A/N: Ladies and gentlebeings...we are gathered here today to celebrate the birth of one very special young lady...
IZZIE (aka OnTheSideOfTheAngels)!
Happy birthday, love! Did you know today is also Hagrid's birthday? YOU SHARE A BIRTHDAY WITH HAGRID. That's awesome. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day, and I hope you like this fic because I'm terrified it makes no sense outside of my own head and because of timezones etc my beta is sleeping and so it might be a jumble of messy nothing (edit: beta'd and stuff. Thanks to MissingMommy!).
It's the thought that counts, right?
Note: Sort of inspired by our dancing days' recent fic Another Feather Falling Off My Wings, Andrea Gibson's poem Prism (from which I shamelessly stole the lines "We are done," she says. And, for the first time, I know she is right, with some pronoun tweaking, of course), and Izzie herself, without whom I never would've written this pairing quite so tragically.
Have a great birthday, baby girl.
"'We are done,' she says.
And I am no mortician.
I have no idea how to put makeup
on the dead."
Prism, Andrea Gibson
Teddy tries not to cry.
There are so many ways they could be, so many different futures they could have, so much he could give her, if only she would listen.
But she shakes her head, sad eyed, and the dust of each crumbling future falls from her blonde, blonde hair.
"We are done," she says. "We are done."
And, for the first time, he knows she is right.
#2
"Honey, I'm home," Teddy calls, and he comes through the door with a jacket on his arm and the world's biggest grin, his hair combed over to the side and a dark blue tie around his neck. He can almost hear the cheesy laugh-track in the background.
"In here!" Victoire calls, and Teddy makes his way to the kitchen, where his beautiful wife is wearing a pale pink dress that swings at her knees and an apron around her front, her hair perfect and blonde and gorgeous, chopping vegetables for the stew they will eat later at their expensive dining room table.
"Something smells delicious," Teddy says, walking closer and slipping his hands around her waist from behind. She drops the knife as Teddy brushes his hand across the back of her wrist.
"I haven't even started cooking yet." She smiles playfully and whacks his hand away, but Teddy buries his face in her hair and kisses her neck softly.
"Must be you then," he says, and he can almost feel her blush.
"Teddy," she says suddenly, throwing his hands from her and shaking her head wildly. "Teddy, no. Not this. Too perfect, too perfect - "
Everything fades to black and Teddy can still smell her neck, like freesias and honey.
#7
The night is dark. The stars are dying, Teddy can see that. Victoire is under his arm and they stare at the sky together, but she is the only warmth around him and he shivers.
"Beautiful," she murmurs, but her voice is different, huskier.
Teddy looks at her; she is different. There are dark shadows under her eyes, her pale skin is no longer perfect, and her makeup is shaky and smeared. She wears a dirty, oversized t-shirt and smells faintly of vomit. She must be freezing, he thinks, but then he looks at her bare arms and forgets how to breathe; her wrists are scarred and her inner arms are bruised; she is laced with needle marks, telltale stains of addiction.
"You okay, Teds?" she asks quietly, meeting his eyes, and Teddy is scared. Her eyes, those perfect blue eyes, are so very dead. Her pupils are fuller than tonight's moon, empty and hollow and wrong.
"Victoire, I - I don't," he stutters, because he knows something isn't right.
"Shh." She is suddenly very close and she smells of more than vomit now. Teddy stares, unmoving, completely and utterly perplexed. And she kisses him.
She tastes like an ashtray, smoky and oh so wrong, and Teddy can smell her skin, not freesias and honey now, no, no. Desperation and mistakes and something's not right.
He pulls back, looks into those dead eyes.
"Teddy," she breathes, blinking quickly and confusedly. She pushes him away harshly, her pink lips mangled with disgust (but her eyes, oh, she's his Vic now), "What are you doing to me?"
And then she is gone and Teddy is alone, and the dying stars are falling.
The darkness swallows him. He's back to nowhere once again.
#123
There is a baby crying somewhere, the sound piercing Teddy's skull like a needle. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, making starlight and moonshine dance behind his eyelids. He grinds his teeth, growls angrily.
Victoire stirs in the bed next to him.
"Don't worry," she says meekly. "I'll get him."
She crawls from the bed quickly but timidly, as if there are things in the corners of the room that she is scared of, hidden in the darkness.
"Vic," he calls, and his heart stutters as he sees her freeze, silent, before turning to stare at him with a forced smile and fear in her eyes. He knows now that there are no monsters here - just Victoire and himself, and he's damned if it's him who put that fear in her eyes.
"Vic," he says, but it's softer this time, almost unheard over the sound of the screaming baby. "Victoire, please."
She does not meet his eyes, looking instead at his chest. He can only make out her silhouette against the backdrop of light from behind her, and that glint in those blue, blue eyes. "I should get him," she says, and she is gone again. This time, Teddy follows.
He stumbles from the bed, walking blindly through the darkness, following the light tread of her footsteps and then he is watching her with a baby – their baby – in her arms.
She looks like an angel, glowing and ethereal and, Merlin, Teddy, what have you done?
The light shines on her face and Teddy feels sick once again. The left side of her face is perfect as always, but the right, oh, no wonder she cannot look at him, no wonder she flinches under his gaze, no wonder, no wonder.
Her right eye is bruised deep purple, swollen and sore. Her face is tender and beaten, the corner of her lip scratched and dark with old blood. The bruises around her jaw line are yellowing. She is battered and ruined and those look like handprints on her neck.
"Vic, what – Did I –," he stammers, reaching a hand out towards her carefully, so carefully. She looks like a tiny china doll, pale and broken. She winces at his touch.
"Shh, you – you'll wake him," she whispers, and Teddy realises the baby has long since stopped crying.
"Victoire, look at me."
She does, and he sees that she is beauty murdered by hasty hands and angry fists and Teddy knows that this was him, but not him, some other Teddy with a blackened heart and a short temper.
"Who did this to you?" he asks quietly, hating himself, knowing the answer that sits on her tongue. "Please, Vic, just – who?"
She does not drop his gaze this time, defiance back and burning, her shoulders back, head up: "You, you bastard."
And then she is throwing the baby aside and running at him with a lioness' glare and the roar to match and her fingers close around his throat and –
Darkness.
Always darkness.
#57
She is sprawled naked before him, fresh and sweet as the morning air, and Teddy clutches the paintbrush in one hand and readjusts the palette in his other – he is almost done.
He is not a realist, in life nor in painting, and his portrait shows that. It is Victoire, pretty, perfect Victoire, but something about her is different on the canvas. Her edges are sharper than Victoire's soft curves, her bones more prominent, more there. Her smile is perhaps a little too big, but her eyes are dimmer than they should be. She is awash with a thousand colours, pinks and blues and greens and reds, but they all swirl and swirl until she is Victoire and she is beautiful – just not...perfect.
"Can I see?" she asks. He hears the smile in her words. He drops his brush, places his palette on the table beside him, and spins the painting with a flourish.
"What do you think?"
The smile slips from her lips; her face is stony. Teddy's heart stops and plummets and explodes all at once as he remembers something – something about bruises or maybe pupils that are a little too wide.
"That's not me," she says, already standing and gathering her clothes angrily. "That's not fucking me."
"Of course it's you!" Teddy cries, confused, throwing his arms open. "Who the bloody hell else could it be?"
She pauses for a second, the buttons on her shirt done up all wrong and her skirt twisted the wrong way around, and stares him right in the eye. "That, Teddy Lupin, is my sister."
"Your – Dom? What the fuck are you –," he shouts at her retreating back, but then he sees the painting, looks again with fresh eyes.
Dominique is sprawled naked before him, fresh and sweet as the morning air.
"Fuck."
The door slams after her and then there is nothing.
#1
This is the happiest he's ever seen her. She lights up the room, beams like trickling water and laughs like crashing waves. She wraps her arms around his neck, whispers in his ear, kisses him with such tenderness, such promise, and tells him she loves him in a voice reserved only for angels who are calling the dying home.
And Teddy – Teddy is not that him.
Teddy is in the corner or the room nursing a glass of Ogden's finest with a scowl on his face and a lump in his throat. Teddy is silently cursing the new boy for making her so fucking happy. Teddy is alone.
Teddy remembers; futures, futures that are but aren't, that could have been but couldn't have, futures that aren't real but they were, somehow, and none of it ever turned out right anyway.
Teddy waits. He waits for Victoire to remember, to turn to him and shout something and then run, or for the world to go black, but this time...this time nothing happens.
The only darkness that will come to him tonight is the sweet release of sleep after one too many firewhiskeys, the thought that Vic and New Boy are sharing a bedroom at the Burrow, and the realisation that this is it.
This is how it is. This is their future.
(This time, the darkness takes its time in drowning him.
Slowly.)
"We are done," she says. "We are done."
And he knows she is right.