A/N: WOOT, SPRING BREAK, YEAAAAH! XD Sorry, had to get that out of my system. I'm on spring break now, obviously. And today, you're all treated to...the last chapter of this story. Yep, I'm done with it. Unfortunately, I feel like the ending cliche somewhat, but I couldn't think of anything else to put. I blame this on the 90's movie version of "Wuthering Heights" for this one. Yep, 90's, not classic 1930's version. I tend to like different versions of stuff than other people. But, yeah, enjoy the ending. I feel like the writing could have been better, personally, but I'm a perfectionist.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 28: Unburdened
A life alone as well as a life without her in it. This was the manner in which Salazar lived out his not-so-golden years as his hair turned grayer and the deep wrinkles on his face became more prominent. He was shocked that he had managed to outlive his father by quite a few years despite being indifferent to death. After Rowena, he swore to himself that he no longer feared it and why should he? Surrounded by valuable treasures and residing in the roomiest of castles, he felt that he lost everything. As he always emphasized to her, she was everything, the biggest part of his life. Yet, her life extinguished like a candle flame. He lived out his life sitting and reading, aging as he waited for death's cool embrace.
Once a hint of illness (most likely consumption, he concluded) touched him at age one and sixty, he sent a letter by owl to his son. What Joseph would inherit was to be discussed among other topics that could randomly weave into that conversation. What these topics were to be, Salazar could have never guessed, for it wasn't as though Legillimency predicted the future. Thus, the two men sat by the hearth one autumn evening, sipping cups of tea and speaking of the son's inheritance. However, Joseph stared almost concernedly at his father after a nagging cough.
"What is it?" Salazar gruffly inquired. "Have you not seen a man cough before?"
There was a guarded sharpness in his eyes that the younger Slytherin found that he was ill at ease with. He ran a hand through his dark brown, nearly black hair and took another sip of tea.
"Yes," Joseph finally spoke at length, requiring the soothing liquid as something to mull over. "But, Father, it seems to me that you are welcome to dying. Otherwise, why would we discuss the land I shall acquire? Or that I shall inherit Violethall?"
For, yes, Salazar himself had named the castle after her wonderful, lovely wildflowers that she would pick in the summer and put in vases. Every little bit of nature-made color that she could find would end up in Hogwarts' interior.
He sighed, though eyed Joseph grudgingly. "Joseph, why care to tell me this? All old men welcome death."
Clearly ready to test him, his son shook his head quite fervently. "But, they do not embrace it as wholly as you, Father. What would it be that has troubled you?"
Those analytical midnight blue eyes of his scanned Salazar's own, for the elderly man shifted under such vision. Throughout these many years that had seamlessly lapsed into each other, the two of them rarely shared what would be considered heart-to-heart talks. It was most unlike men, especially Slytherins, to divulge their feelings.
However, in this instance, Salazar's patience ebbed once he noticed Joseph's eyes take on a glow of pity. Something seized him then.
"It is her!" he bellowed, on the verge of hurling the tea kettle. "I long to join her!"
Joseph's eyebrows perked up out of sheer puzzlement, stunned that his father could possibly speak of...well, the woman he believed him to refer to.
"Mother?"
Even murmuring that left Joseph a skeptic, for he was no fool, able to observe that there seemed to be a certain contempt Salazar held toward his former wife.
Currently, his father snorted. "No, boy, not her. There was another before her, one who is irreplaceable both in my mind and heart."
His voice had softened at that point, astounding his son even further.
Nonetheless, it was no longer in doubt that he also held some degree of affection toward the man who raised him, for he implored sympathetically, "Tell me about her."
Since the boy was lucky enough to be of the same blood, Salazar half-disdainfully, half-dotingly thought, he would be the worthy one to hear the story of an old man's heart. He proceeded to relate of the tale of him and Rowena Ravenclaw, recalling as much as possible (and, even as an old, dying man, his memory still held up) on their most joyous moments as well as the most heart-wrenching. Their tea was abandoned and soon became lukewarm, though Salazar continued to give his recollections and Joseph with listening. It was to be the closest to them bonding.
As well as that father-son interaction, it marked the first and last time Salazar ever spoke of Rowena this candidly.
The next morning, once bidding his father a fond farewell and sincere wishes for him to recover soon, Joseph rode off on his ivory colored steed. A very slight, wry smile appeared on Salazar's lips while watching the horse disappear into the horizon. Joseph reminded him of a younger yet infinitely better version of himself, what with the rejection of luxurious things such as a carriage for simpler things like a horse. And yet, Joseph possessed the temperament of someone well-bred and quite cared for during his childhood. Salazar envied this, though the alternative would have been turning the boy wretched. Despite the unknown chamber with that ugly basilisk at Hogwarts, he wasn't as heartless as to torture his own flesh and blood. Still...his son had been so well-endowed in his life.
His health took a drastic turn for the worse in the following days after this brief contemplation. Perhaps this was because it caused him to realize just how much he longed for death instead of mere indifference. Indeed, Salazar's cough seemed to seize him each time, taking control to make him suffer from an aching chest among other ills. He felt exceedingly old, as ancient as Merlin himself had been when he died. He cared not and continued to pore over his books that he had obtained over the years to add to Violethall's extensive collection. Every word he read would whisk him away from his frightfully lonely castle and leave him to forget, at least for a little while, his situation.
But, as he would have had to eventually settle for as someone who was dying by the day, Salazar was placed under bed rest by his servants. Oh, how he had initially protested! Then, he knew with a resigned air that this was what had to happen in order for him to transition from this life to the next. Besides, there truly was nothing he could do now, considering that discussion with his son. He faced the fact that he had been setting affairs in order to prepare for this. His rheumy, watery eyes looking toward that one small circular window for answers, he was only assured that he could reunite with Rowena soon. Hopefully, nothing would prevent such a reunion from taking place. As long as that one sin of his didn't place him in damnation and the scorching fires of Hell, he would be tranquil.
Thus, Salazar lay in his bed as the coughs and the chills and the aches plagued him and ravaged his body, perpetually waiting for the end to draw near. That one finale before the curtain fell on him forever, never to rise again. Those fools of servants summoned physicians who tried to cure him with those infernal, vampire-like worms they called leeches. Salazar found it sickeningly comical that they would attempt to rescue him from the abyss of death. He did not deserve mercy for his past wrongs, especially being saved from what was meant to occur. Besides, if the potions he used to brew couldn't cure consumption, then these parasites no better and no more purposeful than flobberworms couldn't either.
And nonetheless, the servants and the physicians should be aware to let an old man have his peace. One late afternoon, Salazar sensed that his death was impending, just minutes away, he assumed. He thought of that miniature hourglass he kept in a certain dungeon classroom that he would constantly eye, each grain of sand falling to the bottom. The sand as of present represented his draining life. Judging by his laborious breathing, it would be gone shortly, and he eagerly wished for it more than anything. Though once he feared death as a presence that took away those he loved, he would meet it head-on now.
Was this what his father felt in his final hours? Relief that he would see his Penelope again?
For, it was the same with Salazar, very much the same morbid yet fervidly optimistic feeling that bubbled in his chest. All of his anguish these twelve years following Rowena's death would come to pass away as he breathed his last. What would she look like once he did encounter her? Would she be clothed in white and smile lovingly at him? Then again, he supposed it didn't have to be white. Actually, if it wasn't too much to ask, he preferred her in the colors she liked, violets and blues and even greens. Oh, such nonsense he was thinking, but it was logical coming from a senile mind. As he drew another painful breath, he allowed his eyes to flutter closed after staring too long at a stream of sunlight pouring from his window. For once, light hurt his vision. If only for the dark to come...
"Salazar."
A voice echoed from a mysterious point of origin, a gentle tone that sounded uncannily familiar. But, how could it be her? Salazar kept breathing, placing a hand over his weakly palpitating heart to ensure that this was so. Why ever would...?
He barely, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. "I am dreaming, hallucinating."
The feminine voice laughed. "No, Salazar, it is I. I'm Rowena."
"I feel you. I feel your presence," he whispered, believing her as soon as she told her identity to him. "Yet, I cannot see you."
Unbeknownst to him, Rowena as an apparition floated rather than stood by his bedside, wearing her favored violet dress. Her hair was loose and without the diadem perched atop her head.
She smiled sadly upon the inevitable fact that she was indeed invisible to him for the time being. Of course Salazar wouldn't see her. He was alive (though by a thread), and she was dead. A boundary had situated itself firmly between them, as much as she was loathe to admit it. This didn't stop her from situating her ghostly form comfortably on his bed, so that she was next to him.
"But, you do hear me, I presume?"
Salazar's aged eyes lit up. "Aye, I do. Tis been long since I have heard your pretty voice. I missed it so."
A desire to touch him as she once did when alive overcame Rowena to the point that it tingled throughout her whole being. In one way, it would serve as a gesture of comfort toward him, for he looked quite frail. His hair and beard were both long and white with age as well as the toll it had taken on him. So, she moved her hand toward his hair...and it passed through it. She could not feel a thing, she realized, her face falling in disappointment.
Ashamed, she murmured, "I cannot touch you just as you can neither touch nor see me. What reunion is this?"
"Do not fret, Rowena. We hear each other as we always have, do we not?"—she acknowledged this with a "yes"—"Then be at ease. We are together again. By the by...why have you returned?"
Looking emphatically at Salazar, Rowena noted that her love had gone through so much, nearly as much as she had before her passing. And he was alone as well.
"As a spirit who is intimately connected with you, I sensed that death would soon claim you. I came to be of solace and to be your guide to the realm of the afterlife. Magic does not stop for death, Salazar, despite the fact that magic cannot reverse the effects," she explained gently, though was concerned when she heard him cough severely. She swore that she even spotted drops of blood splatter his coverlet. Appearing to sense her anxiety over him, he dryly smiled while collapsing back onto his bed.
"Charming, is it not?" he self-deprecatingly joked. "I have been reduced to do the leeches' work."
Oh, Salazar, Rowena thought while shaking her head, why must you joke about things like that? Regardless of the inability, she touched his wrinkled, wizened face without feeling the skin or bones beneath. Twas all extremely odd.
Whispering in his ear, she lightly admonished, "My dear, what am I to do with you? You distort serious matters into ones of amusement. You always did have a strange sense of humor, darling, and I am still taken aback by it."
"I am full of surprises." He smirked with that sly Slytherin smirk that was never out of place on his face, no matter the rhyme or reason.
The expression then turned pensive and grave due to the remembrance of what he wrote in his first and last letter to her. He hadn't dared to be specific regarding what he referred to, for he disliked having to startle her. The moment before his death was as good a time as any.
Raking a hand through his white hair, he confessed, "I knew about our child."
Rowena's blue-gray eyes widened in shock. "For...how long? I cannot believe...When ever did you discover that I had been with child?"
"Shortly before I left Hogwarts whilst you peacefully slept. It was the delicate matter I did not address in detail in my letter to you for fear that you would die more quickly."
She could not resist stuttering. "I—I thought y—you would be enraged by that."
Another cough seized him before he elaborated, "I was for a time but not initially. That child was a product of our love, and I was glad. And yet, I could not stay. You know why."
Rowena rested her hand on his chest, where his heartbeats lessened by the minute. "I was an unfit mother, Sal. Helena ended up betraying me and stealing the diadem, for she seemed to think thoughts along those lines. It was not until later, when I died that...I learned that that bloody wretched baron I summoned murdered her! He was enamored yet sinfully obsessed with her."
Trying to hold back her tears, she clutched yet bizarrely not clutched at Salazar's silk nightshirt to anchor herself. She could not weep such weak tears. And yet, he soothingly hushed her to placate the frayed nerves and the immeasurable guilt.
His voice weakening, he told her lowly, "Our daughter...must have inherited...that blasted Slytherin ruthlessness...infamous in my line. But...you are not to blame...my love. Did my letter...not help you?"
Rowena glanced at his troubled face and kissed his forehead. "It did...so much."
Tilting his head toward where he guessed she was, he whispered, "Then...now, you are alleviating me of my sorrows, of my pain...It is a most...beautiful thing."
Salazar's entrancing green-gray eyes grew tender and affectionate, his face brightening, and for a moment, his younger self emerged. He was extraordinarily perfect to her.
A pang struck her as he reverted back to his current self, the dying self that would fade from existence. In spite of her anticipation of this moment, Rowena hated to witness him in agony from his illness, to see him suffer in any way. Pride took hold of her then, pride for what bravery he showed in these lingering minutes.
She swore she really touched his hair this time as she warmly remarked, "You look captivating, even now. It is more than I could have said for myself. I must have looked quite a fright before I died."
"Implying that you were far lovelier than ever...," he trailed off before adding, "I wish...more than anything, my beloved, I wish...I could...kiss you..."
He faded and more rapidly. No wonder she could stroke his hair.
Though he was under immense physical torture and that it was a struggle for every single breath of air, Salazar smiled softly, relieved that it would be all over. His smile widened when he glimpsed Rowena now. She lay beside him yet not quite touching the bed...No, if anything, she floated above him somewhat, an angel in ethereal form. She looked the age she was at the time they founded the school. Heavy weights fell as though they pulled his eyelids closed with that one final assessment of her. He felt content.
Barely breathing, he breathed out, "Rowena..."
And thus, he was no more on this earth as his heart gave out at last. However, a separation of soul and body took place, and he discovered his spirit floating outside the castle.
Hesitantly, Rowena joined him, her eyes never leaving his. She was unsure about how to react, taking into account that she witnessed the love of her life die. Clearly, he would move on with her, and together, they would become two phantoms traveling wherever the wind took them. Or so she romantically thought, she admitted.
"Come here," Salazar murmured, gesturing with his hands which...appeared young. Out of curiosity, he fingered a strand of his hair—raven black, as it had been. This...this genuinely was the magic Rowena had spoken of. Inwardly, he rejoiced.
"I...I am young again," he told her reverently, rushing over toward her.
Laughing freely and blissfully, Rowena embraced him in the hopes that she would feel him in her arms and her in his. They made contact.
Salazar's face broke into a grin. "And I can touch you as well! Do you realize what this means?"
"We shall never be apart ever again, eternally in the afterlife's realm," she told him confidently, knowing that this was what they deserved after too many years apart.
"Indeed we will." He pressed his forehead against hers. "I love you, my beautiful, intelligent, sweet Rowena."
She caressed his face. "And I love you my clever, kind, perfect Salazar."
In a moment of pure euphoria, their eyes remained locked on each other as their heads were swarmed by half-disbelieving, half-exhilarated thoughts.
For one, both speculated that what had happened in the past few minutes would turn out to be a fantastical dream. They fleetingly pondered over the possibility of no afterlife whatsoever. But, then, their hearts filled with such joy that this was real and that they could still be able to kiss each other.
Without much further contemplating, Salazar brought his lips down on Rowena's, kissing her with as much passion as he ever felt for her. There was no way he would release her again. She returned those same sentiments through her enthusiastic response as she wound her hands through the tangles of his dark hair.
"Everything is as it should be," she whispered, giving him a lasting kiss on his lips.
Truer words were never spoken as far as he was concerned. All these years, he had always adored her. In this next phase, he would continue to do so, for nothing horrible could happen again to disrupt the harmony they shared.
Salazar smiled heartily, touching her cheek. "I could not imagine anything more ideal."
Their embrace then breaking, Rowena held out a hand to him. "Are you coming?"
"I will follow you to wherever our destination is, Rowena."
As he took her hand, the two lovers gazed at each other quite tenderly, endearingly. It was as though they read each other's minds to ensure that this was what they both desired. And then, they floated upwards toward this enigmatic realm, to become part of the stars. Forever.
The End
A/N: And yeah, I normally hate putting "the end" after a story, but in this case with this one, it felt right. First of all, it's (lemme check here) a whopping 343 pages long on Word, my biggest fic to date. Dang, I can't believe it got that big, but it did. Second of all, I felt attached in writing something as emotional as this. Then again, all my fics seem to have a certain range of emotion, so maybe it's not so surprising. I enjoyed working on this just as I hoped you guys enjoyed reading this.
Comments...Hm, well, that one line I wrote about Salazar telling secrets "from an old man's heart"...That was frickin' Titanic. Yep, guys, Titanic, never thought I'd say that. Or maybe I did. I don't know. And somehow...I just hate ending stories with just a death and then nothing. I mean, heck, originally the story was going to end right at Rowena's funeral. But, that just didn't seem right to me.
So, anyway, special thanks especially goes out to Electra de Lioncourt and Violet Saphira Darling (sorry for any butchering of pennames) for reviewing a lot and Update for putting this as a recommendation on the on livejournal. And all of you reviewers and readers out there, thanks so much. I never expected this story to have so many hits for a Salazar/Rowena or so many reviews. Thanks, all you guys, so much! I mean it. XD
