China Doll X—Transcendence
transcendence (n)-- 1. to exist above and independent of material experience or the universe 2. To be greater than, as in intensity and power 3. A state of heightened consciousness reached by the psyche upon draining its victim of any human emotion [Et. Lat. transcendere: trans-, trans+scandere, to climb]
-The Annoted Webster's Dictionary for the Wizarding Community
He opened his eyes on a tiny hillock just outside of Hogsmeade. The hot Asian July was now replaced with the bitter cold winter of Southern Scotland. Looking up into the persistently gray sky, Remus felt a chill run up his spine, as the fresh snowflakes fell on him, coating his face and outstretched arms. Sitting up abruptly the tiny wizarding village was just as he remembered it, with its picaresque waddle-and-daub huts and annoyingly narrow streets. Again he shivered, just beginning to aquatint himself with the cold of the crisp December day. Maybe he should have brought something warmer...
It never occurred to him to ask why he was there.
"Sit down," Remus heard someone snap from behind him. "Look at the sky dammit. Isn't that what we came up here for? Even if there's not a lot to see..."
Remus didn't even have to turn around to recognize the voice, "James?"
His voice dripped with blatant sarcasm, "No, Snape you idiot."
Remus backed away in shocked horror; "You've been dead for thirteen years."
James sat up, brushing an obstinate piece of hair out of his face. It promptly fell back where it had came from as soon as his hand left his head. "Well my sixteenth birthday was two weeks ago, so if you're right, I died when I was three. Not quite enough time for a fulfilling life, but you get what you--"
Remus was gaping at him in complete surprise, "Sixteen?"
Instead of giving to worry James just shook his head, obviously supposing Remus was trying desperately to be funny. "Where've you been Moony? Welcome to 1976."
Remus felt a chill wash over him at his words, a chill followed by a tidal wave of panic, "I have to see Sirius."
"Convient," James said drolly as a figure apperated behind him with a pop.
"How did you know--" Remus began, but stopped dead when he saw the figure behind James. It was most definitely Sirius, there was no mistaking his shaggy black mane and haphazard smile, but it was not the Sirius of the past two days, this was the Sirius of eighteen years previous. His face looked younger somehow, its lines not yet defined, his eyes not yet tainted by the twelve years of solitude in Azkaban.
"Remus wants to talk to you," James said heavily, with mocking pomposity.
Padfoot gave that lopsided smile that was not serious but rather perfectly Sirius. "Remus always wants to talk. What is it?"
"I..." his mind failed as he stared around in amazement. And the most bizarre thing of all was that he was beginning to remember. Dug up from the dregs of his memory was some Sunday in December 1976, the Sunday after a big Quiddich match, Gryffindor victory of course. It had been the game when Sirius had knocked Othello Bastion off is his broom and left him clinging to the goal posts. Despite five technical fouls he had gloated about that for weeks. Or will gloat... "This is bizarre," he murmured to himself, holding his head.
"You want to see bizarre?" Sirius grinned, pointed down to the bottom of the hill, where a tiny figure in black was trudging slowly up the side. "Wormtail wanted to walk."
James shook his head quietly, "He's afraid he'll splinch himself apparating."
"Considering he has only half a brain already there's not much to loose," Sirius smirked, but his triumphant smile fell as James glared. "All right, sorry, sorry... Anyway he wanted to walk, and I told himself to make himself useful and carry the butterbeer left over from last night's party."
"Wormtail?" All color faded from Remus's face as memories the Shrieking Shack, fresh and ripped raw, came back, or forward, to him. "Why is he here?"
"What?" James blinked, personally offended. "I thought you liked Peter."
"No, I--" Remus broke off, too confused to venture on. The three sat in silence as Peter stumbled slowly, too slowly, to the crest of the hill.
"I got the butterbeer," he grinned sheepishly, it was the slightly-self conscious grin the one Remus remembered, a smile he had thought gone forever. Sirius extended a hand wordlessly as Peter pulled a butterbeer out of his robes. It was then Remus knew that something was askew. Peter was holding a gun. Turning to the bewildered James he gave a long low smile. "Bang," he said quietly. And James was lying there on the snow without a sound, his blood gradually spreading itself away from his body, unfolding into crimson wings: a scarlet angel of death. Sirius gave a cry of shock and leapt forward towards Peter, but now he too was dead, and on the snow before Wormtail had even turned. In an instant, Sirius simply faded away, as a soft breeze blew bits of ice over the tiny hollow where his body had lain. Now, it was Remus's turn as Wormtail fixed him straight in the eye, and he watched as Peter's face aged before his eyes, dissolving from the smiling boy he had loved to the paunchy man from the Shrieking Shack. This was the paunchy man that was the reason Harry was his own loco parentis, the paunchy man that was the reason that James was now lying here on the snow, cold as the wind that ruffled his unruly hair. "Damn you," Remus said quietly. "We loved you Peter... why?"
Peter tilted his head to the side, and a faint grin flashed across his worn face, " I'm your devil," he whispered. Remus caught every word as Peter took a step closer. "And you're my China Doll... I'm breaking you. All of you..."
He pulled the trigger.
And then the snow filled deranged nightmare dissolved into a thousand indecipherable pieces. Pieces of a puzzle that did not, could not, would not, fit together now or ever. Yet somehow, beyond the laws of any reason the pieces arranged themselves into a fact. James, Peter, Sirius, 1976, had all been a dream. And this fact led to something new:
A face.
Remus opened his eyes, slowly and painfully, feeling every muscle in his face contract in agony and cry out for mercy. He desperately strained his sight onto the darkness, trying to make out a figure. And there she was, bending over him, the whites of her eyes the only thing visible in the entrenching bosom of night. "Vix?"
"Thank god," she said, leaning back. "I thought you were out for good."
Remus tried in vain to sit up. At long last sick of being desperately abused, without any discussion of a raise in salary or paid leave, his muscles seemed to be on strike and refusing any orders he put to them. "Damn."
"What?" Vix gave him a sharp look. "Right back at you, prig."
"No," he growled, as his arm let out a whiplash of pain. "Not you, I hurt all over."
"Well of course you do, after that fight," she said with annoying superiority. "Only leave off complaining about it till we find a way out of this cage." Remus managed to turn his head and look around, and he could see that Vix's description of their predicament was nothing short of the truth. They were imprisoned in a metal cage no more than six feet long in either direction. He reached out to grab one of the bars and then jerked his hand away in surprise, suppressing the cry of pain ad he tried to hide the telltale line of blisters. The cage was silver. "There's no door," he heard Vix saying as he painfully jerked his mind back to some semblance of attention. "No way in or out. I don't know how Whimsy got us in here, but we aren't escaping anytime soon."
"Where's Sirius?" Remus said as his eyes began to acquaint themselves to the darkness.
"Not here," she said bitterly, leaning back against the bars. "Probably waiting to rescue us at the last possible moment."
"He'd wait that long, just to be a prig," Remus joked uncharacteristically. A silver cage, a dream about Peter, Whimsy's elaborate lies, what did it all mean?
The soft thud of hobnailed boots alerted them that the answer was soon in coming. "Lumos," Jonathan Whimsy whispered as a faint ball of light appeared on the end of his wand, sketching and outlining the contours of his face bizarrely, in hectic stoicism, making his smiling visage even more threatening than it would have been unseen in the impenetrable dark.
"You lied to me," Remus said quietly, unable to stop his conscience from speaking,
Whimsy's spectral grin only widened, "Yes. Highly amusing at the time."
"This is all some stupid game isn't it?" Vix's voice rose in indignation as she stood up beside Remus.
Whimsy's eyes narrowed in the dim wandlight, "It is much much more than you'll ever begin to comprehend, Miss Su."
"Make me comprehend," she hissed aggressively.
Whimsy glanced at his watch and a small look of cockiness crept across his face. "Why not? I have time."
"Time till what?" Vix snapped angrily.
Whimsy clucked his tongue. "Patience Miss Su, all in due time."
"Start talking," she growled.
Ignoring her as one would overlook a fussy child, Whimsy turned to Remus. "I told you I lied to you. Lord Voldemort never came to Hong Kong. None of Grindewald's followers survived. The Su Naoto I created was pure fiction."
"What are you talking about?" Vix said angrily. "Voldemort? Grindewald? I'm sick of this!"
Whimsy gave her an extremely patronizing stare. "We, my dear, are wizards. You are a muggle, a person with no knowledge of magic and even if they had knowledge no ability to utilize what they might know. Lord Voldemort and Grindewald are two wizards who abused their power and extensive talent and turned to dark magic, your standard run-of-the-mill nefarious villains bent on world domination."
"You're insane," Vix muttered, a shaky smile spreading across her face.
"Perhaps," Whimsy sneered, "If you keep telling yourself that we're out of our minds then you'll actually believe it."
Vix bit her lip in fury, "Remus?"
He didn't know whether to assent or deny. What he had been fleeing ever since his letter of resignation from Hogwarts had finally caught up with him. Once again he had started the age-old circle of lies and betrayal, the inevitable discovery, the inevitable rejection. Hong Kong wasn't an escape, it was only a travesty. Two thousand miles only changes the latitude, not the longitude of human nature. Human nature... politically incorrect with regards to him, but this wasn't the time or place. He owed it to Vix, he owed it to himself to stop the constant lies. A plane ticket couldn't accomplish it, only he could do that. Only he could start now. "How do you think he healed me," Remus said, hating himself for every word. "Why do you think you had never seen a bird like Buckbeak before? Why do you think I had all those books?" He paused and then began to answer his own rhetorical questions. "Because its true."
"You said you trusted me." Vix stared at him, the anger and rage and betrayal he had seen so many times before on so many faces printed into her own features. She bit her lip and for the briefest of seconds it looked at if she was going to say something more, but she turned away. Remus felt his heart skip a few beats and then lull, fear seeping in as his second chance had slipped trough his fingers. Whimsy leaned towards Remus, leaned so close that his breath rasped against the deadly silver bars of the cage.
"Since our friend knows everything she needs to, I have a few questions to ask you."
Remus approached the bars nervously, hating Whimsy with every ounce of his being. When he spoke, his voice was a light growl, "You haven't answered all."
Whimsy inhaled deeply, closing his eyes, and Remus suddenly felt as if someone was wrenching at something deep down in his gut. Something he couldn't afford to loose. Whimsy gradually opened his eyes and licked his lips a look a supreme bliss on his face. "I played a game once involving two players when one player asks a question, which the second answers truthfully. Then they switch places and the second asks the first."
Remus glanced over his shoulder to where the furious Vix still lurked. An image came to him, an image of some tang, some Silence of the Lambs, and some pancakes came to his mind. It had been a much lighter morning, than this darkest of nights. "I played that once too."
Whimsy's unearthly smile broadened, "What's your name?"
"Remus Joaquin Lupin. What's your name?"
Whimsy raised a white eyebrow, "My first or my second?"
Throwing away all frayed remnants of logic, Remus leaned forward. "Both."
"Richard Thrombus Brighton and Jonathan Alberic Whimsy, though I haven't been known as Brighton since 1842." Whimsy's face seemed even more sinister in the flickering wandlight. "How do you know Sirius Black?"
Remus took a deep sigh, "We went to Hogwarts together, we were friends."
Whimsy smiled thinly, "Good friends?"
Remus shrugged non-committaly. Where was Sirius, he hoped to god he was safe. "1842?"
Whimsy didn't seem the least bit overbalanced. "I was drafted into Her Majesty's Navy when I was seventeen. That was 1836. By 1842 I was the second commander of Her Majesty's ship the Lottery, but I got... sidetracked on Hong Kong during the Opium Wars." He smiled, well aware and well pleased that he had raised more questions than he had answered. "My turn. Why are you here in Hong Kong?"
Remus dropped his head in his hands, suddenly trying to decide how much to reveal. "It was the only flight for under seventy pounds. I had resigned from my job, I just had to get away, The travel agency was having a sale on flights to Asia and here I am."
Whimsy nodded, his eyes approving, "Your turn."
"No, mine," turning around, Remus saw Vix stand up and walk slowly to his side of the cage, walk so that she was level with Whimsy, her face pressing into the bars, "What's your game?"
He gave a low chuckle, "Do you really want to know?"
"I'm asking," she hissed menacingly.
"Very well," Whimsy smirked, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Very well. My game is transcendence."
"Come again?" Vix said, her knuckles turning white from gripping the bars of the cage.
"Transcendence," Whimsy replied, hissing the word through his teeth like a cold wind. "Enlightenment. Something beyond your... juvenile understanding of the world. As your friend Mr. Lupin may have told you, I wanted him to kill your father. I do not care less whether or not Su Naoto lives or dies, to me he is just a petty crook. But I knew enough of Mr. Lupin then to know it would seen him into emotional and moral turmoil. I killed Sho Seiji because I knew I could pin it on you. And that would send Mr. Lupin off the brink."
"What?" As Vix's eyes fell deeper into confusion, Remus's filled with slowly growing comprehension.
"For years I had to be content with dregs, feeding off the homeless and weak that no one would miss. Most of them were already so far gone that they only gave me enough for a midnight snack. And then Mr. Lupin entered my life. Your friend leaks emotions like a broken faucet, Miss Su. His empathy is incredible. He projects his sensibilities, I dare say unconsciously, so powerfully that anyone around him with the psychic ability of a golf ball can pick up on what he's feeling. In short, Miss Su, Mr. Lupin is a psyche's dream."
"You're a psyche," Remus whispered softly.
"Bingo," Whimsy replied, replied as he ran his tongue over his pure white teeth, over the fangs Remus had never seen before.
"You're going to feed off me," Remus replied, his mind muddling, mesmerized by that deadly smile.
"I have been feeding off you, Mr. Lupin, ever since I met you at that trash dump of a diner. I'm feeding off you now, as your discomfort increases, the more you give to me."
"Damn you," Vix whispered. No two words could have meant more to Remus. By damning Whimsy she threw herself in with him, breaking their silent vendetta. In spite of himself, he smiled.
Whimsy looked up at Vix with eyes far too old. "I'm immortal Miss Su."
The silence rang hard in the room. Harder than any taunt of Whimsy's, harder than Vix's fury, it encompassed all and filled the vacuous hole inside eaten away by their acidic fear. Remus felt his heart race as Whimsy fixed him with his own gaze. As the old man inhaled a wave of unbearable cold washed over him. Whimsy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wand. "Wingardium Levosia," he whispered as the curtains raised themselves from their place and rolled back from the gigantic floor-length window. Right now it was showing the sky, just at dusk, caught in an ancient limbo between daylight and its darker fantasies. "The full moon is set to rise at 8:27 tonight. Though we cannot expect complete accuracy the time is currently 8:25 and 32 seconds. You have roughly one and one-half minutes, Mr. Lupin." A thin smile curved its way across Whimsy's ancient face, a smile mocking Remus's look of shock. "You see now don't you?" he whispered across the silver bars. "Now when it's too late."
He saw, yes by god he saw, and wished now that he could retreat back into his blindness. In less than a minute, he would be powerless against the full moon. Locked in a silver cage, with no Padfoot to hold him back, he knew the undeniable truth. Locked in with Vix Moony would be unable to stop himself. By morning she'd be little more than a pile of blood and flesh. And his remorse, his self-hatred that would follow would be enough to supply Whimsy's twisted quest for transcendence for eternities to come. He could feel the soft touch of moonlight on the back of his neck, feel his body tense, feel his pulse freeze and his muscles lock. His legs gave out from under his and he fell to the ground his head colliding with the snow white carpet. Vix ran forward to catch him but he violently pushed her away. "Remus?" As her concerned voice rose in his ears he could feel them lengthen, feel hid bones move in ways they were not made to, feel every inch of skin crawl and reform. Staring up at her while his vision clouded, he once again say that tantalizing glint of silver dart across his mind like an arrow from hell.
He opened his mouth forcing his voice to work as the means to work it rapidly dissolved, "Vix..." he groaned hoarsely, "Vix your necklace..." and then he slipped away.
----
Three hours earlier...
When Orien opened his eyes, dusk was already falling. The entire left half of his body was cold, pressed into the hard cement. Blinking steadily, he noticed his hands, rust colored and caked with blood. The soft lines of his palm stained and dyed beyond recognition.
Then looking up, he saw her.
She was a ghastly sight to behold, lying in a heap a few feet away, her arms outstretched at odd angles like wings, he hair spread around her like the dark parody of a halo. And through her hair, woven like flowers bits of blood and flesh and bone. She lay in state, the very bride of death as it hovered about the room like an aura. He backed away, the sight too much to bare, though he could neither move his eyes left or right, up or down, so transfixed and held by the brutality. He backed away till he hit the wall, and there was no where else to back to. Her empty vacant eyes mocked him pitilessly, the faint smile on her lips turning the dagger in his gut. In a frenzied panic, he ripped off his blood stained coat, tore at the blood caked into his hands, staining his palms, his veins, his soul.
He slid against the wall, never lifting his eyes from her limp form. Slid to the door, opened it, and slid across the bridge into night.
----
Damn.
Four little letters.
And it just about summed up Sirius's evening.
He opened his eyes and sat up, suavely banging his head on the desk that was suddenly on top of where he had been lying. So he decided to try another modus operandi and crawl out form under the desk.
Out from under the desk and starlight into the comatose body of Su Naoto. Well, not comatose, the technical term was "under the influence of the Gravatuus hex", but comatose worked well in describing his slack jawed unblinking stare, Looking out the floor-length window, Sirius saw it was sunset, he had to have been out for at least a day. Struggling to his feet it occurred to his that Moony was gone. Sirius had about a millisecond to ponder this fact when a not at all comatose hand grabbed his arm.
He turned.
Orien smiled.
Sirius felt the grip on his arm tighten as the fingers pressed into his flesh, break the skin. He watched at the dull red line of blood trickled down his arm and dripped to the gray carpet, staining its drabness with sadism. A gleeful smile spread across Orien's face as he watched the blood with manic fascination. He jerked his hand away as Sirius's fist connected with his jaw.
Orien growled something in incomprehensible Chinese, his eyes flashing with untapped anger.
"You don't do that to me," Sirius snapped, as he caught Orien's punch in midswing.
"I do what I want," he hissed in return, baring his teeth like a dog.
Sirius blocked his second punch, "Not to me you don't."
Orien let out a long howl, breaking away from Sirius's web of control, hit him in the side with a well aimed kick. Sirius twisted around and punched him square in the nose doubly glad of all the Socking Snape sessions in their Hogwarts years. Ignoring the blood dripping down his face, Orien circled Sirius like a bird of prey, a predatorial glint in his eye. Then he struck.
Sirius could see what Moony had lost half of his ear, Orien was everywhere at once, punching his cheek while at the same time kicking shins. He grabbed one of Orien's hands as it fought its way towards his stomach, and pulled them both down to the floor. Orien wrenched away and pushed up, gripping Sirius's ribs and digging his thumbs into the soft flesh of his stomach. Letting out a bellow of indignation, Sirius kicked upwards, and Orien let go, rolling across the floor. Using muscles he had long forgotten he had, Sirius scrambled onto the carpet and gripped Orien by the throat. Tightening his thumbs, he leaned forward so that his nose touched Orien's broken and bloody one. "Don't come near me, ever again."
But Orien didn't hear a word he was saying. He was looking over his captor's shoulder out the window to where the moon was rising over the water, shooting its fine rays of silver across the mirror-pool surface. "I killed Nsia," he said quietly.
"I killed my best friend," Sirius replied softly, looking at Orien sideways, staring at the unreadable face, carved of stone, its crevices illuminated gently by the sugar-spun light of the moon.
Then as suddenly as he had quieted, the muscles in Orien's neck tensed and he began to shake uncontrollably. Sirius let go in shock and backed away as Orien spasmed on the carpet, spasmed and let out a long howl of pain. He had heard only one other person scream like that...
A snapshot memory flashed across his psyche, a memory covered with blood and repressed in the twenty-four hours he had held it. Orien, driving the penknife into Remus's shoulder. Remus, crying out in pain, the cuts on Orien's own hand, their blood intermingling and running to the street.
Their blood intermingling.
Sirius stared in shocked comprehension to the black wolf lying at his feet as the first rays of the full moon drifted into Naoto's office. The wolf tensed, opening its eyes and focusing its yellow gaze upon Sirius. Ever so gently, it bared its teeth and sent out a long low growl.
In an instant, he was Padfoot.
The wolf took a tentative step forward, testing out its new legs and liking what he found, straightened tall, its glinting yellow eyes the only source of light in the room. As tall as Padfoot, Orien was bigger than Moony, almost two hundred pounds of pure muscle and sinew, muscle and sinew Sirius could tell would have no problem ripping him to shreds if it so chose to. And right now, slavering and snapping, Orien looked just about ready to do what twelve years in Azkaban could not. He saw Orien's back legs tense, and tried to swerve away but the wolf was too fast. It sunk its jaws deep into Sirius's right shoulder, twisting its head and savaging the would as the blood began to flow. Growling in pain, Sirius shook him off and leapt on top of the wolf trying to force him towards the ground. Engaged in a indecipherable battle of tooth and claw, the werewolf was unstoppable. Slavering anger and ferocity every second, he was pushed even further by the madness in his blood. Unlike Remus, Orien did not fight his nature.
Sirius managed to dodge one of Orien's paws and fit his teeth around the other's neck. This didn't have the calming effect it did on Moony, Orien thrashed even harder. Snapping wildly he wrenched away and letting out a long howl of fury, he leapt on Padfoot's flank. Sirius tried to twist away as the claws and teeth broke through his mangy coat of fur, drawing blood.
With a bark, Sirius bared his teeth in an unmistakable challenge. This was what Orien had been waiting for, giving a yip of pleasure he advanced, paws skidding clumsily on the carpet. Ignoring the blood trickling down his side, Sirius rushed forwards, nipping at Orien's heels, drawing him forward. Growling in frustration Orien advanced after his quarry. Ears flat against his head, Sirius backed away from the ever closer Orien, backed away until he was flat up against the plate glass of Naoto's floor length window. Snapping he let out a long growl of challenge, and then darted forward, sinking his teeth into Orien's leg. The wolf howled in fury, rushing forward to put down his attacker. Sirius leapt clumsily out of the way as Orien raced past in a whirl of slashing fur and force. Two hundred pounds of wolf collided with the plate glass window.
Twenty stories and ten seconds later, he hit the pavement.
Sirius transformed and stood up, purposely averting his gaze from the shattered window. He could never say how or why he knew, maybe it was intuition, maybe it was one of those flashes of clairvoyance before confined to the mind of Sibyl Trelawney. But reasons aside, he knew where Remus was. With a quick glance around the ruined room, he disapparated.
----
"Vix... Vix, your necklace..." She reached her hand instinctively to the silver chain around her neck. Remus tensed below her, his hands clutching wildly at his neck, his eyes rolling back into his head so only the whites shone.
"Do something!" She screamed to Whimsy, who made now reply except to smile sardonically.
A low snarl made her turn. Standing at her feet where Remus had been a heartbeat before was a huge gray wolf. It opened its eyes lazily, its clear yellow gaze boring into her soul and striking a chord with the fear that lurked within.
It was then it all clicked. It all added up, the penknife's burn, the silver cage, the full moon-- it all added up to the unbelievable truth. Remus was a werewolf. Whimsy was going to kill her. She understood the panic in Remus's eyes ten seconds too late, saw the truth once there was no escaping it. She heard his voice echo in her ears... Vix, your necklace. Her necklace was silver. Silver like the bars on this cage, silver like the penknife that had burned Remus from the inside, silver like the padlock on her death.
The wolf stepped forward, its gaze never wavering from Vix's own. Its ears lowered, flat against its head as it let out a long mournful howl. Her fingers fumbling, her hands drenched with sweat, Vix wrenched furiously at the slender chain around her neck, weeping with relief when it came free in her hand.
----
Moony opened his eyes, suddenly sensing the undeniable feeling of enclosure. He was no stranger to captivity, but this was different. The bars of this cage repelled him, their aura a poison to his flesh. A flash of movement caught his eye. The natural prey of a werewolf is human flesh. It called to him like nothing had ever called to him before in his life. Moony was about to come into his own.
He fixed her with his gaze, she was so helpless, his prey, helpless in her tears and lamentations, huddled against the bars that held him captive. She was weak, but she would do. He leapt, mouth slavering in anticipation. Something whipped across his face, driving him back.
He let out a howl of pain as the silver ate into his flesh.
----
She had never heard any sound in her life like that. No sound could come close to what it did to her, it was the very embodiment of everything she had ever feared and hated and despised. She could not block out the howl of the wolf.
Heart pounding as the adrenaline carried away her reason on a wave of fear, Vix backed up against the silver bars of the cage. The wolf returned from the shadows of the cage, its hulking form illuminated in the wide pool of moonlight. She could see the thin red line across its silvery muzzle, she knew it could see her.
The wolf lunged again and she snapped the silver chain forward. It backed away, snarling.
----
Moony could feel the pain, feel it course through his veins and only serve to fuel his bloodlust further. The pain should be hers; the blood shed his tormentor's. He paced around angrily, not wanting to return for another whiplash, but unable to resist the call of her warm flesh.
He leapt forward, the silver whipping fast and hitting him once more. This time he didn't cower back and had time to slash at her leg before the silver hit him full in the face and he had to retreat once more into the shadows.
----
It was a bite, not a scratch that doomed one to becoming a werewolf. Old fossilized memories of folklore were washed back into the forefront of Vix's mind on the tidal wave of adrenaline. She gripped the silver bars of the cage, dangling her necklace between sweaty palms her entire world narrowed to this six by six square. Where would she be in ten minutes? Five? Dead? Or would she stay this way till morning, till the sun came up and Remus returned? Would she be saved from hell?
As the wolf charged forward again and again, she tried to tell herself that despite her bleeding leg, despite the hot breath of the animal, despite Whimsy's laughs it was all a dream. A nightmare.
But it wasn't.
It was living hell.
----
Moony had to get rid of his tormentor, the elusive silver chain that kept him from what was his. Pacing around slowly, the smell of her red blood luring him even closer, its call growing in strength with every beat of his heart.
He leapt forward and once again his greeting was the harsh slap of the silver chain. But this time he lunged upwards to meet it. He gripped the pendant between his teeth, his ears flattening as the soft skin inside of his mouth turned to fire, scorching away any semblance of taste, leaving only raw nerves. Nerves tuned to nothing except the explosive pain.
Maddened by the agony, he jerked his head, and was rewarded when the necklace came away in his mouth.
----
She felt the chain slip through her sweaty fingers. She saw the tiny glint that was her only lifeline fly to the other end of the cage, tossed by the sheer ferocity of the wolf. She heard its triumphant howl, knowing with every beat of her pounding heart what it meant for her. Whimsy would have his transcendence, Remus would have his feast, and she would have her death. She gripped the silver bars of the cage, all defenses broken and breached, tears coursing down her face as the wolf circled closer, its breath rasping harshly. She bit her lip, trying to suppress the inevitable cry of fear, the salty taste of blood mixing with the water from her tears.
It leapt. She turned her head, shutting her eyes against the wave of agony she knew would be soon in coming.
"Stupefy!"
The wolf fell in midleap to the floor, the soft thud of its body the only sound in the entire room.
Her knees gave out and she fell to the floor of the cage, tears coursing down her face, heart pounding in a rhapsody of unfilled terror.
----
"You sick bastard," Lowering his wand, Sirius looked in shock to Moony's limp form and Vix's weeping one, enclosed in the cage of silver.
"I see you found Lupin's wand," Whimsy said, not turning his eyes from the limp form in the silver cage. "Bravo. Very careless of me to leave it out. A very fine stupefaction charm to penetrate the werewolf's hide, though from you I'd expect an Avada Kedrava."
"I'm not you," Sirius hissed, taking a step towards the old man.
Whimsy turned ever so slowly and fixed Sirius with his unnerving stare, "You could be."
Sirius made no reply except to finger Remus's wand, tilting his gaze once again to the silver cage.
"I'll suppose you'll want to duel," Whimsy said in a slightly bored tone, slowly staggering to his feet. Sirius was suddenly amazed at how old he looked, how old he was. Taking a wrinkled hand, Whimsy pulled out his wand. "We bow."
Sirius inclined his neck stiffly; his head and heart pounding as the adrenaline washed over him.
"Crucio!" Sirius doubled over as the full force of the curse hit him the pain coursing through him a rack and thumbscrews and red hot metal all at once. It was the pure untapped essence of pain, numbing his mind and crippling his senses. Then as quickly as it had began, it was over, Whimsy raised his wand and then leveled it for another bout.
"Expellarimus!" Sirius yelled, Still doubled over from what had hit him; his anger only tripled by what he had experienced. Whimsy's wand flew from his grip and into Sirius's outstretched hand.
Whimsy smiled sarcastically, "Bravo, Mr. Black. You've won." With a woosh of air, he disappeared. Sirius gazed around wildly, running to the spot where two seconds before Whimsy had stood. "Or have you?" A voice breathed in his ear. Spinning around wildly, Sirius saw Whimsy behind him, but Whimsy was blurry around the edges, like someone had forgotten to focus him completely. As Sirius watched in utter amazement, Whimsy split in to two separate halves and then reformed into one, his figure swirling and melting like something out of a dream. His face fogged and condensed into Orien's, Vix's, Naoto's, Remus's, James's, a million people he knew and thousands he did not. And suddenly it all stopped, Whimsy's figures began to reform as the age melted off them until he was a tall young man withblack hair just at his shoulder in a British Navy Uniform a hundred and fifty years out of commission. The man stepped forward, the sardonic smile still on his face.
"Who are you?" Sirius breathed, entranced by his all encompassing gaze. He could drown in that gaze.
The man gave a long low laugh, "I am living, I am dying. I am all that has been and all that will be. I am Lord Grindlewald, I am Lord Voldemort. I am you, I am me. I am completely insane and I know more than you can ever hope to comprehend. I created Jonathan Whimsy, he's nothing but a mask." As if to demonstrate his point, the man's face molded itself back into Whimsy's ancient one, and then in an instant reformed back to his own. He drew a long breath and Sirius felt the all too familiar wave of cold wash over him.
He knew what he had to do, "Avada Kedrava!" The curse flew towards Whimsy in a flash of green light, flown on the rushing wings of death. Surrounding them both, its blocked out all vision in a blinding flash of light. And then it was all over, the light faded, the air cleared.
Whimsy smiled, "I'm already dead."
"Burn him," Sirius turned to see Vix struggle to her feet, tears still streaming down her face as she gripped the bars of the cage for dear life. "He's a psyche, it's what the book said...burn him."
"Burn me, Sirius," Whimsy said quietly, his eyes flashing something beyond any comprehension, his face elated in the light of death. "BURN ME!"
"I've won, Whimsy," Sirius said coldly, unable to find any pity for this man who had so tortured two people he held dear.
"No," the young man shook his head, a sinister gleam on his face. "I won. You're murdering me, your morality lost. I brought you down to my level."
Sirius shook his head, "I was never up there. I'm no Remus."
The young man smiled, his too-old eyes gleaming in the half-light of the full moon. "Then we're more alike than you'd think."
Sirius didn't hesitate, leveling the wand he gazed for one last time into those cold eyes. "Pyrex Infernus," he said as the blaze of orange flame shot out from the tip of Remus's wand. Fueled by magical ferocity, the fire hit Whimsy's outstretched arm and spread in an instant to his torso and all other parts of his body. Eating his uniform, eating his arms, his legs, his face. Whimsy never broke his gaze. He didn't cry out once.