July 2007

Disclaimer: I claim nothing but the angst.

The Battle of Pydna


It was moments like these: mere seconds or minutes or hours, he couldn't tell. Regardless, they were always fleeting, little nudges or shoves or murders. They killed him, destroyed him.

It was moments like these in which he admired her. The first sting of pain so many years ago, when she wouldn't put her arm down until he acknowledged her presence – and when he didn't, spoke anyway.

It was when she held her chin high and ignored the tears that he felt the first stab, when she stared him in the eye and defiantly showed him her soul. It was when he saw out of the corner of his eye the swelled robes and the slightly open door to his private stores.

He compartmentalized these wounds in a small area in the back of his soul, next to the padlocked room that held the writhing snake and screaming skull, the omnipresent green and the blood still trickling through a crack in the door. This room he did not lock, although there was a small silver key hanging patiently on a hook, preparing for its moment.

There were still more wounds, he knew, that he would need to put away.

--

The room stayed shut for a very long time. Circumstances changed and much more deadly things forced their way into him. In truth, he had nearly forgotten the scars she had caused as he noticed less and less the determined passion she used to cut through him every time she encountered a new challenge. Like a scrape that throbs less over time, each perfect potion he was presented with, each textbook recitation she expelled sliced him quicker and shallower until he could not feel them anymore.

The rattling and banging in the padlocked room continued to get louder and louder, the blood flowed thicker and heavier until he could no longer ignore it. It fought with him, made him weak, overtook him. He was tired and battered and it was then, he knew, that he could no longer fight. The chains on the door loosened slightly and the snake stuck its forked tongue into the hall, testing.

--

The snake had begun its slow, poisonous journey out of the padlocked room when she chose that particular, random day to offer him a quick half-smile as he passed her in a corridor. Any other time, with any other person, this would have been a foolish decision and he was not expecting his glossy white scars to rip open. The snake, startled and cautious, paused outside the unlocked door.

She did it again the next week – stabbed him with her smile, getting more confident after the first time. The next time, against his will, he nodded back, pieces of him gouged out.

--

The day they made Veritaserum was the day the snake was well on its way through the maze, and he was finding it more and more difficult to keep it at bay. The blood ran freely through the doorway and mingled with his own blood pushing underneath the unlocked door. The little silver key twitched, unsure.

This was also the day he gave up on her battle. He had known he would; the cuts were getting deep enough to kill and the unlocked room was getting full. The old wounds had dusted off their cobwebs and joined the new ones, ready to fight.

That night, as they pushed against walls and bit at skin, he discovered why he had shut her fight away in the first place: it was in these moments, these murderous moments, that he felt alive.

The silver key fell to the floor with a deafening ring.