Hallucinogenic Toreador by antijuicy
Rating: M (mainly for language)
Summary: But nothing isn't enough. Not when he's sitting in his sanitized hospital bed. Not when he's about to die. And not when his best friend hasn't seen him for nine years. Ron Weasley reminisces about sunflowers and heart disease.
Disclaimer: Props to J.K. Rowling for making the characters first. Also, the title's borrowed from a Salvador Dali painting, so props to him too. Oh yeah! And the passage in the last bit that sounds like a Bible passage actually is from the Qur'an.
A/N: Deeply AU, and my first story in about eight months. God, my wrists are aching right now. Un-ergonomically designed keyboards are so not the shizz. Please review, if only for the sake of my wrists.
Written for Eleniel Gilraen—I hope this is the kind of story you wanted. It's my fault if it came out all wrong, and you didn't want a repentedmurderer!Ron. :P
- - - - -
The biggest lie Ron Weasley ever told himself was that he couldn't die.
When you're eighteen and stupid you don't think about death. Death is—well—something that happens to everything. And everyone. Oh yeah, except for you.
When you've never believed in God—never even been inside a fucking church, or a mosque, or a synagogue, or any other place where people bowed down the thing (being?) that they believed in—when your father's a scientific man and says that God's a lie cooked up by dead people in robes who wanted control over alive people who weren't in robes—when he says that because there's no proof that God exists because there isn't any proof—when he says that religion's a waste of time—repeats it every week, every year of your life until it actually becomes something you say too—
Well, then you'd have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that you were going to die.
There is no heaven. There is no afterlife. All you have to look forward to after you die is—
Nothing.
But nothing isn't enough.
You sit in your sanitized hospital bed and think that there's got to be more to dying than worms eating your body. You want to believe so bad that it makes you crazy.
Wrecks your mind.
You spend all of your spare time reading the Qur'an, the Torah, books by Dalai Lamas—the books that nobody's checked out of the hospital library since 1933.
Your dad would be disgusted.
But maybe it doesn't matter if there's no proof that something exists.
Maybe the only thing that matters is that somebody believes it does.
- - - - -
"What do you mean, you're not bloody coming?"
"I'm not, ok? Just—just—it's—"
Silence.
"What? You got cold feet or something?"
"Shit, no! But—Ron, seriously. D'you think this is right?"
"Right? Fucking Harry Potter, hero of the day, worrying about whether something's fucking right! Well, all I know is that there's a Death Eater family trapped in that house. They're like cockroaches in a roach motel. And if you're not going in there with me I'm—I'm—" Swallow. "I'm never going to speak to you again."
Heavy breathing.
"Ron? You sure you're ok? Because I kind of don't get what you just said. I think you just said that if I'm not going to follow you into that shack to kill people you're not—you're not going to—" He gives up. "Yeah. What you said."
"But they're not people."
"Look at these photographs, Ron! Three kids. One that's not even eight years old. Do they have green skin? Do they have little antennas sprouting from their heads? Do they have human parents? Yes, Ron. They do. So they're human. I'm not going to run in there and kill a two-year-old just because the Minister of Magic said that it's ok."
"I don't think you've looked at the casualty list, Harry. The parents killed thirty people. Twenty of them were muggles, didn't even have a clue why they had to die. And the two-year-old kid. He's got a pretty long list, too, for someone who's only been here for twenty-four months."
"That's not the fucking point!"
"These Paddocks—they're murderers, Harry. And look. I'm—we're—going to be doing them a favor. Fuck. The whole village knows about them by now. Why else would they be barricaded in that shitty excuse for a house? They're afraid to go out. I've watched the house for a while. Rats that go in don't come back out again. They're living on mice and bugs. Pretty soon even the mice and bugs'll be too smart to go near that place, and they'll either have to eat each other or come out. And you know what the villagers'll do to them if they do. It's a prettier end."
Pause. Sigh. "You really do think that I'll be coming with you, don't you, Ron."
Glare. "Yeah."
Silence.
"It's because of your parents, isn't it. Your family."
Silence.
"The way that they got killed. Ron, I know it was ugly. The Burrow. The—the redness. I saw it too. I—" Swallow. "I saw it too. I'm—I'm trying to understand. I think I know how you feel. About—how your family died. But—but it's so hard. I can see why you'd want to go on a killing spree. But this hate thing—it isn't pretty."
"Well, you're Harry Potter. How the fuck would you understand?" He bit his lip. "You've never even had a family—"
- - - - -
It was half an hour later.
He was walking towards the shack.
The crickets were chirping next to his ear.
The sky was purple-red.
His nose was bloody, and both of his eyes were bruised.
The fireflies were out. It was a magical evening.
He felt like shit as he pulled his wand from his pocket.
Another half an hour later it was over.
- - - - -
The first time he was actually really jealous of him was when he first sawy him kissing his sister.
Not that he was an incest person (Ew! Just ew). But he'd stood by and looked on, and it hadn't seemed fair. Harry had everything. He was the fucking Golden Boy, the fucking poster fucking kid for every fucking noble deed in the fucking universe. People'd bow down and worship him, actually come up to him in bars and ask him for an autograph in the days that they sneaked out under his cloak to Hogsmeade to get drunk, just because he had a scar on his head.
And it didn't matter that he didn't want the scar, not really. Because that just made it worse. He didn't want it, why not give it to someone who
(wanted)
deserved it more?
He was a kid that everyone loved to love, (except for the bad bad Death Eaters, but that's ok because everyone knows that they're bad and therefore not human) that everyone fell over on their stomachs to just to be able to talk to.
And there he was kissing his little sister.
He had everything.
It hadn't seemed right.
- - - - -
His own death didn't even have the decency to be glamorous.
It wasn't even a curse, or a deadly potion that his worst enemy had slipped him, which would kill him within two weeks.
No.
It was heart disease.
- - - - -
The last time he saw Hermione, she was working as a school janitor in France.
She told him how she felt so much satisfaction making the building a safe learning environment for young growing minds. Some kind of shit like that. And in her eyes he could see her filthy flat that she shared with a junkie prostitute and the non-hope that was killing her.
She said it was only for a little bit, until she'd gotten enough money to get into a decent uni.
Yes, really.
He picked up a check that was lying around in her house, and by the salary that she was getting she'd be able to get into a decent uni in approximately fifty-seven years.
He knew that the kids barely saw her, that they teased her for her English-accented French.
He knew that the uniform made sweat stains the size of frying pans underneath her arms and that she couldn't buy deodorant because she was saving up. For uni, she said.
Constantly.
He knew that her supervisor had gender issues and only promoted lady janitors that had big tits. Admittedly janitors could only get promoted to janitor managers and that the only difference was a decimal point in pay, but still.
He knew that if only there hadn't been huge anti-muggleborn riots in England she would've been able to get a job there that paid her ten times what she got in France.
He didn't get it.
"How could you work like this? Work like a fucking machine? For university? For a lame-ass job? Are you doing this to listen to the radio? So you can watch TV and buy a sofa like a grown-up?"
And she looked at him with sad, sad eyes and a happy mannequin's smile and told him that everything was ok, that she was going to make everything ok for herself and not to worry about her, like she was his fucking mother when she had a cold, and he didn't ask her any more because she was just too fucking sad.
He learned when she came back to England, eight years later, that she'd been sending money to the working-class muggle family that had taken in Terry Paddock, the five-year old that he'd nearly killed. And whose whole immediate family he himself had exterminated.
- - - - -
The last time he saw Harry was in a photograph on the front page of some gossipzine.
He was smiling like a fucking maniac, waving his hand at about the same speed as a hummingbird's wing. Oh, the paparazzi! Mi amore!
Fuck.
That was three days after the day that he'd found out about his—well—heart disease. But he feels uncomfortable calling it heart disease, so he's calling it My Little Problem because he's a lame-ass coward.
He hadn't seen Harry in person since the night he went all insane and murdered the Paddocks.
And since then he's been thinking this whenever Harry Potter comes up in his mind. His little mantra.
Potter might have cold feet but he keeps his promises. Potter might have cold feet but he keeps his promises.
According to some of his ex-girlfriends, he even says it in his sleep. And when he's drunk. The entire clientele of his favorite bar knows it now.
- - - - -
He'd only thought it'd been a mild chest cough thing.
"Ex—excuse me? D'you mind repeating…"
"It's heart disease, Mr. Weasley. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I'm afraid you're going to have to reside in the hospital for some time. We'll have to work on finding the best treatment." His doctor, Trevor M. I. Kiefer but Trevor because he's modern, ruffles his papers, adjusts his glasses and looks at him. He puts on a sympathetic frown. It's fucking stapled to his face. He probably learned it at a class in med school.
Calming Distressed Patients Just Informed of Their Demise 101.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley."
The second biggest lie Ron Weasley'd told himself was that the word sorry could make everything ok.
- - - - -
He nearly saw the kid he nearly killed.
He'd asked Hermione for the address, and she gave it to him. Right away. No what are you going to do with it?s, or, are you going to—you know him?s. That made him feel good. Like, you know? Not everyone believes he's a homicidal maniac who's still out to get someone, who still lives with the same ideals and ideas and shit that belonged to when he was eighteen.
It felt good.
The house was quite small.
He dressed up as a salesman. Suit, sky blue tie. He armed himself with encyclopedias. He was planning to talk himself into the house with some crap about how encyclopedias were necessary for your child's proper educational development and ask to see their son.
He'd thought it was quite a good plan.
It was only when he had his hand hovering above the rusty doorbell when he realized that he wasn't supposed to know that they had a son.
And then he pressed the doorbell.
When he heard footsteps coming towards the door he just freaked—dropped all those encyclopedias and ran and ran and ran until he reached his flat.
And when he did he tore off his suit and tie and kind of stuck his head under the pillow.
He'd be ashamed to tell you that he cried, because, you know, men don't do that kind of shit. And underneath all that self-loathing he's been carrying for years and years he still has his ego. So he didn't cry.
No, he didn't cry into his mattress until it was soaked, until he'd used a whole roll of toilet paper to mop everything up, and then he didn't cry again the next day when he saw the sun outside his window and saw his abandoned suit and tie.
He just didn't.
- - - - -
They don't tell you how to react when you don't know it's the last time you're going to see your dad, and your dad is a red splatter on the wall.
His face tried the Horrified Diva. Then the Horrified Diva morphed into the Pale Ghost of Shock and Terror. That didn't fit, either. So he just settled for Dazed and Confused.
This person. He changes your nappies, buys you your favorite Quidditch team's shirts, tries too hard to talk to you about teenager problems, like he's learned how to do it from a manual. And then you're told that he's dead, he's…this…thing. That nobody talks much about and everyone tries to comfort him about. But nobody talks about him, as in the dad who used to spill tomato soup all over his clean white blouse, or picked a fight with Draco Mafoy's dad because he insulted his family. They talk about the Dad Who Would Have Wanted and the Dad Who Always Understood, but the other dad, the dad that was there and then not there post-smear, that dad's just…gone. Gone to another place. And nobody really understands.
And now he's just this smear on the wall.
He did wonder whether it was real. Sometimes, he's see this redheaded middle-aged balding guy on the bus, or on the street, and he'd get off at his stop, or run to catch up with him because it might be him, it just might be Dad, and he'd turn around and yay! he'd see his smiling face again, that shy-dad grin that turned the corners of his eyes into a diagram of a ninety degree angle divided into five degree angles, and he'd be There again. And everyone would understand again, and he could talk about him again, the dad who used to spill (spills!) tomato soup all over his nice clean blouse.
And the Dad Who Would Have Wanted would never come back. And everything would end Happily Ever After.
But he'd tap the guy on the shoulder and it wouldn't be his dad. And he'd say "Sorry, I thought you were someone else" and kind of briskly turn and walk away, more to hide the fact that his face was scrunched up in the expression of a person trying not to cry than to hide any kind of embarrassment.
- - - - -
People send him flowers. Dahlias. Geraniums. Orchids. But nobody sends him sunflowers.
He never told anyone that sunflowers were his favorite flower. Hermione was always too grossed-out about them, and he had the feeling that talking about them to her would be like asking…like asking…like asking someone to do something that they were totally not in the mood to.
He liked the way they were constant, and seemed to move in packs. He liked the way they were summer-yellow. He even liked the creepy feeling you got when you saw them in huge, huge masses and they were all looking the same way. He thought this gave sunflowers personality.
Oh, yeah. He did tell someone that sunflowers were his favorite flower.
He told Harry, but Harry sending him sunflowers, even right now, would be very unlikely.
Harry hasn't talked to him for nine years.
- - - - -
The operations failed. All eight of them. By the eighth one the money his family left him in the vault had dried out, and he didn't want to ask for charity. He knew Hermione would've given him every penny she owned.
"I don't care. This is your life, Ron. You're going to die if you don't get this surgery right—and I'm not going to stand by and watch my best friend die."
"You don't understand. I don't care. I live—I live for nothing, Hermione."
And she'd said, "So you're not going to live for me?"
And he'd screamed and shouted that his chest hurt like hell ohshitohshitohshit. By the time the nurses came Hermione had already been ushered out.
- - - - -
59:24. He is the One GOD; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Glorifying Him is everything in the heavens and the earth. He is the Almighty, Most Wise.
As much as he wants to die he doesn't really. He supposes it's because he's a coward. He'd been a coward as he killed each member of the Paddock family—even while he thought he was doing something for the greater good. He'd been a coward as he put his neck into the noose, put his wand and a gun to his head, looked down at the street from fifty-eight floors of elevation.
He's too tired to be brave.
And the more he reads the less convinced he is that there really is a big bearded man in the sky who'll make the bad things go away and welcome him into heaven.
- - - - -
"…Ron?"
"H—harry?"
Silence.
"I thought you weren't going to come."
"Yeah?"
"Uh-huh."
Silence.
"I've seen you in the…magazines, you know."
"Er, yeah."
"You look very happy."
"Look—Ron—"
"What?"
Deep breath. "I—I'm sorry for all the things that I— you know, did. I was just—a little freaked out about, er, everything. I didn't believe that you could actually—yeah. And—and…"
Silence.
"Yeah."
Silence.
"Ron…?"
Silence. Then,
"If only you knew about this fucking ball-and-chain that's been on my mind. It's been there. For such a fucking long time. And I'm so—so tired. Of it all. I mean, the ball-and-chain. It's there. Whenever I wake up. It's there." Pause. "I was really angry. And psyched-up. And I was eighteen. But it's hard. I can't undo what—what—what I think I did. And it's very—it's really fucking confusing."
Silence.
"How did you know?"
"Hermione called. She was getting worried about you. Eight operation and no results. I've heard it's a slow death. Or a quick one."
"Yeah, like I said. It's hard."
Silence.
"Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"I brought you sunflowers."
- - - - -
The biggest lie Ron Weasley ever told himself was that he couldn't die.
When you're eighteen and stupid you don't think about death. Death is—well—something that happens to everything. And everyone. Oh yeah, except for you.
When you've never believed in God—never even been inside a fucking church, or a mosque, or a synagogue, or any other place where people bowed down the thing (being?) that they believed in—when your father's a scientific man and says that God's a lie cooked up by dead people in robes who wanted control over alive people who weren't in robes—when he says that because there's no proof that God exists because there isn't any proof—when he says that religion's a waste of time—repeats it every week, every year of your life until it actually becomes something you say too—
Well, then you'd have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that you were going to die.
There is no heaven. There is no afterlife. All you have to look forward to after you die is—
Nothing.
And maybe he's being stupid, maybe he's been a really lame-o asshat. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. All he knows is that every day, the blank eyes of Fiona, Rupert, Owen and Arabella Paddock look back at him from dead lightbulbs, his neighbor's feet, flower bulbs, skylights. He relives the realization, again and again, that they really were people. They were murderers, yes. They deserved to be punished. But next time, he's going to leave the punishing to other people. Because he hears the last words of Arabella every day—"Mummy…I see black…" And every day it hurts.
They say, you've got to live with the pain. You've got to keep going. Living, you know?
But he's pretty sure that they've never killed anyone. Easy for them to say.
Now—he really doesn't fucking know. He does know that nothing still isn't enough. But after the sunflowers everything's kind of changed. Harry and Hermione're paying for his ninth operation and he doesn't mind.
All he knows is that there's a small house somewhere. He dropped encyclopedias on its doorstep because he couldn't face his own shittiness. And in it is a thirteen-year-old who's small for his size because Ron Weasley blew away half his body. But he's still living.
He's still out there.
And one day, he's going to go visit him. This time, no encyclopedias, or suits or ties. Just the truth.
He's going to do this.
Someday.
- - - - -
Fin.