Authors Note: So, this is my longest chapter for sure. It's a monster. But it's also my favorite. Ladies and gentlemen, THIS chapter is what inspired the ENTIRE STORY! I had the inspiration for this series of scenes and actually worked my way BACKWARDS to plan the entirety of the story *around it*. This was the seed that sprouted Resurgence! I hope you love it as much as I do.
Chapters left after this: 4 (and an epilogue.)
I'm heading to Vermont now for a long weekend! Toodles!
Chapter 37—Vita
It was happening again: a woman walked down the opposite end of the corridor, only this time, Fred was certain it was Ava.
He was following her down what seemed like a never-ending hallway. The floor was plain flagstone and the walls were plain, roughly cut grey bricks. No torches were mounted upon the walls; the space was void of any warmth or merry light, rather, they were bathed in an odd purplish haze.
Ava walked ahead of him, not very quickly, but gaining distance nonetheless. Fred quickened his pace but felt as though he were wading through molasses; moving was becoming increasingly difficult and his progress was slow.
"Wait for me!" he cried out to her.
But Ava continued without so much as a glance behind her. Her long blonde hair swayed across her back, and she was wearing those oversized black clothes she'd been in the first time they'd met in the alleyway.
"Ava!"
She was becoming smaller and smaller in the distance of the massively lengthy corridor. There was panic swirling around in Fred's chest; he was certain he'd lose sight of her soon.
He attempted to break into a sprint, but suddenly found himself unable to move. He'd like to say his feet were glued to the floor, but it was more than that—he was stuck in place so firmly, it was like his feet had rooted into the flagstone itself.
The ground began to shake, violently enough so that the bricks in the walls began rattling against one another, threatening to fall out of their places. Small clouds of dust began emitting through the cracks between them.
"Ava, help me!" Fred screamed, twisting and flailing in place.
She finally paused, and slowly turned to look over her shoulder at him. Her face wasn't one of concern or even one of recognition—she looked totally and utterly confused. There was a crease between her eyebrows as she seemed to study him skeptically, but the quaking of the corridor didn't seem to phase her otherwise.
After a few moments of staring, she seemed to decide she didn't know him, or want to help him. She gave what looked like a half-shrug, and turned back around, continuing her strides away from him.
"Ava!"
But Fred's pleading was drowned out by a sudden explosive rumbling; it was a terrible noise, the sound of rock falling against rock. The walls around him began collapsing, the bricks tumbling down out of place one by one, whooshing past him and crashing to the floor.
There was dust and debris everywhere now, obscuring his vision and choking him. He could barely see his own hands out before him.
An additional noise broke through the sound of the rumbling and his own gasping: the very distinct cries of an infant.
"Ava, where's the baby?" he called down the corridor, but there was no answer.
The child wailed again, and this time, it sounded much closer, like it had been right next to his ear.
He looked down—the crying infant was cradled in his own arms, its wails strangled sounding amongst the dust. How it had gotten there, he didn't know, but he had to protect it from the falling debris...he wrapped his arms around it as tightly as he could, crouching down and tucking it under his ribcage, letting the bricks smash into his shoulders and the back of his head as the baby squirmed in his arms—
"Fred. FRED!"
Although his eyes snapped open, he couldn't see anything quite yet. Consciousness was flooding back to him, slowly but surely, as the dream left him hazy and disoriented.
"What in creation are you down here moanin' and groanin' about—were you dreamin'?"
Dakota's twangy voice accompanied by the sounds of him clomping down the spiral staircase echoed around the circular, glass-walled second level of the Treehouse. Fred remained lying still in the bed he'd summoned there, blinking hard, waiting for the last remnants of anxiety from the dream to melt away. He licked his lips and sat up slowly.
"Sorry," he croaked. His throat was very dry, he swore he could still taste the dust from the collapsing corridor.
Dakota swaggered over, yawning widely and dragging his feet, shirtless and wearing only a pair of drawstring pajama pants and his white and red phoenix eye patch. He was sort of scowling, his one visible eye all screwed up like he was staring at something that warranted harsh judgment.
"What in the Sam Hill is wrong with you? You're sweatin' like a whore in church."
Fred was rubbing his face vigorously with his palms now. "Had a nightmare," he muttered through his fingers, before letting his hands drop back down to the bed.
Dakota was still eyeing him. "This have anything to do with you being...here?" He held his arms out, gesturing to the room around them.
Fred wasn't sure if Dakota was trying to point out something specific—the room was perfectly tidy, and the dark forest visible to them through the glass walls was quite still.
"Here?" he echoed back.
"Yeah. I mean, you're here, she's there, you two been gettin' into it or what? Wasn't she just takin' care of your sickly ass last week?"
"Dakota," Fred said loudly, his voice coming out a little more aggressive than he intended it to. "Just...stop. I'm fine." His stomach was still churning with all sorts of dark feelings about the nightmare he'd just had; he was far from 'fine' but he didn't feel like sharing his feelings with Dakota right now.
"You don't look fine," Dakota challenged him stubbornly, folding his arms across his bare chest. It was only then Fred noticed that the burns he'd sustained across his face and ear ran down his neck, and the skin stretched across his right collarbone was rippled and marred as well.
Seeing the burns made something *ping* inside Fred's chest; that dream, that skeptical, almost accusatory look Ava had in her eye as she stared at him becoming buried in rubble, unmoved, suddenly came floating back into his head, and the last thing Fred wanted to see right now was any pain he'd caused.
"Stop with the fucking questions, Dakota, and go back to bed!" he exclaimed, jabbing towards the staircase.
Dakota's half-formed lips parted in surprise, and then his expression immediately became angry. "Well excuse me, Your Highness, I only came down to see what all the yowlin' was about that roused me from my godamn sleep—"
"This place doesn't belong to you!" Fred was yelling now, although he couldn't remember consciously beginning to raise his voice. All leftover lethargy that had been clinging to him from the dream had completely disappeared. "You just sleep here, I helped build this place!"
"Oh, I see, so anything you make is just yours to do what you please with, huh?" Dakota cried back, now looking at Fred like he was absolutely crazy.
"Yeah." Fred licked his lips again. He wished he had something to drink. "Yeah, that's right. Sure."
"Well...fine!" He reached up around his head and tore away the gleaming eye patch, tossing it to the ground. "You can have that back, then." He turned on his heel and left, storming back up the spiral staircase to his room on the third level.
Fred was staring down at the beautiful patch, carelessly splayed out in the middle of the floor. The phoenix flapped its wings a few times.
"Dakota—" he called, but the door above him slammed.
For a few moments, Fred just continued sitting there, upright in the randomly placed bed. Part of him wanted to go downstairs to get water, but the greater part yanked back at him with exhaustion, not willing to put forth the effort.
With a frustrated groan, he flopped backwards on to his pillow, staring up at the wooden boards in the ceiling.
The last time he had a nightmare was the night before the Hogwarts memorial service. It was slightly similar to this one; he'd found himself in the corridor collapse all over again...but that time was different...Ava had intervened, sensed his distress, pulled him out of the nightmare and changed the dream for him, her very presence the salve to his night terrors...
This time, she hadn't appeared. This time, she'd heeded his wishes, and truly left him alone.
Her skeptical face from the dream and Dakota's eyepatch lying stationary on the floor only feet away from him swirled around his mind like a tornado he couldn't escape from.
Fred couldn't help feeling like he was back to square one—back to pushing everyone far, far away, and making everyone he loved dearly hate him.
Some might say staring deeply and determinedly into a teacup looks like unhealthy behavior, but Ava was on a mission.
The little blue cup sat still on the kitchen island, filled with water at room temperature. The teabag floated along at the surface, and the water remained clear, the tea not steeping from lack of warmth.
Ava took a deep breath—five seconds in through the nose, five seconds out through the mouth—and she reached out to touch it.
She let her finger gently brush the brim of the cup, concentrating on visualizing exactly what she wished to happen—she imagined curls of steam arising from the surface, the teabag's color bleeding amber into the water. She even mentally chanted the word 'hot' a few times.
Hot, hot, hot.
Nothing.
Ava sighed, staring forlornly down into the shallow depths of the teacup again. She cracked her knuckles, and clenched and unclenched her fists again, before wrapping both of her hands around the sides of the cup.
Hot! Hot! Hot!
"Ha!" Ava let out a triumphant sputter of surprise as the porcelain seared warmth into her skin. The teabag immediately sank, its golden color spreading throughout the water. The aroma of the freshly brewed tea met her nostrils, and promptly, as though on cue, her stomach gave an almighty grumble.
"Alright, alright, food's coming," she murmured with a pat to her navel as she crossed the kitchen to the cupboard above the stove. She pulled out a box of cookies—Ginger Newts, they were labelled—and went back to her spot at the counter, dunking the amphibian shaped biscuit into her tea before biting its tail off.
She was getting better at controlling the magic now. Hermione had stopped by again a couple of days ago with some of her old school books to let her borrow, thinking it would be good for Ava to have something to put her energy towards and work on.
"Truthfully, I'm not sure how much use they'll be to you," Hermione had said with a sigh, setting the large stack of texts down on the coffee table. "They're spellbooks, but it's all about incantations and wand movements, and seeing as how you're not using a wand...well, maybe some really strong intent will have to do." She'd offered a half smile and a shrug.
"Thanks Hermione." Ava had smiled back, knowing Hermione understood—she wasn't just thanking her for the books, she was thanking her for not pumping her about what had happened with Fred. No one had seen him in days, after all.
Ava didn't like thinking about that too much herself, either. Every time she did, for example, she'd start breaking or dissolving or bursting things with her very touch, her chest wracked with sadness and anger and fear. And it seemed like all her body wanted right now was copious amounts of food and sleep—so she ate and slept and read Hermione's books, determinedly pushing away the aching hole in her heart that thumped every time she came across one of Fred's socks, or stray ginger hairs on the bathroom floor.
Her stomach rumbled again.
"He'll be back," she whispered out loud, and chomped down on another Newt.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairway from the shop met her ears. Half-heartedly abandoning her unfinished biscuit, Ava turned to fetch another teacup from the shelving above the sink. George had been dropping by every day to check on her, and not-so-subtly ask if she'd heard from Fred. They had a bit of a routine going now, where George would vaguely ask how she was feeling, Ava would tell him about her need for snacks and naps, George would give her a sack of food he'd picked up from the market, and then he'd tiptoe into the subject of his twin. These afternoon visits were always accompanied by tea, so the footsteps had come to be her signal to get the kettle going (her patience for magically warming the tea had run out for the day).
She heard the door open behind her as she was rummaging her hand around the tea bag jar next to the sink, her other hand still holding on to the empty cup.
"George, do you think you can bring me some more tea soon, I'm running—"
She'd turned around, and her words stopped short. The cup slipped from her fingers and shattered upon the floor.
It wasn't George. It was Fred.
"What are you doing here?" The words seemingly came spilling out of her mouth all on her own; Ava would have liked for her first words to him after his nearly week-long absence to be something smart and important and powerful, but instead, here she was, questioning him why he'd returned to his own house.
Fred's shoulders were rounded forward in an ashamed sort of way as he looked at her, standing awkwardly in the foyer. He gestured to her bare feet.
"There's glass," he said.
"What are you doing here?" she repeated back to him, staying firmly rooted in place—half out of stubbornness, half out of, admittedly, fear of stepping on the broken shards.
Fred stared at her face for a few more seconds before resolvedly sighing and drawing his wand out from his back pocket.
"Reparo," he murmured, and the broken pieces of the teacup sprang to life, melding together seamlessly like puzzle pieces in a perfect fit. He twitched his wand again and the teacup levitated up on to the counter to sit beside Ava's.
They stayed in silence for a few more seconds, Fred still posed in the foyer among the shoe rack and umbrella stand and Ava behind the kitchen island, the tea bag still in her hand.
"How are you?" he asked her pathetically, shoving his hands in his pockets. The edges of his ears poking out from between his layer of shaggy orange hair flushed magenta.
"Pregnant. Alone. Peachy. You?"
The magenta flushed an impressive shade of merlot.
Fred withdrew his hands from his pockets and began making his way over to Ava's side. "Listen...I really don't know what to say. I—"
The sound was like the crack of a whip. She'd slapped him.
Fred had a bit of a delayed reaction, flinching and blinking hard after her hand had already left his face. An awkward silence ensued before he finally had the courage to look down to her eyes.
"Suppose I deserved that," he muttered, rubbing his jaw. "Suppose I would've been concerned if you didn't do something like that."
Ava was staring up at him, her fists clenched at her sides and breathing hard like she'd just sprinted a short distance. Fred reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked her torso away, tears burning in her eyes.
Fred frowned. "What do you want me to say?"
"You're an ass."
"Okay, I'm an ass!" he exclaimed, holding his arms out at his sides. "I'm an ass. You're right. What else?" He let his arms fall, clapping against the sides of his legs.
Ava hugged her arms against herself tightly. "I didn't do this to myself, you know," she whispered thickly through her tears.
"I know."
Fred was undoubtedly kind of afraid of getting slapped again—boy, the girl could hit—but he risked it, closing the distance between them in two wide strides and pulling Ava against his chest.
She folded, giving in without a fight and leaning against him, her tears soaking through his shirt. She sobbed for a minute, and Fred squeezed her tighter, one hand stroking her hair.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You were so angry," she said back, her voice muffled against his chest.
"I wasn't angry at you," he replied quickly.
"I know—I know you don't w-want this, Fred, but—"
"Is that what you think?" Fred grabbed her by the shoulders and held her away from him at arm's length to get a good look at her reddened, tear washed face. "That's why you think I left?"
Ava shrugged beneath his hands. "What else was I supposed to think?" she whispered.
He stared at her for a few more seconds. "Fair enough."
Ava avoided his eyes. She slipped out from under his hands and headed over to the sink, turning on the faucet and leaning over the spray as she splashed her face.
"I can only imagine how much you hate me right now," Fred said in a low voice from over her shoulder. "I don't know what I'm doing here, I know I need to fix things but I feel like I can't stop fucking up...what are you staring at?"
Ava had straightened up from the sink and was patting her face dry with the dish towel. The fabric had barely left her skin when something out the window had caught her eye...it almost looked like...but no, not here...
"I thought I saw something," she said in a distracted voice, and quickly crossed the room, stepping around Fred to stand at the larger window in the sitting room. She cranked it open; it was the window she'd climbed out of a few weeks prior. The crisp October breeze and the sounds of the bustling alley below flowed in.
"What was it?" Fred asked, coming to stand beside her. He directed his gaze to where she was staring: directly across the way, through the third floor window of Miss Teeley's Muggle Trinkets and Toys.
Ava continued watching, waiting to see it again...but there was nothing. Just stillness, blackness. She turned to face Fred.
"Callaghan," she said in a voice that sounded both awed and confused. "I thought I saw Callaghan."
Fred frowned. "Callaghan? You haven't seen him since—"
"The night I left Merryweather, yeah," Ava finished for him. She gave one last glance into the window across the way and then cranked theirs shut again, making sure to lock the latch. "Fox wouldn't tell me what happened to him. Hey, did you hear about Knox?"
"Dakota told me, yeah. He's with one of the Auror's family, as a foster. They're not sure what to do with him yet. It's weird how Zonko would just give him up like that and surrender, isn't it?"
Ava nodded. "George said he was barely coherent, acting really addled, but he managed to get something out about Knox being Gridgeon's 'crowning jewel' because he started doing magic...he said he took Knox away to try and draw Gridgeon out for us."
Fred's thoughtful frown deepened. "That doesn't make any sense. Why does he want to help us now?"
"Don't know. Some sort of redemption song, maybe."
They returned to silence, their temporary distraction from the window and their talk of Sarah's son fading, the heaviness of the previous conversation creeping back into the atmosphere.
Finally, their eyes met, Fred's maple-syrup ones and Ava's greyish green, all vulnerability, shame, and desperation between them apparent.
"I don't know what to do," Fred whispered.
"I know. I'm scared too."
Fred shook his head, gnawing on his bottom lip and backing away from Ava. "You don't understand," he said. "I'm not...this isn't..." he struggled desperately for the words.
But he didn't have to. Something was practically vibrating off of him; when he'd first come in Ava could feel his awkwardness, his embarrassment, his guilt. But now it was different, now he was feeling like—
"Like you're not good enough?" Ava whispered, stepping towards him. "You feel like you're not good enough? Fred, how could you possibly—"
"I can't give you what you'll need." Fred forced the words out through his teeth, tears forming in his own eyes now. "I can't be a good father, I can't be a good anything!"
"What do you mean?" Ava pleaded.
Fred jabbed his finger behind him in the direction of the hall leading to the bedroom. "You just had to care for me like I was some kind of bloody invalid for almost a week, Ava!" he exclaimed. "This is what's going to happen, this is who I am, who I'm going to be! An on and off cripple forever!"
"And our child will love you all the same!" she said firmly, trying to get close to Fred to touch him, but now he was the one jerking away. The tears spilled down his cheeks.
He had his hands on his hips now, staring down at his shoes, or the floor, anything but up at Ava. "I'm not worried about love," he said softly. "I'm worried about the third night in a row when you haven't slept, and the baby is crying and needs tending, and I'm confined in bed and you have to do it. I'm worried about not being able to send him or her off to Hogwarts because I'm back at home in bed and aching. I'm worried I wont be able to fly with him on a broom, I'm worried I won't be able to braid her hair, I'm worried..." Fred trailed off. He was staring at Ava's face now, although he couldn't remember looking up. "I'm worried you'll have to do it all. And I'm worried you'll hate me for it."
There it was. Fred hadn't been angry to know she was pregnant, he hadn't been avoiding her because he didn't want their little family. He'd left because he did want it, desperately so, but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to be everything he needed to be when the time came.
Ava had known it all along, that Fred was scared—she just hadn't understood the reason.
Before she could respond, before she could say anything at all, Fred was hurrying past her, wiping his face with the bottom edge of his shirt and going towards the fireplace again.
"Fred, don't you DARE leave me again!" Ava screamed, angry and scared and desperate and pleading all at once, and the repaired teacup sitting stationary on the kitchen island ten feet behind her shattered again, spraying the counter with glass.
Fred paused, and then looked over his shoulder at her, resting his chin on his shoulder. He looked at her the way she'd looked at him in St. Mungo's, when she'd dropped the back of her robe to let the nurse look at her burns. Sad. Broken. Vulnerable.
It had been the first time she had made Fred feel something. The first time he felt the wall in front of his heart fading away.
He'd barely known her at all, but that was the moment she made him fall in love with her.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, and stepped into the emerald flames.
"Fred!" Ava yelled.
But again, he was gone.
Feeling completely drained from the emotional exchange, Ava laid down to rest, still fully clothed and sprawled atop the bed's blankets. She lay there, staring dolefully at the ceiling. Her chest ached, replaying the look on Fred's face before he'd left over and over again, until her eyelids became impossibly heavy and she gave in to sleep.
When she awoke two hours later, she did not recognize the man kneeling on her chest—at least not at first.
She quickly became acutely aware of the sensation of her arms pinned down at her sides, leaving her unable to move, before she'd even opened her eyes. And when she did, she felt them grow wide in horror and shock at the sight of the man sitting on her waist.
Ava opened her mouth to instinctively scream, but the man clapped his hand over her mouth and bore his weight down harder, his knees digging into the insides of her elbows, his thighs pressing painfully on her ribs.
His hand on her mouth smelled dirty and stale as though it hadn't met soap and water in quite some time. The hand was attached to an arm that was extremely thin; the little flesh that was left on the bone sagged like that of an elderly person's. He wore a shirt that was more than several sizes too large, draped across his shoulders like someone trying to wear a circus tent, and the neckhole gaped, showing the skin of his chest stretched tightly across his sternum. His neck bulged with veins and arteries as his square jaw remained extended and tight, his face panic-stricken as his eyes bulged down at her. It seemed like every breath he took required lots of effort on his part, his whole head rocking back and forth every time he inhaled and exhaled.
They stayed like that for a few seconds, Ava puffing quick, panicked breaths through her nose against his fingers, and him, staring down at her looking terrified as though he himself couldn't believe what he was doing. He breathed and rocked, breathed and rocked, and on the third breath, a curl of his hair—so brown it was nearly black—spilled on to his forehead.
"Mm-m-mm!" Ava exclaimed, her voice impossibly muffled against the tightness of his hand across her lips. She'd wanted to cry out his name: Callaghan.
Callaghan had always been—what was it she'd mentally referred to him as?-a juggernaut, all power and strength, a thick jaw and even thicker arms. He'd once looked like he could have burst through a wall if he'd run at it hard enough. Like Fox, he'd been a star athlete in his high school days, an All-American football player and recipient of Gatorade's High School Player of the Year, an Offensive Lineman that made other school's teams shake in their cleats. He had a similar effect on the rugby team he'd joined in Ireland while studying abroad, and although he'd only been in his Freshman year, rumor was Ireland's National team already had their eye on him.
Ava thought she'd last seen him ten months ago, her departing sight observing his fallen, crumpled form, his calves riddled with gunshot wounds as he lay facedown near the horseshoe-shaped front desk at the Merryweather compound. But she wasn't seeing things after all—she had, in fact, seen him earlier that day, a fleeting glance of what looked like his face in the third floor window of Miss Teeley's Muggle Trinkets and Toys—but she'd dismissed it, convinced the shadowy face she'd seen couldn't have been his.
But now she knew: it was, and it was a different face than she'd gotten to know while imprisoned in the Merryweather compound for three years. His face before had been full and handsome, the kind of face that was sure to break hearts—a square jaw and chiseled chin, high cheekbones and bright blue eyes framed by dark brows. But now...his face was panicked, empty, and broken. Gaunt. Bleak, and nearly sallow. The blue of his eyes were framed by pinpricks of scarlet, the blood vessels around his eyes burst and splotchy.
It was like seeing a ghost, a ghoul, a tortured form of someone she'd once knew. What had they done to him?
"MM-M-MM!" Ava tried again, screaming against his hand. She thrashed her legs against the mattress as hard as she could, but even in his skeletal form, all muscle long melted away, Callaghan didn't budge.
He raised his free hand up to his mouth, pressing his index finger against his lips.
"Sh-shhh," he shushed her, his breath quivering violently. A bead of sweat dangled precariously from the tip of his nose.
"I'm—I'm supposed to keep you here," he breathed down to her, revealing dark yellow teeth. "I'm supposed to make you stay."
Ava's breath quickened further, panting out from her nose and against his pinky finger beneath her nostrils. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak.
She was, once again, at the mercy of someone she'd left behind after promising she wouldn't.
Callaghan's eyes bulged further, his forehead creasing deeply as a look of both desperation and pain crossed his face.
"I don't want you to stay," he whispered slowly, taking minute pauses between each word as though it agonized him to speak. He waited a few moments before saying anything again, and the globule of sweat from his nose dripped down, landing square between Ava's eyes. She blinked hard, flinching.
He peeled his hand away from her mouth very, very slowly, a pleading look in his eyes begging her to stay silent. He passed his rough thumb over her brow, gently, almost lovingly, wiping away his drop of perspiration from her face. And then he spoke again.
"I want you to run."
It happened all at once, as though their movements had been well-rehearsed and choreographed: Callaghan did something of a somersault, flinging himself off of her body clumsily and stumbling to the floor, catching himself on all fours. Ava didn't hesitate; as soon as his weight left her body, she spectacularly hurled herself off the bed, springing to her feet and somehow landing across the room as though powered by an invisible catapult. She wondered if she'd ever moved so fast in her life.
She dashed out the bedroom door, nearly losing her footing beneath her in her panic, gripping on to the wall for only a second to regain balance before taking off again. She charged down the hallway, streaking past the bathroom and George's old bedroom, determined to reach the foyer. Callaghan's voice cried out behind her.
"Run, Ava! Run!"
She was almost there. Her bare feet were slamming against the weathered wood floor, just a few more strides—
WHAM.
Someone's arm, someone who'd been hiding around the corner leading into the kitchen, swung out from behind the wall, slamming into her collarbones and catching her around the shoulders. The sheer, sudden force of it knocked her backwards and off her feet, and she felt her body colliding with Callaghan's behind her as she toppled over.
"Going somewhere?"
Fox's voice rang out among Ava and Callaghan's cries, their bodies tangling together as they tumbled in a domino effect.
With the wind knocked out of her and the back of her head throbbing, Ava raised her head off the ground groggily, blinking hard.
Fox came swimming into view, in what had become her usual getup of dark clothes and arsenal of knives strapped to her hips and outer thighs. The one side of her head looked freshly shaved, nearly bald around her ear, and the other side was more wild than ever, a thick pile of frizzy and kinked black hair spilling across her shoulder. She swung up her arm from her side and waved around something dark and long.
"You forgot to lock the door, you nitwit."
Ava's vision finally came to complete focus. Fox was holding the flat's Floo totem—the exact thing that was supposed to be keeping her out.
"Callaghan!" Fox barked.
A scraping sound came from behind Ava. Callaghan scrambled past her, crawling on all fours towards Fox, looking and whimpering exactly like a mistreated dog. As soon he neared her feet, she bent down and gripped a handful of his dark curls, yanking him up by his scalp.
"What happened to holding her until I arrived, huh?" Fox growled, yanking Callaghan up further. He was sobbing, absolutely blubbering, clumsily clawing at Fox's hand in his hair. It was certainly an odd sight; Fox wasn't even five feet tall and maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, and she was seemingly in complete control of the boy who, once upon a time, probably could have squeezed a watermelon until it burst in his hands.
"You've been bad. We'll talk about this later." She chided him like a mother angry with a small child. She released his hair, sending him back to the floor in a crumpled heap, and he remained there, curled into a ball at her feet and sobbing.
"How did you...how..." Ava trailed off, her eyes locked on the wooden trio of monkeys in Fox's grip. She wanted to ask her how she'd managed to get past it, how she was even managing to be here...but Ava was having trouble stringing her words together. She wasn't feeling nearly as brave as she had been a couple of weeks ago when she'd willingly climbed out of the window to meet Fox. At least then, she'd had a sliver of hope for Fox, then, help was only a cry for help away, then, she hadn't been aware she was responsible for the safety of another life, the tiny life inside of her...
But now she knew: Fox was beyond—and not interested in—any form of redemption. And Ava could scream, of course, but the shop beneath her was loud enough to hear through the floorboards, and even if someone did hear her, there was no guarantee Fox wouldn't just kill her before then...
Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Sword or wings.
Fox was standing directly in the archway at the end of the hall leading into the foyer and door. She'd met with Ava a couple of weeks ago just to scare her, Ava knew that now, purposefully killing Rita in front of her to show her—this was how little she cared, this was how far she had gone, this was what's coming for Ava next—
Well, it seemed as though that time had come. She'd been being watched, Fox specifically waiting for a time when she wouldn't run into George during one of his afternoon visits, or Fred, relying on patience in anticipation for the kill...
Ava had been hunted.
And so she made up her mind, like any wild animal in the woods being pursued by something deadly: flight.
She rolled on to her belly as quickly as she could, pushing up off the ground and bumbling to her feet.
"Oh no you don't!" Fox yelled, and Ava could hear her thundering footsteps behind her.
Ava dove in through the first doorway she saw—the bathroom. She cursed under her breath as she kicked the door shut and locked it, wishing she'd instead continued on to the bedroom where she could have escaped through the window.
"And what are you going to do in there, pray tell? Are you taking a bath? Did you soil yourself?" Fox jeered on the other side of the door.
Ava dragged the stool from the corner to the door, the spare towels atop it tumbling to the ground as she wedged the seat under the handle for good measure.
Complete silence followed for a few seconds as Ava watched the door carefully. But even though she'd been waiting for something to happen, the first whack upon the door still managed to make her jump, stumbling backward and clutching the edge of the sink.
Something heavy continued thumping against the door, over and over again, with identical force each time. Fox's voice came from the other side.
"You are such—"
THUMP.
"A fucking—"
THUMP.
"Coward!"
The center of the door was starting to appear swollen now, bulging inwards as Fox continued her attempts of knocking it down. There came another whack, and the sounds of splintering wood finally began.
I'm going to die, Ava thought hopelessly, her heart threatening to hammer clean out of her chest. I'm going to die in this bathroom...
This bathroom.
For just a second, Ava forgot about Fox acting as a battering ram on the other side of the door. Instead, her attention turned to the floor beneath her, staring down at the fluffy white bathmat poking out from between her toes.
"It's a potion. It's called Vita. Me and George invented it...it makes it so you can't die."
Another swift whack thundered upon the door, and Ava heard paint chips falling to the ground. She jumped aside and crouched down, ripping the bathmat away from its place and grabbing on to the loose floorboard with fumbling fingers.
THUMP.
The grubby little cardboard box stacked neatly with Vita potions rested there, quietly and patiently, as though in hibernation and waiting to be used. Ava pulled out one of the tiny bottles and hurriedly replaced the floorboard and rug.
THUMP.
As she began feverishly twisting off the cap to the bottle, Fred's words came floating back to her, and she paused.
"It's a very temperamental little potion...needs to be dispersed but cant be separated too far from its other half."
What good would drinking the potion do if Ava didn't have a second drinker to finish the dose?
Fox hit the door again, and finally, it began breaking—a large seam appeared down the middle of the wood. Ava could hear her angry, labored breath from the other side.
But she was out of ideas, out of options, out of time—she wasn't sure what good it would do, but she did it anyway: Ava downed the top half of the potion.
It was incredibly sour, and very...zingy, like taking a mouthful of pure lemon juice. She sputtered from the acrid flavor, coughing and placing the bottle on the sink beside the soap dish.
One final bang, and Ava was suddenly showered with bits of wood and paint chips as the door smashed open. She shielded her face and jumped backwards, her calves bumping up against the toilet. She was cornered, and the fear that hit her upon realizing it was colossal; the sink and bathtub faucets sprang to life and began pouring forth water, her magic going haywire again.
The thin cloud of dust cleared, and Fox climbed through the gaping hole in the door. She clutched the heavy trio of monkeys, and her fingers and knuckles were bloody.
"Well, this thing finally came in handy, didn't it?"
"Fox—"
"Oh, Ava." Fox sighed, and wound up the totem behind her head, like she was gripping a baseball bat and waiting for a pitch. "Don't you ever just shut up?"
And she swung, Ava feeling the immense pain as it collided with the side of her head for only a second before the world faded away.
It was as though Dakota was waiting for Fred, like some kind of scheduled guest. Nothing else could explain the way he was sprawled across one of the tabletops in the first level of the Treehouse, twiddling his thumbs together expectantly.
Really, he was literally sprawled across the tabletop. He lay on his back, fully clothed with combat boots and all, acting like it was totally normal to be laying down on a surface that people frequently ate off of.
He also didn't look surprised at all when Fred stepped out of the fireplace, still faintly glowing green for a moment as the flames of the Floo died down. He simply turned his head to look at him, his scarred cheek resting against the woodgrain. Fred noticed he was wearing his magical phoenix eye patch again.
"Ah," Dakota said, sitting up slowly and swinging his legs off the side of the table so his feet rested upon the bench. "The Prodigal Son returns! He was lost, and is found!" He belted out the last sentence especially loudly, with a deep and official tone, like he was announcing it to the empty room.
Fred's shoulders felt like there were enormous boulders resting on them. He didn't have the energy to shrug, or even to make a face, really. His arsenal of witty comebacks also seemed empty.
"The Prodigal what?" Fred muttered. He remained standing awkwardly before the hearth.
"Nothin', ya filthy heathen. Come take a sit." Dakota slapped the spot on the table beside him firmly.
Fred couldn't help but eye him somewhat suspiciously.
"You're not angry with me anymore?" he asked, guilt swimming in his gut as he observed the Marine.
Dakota smirked. "Didn't say I wasn't pissed. I just don't feel like fightin' no more." He reached into his jacket and extracted an aluminum flask, shaking it back and forth. Fred could hear liquid sloshing around inside. "I feel like drinkin'."
Fred continued to stay rooted to the spot, staring at Dakota. He wasn't sure what to make of his suddenly warm behavior; the two of them hadn't acknowledged one another since their argument the night before.
Dakota tipped the flask into his mouth for just a second, scrunching up his features in disgust as he swallowed a mouthful of whatever was inside. He exhaled with an obnoxious, refreshed-sounding "ahhh" and stared right back at Fred cockily with his good eye, smacking his lips a couple of times.
"You know, where I come from, if a man invites you to drink with him and you turn him down, that's a sign of disrespect."
Fred sighed heavily. "We're not in Texas, Dakota."
"Well, maybe we should drink until we think we are." He patted the table beside him again. "Sit. Drink."
Fred admittedly didn't have any better ideas as to what to do with himself, so he finally went ahead and obliged, heading to the table and dragging his feet the entire way.
Shit. He just felt like shit. All around dragon dung.
He perched himself upon the table beside Dakota, trying to push from his mind what his mother's reaction would be if she could see them now, their asses where plates should be.
Dakota stuck the flask under Fred's nose and shook it around, its contents slopping around again. The smell of whiskey drifted from its top and met Fred's nostrils harshly, like he was breathing in smoke.
"Erm," he said, his usual way with words gone and forgotten, "I think I'll stick with...water. Accio cup."
One of the cupboards above the sink in the back corner of the room rattled for a moment before springing open. A clear drinking glass came whizzing out through the air gracefully, landing in Fred's outstretched hand.
"Aguamenti."
Water poured form the tip of Fred's wand into the glass. Dakota watched the whole thing with great interest.
"Cheers," Fred muttered, and banged the glass into Dakota's flask. It seemed like Dakota didn't have anything in particular he wanted to talk about at the moment, so the two sat in silence for a bit before Fred spoke again.
"Where's Gabrielle?" he asked, rolling the now-empty water glass between his palms.
"She's out," Dakota waved vaguely into the air. "She's got all these appointments."
"Appointments?"
"Yeah. House buildin' plans. You know we got two architects?" He laughed, shaking his head. "I reckon she's plannin' some kinda estate. Castle or somethin'. Probably with a moat full of glitter." He laughed again and took another swig of whiskey.
Fred raised his eyebrows. "I was wondering why you hadn't taken off with that money yet. So it's like that, is it? You and Gabrielle's house?"
Dakota grinned, even making the right side of his face hitch up a little. "Yeah, it's like that. Told her I don't give a damn what she builds, as long as I get a little land to shoot and ride. Somewhere close I can fish, too. You ever been fly fishin'?"
"Can't say that I have."
"I'll have to teach you."
Fred couldn't help it. He smiled at him.
"Okay."
"Alright."
A few more minutes passed with nothing said between the two. A pleasant breeze drifted through the large Bay window that had been thrown open, the air in the trees seemingly glowing periwinkle as the last of the day's sunlight was drained from the forest.
"Dakota?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to be a father."
The mouthful of whiskey Dakota had taken into his mouth immediately began choking him; he spluttered violently as Fred pounded him between his shoulderblades. As the coughing subsided, he grasped one hand to his chest, trying to catch his breath, and with the other hand, tried to forcefully shove the flask into Fred's hand.
"No, Dakota, really—no, I don't want it—"
"Drink," he gasped.
"I'm not doing much of that anymore...really, I'm fine." He gave Dakota's hand a final push away.
Dakota set the aluminum flask down on the table with a very final-sounding clunk, and stared at Fred, his face somewhere in the realm between shock, curiosity, and excitement.
"Well, fry me in butter and call me a catfish, Fred!"
Fred couldn't help it, he burst into hysterical laughter.
"What on God's green earth is so gosh darn funny?" Dakota demanded.
"You're...you're ridiculous," he managed, wiping tears away as his peals of laughter finally subsided.
"Hold up, is that why you've been stayin' here? Did she kick your ass out for knockin' her up?"
Fred swung his arm out to the side, catching Dakota around the middle. He doubled over with an "oof", but the two grinned good-naturedly at one another.
"It's been...awkward," Fred admitted after they regained their composure. "George knew before I did, and I dunno, it just caught me by surprise is all—"
"You quarrelin' with George too?"
Quarreling. Is that what they were doing?
Fred shrugged. "I guess so."
"Aw, man," Dakota murmured, picking the flask back up and taking another drink. "You know when I first met you two—George and you—I took you as the never-quarrelin' type. You always just seemed like...I don't even know how to say it, two halves of the same person? Does that make sense?"
"It does," Fred replied, and then, after a pause, "Sometimes it is still like that. And sometimes it's not." He waited for Dakota to respond, but he was watching him expectantly, so he just continued. "When we were younger especially. Mum used to say we actually started out as one child, and then down came a bolt of lightning that split us into two." He laughed at the memory. He hadn't thought about that in awhile.
"But then, I dunno...these past few years it's just become more apparent that we really are two different people, you know? Not just twins, not just brothers. We're separate men. And it's times like this that it really shows. We're already looking more and more different, for the love of Merlin."
"Yeah," Dakota said, nodding, and his hazel eyes traveled up to Fred's hair, which was now shaggy, hanging loosely nearly to his jaw and tucked behind his ears. "George keeps it a bit more tidy, more slicked-like, and you got some kinda...rockstar thing goin' on."
Fred arched a single eyebrow at him.
Dakota laughed. "Oh come on, why do you sound so down about all of it, Fred? You sound like you're guilty for realizin' you and him are two separate people!"
"I suppose sometimes I am guilty. It feels that way, at least." The words tasted strange coming out of Fred's mouth. He hadn't ever told anyone this before.
"And Ava?" Dakota raised his remaining eyebrow. "Don't feed me no bullshit and try and tell me you left just because you were surprised. That's supposed to be your girl, aint it?"
"I...yes."
"Well?"
Fred almost laughed again at the way Dakota was staring at him; it was like when his mother used to question him and George about why they didn't complete some kind of assignment that they were supposed to.
He sighed exasperatedly and raised and lowered one shoulder in an awkward half-shrug. It was...odd, to say the least, opening up to Dakota in this way, but at this point, why stop now?
"I'm afraid I won't be good enough. I'm afraid I won't be able to be everything they need. I had to step down as Head for this mission and pass the ball to George, didn't I? I don't think you can do that with a kid. You're either brilliant at it or you suck big, blubbering baboon balls, and I'm going to be the latter..."
Dakota screwed up his face, looking over at Fred like he'd just said something absolutely abominable. "Boy, are you crazy?" he demanded, his twangy accent in its fullest swing. "Shut your trap with that nonsense, come on now, you think your parents got some kinda instruction manual when they popped all of you out? You think any parents do? It's not one or the other, you're crazy! Of course there's a freakin' grey area! Hell, I'd say bein' a father is compromised of three things: gettin' barfed on, cuttin' the crusts off of sandwiches, and wonderin' how badly you screwed up that day on a scale of one-to-ten."
Fred stared at him, just blinking a few times. He had no idea what to say.
"Listen." Dakota's voice got lower, deeper, and more serious. He leaned forward, bearing his weight down from his elbows on his knees. "Bein' in the Corps? I've seen a little bit of shit. I've known guys who've seen A LOT of shit. Guys comin' home missin' body parts, Vets in wheelchairs...listen," he repeated, and lightly punched Fred's knee to make sure he was paying attention. "Some of those guys aren't as lucky as you. Some of 'em get all screwed up, they go home, and they feel nothin'. Nothin'. They leave parts of themselves out on the battlefield they got dragged away from, parts of themselves from here." He pounded on his heart. "I know you're scared. I know you're worried. You said that. But you know what you do now?"
"What?" Fred whispered.
"You take that pain, that ache. You take that fear. You take that worry. You take that pit in the bottom of your gut that feels like a black hole. And you know what you do with it all? You feel it...every bit of it. And you thank God. You thank God you can still feel somethin'. Because others aren't as lucky."
Dakota paused for a few more seconds, maintaining eye contact with Fred, and then shrugged casually, taking another sip from his flask.
"Just my two cents," he muttered.
Fred's feet seemed to know what they were doing before he did—he'd leapt from the table and was striding back over to the fireplace.
"Where you goin'?" Dakota asked.
Fred looked over his shoulder at him and grinned.
"To get my girl."
Normally he wouldn't let Dakota get away with such an ego boost, knowing how much he'd helped...but as Fred spun into the flames and left his friend behind, he relished in the smirk upon his scarred and sagging face, and realized, it was okay this time.
Just this once.
Before Fred had even ducked out from under the hearth, he heard the sound, and he knew something was wrong.
It was an awful sound, like a levee had broken from somewhere inside the flat—multiple thick, powerful-sounding gushes of water pounding on even larger bodies of water.
"Ava?" he called out in a cautious voice, taking a tentative half-step into the sitting room. His face was still burning slightly from where she'd slapped him, and he couldn't imagine what her anger would be like now, after leaving again.
Fred sighed heavily, knowing he must have upset her very much, and her magic, no doubt, had...he didn't know, exploded the plumbing, perhaps...
He could practically feel a tail tucking between his legs as he slowly passed through the sitting room and foyer. He headed for the bathroom, an image concocting itself in his head of seeing Ava standing in the bathroom when he arrived, soaked from head to toe and in a panic, clutching a wrench, maybe...the vision actually made him smile...
And then the dimly-lit hallway came into view. Fred's heart sank; no, it dropped, plunging down through his abdomen so hard he wouldn't have been surprised to see it flopping around on the hardwood floor like a fish out of water, pumping without a body.
The bathroom area had been completely decimated. Although the door was closed in the frame, it was hanging on to its hinges by barely-there splinters of wood. The hallway floor was littered with debris and an enormous puddle was quickly seeping down the hallway. Fred looked down at his feet, his eyes wide, looking at his shoes submerged in the water. It was as though he was standing in the middle of a small, indoor lake.
"Ava!" he screamed, jumping into action. He splashed through the puddle and clambered through the gaping hole in the door, a sick feeling in his gut, already knowing she wasn't going to answer.
The source of the water was instantly revealed: the faucets for both the tub and the sink were cranked on at full force, pouring forth water at too great a speed to allow the drains to catch up. Both basins were full, and thick waterfalls streamed over the edges and down to the ground, now leaking out into the hallway.
Trying his best to wish away the feeling that he was going to vomit, Fred extracted his wand and ceased the faucets' production with a wave. A terrible silence followed, the only sound in the room coming from the quickened, panicked breaths pumping from Fred's nose.
There was a large, dark object half-submerged in the water around Fred's feet. He crouched down to retrieve it, turning it over and over in his hands as his panic increased. It was the Floo totem, with the trio of monkeys. The very atmosphere of the flat felt tainted all of a sudden, dirty, knowing someone had been in here who was not welcome.
But who? There was Gridgeon, who would surely be on the warpath and out of hiding now that his son had been taken away from him...and there was Fox, no doubt still bloodthirsty and waiting for her perfect moment for revenge...Fred's stomach clenched at the thought that this attack was anticipated, it was planned...someone had waited for him to leave again, waited until Ava was defenseless...guilt and anger and desperation swam around and around in his mind like a terrible whirlpool, threatening to submerge him much like his sneakers beneath the surface of the water on the floor.
Fred desperately surveyed the ruined scene again, spinning around in a couple of circles fruitlessly. He found himself stupidly wishing Ava would jump out from behind the toilet tank and yell 'Surprise!'. He caught his face in the mirror, hating the expression stretched across his features. Fred doubted he'd ever looked so aghast in his life.
A tiny glimmer of odd light caught his eye, like some kind of twinkle waving to get his attention from around the sink basin. And at first, he didn't see it—not until it glimmered again, the lightly carbonated potion swirling around inside its vial beside the soap dish. It was so full of life, such a flashy little potion, winking and shimmering and changing colors like a crystal being turned over and casting rainbows in the sunlight. Its name was so appropriate, really. Vita.
Fred's fingers were trembling as they closed around the vial, bringing it up closely to his eyes. The cap was gone, discarded somewhere. Both the top half of the potion and the thin sheet of glass that was supposed to be residing in the middle of the bottle were gone. Fred's heartbeat impossibly quickened as the realization washed over him: Ava had been presented with such danger, such fear, she'd drunk this out of anticipation of dying. And she'd left the other half for someone else to consume, someone else to come to her rescue, someone who hadn't abandoned her like he had—
Dying.
The word from his previous train of thought came swinging back around. Ava thought she was in danger of dying.
And Gridgeon, Fred quickly thought to himself, didn't want to kill her, only ever wanted to immobilize her and take her back to Merryweather...to Gridgeon, she was too valuable to kill, too precious, he wanted to keep her and groom her to be one of his soldiers, like...
Like Fox.
Fox wanted to kill her. Not Gridgeon.
"Argh!" Fred nearly screamed out in frustration. Fox had taken Ava away to die, but where? They could be anywhere...a filthy alleyway...an abandoned building...a remote cliffside...anywhere on this planet, in this galaxy...
No, said a tiny voice inside Fred's head. No, she wouldn't go just anywhere. Fox may be crazy, but she's smart...she plans things.
"She's calculating," Fred murmured aloud, acutely aware he was talking to himself now, one hand still limply clutching the trio of monkeys and the other grasping the potion. He vaguely wondered if he was on the verge of some kind of mental break.
But it was so very true, wasn't it? Gridgeon and Fox had always been different, in that way, Gridgeon was easily taunted, easily manipulated, a coward, even, occasionally sending others to do his dirtiest of deeds. But Fox...Fred remembered the first time he'd laid eyes on her on the island—the way she'd thrown a warning knife, the way she'd stepped out of the shadows...and then how she'd forced Ava to come and meet her, and timed it all perfectly, banking on Rita's arrival...
Every move Fox made choreographed. She had a flare for the dramatics.
So if she wanted to kill Ava, she'd do it somewhere relevant, somewhere climactic, the final act of her fucked up show before the curtain dropped. But somewhere smart, too, somewhere Gridgeon wouldn't think to find and interrupt her...somewhere he wouldn't suspect she'd want to ever be at...somewhere hidden...
Somewhere like the abandoned Merryweather compound.
The Floo totem slipped from Fred's grasp and made an impressive splash in the pool of water around Fred's feet. Something like an invisible walnut suddenly lodged itself in his larynx.
Perhaps the smart thing to do would be gather as many Order members as he could find. Make a plan. Assemble the cavalry and dig some trenches on the battlefield, you know?
But Fred didn't feel smart. He didn't feel capable of making a plan. He felt scared. He felt murderous. He felt irrational.
He downed the second half of the potion, letting the empty vial slip from his fingers when he was done and float somewhere among the Floo totem beneath him. He screwed up his face against the sharp, overly tart taste, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times.
Fred wasn't assembling the cavalry. He wasn't digging any trenches.
He was Disapparating.
He was going to Merryweather.
"I've always been a loser, you know. You asked me what happened to me. Nothing happened. I just got tired of being the victim all the time. I'm tired, Ava. I'd rather be a guard dog than a bait dog, know what I mean?"
Ava heard the words meet her ears, but she wasn't sure if she was imagining them or not. She was awaking from her unconsciousness, reality coming back to her in small trickles. First, she felt the hard, ice-cold ground beneath her. Then, those words came. And now, the pain was hitting her, growing in severity by the second, like a steam engine barreling down its tracks with no sign of slowing down or stopping.
Even though her eyes were already closed, she squeezed them shut even tighter. It felt like her head was inflating like a balloon, like her brain was swollen, like her skull was quadruple its normal size. Even just the sound of Fox's voice—not loud by any means—hurt her ears.
"Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey. Come on, gutter-slug, I want to whine about my troubles. That's what two gals at a slumber party are supposed to do, right?"
The memory of what had just happened—Fox's and Callaghan's invasion, getting cornered in the bathroom, drinking the Vita, the strike of the statue against the side of her head—came floating back to Ava. She knew she should be forcing herself awake, steadying herself for the inevitable oncoming fight...but her head, it was pounding now, and it was so heavy, how could she possibly manage to lift it from the ground...?
Fox sighed heavily. "You know, if you're the first one to fall asleep, you're totally getting pranked. Bra's going in the freezer, finger is going in some water, marker on your face...the whole shibang. I thought you'd be a teensy-weensy more excited to be home!"
Home?! Had Fox somehow managed to bring them across the ocean and to Vermont? Was Ava laying in her old house? This distant memory of Mike and Barbara's warm, smiling faces, talking about the farmer's market and offering her sodas swam by...Ava could only imagine what Fox could have done to them...
Ava let out in involuntary little groan as she used every bit of energy she could summon to push her torso off the cold ground with her forearms. They shook like they were made of jelly.
She licked her lips slowly, trying with all her might to wake herself up more. Her mouth felt dry, but the tiniest remnant of moisture left on her tongue hit the roof of her mouth, tasting the acrid aftertaste of the potion. She took a long, deep breath through her nose. And suddenly, everything changed.
It was as though her tongue had received some sort of electric shock that was quickly traveling throughout her mouth, and spreading to the rest of her body. The pain in her head was subsiding. Her arms stopped wobbling. Even the mental fog was lifting; Ava was not only feeling suddenly awake, she was feeling...euphoric. Like she could be or DO ...anything! It was beyond confidence, it was beyond bravery; her senses were feeling especially acute, she had never felt her pulse clearly pounding within her wrist like this—
Her eyes snapped open. She didn't have to wait for her vision to come swimming into view; it was like she had awoken with some kind of special magnifying goggles planted over her eyes; everything was so sharp, so vivid.
They certainly weren't in Ava's Vermont family home. A minuscule breath of relief escaped from Ava's lips, but then—even through the shining shield of courage the Vita was providing—the relief instantly dissolved, quickly becoming replaced by heavy, dark dread.
Fox sat on the ground directly across from Ava, her legs folded Indian-style and her posture particularly perky. She grinned and batted her eyelashes in a rapid, cartoonish sort of way.
"Welcome back, babe. Happy homecoming! So, bad news first: there's no cake. But good news! You won't be here for three years this time."
They were back where it had all started, nearly four years ago now: they were in their Merryweather Cube.
Ava slowly got to her feet, mouth gaping and slack-jawed as she took in her surroundings. A single florescent strip of white light above them had somehow become illuminated again-from what power source, Ava didn't know-but it was threatening to give out...it was flickering...
"Oh. That." Fox followed Ava's gaze, looking up at the ceiling at the light strip briefly. "Gave myself just enough juice to get us down here and get that thing going. For a little while, at least." She reached down into her shirt and extracted a necklace; it was a tiny glass tube on the end of a black cord. The glass was stained with red but was clearly empty. "Breakfast of champions."
Fox watched her amusedly as she continued to marvel at the Cube.
"I know, I know, this place is a dump and a half," Fox said, getting to her feet as well. She delicately dusted off her black pants as she stood. "Coulda used some sprucing up before our visit, I suppose. What's that they say about hindsight? When life hands you hindsight, make lemonade? No, that can't be right..."
"Fox," Ava said slowly, her eyes still traveling around their surroundings in disbelief. It was almost exactly like she remembered, except for the massive holes in the ceiling outside the Cube and resulting piles of rubble beneath them. Everything, from the glass walls of the Cube to the white-tiled floor outside, was covered in a thick layer of brown dust. Ava remembered the Order's visit to the ruined reception area, the talks of rioting, and the apparent cave-in.
"What have you done? You can't get out of here from the inside, you know that—"
"I DO know that!" Fox squealed gleefully. She threw her arms out dramatically at her sides like she was being crucified. "Welcome to the Hotel California! Relax-We are programmed to receive! You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!"
"So—so this is a suicide mission then?" Ava asked in disbelief. "What's your plan, murder me and then sit here and twiddle your thumbs until you starve to death?"
Their exchange had become similar to the night a few weeks ago in the alley—common sense was practically screaming at Ava to not taunt the person with a knife, but Ava was feeling so angry right now, there was little room left for reason. She couldn't believe that after all she had been through, all she had worked for, she was going to go down like this, back where she'd started in the first place. Her heart broke for the future that was rapidly slipping from her grasp, like a hand trying to hold on to smoke—the scent of her baby in her arms she would never smell, the peals of laughter from the twins she would never hear again, the gnarled, wrinkly hands belonging to Fred she would never hold as they watched their grandchildren play.
Fox snorted and rolled her dark eyes. "Hardly. Cal will come fetch me if I need him to, like the good little doggie he is."
"I thought he was dead this whole time," Ava said quietly. Part of her, admittedly, was interested in whatever explanations Fox had to give, but the greater part was simply biding for more precious time. George had probably attempted to come by the flat while Ava was sleeping and she'd missed him, but those streaming faucets? She was absolutely banking on a leak starting in the ceiling of the shop...someone would come up to the flat to check for the source of the water...see Fox's destruction...how they would track Ava down, she didn't know, but surely there was a magical way?
"He may as well be," Fox replied, her voice emotionless. "He's probably close enough. Looks like shit."
"Yeah, I saw."
"You know he can't even do Legilimency yet?" Fox fed her this tidbit of information like it was a piece of fantastic, juicy gossip. "He's still fighting it. Poor kid. He's gonna end up kicking the bucket before he gets to do any of the cool shit like me and you."
"It's not—" Ava started, but quickly paused, knowing she had to choose her words carefully. She knew Fox's quiet, casual demeanor was only temporary, and she was incredibly easy to set off into a psychotic rage. "It's not that cool," she said quietly, crossing her arms and avoiding Fox's eyes. "I hardly use it anymore, you know."
Fox chortled. "Ho-ho! Let me guess: you're too noble to use it."
"I never wanted it!" Ava said, her voice rising in defense. "I didn't ask for this, I didn't grow up dreaming of a day where I could share a person's pain from across the room! It's Merryweather, they didn't give us some great big gift, they infected us—"
But she stopped abruptly as she watched Fox's expression change. She was wearing that smug little smirk she put on every time she knew something that Ava didn't know.
"What?" Ava asked tersely.
"Are you still on that bullshit that they gave us powers?" Fox asked, clearly enjoying every second of Ava's cluelessness.
"That's what it seemed like, and that's what you said," Ava replied. She gave a second of pause to listen hard, and let her eyes flicker over Fox's shoulder in the direction of the hallway. Still nothing. "When we were in the alley, you said they were trying to give them to us. That was their end goal, wasn't it? They were trying to see if they could give military family Squibs powers to start their own little army of super-agents?"
Fox leaned forward, her eyes wide, innocent, and bright, like she was about to teach a small child about the alphabet. "We could always fly, my sweet little Dumbo," she whispered. "They just gave us the magic feather. You just picked up on it before the rest of us. And we always wondered why! But after you left, I stopped fighting it—in fact, I welcomed it with open arms, and now I see Callaghan, still fighting it and without powers—and you know what I think?"
Ava didn't even have to reply; she knew Fox was on a roll now and she was going to tell Ava exactly what she thought whether she asked about it or not.
"I think you never even fought it. You're not some special snowflake Chosen One. I think you let them do whatever the hell they wanted inside your squishy little brain from the get-go. You see, it's like unlocking a series of doors, with Squibs, you just have to get inside their noggin deep enough and wiggle around until you've planted the seed just right. Get them as numb and limp as you can, convince them they can do groovy Jedi-mind tricks until they start believing it too. Obviously they didn't know they succeeded until one of their test subjects used their own weapons against them—that would be you, sweetheart. And then it was Game Over."
"You're right," Ava said. "You're right, I didn't fight them. It's probably because the first time I tried to, they gave me this." She tilted her head back, extending her neck and displaying the thick pink scar banded around her throat. "I didn't really fancy my throat being slit, you see—"
"Because you're a—!"
"I'm not a coward," Ava said firmly. The Vita was giving her the courage to say it, finally, but the words were all her own.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and her feet splashed through the marsh on Christmas Eve. She turned her back on Gridgeon in the alleyway, screaming at Fred and George to run. Her fists flew into Dakota's palms as he chanted to her, over and over again, that she wasn't weak.
"I'm not a coward," she repeated. "You call me a coward because I didn't fight them, because I ran away from them, because I run away from you...but it's not out of weakness. It never was. It's out of strength." Ava paused for a second, taking a deep breath as Fox stared at her in disbelief, her voice getting stronger and stronger by the second.
"I do what I have to do to survive, over and over call me a coward because you think my strength is nonexistent; no, it's just my strength is a slow burning ember in the dark, and yours is a fireworks display. My strength is about sustainability. Yours is about a show." Ava straightened herself up further, posturing herself to her full height, and looking down at Fox, no trace of fear to be seen. The hallway outside the Cube remained dark, still, and quiet. No one was coming to her rescue.
"And I will always be stronger than you."
Fox's face contorted in rage, and she let out a biting cry of fury. She plunged a hand into one of her holsters and extracted a dagger.
Ava didn't know much about battle, except that she probably wasn't any good at it. She was good at talking her way out of things and biding for time. She was good at escaping. She was good at knowing the right people and relying on them for their help at the right time.
But Fox was lunging at her now, her elbow crooked and the blade gripped at her side. Ava didn't have time to take a crash course in hand-to-hand combat. She had nowhere to run. And the Order was nowhere to be seen.
What she did have was the Vita coursing through her veins, and an incredibly powerful little life growing in her belly. And those two things were the perfect storm; all adrenaline and extra focus and luck and magic colliding, crashing together, making her eyes zero-in on of the many extra daggers Fox had strapped to her body.
Fox was halfway across the Cube floor, charging towards her, and the look of surprise that flitted across her face as one of her own blades betrayed her and flew into Ava's hand was just enough to distract her.
Ava let out a cry of her own, and charged forward as well. Although Ava hadn't come to terms with the idea of dying, she took just a grain of solace in knowing that, although they both had blades now, they would never, ever be marked as equals.
Fred had never run like this before.
He'd skipped away from his brothers gleefully among their promises of injury and revenge after his latest prank. He'd galloped down the halls of Hogwarts, George at his side, narrowly escaping Filch on what had felt like a weekly basis. He'd tore through the jungle of St. Kitts, his wand over his shoulder throwing curses and beads of sweat racing down between his shoulderblades.
But he was certain he'd never run like this.
"Reducto!"
He blasted yet another pile of rubble out of his way, and stormed through the resulting cloud of dust, shielding his face with his forearm. The light emitting from his wand bounced around the otherwise pitch-black corridor wildly as he ran, casting second-long glimmers of light on to various evidences from the Merryweather riots. Scorch marks and bullet holes pocked the walls. Almost every last inch of visible glass was smashed, occasionally crunching beneath Fred's sneakers. Twice a foul smell reached his nostrils, and he forced himself to carry on past what looked like a crumpled corpse or two, entangled and still in uniform.
Although he didn't have an exact idea of where he was going, he recalled from Ava's story the conclusion that she'd reached during her escape: that the Cubes were on the bottom level of the compound. So down and down Fred had went, flight after flight of staircase in a tight cement-walled channel. It was how he'd ended up here, dashing through the bowels of Merryweather, blasting rubble away from his path and trying not to look up at the cracked, sagging cement ceiling above him.
And running like this.
His calves, cramping. The seams of his pants, whining in protest at his abnormally long strides. The balls of his feet, slamming down on the gritty white tiled floor over and over again, exploding in pain. His jaw set. His teeth bared.
Running like this, so fast that he was nearly flying.
He could see a light flickering up ahead now. It illuminated a small space of tile beneath it for a second before flickering to black again, but Fred had already focused in on that square of floor. He was picturing it in his mind, he wanted it, he coveted it, and in mid-sprint he spun, a nearly perfect pirouette to Disapparate him to that spot, 100 yards away.
What would he see when he arrived? Would he be too late? Could he get close enough for the vita to work with its other half? Fred didn't think he'd ever been so scared in his entire life; his feet left the ground and in the split-second it took for him to Apparate to his destination, he saw a thousand things behind his eyelids: the wall coming down on him. The color of the sheets in the bed at St. Mungo's. The Whirly Puffer hovering over Ava's burns. The color of Ava's skin on her neck as he dipped her and kissed it during George's wedding. The hazel of Dakota's remaining eye, brown and green and gold, all at once. The smile of his twin. An empty whiskey bottle. Verity's artwork on the ceiling of his shop. The look on Audrey's face as she walked again. A barrel of golden Galleons spilling out on to the countertop. The vision of Ava in a white sundress in the field.
'You take that pain, that ache. You take that fear. You take that worry. You take that pit in the bottom of your gut that feels like a black hole. And you know what you do with it all? You feel it...every bit of it.'
His feet were landing—he was Apparating—he could feel the Vita pumping in every artery—
'And you thank God. You thank God you can still feel somethin'. Because others aren't as lucky.'
Fred opened his eyes, just in time to see Fox and Ava colliding like a pair of battering rams behind a glass wall, a knife glinting in each of their hands, each of their blades plunging into the others' body.
He screamed, and Disapparated again, this time arriving directly behind Ava. He caught her as she stumbled backwards, a blank look on her face in shock. A horrible gurgling noise came from her mouth as her legs swayed beneath her.
"Thank...you."
The words were spoken in a small, barely-there voice. Still cradling Ava's shoulders in his arms, Fred looked up in horror. Fox was standing there, a few feet away. A thin trickle of blood ran down her chin, and the knife Ava had been holding was lodged in her sternum.
The florescent light above them flickered, and there came a thumping noise. When it came back on, Fox was on her knees, slumped and with her head hanging forward. The stream of blood from her mouth became thicker, and she moaned as she elongated her neck backwards until she looked up towards the ceiling, as though she was waiting for the heavens to part and to see God's face. She looked different, somehow. All traces of malice, of calculation, of rage appeared to be wiped away. For the second before she fell over and died upon the floor, Fox just looked like a normal girl. She looked like Annie Wu.
Ava made a sound like she was releasing a deep, deep exhale, and her legs fully gave out, her grey-green eyes rolling in the back of her head. Fred sunk to the ground along with her, cradling her against him tightly as he collapsed to his knees.
"Ava! Nooo!"
Fox's knife was stuck askew in her ribs. Dark red blood leaked around the edges of the blade, and Fred sliced two of his fingers on the edge of it as he clamped his hand over the wound, pressing down in an attempt to stem the flow.
He attempted a half-turn on his knees, envisioning St. Mungo's and intending to Disapparate, but only succeeding in skidding across the floor a couple of inches. He tried again, with the same result.
He couldn't Disapparate from within the Cube.
Fred wailed a wordless cry of agony as the wet warmth of Ava's blood continued to push against his fingers. She was dying, and their child inside of her was dying, right there in his arms, and he was powerless to stop it.
"Somebody please fucking help us!"
He didn't know to whom he was crying out to. All he knew was that he felt like he was dying, right alongside Ava in the Cube.
The florescent light above them gave one last, pathetic flicker, before fully extinguishing and plunging them into total darkness.
Fred howled again, but it was a secret cry; for being in the Cube was like being in the throes of the deepest slumber: you are gone, you are silent, and you have disappeared, and the world around you will continue to turn.