InsaneJournal

Some element of past life assumption had given Charlie Weasley over to the belief that the tools of a centaur’s trade would be rough-hewn and crude, simple implements given to rudimentary tasks. He was leagues from correct. The obsidian blade he held, its oaken hilt carved with runes he could not recognize, was finely filligreed and cast in such a way that it seemed to absorb the light around it. Silvery moonlight and the warmth of the fire they were gathered around amassed in the blade until the chant began.

When, at first, the tip pressed into the soft skin at his elbow, he hissed. But depth came easy and as crimson thick and alkaline pulsed from his arm he could in turn feel the axis of the earth pulling beneath his feet. Orion and Cancer sped in the sky until it was but a blur and it seemed as though Pegasus flapped his starry wings, wringing from Charlie all the breath in his lungs until he squared his shoulders and focused on one tree to his left.

As his brow beetled over, it began to bend at the trunk, jointed limbs in a slow-motion and languid writhe until his knee hit the ground and he gasped, the connection broken. Though words of encouragement were near to him, whuffled in his ear between the dying spin in the stars and the stomping of hooves within the circle, he felt the inky darkness cloud his vision. Then, with a single world -- “Why?” -- then, he knew no more.

Hestia hadn’t been permitted into the site itself -- the centaurs were churlish before her; she had not formed a connection with them the way Charlie had over these last few weeks. And though every ounce of her -- the healer, the friend, the woman -- rebelled against the very notion of not having Charlie within her sights, especially for this, she knew well enough by the strong suspicion in their eyes that she would wait by the tree line and would not, could not, go further.

The hours passed.

At first, it was only her fears creeping into every vestige of thought that sped the minutes by as her senses grew attuned to the furtive nocturnal sounds and scents of the forest beyond the halo of her lantern. That owl and its iridescent eyes peering unblinkingly at her. The mouse that skittered over her boot. The chill set in soon enough, and she pulled her cloak closer to her body, charming it with a warming spell. And finally, the boredom. She almost wished she had brought a book -- and then took herself to task for the thought. This wasn’t simply like sitting in a waiting room for some mundane appointment.

Her eyes had just started to grow heavy when the sound of hooves startled her back to alertness and she stood up just as a large centaur appeared before her bearing a slumped familiar figure in his massive arms. “By Rowena’s left tit,” she spat out, both relieved and alarmed at once. Without thinking, she surged forward, only checking herself just in time when her nearness only served to emphasise the massive difference in their sizes. Should the centaur have wanted, he could have trampled her without much effort at all.

“He’s alive,” was all the centaur would say, setting Charlie down at her feet with surprising tenderness, then backing up to gallop away.

When the last of the centaur’s steady reverberations faded from the ground, she fell to her knees to assess him, only to reel back when her fingers made contact with warm, wet blood. Her lamp was several feet away yet, abandoned in her haste, and from little she could make of him -- darkened, stained clothing, streaks of it across his pale face -- he was covered in it. “Oh Charlie, what have you done?”

Oblivion -- it was a sweet word, a word for poets and mass bloody murderers of the English language. But to Charlie, oblivion was the absence of light or sound. It was the whole world faceted in dragon eyes as he fell through the gold and laid still while the heavens blacked out his small, insignificant self upon the earth. Oblivion was the lack of any fear he faced, any buttress built. Oblivion was the incorporeal embrace of night enveloped in the warmth of equine and the strength of arms which bore him to the tree line.

There, it was only the presence of Hestia Jones, whose light touch and flicker of tonal horror unshackled him long enough to bring his eyelids to a flutter. He wavered out a smile. “Firenze said I couldn’t. That -- men. Our bodies couldn’t handle it. But I did.”

She stared at him as if he had lost possession of his wits -- which was quite possibly true. His daft smile amidst his bloody face did little to encourage her otherwise. No, she reminded herself, do not think about it. Focus on the practical. “Where are you bleeding?” Even as she began searching for the source itself, wand out, hands gingerly prodding his bloody clothes. “What did you do?” What did you see? she bit back from asking. It was her damned, tireless thirst for knowledge stirring in curiosity, she knew. Charlie had seen things most men would never see.

“My arm.” The skin, nearly cleaved to bone, would lay out in a neat seam for her. But -- “Hestia.” He focused, attempting to rise on his elbow to greet her with a hand to the angle of her jaw. It went awry halfway and so did his strength. He fell back to the earth, half stunned by the blaze of castle light and the lack of forest cover. “I did it, Hestia.” Maybe we will be safe. But he couldn’t make it hold. It wasn’t a sure bet, this magic. Not without greater sacrifice.

“ … can you Apparate us?” Blood burnt in his nostrils, its ferrous scent blotting out his other senses.”

“I’ve half a mind to drag you to the castle and dump you at Minerva’s feet for a full lecture.” The gash, now illuminated by the lumos from her wand, glittered crimson and bone white. Blood still poured from it freely, had been for hours. Too much. Without a thought for the whys and where’s, she gathered Charlie close and Apparated them both to the first safe, easily accessible place she could think of -- her own small home, right in the centre of her living room, surrounded by all her books, her silly trinkets and now Charlie Weasley, bleeding all over her floor.

She’d chastise herself later, but for now, a warming spell to keep him from falling into shock, then the various healer spells necessary to restitch muscle, sinew and lastly, skin -- difficult, the wound was inflicted by magical means, the flesh seemed to want to fall back apart nearly as soon as it came together. “Fuck.”

When magical means of reparation failed -- she drew out her healer’s bag, and among all its potions and elixirs, simple medical muggle tools for stitching -- thread, forceps, scissors. “Any pain reliever now would be inadvisable, given the amount of blood you’ve lost. This will hurt.”

Kneeling by his side, pressed by time, she at least had a bottle of scotch for antiseptic and the fire set ablaze in the hearth. Sharp metal pressed against the edges of skin, penetrating with one quick thrust. “Tell me what happened.”

The cold grip of Apparition, shaken off by the dim realisation that he was lying on Hestia’s rug (she had a home, and he almost laughed for assuming all this time she’d just been some will o the wisp creature who’d lived in the between spaces of the hospital and his own daftly unencumbered cottage), allowed him that moment of clarity before he felt the needle glide through his skin. As a point of pride, for all she’d been involved in keeping the meat on his bones, he could not let her hear the fire and brimstone in the nerve endings of this flesh she so dutifully mended. But his teeth pressed to his pale lip.

A gasp. “It was a spell meant to connect. Man, earth, sky. I saw --” he swallowed. “I saw everything spun up as if I could perceive us tilted on our axis. I felt the earth’s core. And there was a tree.” Hazily -- “I don’t know if I made it move or I hallucinated it, because the next thing I remember is you.”

“That all sounds….” She was quick and neat with her stitches (pierce, pull and thread, cross back over), pinching together the interiors of flesh to coax it to knit back together eventually -- slowly, the ways in which muggles suffered. “Absolutely mad.” And she couldn’t help the huff of laughter from escaping her lips as she paused to push a tendril of hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Are you certain it wasn’t the blood loss?”

“There’s no part about it that wasn’t mad,” he told her stiltedly, the pain becoming so constant it was back channel noise. He had endured dragon claws, the silver of the moon and the warmth of fire mixed with Hestia’s neat stitches was … I can do this. I can.

“I’m not certain.”

She spared a glance to his face, paler than ever, beaded with sweat, tight with pain, wishing she could hurry along her steady hands, that all of this were somehow easier, but then, that was the point, wasn’t it? Why men did not do this.

When it was over, she sat back on her heels, exhaustion settling into the very marrow of her bones. Her hands and forearms were as slick with Charlie’s blood as he was. It had soaked into the front of her robes and somehow streaked across her own face and hair in some macabre mirror to his. “Fluids and rest now,” she sighed more than spoke, and quite in need of a stiff drink herself. “Perhaps a bath too. You look like you’ve been through a massacre, Charlie. Can you....how long can you even keep this up?”

“I don’t know. But -- it’s there, if we need it.”

It was only when Hestia finally sat back on her heels and the needle left him that the haze began to clear and he could get a sense of what he’d done to her. He imagined her waiting, he imagined her worry as she’d waited by the border for hours, the cold seeping into her bones as he’d rooted himself in the very earth. Then, coated in his blood -- “Hestia,” was a stupid whisper. He rolled onto his side to lever himself up, arm cradled into his chest. “Godric, look what I’ve done to you.” A breath. “I’m so sorry.”

Lowering her gaze lest any stray emotion betray her (it was hard, so hard to look into his face, those earnest eyes), she instead raised her hands to unbutton his shirt. “These clothes. I think there’s nothing for them now.” Her fingers shook and slipped on the buttons where they had been steady all her life, even only moments before.

And there had been enough times that he, without shirt, had been laid out for her clinical eye Now, however, he detected … what. Something feral, unnameable. Something trace in the scent of blood and sweat permeating the room. His uninjured arm lit upon her elbow, sliding past to still her as he rose on quavering and protesting limbs, hoping she would follow up.

“Let’s get you to the bath.”

“Charlie--” Hushed. A breath escaping before she could tighten her lips. Her arms already slid around him, legs gathered beneath her to support him every inch of the way up with whatever dregs of strength still left within her. She stumbled only once, but quickly set herself to rights, leaning into him as much as he leaned into her. “This shouldn’t have to be yours to bear alone.”

Who else could he ask to give up what he was willing to give up in order to see his family and his country safe? It was only a little flesh, no less than the dragon had taken. His only regret, feeling Hestia struggle at his side, was that he could not spare her. In fact, he could not find enough chivalric selflessness in him to refrain from asking her. She’d come into his life when he was in the dregs of his own despair, now she’d earned a place he could not rightly name with simple things like words. He wanted her with him. He trusted her keen mind and cool head. He found himself wondering what she’d think about their plans -- whether they be simple or grand.

But if war was coming, he would be that Wizard. Only now, he supposed, it was also his duty to see her strengthened. Wearing his blood in streaks, she had always been stark and beautiful, but now took on a quality far wilder than he could have before guessed. Leaving her by the sink, he leaned over her tub to turn the water on and point the shower head into the basin.

“C’mon, Jones. There’s nothing to do but go in.”

All at once, she was struck by the odd surreality of having Charlie in the close confines of the loo, sitting on the edge of the tub she had spent many a long soak in, a swath of red amids white tile and porcelain. Turning her head just a little to catch a glimpse of her reflection bore similar disassociation. Everything about her now appeared so unmoored. There was, she was only slightly ashamed to notice, still the half bottle of wine sitting at foot of one claw from her last leisurely night in, and she rather promptly walked over to pick it up, uncork it, and bring the neck up to her lips in steady determination.

Pulling back, wiping her mouth with the back of hand that did nothing but smear blood across her lips, with the wine lighting a warmth inside her, she could look at him steadily now, braced for all impacts. “Right. You first, Weasley.”

If it hadn’t been for the blood loss, Charlie was quite sure his thoughts and opinions regarding what he was about to do would have rooted him to the ground with more steadfast precision than any centaur magic. Instead, it was his hand gentle upon her waist, pressing her toward the now steaming shower as he shook his head. “Ladies first.” And when the wine was produced, he could not help a brief laugh.

He supposed any other man would have her clothes off, his regards and attentions announced, before this back and forth could be truly realized. But all Charlie had was a swimming head and a smile which said please. He watched her carefully, making it clear he had no intention of turning aside for modesty’s sake, wanting this and wanting her enough to feel his hand tremble with it.

One good thing. It was all he would ask of the universe for himself. This one good thing.

At first, the bright spark of exasperation flickered across her eyes, but wine-numbed nerves and the almost painfully rapid beat of her heart washed away the last of her protestations. Madness. She should have turned and left the room then and there, decrying all of it to be inappropriate, but the heat that fanned out from her belly could hardly be attributed to her recent imbibitions when she met Charlie’s bright, near feverish eyes. The bottle was set down upon the sink gracelessly. As if moving in a dream (underwater), her hands rose to loosen the stays of her robes and then to push the fabric off each shoulder and let the garment pool at her feet as she found a spot of tile on the floor to focus upon during the whole ritual. As the steam-infused air caressed her bare skin, she finally found the strength to focus back on Charlie with a stuttering breath.

Red at the forearm, Hestia was a contrast in pale skin with rosy points, whilst her dark hair lay in a cloud around her. Charlie watched her as if the magic husked him out, as if this act could fill him and remind him of his humanity somewhere beyond the frailty of his body. Because she was beautiful. From the tips of her toes, along the points of her hip to her shoulders and her face, she was beautiful and he finally realized he loved her.

He stepped in, pausing a hair’s breadth to give her the opportunity to step out of sync and withdraw from him, before grasping her waist with his free hand to pull her against him in a kiss. Stupid that he would streak her further in dirt and blood. Far stupider that he did not press her further into the shower, beneath the water, but it would come. He simply wanted her to know with the words which wouldn’t come how he felt. You have the magical capability of being there. You’re amusing, clever. You’re beautiful. I love you.

Finally -- “One little step. Get in and let me wash that off.”

A muffled note of surprise, before whatever mad inertia had taken over (the wild leave of) her senses had her sinking against him, the very maleness of him in height, solidity and expanse, lips against lips, her hands instinctively rising to tangle in in his hair. The earnestness of it if not altogether the gracefulness. It was a remarkably heady feeling.

She opened her eyes (they had closed, easily, just as willing as the rest of her to let go of the hard lines of any semblance of reality), the ferocity of his expression, half soaked now beneath the water, dirt and blood running in streams down his chest, washed away the last tokens of her resistance, the reserve she gathered unto herself and employed as buffer between her and the rest of the world. Across the now wet and dirt streaked tiles, she stepped in and met him under the full spray of the shower.

Her palms spread out across his chest. She steadied herself to the pulse that ran beneath her hand. The bandages, magical in nature and water resistant, still served as a sharp reminder to this man’s continued existence on the fine edge of mortality. She has already borne witness to its scars, and tonight would bring another. All these things I should not be doing. “Don’t use that arm -- you’ll...it’ll need a sling, after. You could tear out those stitches and--” Still, she tried to keep up the rhythm of advice, but it became increasingly difficult to speak when she remembered it filleted out before her beneath the wan moonlight.

When Hestia made the choice to join him, when he felt her rise flush against him with naught but the rivulets of steam passing between their bodies, he allowed himself a brief moment of triumph. It was not that she yielded or he simply wished to have her, but she made the conscious decision to step in. For this was beyond that line of formality they danced. And as she laid her hand upon his chest, he wondered if she could feel the faint and erratic beat of his heart.

The forest was beyond him for now. It was a memory built up in the gleaming lights of the castle and the unencumbered swing of stars. He, however, ran his palm down her shoulder, tilting his chest so that her forearm could catch the spray of the shower. “Yes, Healer Jones,” was said with a rumble of amusement. “I promised you early I wouldn’t --” unwind your good work. But he was, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he dancing on the edge of a knife? He kissed her again to silence the thoughts in his mind.

“Hestia? I think --” he took a breath. “One day, I’m going to take you on an actual date.”

Better still to not think of it and all and concentrate on the way he, so young, so very young, still held her so confidently, the way she had not felt this in, hells, years. The way she could close her eyes and allow time to simply drift past her, unnoticed. And then -- with the turmoil of her thoughts and the released floodgates of her emotions, the fear, the desire, the doubt that this was all still a mistake -- she laughed. “You’ve gone about this rather backwards, haven’t you?” It seems, after blood, centaurs and fey magic -- I am a sure thing. “But I’ll hold you to it.”

“ … I’ve never really done any of this before. Shocking, I know,” he uttered with a gruffed out laugh. The hot water made him all the more lightheaded, but it would hopefully do him well. That hazy confidence which put his hands upon her in the first place, let it then drift as she laughed, falling from her waist to make a slide across her backside. He took a handful, then, and pressed a smile to the hollow of her throat. “Foresworn.”

“Oh -- cheeky.” The reminder of his youthfulness was a sharp pinprick of awareness -- his pallour, the exhaustion writ large across his face. Her hand rose to cup the back of his head, letting him rest against her in the hot warmth of the water. “Come on -- you’re barely on your feet. I’ve got to put you to bed.”

Any remainder of energy that could have gone into protesting (into the desire to explore, to know, to be within) was directed to stepping out of the shower without falling over. He offered his arm and shoulder to her to do the same, pressing the injured arm tight to his chest. “I --” love you. “ -- would like …”

The enveloping silence beneath the earth seemed to envelop him, only now audible the voices which whispered from the corners. “ -- can I stay with you?”

“Obviously.” She enveloped first in the largest towel she could find in an attempt to ward off the first chill, then merely guided him down the short walk to the room at the end -- hers. The duvet and sheets pulled were pulled back, and he coaxed to climb into it, towel and all, with silent presses of her fingers. The covers were pulled up, and then after only the slightest hesitation, she slid in beside him, damp skin meeting cool sheets and the heat of his body beneath the covers. “Go to sleep, Charlie.”