decay
i.
He reaches into his bone cage ribs to pry out his heart and holds it out to her, beating wild and bloody in his hands. There is a gaping hole deep within him, expanding from his chest deep into his brain and out of his eyes. She leaves the hole to gape as she stares and stares and stares.
The ground hurts his bruised knee as he kneels but he loves her, he loves her, he loves her – and love is far more painful. He proposes his heart in place of a ring and begins to understand what the sky feels like when it's falling as he waits and waits and waits.
His lungs are filled with lead as he tries to breathe poison. This moment is lasting forever. His heart is heavy in his battle-scarred hands and he is so so fragile beneath her gaze because she has the power to break him and she doesn't even know. She doesn't understand that the sun shines in her eyes and the only way to warm him is to place all that he is inside her and stay there forever.
But sometimes the sun hides behind clouds and hearts wither and die like mistreated plants.
I can't, she says, crying.
As his heart falls to the ground, she runs away. His heart pulses and rots and bitterness starts to creep in the gaping hole in his chest and he loves her, he loves her, he loves her.
ii.
The wizards haven't quite got stitches yet and when they sew him up, his insides still bleed out. They find him outside, half insane and half mad and wholly alive, and they send him to the hospital where there's a potion to fix everything. They give him something for the pain while a healer places his rotting heart back into his chest and picks up a needle and thread to piece him back together. He stares at the ugly lines and wonders how it all fits.
He is certain that his heart is not working right. He knows it's supposed to pump blood instead of her words but all he can hear is I can't, I can't, I can't. When he tries to tell the healer, the words freeze in his throat like ice and he chokes.
Pain returns gradually, physical pain that fills up all his crevices and all the gaping holes that can't be fixed with a wand. A single ruby red drop of blood falls from the stitching and he doesn't have to wonder how it all fits – because it doesn't. His skin is bursting from the bitterness and unreturned love and heartbreak and it fills up all the room his organs are supposed to reside in.
They see the blood and they put him to sleep so they can attempt to fix him. He wonders how long it will take them to understand that some things aren't meant to be fixed and that he is one of them.
iii.
Every time he wakes up, his first thought is her, her, her. He lies on the hospital bed, wondering if she's okay, if she's crying over her brother's death, if she thinks about you. It's been a week and his heart is still beating to her rhythm.
He thinks he hates her sometimes, when it rains and he can forget what it was like to look into the – her - sun. He still hears her words with every beat of his broken heart and he hates her, hates her, hates her.
But then sometimes he wakes up to sunshine and sees the bruises that have blossomed on his skin. He is more hurt than angry. He listens to her voice more than her words as they pulse through him and he loves her, loves her, loves her.
All the time, though, he just wishes he could forget her.
iv.
When they release him from their sterile prison, he cannot remember all the shades of red her hair shone in the sun's light. The fresh air smells like decay and the wall of clouds in the sky remind him of all he cannot have and the redheaded male walking beside him is like a mockery of what he truly desires.
Are you okay?, his friend asks.
And all he can think is how hard it is to breathe when you're drowning in memories. He'd defeat Voldemort every day for the rest of eternity just for her to say iloveyou and mean it. Instead, all he has is I can't and poison defeating him.
No, he says.
v.
There's this common misconception that heroes are supposed to get happily ever afters and it's wrong. wrong. wrong. She moves on; he begins to carve his happily ever after into his skin with a blade as a reminder of what he was promised and as the red trickles down his arms and thighs and stomach he sinks into an abyss of darkness with the bitter hope that when he wakes, he will have what he wants.
He never does.
His eyes open to a happily never after. All he has is her name carved into his flesh to scar and be with him forever – Ginny, Ginny, Ginny – because sometimes he starts to forget things like which side of her face dimpled when she smiled and what colour of pink her lips were after he kissed her and what her natural smell was like. He can't remember just bits of her. He has to forget everything or nothing; there is no middle ground.
Time heals all wounds so he makes more and more until he is a grotesque living testament to his love for her. He hides within the walls of 12 Grimmuald Place and becomes a living, breathing ghost.
And despite it all, he loves her.
vi.
Did you ever wonder what it felt like to die, Ginny?, he writes in his suicide note.
I'll tell you.
It was easy compared to loving you.