She stood in the park looking lost and confused, her red hair glittering in the light of the sun. She was wearing a flower patterned shirt and black ripped jeans with her hair flowing down her back. Her eyes, glinted brightly through her spectacles, as she hummed a slow tune, while tending the flower beds in the community garden while other kids played nearby.
"This is so wrong," he thought even as he moved forward through the bushes, which he was hiding behind, his feet making no sound. In his right hand, he clutched a small pocket knife, which dug into his palm, leaving a red trail behind him. All he wanted to do was sleep, sleep and never wake up again, but he had to see her one last time, he had to talk to her, before he fell. He knew running was futile and so was hiding; they were hot on his heels. He had another hour at the most and a few minutes at the least and he had to warn her, tell her somehow that she was in danger, and protect her. With his life, if that is what it took. He knew what he had to do to save her, but his hands still shook, and tears flowed past his cheeks, dripping down from his pale chin, his dark eyes shining. His brown hair was unkempt, and his face smudged with dirt and stained with blood, but he still walked forward to where she stood now, dusting off her jeans, preparing once again to go back to the orphanage where she was raised and this quickened his steps. He knew that is she went there, she would never see the light of the day again.
"Lily Laura," he called out, his voice weak and cracking as he stumbled towards her, still soundless in his steps as he fell on his knees, the bare skin splitting at the contact. All he wore was a tattered blue shirt and shorts, the same ones he had escaped prison from.
"James? Is that you? James?" Lily called out, her head turning around fanatically, trying to see him but being unable to do so.
"Lily, Lily, listen to me," he cried out, trying to warn her as he heard their footsteps from behind her. Panicking he called out again but this time he voice faded into the wind as his powers receded.
"No," he screamed out to the winds, tried to move the trees to conceal her, tried to attract the winds to assist him, to save her but he watched helpless, she they caught her by the shoulders. He witnessed unable to move, as the first blow landed on her confused face, her features scrunching up in pain as the skin on her cheek burst open and blood flowed down her chin like it was flowing down his.
"Sir?" he heard her ask before they punched her in the stomach, making her fall on the flowers she had tended, turning them into a soft bed for her, unlike the knives and skulls he had fallen down upon.
Their laughter rang in his ears, as he watched her scramble back trying to evade their blows, the sun shining on the park ground. People around them watched amazed, whispering and pointing as the officers beat her up and yet none but one made their way forward. The one who tried to help was also shot down with a tranquilizer dart.
"What?" he heard her asked dazed as red flowed out of the corner of her lips in a thin line.
"You are under arrest for conspiracy," one of the officers announced before kicking her once again and then tying her hands up behind her back while she struggled to speak through the gag they had put in her mouth before taking her towards the station as they called it. James called it the Torture Chamber.
Following them what he saw made him sick and so angry that his powers went out of control, winds clashing together, knocking down things and people. It was the worst he had ever done since he had been killed in this place.
Aiming, he hit the officer holding Lily with a lamp before the ground opened beneath his feet, pulling him back to where all ghosts go. Even his hardest efforts to stay anchored to Lily could only make him stay and watch once again powerless but this time Lily was no ordinary girl, this time she was a fierce warrior. In the few moments something in her had changed, changed to fully unveil the girl whom James had only glimpsed when Lily got passionate about something. In those seconds, she had turned from a meek flower girl to a queen out for revenge against the crimes done to her and the ones she loved.
Freeing herself, she tucked her bound hands under her feet, pulling her arms forward before she ran, barreling straight with all her body force into the officer nearest to her, lodging her elbows in his chin and her knee in his stomach before kicking another one with a perfect swing kick. Dire as the situation was, James could not help but smile at the talent displayed by his fiancé before jumping in to assist her. He could not do much, being well matter-less, but he did what he could, flickering the lights and keeping the red head in the shadows while she threw fist fulls of dust into the eyes of the officials and thrust her elbows in their noses or stabbed in the knees them with knives she held in her now free hands. Try as she might, she could not aim to kill.
Hurt, bleeding and scared, she fought like a goddess of war, with bloodshot eyes and air flying all around her, making her look like the eye of a storm, until suddenly all that was left in the room were groaning bodies and bloodstained floors along with a girl who had suffered only to re-discover herself.
On her way out, she grabbed one of the soldiers by the collar and pulled his face towards hers before asking, "Where is James Potter's body?"
"Answer me now or I shall," she threatened calmly waving a knife in front of the man's face before placing the cold metal tip on his forehead.
Looking at her now, James blinked tears, at her faith in him but also at the inevitable knowledge, he knew only she would recognize, the knowledge of his death. She was the only one who would be able to accept it and somehow it did not hurt at all, he thought, as he followed her towards the dungeons where his body had been stashed along with so many others he had seen die that day when they shot him in the dark cellar full of the smell of sweat, blood and urine. Tired as he had been, he had not gone down without a fight, he recalled as he saw for the first time, the passage to his death chamber.
He remembered being brought here with a cloth sack over his head, but the feel of stones under his feet was new. Maybe if he slid along the way, he would recognize the feel, he thought sarcastically, his skin crawling yet again at the memory of how he had been dragged here, his head in that in infernal sack, boots on his legs and nothing else to cover him while they beat and pulled him along the way towards where he did not then but saw now as a wooden door.
"That must have been the cause of this," he whispered as his fingers ghosted over a cut on his right arm. As he entered the place where he had been held, behind a weeping but alert Lily, it seemed as if his mind had been divided into two. One part registered her tears and longed to comfort her, as she looked for his body under the rotting corpses of the thousands that had been killed by those barbarians. That part held her hand in a gesture of comfort, which he was sure and yet unsure about whether she could feel. It lingered in the air above her determined yet tear stained face, it rested over her knuckles as they clutched the gun, it looked over her shoulder just she did to check that none of those monsters were coming back, it watched as she freed many people and offered help, while still trying to find his body, it saw her tears when she found not his but her brother's body and those of her uncle and aunt and few of friends or people she had seen around before her hand held the one which had been his. That part of his brain was the one that smiled through tears when she brushed his dark bangs from a pale forehead and kissed his cold lips. Fingers of his body responding to that part touched his lips as she did kissed his dead body and then the air, trying to locate his ghost. That part of him was all about her, about Lily Laura, the girl he loved and the one he died protecting but failed to save all the same while at the same time saving her from something that was maybe he more dangerous, her own self imposed fear.
Despite all this, another part f his mind recalled the trauma, the pain and the coldness of this place, it called forth his tears and made his wounds sizzle like they were raw and new once again. That portion of his head throbbed and ached under an onslaught of memories, memories full of blood, gore and death, something he might have loved in movies but was just plain horrific in reality.
He remembered the feel of the barrel of the gun near his back, the portion, where the other half of his mind was watching Lily Laura rest her hand over as tears dripped down her chin, he recalled the cries of pain of his fellow captives and the terrible silence that settles down for a while after every shot, the tears that settles down like dust and the pleas, oh lord, the various pleas, for food, for water, for freedom and for family. He remembered the strength of some, the endurance but what shone through always were the pain and those gruesome images of hurt. Trying to block them, he focused his entire brain on Lily Laura as she freed others while somehow placing a kiss on his forehead and promising to return to take him home, and to bury him under their oak tree, a conversation held long ago, which he had called forth many times during his capture. His bones once again shivered as the images attacked him, his restless ghosts haunted him here, where he had finally accepted God's path into heaven alone but this time they showed him not only the pain but also how he had lived those four months through it, they put in front of him his entire life, the happy childhood, Lily Laura, his sister Isabella and so many more tiny moments that had once been his last hope of life.
A gun shot and a shriek, pulled him out of his revive, as his eyes fell on Lily Laura and the other escapees, while they tried to fight their way out. Most had already escaped but the few that remained, Lau was shooing out ahead of her, knocking down timbre and officials alike. Survival was no longer her goal; his death had taught her that, now it was to make sure those she cared for lived happily with her and she could not help but want that for others too. No one, she thought, no one should die the way her James had died or the way her uncles, aunt, brother and friends had. That was in human, evil and so much more because while there might be things worth dying for, nothing, absolutely nothing was worth killing for.
All her old love, devotion, praise and happiness she had felt with James came back sharp as knife's blade and all she saw ahead of her was red. Nobody, absolutely nobody would die under her watch, she vowed as she escaped and yet her thoughts lingered on the pale dark haired boy with warm brown eyes whose ghost she was sure would be with her forever. She was thankful, that no one could hear her thoughts as she escaped, as filled with James they were that f someone heard them, they certainly would not be able to understand them and right now the last thing she wanted to do was explain to anyone what she felt for James.
These thoughts, though there were not her predominant ones as most of her mind was focused on the escape, on getting put preferably alive. Shooting as many walls and paintings down as she could, she knocked out many officers un conscious but only for a few seconds before they were once again hot on her trail. It was a mystery how they had not out numbered her yet.
James worked his powers overtime as he caused obstacles in the path of those pursuing Lily Laura while she escaped, jumping over the bodies of the fallen but not without tears and knocking down walls with zeal. He had to save her and that is why using the last of his conscious left on this realm he burnt the station down, making sure no one died but also making sure of Lily Laura's escape. The last he thought of before he faded out was that even if the injuries sustained by the officials were fatal, they would live, only to wallow in their guilt while the girl he loved would lead, hopefully a happy life.
Years had passed since the revolution had broken out and now there was a new and better government in place, a government that did not just arrest people for speaking their thoughts, which did not refuse happiness to the poor and a government that the people had a say in. Graves littered the small town and many old people and some young ones were often seen there but now there were new comers too, once who did not know the significance of the grave or the carnage caused, ones who thought nothing of an old lady with fiery grey hair sitting for hours under an oak tree every day, after teaching the children of the small school, leaning against the headstone placed there as if it was not a stone but the arm of a person before kissing the flowers she brought and placing them at the foot of the grave and walking away.
Only Lily Laura knew why she went everyday to the oak tree where a grave of ashes lay and as years had faded into decades, she had continued doing this, feeling as if for the moments she lay against the stone, her James had come back. By now, she had forgotten his exact looks and smell, muddled in her memory the exact gravelly tone of his voice till it did not sound as unique as it had done in her youth but even now when she approached the end of her journey, she could feel what it felt like to have him next to her because as it said on his headstone some love stories, even death cannot undo and some hearts even bullets cannot stop.
A/N- I know I should be updating my other stories and that laziness and writer's blocks are no excuses, so I promise to update all of them by Tuesday. Thank you all for your support! And review?