QLFC, CAPTAIN: [Captain, Screaming Faeries, Arrows]-Barty was never given the Dementor's Kiss. Dumbledore managed to rescue him from the fate, and Barty pretended to have received the kiss and lived out his days in Azkaban.

Team: Kenmare Kestrels

Beta'ed by the lovely crimsonvortex. She's the best! :3

"Guh guh," Barty said, pointing his finger at the two odd people in front of him and laughing. "Me guggy guh buh." He was rocking back and forth, babbling sounds escaping from his lips, his gaze unfocused.

One of the men—the muscular one with a scar that crossed his face from his right ear to his chin—roughly shook him. "Speak, you devil spawn. What happened with You-Know-Who?"

Barty smiled and nodded. "Gaggy lalu!"

"It's useless, Reginald. They've kissed him already." the other person—a man who just looked like any other man—said.

The man called Reginald threw him on the floor, looking at him with disdain. "People like him don't have a soul. There's no Dementor who could steal it from them." He viciously turned to the prisoner and spat, "Isn't it, Barty?"

Barty stared at him blankly as his thumb made its way to his mouth.

"Reginald, calm yourself down," the second man sighed. "I think we'd better go—"

"What? What kind of Auror are you?"

"Not a Hufflepuff one, that's for sure."

"Guh?" Barty interjected. "Fff pfff!"

"Oh, look. Is he trying to say Hufflepuff?

"Who knows? What do you think happens to your brain without your soul? Maybe we could redeem him? Teaching him something useful?"

"Please, Caractacus. And you still think you could not have done well in Hufflepuff."

"Well, the Sorting Hat decided—"

"Yeah, well, that thing is pretty old, isn't it?" He regarded Barty once more, pensively. "Come on. Clearly, Dumbledore was too late to save him. Not that this scum was worth it."

Save him? Barty thought. They were so wrong, in more ways than one.

"Ah, the old fool. I've heard Dumbledore has been going crazy lately."

"Are you surprised—"

As the two Aurors exited his humid cell, their voices fading and mixing with the cries of desperation that haunted that place, Barty sighed in relief and blinked several times to get rid of the dryness in them.

Dumbledore saving him? They had no idea.

.x.

Every day, there was a time in the dead of night when the cold wind howled louder and entered Barty's cell bringing the sharp smell of saltiness with itself. It froze him, the cold reaching his bones.

That was actually the only moment when he felt alive, and not only because no one was around and he could stop pretending he had received the kiss, but because it reminded him what life was—what life could have been? He never dwelled on that thought; it hurt him.

It wasn't the memory of his mother's hug—sometimes he wondered how he had managed to keep that—nor it was the memory of his father's cutting gaze—that one he wasn't surprised to remember in such a dark place. No, it was that merciless wind, that saltiness that stuck to his face and kept desperation as far away as possible.

It was cold; he was cold, and Barty cried and laughed at the same when he smelt the sea—he cried because he couldn't see the waves; he laughed because he had been going mad, and the idea of holding on to something like that—that he didn't know, that came and went as it liked—was stupid and inconsistent, but he couldn't do anything else.

Dumbledore saving him? Huh.

.x.

Every day, there were long moments—they seemed neverending—where his life flew in front of eyes. The images were blurry and trembling like an old, modified memory, like they belonged to someone else's—in a way, they did, he mused. The official line was that Bartemius Crouch Junior was lost to the world, after all.

So those memories couldn't but belong to another person.

"Guh," he whispered to himself, desperatedly, wondering if he could pretend he had received that damned kiss until he tricked himself into believing it too, trying to suppress those memories. But they kept coming back, haunting him, reminding him that yes, they were his own and he had to face them, live with them.

When he closed his eyes, he could see all his childhood monsters coming back to life—oddly similar to the memories that resided in his head—like they were when he was little. They were hidden in the dark, under his bed, in the corners, in any shadow.

Now, like then, there was not anyone—no father—who'd chase them with a spell.

He was alone with himself.

Unconsciously, he caressed his forearm, searching for some form of safety that he could get only when those monsters were skulls and snakes. Nostalgia filled him up then—nostalgia for that happiness that he had ever known when he had been in the presence of the Dark Lord and certainly not when he had found himself under the cold gaze of that man that he had had to call father.

Dumbledore saving him? It was almost funny.

.x.

"The Dementor's kiss? For you, Barty? Oh, no, you don't deserved it."

Barty narrowed his eyes.

"No, Barty. That would be fair, that would be easy. But would you learn? Would you feel regret in time?"

"Regret?" Barty spat the word and laughed.

"Yes, regret. I'll find a way to spare you this fate, but actually saving your soul is up to you."

.x.

Suddenly, a day came when the wind entered Barty's cell earlier; the sun was still up and shining—some of it reaching a few inches of Barty's cell—when the door of the hall creaked open, letting someone in.

A whiff of vanilla reached his nostril as a woman passed by his cell, completely ignoring him. She was sobbing and looking for someone—that much was clear; maybe some relative—and Barty could imagine more tears, hugs, and sweet words during their reunion.

No one would come for him—the poor, soul-less Death-Eater.

He was alone with himself and with a soul too heavy to carry.

Dumbledore saving him? Ah, he had been the cruelest of them all.

"Guggy lala gah."