Warnings: Character death. Um. Snape/Ginny, if that requires another warning.
welcome to the fallout.
"Don't fucking touch me," she whispers, the syllables getting lost in the rustle of autumn leaves. The tree they stand beneath displays brilliant red and orange splashes of colour.
He sneers. "It's not as though I plan to sully you." (It's not as though you haven't already.)
"Let me have my vanity," she says, and turns a hard stare on him.
(She had been quiet the first few years. Reserved, even. Six years of silence about her descent into hell provided her with a wall, and you want that wall to crumble and fall, you want her blood to rush to her face, and you want to--)
"We're not allowed to have vanity. We're at war."
Ginny casts a glance down the hill to the battlefield below.
"A war," she says with jaded tones beyond her years, "that will soon be over."
An all-out battle rages. They both know it's the last, everyone on the field knows they will live or die depending on the outcome of this battle. Gashes of colour tear the air, but all stop dead when they hit the dome enclosing Potter and Voldemort.
"He's on his own now," she says, as though reading his mind.
Severus knows she's right, so he doesn't know why he says, "He's always been on his own." Perhaps because, in some way, he knows it's true.
He hears her straighten away from the trunk and she takes a step toward him. She places her hand on his arm, directly over his own brand. Her touch feels like a baby's breath, a sweet release in a desperate time.
"I thought you didn't want me to touch you," he mutters, eyes transfixed on her hand. Nails bitten to the bloody quick, fingers long and slender.
"You're not, are you," she says, and it's not a question.
(Her hands are cold on you, pushing your robe up and spreading ice across your flesh.)
"It'll have to stop, you know," he tells her, and she nods.
She pauses, looking contemplatively at the field below. "It never should have begun, don't you think?"
Severus doesn't answer, because it appears that her hands have disappeared and he can feel her working slowly.
(She wraps her fingers around you and it's officially pure ice flooding from that touch. She's so cold.)
"That doesn't," he gasps, "seem to have stopped us."
She looks up at him, eyes big and empty. "There is no 'us,' Severus."
(She pulls harder, faster, and if you had any control, you'd have told her to stop, but you don't and she doesn't, and everything is going faster faster faster, where do you stop, does it matter anymore, no it doesn't nothing matters but this climb, this excruciating climb.)
His eyes are glassy, but he locks gazes with her and watches as she tugs and pulls, watches the rapt fascination on her face. It's funny, this, that even now she is able to sell herself as an innocent. He knows her innocence fell away in coats, the first shedding when she saw her brother killed before her eyes, another when her boyfriend came to her with a dismembered arm, and the last when she murdered her first man.
"He's not going to make it," she remarks, breaking the connection and looking down again.
At this moment in time, Severus does not comprehend, nor does he care.
(Nothing matters, nothing matters, except that peak and that rushing fall, feeling the wind gust past you as your feet never leave the ground, that you could reach if only she would if only she if only if—yes.)
There's a flash of green light, brighter than anything either has ever seen before, and it's stronger, harsher than any Killing Curse they've cast or dodged or witnessed.
Temporarily blinded, Severus blinks several times to bring the world back into focus. Ginny tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Well, I guess that's it, then."
Her eyes glint with intent, but what that intent is, Severus can only guess. She stands on tiptoe and kisses him once on the lips.
"I'll see you around."
As she walks away, her outline fades into the mist until she's just a silhouette, a black figure, and when Severus looks down at the fallen hero below, he fears that's what she's going to become.
He starts after her, intending to tell her that giving herself to them isn't worth it. But he turns back, to take one last look, and the wind blows the leaves from side to side. The red and orange and blood and copper swirl together, and it looks like fire.
And even though Severus never really believed in God, he takes the name in anger as he turns around and realises that nothing he does can save her now.
-fin-