This morning, a nasty thought occurred to me. A plot-bunny was born, and from it came this one-shot. This is vaguely connected in my mind to the 'universe' of Between Two Worlds. However, that is only to satisfy my own need for some form of continuity, and for those of you reading that fic, this shouldn't be taken as its ultimate conclusion, this is a stand-alone AU…if that makes any sense. Enjoy.
Only the Dead
Years later, he would try to recall where he had been when it happened. Had it been when he was sitting alone in his apartment, reading from an old and slightly foxed textbook on thaumaturgy? Had it been slightly earlier that night, when a heated discussion between two neighbours had caused him to leave his study to negotiate a cessation of whatever petty squabble the girl from number six and the father from number eight had gotten into?
No, he realised. As much as he, rational in mind, would hate to admit it he knew the exact time. He had looked out of the window onto the darkening city, senses reaching far beyond his mortal sight. He had Looked and seen….emptiness, a blank space where a light had once been. It was a long time before his grieving heart had taken that sign for what it had been; an ominous portent. Long ago he would have dismissed such a thought as fallacious, romanticised interpretation. Now, when the world seemed colder, he gained slight comfort from the thought.
The call had come at ten o'clock, and Bob had picked up the telephone to hear the harried, muffled voice of Lieutenant Kirmani, distorted by static but his distress clear. He had said something of an apology that Murphy "couldn't" be the one to phone him. That alone should have raised his suspicions, but the rest of the one-sided conversation was short. Bob heard only words like 'Harry', 'hurt…bad' and 'hospital'. It was at that point that Bob had simply hung up. He had heard enough for fear and panic to overcome him. Not that anyone watching him then would have realised this, as with surprising swiftness he crossed the room, removed his coat from its hook, and for a moment stood in the centre of the room. After a moment, he simply vanished, leaving the dark apartment in silence.
He arrived too late. A late arrival to a party already in mourning. Bob met Kirmani at the entrance to the emergency room, but eschewed the man's hesitant words of sympathy and remorse. What had he to apologise for? He had not been the ones Harry had gone after, a couple of ignorant criminals dealing in magic they did not understand. He had not been the one who had, at the last possible moment, turned from the metaphysical to the horrifically real, and turned his gun on the wizard who had been rendered too weak to defend himself.
He had stood in the morgue in silence. The cold, sterile room felt oddly fitting for he could feel nothing but numbness. Not here and now, when his friend lay dead before him. Friendship. It was a suitable description for the relationship between Bob and his young student. Yes, in the eyes of the aged sorcerer, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden was still young. Too young for death and the end of a life which had came close to true happiness but had experienced it all too briefly. The silence was broken by a sigh, a stilted sound as Bob reached down and placed a hand upon Harry's cheek, relishing the touch as the physical contact communicated more than he had had the time to say. Perhaps more than he ever would have voiced aloud: friendship, loyalty and love, all indeterminate and unending. Some other wizard would have left it there, would have rationalised away the loss with empty words of 'humanity' and 'nature'. But Hrothbert of Bainbridge was not such a wizard.
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The police had investigated, of course. They had searched for the killer and his companion, some energy – provided perhaps by a grieving Murphy and her partner – driving the city's officers to find the murderer of an innocent man. A good man, Murphy had claimed at Dresden's funeral. The one who, above all the few people in that cemetery, knew it to be true had stood and said nothing. He thought: who would believe it, after all? That Harry Dresden, the wizard of Chicago had saved the life – literally and otherwise – of a man all others had condemned for centuries. This truth, amongst others, would live on in its own way and would not be forgotten. What had been forgotten was the disappearance of certain items. The misplacement of evidence, simply bits of blood-stained clothing, was put down to the clumsiness of someone in forensics.
Not enough to be significant, not even when the case could not be closed and was eventually left behind except for Murphy's burning determination to solve the murder of her friend, even as her hope waned. So came as a surprise the night she got a call from an officer who had happened to answer a call to an apartment block. Two bodies had been found, of the men wanted for the murder of one Harry Dresden. A cleaner had phoned the police in a panic. Two men, in a room no different from any other in the building. They lay upon the floor, dead with eyes wide as though staring into some terrifying abyss. No marks blemished their cold skin, no wounds cut their flesh. The police arrived at the scene, and found….nothing. No sign of forced entry or a struggle. Only the dead, silent, cold and alone.
In front of the apartment block were a couple of police cars, officers attempting to hold back the growing group of the panicked and the morbidly fascinated; crime provided fine gossip. Few noticed the man, white-haired and dressed in black, standing in the darkened alleyway opposite the building. Had any of the crowd looked, they would have seen no expression of shock or disgust upon his lined face. His pale eyes gazed grimly upon the scene, betraying no emotion.
Early the following morning, with the sun barely up, a group of students passed through the cemetery. They took the path through as a shortcut, paying no heed to the graves. Some were overgrown with weeds, others neatly tended and bright with the flowers left by the bereaved. They missed also the man standing alone amongst the rows of tombs and gravestones. Hrothbert had learnt long ago that death could not be avoided, but only delayed. It came in many forms, from the death that had taken his friend Harry Dresden, to the deaths he had dealt without remorse to the man's killers. It was of no consequence, for nothing that lived would endure eternally. All would fade to dust, and ash, and be forgotten. Around the dead and the dying, the world moved on uncaring. The last of the students left Bob alone with his thoughts. The gate clanged shut behind them as they moved on into the wakening city. Only the dead remained.
The End