"I'm gonna marry her, Gid."

Fabian walked next to his brother down Diagon Alley, which was becoming increasingly more desolate, even just in the last month. Witches grouped together and hurried about their business. Wizards ducked from shop to shop not making eye contact. And no one spoke. His words seemed to echo along the bricks. It was an empty sound that danced along the walls, as if scolding him for daring to speak of a subject that wasn't appropriately melancholy.

"Sure, Ian."

"Think she'll have me?"

Gideon's pace slowed to a meander, and he looked his brother up and down, considering. "Dunno. She's pretty infatuated with Benjy …"

Fabian rolled his eyes; that was a sore spot between him and Marlene, and one that she liked to tease him about. Said it was good for his ego, or it'd get too big.

"Everyone is infatuated with Fenwick," Fabian dismissed.

Gideon grinned. "Yeah, but Marlene and him … Sure you'll be able to manage not taking his head off every time they're in the same room?"

"I'll control myself."

Gideon paused for a moment. "She could do worse," he finally said, grudgingly.

Fabian shoved him, and they laughed.

"I need a ring," Fabian said, and Gideon sent him a sideways glance.

"You're really serious?"

"I said I was going to marry her. That implies a ring."

Gideon was quiet for a moment. He kicked a loose pebble and sent it skidding down the walkway. "I'm not wearing a bow tie for you," he told his brother. "I don't love you that much."

They weren't having a big wedding, Fabian decided a few days after he got the ring. Marlene would object to that, probably. She loved weddings, and Fabian almost hated himself for not being willing to give her the most fantastic wedding.

But it was war, and every happy moment seemed to be interrupted with tragedy, as if it waited, lurking in the shadows and knew just when to come out so that it hurt the most.

No, Fabian decided. They could have a small wedding. They wouldn't call attention to themselves. They would be careful.

Gideon said fuck it, they were coming anyway, why let them ruin your wedding? But Fabian worried - that's what he did. He was the logical side to Gideon's bursts of passion.

He was going to propose that evening. They'd made plans for dinner, and Marlene had been giving him slightly suspicious glances all week, tinted with smiles. (She'd look up from her desk where she studied late into the evening and watch him, kind of smiling and he'd ask what and she'd laugh and look down and they'd go on like that well into the night.)

She left for work that morning - early, always early - promising to try to get off at a reasonable time, but they were so busy and she couldn't just leave but she would definitely not miss dinner and Fabian had been half asleep and he couldn't remember if he told her he loved her.

The hit wizard, dressed in dark red robes, not much older than Fabian, shifted his weight uneasily. Fabian was numb, his mind buzzing, and he only sort of heard the man tell him that someone had to come claim the body, and he was listed as the contact.

Fabian managed to nod and get whatever information he needed - later, he would just remember feeling like his legs were crumbling beneath him, a physical pain in his chest.

They didn't find the rest of her family until later that afternoon.

He didn't cry at the funeral. He wondered if that was okay. Everything was mostly a blur - he tried not to remember. Couldn't quite block out the hot anger slowly growing in the pit of his stomach, though. Anger was easier.

He wasn't exactly aware of it until after the funeral - or, he thought it was. He was with Gideon, they were outside, on a street somewhere. He felt more than saw Benjy to his left. The three of them kind of stared at each other for a long moment, the charge in the air building until Fabian could almost feel it crackle.

It was funny, the small flashes of clarity, the things that stood out. This small moment where absolutely nothing happened.

Benjy shook his head, didn't speak.

Fabian muttered something about one more day.

Gideon reached over and unclenched Fabian's fist gently, and Fabian stared at his palm for a moment, the little red crescents left by his nails digging into the skin, and he hadn't realized it hurt, and he clenched his fist again, thinking that if she was alive, she'd be wearing her ring right now - but she's dead and she'd never worn the ring and it didn't matter, it was just a ring, it wasn't anything, because she never touched it - and then he was yelling. Angry, trembling, yelling as loud as he could at his brother, sometimes forming coherent sentences that Gideon tried to respond to. One more day. One more fucking day, and it might have been okay. She might have been okay. It could have been okay.

And then the tears that he hadn't cried - the ones he'd shoved aside the day she died because there had been things to do, he had to keep it together, the tears he didn't cry when he went to identify her body - but that sounded so cold, her body - the tears he didn't cry when they put her in the ground next to her sister - also killed that day - and the rest of her family - he couldn't do anything other than stand there and cry, and his brother held him silently because there was absolutely nothing left to say.

Fabian set the small velvet box down on her desk - his now, he guessed - on top of the layer of parchments that covered the surface. A small stack of healer texts on the left side of her desk was tilted at a precarious angle and looked like it might fall, but he couldn't bring himself to right it. To disturb anything she left behind would ruin it, obliterate the last traces of her he was trying so desperately to hold on to.

Their bed - though, he guessed it was just his now - still held her scent, though it was fading, she was fading, just like every other bit of her, and soon she would be gone, except for the echos still left smiling out of picture frames.

He heard Gideon in the doorway, and he didn't turn. He sighed, stepped back, looking at the small velvet box and the mess of papers covering the delicate polished wood of the desk. A long moment, and his voice was tired when he spoke, resigned.

"I was gonna marry her, Gid."