A/N another Seven Words fic...five down, two to go. Don't own 'em, enjoy.
After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. -John 19:28
The water was brown, murky, bottomless sludge. But he did not care. He plunged his face into it, despite the muck, and drank greedily. He did not care how it tasted, he ignored the vinegar flavouring of it all, and gulped it down. It felt good. It felt refreshing as it traveled over his cracked, chapped lips, down past his swollen tongue and down his scratched and parched throat.
He'd been running so long and so fast, he'd drained every drop of water from his body. And now, he had to replenish it. He did not care about illness. It would be pleasant to die of dysentery given his other options. It wouldn't be so bad. A day or two of an upset stomach and he'd be dead. Better than the alternative, being tortured, and tortured, and killed. Or the other option, which was to have his soul sucked out of his body leaving him a lifeless husk.
No, he was going to be here in the woods, drinking this foul water. It wouldn't be so bad. He'd get sick, he'd die, he'd die rather peacefully and calmly. Without being subjected to round after round after round of crucio. Without being mocked and teased for being a turncoat and a traitor, a traitor to both sides, loyal to neither, only to himself. He was a coward. He knew that. He accepted that. There was a reason why his animagus was a rat.
He and Snape weren't all that different. Both of them were cowards. Both of them were turncoats. Niether had a side to fight for. Neither of them cared which side would win. Snape had confessed that much to him when they were both tipsy on his store of wine, supposed to be slaving over some potion for their master. He had agreed. He wanted the dark to win, but all the same, the dark had done nothing but kick him down and use him.
It had promised him power, the Dark Lord had promised him the chance to break out of the shell of being the tagalong to James and Sirius. To be a man. And he had greedily accepted it, willingly turned his back on those he had called friends. The Dark Lord made him see that James and Sirius had merely used him. But over time, he came to realize that the Dark Lord used him as well, he was just as much a pawn in this game as he had been in the other.
But still, he had more with the Dark Lord than he ever did being the fourth wheel, the Marauder that never quite fit in with the rest. He may have been used and shoved around, for surely no one but a low minion would have been stuck as Snape's assistant, but he had more now than he had in school. And he had to be trusted to be Snape's assistant, the Dark Lord would not have sent some idiot to work with Snape.
But he had fallen from grace. He had known that Snape was a traitor, had known that Snape was playing both sides against the middle, but he said nothing. He would not be believed if he had. Snape was trusted, he was not. Snape was a traitor to both sides. He was only a traitor to one. He had only betrayed the good, he had betrayed James and Sirius, but he had not betrayed the Dark Lord. He had merely run from the battle.
But it did not matter. He was not a vital part of this war. He was not necessary. He had done his part. He had helped his master return from death, into life. He had resurrected his master. That was what he had set out to do. Every person on this world is here with a purpose. His was to set the chain of events in motion that led to the Dark Lord dying to be resurrected, to fulfill the prophecy. It was written that Potter would have to destroy the Dark Lord so that the Dark Lord could rise again. Jesus needed Judas to betray him, to fulfill the scripture, just as both sides needed him to fulfill the prophecy.
And he had done his part. He had set those events in motion, he could run now. Run until every drop of liquid was drained from his body. Run until he had to stop, drinking murky, foul water out of need, out of desperation, out of thirst like he had never known. He wouldn't mind that so much, he didn't think.