A/N: This story came to me from a poem I wrote called "Not What You Asked For"...
Not What You Asked For
If it's quick, if it's painless, if it's a sigh of relief Are you lucky, are you free, are you out of control
If you're cold, if you're hungry, if you're still holding on
If I'm empty, if I'm lonely, if I can't see the end
If we're desperate, if we're greedy, if it's not what you asked for.
Are you helpless, are you needy, are you under a spell
When I go, when I fade, will I leave you behind
When we're certain, when we're sure, then it's never what we asked for.
Chapter 1 - If It's Quick...
I thought of my life in pieces. I thought of grains of sand on a seashore. They pack together at the water's edge, but when you step on them they crush under your weight, they slowly fall. It feels like comfort. It feels warm to the touch on a summer night. It makes me feel real, alive, human.
I thought about death in pieces too. There is no way to describe feeling dead before it happens. We knew it was possible. We knew that we were merely fragile bits of matter held together by a force outside our imagination. But that's, in the end, why we could never have known. I didn't expect much, I suppose. I didn't know how to expect what I could never have guessed.
I thought about what it would feel like. But my grasp was only on things I knew, adding them together to create a picture of something that I had never experienced, and obviously would never be able to experience and live to tell about it, live to remember it for the next time. There could never be a next time. But my picture was flawed, pieces missing.
There are so many ways to die.
My mother's aunt died when I was young, maybe four or five. I saw her body in the open casket at her funeral. It was so still and pale, but peaceful and calm. I asked my mother if she was in heaven. My mother probably told me she was, being a good mother. But I can't remember her answer. It's as if I blocked out the response or perhaps feared it more because I could not ever hope to understand it until it was my own body in that casket, someone I loved looking down at me, or what was left of me.
But when we left, when I set off on a nearly impossible journey with my best friend and the boy I had loved since before I knew what that meant, I prayed. I actually knelt down by my bed and prayed that if any of us should die, please let it be me. Please spare Harry and Ron. And if you could, whoever's out there, if you don't mind, let it be quick.
Like blowing out a candle. Like crushing a mosquito in your palms.
No one ever spares a thought for those things, do they? I selfishly wanted those that I loved to grieve my death. But I wanted them to move on quickly. It hurt so bad to imagine Ron with someone else when I'd imagine my own death. But why should it? He never belonged to me, did he... Only in my dreams.
I can't describe this now in my head, now that I'm faced with it. But I can safely say that it's not how I pictured it. I can hear him screaming my name. Oh, why doesn't she just get it over with? I know this is the end. I have admitted it to myself somehow. Why do I feel as though I have given up? I am speaking to her, words falling out of my mouth without me really thinking about them.
My brain feels split in three pieces. One part is here in this room, pain rushing to every part of me from my chest where she won't stop... Another is wherever Ron is now, where his screams finally stop because I've gone to him, I'm with him, trapped. But we're together and I'm telling him all the stupid little things I should have said long ago... stupid things to me now because it seems such a waste that the words will never really make it to his ears.
I don't understand this world anymore. Is this regret that I'm experiencing? I have heard before of people feeling all of the things that they never did, feeling them all at once on their death bed, weeping because of a life that they never had but always wished for. I feel as though that was always a driving force to my life, to avoiding someting just like that, that moment in the end when you know it's over, when you see clearly all of a sudden the things that should have mattered more, should have been priorities.
I ordered my life so I never made a mistake, so if I did, I felt guilt and regret so deep and sharp that I wouldn't falter again. But oh, how could I not have seen? Now I'm going back to fourth year when Ron and I argued over Viktor Krum. At the end, I'm crying in my bedroom, and a sudden thought passes through my mind. I want nothing more than to kiss him. It's ironic that the person who so recently had caused me so much pain is the one I wanted even then. I suppose it was the loss of that first kiss, that one that should have been ours, the one I let Viktor have because I thought I'd feel better in the end, knowing someone wanted me that way...
So now, lying on this floor, there is a third part of my mind that has traveled back in time and is kissing him instead. He's so shocked and his eyes are wide. Does he feel the same way? I can trick myself into believing that he does now that I will never really find out. Yes, he feels the same. He's kissing me back. And now we'll have years together before the end. It seems like such a long and happy life in retrospect...
But now she hits me with another blast and the first piece of my brain, the one that hasn't moved from this cold floor, takes over and shouts to me that I've lost, that it's over, and that he'll never know, that I'll never know, and that the regrets I never wanted to have are making all those nights of studying and reading totally and utterly worthless.
I feel angry and useless at the same time. I feel him all around me as if taunting me, reminding me that I never had the one thing that I should have, that I should have at least been brave enough to try. Sure, he could have turned me down, could have broken my heart, but he's Ron. He's calling my name. He's reminding me that he's not going to just be alright when I'm gone. I wonder what that will feel like, if his pain after I die will be worse than what I'm feeling now. I imagine if our places were reversed, if it was his anguished screams I was responding to from somewhere below.
And I know that it would be worse. Could I live through it? Would I be able to survive that kind of unbearable pain?
And suddenly, he calls my name again and it's different. Everything is different. This world I'm saying goodbye to seems to be a part of me again. Is is possible that this quick death I've been wishing for might not be what I'm destined to? After all, this isn't quick, not in the slightest. I'm still here, still in agony, still... alive.
I can't hope to even dream of such things now... I should be calling back to him, I should be telling him everything before it's too late. At this point, who would I have to be embarrassed in front of? Before I could even hear their laughter at my feeble admissions to someone who's not even in the same room, I'd be dead... wouldn't I?
She curses me again and his voice rings out as I expected it to. It has become a comfort, a pattern, and part of this process, the process of something I can't name. It's not death. Not yet...
Not yet.