InsaneJournal

Who: Greg & Theo
What: Tragic visions, helpless victims
Where: Greg's house
When: That evening
Warnings/Rating: R | crazy Theo, animal death



Whether subtly or not so, Theo carefully hadn't left the house since Snape's visit. He'd stayed in their room or lingered in the kitchen, stretched out in the middle of the floor on his back looking at the ceiling or huddled down under the closest piece of furniture that would fit him.

He still greeted Greg when his boyfriend came in from attending to his caretakerly duties; after the incident in the prefect's baths he'd been a little more easy about expressing affection (maybe he had picked up on more of the distance that had threatened between them than even he had known) but he certainly wasn't in any mental place where he was ready for even heavy petting yet. He'd mostly forgotten the conversation with Snape, which was to say that he only remembered what exactly had been said from time to time, but the meeting had left him with the lingering feeling that to go outside would be very bad, like the taste of something bitter hauting his mouth, like he'd eaten something that he couldn't shake.

He'd been reclusive at the best of times but the house had become just another room in St Mungo's for him - at least he hadn't started writing on the walls yet.

He played with his kitten a lot, getting more delight and joy from the small and admittedly destructive animal than he'd experienced in a long time, something quite different from the way his heart leapt and ached at seeing Greg each day, but almost as good. He hadn't named the thing, and there were occassions where it turned and bit or scratched at him to be left alone, but Theo had never been anything less than gentle with it, as though even in his madness he understood that this thing was fragile.

The incident was inevitable really.

Greg was out working hard and Theo was doing nothing much, laid back and thinking about nothing, letting the little scraps of memory come and go like torn leaves in the wind, making him wince as much as they made him sigh in reminiscence. He heard the scrabbling before he saw his kitten trying to make a break for it out of a crack in the window; it had it's head out and was trying to push it's shoulders through.

Theo sprang up and dived for the cat with all the deadly grace that living with his tyrant father had bred into him, catching the kittens back legs and yanking it back. The cat yowled and tried to brace itself, tried to force itself out to freedom but Theo was stronger, pulled harder, and the cat lost the fight, falling back into the room where Theo grabbed it up and held it, spitting and hissing and fighting, to his chest.

Theo babbled to it, to 'shh, shh, safe now, you're safe now, it's okay, I won't- won't let him get you, won't let him touch you, never, never touch you again, never never touch you again, won't let him anywhere near, you're safe...' on and on like a broken record in a shattered mind. The cat struggled harder, Theo held on, even as the skin of his hands tore under claw and tooth and bled freely down to his elbow. Theo held on as the cat kicked and bit and struggled, he held on as the struggles became more urgent, held on when they stopped and by the time he came out of the nightmares flashbacks he was shaking in terror from his kitten was dead in his arms.

Theo blinked like his eyes were sore, not quite sure of where he was as he carefully, tenderly put that small body down on the floor before him, the way he'd done so many times before after picking the kitten up for a cuddle. He sat, waiting for it to move, waited until the body had grown cold and stiff. He reached out to stroke it at first but then it began to feel wrong, wrong and cold and Theo felt that coming into himself.

He put his arms around his knees and rested his chin on them, motionlessly watching the kitten's dead body as though to look away would be to turn to stone. He stayed there as the sun went down and the light ran away from the corner's of the room like paint, he was still there when Greg came home, although by then his face was wet from tears that he couldn't explain to himself, licked away by a pink tongue that couldn't lick away the hollow pit that his insides felt that they had become.