emlynn (emlynn) wrote in quiddproquo, @ 2012-10-31 19:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | emlyn rosier, viktor krum |
Part 3 of 4.
WHO: Viktor Krum and Emlyn Rosier
WHAT: A wrong turn.
WHEN: Monday, October 29, 1998
WHERE: Viktor’s cottage, on the outskirts of Caerphilly, Wales
SUMMARY: Em takes the floo and ends up in a drastically different place than expected.
RATINGS/WARNING: SFW
STATUS: Closed. Complete. PART THREE. [PART ONE, PART TWO]
“They are." His eyes lowered to the photos in her hands, a small smile warming his face. Talking about his family, reminding himself of their faces, was making him miss them. And bringing stories and events to mind, voices and phrases and smiles. Viktor’s eyes clouded over, his thoughts lost far away from that room and Em, remembering favorite places and things. He was brought back to the present with a rude force at her question. It had to come eventually. Although given her reaction the last time he’d tried to bring it up, Viktor realized he was surprised that she’d asked.
His eyes refocused, seeing her face and not the past. He lowered his eyes from her face, expression grim. “Yes. They do." He looked down, his shoulders hunching up again and tensing. They knew. He would never forget their reactions. His father’s silent disappointment. His mother’s vocal disbelief and upset. His sister’s eyes… the betrayal in Ana’s face. “They know." He repeated, lifting a hand to rub over his eyes before slowly looking back up at her.
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Emlyn didn't realise she was holding her breath until she felt the urge to breathe suddenly pressing down upon her. Drawing in a breath, she couldn't take her eyes off him as she watched his reaction to her question. There was no doubt they knew, and they remembered. They hadn't been happy, she surmised. Good. They shouldn't be happy, and he shouldn't get off lightly. Emlyn's inner turmoil was reflected in her eyes as she watched him tense up, seeing the way he seemed to grow smaller somehow, retreat into himself. It hadn't been pleasant. These were not happy memories he was thinking of now. She was pleased, and yet oddly, not.
"What happened?" she asked quietly, still holding the pictures of his family. She wanted to know how these lovely supportive people had reacted to hearing the news of what their son and brother did. She needed to know.
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Maybe this was part of his punishment. Revisiting the torture of realizing what he’d done. Revisiting the pain he’d caused his parents. His sisters. Emlyn. Living endlessly in the emotions of failure and regret and remorse and hurt. Viktor swallowed roughly, feeling helpless in the face of her question. He had to answer her. Anyone else, and he would have stopped talking. For her… for her he would speak. Because she deserved it. She deserved his answers. No matter what they dredged up for him. Just by being near him, her past was dredged up and thrown in her face.
“The school told them first." Viktor’s voice was low and raw, and his eyes fixed on the open window. “By the time I got home, they knew." He would never forget their faces. His eyes reflected the deep, deep effect his parents disappointment had had on him. “My father didn’t say anything. He just looked at me." Viktor’s face twisted into a grimace. “My Mother…" He swallowed again. “She said a lot." He hated that he remembered almost every word. Her shock. Her hurt. The way she looked at him as if she didn’t know him. Viktor’s eyes shut. “Ana barely spoke to me." She just told him, in frank words how disappointed she was. Her distrust of him palpable. “Pavla was confused. And afraid." Of him. Which had just about killed him at fifteen.
“They loved me. They didn’t stop loving me." His eyes stayed shut. “My Mother is the reason I owled you." He had felt as if any attempts to talk to Em would have been unwelcome. His Mum had insisted that he try. That he owed it to her to try.
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Emlyn was transfixed. The torment on his face was unmistakable, and while a part of Emlyn was glad to see it (fiercely glad) there was another, unexpected part that wasn't. It was as if seeing the clear evidence of his regret - that he hadn't gotten off lightly and carried around as much pain surrounding that event as she did (if not more) was enough for her. If he hadn't cared, or if his parents hadn't cared, then she would have been devastated, but they did care. They cared that their son had done something so horrid, and he cared that he'd let them down.
But there was still so much that she didn't understand. "Why did you do it?" She couldn't stop the questions now that she'd started. They'd been bothering her for weeks now, itching to be asked. "Were you intending to hurt someone? I know it was an accident with me. You couldn't have known I'd be there, but why would you be casting magic like that if you weren't going to use it on someone?"
That was what she didn't understand. She could accept that it wasn't a deliberate attack against her. She hadn't been expected in that hallway then, and hadn't even known she would be there herself until right before she'd headed upstairs. He couldn't have known she would be there. But that didn't alter the fact that he'd been casting some seriously dangerous magic, which could really only be used for one purpose, as far as she could see.
She was managing to reign in her emotions for the moment, though there was a slight tremble to her voice as she asked her questions. Tears were threatening but held at bay for the moment, just beneath the surface. It was taking a toll on her, but the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of him.
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It was as if once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. Viktor’s gut twisted. He’d tried once. He didn’t think he’d ever have to try again. And now she wanted all of it. The details. The history. It was being pulled out of him like organs being removed without anesthetic. He stood up suddenly, not careful in his turmoil, and walked to the window, his back to her, the muscles tense. Viktor wasn’t sure how to do this. Words had never been easy. And in a second language they were even less so.
“No. I wasn’t." Intending to hurt someone. He’d been a naïve, power hungry, knowledge seeking teenager who’d gotten caught up in the pursuit of something that through pride he’d thought he could handle. “I was curious. I wanted to know if I could do it." His voice was full of self-loathing mockery. “I was fifteen. And I’ve always been good at offensive magic." Simple and true. “Better than most at that age. I wanted the knowledge. And I was prideful. I wanted to create something that no one else had. I got sucked in way past my depth." And he’d lost all sight of humanity in the process. “It was an experiment. I never intended to use it on someone." His voice grew lower, his accent showing through more strongly the more emotional he got. “I was naïve. And stupid." Viktor stared blankly out the window. “People didn’t factor into it." Knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Power because he wanted to wield it. What an idiot he’d been.
“I don’t think I realized what I was messing with." He knew that he hadn’t realized. “Not until I saw you after." His voice reflected his shock and horror in seeing her pale face. It had been a punch to the gut. Viktor swallowed roughly.
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Emlyn blinked, recoiling a little as he stood up so suddenly, looming over her and she was already so tense, ready to bolt, but he turned away and she let out a slow breath as she kept her eyes on him as he walked over to the window. Intellectual curiosity. She had almost died because he wanted to know if he could cast a spell that he'd had no business even reading about, let alone attempting. She didn't know if it made her feel better or worse to know that he hadn't actually intended to use it against someone. It should make her feel better, she knew, that there had been no intended target, but it didn't. It almost seemed like she had been hurt (so badly, so painfully) for no reason.
She was silent for a long time, thinking over his words that she'd sometimes struggled to catch as his accent grew thicker. Her gaze had shifted to the fireplace, though she wasn't thinking about the floo problem. She wasn't seeing anything as she was transported back to that time, but instead of her own memories of suddenly being struck down by a sharp and stabbing pain throughout her body, as if dozens of razorblades were suddenly tearing through her, she was attempting to put herself in his shoes. (If she were feeling particularly masochistic, she might have asked to view his memories in a pensieve, but that was perhaps too confronting just yet.) Knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Power... for what, if he wasn't going to use it?
"Why that spell?" she asked quietly, her eyes returning to his towering, tense form by the window, tracing over the taut muscles of his back and shoulders. The tears that had threatened had disappeared as quickly as they'd begun to form, and it had almost become an academic debate for her as she endeavoured to understand. "You said you wanted to create something, but why something harmful when you could have created something amazing, that would help people or inspire them. What point could there possibly be in creating something that others would only use to hurt people?"
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The silence extended. For a long time. It felt endless. Viktor stayed where he was, back and shoulders tense, eyes fixed on some distant and unseen point out the window. His mind circled back down into the feelings, the thoughts, the circumstances that had led to one of the most awful decisions of his life. The most awful decision. And he would never stop paying for it. Never stop reliving it. Viktor’s jaw clenched. He’d been naïve to think he could ever get away from it. Ever stop being punished for it. He wasn’t sure he deserved to anymore. He’d thought for a long time that if he just worked hard enough, if he just changed himself enough, if he just divorced that piece of himself, he would be separated from it. That was an illusion. That he’d wasted too much time believing.
The sound of her voice startled him out of his thoughts, and Viktor’s chin lifted as he tried to figure out how to answer her question. How to find the words for an answer that would probably be completely unsatisfactory.
“I was fifteen. I’d started with dark magic when I was eleven. You were there." His voice was quiet. It wasn’t Durmstrang’s fault, but they had definitely exposed him to things that he wished he hadn’t been. “I was good at it. Much better than almost everyone else." It was ironic. That what he was good at was something so destructive. “Darkness is seductive." His voice hardened a little. “Once I’d started experimenting, I kept going. It was like a drug." The more he tried, the more he wanted and the less he was satisfied. “Power is about control. What better way to demonstrate power?" His voice was low and tired. “I was fifteen." He repeated quietly. It wasn’t an excuse. But at that age, the lure had been hard to resist. Especially for a boy that had always been quiet, always been internal, always been smart. Viktor looked back on himself with something akin to pity and disgust. He hated what he’d chosen, the choices he’d made in naivety and immaturity that had cost so much.
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The more they talked about this, and the more Emlyn heard his side of things - not just his words, but the torment in his voice - the more her heart was beginning to go out to him. He had been a child back then, they both had been, despite their ages. Fifteen and seventeen weren't that old, and Emlyn still didn't feel like an adult a lot of the time. She knew what it had been like at Durmstrang, with classes centred around dark magic, or what they usually termed 'old' magic, instructing them that there was no light or dark, only the intent of the wielder, but she had never believed that. The magic Viktor had used was dark. There was no other word for it, in Emlyn's mind.
While Emlyn wished he'd put his clearly intelligent mind towards something more inspiring, she knew how Durmstrang, with its harsh, unfriendly feel to it, could drag someone down until experimenting with dark magic seemed normal. Emlyn wondered briefly what Hogwarts was like, and what it felt like to go there. She imagined it to be filled with light and warmth and friendly smiling people. Dark magic probably wasn't encouraged there like it was at Durmstrang.
For the first time since she had arrived, Emlyn seemed to have run out of things to say. Her nervous chatter had stopped once they had finally acknowledged the elephant in the room, and now that she had answers to all the most pressing questions, she wasn't sure what to say next. Something inside of her had been calmed with the knowledge that he hadn't been intending to hurt people, that he'd been seduced by the knowledge and the power. That, she could understand. Not the power, she'd never had any desire for power, but knowledge. She knew what it was like to want to know, to understand how something worked. Perhaps not to the degree that he did, but it helped.
"Thank you," she finally said, her voice soft and her eyes still on him, no longer out of self-preservation, but rather compassion. "For answering my questions. I never read your owls. I wasn't ready to then, but I've wondered why, moreso lately. So thank you."
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The silence fell again for a few moments and Viktor closed his eyes and tried to breathe. His gut was twisting with familiar hunger, the revisit of old emotions, old thoughts, old actions bringing it to the surface. He clenched his jaw and ruthlessly forced it down. At least he had some measure of control. Hard fought as it had been, and tempered with weary persistence. Viktor hoped that some measure of what he’d told her was helping. Somehow. That she would hear it. He’d never gotten the chance to explain. Not that what he’d done was explainable. But for her sake, he was glad that she knew.
Her thanks surprised him, his shoulders lowering a little and his head tilting her direction. She didn’t need to thank him. Viktor turned to face her slowly, eyes dark and open and vulnerable, all of his emotions close to the surface and barely skin deep.
“I am so sorry." His eyes met hers, as he struggled to force back the tears that had appeared the first time he’d tried to apologize. Maybe this time. Maybe she’d hear it. “I wish you could know how much." He’d spent years, years, learning how to carry the weight of what he’d done to her. And even if words meant little, he still wanted her to know, in some measure, how much he felt them. How genuinely he meant it. And how firmly he intended to never, never act on those impulses again.
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Now it was Emlyn's turn to struggle with self-control as the tears she had so recently congratulated herself for conquering suddenly reappeared. Her heart was bleeding for him as she watched the play of emotions across his face. This was the reason she was far better suited to being a physio than a healer, no matter what she might say about the course lengths. Emlyn's innately reserved nature (reinforced by her childhood of neglect) didn't allow her to show it outwardly, but inwardly, the depth of her compassion meant that healing - particularly with the more serious or terminal cases - was simply too much for her to bear. Physiotherapy gave her caring nature an outlet, but it was highly unlikely that she would ever lose a patient.
Nodding, she swallowed hard before saying, "I think I do know." She could hear it in the torment in his voice. She wasn't quite sure what to say. She couldn't say it was alright, because it wasn't. She understood now, and she knew enough to know that her worries about him trying it again were unfounded, but could she forgive him? It had been an accident. He hadn't deliberately hurt her, and he'd paid a hefty price. The toll it had taken was written all over him. Viewed like that, she couldn't withhold her forgiveness and torture him longer, even if she was certain Lucius wouldn't agree with her.
"I forgive you."
PART FOUR