Disclaimer: Do I give off the impression that I own this series? If so, I'm terribly sorry for misleading you.
Summary: Harry won the battle, but lost the only war that ever mattered. Fifteen years later, he sets out to find absolution. Post-Apocalyptic AU. Inspired by the older Mad Max movies.
Morning in the Land of Nod
Part One: The Wasteland
He stepped over a corpse, long picked clean by the vultures and maggots, and thought three words:
The Wasteland consumes.
It consumed life, love, hopes, dreams, and regurgitated the infinite myriad of human emotions into fine grains of white sand. That was all the Wasteland ever did. It ate, and ate; it never knew anything but hunger.
No one truly knew what happened; the world had ended and they were all still here.
There had been a few frantic years, trying to save something, anything, but soon everything succumbed to the Wasteland. It was a fitting end.
Something snapped under his boots, and he grimaced at the sight of a child's femur snapped in half. They had called it the Valley of the Bones; now he knew why. Walking sedately and desperately ignoring each snap and crack under his stride, he made his way through the valley, toward a cliffside. Other wanderers had told him that he would find what he was seeking here: a purpose, a dream, a new life.
But as far as the eye could see, there was only death. Death and sand.
A world of fire, and ash.
There was something else, however. Something electric in the air. It was the faint buzzing sound of magic, he knew it. He could hear magic, smell magic, even taste magic. He let out a low grunt. The raiders and looters were never any trouble, but magic? Magic was darkness, magic was danger, magic was the senseless trek into a thousand deaths. He reached to his side, where an old but faithful short-barreled shotgun was holstered, and took comfort in fingering the polished handle.
For a long while, all he heard was the rattle of his gun and the crunch of his footsteps.
And when he came to the cliffside, he wasn't entirely surprised to see an archway lead out of the hot sun into the oppressive dark of a cavern. A rush of cool air hit him upon entering, and the dark cavern immediately brightened as he stepped inside. Lighted by stalactites and stalagmites, he found himself standing high above a grotto of cool, life-giving water, on a stone bridge.
He resisted the urge to simply dive into the water: It might be too shallow, thought a part of him, knowing falling that far would likely kill him, who cares, either way works, thought another. And while the thought of suicide was a constant companion to anyone roaming the Wasteland, he hadn't survived this long by thinking like that.
So he pressed on and reached the other end of the stone bridge, where the murk opened up into a long, dim passage, stacked to the heavens on either side by solid rock. He freed the firearm from its holster, taking care to keep one finger up and off the trigger, and then stalked his way down the corridor. Silence reigned supreme, broken only for the sound of dripping water. The darkness grew and grew, until quite suddenly, a burst of light came some forty paces up ahead, at the end of the long corridor.
He stepped through, and walked into a antechamber that smelled of wet moss and strong incense. The moss made sense, half the rocks in the cavern were overgrown with it, and the incense was soon explained as he came to a landing over crudely fashioned stone steps. Down at the base was a long sanctuary, lit by a row of archaic torches, and a coterie of robed figures knelt at the basin of a shallow pool of water in prayer. At the centre of the manmade pond sat an altar, and next to that, a throne where an old man awaited, infirm and slouched.
The wary drifter stood at the edge of shrine, and looked a while.
"Come closer, my child," a voice soon echoed through the chamber. The robed figures turned back, and all eyes landed on him.
Unsure of what else he could do, he complied, and stepped down the stairs slowly, one hand still clutching the handle of his weapon. One of the robed figures rushed toward him and when he reached the base of the stairs, she stood in front of him with outstretched arms:
"There will be no weapons before The Prophet, heathen!" she hissed, and produced a sharpened, sculpted stick to his throat. He stepped backward, fingers tightening around the stock.
A chuckle came from the throne. "My dear Adda, if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already. Let him pass, and leave him his weapons. A show of good faith."
Adda clucked her tongue in annoyance, but let him go through. He moved past her like a shadow, but his eyes remained on her long after she was deemed to be no threat. But he slid by her without fuss and soon found his feet had carried him to the throne, a primitive thing fashioned out of the cavern stone and, behind that chair, stood an altar of gold, adorned with the bones of the dead. There was the slow sound of movement, and the one in the throne shifted forward in an ungainly manner, nearly flopping forward to rest his gnarled arms on his thighs.
"Is it done?" the old man asked with a creaking, shuddering voice.
He nodded back, and reached for a sack tied to his waist. Unhooking it from his belt, he stopped by the water's edge, and tossed it over the water to the throne. The old man, also called The Prophet, made a strangled noise caught somewhere between delight at having received what he wanted and disapproval with having it thrown at him. For a man so ancient and sickly, he moved spryly as he untied the sack and unwrapped a severed head from it; a red-eyed, snake-lipped head, bald at the crest, a stump of dried blood and gore at the throat.
"Wonderful," The Prophet sighed, stroking one of the cold cheeks, "beautiful. Have you the rest of him?"
"No," came the reply, his own voice sounded like crinkling old parchment. "The rest of him rots in the wastes."
The Prophet breathed out disapprovingly. "Ah, such a shame. But no matter. The eyes will be more than enough," he relaxed and leaned back into the throne. "How did you do it?"
"It was just as you said: the curse that called the storms weakened him permanently. He was hidden at the stronghold you told me of, but he could do nothing to defend himself when I came."
"You never told me, wanderer, so tell me now, what is your name, that we might drink to it at supper?" The Prophet asked knowingly.
"Ron," he replied; his was face shadowed in the dim light, though his emerald eyes burned brightly.
The Prophet looked amused. "A lie. But a harmless one. You have done me a great service, let alone what you've done for yourself by ending this... this thing," the old man sneered at the head. "What do you seek? If I have the power to will it, I will do my utmost."
"They say you're a seer, that your powers can be called upon at will," the green-eyed man replied, "so tell me a tale."
"Whose tale?"
"My own."
The Prophet laughed gaily. "Are you sure that is what you wish? You've just ridded yourself of one prophecy, and now you wish to saddle yourself with another?"
"Tell me a tale," repeated the green-eyed man.
"As you wish," said The Prophet, and with the claws of his right hand, he opened the one of the lids of the severed head, reached in, grasped something, and tore it out. Without even a second look at the red eye, The Prophet shoved it headlong into his mouth and grinned as he chewed.
The other man sat patiently and waited as The Prophet began to glow, his eyes rolled back into his head, and that electrostatic feel of magic came crackling to life once more within the antechamber:
"A child of darkness, beset on all sides by wickedness, and in the darkness and among the wicked for some time longer yet you will be. You will know pain to the very ends of the earth, to a spring followed by winter, but there is a chance..."
"A chance?" the green-eyed man asked. "A chance for what?"
"Ab...Absolution. Go East. As far east as you can. To a place where The Wastes end, the trees bloom eternal, and water remains. Seek the Queen of Whispers. Along that path, you shall find what you seek."
The green-eyed man eyed the elder man. "East, then."
The glow dissipated and The Prophet nodded. "East. But be wary."
A curious, emerald gaze fell on The Prophet; the wanderer had been in the process of standing up, but stilled at the seer's words. He said nothing; he waited for The Prophet to continue:
"Revenge is cold, and ruthless, and it is coming for you."
The green-eyed man stayed quiet, motionless, and then he swept away quickly, the soles of his boots were oddly silent against the stone floor of the temple.
He didn't stay for supper, instead choosing to cross that valley of dry bones once more, climbing upward and outward until a small black blip appeared on the horizon, just below a fearsome orange sun. Two looters sniffed nearby it; he fired two warning shots into the air. They beat feet toward a mountain in the distance.
Nothing was gone when he arrived; he had been lucky, had he been a few minutes late, the car would have been picked clean. Getting inside, he sat and rested his eyes a moment, and nearly fell asleep.
It was the dreams that woke him, in the end. He dreamed of them every time he closed his eyes. Of the girl with brown hair and the boy with red. He had long since forgotten how many years it had been since he'd last seen them, and realized they had likely long since died, but he still remembered their laughter. He missed them, the girl with her soft, posh giggles and the boy with his loud, boisterous guffaws. But they were naught more than dust and wind, one of the many grains of sand and ash that gusted about listlessly under the hot sun.
The engine rumbled. He had many miles to go.
So he pressed down, and the old girl trundled softly down a dune.
Part Two: By Any Other Name
They called him The Raggedy Man.
He was a passing shadow, a drifter: one of many in the new, wild world. The Raggedy Man in his raggedy car, the squib who hunted down Dark Lords. He drove, crossing dune after dune, from makeshift town to makeshift town, saving the innocent, helping the disenfranchised, finding the lost.
In reality, he was little like the tales, which were a vestige of the days when he still thought the world could be saved. He still traveled, but the lost and hopeless remained lost and hopeless. He kept far away from settlements, only venturing into them when he absolutely needed supplies. And most of all, he avoided people where he could; people were trouble. Like this, he traveled before he met The Prophet, and, like this, he traveled afterward.
For a short time, at least.
A week into his sojourn east, The Raggedy Man drove into a town situated in the basin of what was once the Mediterranean Sea, and stopped at one of the many drive-bars popping up all over what was left of the world. People needed food, needed drink, needed gasoline, but no one was willing to leave a vehicle unattended, not even for a scant minute. The Raggedy Man was no different: all it took was one enterprising thief; losing his car in the new world was like losing a house, a job, and a means of mobility at the same time in the old.
So he drove up, and a girl much too young be working in the hot sun came loping toward his car. "What can I get for you, Mister?" she asked with an accent very much like his own, and as much careless energy someone of her age could possibly muster.
The man didn't immediately respond, staring instead at her strikingly familiar auburn hair and brown eyes hidden underneath a pair of slightly crooked spectacles.
"Mister?" she asked again.
"What have you got?" he asked quickly, a bit too quickly for his liking.
"Water and Meatloaf surprise, everything a growing boy needs!"
"The meatloaf actually beef?" he grunted, and stared at her seriously. The implication was not lost upon the girl:
"What a horrible thing to say!" she gasped and worried her lower lip a moment, before she continued: "We're not like the looters or the corpsers out in The Wasteland, Mister; we serve only good food and clean water, that's our guarantee!"
The Raggedy Man's emerald eyes sparkled with amusement. "Well, I'll take it then."
"You won't be disappointed," the girl beamed widely, "that'll be three rounds please!"
"Rifle?"
"Pistol."
The green-eyed man nodded and reached for his sidearm, an old World War II-era handgun that he popped the magazine out of and removed three bullets. Turning back to the girl, he held out the bullets to her, but she seemed to take notice of something else entirely:
"Are you... are you a wizard, Mister?" she asked, hushed, and with wonder-filled eyes, staring at the wand strapped to the underside of his outstretched arm, which was normally covered by the sleeve of the jacket he wore.
"No," he answered quickly and gave the girl the rounds, not anymore, he finished the sentence silently. The girl's face fell at the news:
"Oh. I'm sorry for... I-I'll just go now," she said, knowing she had hit a sore spot.
He watched on impassively as the girl scampered away, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that he knew her. She couldn't have been more than ten years old; he couldn't place the face, yet he knew her.
It wasn't long before the girl came back, much more subdued now with a plate of meatloaf. Though, to call it meatloaf was a severe overstatement; it was more of a pasty brown mush, unappealing, but undeniably filling. The once lively girl handed off the plate, raked a hand through her curly hair, and bit her lip in contemplation of something. Seeming to think better of it, she made to turn and leave.
"Wait," said the man in the car. The girl stopped, and turned to the man, who unceremoniously dug into the meatloaf:
"Yes, Mister?" she asked.
"What's your name, girl?"
"Erm... it's, erm, Rose. It's Rose," she said, taken aback. Few probably ever stopped to talk to her. People always ordered their food and shooed her away as quickly as possible. In The Wasteland, children were a liability, after all.
The Raggedy Man nodded, and gave her a smile as he took a bite of the loaf. "Pretty name. You... live here?"
"Uh-huh."
"With your parents?"
"No. Well, yes. I mean, I live here. But not with my parents. Why do you want to know?" she asked with a suspicious glance.
So, an orphan, then.
"Relax, sprog. If I wanted to hurt you, you'd be hurt."
"I didn't ask if you wanted to hurt me," the girl returned with a haughty glance, reminding him starkly of another girl he once knew, "I asked why you wanted to know."
"I..." he started, "I don't know. Just curious, I reckon. Don't get a lot of chances to talk to people these days."
Rose gave a lopsided grin. "That's because you're out on the road. There are plenty of people to talk to in towns."
She received a bark of a laugh in response. "I'm not exactly cut out for domestic living."
"That's what they all say. If you stay here for more than a few days, you might think differently."
"If you say so, sprog. If you say so."
He promptly shooed the girl away and made for the edge of town, to gather some food and supplies for the long journey ahead. The town was the only one for miles with a hunter's shop, prepping any and all would-be adventurers for their pilgrimage into wild, cursed lands. They carried knives, guns, gas, even new-formed bullets, not at all like the ones from the old days everyone used for currency.
"What can I do for you, stranger?" asked the man behind the counter.
"Bullets, petrol, a lighter, non-perishable foods," replied The Raggedy Man shortly, keeping an eye on his car outside the dilapidated shop. "Maybe some grog, too" he added quickly.
"All kinds here."
He was in and out quickly, ready for a night's sleep in the car and getting ready for the next leg of his journey east. But, as he drove by the old shack he had stopped at for his lunch, The Raggedy Man heard a commotion behind it. So he stopped his car and stepped out, heading for a back alleyway, where he spotted a woman and two men surrounding a small figure.
It was Rose, the girl he had stopped to talk to. She stood, back against the wall, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Freak!" shouted the older woman. "Whore! Witch!" she was an ugly thing, old and wrinkly, robbed of life and spirit by the world. All that remained was a bitter, vengeful hag, with hair like ash, eyes like the dead, and a voice like a harpy's.
She slapped the girl. The Raggedy Man picked up his pace and un-holstered the revolver at his side.
"You think you can hide among us, but we know better. Your kind destroyed the world! And now you have the gall to come here, to be part of our world!?" Rose jerked back at the spittle and vitriol that flew into her face.
The Raggedy Man pulled back the hammer.
The woman slapped the girl again, and she stumbled back with tears in her eyes.
He fired a warning shot.
The trio whirled around and faced in the direction where the shot had come from. "Hey!" said The Raggedy Man. "Have you a problem with the girl?"
"She's a witch," the woman said haughtily.
"A witch!" agreed one of the men, as though that settled the matter.
The Raggedy Man took aim, and fired once more. This time, the bullet whizzed by the woman's silvery hair, even clipping a few strands. A second shot rang out, nearly in succession, and struck one of the men, a bald-headed and heroin-addled one, in the right arm. He stumbled over and clutched at the bleeding arm with a weak cry.
"Leave her alone," said the drifter. "Don't come back, or the next shot will kill."
The three wasted no time in bolting, and left the man and his charge alone in the alley. He bent to eye level:
"They didn't hurt you, did they, sprog?"
The auburn-haired girl sniffled. "Only a little," she smiled weakly, rubbing a flaming-red cheek.
He sighed. "Does this happen often?"
"Some people try. Usually Old Sam never lets them get this far."
"Old Sam?"
"The man who owns the drive-bar. He's very kind."
"And where's he?"
"He's sick. His wife has taken over the bar right now."
"His wife?"
"The woman you scared."
The Raggedy Man grimaced. She was alone in the world, abused, and scared, and she reminded him so very much of a little boy locked in a cupboard, whispering out hoarse prayers to any god that would hear him. He wiped away a tear streak from her face with a gloved thumb and readjusted her spectacles, which had been knocked askew:
"Why? Why does she do this to you?"
"She hates magic," replied Rose. "her son died and she's very sad about that. She thinks magic killed him. And since she knows... knows my mum and dad could do magic... Old Sam used to stop her, but now he's sick..." she trailed off, uncertain.
"Sounds like a terrible place to live," the drifter commented quietly.
"It's not so bad," said the girl with a wide, fake smile. "I get food and a nice, warm place to sleep every night."
"But do you want to stay here?"
The question hung between the two like a sheet of iron, and Rose became very still, as her eyes worked unseeingly and her mouth moved soundlessly. "No," she said at length. "I don't want to stay here."
She confirmed it, and now, The Raggedy Man had to pose the question, had to broach the subject. His mind was in conflict. One voice told him 'take the girl! She needs your help!', while another spoke of her being a liability in the wasteland, and another still sure that the girl would say no. But then he saw this wholly innocent child, locked in a cupboard as he had been for years, and his mind was quite suddenly made up:
"You want to see the road?"
Rose looked away shyly, as if contemplating, and then, looking as stoic as a Greek philosopher might, turned back and spoke.
Part Three: The Road
"Why do regular folk hate magic?" Rose asked from the passenger's seat.
"They think magic destroyed the world," the man replied.
"Did it?"
Her companion sighed. "In a manner of speaking, yes."
Inquisitive brown eyes turned on him. "How did it happen?"
"It started with two men: a wise, old man and a foolish, young boy," The Raggedy Man said. "The fool wanted power, the wise man cautioned against it. But the fool wouldn't listen, and went across the world, gathering knowledge and power until he became a wise man in his own right."
Rose nodded, following along as the car ripped past another dune.
"But becoming wise doesn't change that you were once a fool, and he tried to use his broken wisdom to take over the world. He took what he wanted and killed anyone in his way."
"He sounds like an awful man."
"He was. He killed, and killed, until another little boy was born, prophesied to defeat him. They fought for many years, but in their last battle the fool who became wise called down a storm, a terrible one that destroyed half the world and covered the rest in sand. Just as you see now."
He indicated the long hills of yellow sand that stretched as far as the eye could see, which sparkled beautifully in the evening glow.
"What happened to the fool who became wise?"
"Well, he finally learned he was only a man: He lost his magic as payment for the storm, and fled to a castle where he lived in solitude and thought on his mistakes for a very long time. He died only recently."
"And the little boy?"
The Raggedy Man paused. "He lost his magic, too. But no one knows how he lost it, or where he went, or why he disappeared, No one knows how to get him back."
"Wow," said Rose.
"Quite a tale, isn't it?"
"Yes, mum and dad would never tell me what happened, how things turned this way, though I'm sure they knew."
"Why wouldn't they?" The Raggedy Man asked.
"Said I was too young."
The Raggedy Man snorted. "Hardly anyone is 'too young' anymore."
Rose fell quiet, and watched the long road of packed sand. They stayed like this, in comfortable, contemplative silence for several long minutes, until, quite suddenly, she turned back and posed the question The Raggedy Man had been asked only recently:
"What's your name?"
He grunted. "Does it matter?"
"Yes. You asked me my name, and I answered. Now I'm asking you yours," she retorted in that precocious way of hers.
The Raggedy Man was quiet for a short while, and turned to the auburn-haired girl. "Harry. My name is Harry."
"Harry," said Rose. "It's a nice name. My mum and dad knew a Harry once."
"Did they?"
"Mum always said he had the prettiest green eyes. She always tried to make daddy jealous, but he'd always laugh. Hey!" she exclaimed. "You have green eyes! Did you know my mum and dad?"
She was a smart child, but still a child.
"Probably not, sprog," said Harry with a sigh.
"Don't call me that."
"What?"
"My name's Rose. Call me Rose."
Harry stared at her, unnervingly. "Right then, sprog."
Rose huffed and crossed her arms: "Honestly!" she muttered loudly, at the very edge of annoyance. "Fine then, old man."
Harry smirked.
They drove a long time, only ever stopping to leave the car when nature called. In the wasteland, the roads were infinite and endless, stretching in every direction fathomable. They ate in the car, slept in the car, crossed dunes in the car, lived life in the car. Surprisingly, Rose took to the life of the wandering nomad, eager to learn the ways of survival from a man who had been doing such for years. She was only mildly disappointed when Harry refrained from teaching her how to use a firearm, citing she was 'still too young'. Rose refrained from pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.
But that choice never deterred her, nor did it lessen the potential Harry saw in her, for a fortnight after Harry met Rose was the first time she showed aptitude with magic. It had been a hot day, like all the rest, and the girl asked him for water:
"We don't have much left," replied Harry, "we'll have to ration it."
Rose sighed. "You know, mum and dad took me to a town once that had so much water, I could scarcely believe it."
"Did they?"
"It was somewhere north. There was no sand. And there was water, lakes, everywhere!"
"Really?" Harry asked, splitting his attention between her and the road.
"Some of them even shot out water from the middle, like this!" she splayed out her arms up and wide, mimicking an explosive torrent of water shooting up into the sky. It caused Harry a chuckle:
"What you saw was a geyser," replied the man, "though I wasn't aware any still existed."
"It was real," said Rose earnestly.
"I believe you," he didn't believe her. It must have been a dream, or something she had seen in an old book.
The ride continued comfortably, until Harry spotted something on the horizon, squatting at the crest of one of the many dunes. Stopping the car, he reached over Rose into the dash and pulled a pair of binoculars out:
"Shit," he murmured lowly.
Rose whirled to him, alarmed. "What is it?"
"Raiders," he said slowly. "Get into the back seat, cover yourself up with the blankets there. Don't come out until I say you can." Rose nodded, and scrambled through the gap between his seat and hers, and scurried into the back seat, where she promptly swaddled herself in the rough, scratchy material of their blankets. Once sure Rose was hidden, Harry inched forward, mindful of the three rust-hued cars waiting for him.
"What are you going to do?" Rose whispered from underneath the covers.
"There's a chance they just don't want us on their turf," said Harry, "I'll take a detour and go around, see if they leave us alone, then."
But when Harry turned, the rust-coloured cars thundered down the dune, rapidly closing the distance to them. Cursing, Harry flipped up a red nozzle on the dashboard, and flipped the switch. A choking roar came from the front of car as it sped through the sand. Rose screamed as the car jumped over a bank and veered onto a makeshift road, created over years of light traffic. Harry looked back, he hadn't lost any of them.
"Damn it," he growled. "I need you back up here."
"Are you sure?" asked Rose, throwing back the covers.
"They catch up to us, and a couple of blankets aren't going to do you any good."
Rose didn't need any more convincing, she sprang up and clambered over the gap between the seats, mindful of the gearbox. "What do you need me to do?"
Harry double-tapped the accelerator to the floor, activating a makeshift device that would clamp down on the accelerator even when he wasn't pressing on it. "Hold the wheel, keep us going straight."
Rose gulped.
Harry captured her eyes with his own and tried to convey all his belief into his next words. "You'll do fine, sprog."
Shakily, she nodded, and leaned across the gear lever to grasp the steering wheel with her small hands just as Harry's bigger ones left it. Not wasting any time, Harry reached below the driver's seat a grasped a handle, solid and wooden.
Crunch!
A great shockwave went through the cabin as the cars behind the duo rammed theirs. Rose cried out as she momentarily lost control of the wheel and Harry lost grip of the handle. He rushed up to grasp hold of the wheel, but found Rose had already recovered, and nodded at him resolutely. When the second ram hit them, Harry and Rose had braced for it, and they kept composure.
Harry leaned below and grasped the handle once more, pulling out the duo's best chance of survival. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw three evil-looking vehicles, all spikes and rust, one moving in to ram them from the side. Quickly disengaging the accelerator, Harry slammed on the brakes and waited for the first of the assailants to come into view, he raised the handle, aimed for the window of the first car, and fired twice: the first weakened the glass, and the second punched right through the windscreen.
A shower of blood and brain painted the car an ostentatious red, but they only saw it for a moment, as the dead man, as dead men were wont to do, quickly lost control of the car, and veered off the road into an oncoming sand bank.
"One down," murmured Harry, as he unfolded the sawed-off barrel, turned it 90 degrees, and let two smoking shotgun shells fall out, before reaching around Rose to the glovebox, where he found two more shells to replace it with.
"There's still two more!" confirmed Rose.
Harry took the wheel once more, veering right as the dull roar of the engine quieted only slightly. "Keep calm," he said, right before the cabin shook violently.
This time, Harry rammed one of the other cars, hitting the back left fender of the raider's rust bucket, right where the gas tank should have been, by Harry's guess. He was proven right when he spotted golden-brown liquid dripping from the spiked back fender of the car:
"Sprog," he said as calmly as he could, "in the back, there's a bottle of whiskey. Brown liquid, glass bottle. Do you see it?"
Rose turned around and looked, eventually nodding. "I see it!" She reached over and pulled it from beneath the back seat.
"Good," Harry said, relieving her of the bottle. "Now tear me a strip off one of the blankets." Rose did so, and handed it to him. "Now take the wheel again."
Harry uncorked the hooch, took the torn strip of fabric, and covered it in poorly-made alcohol, before shoving it back into the bottle. He reached into his pocket and rifled around a moment, before finding what he was looking for, a small, handmade lighter.
"Come on, you bastard," Harry murmured lowly as he repeatedly failed to create a flame. He thought for a moment that Rose might scold his language, but perhaps even she could see that now was not the time. The car took another rocking blow from their friends in the other car, but Rose's hands remained steady. Harry looked out the window and saw the fuel tank really losing gasoline now.
So he turned back to his task and went about it with renewed vigour, vigour which very quickly paid off when he lit a flame. Laughing gaily, he set the rag on fire and waited a moment for the cars to line up before throwing the bottle. It crashed against the back fender and immediately spewed up in a blaze.
The explosion was something to behold.
But so was searing pain, as some of the resulting explosive fire whipped through the open window and managed to singe Harry just above his right eyebrow. Though, used to pain, he opted to ignore it, and retake the wheel from Rose.
"Why are they after us!?" Rose shouted frantically, as the third and final car came very close and nudged the back end of their car.
"I have an idea," Harry replied, but said nothing else, leaving his auburn-haired charge looking on in confusion as they avoided a sandbank with a sharp yank left of the steering wheel.
As they came back round the long drift of sand, the two found the final car right alongside them, and Harry found himself facing the wrong end of a gun not unlike his own. Time slowed, and he acted purely on instinct, feet going from accelerator to brakes with lightning speed, and just as the shotgun fired, the car slowed enough that the pellets only took out a chunk of the doorframe, and not Harry's head, where it was aimed.
That, however, brought it's own problem, as the usually growling engine of Harry's vehicle sputtered and died. He returned the gear lever to neutral and tried to start the car again, only to find the beast completely unresponsive.
"Shit," he murmured appropriately, as the last enemy slowed, and turned his car round.
"What is it?" Rose cried worriedly.
Harry clucked his tongue. "Clutch went; car's stalled."
Rose didn't need to be a motoring expert to realise this was a terrible situation to be in, especially right now, as the pincer-like nose of the raiders' car came bearing down toward the hood of Harry's old Ford. Her parents never seemed to believe in a higher power, her mother dismissive of it and her father bemused by the idea entirely, and Rose wasn't sure if she herself believed, but she remembered that Old Sam had believed in a god. And if nothing else, she believed in Old Sam, so she prayed fiercely to whatever god that would listen to save herself and the only other person besides Sam in the whole cold, cruel world who had ever shown her an ounce of kindness.
She thought of the raider's rusty old bucket, crumpled in on itself, lifted and tossed over Harry and Rose, and crash in a heap behind them.
And when Rose opened her eyes, the enemy car only meters away from them, her wish came true, and something quite extraordinary happened: water. A veritable geyser of water shot up, vicious and stabbing, right into the raider's car, spearing into it and lifting it over the stalled Ford, as it sailed in the air, crashed, and tumbled some ten feet away.
Harry, surprised and amazed by the turn of events, turned to give Rose a wide-eyed look, who returned it with the same expression. But, while he was shocked, Harry knew he couldn't let their good fortune go to waste:
"Stay here," Harry ordered Rose, and kicking open the door to his Ford, he stepped out, and reached under the driver's seat to pull out another weapon: long and silver, this revolver would kill anything that moved.
So he stomped out into the sand and toward the other car, now laying upside down, and hideously wet for the middle of the desert. He came to the front of the car, and fired once, instantly killing whoever was in the passenger's seat, and, coming to the driver's side, he wrenched the door open, and dragged a bloodied and bruised man out, kicking and screaming. He pulled the man clear of the car and let him flop on the sand, before putting a boot firmly on a broken leg, applying just enough pressure to let the raider know Harry could make it hurt much more than it already did. With a grim look, Harry then leveled the revolver at the other man's head:
"Raiders," he surmised quickly, "acting on your own, or were you hired?"
The raider, an ugly, bald-headed one with a scar over his left eye, smiled and revealed rotted teeth. "I think you know the answer to that one, mate," he said.
Harry blinked. "Still?"
"Always. To the ends of the earth and the last second of time. You've still a debt to pay, Mr. Potter. And the boss intends to collect."
"He's tried before. No luck."
"But each time closer. Some sins, you can't run away from."
"Is that why he sent you? To threaten me?"
"To warn you. Retribution is coming, and it's coming soon. Forty innocent lives dead and there will be a reckoning."
Harry snorted, amused that a hired killer would lecture him about righteousness, and retribution:
"You? Moralising? Quaint."
A sigh, a squeeze, and blackpowder fire; a gunshot rang out in silence, as a few grains of lonely sand shifted away in the wind.
With fresh tankards of gas and little preamble, Harry soon returned to Rose, having scrounged what little he could from the assassin's car. The girl had remained still, watching in amazement at the patch of sand where, only minutes ago, a geyser of water had erupted. He entered the Ford silently, and started it up without a word. They drove in silence for what seemed like hours, until the sun was nearly setting, and the two found an empty little cavern just above the sand.
Just as quickly as he had come in, Harry turned the car off and exited the car, leaving Rose unsure of what to do.
"Come on out," Harry called to the girl, who jumped at his voice, but immediately complied, slipping out from the car.
Harry inspected her, and Rose shifted under the man's academic gaze, but reached an entirely new level of bemusement when Harry pulled back the left sleeve of his leather jacket and showed her a polished piece of wood strapped to his arm:
"You know what this is?" he asked.
Dumbly, Rose nodded. "Did... did I do something wrong today?"
The Raggedy Man's harsh green eyes softened the tiniest bit. "No, sprog. You might have done something very right," he said, reaching over to the wand holster, gripping the short rod, and pulling it out. Once he did so, Harry offered the polished stick to the girl, who balked at it:
"What do you want me to do with that?" she asked nervously.
"You said your parents were magic."
"Y-yes."
He offered the wand once more. "Then you might be, as well. Take the wand."
The auburn-haired girl gulped at her guardian's serious tone, but, despite her trepidation, she took the wand and immediately marveled at the feeling of it all. A tingling warmth shot up her arm, and this piece of holly wood seemed to sing at the prospect of being used once again. But, more than all that, was the indescribable sense of completeness that enveloped her when she gripped the wand, as though Rose had just discovered a limb she never knew she'd been missing.
Harry offered her a rare smile. "Feels good, doesn't it?"
"Uh-huh!" Rose hummed happily.
"That's good. Now aim the wand forward and watch me," Harry said, making a few uncomplicated swishes of a dipstick he'd been using as a makeshift wand. "After you do that, say 'Aguamenti' loud and clearly."
Rose nodded and did exactly as he asked, clearly intoning "Aguamenti."
Nothing happened.
Surprised, Rose tried again. Still nothing. She tried once more. Nothing. Not even a shadow of the spell she'd heard her mother and father do numerous times when they had been on the run.
"Swish, pull, then flick," Harry coached calmly next to her.
She followed the man's instructions to the letter, and still, nothing happened. Unbidden, tears sprang to Rose's eyes; she felt useless, unable to live up to her parents', who could have done this spell in their sleep, and, more importantly, unable to live up to Harry's expectations. However, for a man who had spent the better part of a decade living life as a beast on the far edges of the world, The Raggedy Man proved himself infinitely patient:
"Sprog, look at me," he said, and Rose found herself staring at his grizzled face, crouched a few feet away so that they stood eye-to-eye, "Don't get frustrated. All of us started out this way," he finished, somehow having managed to calm her.
Rose closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and opened them once more as she exhaled. Calmer, and feeling more resolute than she had in the beginning, Rose aimed the holly wand down toward the entrance of the cave, and swished, pulled and flicked.
The words came easily. "Aguamenti."
And lo, water flowed.
It was a weak stream, pitifully dribbling from the tip of the wand, but it was water nonetheless, and a great boon to both Harry and Rose, who had been conserving what little water they had from their last stop-over in a town.
Harry grinned. "Well, it looks like we have us a little witch. There may be hope for you yet, sprog."
Rose flushed at the compliment, unused to being praised as she was. While her mother and father had done it frequently, she had missed the warm feeling of accomplishment ever since they both died. Old Sam was kind, but he never praised a soul; it just wasn't in his nature. So, receiving such acclaim was incredibly flattering to Rose.
Harry rushed over to grab his canteen of water, and Rose's as well, filling them up from the wand's endless stream, and told Rose all about the wonderful world of magic. It was a world of mystery and intrigue, and, more than that, it was a world where Rose could be anything she wanted.
She liked that idea.
"Let's get to work on supper," Harry said after both canteens had been filled. "There'll be more than enough magic to learn tomorrow."
Rose went to sleep in the backseat of the Ford on pins and needles that night. It was the first night in a very long time that she couldn't wait for tomorrow.
Author's Notes: This is a three-shot fic that I started writing about four days ago, with the challenge of trying to finish the fic before the new year. As of right now, I hope to get the second chapter out by Christmas, and the final one by New Year's Eve, then it's back to working on Midnight Blues and So Spoke the Idol God.
Chapter Note:
Mad Max: This fic takes rather obvious inspiration from the Mad Max series, due in no small part to the fact that I could see (toxic politics aside) a young Mel Gibson playing a slightly older Harry in a heartbeat. There are several further references to Max, from the vehicular combat, to the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun Harry uses, the fact that he calls Rose 'sprog', which is supposed to be the name of Max's son, the nickname "Raggedy Man", and the Ford he drives, which is intended to be a reference to the Ford Falcon XB GT, better known to Mad Max fans as the Pursuit Special.
Thanks for reading,
Geist.