"You look awful," Sirius greets as he steps into the living room.
Mary groans, her chest shuddering upwards; she feels her ribs rattle, chafing. She tries to breathe out and it stutters and jerks from her like a laugh. "Sirius."
"Oh, fuck." There's the sound of him dropping his bag. He kneels down beside her in the dark, grey eyes large. His knees fumble on the carpet. "You look worse."
A spasm like a hiccup; she feels all the muscles in her stomach seize up and then release, it swells a great liquid pain up through her lungs. Mary fumbles out a hand to grab Sirius' wrist and squeezes it very tightly.
"Hurts," she groans.
Sirius takes her hand in his left one. His right arm dangles beside him like a used noose; it is the darkest and most dead thing in the room, even more than her.
"I didn't think you'd get worse," he says, with terrible urgency. "I didn't think you would get worse."
"Where have you been?" Mary asks, instead of answering the not-question.
He blinks at her. "Hungary."
"If either of us should be in Hungary, it's me."
"Don't say that. The Kórház is a hospice. It's for people who are dying."
Mary furrows her brows at him. Another wave of pain hits her and she squeezes his fingers so tightly in her own that she feels the veined skin of the back of his hand break beneath her nails. Sirius flinches but doesn't pull his hand away. They stay like that for a handful of brittle seconds.
"And you think I'm not dying," she forces out. "Look at me."
Sirius exhales shakily. "Yí'ān said you'd get worse before you got better."
Nausea curls tight hands around her head and squeezes; it puts its fingers in Mary's mouth. "And I'm not getting better," she mumbles around them, tasting saliva.
"He promised," Sirius says with desperation.
"He didn't know what he was dealing with." Mary grabs his jaw with one hand, just to feel some part of another person, the warmth of it. She hears her wrist click-click-click-click-click like a creaking door. Sirius' skin is pearly and cold and he doesn't feel human. "The curse, it's not old. It's only been around since the New War. He thought he could handle it but it's nothing like anything he's ever dealt with before. He can't."
"He told me the other day he's got faith you'll be fine."
Mary shakes her head once. "His potioneer won't come to help. I can't move."
"I'll get Claude," Sirius says in a rush. "I'll find them, I'll convince them to come back, I'll… I'll…" And it seems to set in, what a hopeless idea that is. "There has to be something."
"He wrote to them."
"And?"
Mary nods towards the table in the middle of the room. Sirius shuffles on his knees to it; there are two sheets of paper sitting there, bright in the dim light.
This is an automated response, the first letter reads, in messy, un-automated handwriting. Mx. Archeambeau is not taking freelance work at this time. Thank you for your patience. And the same line repeated in a variety of languages underneath it, followed by an absurdly long list of pronouns.
Beside it, the second letter is a bit crumpled, like it was written and then screwed up and tossed against the wall. OH, YOU ABSOLUTE CUNT, CLAUDE, it reads. YOU'RE THE WORST I HATE YOU.
"They're not even answering Yí'ān?" Sirius asks breathlessly.
"Guess not," Mary says, and coughs so hard she feels like she's going to break open, pour guts out all over the carpet and the sofa. That would be a great hassle to deal with. She almost feels a sort of preemptive guilt.
Sirius finds his way back to her. He sits with his back to the sofa. His dark hair brushes her arm, long and unkempt.
"Fuck," he says.
"I've got a while longer," Mary forces out. "Before it gets me. I've been trying to get Yí'ān to take me back to London. I'm strong enough for sidealong."
"London's too dangerous."
"That's what he said." Reaching over to him, Mary clamps a hand as tight as she can around Sirius' shoulder. "What's happening in Britain? Something's gone… gone wrong."
Sirius hesitates. "I don't know."
"You have to know something."
He looks over his shoulder at her, mournful. Mary has never seen a human look more like a kicked puppy before.
"That's just the thing, though," he says. "Nobody knows anything. No Direct Action this week, and then just… radio silence. Nothing. Yí'ān hasn't heard from any British allies in months, there was no response to your letter, and now… it's like someone's just… turned the lights off. Pretending nobody's home."
"We should go back. Or just me," Mary amends quickly, when Sirius goes bolt stiff beside her like someone's fired a gun in the next room.
"No," Sirius says. "London's more occupied by the day. Soon they'll have the whole city. The Order's probably on taken territory by now. If not yet, then soon. It's too risky."
"I sent another letter the other day," Mary murmurs. "Nothing in response to that one either."
"You should give it time," Sirius replies, and then, "why am I lying to you? We both know this whole thing is…"
Mary nods once, the only movement her neck will allow. The pain of it is sickly and horrendous, so heavy-pressing that she's worried it'll crush her completely.
"They won't reply," she murmurs. "I know."
"Something's really wrong over there."
"Maybe the whole Order died."
Sirius wraps a skinny arm around his knees, shaking his head furiously. "No," he replies. "No, they're too big for that."
"One fell swoop," Mary says miserably. "One raid on headquarters maybe, and now…"
"We can't think like that," Sirius replies, but it sounds more like an agreement than an admonishment.
They languish in mutually sorrowful silence for a while, neither speaking. A sharp, chewing pain strikes up around Mary's kidney and she drags her hands to rest atop it, as if she can suck the pain out with them. Fucked up snake venom or something.
"The potioneer," she whispers. "Who are they?"
Sirius is quiet for a bit. "Claude. My… friend."
"I didn't know you had those," Mary tries to joke, around a heavy lump sitting right in her airway.
Sirius laughs breathily. "I don't think I do anymore," he mumbles. "They hate me now. Because I… I fucked up. I always do."
"I don't think you always fuck up."
"We don't know each other. You can't know that."
Mary tries to shrug a shoulder and hisses. Each bone feels tight with a light, hollow ache. Like she's being carved out at the marrow, like a bird.
"I don't know," she murmurs. "Maybe you did fuck up. What did you do?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I'll be dead soon. It's not like I'll tell anyone."
"Don't say that," Sirius says roughly. "You're not going to die. I'm not going to let you."
"Tell me," Mary murmurs again.
Sirius hesitates, watching the carpet intently. His head turns and he looks at the door. Like he expects something to come through it. Very slowly, he reaches a hand into his shirt and pulls out… something. A necklace, Mary thinks, unable to see it very well past his hair. No. A locket.
"This is something important," Sirius tells her. "For winning the war." He fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a small, leather-bound book, grotty with age. "This too."
"What are they?" Mary asks.
She feels some great, dark pull in her gut. Like the bad magic burrowing through her is trying to find its way out through her ribs to unite with the artefacts in Sirius' hands.
Sirius shrugs. He puts the locket and the book down on the table in front of him and seems relieved not to have them sitting in his hands any longer.
"I knew Riddle," he says after a while. "Voldemort, that is. Before the Old War started."
Mary doesn't know how to respond to that. Tentatively, she drops a hand onto his shoulder again, letting it rest there.
Sirius seems to appreciate the contact. "We were close," he says darkly.
"While you were at Hogwarts?"
He nods once. "I know where he keeps these… things. Some of them, anyway. I know him better than anybody does. And I knew I had to go get this one so I brought Claude with me. And it went to hell."
"But you got it."
Sirius breathes in and then out, steadying and low. "And they paid the price for it."
"You both made it out alive."
"There was a potion there," Sirius says in a rush, through a very tight throat. "It did something to them. And things in the lake… and…"
The light flicks on. Both he and Mary jump, flinching so hard the sofa creaks violently.
Yí'ān is standing in the doorway, a hand on the lightswitch, in a cloth shirt and tartan pyjama pants. He stares at Sirius for a moment.
"What are we doing talking in the dark, then?" he asks, face breaking into something cheery. "Come on, I'll make tea."
Sirius stares up at him. "I only just got back."
Yí'ān gestures to the bag on the floor. "I can see that. Stay here, okay?"
There's unspoken threat in the words. Stay here.
Sirius nods once. "Yí'ān—"
But Yí'ān has already stepped back into the hallway. His bare footsteps pad up to the kitchen and there's the sound of the kettle turning on.
"Fuck," Sirius mutters to himself. He hefts his dead arm into his lap and squeezes it there, holding it very tight like a security blanket.
"He's not angry with you," Mary reassures quietly.
Sirius shakes his head. "Yes he is."
"He's not. He just worries. You didn't come home for…" Mary trails off. She couldn't tell you what the date was if you asked her too.
"About a month at this point," Sirius finishes miserably. "There's stuff I need to do."
"Like get more tattoos?" Mary points to the array down Sirius' arms, shoulders. Now that he's taken his jacket off, they peak around the thin sleeves of his tank top.
Sirius runs his working hand over the inked skin. "More important stuff than that."
"What do they mean?"
"What?"
Mary tilts her head a bit, as much as her neck will let her. "Bit specific, isn't it? I wanted to ask last time I saw you but…"
Sirius sits up, crossing his legs and shuffling around to look at her. Mary can see them better now. Knives — a pocket knife, fixed blades, a Bowie, a karambit, a broken-glass shiv. A dozen of them. They sit along his clavicle and the tops of his shoulders and down his arms like a strange rune array.
"I don't know why I keep getting them," Sirius admits. "I think it distracts me."
Mary nods slowly. "I see," she says, even though she doesn't really.
"They're for, uh, people." He shuffles closer to her, a bit imobile, right side all floppy. They feel like broken puppets, both of them. "People I know. To remind me why I'm doing this." And he says it more like he means to remind me why I'm still here, but Mary doesn't mention it.
"Who's this one for?" she asks, draping a shaking hand across the top of his left shoulder. Butter knife. Soft, curved edge.
"Regulus. My brother."
"And this one?"
Sirius traces the edge of the shiv. It's jagged and half-broken, hard edges; you would have to hold it between thumb and forefinger to keep it from cutting you. "Remus."
"That one?"
"James." Sirius laughs fondly at the Bowie knife. "He never liked Bowie, that's the joke."
"Oh." Mary doesn't get it but whatever makes him feel better, she supposes. "It's… sentimental."
"It helps me a lot."
"Right."
"Like he's here."
Mary thinks of Dorcas and Marlene and burns like a church on fire; it hurts worse than the Kettering, it skitters over her like bugs. She wants to touch, wants to feel skin against her palms. She wants to remember the taste of Marlene's mouth. "Yeah."
"They probably think I've died again by now."
Mary makes a strange sound in the back of her throat. "Me too. Mine too."
"You don't think your letter got to them?"
"There must be something going wrong with the communications. They would've announced it otherwise. My family…"
Sirius gives a short nod. Like he doesn't really want to go there. He opens his mouth as if to say something and then seems to reconsider, closing it again.
"Say it," Mary instructs.
He clears his throat. "I was just going to say that if you're so convinced you're going to die, it might be better if they assume it already. No false hope."
Mary stares at him. Unbidden, tears fill her eyes. She sobs once and then again; it ricochets out of her bullet-harsh.
"Oh, fuck," Sirius says. "I'm sorry, I didn't— I didn't mean to upset you—"
He shuffles backwards, looking very uncomfortable. Mary's vision blurs and she hauls a disobedient hand up to lay across her eyes, lips curled and crunched together between her teeth, throat all full of salt and spit. Her eyes scorch with hot pain. Her chest rattles with it.
"Oh, bloody hell," says Yí'ān's voice from the doorway. "Sirius…"
"I didn't do anything!" Sirius' panicked voice says, before correcting, "I didn't mean it!"
Yí'ān kneels down beside Mary, putting a gentle hand on her arm. "Try to breathe for me, okay?"
"I don't want to die," Mary heaves desperately, almost hyperventilating now. "I don't want to die. I can't die here."
"I know."
"You don't!" she cries, nearly hysterical, hovering on the edge of it; madness blinks wide eyes at her, she stares into it, it stares back. Mary feels connected with herself only tangentially. One strong shake would tremble her into small pieces.
Yí'ān hugs her gently, around the shoulders. He wipes her face with his sleeve, depositing her hands in her lap. "He didn't mean it," he promises.
"I didn't," Sirius says, watching them both from the carpet. He sniffs once. "I… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
Mary shrugs hard, hard enough that it hurts, and then does it again just to keep herself awake. "I'm scared of it. Dying."
"Well, it won't get to that point if I've got any say in it," Yí'ān promises.
Sirius and Mary exchange looks. Neither of them says anything. A heaviness settles here, sitting between them all like a body.
Yí'ān sits there at her side for a few moments, looking like he wants to say something. Then, he sighs. "Both of you are going to be the death of me. Sirius, sit back down."
Sirius, halfway to his feet, freezes.
"You're staying for the night," Yí'ān says firmly. "And longer, if I can get it out of you."
"I can't," Sirius mumbles. "It'll just make things worse."
"It would help my peace of mind greatly to know you're safe here," Yí'ān replies, quite strained now.
They look at each other for a tense handful of seconds. Mary stares at her hands and wonders whether death would be such a bad thing.
Sirius is the first to look away. He sits back down heavily. He really does look sick. A great bag of bones held together by pale, translucent skin. All knives and hard edges. His hair needs a trim; the edges have started to split.
"Still no luck?" Yí'ān asks, and nods to the book and the locket.
Sirius goes still. "No," he says eventually.
"I didn't think so." Yí'ān reaches over to him and runs a heavy brown hand through the front of Sirius' hair to get it out of his face. "That means you can afford to stay here for a while."
"I've been making progress—"
Yí'ān's hand stills in the front of Sirius' hair, drifting down to his forehead, feeling it like you might feel for a temperature.
"You're freezing," he says after a moment.
"It's not so bad."
Yí'ān reaches out a hand and pulls up Sirius' right sleeve. His arm beneath is blotchy like one large, long bruise. The festering black mass under the skin, held there by a long dark scar, prison bars, has gotten starker and larger since Mary saw it last. Still, light dances under there, under the black veins. Interwoven through the rot and horror of it.
"Oh, Sirius," Yí'ān murmurs. "You should have come earlier."
"It's not so bad," Sirius defends without conviction.
"Look at that and tell me it's not so bad. Look me in the eye and tell me."
He shrugs. "It's because I'm not using it enough. It won't let me."
Yí'ān hesitates. "Because you're afraid."
"Maybe."
"This is what I meant when I said we need to get you into a therapist's office—"
"Stop it!" Sirius shouts. "Stop it with all that, I'm not going to talk to anybody! It won't help. This is a war, not school, and you're the one who told me to change the world, you're the one who said it was my fault Galina's dying—"
"I didn't say that!"
"You might as well have!" Sirius throws his working arm out towards Yí'ān, desperation hot in his eyes. He looks like he might start crying, but Mary knows he won't. "I know you blame me, even if you won't say it!"
"Am I not allowed to mourn her?! She's practically my mother—"
"You can do it without making me feel like— like—"
"Like what?" Yí'ān asks, and he grabs Sirius around the shoulders, holding him very tightly and staring intently into his face. "Like what?"
"Like I don't have anywhere to go," Sirius replies miserably. "I went to their place in Cannes the other day. They've moved out. Someone else is renting it now. Nobody will tell me where they went, and whenever I come here all we talk about is her. And I already fucked up and lost Remus and James, at Little Hangleton. They probably won't talk to me either if I ever see them again. They might already be dead, with everything going on in Britain, and… and…"
The steam goes out of him. Sirius shakes his head and his shoulders slump.
"I'm sorry," he says eventually.
Yí'ān shakes his head. "I never doubted you were. But you need to stop running from this."
"Running's what I'm best at."
"It won't work anymore."
Sirius shrugs. "Don't know if I don't try."
"But you don't mean that when you say it."
"I do."
Yí'ān makes a very irritable sound. "Sirius Black, you are taking the bed in the main bedroom. Or so help me."
"But—"
"And tomorrow, we are fixing this."
"But—"
Yí'ān holds up a hand. "We took care of you last year," he tells Sirius. "Let me take care of you now."
Sirius looks from Yí'ān to his dead arm and then at the door. "I need to keep visiting her."
"Then apparate back here once you're done."
"I'll make it worse for Mary."
Mary clears her throat. "There isn't much that could make things worse for me right now," she tells Sirius wetly, still trying hard not to cry.
Sirius jumps like he'd forgotten she was there. His knife-thick clavicle flexes. "You're sure?" he asks.
Mary chews her lip. She opens her mouth and then closes it again.
Sirius looks at her intently and seems to understand. In that look, a deal is struck.
"God, you are both so fucked up," Yí'ān murmurs emphatically.
Sirius sleeps on the other sofa, despite Yí'ān's insistence that he take the bed. By the following morning he's gone again, like smoke on the wind.
"At least he left a note this time," Yí'ān says glumly, as he re-dresses Mary's wound by the pale daylight.
Mary nods, biting her lip, feeling the tendons of muscle under the skin there feeling the great hard lumps of them bulging tight and taut around her teeth feeling the hot moulding pain of it; she bites harder, scrapes her teeth down the rust-thick flesh until she can taste iron. A bit of blood spills out of the corner of her mouth. Juice from a fruit.
"Oh, don't do that," Yí'ān murmurs, and wipes at her face with his sleeve. "Only a bit longer now, chin up."
Mary pulls her teeth out of her flesh. She swills blood and spit around in her mouth and stares from Yí'ān to the ceiling, stomach swelling and guttering with pain. The airy globular rattle of the bottom of a cup, the liquid gargling.
"What did the note say?" she asks, just to say something. It comes out a faint mumble, blood-thickened.
"I'll be back soon," Yí'ān quotes, rolling his eyes. "And an apology. Nothing new these days."
"He never used to do that."
Yí'ān nods. He pauses for a moment, antiseptic-soaked cotton pad held an inch over Mary's black-bleached ribs. The infection spreads wider each day.
"Were you two close?" he asks.
Mary hesitates. "No. Not really. He was best friends with James Potter."
"I've heard about him." Yí'ān laughs faintly, a bit knowingly. "I've heard a lot about him."
"James used to be a bit…" Mary trails off. She thinks of the James she knew in Hackney Terrace. Fidgeting fingers and very tired eyes. Always a tension in his face like he was about to start crying. Or maybe throw himself out of a high window. "He's changed a lot."
"I figured as much." Yí'ān drops the cotton pad into the bin and cuts a square of gauze from his long, thick roll of it, fingers deft around soft, springy fabric. "You've all probably changed a lot."
"Yeah."
"I've known a lot of wars. None of them quite as cruel to kids as this one."
Mary hesitates. "You didn't go to Hogwarts."
He presses the pad of gauze exceedingly gently into the wound. The gash promptly begins to try to eat it, chewing slowly.
"Ah, fuck," Yí'ān murmurs, pulling the gauze away. "Let me cut out a bigger piece."
Mary watches him as he works, saying nothing. She figures that she's probably crossed some invisible line sitting between them, huge, indomitable, silent.
"Yeah," Yí'ān says eventually. "Yeah, didn't go to Hogwarts. Durmstrang for me. Since I wasn't a citizen."
Mary winces. That would've been her, without the luck her family had. Could have easily been her. "What was it like?"
Yí'ān finishes cutting loose a larger square. He holds it up to the light, springing it out between his hands a few times. "This looks better, aye?"
Mary coughs and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. "Yeah."
Not seeming to notice, Yí'ān lowers it to the wound and pulls out a roll of bandages. "Alright," he says. "Hold still now, it'll be over in a sec…"
The pain doesn't ever pass completely, but with the wound redressed it's easier to ignore. Yí'ān disappears off on a distress call later that day. The unanswered question sits between them and when he leaves it festers all purulent and stinking on the air of the apartment; Mary thinks it might kill her before the kettering does.
But no, even as she thinks it she knows it's a liar, because as cruel as the kettering is, there's only one real killer: the depressive, neurotic haze of boredom that clings and cloys and does not ever go away. A month ago, her wrists were still strong enough to hold up a book to read, and two weeks ago Mary could raise her head enough to stare around the room, watching the posters. She still can on occasion, and that's the worst bit; there's nothing she can't do. She could write a word. She could read a sentence. But after that she hits a wall and hits it and hits it, pounds at it screaming in her head, and it doesn't give. Energy and strength never last longer than minutes, seconds, growing quicker and lesser each day.
Hour by hour, her body is becoming less and less her own. And that's the killer. That and the boredom.
Why is it called the kettering curse? she asked Yí'ān the other day, after pondering it for six hours for lack of anything else to do. Who named it?
No idea, Yí'ān replied, frustratingly short an answer. From what I've heard, it's the death eaters' name for it. One of them invented it. Maybe the big guy himself.
But he's missing, isn't he?
They're only ever off the map when they're planning something, Yí'ān said darkly. I'm making pasta tonight, do you want some?
Most days go like that. Yí'ān is the busiest person Mary has ever met (save, perhaps, McGonagall while running the Order), almost always sprinting against the clock. The alarm in the comms room for distress calls goes off about once every half an hour and only a fraction of the calls get answered at all. Apparently it didn't used to be so hectic. Mary hasn't bothered to pry into whether that's because he used to have help, or because the world is getting worse. He told her once, but she doesn't remember it well. She doesn't remember anything well anymore.
Reykjavik is quiet for a city, too quiet. Sometimes the walls seem to vibrate with it, like they ache with stagnance too. Like they're afraid of their own echo too. It's a quiet city and Mary would feel safe here, rescued here, if she could even for a moment think of anything other than Dorcas and Marlene, and James and Lily and Remus, and everyone else who might be dying or dead out there.
And herself, too. Dying and dead right here.
A bird lands on the window, startling Mary from her thoughts. A seagull with a yellow beak, orange-splotched. She stares at it for a while and it stares back at her, cocking its head, before rising back into the sky, cawing. Disappearing. Mary burns with a sudden, fierce envy she has never known before. Birds don't know how lucky they are. People don't know how lucky they are. To have so much time.
She decides she wants to see the wound again. Maybe so she can know her enemy. More likely just so she can marvel at it, the great hungry power of it, and feel like she has fallen to a suitable foe.
But getting up will be a struggle. She almost wishes Sirius would come back (she thinks he would understand this, this desire to see it, to know). But that would be too humiliating to bear and she would probably start crying.
She'll have to do it on her own, then.
Very gradually, Mary takes a long breath and tenses up every muscle in her body, just to feel whether she can. Her calves, springing hard against the sofa cushions, and then her thighs and her hips and her stomach and her chest, which curls her shoulders up around her, burnt paper. The pain of it is fantastic. Like nothing she's felt before Reykjavik, but now, commonplace, an old friend.
She tenses up her arms, clenches her fists. Mary hasn't cut her nails in weeks and they carve hot angry lines into her palms, a digging sort of pain. She squeezes harder and then pushes her hands out underneath her and tries to push herself up to sit.
Her wrists don't hold her. They tremble and yank out sideways, twisting, gammy and all tendon and no bone. Mary goes flopping back against the arm of the sofa again and all of her screams with pain. A lash of fury (she has never had a temper before this). She pushes herself back up again and falls again, and then again, and her stomach is bleeding under the bandages, sopping thin black watery pus all through her clothes, the acrid smell of it taste-it thick in the air.
"Merlin," she groans. "Oh, god."
There it is, that chewing, twitching sensation in her gut. Like a trapped nerve, like a pulsing muscle. It is laughing at her.
Mary's stomach, eyes, head — they all go hot with helpless anger. In a rush she rolls right off the side of the sofa and lands on her front on the floor.
The impact is white-hot pain, blackened with it. Her vision greys out and it knocks all the wind out of Mary's lungs. She lies there with her cheek on the carpet for what feels like centuries. Like when you doze off for a moment that feels like a full night.
When her senses come back to her, the floor is scratching an itching, nit-like storm against her skin — the front of her arms, the side of her face — and Mary rolls onto her back to get away from it. There's this horrible tickling, rushing tingle all across her skin, right in her organs. Elevated blood pressure, or perhaps just fear.
She tells herself that she can do it. And very tenuously, Mary rolls back onto her stomach and begins to crawl towards the door, digging fists into the age-hardened carpet, ploughing chunks of it away from itself. Her nails crack against the backthread beneath it. Her chin drags against the floor. Her stomach groans and chews and gags, the blood there seeming to curdle, the smell of it going sour and septic, necrotic.
"SHIT!" Mary screams into the empty apartment. A stuttering, strangled moan scrapes out of her throat and she fumbles her hands around the bottom of the doorframe and hauls herself to it, feeling the cold hard press of the wooden knull against her ribs. There she stops for a moment, panting, each exhale almost a grunt, each inhale sob-thick.
She never used to swear much before all of this. It feels like her mind is becoming less her own, too.
She needs to see. She needs to see it. She needs to know the enemy. Like that night, Sirius in the hallway mourning her killer; she needs to know.
Mary slams a flattened hand against the floor ahead and pulls herself down across the wood, the skin of her palm rubbing and going hot with tension. She stretches out her other hand, joint of the wrist going click-click-click-click-click like it might come loose, and pulls herself further still, and again, and again. Half a foot at a time. Moving slow and heavy and mournful, hot with desire.
She's halfway to the front door, the bathroom sitting opposite it, when there's noise outside. The distant crack of apparition onto the strip.
"Shit," she murmurs to herself, and lets herself go still. Yí'ān will help her. He'll help her.
There's silence for a while, and then distant footsteps, staggering and slipping on the stairs. Cursing in Icelandic, or something similar. More stumbling.
Then, the key in the lock; the front door opens; Yí'ān steps inside.
Less steps, more falls. He's bloody around the face, red-black ichor dripping out of his hairline and into his eyes like someone's tried to split open his skull with a cleaver. He's clutching his ribs like they might be broken and he staggers and slips on mangled feet, slamming the door closed with his back and then hitting the ground on his knees.
"Oh, fuck," he spits, an amount of blood with it. And then, "Mary?"
"Needed the bathroom," she groans. "Are you okay?"
Yí'ān flops onto his stomach. They both lie there like that, looking at each other. Mary can't decide which should be helping the other.
"Bad mission," he grits out eventually. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," Mary says, not knowing whether, in relative terms, it's true. "I'm okay."
"Good." Yí'ān dribbles a bit of blood out between cracked lips. "Me too."
"What happened?"
"Ambush. Ljubljana." He reaches up to try to hold the splitting skin of his hairline together with one hand. "Apparently some idiot's been burning down death eaters' houses in the area and didn't think to alert any of us. They've heightened their security. They were on us the moment we apparated in."
"Did anybody die?"
"Three. Didn't know any of them." Yí'ān rests his cheek against the floor and sighs, sounding very defeated.
"I'm sorry," Mary murmurs, feeling the kettering chuckle inside her ribs, an arrhythmic rattle.
"It's fine. Happens all the time these days."
"Did you manage to save whoever made the call?"
Yí'ān doesn't look at her. "No," he says.
Sirius finds them an hour later, by which point Yí'ān looks close to passing out. Neither of them has moved, maybe because they can't or maybe because it feels hopeless to try.
"Oh, fuck ," he says, dropping his backpack on the floor. "I was wondering why there was blood in the hallway."
Yí'ān makes a faint, almost congratulatory noise. "Deja vu, right?"
Sirius closes the door behind him. "You left the door upstairs open. And this one."
"Just help me, please," Yí'ān replies tightly.
Sirius drops down beside him. "Tell me where it hurts. Hi, Mary."
"Hi, Sirius," Mary replies, half-asleep. Most of her has gone dead, pins-and-needlesish.
Yí'ān gestures vaguely to the part of his head that isn't holding itself together properly. "Might want to start there," he groans.
"Didn't think you had a lobotomy planned for today," Sirius replies, hands shaking so violently they're almost a hummingbird blur.
"Well, the death eaters had other plans."
"Death eaters? Where?"
"Slovenia. They're spreading east."
"Oh," Sirius murmurs, and stares at nothing for a moment.
"Any luck with the horcruxes?" Yí'ān asks, a little pointedly.
Sirius seems to snap back to himself. "I'll go get the med kit," he mutters.
"We made a deal," Mary starts.
Sirius looks up from his can of cold beef stew. He didn't bother to heat it up. "Tonight's not the night," he sighs.
"But we did."
"Yí'ān's half dead. Can you give it a few days?"
"You'll run off again."
Sirius looks at her with hard eyes and then looks away. He's got a sharpness growing between his brows, deepening with the days.
"I won't leave again," he mutters. "Not until he's back on his feet."
"Broken ribs, was it? And his head. And his feet."
"Nothing so bad he won't be able to heal it magically. Just… in a few days. When he's stronger."
Mary nods shortly. "Then after that, we'll go."
"Why do you want to?"
She hesitates. "I want to see somewhere that isn't this apartment. Before I go."
"You're not going to die," Sirius snaps.
"Had any luck finding Claude?" Mary doesn't wait for an answer. "I didn't think so."
"We don't know that it'll kill you."
Mary raises the bottom of her shirt. Since this afternoon, the wound has bled through black, so thick it's a void. Sirius looks away, unable to see it for long. His throat pulses, perhaps with a repressed gag.
"Please," Mary murmurs. "I can stand sidealong. I'm still strong enough for that."
"It's grim out there," Sirius warns.
"Not if it's the last thing I'll get to see."
"Why are you so determined to die?"
"I'm not," she replies. "I just know." And she nods at Sirius' arm, sprawled limp in his lap. "You know, too."
And she can see by the look on Sirius' face that he knows, he knows it better than anything. That thing, whatever is in his arm, is killing him just as much as the kettering is killing Mary.
"That's different," he mutters. "There are still things I need to do first. Before it eats me."
"There are still things I need to do too. Like see the sky again."
Sirius nods to the window.
"Properly," Mary amends. "Properly see it."
He considers that for a while, watching her. Mary watches him right back and in a way they consume each other. They're more similar than they've ever been. Mary has never been able to relate to Sirius Black in all her life and she didn't imagine that she would start now, here, in the swirling quiet heart of the New War. With nothing left to do but wait and mourn.
"Fine," Sirius says. "Once he's okay again."
"He said something about fear," Mary says, before she can help herself. "Fear being what's doing it." And she nods to his arm again, even though it hurts deep in her neck like a bone out of place, pressing cold tension into the front of her windpipe.
Sirius runs the fingers of his left hand over the bloated black skin of his right. The fingers have gone overripe, spotted, like a plague has taken them.
"Something like that," he agrees.
"What gave you it? The injury."
"It's not an injury. More like a weapon."
"Evidently not working," she replies.
Sirius laughs wetly and rubs his face. "I need to be angry," he says eventually. "To tame it. I need to hate."
"There's lots of stuff to hate right now."
He nods. "But I've been hating for a long time and I think I've started to forget how to do it right. I'm too afraid to be angry anymore. It sits in me like a fucking— a fucking— a… sickness."
Mary almost says 'me too' and decides not to. "It'll suck if we both die."
Sirius nods dourly. "It will, won't it?"
"No way to say goodbye to them."
"James," Sirius agrees. "Remus."
"Marlene. Dorcas. Lily."
"Regulus. Peter. Claude."
"My parents."
"My uncle. Mr and Mrs Potter."
"Hestia and Alice and all the rest still in Britain."
Sirius holds his left arm out to her, nodding his head to the bicep, along which sits a heavy carving knife, the type you would use for meat. "That one's for Galina."
"The dying woman."
"I killed her."
"I'm sure that's not true."
He shrugs and pulls his arm back. "It feels like it's true."
Mary is quiet for a bit. "We're going to make each other miserable if we keep talking."
Sirius nods. "What's it been like? Living here."
"Lonely. Painful. Every moment is a small death."
"Cheerful."
"What about you?"
Sirius fiddles with the hem of his trousers. "I've been running mostly," he says. "Staying in hostels and sleeping rough. I visit her lots. She's sleeping most of the time."
"Galina."
"Yeah."
"Right."
He lifts his right arm up and lets it flop back down into his lap like it's funny, like it's a big game. He's not laughing, though. "I look for Claude. I try to destroy the…"
"Horcruxes? That's what he called them."
"Don't repeat that word to anybody."
"I won't get the chance."
"This is so fucking depressing," Sirius says. "Yes. I try to destroy the horcruxes. The diary and the locket. And as you can probably tell, it's not going very well."
"I'd gotten the impression," Mary agrees. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's my own fault."
She thinks she should probably try to rebuke that, but can't come up with the right way to go about it, so says nothing. Sirius says nothing too. They fall back into silence, him sitting on one sofa, her lying on the other, Yí'ān sleeping silently in the bedroom. This place has always felt out of time, like some parallel dimension, but with Sirius it feels moreso. This is where he ran after the Rosier Wedding, after they took over the ministry, Mary knows. It feels like a cemetery masquerading as a refuge.
"We'll go soon," Sirius promises eventually. "I'll take you to Hungary to see her."
"Is it pretty out there?"
He nods once. "It's pretty out there."
Yí'ān wakes up the following morning, wrestles his wand back off Sirius and tries to stitch his own ribs back together with it, despite being monstrously concussed. Predictably, it doesn't work, and he ends up resigning himself to a few more days of rest at least.
"I'm sorry you had to see me like that," he calls to Mary down the hallway, both of them bedridden. "Nasty, that mission was."
"No worries," Mary shouts back to him. "Sorry you had to see me like that."
"We're in a right state, aren't we?"
"Yeah."
Sirius flutters between them, a jumpy ghost, never quite settled. A few times he hovers near the front door, as if waiting to leave, and then seems to give up on the idea. He watches comms and doesn't respond to a single distress call. He makes a lot of tea.
"You people do that a lot," Mary tells him, when he brings her her fourth cup of the day, all the others sitting undrunk and cold at her side. "Making tea like it'll fix your problems."
Sirius shrugs. "The British way."
"I wouldn't know."
"Suppose it's been so long I wouldn't either," he agrees.
The days pass in quiet, oppressive mournfulness. It storms the whole following night, the sound of it howling loud and rapturing against the windows. Sirius does not sleep, lying awake on the floor all night with his arm clutched tight against himself, and Mary doesn't either, too restless with tension, too alive with pain that worsens in the cold. The kettering never leaves her alone. It chews and hacks and laughs long into the night, jeering in the juncture between her kidney and her liver.
Yí'ān manages to heal himself up properly three days after the distress call gone wrong. Mary hears all of it: the pop of magic, the sound of his exhale, and the creak of the bed as he stands on his own. There's a stuttering, flinching breath and the sound of Sirius' voice muffled into Yí'ān's shoulder, apologising for something like the something doesn't need elaboration on.
"It's okay," Yí'ān promises gently. "You're okay."
Mary thinks of Marlene and decides that if she could, she would have died that night in central London, outside the museum, Dorcas nearby. It would've been simpler.
They all eat together that night. Mostly quiet. A sort of Last Supper, one of many. The morbid, the absurd, sits low over them, watching. Chances are none of them will live to see next summer. Mary figured out the other day that it's November. It burns with a painful irony that she'll die before Christmas. Her dad's a Catholic and her mother never talked about god. She wishes she'd had the chance to figure out how she felt about all of that.
The following morning, without announcing it, Sirius wakes her up at the crack of dawn and slots his arm around the underside of Mary's shoulders, hauling her to her feet. She bites right through her lip and leaves the flesh of it ragged in her mouth, torn like a bin bag.
"You okay?" he asks her, and it's not a question.
Mary nods once. "Fine," she says, the 'f' not coming out right through the gore of it.
They hobble, leaning heavily on each other, to the door. Mary's legs don't work, the muscles atrophied with time and the kettering. The ankles twist in on themselves and Sirius mostly carries her, though he doesn't complain. It's an unspeakable pain, something she can't verbalise right. She's almost crying but her eyes are shut so tight nothing can get out.
Blind, they reach the front door. Sirius pulls her out and closes it behind them both, locking it. Mary's chest is rattling with retches that don't make sound. She can feel her face crumpled up by them.
"It's alright," Sirius tells her. "We just need to get to the strip. Come on. Bit further now."
They make for the stairs. Mary's feet drag more than they take steps, almost overturned, the tops of them vertical. She crushes her cheek into Sirius' shoulder and he pinches cold fingers around her underarm to keep her against him. They take unsteady, lilting steps, staggering left and right like drunkards.
"Sure you want to do this?" he asks her in a murmur.
Mary nods. She isn't sure; she hasn't been sure of anything for a while. But she can't stop now. "I'm sure."
"Then hold on tight." And he starts to haul her up the stairs, step by aching step, the pressure of each raised leg immense against her stomach. Mary doesn't complain. She tangles bits of torn lip between her teeth and flexes her jaw left and right, crunching her molars together, trying to chip them flat. It isn't a worthy distraction. But it's all she's got.
They hit the top of the stairs. In a haze of pain, Mary is dragged to the door and then the cold Icelandic air hits her. She opens her eyes and it's dark despite the hour, and it's biting, freezing, the wind icy with spots of rain that hurt as they hit her face.
Mary breathes in a long breath. The smell of the ocean; the smell of wet grass; the smell of cars, petrol, industry. It's like being alive again. She sobs with relief.
Sirius drags her to the flat spot of brown grass in front of the apartment block. He tightens his grip on her.
"Ready?" he asks.
Mary nods against him. "Do it," she hisses.
Sirius takes a deep breath. He stares intently down at his arm. Mary watches it too, watches the flexing of the blackened skin, a false heart.
"Come on," he murmurs. "Please. Please. Please."
Mary clears her throat, a glob of hardened blood stuck in there. "You need to be angry?"
"Yeah." He looks up at her.
She thinks fast, desperate. She needs to get out of here, needs to be anywhere other than Iceland. "You-know-who wants James," she says in a rush. "James is wanted now. Almost as badly as you. He's looking for him."
Sirius goes deadly still. His arm seems to twitch and the lights dancing beneath the skin blink.
The curling crushing gasp of apparition closes in around them and they're gone.
Galina Kovalenko is pale as death on the daisy yellow hospice bed they have laid her out on. Her skin is grey underneath the first few layers, and the veins in her eyelids are black. She doesn't twitch as Sirius and Mary stumble in, and Sirius deposits Mary into a chair.
Mary's vision is so blurry with pain that she's surprised she's still awake. She sprawls mostly limp in the seat beside the bed and flexes her jaw left and right, trying to get some feeling back into it.
"Sorry I couldn't apparate us closer," Sirius says, and flops into the chair on the other side of the bed. Under the flickering white lights overhead, magically suspended there, he looks ghostly. "There are wards up against people who've never visited before."
Mary hoicks up a mouthful of bloody spit, barely able to raise her arm to catch it in her sleeve. "You were right," she mumbles, dropping her hand and looking out of the window. "It is beautiful."
This part of Hungary is very desolate, far-flung from any nearby towns. The flats of broad, greying fields stretch for miles around, cordoned by rows of high green hedging and the distant shapes of farmhouses on the horizon. Lavender fields cast the horizon into a line of brilliant purple, the colours melding together into a jewel-toned strip. It's a miserable day but even despite that, the grey sky makes the whole picture pale and unobtrusive. A still, cold landscape portrait, curling thick with heavy mist.
"I come here a lot," Sirius says absently. He's not looking at Mary; his eyes are glued to the woman in the bed, who on closer inspection looks to be in her fifties or sixties, fast asleep and dead to the world.
Mary hesitates. "Are you going to wake her up?"
"I don't know. Usually I don't. The healers tell me to let her rest." Sirius hesitates, left hand hovering over Galina's papery white face. "But it feels cruel. To let her sleep. Since she's got so little time left. Feels like we should be using the most of it. Like she'd want me to wake her up and I'm taking that away from her if I don't."
"Oh."
"But I never know what to say." Sirius puts his left hand in Galina's limp one and squeezes until it probably hurts.
"Does she blame you? For whatever happened?"
"No. Well. She says she doesn't."
"Do you believe her?"
"Of course not," Sirius dismisses. "I'd blame me, if I was her."
Mary traces the black veins of Galina's shrivelled right hand up her arm, up her neck. "Is it the kettering curse? It looks the same."
"Dark magic always looks the same," Sirius says wryly, gesturing to his arm. "The three of us match. But no. It's not."
"And I suppose I'm not supposed to ask."
"Yeah."
"Well I'm going to."
Sirius' grip on Galina's hand gets tighter. It seems like he always needs something to hold onto; like he's afraid if he lets go he'll float away. Or drown.
"Little Hangleton," he says.
"Oh," Mary replies. "Right."
They fall silent again. Mary manages to heft her heavy arms up to wrap around her stomach, watching the rolling fields out of the window as if there's anything to see out there. The Kórház is quiet and peaceful, probably charmed that way. A tall, converted old factory, owned by magical folks since the first war, first in use during Grindelwald's era. For the dying and the dead. Mary has seen seven ghosts already, and the healers have similar appearances, all sallow and a bit crumpled. Galina has her own room, a luxury most probably can't afford in the other magical hospitals of Europe right now.
"You were close with her?" Mary asks after a while. It's probably the wrong thing to say; she doesn't care.
Sirius hums. "I was."
"How long does she have?"
"A few weeks now. If that." His grip on her hand loosens and then tightens again. He leans forwards to rest his cheek on the edge of the bed, watching Galina like he expects her to die at any moment.
"I'm sorry," Mary murmurs.
"Don't be." Sirius doesn't look at her. "Christ it's cold in here."
It's not cold in the slightest; it's an ambient, near-warm temperature. Probably charmed that way. Mary doesn't mention it.
"We should go soon," she murmurs. "If you start crying I'll cry too."
Sirius laughs, vaguely choked. "I'll do my best not to."
"Okay," Mary agrees. "If you want a hug—"
"I don't," Sirius reassures.
"Right. I couldn't give you one anyway, so I guess it's for the best."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
Galina doesn't stir, not waking even as Sirius fiddles with her fingers, right arm dangling from his shoulder, swinging with the fingertips a few inches from the floor. They really do all match.
"You really think nobody here could help me?" Mary asks, after some time has passed.
Sirius draws a shaking breath. "I've asked a lot," he says. "But they don't heal here. Just ease pain. They slowed Galina's infection down but not by much. And they can't do anything about the kettering curse, they've never heard of it."
Mary snorts a laugh through her nose. "When I'm gone," she says, "find whoever invented it and kill them for me. Okay?"
"I'm not sure I'm up for that," Sirius admits, though he's laughing a bit too. "This thing is useless." He flops his arm around.
"Get someone else to do it," Mary suggests. "Remus maybe."
"Why not James?"
"I don't think he's up for it either."
Sirius sobers. "Maybe not," he agrees. "Is it true? What you said about…"
"He's undesirable number two," Mary assents. "Still goes on missions, though. Not as much as Dorcas. He's got something wrong with his chest. New War injury." Like me.
"Oh." Sirius glances down at his own chest, as if by all rights he should be able to feel the pain of it too. Then, he glances down at his own hand, and then back up at Mary. "I need a favour."
Mary squints at him. "What is it?"
"You need to…" Sirius hesitates, looking down at Galina, and then back up at Mary. "We should go somewhere else."
More apparition will kill her. But she's going to die anyway. Mary nods.
"Give me a minute," Sirius murmurs. "Just to say goodbye."
"Alright."
He turns to Galina and lowers his head close to her pillow, murmuring. Mary tunes it out, busying herself peering around as far as her stiff, weak neck will allow. She doesn't want to observe this; mostly because she's afraid it'll make her jealous. At least he gets to say goodbye. There's nobody here to say goodbye to her and that makes her simmer with quiet resentment. But being here is miles better than being stuck on the sofa in Reykjavik, she supposes.
When Sirius is done, he stands up, letting go of Galina's hand very reluctantly. He takes it and then lets it go again and she still doesn't wake up again. Mary would have thought she was dead if it wasn't for the beeping of the heart monitor at the side of her bed, magical, charmed to ring like tonal bells.
"Well then." Sirius crosses around the bed to Mary's side and claps a hand onto her shoulder. "I won't make you get up. Ready?"
"Can I take the chair?" Mary asks.
"They won't miss it," Sirius shrugs.
Mary wraps her hands tightly around the arms of the chair and nods once. Sirius pulls them both into the ether, emptiness screaming in a twister around them, almost a tornado. His hand seems to glue itself around her shoulder and she sees the dark mass of his other wrist whip out in the darkness, the world distorting; they hit the ground, the chair rocking dangerously backwards on both legs.
Sirius steadies it while Mary catches her breath, clutching at her stomach. They're in a broad, barren field, still Hungary by the looks of it. Lavender grows in purpling clumps around its border, ripe and still.
"Shit," Mary grits out, feeling her bones settle into their sockets again. Nausea swims through her and she thinks she might throw up in her lap but manages to keep it down, forcing bile back into her stomach.
Sirius yanks the locket out of his shirt and throws it to the ground ten feet away, pacing from Mary to put a distance between them.
"You okay?" he asks over his shoulder.
Of course she isn't okay. How could anybody in this situation, in this body, be okay? "Fine," Mary calls, through a clenched jaw and grinding teeth.
"Good." Sirius comes to a stop twenty feet from Mary, the locket on the ground between them. He stares at it, dark eyes squinted very narrow. "You look like shit."
"So do you," Mary shouts back.
A faint smile, which falls quickly. Against the grey sky, Sirius is more thunder than person, the crackling burning type, thick with fearful tension. His arm hangs disused at his side, its blackened flesh swollen, lolling slightly in the wind.
"Tell me," he instructs her. "Tell me about James."
Mary gets it then. The other half of this deal they have struck. She shuffles a bit in her chair, feeling the pinch-it scratch-it biting pain in her midriff strike up a fierce chorus.
"He doesn't breathe properly," she calls into the windless air. "They didn't heal his chest right, so he can't run very far anymore. He's in pain a lot."
Even from this far away, she sees the tendons in Sirius' neck jump. It seems to make him wider. Larger than life.
His hand jumps a bit at his side, the fingers twitching.
"He has nightmares a lot too," Mary continues, feeling her throat strain with it. "Since Little Hangleton. He says your name in his sleep."
The hand starts to raise. Alien and strange, wind whips through the silence around them, the grass beginning to tremble with it.
He wants anger. So give him anger.
Mary raises her voice, despite the straining in her throat, despite the ache of it. "He's a mess," she calls. "And the death eaters want him. We don't know why. We never figured it out. But one of these days they'll get him."
Sirius' arm is horizontal now, held out in front of him, the fingers clawed, palm down. The wind whips louder, a swirling vortex around them, him in the centre of the storm. It sends his hair into a black clouded mess around his head, ripping around in great dark blustering tangles.
"Remus left him!" Mary calls. Truth. "Lily too!" Truth. "He used to tell me he was scared—" Lie. "He used to say he was scared of you-know-who—" Lie. "He said he wished you'd never left—" Truth. "He said he never wants see you again—" Lie. Big fat lie.
Sirius' eyes close and his face screws up. His form seems to ripple and something bright and hot bursts out of his fingertips, which he extends until his hand is stretched out flat. Electricity crackles on the air and the wind rears into a howling mass, whipping grass clear out of the earth, scattering clumps of dirt. Mary squeezes her eyes shut very tight and there is a terrific bang.
The wind dies. When Mary looks up again, the air is thick with dust and Sirius is halfway down to his knees, shoulders knotted tight. The locket is lying in a smoking pit of burnt-husk grass between them, unbroken.
"Shit!" Sirius shouts very breathily. He hauls himself to his feet and then hits his knees again.
"It wasn't enough?" Mary calls.
He shakes his head once. "Not nearly enough." And he looks up at her. "Again. Tell me more."