The Keeper
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: Gellert Grindelwald / Albus Dumbledore
Rating: R
Words: ~1,300
Warnings: mind control, violence, (abstract) horror, character death
Summary: In one moment, Gellert's lips are on his temple, and the next moment they are gone. "Hush now, Albus. Stop murdering."
A/N: This was written for livejournal Darkfest 2010. The prompt was an "AU in which Grindelwald won". I hope this works for everyone who choses to read!
***
The Keeper
"Your secret is safe with me."
The words echo, then die; the truth within is magnificent. Nothing has ever been so white, and Albus has to squint to keep out the whiteness. A hand reaches out to touch him, but never does.
Everything is so white.
"Albus. You know that this is no dream, don't you?"
No dream. But what else could it be?
Eventually, there is skin upon his, and it burns familiarly, burns a hole where he used to be.
"Albus."
He looks up and finds Gellert's eyes, looking just like they looked all his life. They aren't piercing, but bright with childlike anticipation. His face is lit up as though it is young again, and he smiles brilliantly. Their skin still touches, an endless fire.
You must be a dream. Otherwise I would have tried to kill you mere moments ago.
Gellert's smile widens. The air is chilled and everything holding its breath.
"Oh you did, Albus. You tried to kill me, and it hurts." He tilts his head. "But I disarmed you first."
Albus feels his eyes blink lazily, almost involuntarily. This explains why his hand feels emptier than it ever has: he's wandless.
"Gellert..." Gellert! I don't know what happened!
"I'm sorry, Albus", Gellert says, nodding. "I knew you would ask."
His voice seems to grow more quiet with the moment, until Albus realizes that it actually fades. A scentless fog rises fast and thickly around them now, shuts out sound and sight. Greedily, it crawls into wherever his face is open, and soon Albus feels his head fill with a whiteness that compares to the outside one. As if a pensieve had been spilt inside his brain, they cloud with floating brightness.
"Albus... Albus, my love."
The words reach his conscience, but cannot stay. Albus is too focused on an unexpected black jaw opening in front of him, disembodied and beyond any reason. He watches with strange curiosity as it opens, and closes, then dissolves into an infinite sea.
"Albus, look at me."
He looks at Gellert, who is standing at the sea's heart.
Come back, come out, now! Or it will devour you!
"It has devoured me already." Gellert's voice is calm and hardly the sound of a dying man. "I'm going to a place you can't follow. You must understand."
The jaws have gone, the water dissipates, only to rush back in as an army of wild horses. They make no sound, no sound at all, and this is more unsettling than any threat of thunder.
Why?
"Why, Albus? Because you are―"
A murderer. The memory is clear, finally; the fog allows the pictures to arise, gain contour, and tell their story over and over again. Albus witnesses, in flawless clarity, as he takes his younger sister's life, then escapes a place called home never to return. His hand is clutching the Elder Wand; the prize their pain won him. His memory self is panting as he's running.
I... don't understand.
Gellert steps from the blackness, his legs a set of burnt branches. "No one did, Albus. No one knows why you killed her, but you see why I had to act. We had a dream, but it cannot live with one of us a murderer." He heaves a sigh that is loaded with sadness. "The Greater Good can't just vanish. I don't blame you, Albus, for anything; but the authorities would win."
"You... don't blame me?" Albus feels his tongue, thick and disgusting. It fills his entire mouth. He doesn't dare look at Gellert, for he feels so hideous while the man's beauty is radiant like the sun.
"Never. You did it for us."
For us? Who were we, who were they? The words make no sense, especially not amidst all the fog and the dead beast and trees scattered across the desert. Beast, desert? Albus can't remember coming here, neither deciding nor contradicting. He can't remember any of it, but the red sky looks like a wound that's been bleeding for too long to be a surprise.
Is this a dream?
The stench of burning flesh rises to his nose, and Albus notices too late that his own hands are on fire. He looks down to see his body melt away into nothingness, he feels no pain and can't even scream. All he does is watch himself disappear without a trace, sand in his eyes.
"No, Albus. This is your reality. This is what you have become. It is... how to put this? Your future."
A flash of white turns gold. Just when Albus thinks it is the sun, come down to blind him, he realises it's Gellert's hair, and he reaches out to touch it. The fire has stopped feasting, no ashes left as proof. Gellert's hair is soft between his fingers, and he remembers burying his face in it when they fucked, centuries ago.
He wants to love him again, but it's become so hard. He wants to take his life now.
In one moment, Gellert's lips are on his temple, and the next moment they are gone. "Hush now, Albus. Stop murdering."
It's nothing I chose, it's who I am, and you know it.
The words are strange even within his own brain cells. Albus wonders whether someone else might be sitting within his body, right next to him, doing the thinking; he has to stop the thought. It hurts like salty water entering through his nose, and breathe is all he wants. Albus claws, but doesn't reach; he inhales instead.
Nothing is there, nothing at all. Not even white, or black, or the ashes from an all-consuming fire. The earth has gone entirely still with no trace of life. Albus wonders who it might have been that swallowed everything between their giant pair of jaws, but the answer is nowhere to be found.
"Gellert?" He has his voice back, but there is no one to acknowledge it.
Only when the sky approaches him, Albus realizes that death is merely part of it. Whatever is about to happen is beyond anything the word "end" could imply, and he puts the leftovers of his hand deep into sand and stone to remain rooted for a little longer.
"Albus." Who is it speaking? He hardly recognizes the voice, and that when it meant so much to him for a lifetime.
"Albus."
"Albus."
"Your secret."
"Your secret is safe with me."
Something is throbbing beneath his skin; it needs to get out, or else it will eat the tissue. Albus feels the long-treasured sob rip itself from his throat and disintegrate in the chill of twilight. Eternal twilight, for neither night nor day can ever come again.
"You were too hungry for power, Albus. I forgive you, but remember that no one else will."
His knuckles are on fire. Gellert is a dream now, or has he never been anything else? The sky is so close Albus can almost touch it, but he doesn't try. He wouldn't have asked for their forgiveness, he wouldn't have.
I remember.
Just when he thinks he's alone, the voice addresses him again.
"Albus... why did you do it?"
Now, now the surfaces pass the turning point.
"Why did you want to see our world fall? It's all we have, and you tried to take it from us."
Any moment, they crash―a beautiful firework.
"From me, Albus. You said you loved me, the way I loved you."
It's a memory become the future, and a desert of stone become infinity. Albus doesn't reject the guilt, but he can't help the smile slowly creeping across his worn features. However fleeting, by far this is the most profound truth Gellert ever shared with him, and it is the farthest they can go before it's over.
***