(A/N Scrying is the practice of finding something by dangling an object, usually a precious stone with spiritual qualities attributed to it, on a string above a map. I think wherever the stone stops swinging is where the thing you're looking for supposedly is. I.e. if you're looking for your favorite shirt and you dangle the stone over a picture of your room, you swing the stone in a circular motion and wherever it centers is where you'll find your favorite shirt. Some people believe that this works in real life; personally, I think its a scam to get the gullible to spend their money on an overpriced variation of soap-on-a-rope. But I'm sure it would work wonders for an actual wizard :D)

.

.

.

The summer evening was not cold, but Gellert was. And the air became cold around him. The sunset found him on the top of the tallest building in London. It was empty up there, forsaken by all but birds and the odd custodian.

Below him, unseen in the gathering darkness, people huddled in their coats and hurried indoors, running from the biting wind that had arisen in what should have been a warm night.

He wasn't angry anymore. In its wake he was as cold as the aura he bled into his surroundings; mournful and yet not repentant, never repentant.

He knew what he'd done was unethical. He would be the first to admit it. And yet he refused to call it wrong. Sometimes unethical must be done. That was how he made sense of the world and his place in it, how he made uneasy peace, or at least a truce, with the tragedy of his life.

He was meant to be as he was: hateful, violent. Evil, some would say. It was his fate to do the things that others could or would not do.

Even now, as darkness fell in London, there were people dying – of hunger or disease that could be cured by muggle or wizard alike. Yet the people of England, of any so-called 'civilized' country, went about their lives as though no one in the world was suffering any more than they were. Was that so much more evil than him, to enjoy surplus while others starved?

They took it for granted, how the world was built around a system that blessed some and cursed others. They didn't care, as long as it didn't negatively impact them. How could anyone live complacently in such a world and not be evil, simply by contributing to it?

It wasn't in his power to save lives. He had nothing of his own, depending on the charity of his great-aunt and others survive. Even healing was something he'd always been terrible at. Gifted as he might be in other areas, he typically failed at even the most routine of curative magic.

He hadn't been able to save his siblings. He hadn't been able to save even himself, until after the best part of him had already died.

No, his power was in destruction. And that was fine by him; the world sometimes needed destruction as much as it needed healing. He would tear down every framework of inequality, destroy the very foundations of society, if that's what it took.

I will save the world, or break it in trying.

What could he ever destroy that was worth preserving? It was all rotten, the world and everything in it. He wanted no part of it.

He walked to the very edge of the roof, with nothing between him and the stomach-clenching drop below. The abyss, so much like that of his nightmares.

It was then as it had been the first time he reached rock-bottom. Everything in life might be breaking around him, but he knew he would not die, not like this, swallowed by the black void yawning hungrily all around him. He had survived too much, just to fall away into nothingness. Surviving was his precedent, his habit. He would live, even if he didn't want to.

All the same, he wasn't quite ready to step back from the edge yet. The thought of surrender was too sweet. He would not die, and yet did not know how to go on living. So he stared into the darkness until he was dizzy, until it seemed to be rising up to meet him, since he refused to come down.

.

.

That was where Albus found him, perched on the very edge of the precipice as though a gust of wind might send him over into the nothingness.

Gellert felt a shiver in the back of his mind that told him he was not alone. He knew who it was without looking, and the realization was not a welcome one.

"How did you find me?"

He was good at maintaining spells that prevented people from tracking him; a skill developed when he was young and attempted to run away from his caretakers every month or so.

"Scrying let me track you as far as the city. Once I was here, I only had to go where it was coldest."

"I take it you can stand to look at me again."

"Ariana was asking about you. She misses you. So don't you dare be so selfish as to jump from there."

"God's will didn't succeed in killing me." He said God as though it was the most disgusting word known to any language. "No way a lover's tiff will."

"Then come away from the edge." There was no fear in him for Gellert's sake. His heart was like a rough stone in his chest, painful and heavy yet numb in itself.

"Come and get me if you have something you want to say."

Gellert didn't want to fight, but didn't want to reconcile either. He had been preparing himself never to see Albus again, and the change in plans was far from welcome.

"I came this far."

"Do heights scare you?"

As a matter of fact they did, but Albus was unwilling to admit it.

"…I'm exceptionally less steady when I've barely slept in two days."

"Vodka would help with that. Puts you right out." Drinking was one of the many things Gellert had been doing from far too young an age.

"Did you enjoy it, Gellert? Murdering him?" His words were neither angry nor beseeching. They were simply there: raw, as he was.

"If you came here to talk about that, I just might jump after all."

"I need to know. Did you…did you like seeing his fear? Did you enjoy having that kind of power over him?" The words made him feel sick as he spoke them.

Gellert would have dearly loved to say that he had.

"I saw what I did as an obligation. I enjoy the knowledge that the world is free of that scum. I am not sorry."

"Every time I fall asleep I dream of him." Albus covered his eyes with his hand for a moment, aching from too many hours with too little sleep. "I dream his corpse is there, under my bed rotting. I can't get away from it, all that putrid flesh…"

That hurt. Gellert knew that Albus didn't deserve that kind of pain. And he didn't want to be guilty of that, of hurting someone he cared for in such a sick way.

"I did not kill him for you; his death is not on your conscience. I killed him because it was the right thing to do. Is that enough? Can you sleep in peace now?"

"Of course it's not enough! It's not that he died. It's the fact that you did it." He took a deep breath, summoning the will to say what he had come to say, although at the moment it was something he did because he had to, not because he wanted to.

"I said I loved you and I still do, even though I hate what you've done. I made commitment that I would help you overcome your demons, and I will keep that promise. All I need is for you to let me."

The sentiment was in words, but not in his heart at that moment. His love was not gone, but eclipsed by everything else. He was dead-tired and tired of death.

"You mean change me." Albus was just like everyone else, wanting to control and contain him, motivated out of cold duty, never love. Gellert had never wanted to be loved, until now. "You only care about what you want me to be – someone with brains and charm and a tragic past but no bite behind his bark."

He knew it would turn out this way all along. How could he ever have been foolish enough to believe otherwise?

"Why is your defining characteristic taking life? What about the good you've done? No one else could have done for Ariana what you did."

"I thought you told me to leave her out of it."

"I didn't want you to kill in her name. Or in mine – especially in mine. You say his death made the world a better place, but you've already made the world better – for me and my sister, anyway. Do not we matter?"

"You matter above anyone." He turned to look at Albus at last. It was Ariana that undid him. This conflict with Albus didn't touch his feelings for her. They were the one part of him that still had any hope.

"If I – if we matter, then come down from there and talk to me."

"I would be doing you a disservice if I did. How many more nightmares would I give you, if I stayed? I love you too much for that." He smiled, but it was bitter. "I love you more than myself, you know? More than anything."

They weren't happy words; love had become a cage to him, something that held him down and trapped him. A prison he couldn't escape even if he wanted to.

"I'd give anything for you, sacrifice anything." He continued. "Anything but this."

"Sacrifice anything but what? Killing people?"

"You do not understand! I can't live knowing that people like him are allowed to exist in the world. When I can only see the pain they cause, how their hatred spreads like a cancer and what that hate leads to…what about the ones who couldn't kill to defend themselves? Ariana, my brother and sisters, all those others who could never fight back? Am I supposed to forget them?"

"Killing won't change what happened to Ariana, or your siblings. Or you."

He remembered, with an almost physical pang, running his fingers, his lips, over Gellert's scars. All those tender, protective feelings clashed head-on with the horror of the past days, leaving him in chaos.

"If I wipe out all of them, all of their hatred from the world, I might prevent the same thing from happening to others."

"Can fighting hate with more of the same accomplish any good in the end?"

Even when they were angry with one another, their thoughts still worked in astonishing unity; it was a meeting of the minds, even when they met on the battlefield.

"Hate saved my life – I sure as hell didn't live because I had any hope or love. Is that worth something, or do you no longer care if I live or die?"

"Why do you insist on making it a matter of life or death? What Mr. Weaver did is nowhere near as bad as what they did to you. He did wrong but he did not deserve to die for it."

"Even assuming he would never physically hurt anyone by his own hand, he still contributes to a society that persecutes those who are different – he condones it, he participates in it, even if he himself does not take life. Hate breeds more of the same."

"Killing someone won't change that; there will always be another to take their place. Even with the power of the Deathly Hallows, you could never force people to change. Not individually, and not as a society."

"So what? Are you saying it's hopeless, that I should give up? I will die first."

"I'm saying, there are better ways to bring about change, than to do it by force. If hate breeds more of the same, why base your actions off of it? Why not help people in your sibling's names, or Ariana's or your own? Surely that would honor their memory just as well."

"Death comes easily to me; kindness does not. You've lived in a world altogether more pleasant than mine, even accounting for what happened to Ariana. Your ideals might work for you, but how am I supposed to accept them?"

"I'm only asking you to take them into consideration. Another point of view is good, as long as it's based in reality."

"In the end, you would only ask me to compromise, and I am not willing to do that. If you are to lose sleep over every death, how can you hope to change anything?"

"I'm not asking you to compromise. I know what you want, it's the same thing I do – a world better than this one. I'm only asking you to consider other means to accomplish it. Not in lieu of your own, just in addition to them."

"What means are you suggesting?"

"Come over here and I'll tell you."

Gellert regarded the distance separating him from Albus. How easy those steps would be, both physically and emotionally. He wantedto go to him, to be forgiven by him. He wanted that so badly it hurt.

But it wasn't about what he wanted. The faces of his siblings rose like phantoms from his early memories.

Am I betraying you for doing the easy thing?

"If I back down now, won't I back down every time I'm faced with a painful choice? When I must choose between what I want and what I must do?"

That was what it took to shatter Albus, the knowledge that Gellert didn't want things to be this way anymore than he did. They were both lost, both struggling to do the right thing when everything was so horribly wrong.

"I'm not asking you to choose. I swear to you I won't rest until we've built a world better than this one." His words were heated with sudden urgency. His emotions were overtaking him at last. "I'll give you my life, if you just give me this, just the promise that killing will be your last resort, not your first."

"It means that much to you?"

"You and what you believe in are worth everything to me. My life, a hundred times over." He removed his glasses, irritably swiping at the sudden moisture on his face. Was he really crying? If he was he hardly felt it. He didn't know what he felt anymore.

He was surprised to feel a soft touch on his face. Gellert was standing in front of him, wiping away his tears.

"Don't. Please, it's not worth it. None of this is. The world doesn't deserve the tears, or the life of someone like you."

Albus didn't think nearly so much of himself, but figured that was beside the point. He settled for responding,

"Even if it doesn't now, it will someday. I promise you."

"And I don't want you giving your life to me. I don't deserve that either."

"Whether you do or not, I'm yours entirely."

"I fear you've made too much of me." He looked as miserable as Albus felt, although his own eyes were dry. "You're by far the better person of the two of us, but the wicked ones have a part to play as well."

"I think you've made too little of yourself. You call yourself wicked because you can't see all the good in you."

Gellert wasn't sure he believed that, although he wanted to. Wanted to be the person Albus saw him as. The person who deserved him.

"It once seemed that we were the best ones for each other. Now I wonder if we're not the worst."

"I would not have anyone else." Those were the truest words he had spoken all night. He didn't want to love, or hate, anyone aside from Gellert. Didn't want to cry for anyone else.

"Nor would I."

"Then we are good enough for one another." He extended his hand. "Do you want to come home?"

"…How can I go back? After everything that's happened. How can either of us go back?"

"That's what home is, isn't it? The place you can return to always, no matter how badly you mess up."

Gellert thought about that, thought about the home of his childhood, filled with ghosts and graves and terrible memories. No matter what happened with Albus, a home with him would always be better than the home Gellert had come from.

"Yes. You're right." He took Albus's hand; his own was shaking noticeably with the turbulent emotions that still clashed within him. He had indeed fucked things up pretty badly this time, and in the past he had always been the one to turn his back, to run away.

No more.

"If home is with you, there's nowhere else I want to be."

If that wasn't worth fighting for, nothing was.

.

.

.

(A/N Happy Valentines Day! Celebrate with this new chapter of this tragically doomed love. I'm not single and bitter.)