Disclaimer: I don't own it.
Summary: They never stood a chance against five Death Eaters. Everyone thought that they were so brave for trying anyway; none of them realized that having no chance was the point.
Love Lost
He could still remember his first mission with Fabian. They weren't ready for the job, not yet, but who really was? People were dying out there every day; time (for extensive training or anything else) was a luxury they could not afford.
They'd been following Antonin Dolohov for a week and everything seemed to be going fine. They never suspected a thing when he started to lead them through a thick forest. Neither twin could explain what first made them suspicious that things weren't as they appeared, but soon enough, both of them were. Doubling back, they saw that they had nearly walked into a trap, because four Death Eaters were converging onto the stop that they had been quickly approaching. Fabian was all for going in anyway, for taking the Death Eaters down there and then, but Gideon talked him out of it. "I'm not ready to die yet," he said, "but thanks very much for the offer."
At the time, he thought he was simply being flippant (because he had always taken it for granted that he would die sometime during this war. He was never sure why, but he had), but he later realized that he was telling the truth. He wasn't ready to die yet because he still hadn't met her. He still hadn't met Marlene McKinnon.
He never would have imagined that he would fall for her. Self-conscious, a workaholic, and absolutely hopeless at duels (she was only allowed to give information to the Order, never to go on missions), she was nothing at all like the women he usually pursued. But, fuck him, she was beautiful: slim, freckled, with a mess of curly black hair. Fabian claimed that he didn't see it, but Gideon didn't care. He could, and that was all that mattered.
She made him happy—so, so happy, in a way that he had never thought the he could be. She made him think about the future, curled up on his couch with her, arguing about how many kids they would have once the war was over (because they both refused to bring a child into this fucked-up excuse of a world). She made him think that they would both survive, that they would actually reach the point where their plans became a reality because they were meant to grow old together (he wouldn't feel so much if they weren't).
Then he had to go and give her the ring, which of course she accepted right away, smiling ecstatically as he slid it onto her finger. She rushed off to show her parents because, oh, they were going to be so happy for her!
He never saw her again. Her body was recovered three short hours later, while he was still smack in the middle of the high that follows a successful proposal.
They wouldn't let him look at her tangled mess of a corpse, no matter how much he argued and fought and raged to see his Marlene. He guessed he could understand why. He was already broken beyond repair by her death, but to see her body, pale and lifeless… it would have shattered him completely, and that they couldn't allow.
What they didn't realize was that seeing her coffin being lowered into the newly-dug grave? It had the exact same effect. It made everything too real, too final. Marlene was gone, and nothing he could say or do would change that. It was unbearable—life was unbearable—which was why he could turn to Fabian and say, "I'm ready to die now" and mean it.
They never stood a chance against five Death Eaters. Everyone thought that they were so brave for trying anyway; none of them realized that having no chance was the point.