A/N: Pius Thicknesse/Rufus Scrimgeour
because I like it. SLASH! Obviously. Post-war.
Grief is like a labyrinth you always said. You can only go forward until you reach the way out again. But will you find the way out? After so long. So many years and your still lost in all the turns. Sometimes you beg for a dead end to turn up so you can stop looking for the exit of relief.
Do you want to find the exit? Do you really want to move on? Past everything you have done. By all the hearts you have broken? Maybe you want to. Deep inside. But you can't and you know you it. You'll never be able to forgive yourself so you can find a way out of the labyrinth that's keeping you inside you.
With every tear that rolls down your cheek, a stone falls. There's no light at the end though, there never will be. You slump down against the wall, trying to find support that isn't there. It will never be there, you're alone although you don't want to face it. You want to think there are people who can help you, but you can't be helped. Never. Because you can't admit it.
Every tear that rolls down. Every stone that's built around you. It all keeps memories. His lips brushing against yours. His fingers tracing patterns under your shirt. His hair getting tangled in yours. You might have been above him at work, but you never said 'no' to anything he asked. You never worked against him. You never refused. The crab was never in command of the lion. It was a façade you both kept high because you were able to.
But every façade drops. And you couldn't carry on with it. They forced you to break him. To say no after all. You never wanted to, but you couldn't resist. No one can. You broke him. You cut the lion's manes after the lion had overpowered you after all. You were forced to. That's what you keep telling yourself, but guilt nibbles at you. Why didn't you just resist the curse as you did in the beginning? Why did you obey to what he said?
They had all laughed. Just laughed at you when you mumbled those two words when looking into the pleading, yellowish eyes which were balancing between anger, fear, and sadness. The green light and you were on the ground before him. The fun the Death Eater had, had dropped the effects of the Imperius Curse and you realized what you had just done.
Your hands grasped his hair, tears rolling down your cheeks. It couldn't be true. It could never be true, yet it was. You clutched yourself to his body, trying to find that last sparkle of life in the motionless body. None of the shallow breathes reached the air anymore. Not one slow beat of the heart could be noticed. The lion had lost and the crab had to climb from under its rock.
You had crawled from under the rock into the labyrinth you couldn't get out of. The walls are closing in on you, trying to crush you between them and you have to keep running towards the exit. But you can't keep running anymore. You're out of air. You need to rest, to take a break. If a break means the end. If a break means you're going to be crushed by the walls, would you keep running? You're not sure. Not sure if you want to take a break. Not sure if you can keep running.
So long you had reached. You had always reached and never touched. And when you could finally touch, the reachable had drifted away. It had slipped away between your fingers and you couldn't get it back. Never.
You stopped running. You didn't want to run anymore. Your legs had gone numb and you had fallen on the ground. Hard. You were so tired. Tired of life. Of love. And most of all, of the labyrinth of grief you couldn't get out of. And although the end was so close, you still couldn't realize it and you didn't move on. The walls would crush you. Would take everything away and you didn't care. Life meant nothing anymore. Not now he was gone.
And it was your entire fault. Or so you thought.