phoenixfest (phoenixfest) wrote in phoenix_flies, @ 2007-10-21 19:00:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ad/tmr, fic: conspiratorsb, fic: pg-13, prompt 26 |
Fest fic: One Selfless Act
Title: One Selfless Act
Author:Star conspiratorsb
Prompt: 26: Voldemort meets Dumbledore in Death. Madness ensues.
Pairing: Implied Dumbledore/Riddle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2000
Warnings (if any):Mild language and sexuality
Author's Notes (if any): More fluff than Crack! But it was a cute little plot bunny. Thanks so much to my fabbity betas! *bug squishy higs*
One Selfless Act
It might have been a long time since he last stood up, he wasn’t sure. He sat staring at the garden before him. The daisies bent as if blown by a breeze, but there was no wind. Albus sighed and looked around. He was sitting on a park bench. Beneath his feet, a cobblestone path wound away in either direction, disappearing over a hill to his right and behind a large tree to his left. It was so hard to tell time here. When there was no pressing business, there was no reason to mark the passage of minutes or hours. Well, he thought, Since I think it’s been quite some time since I last stood, I suppose I’ll stand for a bit. Albus stood up and stretched his back, pondering, not for the first time, that despite the lack of pain, he still stretched it as he had in life. To his left, a figure had appeared, just coming out from beneath the large tree.
Oh good, he thought, This will liven things up a bit. The figure was lost inside the folds of a hooded, black cloak. It approached slowly at first, as if it had not noticed Albus. Then it stopped and Albus felt its eyes on him. He waved and smiled, “Hello there!” he called.
With a sudden shriek of rage, the cloaked figure leapt for him, closing the distance in a fraction of a second and crashing into him, knocking him backward onto the cobblestones. Voldemort’s thin hands wrapped around Albus’ throat, “YOU!” he hissed as he squeezed.
Dumbledore smiled pleasantly up at him. “Tom! I didn’t think I’d see you here,” he greeted.
“Wha--!” For a moment, Voldemort tightened his grip further. Albus’ smile managed to reach his eyes and he chuckled slightly. With a final cry of frustration and anger, Voldemort released him and clambered off, crouching near Dumbledore’s knees, resting an elbow on the park bench. His eyes followed Albus’ every move as the elder wizard sat up.
“How are you?” Albus asked him. “Are you whole? I must say, I’ve been very curious about your experiment.”
Voldemort pushed his hood back, revealing dark hair and eyes, the handsome quality of his former self replaced by a gaunt forlornness. “Well?” he asked.
“Ah, as beautiful as ever, Tom,” Albus replied. With a glare, Tom pulled himself up onto the bench and sat down, pointedly not looking at Albus. Regaining his feet, Albus returned to sitting on the bench. He stared at the daisies again while his mind raced through what he remembered of Tom’s experiment. “How did it happen?” he asked at last, gazing at Tom.
“Look,” Tom said, turning angry eyes on Albus, “I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to you!”
“Then, why are you still here?”
“I --” With a grunt, Tom stood up and stalked away towards the hill, black cloak flapping behind. Albus smiled at him and waved.
Anger coursed through Tom as he stalked off down the path. Why? What the hell am I doing here with that old codger? He paused in mid-thought, I AM IN HELL! FUCK! Tom glared at a daisy near the path and took a swipe at it out of spite. The flower dropped a few petals in return, bouncing cheerily on its stem. He hissed at it and picked the blossom, ravaging it as he screamed in rage, his long fingernails digging into its heart. When the flower was little more than green and white shreds littering the path, Tom sighed and continued walking.
For a time, the cobblestone path meandered beside a brook and along a dark soil embankment. Then it turned to the right and passed under a copse of willows. Tom’s pace slowed and his heart sunk. No, he thought. He stepped out from under the willows and saw Albus sitting before him, smiling at him. Tom looked behind him, studying the path. He closed his eyes, mastering his frustration. When he opened his eyes, Albus waved at him. “Hmph!” Tom left the path and stormed off across the field of wildflowers. After a dozen yards, he glanced over his shoulder. Albus and his bench were gone.
Relieved, Tom continued across the fields. The flowers dwindled, replaced by tall waving grass that soaked Tom’s robe with dewdrops. He climbed to the top of a small rise and stared down into a shallow valley. A brook meandered beside a cobblestone path, its song drifting toward him. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he raised his eyes from the brook and rested them on a copse of willow trees. “I am in hell,” he said aloud. “I am in the endless spring morning garden from hell.” He continued mumbling as he made his way down the hill, forded the brook and returned to the copse of willows. Beyond the willows, Albus was still sitting on the bench, staring at the flowers in front of him.
Albus heard Tom’s steps on the cobblestones before the other man stopped in front of him. Blue eyes twinkling, Albus looked up at him. “Hello again,” he said. “How did you get all wet?”
Tom’s glare dropped to his cloak. “From the river,” he said, clipping each word in anger.
“You went swimming? Oh Tom, I didn’t know you liked swimming.”
Jaw dropping, Tom stared at Albus. “I didn’t go swimming!” he shouted.
Albus’ chuckled. After the laughter died, Tom took a deep cleansing breath and closed his eyes.
“Sit down, Tom,” Albus invited, patting the bench beside him. Crestfallen, Tom sat. His thin fingers worked the clasp of his cloak and he shrugged out of it, the deep green dress robes beneath had remained dry. He sighed and leaned back, stretching his feet out in front of him, and throwing an arm across the back of the bench, his hand resting lightly near Albus’ shoulder. Tom stared up at the perfect blue sky for a long time.
“So,” Albus began at length, “the experiment.”
“Obviously it was a failure. I’m here.”
“But what was it like?” Tom glanced at Albus out of the corner of his eye. Eagerness lay painted across his face, thinning the smile above his beard, glinting in his blue eyes.
Tom straightened and faced Albus. “Do you remember sex?” he asked. Albus blinked, taken aback, before nodding slowly. “It was like sex.”
“Like sex?” Albus repeated.
Tom licked his lips and leaned back against the bench again. “Yes. It was hot and powerful, my soul dancing along the edge of pain and pleasure. Life and death fluttered in my hands like two birds and I overpowered them and conquered them and, in the midst of that conquest, I knew danger and safety, loss and love, and it was wonderful,” he finished with a sigh.
Albus thought about Tom’s description. “Hmm, I don’t remember sex being like that. I just remember love so strong it would pull a tear from your eye and to treasure someone that much was the most beautiful peace in the world. In fact,” he looked around, “This place reminds me of sex.”
Tom snorted. “But this is hell! So you’re saying that sex with you was hell?”
“Is it hell? I don’t think it is. Don’t you remember? We’ve been here before.” Albus smiled at Tom and rose. “Come on, you’ll remember as we walk.” He held out a hand to the younger man.
With a wary glance into Albus’ face, Tom took his hand and stood. Albus wrapped an arm around Tom’s waist and they started down the path toward the hill, their pace unhurried. “What will I remember?” Tom asked.
“Before.”
“Before what?” Tom asked, confused.
“You will remember Before,” Albus said, chuckling as Tom’s brow furrowed.
They followed the path in silence until they returned to the bench where Tom had left his cloak. “Do you remember?” Albus asked.
Tom stood in thought. Albus waited for him to speak. At length he said, “I’ve been here before…we’ve been here before.” Images of the tree, the bench, the brook, traipsed through Tom’s mind. He remembered the portal hidden behind the dark soil embankment. He remembered endlessness with only the two of them. Walking from end to end of the garden and always meeting at the bench. He remembered stepping through the portal with a plan.
“Yes!” Albus clapped his approval for a moment before sitting down, beaming up at Tom. Tom sat down again after draping his cloak across the back of the bench.
He shook his head, “I remember not wanting to be here, Albus. We had a plan. I thought we’d figured it out!” He buried his face in his hands. “What went wrong? We were going to try two different lives. Now we’re both in hell!”
Albus stared out across the garden. “You said that before, but is this hell?” he asked again, “Before, I thought of it as limbo.”
“Why do we keep coming here?” asked Tom, hands still hiding his face. Albus shrugged. “I don’t want to come here anymore!”
“Perhaps we should try again?” Albus suggested, laying a hand on Tom’s shoulder, willing peace and strength into his companion. “Let’s go find that portal and do it again.”
Tom dropped his hands. “I don’t want to ‘do it again’,” he said, “I want to move on!” He stood up and began pacing in front of the bench. “We’ve been back here three times now! We’ve tried living again. I tried living evilly, you tried living selflessly, and where did it get us? RIGHT BACK HERE!”
“Well, let’s think of something else then,” Albus suggested. “Sit down.”
“I am never sitting on this fucking bench again!” Tom shrieked. He stormed off towards the tree. Albus pursed his lips and grabbed Tom’s cloak before following him.
Once he had caught up to his companion, he took him by the arm. “Tom, wait. We are on to something. You took an awful long time to return. Now, was that because it took a long time to put your soul back together, or was that because you couldn’t get in here?”
Tom stopped, thinking. “There was a train station…I was whole at the train station. Then, someone called my name and as I walked along the platform…there were other paths, Albus…there in the train station.” He looked up, hope spreading through his dark eyes. “Maybe those paths lead somewhere else,” he breathed.
“I dreamt of a train station,” Albus said, “A train station and a boy. Then I was here, in heaven.” Tom straightened at his last word and looked around at the endless garden, the peaceful breeze, the perfect path.
“Heaven,” he said, tasting the word. “This can’t be heaven, Albus. I would never be able to get here. Not the way I lived last time, at any rate.”
Albus contemplated his own choice of words for a moment more before answering, “You must have done something wonderful. Something selfless and glorious.”
Tom screwed up his eyes, thinking hard through the fog of the train station, back to when his soul was splintered and seven vague memories jangled together like coins in a pocket.
“Oh wait,” he said at last, sighing, “Yeah. I killed myself.”
Albus chuckled, “that might do it.” They started walking, their pace quickening as they spotted the dark embankment that led back to Earth.
“So this time, when we go back to Earth, we just need to be evil!” Tom crowed.
“Well, not evil, just not good,” Albus corrected, breaking into a run beside him.
The End