dyingforakiss (dyingforakiss) wrote in snark_n_bark, @ 2008-03-12 19:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | barty, complete |
I can't shake this feeling I've got...
Character: Barty
Summary: Barty has been walking in his sleep... At least, he hopes he was only walking
Barty woke with a start. For a few rapid heartbeats he glanced about, head turning this way and that as he tried to figure out where he was. He slumped back on his mattress as he realised with relief that he was in his own room and bed.
He had not been so lucky the previous evening, nor the week before that. The disturbing dreams had become a waking nightmare over the past month. He couldn't trust that he would wake up where he had fallen asleep, and as he spent an increasing number of nights wandering, the more snippets of his previous life he could remember.
He knew, for example, that the ruin of a house he had woken up in last week had been somewhere cherished. The place had been half-collapsed, and yet, the feelings he had felt for the place had been frightening in their intensity. He had only just stopped himself from digging his fingers into the dirt of what had once been a garden, wanting to root himself there. As he had shaken off sleep, and the feelings of mad ardour had faded, he had realised that his hands were already dirty.
Memories of waking up in that place, and the several graveyards and copses he had also visited in his sleep, made him rub his fingers together. The action brought his attention to the tackiness of his skin. He raised his trembling hands in mounting horror, and let out a convulsive sob when his fear was realised and he saw the blood on his hands.
Darting from the bed, he rushed to the bathroom, taking up the nail brush to scrub the mostly dried blood off. The stream of water turned a rose colour that brought the taste of bile to the back of his throat. Jerking his hands from the suddenly scalding water, he turned to the toilet instead, and vomited until only yellowish water would come up.
Collapsing onto the floor, he pressed his cheek against the cool tiles and tried to order his scattered thoughts.
He knew that the places he had visited had been places the Death Eaters had met in his youth. He had no true memories of the places, but he knew it, in his blood, magic and soul. His mind and memories that had been wiped clean and reborn by the Dementor's Kiss and Bella's ritual didn't recognise these places, but something deeper did. Something he had thought had died, but which was now returning to haunt him.
Somehow, his soul, his soul, which had rejoiced in following the Dark Lord, which he had sought to regain through following Bella, was returning to him. It was the only explanation, the only way that he could now remember names, snatches of faces, dreamlike but all too disturbingly real.
In his sleep, his connection with his new soul, with Rilind Hedera and the new life he was trying to lead, weakened. In his sleep, Bartemius Elias Crouch Junior was complete. In his sleep...
He lurched to the toilet again, retching painfully and dryly.
He didn't want to know what he did in his sleep. He didn't want to be that person again. That way lay the madness which possessed Bella.
He gripped the top of his arm, nails digging into the initials Bella had branded into his flesh. He couldn't escape! Bella had failed in bringing back his past, so now the past itself came to devour him!
He had to find out why this was happening, he thought, desperate for clarity. He knew it had to be his soul. It was the only conclusion all his research would accept. He had to find out why and stop it. If he was ever going to have his own life, a new life, he had to stop it.
Before he was forced to the confront the crimes he was running from.