If tomorrow starts without me, and I'm not there to see,
If the sun should rise and find your eyes all filled with tears for me;
I wish so much you wouldn't cry the way you did today,
while thinking of the many things we didn't get to say.
- Attributed to David Romano -
It's almost an accident, at first. No one means for it to turn into this, no one meant for it to go this far.
A harmless magic trick.
That's all it took. One young wizard, showing off, turning an apple purple to impress his new friends.
That's all it took to plunge the world into another war.
It's different this time though. They said, didn't they, way back during the Cold War, that when World War Three came it would be the war to end all wars.
They were very nearly right.
It wasn't the war to end all wars, because at the end of this war there would no longer be a world. There would no longer be one side against the other; there would no longer be people to fight against people.
There would only be the survivors.
They don't know, don't understand, or maybe they're just too stupid to realise what they're getting themselves into, what is going to happen if they carry on. It's MAD they say, those politicians, sitting in a big white house, sitting behind a glossy black door, it's MAD because each side could easily overpower the other, one side has magic, the other has bombs. Big, scary, apocalypse style bombs.
If they knew it was mad, Alex thought, why did they do it? Why did they carry on if they knew what they were unleashing was going to be so crazy?
But then it was explained to her.
MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
No matter what happened, both sides would lose.
She's not sure how long it goes on, this tense standoff, waiting for one side or the other to strike. She'd like to say she stays entirely unaffected by it, remains her usual self, but she knows she would be lying. It's like a fuse that's been lit, you know that it's going to blow, you just don't know when.
They try to carry life on as normal, they open the Substation, they go to school, but they're the outsiders now, the ones that no one will talk to, the ones shunned in the hallways.
They retreat into themselves; they try to avoid drawing attention to the family. They live quietly, using magic as discretely as possible. They don't want to shorten the fuse at all; they want to keep it as long as possible. Neither side want the war to break out, but they know that now, nothing will stop it.
And one day, it will inevitably happen.
The war will begin.
It's hard to say what starts the actual war, what starts the bombs, the curse spells, it just happens. One day Alex wakes up, looks out of her window, and knows that it's all over. The war has begun, and life is never going to be the same again.
Her first thought is to run, to get the hell out of New York, find somewhere safe.
But then she remembers.
Nowhere is safe.
She creeps out of bed, and inches her door open, terrified about what she may find awaiting her. She's so full of dread, she's convinced herself that something dreadful has happened whilst she slept that it's actually a shock when she opens her door and finds the house as normal. She blinks several times, rubbing at her eyes, almost unable to believe that everything looks fine.
Sure, if she opens the curtains she will see the devastation, and if she listens closely she can hear the bangs of the bombs and the whistles of the curse spells, but her house is like a little oasis of peace. She creeps through into her parents' room, unable to shake off the feeling of unease. Her parents are sleeping peacefully though, and she decides not to wake them, she wants them to have a few more hours before their lives go crazy.
She cautiously pushes open Max's door, seeing him huddled on the windowsill, staring out at the city with a horrified look on his face. She slides in behind him, and pulls him close, resting her chin on his head, comforting herself as well as Max with the contact. Together they look out over the bleak landscape that was once New York City. Skyscrapers had been felled like trees, and there are craters where bombs had been dropped on supposed "wizarding hotspots."
She can see the wizards, standing on the roofs of the buildings that remain, the sparks shooting out of their wands as they cast their spells. She watches in disbelief as a wizard brings a charter plane down, the wings screaming in protest as the pilot desperately tries to stop the descent, but human technology is useless against the wizard's spell.
Alex realises with a sickening feeling that this is it. This is the last day.
The door creaks open again and she tenses, spinning her head around, wishing that she'd had the sense to bring her wand.
She lets out an audible sigh of relief when she realises that it's only Justin. He too comes and embraces his siblings, and instead of throwing him off like she normally would, Alex leans into the contact, gaining some comfort from it. Max lets out a whimper as he sees a bomb fall where Wiz Tech stood, and Alex realises that she's never heard anything so heartbreaking in her whole life. It's not a whimper of sorrow or anger; it's a whimper of defeat.
Later on she'll realise that that was the moment her whole life changed, watching the bomb fall on Wiz Tech, hearing her father's exclamation of horror as he woke up and saw the devastation. She hears, rather than sees, him run out of the door, and then she sees him standing in the street, her mother running out moments later, pleading, begging him to go back inside.
And then she watches in horror as a gunman appears and shoots them both. Point-blank range, straight in the heart.
They're dead.
She feels Justin push her and Max off the window, feels him drag her under the bed, but she doesn't, can't, process any of it. She feels Justin's arms go back around her and Max, she feels Max shaking with sobs of fear and sorrow, but she's numb.
She can't breathe, her breaths coming in shallow and fast, panicky. She can feel someone rubbing soothing circles on her back, but she ignores them, focusing on returning her breathing to normal. She puts her head between her knees, pushing off Justin's arms and focusing on keeping the breaths coming.
In and out, in and out.
When she finally looks up she sees Max crying, his face red and puffy from the tears. She snakes her arms around him, drawing him close and then leaning back into Justin. She closes her eyes, tries to go back to sleep, hoping that maybe this is just a nightmare, but she feels Justin shaking her, refusing to let her drift off.
"Alex," he hisses, "Alex, get up. We need to get out of here."
She gets up, reluctantly, letting him lead her back into her room. He grabs a bag and thrusts it at her, before going back to Max's room. She stares at it, not understanding why he's given it to her, before she realises.
They're packing.
Hurriedly she throws in the few essentials, and the things she can't live without. She grabs her wand and sticks it down her shirt, hoping no one will think to look for it there.
She creeps down the stairs slowly, and into the den, where she is sure that Justin and Max will be. She sees Justin throwing books haphazardly into a bag already overflowing. He turns around and sees her standing there.
"Come on," he says, grabbing hold of her and Max's hands, "We need to go."
She's not sure where it is they go first, she just remembers driving and driving, the loss of their parents and the outbreak of war causing the siblings not to argue on a road trip for the first time in their lives.
Justin drives, Alex riding shotgun beside him, her face devoid of emotion. Max is curled up in a ball on the backseat, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. They can't draw attention to themselves; they can't give anybody any reason to stop them, to hurt them, to kill them.
Alex has lost track of where they are, she stopped concentrating when they hit Ohio. She knows that they left Ohio behind a long time ago now, but she doesn't have the will to try and concentrate on where they are. She thinks they must be somewhere in the South, judging by the landscape, but she can't be bothered to lift her head and look at the road signs.
Finally, after what feels like months but in reality was less than a day, Justin stops outside a small hotel. Alex steps out of the car, unsure, her foot hitting dry, sun baked ground. She looks around and sees that they're in a village; a tiny one: a few houses, a gas station and the hotel are all that the village consists of.
"Where are we?" she asks, twisting around to look at Justin.
"Texas," he replies "I just drove until I found a village small enough and far enough away from major cities not to be bothered with. We're evacuating ourselves."
Alex has heard stories of evacuees, seen camps on television, kids from Darfur wandering around beside green tents with that hungry look in their eyes, not hunger, desperation. This seems a world away but all too similar, the great American desert in exchange for the African, a wizarding war instead of political upheaval, genocide all the same. She wonders if the passers by see that hunger in their eyes, the tell take sign that they too are more desperate than she could ever have imagined. Bitterly, selfishly, she thinks that at least those children had a camp, some kind of kin, all there is for her are her two brothers and what little money she had foresight to bring.
They check into a motel, telling the girl they'll be staying for one night. When they reach the room they pull the curtains closed, and all tumble into one bed, hugging each other close, gaining some comfort from the fact that they are still together, still alive.
But they know that it can only last so long.
Alex wakes up the next morning, disentangling herself from the sheets and standing up. She stretches, and walks quietly through to the bathroom. Twenty four hours. That's how long it's been since her parents were killed, yet it feels like it was several lifetimes ago.
She's quick in the shower, but rigorous, scrubbing off the dirt, the pain of the road. It isn't so bad she tells herself, lying, they'll get through this. Justin, she knows will want to get on the road again, go further, faster, as if that would help, if they can find them here, in this godforsaken town then they can find them anywhere.
She unlocks the door to find Justin still in bed, finally looking peaceful. She smiles, squints and she can almost pretend that they're back at home. Calmed a little, she turns to mirror to dry her hair. The reflection catches her unawares and soon all the calm is gone.
Max isn't there.
She drops the hairdryer, slides down the wall onto the floor, this can't be happening, to lose her parents and Max in one day? Not possible. Justin jerks up at hearing her slump to the ground and the hairdryer thud against the bed, seeing her slumped against the wall, her knees drawn up against her chest, tears streaking new marks down her face. He folds his arms around her, shushing her, soothing her.
He doesn't understand.
"Max," she chokes out, through her tears, "he's gone."
Justin tightens his grip on her, looking around fearfully, almost as if he is afraid that somebody's going to appear in the room. He rocks her from side to side, brushing her tears away with the pads of his thumbs.
"I'm sure he's gone out to get coffee or something" says Justin, voice as even as it can be.
Alex nods "must be."
They get up off the floor and get dressed. Max wouldn't just disappear. He's going to come back, soon. Still, when the hour hand on the clock moves past three it becomes clear he hasn't gone for breakfast. They ask the girl at the desk if she's seen him.
She's nice, even as she smacks gum. But she hasn't seen him since the night before.
They nod, tell her thank you, keep an eye out okay? Tell him we're looking for him.
They leave a number with the girl. Tell her, if you see him, make sure he gives us a call, going to head out of town for business. She raises an eyebrow
"You wanna call the cops or something?"
"No" they say "no cops, he'll find us just fine."
"Okay," she says, drawling, smacking her gum "if you're sure."
They smile, then they leave.
Justin keeps driving, and Alex keeps crying, on an endless loop, hour after hour, day after day. There's a new small town every day, each smaller than the last, a new motel, a new nameless girl at the desk. They never stop, they're not being chased but they're still running, running from life, from war. They drive through the outskirts of Seattle one day (they've been avoiding the cities, but they're curious, they want to know what's happened to the world) and see buildings felled, the entire city turned into a heap of rubble. Yet the bombs are still raining down on the city; the sparks from wands are still sending showers of light across the night sky.
Justin cries that night too, the two of them curled up together on the balcony outside their room, gaining every inch of comfort from the other as they can. They're too young, too innocent to have seen such things but they have. The war has cost them their families, their childhoods, their innocence. Alex rests her head on her brother's shoulder, unable to cry anymore because all her grief has been used up.
Somewhere in the distance the sun sets, and another day ends.
beta'd by the wonderful augustmonsoon, this story wouldn't be the same without her.
I'd love some reviews, but favourites and alerts are just as nice ;)
Can I get 5 reviews before the next update, maybe, please?