew what Albus was going to say, and it hurt. “I love you, Albus,” he whispered, pouring himself into each word. How seldom he got to say it and how often he yearned to. It wasn’t fair. His free hand traveled up to Albus’s hair, his fingers curling in the auburn strands. Though he knew the word wouldn’t help, that they wouldn’t change Albus’s mind, his friend needed them. “I love you.”
As soon as the words slipped past Elphias’s lips, Albus was pulling him down to catch Elphias’s lips with his own. His kiss skirted the line between something tender and something desperate. Part of him wondered at the idea of simply pulling Elphias on top of him, if he might forget the remaining scrap of Albus’s injury when it was trapped between their bodies. Possible, but unlikely, even if Albus did want to drown his sense of things in the absolution of skin and heat.
His teeth gently trapped Elphias’s lower lip before he kissed along the corner of Elphias’s mouth. “Some scars serve a purpose,” he breathed. “Some scars, we... need. To remind us of the truth.” He hated to deny Elphias much of anything, but this was a puzzle he couldn’t manage to unravel. And he owed Elphias far more than some pantomime.
Even having expected the words, they cut deeply, made all the more painful by the kiss; too much, yet not enough. Albus’s wand dropped out of Elphias’s grasp, suddenly too heavy to hold, and clattered to the ground. He nodded, took a deep breath, and with his own wand, closed up the remainder of Albus’s wound, leaving the requested scars behind. His eyes closed as he did so, his head bowing forward, as red blossomed on his shirt over Elphias’s own heart. When he once again lifted his gaze to Albus’s, his eyes filled with pain, he smiled.
Albus’s breaths were coming a bit easier, and he felt more whole than he had in days. The beginnings of a smile fixing properly along his mouth, Albus looked up at Elphias-- what he found had the curl of his lips faltering. It was the source of the pain that he didn’t understand. His eyes soon found the spreading stain along the centre of Elphias’s shirt.
Elphias’s name crossed Albus’s lips in an altogether different tone, one laced with concern. He was immediately pushing himself up with his elbows, a hasty wave of his hand spelling open the buttons of Elphias’s shirt. It was easy enough to understand, given the placement, give the way the injury mirrored the small slice that had just been closed along Albus’s own chest.
“No,” he said softly, using his hands to grasp at Elphias, to pull him properly down onto the bed. This, Elphias didn’t need. But when he placed his hand to Elphias’s sternum, intent on mending Elphias’s skin, nothing happened.
“It won’t work, Albus,” Elphias said gently, laying his own hands over Albus’s on his chest. “That’s not how this works.” A drop of blood trickled past their fingers. “You put it there. Just like all the others.” As he spoke, dozens of other cuts appeared, dotting Elphias’s skin, some scabbed over, others reopened, the scabs picked at with remembered pain, and others still, all too fresh. If asked, Elphias could have identified each moment they represented.
A tear slipped free, but his smile never dimmed; it was the one he always gave his best friend. It was an almost gruesome dissonance. “Don’t worry about me. It fades with time. Unlike my love for you.”
Albus’s eyes fell open to find the morning’s pale light splashing across his ceiling. Too carelessly, he let his palm stray to his chest; he was too certain he’d find the wound closed. Sure enough, the weight of his hand atop the bandage inspired not even the slightest ache. Vanishing the cloth, Albus’s touch met unmarred skin. The dream grew clearer as he traced upward, following the phantom path of the slice up his sternum. He was almost entirely unsurprised when flesh turned faintly uneven-- a small stripe too soft, too smooth, and slightly raised. What to make of the dream itself, and what - if anything - it meant, Albus couldn’t yet decide. His eyes glanced to the bedside table, but all that stood there was an empty vial of Calming Draught. So. Opium wasn’t the cause, wasn’t somehow inciting him to literally perform magic in his sleep. The conclusion would have been reassuring, except for the fact that it removed the most plausible explanation Albus had. Nevertheless, something relaxed, and something sharp in the back of his mind turned eager instead of grating. As he sat up, he reached for the cigarette case next to the vial, permitting his thoughts to begin to turn in earnest. Two dreams was more to work with than one, and he was already beginning to pick apart the most obvious symbolisms. Elphias, a friend he trusted, who had seen him at his most vulnerable made sense as the visage he’d assign to such a dream. He didn’t even consider that the real Elphias had had much of anything to with the dream itself. His mother had certainly trained him well enough in the field of prophetic dreaming. Meaning was dynamic, and plural, and fluid-- one had to rely more on context than anything else to discern the true nature of things as they unfolded. The barbed ache to his senses was beginning to retreat. He didn’t bother donning a shirt or a dressing gown as he headed for his desk, a thin trail of spiced smoke following behind him. Although Albus was apt enough to remember his dreams quite clearly, one never knew how significant the smallest detail might prove, so recording them was essential. The cigarette found his lips again as he thumbed open his journal, preparing to hex the entry privately to himself alone. |
Elphias woke with a jerk and a groan, blinking groggily. He was tired, but the sun pouring in through the window seemed insistent that he get out of bed. It was mocking him. His face felt numb, and though he was covered in blankets up to his neck, he was cold, making the prospect of getting out of bed even less inviting than usual. Why was he so ruddy tired, he hadn’t gone to bed that late last night, hadn’t drank, hadn’t done anything that would merit feeling as though he’d taken a long tumble in a barrel down a hill and then been dunked in a frozen river for good measure. Still, he lifted himself up onto his elbows, because surely the day had to proceed no matter how he felt, and fell back onto his back at the unexpected pain in his chest. With a glance down at the blankets, Elphias noted that they weren’t the usual beige, but crimson, and sticky, smelling strongly and indisputably of blood. He lifted them gingerly and gasped at the sight of the short but deep cut on his chest. Pressing the already sodden blankets to his chest, Elphias focused on his breaths, applying pressure to the wound. Albus’s wound. But dream wounds didn’t become real wounds, that wasn’t-- But apparently, lately, it was. Which meant... “Oh, fuck,” he breathed, his eyes falling closed, and reached blindly for his journal, grateful to have left the quill inside despite what doing so was already starting to do to the spine, and blindly scribbled a note. |