Notes: This collection is for the Pairing Set Boot Camp Challenge. I am clearly insane, because I want to do all fifty pairings. Stories will be marked individually for warnings. Onward!
He never meant for any of this to happen.
He clung to his ideals like a drowning man, watching Gellert twist and warp, watching his love change into something unrecognisable. It couldn't be happening, and yet it was.
"You know what you have to do," they said, but what did they know? He wasn't a monster. Neither of them were.
But the smirk that twisted Gellert's face, the laugh that shredded his throat, tore holes into Albus's heart, ripped his pretty, precious words into a handful of confetti and a whisper of smoke-wreathed Europe.
"I know what I have to do," he said, but the words died before they ever brushed against Gellert's ears, and he stood by once more and did nothing. The world burned. All was fire and desolation and still, he stood. And when Gellert returned, exulted, his robes dipped in blood and his fingers crackling with poisonous green fire, Albus kissed him, tasting the sweet poison of his lips and drawing him tight against his body. Gellert's magic corroded his, but still, he could not stop.
Ariana's blood dripped from his fingers, stained his soul, but even this wasn't enough. Nothing could ever be enough.
"I love you," Gellert whispered brokenly in his ear, clutching at him with hands like claws. "I love you, I'm sorry, don't leave me, don't leave me."
"I will never leave you," Albus whispered back and he knew, in the most shadowed corners of his heart, that it was true.
The two stood together, and the world shattered.