"In the end it's all the same. Death, I mean. In the end we're all just fucking dead. Whether we go on or we go to ghosts, we're dead. There's nothing left for us as humans, we're gone." He paused, taking a swig of firewhiskey from the chipped glass. "Nothing fucking matters, we're just – dead."
He's broken, sitting there on the wooden chair with his head bowed down and his shoulders hunched over. He's as broken as the living room furniture and as the mirror that he threw against the floorboards when he found that another of his brothers had died.
There was no hope in his eyes because there were none in his soul, all victorious adrenaline had ran out of his body when he saw Harry lying there motionless at Voldermort's feet. When he was faced with the question, join Death Eaters or die and he chose death as willingly as he could but Death turned him away and now he's forced to live this fucked-up life instead, where he's not really alive at all.
He's broken with his empty brown eyes and battle scars along his arms and neck.
He's broken and hollow, and no matter how much firewhiskey he drinks it won't change a goddamn thing because it's over.
Hermione died months ago, a battle cry ripped from her throat as the cruciatus curse drove her down the painful road of torturous death. By the time Bellatrix had been murdered Hermione was a corpse that couldn't come back, she was damaged beyond repair.
It was that night Ron had tried to kill himself without the shame of suicide. He apparated everywhere that night looking for Death Eaters, looking for a fight that would bring around his bloody doom. But like before Death would not take him and instead he took down a houseful of supporters of the Dark Lord, with vengeance carved into his every being he wrote her name on the walls with their blood.
It was with anger and grief and everything messed up in his life that that night he apparated to Lavender's safe house and took her against the bathroom sink. It was hard and fast, not by any means romantic and as she cried out his name all he could think was Hermione, Hermione, Hermione and how fucked up his life had gotten.
Brown was his solace after rough missions and he was her little piece of light even though he had turned as dark as the Lord himself.
Point blank he was using her, and her death, the last one he had endured hit him as hard as a soft punch. To him it wasn't grief or an overwhelming sadness that washed over him, just distaste for the death itself. Another body tossed into the pit, a life extinguished for nothing. She wasn't even part of the Order.
And so he was, sitting in the kitchen of an abandoned London house drinking firewhiskey and coming to terms that everyone he had ever loved was dead dead dead. And as he stood and smashed his glass against the kitchen sink every shattering sound dug into his chest how far this war had gone.
There was no return, there was no coming back. It was an annihilation of everyone that wasn't a Death Eater or a supporter.
Each breath he took just brought him closer and closer to the inevitability of his murder, and his jagged breathing brought him dragging to the finish line.
Warm tears fell from his eyes and falling onto his knees he didn't bother brushing them away, his pride was gone with his bestfriends lives, with his mother's murder and his father's murder, and every single death that had piled itself onto his already breaking shoulders. What was the point of pride if no one could see you? What was the point in strength if you had no one to be strong for?
What was the point in living if you had been dead inside for months now?
He wheezed and spluttered out realization and death, each cough bringing handfuls of blood up.
Hacking and hacking, with his hands on the ground red warm liquid came flying out of his mouth. Tears streamed from his eyes but not from grief but from pain and he knew this was the end, that this was his un-heroic death, on the floor of an abandoned kitchen.
And with his last wheezy pant of life, he could swear he saw her face.