Chapter Six
Erroneous Resolutions
It is said among the wizarding community, that certain siblings, siblings that share terrible fates, are connected. Much the same way some believe that Muggle twins are connected. It is widely considered to be a myth - I know better. I was in the shower when the semi hit Neo's motorcycle. The bike was so tiny that it hardly made a sound as it was trampled. But I knew. I knew in the most terrible way one could possibly know. I saw it happen. I felt it happen. Like a vision but more intense; like a dream but clearer; like instinct with no room for second guessing.
I stood in the shower, letting the hot water trickle down my body. My eyes closed and my brain dulled. The world outside my head dimmed and faded away. I floated in the womb of Fate's own making, hearing nothing but my own heart beat, not truly understanding what was happening. It was like watching an old fashioned television screen turn on. The black and white picture slowly came into focus before me. It was dim at first but I recognized the scenery. My first jolt of panic came when I saw that it was Neo and Petunia on the bike. It sailed forward despite my desperate attempts to call it back. The semi came into view, dark and glowing red like Satan. Its mighty jaws opened and swallowed them whole. Flesh tared and mettle twisted.
The water turned to ice and forced me to come crashing down to earth. I gasped, throwing myself against the other side of the shower, and I opened my eyes. Blood... blood covered the shower head, pelting me with fresh death. I fell right through the curtains and out of the bath. I laid there, dripping the Grim Repair's blood, terrified to look through the shower curtains. I had to know though. I had to know if the demon rattling around in the back of my head was real.
I stood up very slowly, shivering right down to the bone marrow. My heart hammered against my chest, screaming, "No please! Don't look! Don't look!" If my hand had been vibrating any faster it would have been see through. I touched the edge of the curtain, clutching it as hard as I could to steady my hand. And then, just before stupidity ran out on me, I through back the curtain.
A mad, ear piercing scream met my ears. Where was it coming from? Who was screaming? My God! It was coming from me! I stood there, screaming, looking down at Neo's blood drenched decapitated body. My legs gave way beneath me. All I could feel was a burning pain in the soft flesh between my hips. I looked down to find a two inch gash hemorrhaging bright red blood to the rhythm of my heart. In a whirl of crimson and black I felt myself loosing the grip on life. I probably would have died if it were not for my parents.
They had heard my screaming and were now pounding on the bathroom door. In a burning flash every thing came back. I sat there, stunned for a moment. The blood was gone, the pain had passed, and Neo's body was missing. A voice in my ear, so soft I could barley hear it, said confidently, "Go." I jumped to my feet, through a dress over my head, and after trampling my frightened looking parents, ran barefoot from the house.
People were already gathering around the scene. I jumped like a gazelle over low bushes and stray toys. The curious onlookers parted as I reached them and collapsed at Petunia's mangled side.
I spent just enough time at home to put on some sandals and send Natina to James. I jumped into the car and beat the ambulance to the hospital. Neo's body presided Petunia by at lest five minutes, then they wheeled her into the cold, unforgiving hall. Blood covered her body and tubes stuck out every where. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be desperately trying to take in all that was going on.
I rushed up to her and her soul seemed to grab onto me, crying out for something to cling to. I looked up and down her broken body. Her cloths had been torn away, cuts and bruises obscured her skin, and a deep gash had torn her breast in half. And the thing that made my stomach turn with shock and trepidation: a large piece of shrapnel stuck side ways out of her lower abdomen. One of her eyes had been taped shut and was still bleeding.
"Lily!" Petunia said.
"Hey Hun," I said delicately. "Look don't you worry; everything is going to be fine. Really."
"He left me," she said in shock. "He said he'd never leave me."
"Oh no, Hun. Neo... N-Neo's fine. H-He's already in a room. He's fine."
The ghostly hands in the back of her brain reached up and penetrated my skin, searching for the truth. "You always were a terrible liar," she said.
I stopped dead as they wheeled her in through the large double doors. She left the range of my vision and I stood there, my ears ringing, the whole world rushing passed me. I know this is going to sound really sick, but, it was like being killed. Believe me, I know.
I was lost in darkness, numb, unable to breath, unable to think. And then James came, and uncertainly touched me on the shoulders. It all rushed back to me like water braking through flood gates. My mind raced at a hundred miles an hour, then finally snapped. All the electricity in the pit of my stomach exploded in one burst, forcing me to roar like a lion and punch the nearest wall as hard as I could. I slid to the floor, James sinking right along side me. Acid tears like Knights of Evil sliced through my eyes. My whole body shook and between huge gasps and James' incessant, "It's okay. Every thing's going to be okay," I managed to say, "It's all she ever wanted. She never asked for anything else. It was all she ever needed. And it's gone! It's gone, James, and it isn't far. She deserved him."
"Deserved who?"
"Neo."
Decades passed in fourteen measly hours. Sirius joined us after a while and waited as nervous as myself. He always was a sweet heart. I paced, I cried, and I prayed, but still it seemed all futile. She could be dyeing in that operating room for all the doctors would tell us. Mum and Dad weren't there of course; they never did bother to even feign consideration. James, Sirius, and I took turns in pestering every doctor, nurse, or intern that walked by. Even if all they were doing was emptying the trash.
Finally, when I felt that I would burst if I didn't get a strait answer, James came across a nurse that was willing to be strait forward.
"She's lost a lot of blood," she said in a low voice. "And to be honest none of us expected her to survive. It's a miracle that she did. We were able to save her eye, she has a fractured leg, but other then that most of the other injuries are superficial," she paused and looked around at us. The expression on her face said quite clearly that what ever was coming next wasn't good. "I'm very sorry to say that... we weren't able to save the baby. And I'm afraid that because of the shrapnel there's a very, very small chance that she will ever be able to bare children."
"Baby?" I said, as I fought to keep myself from caving in.
"You- you mean you didn't know?"
I took a deep, forced breath as the realization set in. "No."
I could tell that come Hell or high water the nurse didn't want to ask what came tumbling out of her mouth, "Is it possible that she didn't know?"
I tried to speak but couldn't, all that would come out of my mouth was silent black grief. James knew Petunia very well because of me and so felt it best if he answered, "Petunia didn't know. Lily would have been the first one she told."
The nurse shook her head. "Should I tell her...?"
"No!" I said forcibly. "No I'll tell her."
"Come on," she said, taking me by the elbow and helping me to my shaking feet. She led all three of down the hall and into the last room. I stood at the threshold, looking in on Petunia's dull, staring face; she didn't look like she was all there. It was like I was the one laying there with bandages and wires all over the place.
Crossing cold bodies and barbed wire I made it to her side. She was awake but didn't look at me. When I reached for her hand she backed it away from me. Her eye was blood shot, swollen, and dead. The best of her had been killed out on that street, and it would never come back. My Petunia was gone and this frail shell was all that was left.
I turned around and asked Sirius and James to wait outside. I had a felling that Petunia wouldn't talk to me in front of them. Thousands of thoughts, worries, and condolences crisscrossed around my mind like phaser fire and I didn't know were to start.
"How do you feel?" I asked, as it was the simplest question up there.
She didn't answer, just shrugged her shoulders and determinedly avoided my eyes. Electricity told the story far better then words ever could. A sorrow so profound you could slice it with a knife and spread it on toast filled the surrounding air. I leaned over and laid my head on her chest, listening to her heart beat. "Tell me it's a dream," she said suddenly. She closed her eye and said, "Tell me that when I open my eyes I'll be in my bed and none of this would have happened."
"I can't," I whispered. "No matter how much I want to- I'm sorry."
"Some times I feel like I was made to be broken. Why couldn't I have died too? He was everything. We were happy together…" Her voice trailed off into a low, bee-like hum. My stomach squirmed and ached in guilt, regret, and apprehension. Why had I volunteered to tell her?
In a slight wave of nausea I opened my mouth, "That's not all. I have to tell you something."
"What is it," she said, sounding a bit more concerned, if that was possible.
"In the waiting room, a nurse came up to us. Me and Sirius and James," I added, just to stall the inevitable. "She told us the details of what happened to you. And she also… she also said that," I couldn't say it. I couldn't shatter what was left of her dreams.
She lifted my head off her chest and said, "What ever it is you can tell me. Nothing can bring me closer to Hell then I already am."
Some how, I seriously doubted that. But the resolve in her voice gave me strength none the less. "She said you were pregnant. And that the baby had been killed in the accident. And- and-" my mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. I held her life in my hands. If I didn't tell her, if I could just let her fantasies for a little longer. Having children was the only idea that kept her going before Neo.
"And?" she reluctantly encouraged me. Her eye shined with an emerging liquid diamond.
"She said," I replied slowly, "that the damage the shrapnel caused to your uterine wall would prevent you from ever carrying a child to term."
Smash. If you had recorded that moment and played it back in slow motion you could have physically seen the moment her heart broke. She laid there, her hand independently waving up and down from her mouth, trying to force back the waves of new born pain. But they came any way, causing her bandaged eye to bleed again. It released the blood of her fallen love… and never-to-be-born child.
Petunia wasted away in the days fallowing her release from the hospital. She went back to her apartment instead of coming back home. Shadows wrapped around her and none of the blinds or curtains in the place were allowed to be opened. Hours passed, days, weeks, and still she laid in bed staring at the ceiling. She didn't eat, didn't sleep, and barely breathed. Her beautifully proportioned body melted beneath her. Her neck, long as it was when obscured by a modicum of body fat, now seemed to suit a giraffe better then a human. She cried until there were no more tears left. Her mind churned and tried to rationalize her woe-is-me attitude.
Again she was the little girl, bleeding on the school lawns. Like a diver running out of air she flailed about for something that would help her to the surface. A log, a prayer, a notion, a hand, anything would do. And then, late on Saturday morning, the day before Neo's funeral, she woke up with her life jacket firmly in her grasp… it was my fault.
It hardly made any sense but I was the thing floating by as her lungs threatened to burst. The idea flowed and spiraled and grew a body of its own. Glorious in its rock hard, blood thirsty body and glowing red eyes it consumed Petunia. Logic and rational thought stood quivering in its wake. By the time the sun burned its way beneath the lonely roof tops there was no turning back. I had become the demon spawn of Satin himself.
Erroneous Resolutions
It is said among the wizarding community, that certain siblings, siblings that share terrible fates, are connected. Much the same way some believe that Muggle twins are connected. It is widely considered to be a myth - I know better. I was in the shower when the semi hit Neo's motorcycle. The bike was so tiny that it hardly made a sound as it was trampled. But I knew. I knew in the most terrible way one could possibly know. I saw it happen. I felt it happen. Like a vision but more intense; like a dream but clearer; like instinct with no room for second guessing.
I stood in the shower, letting the hot water trickle down my body. My eyes closed and my brain dulled. The world outside my head dimmed and faded away. I floated in the womb of Fate's own making, hearing nothing but my own heart beat, not truly understanding what was happening. It was like watching an old fashioned television screen turn on. The black and white picture slowly came into focus before me. It was dim at first but I recognized the scenery. My first jolt of panic came when I saw that it was Neo and Petunia on the bike. It sailed forward despite my desperate attempts to call it back. The semi came into view, dark and glowing red like Satan. Its mighty jaws opened and swallowed them whole. Flesh tared and mettle twisted.
The water turned to ice and forced me to come crashing down to earth. I gasped, throwing myself against the other side of the shower, and I opened my eyes. Blood... blood covered the shower head, pelting me with fresh death. I fell right through the curtains and out of the bath. I laid there, dripping the Grim Repair's blood, terrified to look through the shower curtains. I had to know though. I had to know if the demon rattling around in the back of my head was real.
I stood up very slowly, shivering right down to the bone marrow. My heart hammered against my chest, screaming, "No please! Don't look! Don't look!" If my hand had been vibrating any faster it would have been see through. I touched the edge of the curtain, clutching it as hard as I could to steady my hand. And then, just before stupidity ran out on me, I through back the curtain.
A mad, ear piercing scream met my ears. Where was it coming from? Who was screaming? My God! It was coming from me! I stood there, screaming, looking down at Neo's blood drenched decapitated body. My legs gave way beneath me. All I could feel was a burning pain in the soft flesh between my hips. I looked down to find a two inch gash hemorrhaging bright red blood to the rhythm of my heart. In a whirl of crimson and black I felt myself loosing the grip on life. I probably would have died if it were not for my parents.
They had heard my screaming and were now pounding on the bathroom door. In a burning flash every thing came back. I sat there, stunned for a moment. The blood was gone, the pain had passed, and Neo's body was missing. A voice in my ear, so soft I could barley hear it, said confidently, "Go." I jumped to my feet, through a dress over my head, and after trampling my frightened looking parents, ran barefoot from the house.
People were already gathering around the scene. I jumped like a gazelle over low bushes and stray toys. The curious onlookers parted as I reached them and collapsed at Petunia's mangled side.
I spent just enough time at home to put on some sandals and send Natina to James. I jumped into the car and beat the ambulance to the hospital. Neo's body presided Petunia by at lest five minutes, then they wheeled her into the cold, unforgiving hall. Blood covered her body and tubes stuck out every where. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be desperately trying to take in all that was going on.
I rushed up to her and her soul seemed to grab onto me, crying out for something to cling to. I looked up and down her broken body. Her cloths had been torn away, cuts and bruises obscured her skin, and a deep gash had torn her breast in half. And the thing that made my stomach turn with shock and trepidation: a large piece of shrapnel stuck side ways out of her lower abdomen. One of her eyes had been taped shut and was still bleeding.
"Lily!" Petunia said.
"Hey Hun," I said delicately. "Look don't you worry; everything is going to be fine. Really."
"He left me," she said in shock. "He said he'd never leave me."
"Oh no, Hun. Neo... N-Neo's fine. H-He's already in a room. He's fine."
The ghostly hands in the back of her brain reached up and penetrated my skin, searching for the truth. "You always were a terrible liar," she said.
I stopped dead as they wheeled her in through the large double doors. She left the range of my vision and I stood there, my ears ringing, the whole world rushing passed me. I know this is going to sound really sick, but, it was like being killed. Believe me, I know.
I was lost in darkness, numb, unable to breath, unable to think. And then James came, and uncertainly touched me on the shoulders. It all rushed back to me like water braking through flood gates. My mind raced at a hundred miles an hour, then finally snapped. All the electricity in the pit of my stomach exploded in one burst, forcing me to roar like a lion and punch the nearest wall as hard as I could. I slid to the floor, James sinking right along side me. Acid tears like Knights of Evil sliced through my eyes. My whole body shook and between huge gasps and James' incessant, "It's okay. Every thing's going to be okay," I managed to say, "It's all she ever wanted. She never asked for anything else. It was all she ever needed. And it's gone! It's gone, James, and it isn't far. She deserved him."
"Deserved who?"
"Neo."
Decades passed in fourteen measly hours. Sirius joined us after a while and waited as nervous as myself. He always was a sweet heart. I paced, I cried, and I prayed, but still it seemed all futile. She could be dyeing in that operating room for all the doctors would tell us. Mum and Dad weren't there of course; they never did bother to even feign consideration. James, Sirius, and I took turns in pestering every doctor, nurse, or intern that walked by. Even if all they were doing was emptying the trash.
Finally, when I felt that I would burst if I didn't get a strait answer, James came across a nurse that was willing to be strait forward.
"She's lost a lot of blood," she said in a low voice. "And to be honest none of us expected her to survive. It's a miracle that she did. We were able to save her eye, she has a fractured leg, but other then that most of the other injuries are superficial," she paused and looked around at us. The expression on her face said quite clearly that what ever was coming next wasn't good. "I'm very sorry to say that... we weren't able to save the baby. And I'm afraid that because of the shrapnel there's a very, very small chance that she will ever be able to bare children."
"Baby?" I said, as I fought to keep myself from caving in.
"You- you mean you didn't know?"
I took a deep, forced breath as the realization set in. "No."
I could tell that come Hell or high water the nurse didn't want to ask what came tumbling out of her mouth, "Is it possible that she didn't know?"
I tried to speak but couldn't, all that would come out of my mouth was silent black grief. James knew Petunia very well because of me and so felt it best if he answered, "Petunia didn't know. Lily would have been the first one she told."
The nurse shook her head. "Should I tell her...?"
"No!" I said forcibly. "No I'll tell her."
"Come on," she said, taking me by the elbow and helping me to my shaking feet. She led all three of down the hall and into the last room. I stood at the threshold, looking in on Petunia's dull, staring face; she didn't look like she was all there. It was like I was the one laying there with bandages and wires all over the place.
Crossing cold bodies and barbed wire I made it to her side. She was awake but didn't look at me. When I reached for her hand she backed it away from me. Her eye was blood shot, swollen, and dead. The best of her had been killed out on that street, and it would never come back. My Petunia was gone and this frail shell was all that was left.
I turned around and asked Sirius and James to wait outside. I had a felling that Petunia wouldn't talk to me in front of them. Thousands of thoughts, worries, and condolences crisscrossed around my mind like phaser fire and I didn't know were to start.
"How do you feel?" I asked, as it was the simplest question up there.
She didn't answer, just shrugged her shoulders and determinedly avoided my eyes. Electricity told the story far better then words ever could. A sorrow so profound you could slice it with a knife and spread it on toast filled the surrounding air. I leaned over and laid my head on her chest, listening to her heart beat. "Tell me it's a dream," she said suddenly. She closed her eye and said, "Tell me that when I open my eyes I'll be in my bed and none of this would have happened."
"I can't," I whispered. "No matter how much I want to- I'm sorry."
"Some times I feel like I was made to be broken. Why couldn't I have died too? He was everything. We were happy together…" Her voice trailed off into a low, bee-like hum. My stomach squirmed and ached in guilt, regret, and apprehension. Why had I volunteered to tell her?
In a slight wave of nausea I opened my mouth, "That's not all. I have to tell you something."
"What is it," she said, sounding a bit more concerned, if that was possible.
"In the waiting room, a nurse came up to us. Me and Sirius and James," I added, just to stall the inevitable. "She told us the details of what happened to you. And she also… she also said that," I couldn't say it. I couldn't shatter what was left of her dreams.
She lifted my head off her chest and said, "What ever it is you can tell me. Nothing can bring me closer to Hell then I already am."
Some how, I seriously doubted that. But the resolve in her voice gave me strength none the less. "She said you were pregnant. And that the baby had been killed in the accident. And- and-" my mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. I held her life in my hands. If I didn't tell her, if I could just let her fantasies for a little longer. Having children was the only idea that kept her going before Neo.
"And?" she reluctantly encouraged me. Her eye shined with an emerging liquid diamond.
"She said," I replied slowly, "that the damage the shrapnel caused to your uterine wall would prevent you from ever carrying a child to term."
Smash. If you had recorded that moment and played it back in slow motion you could have physically seen the moment her heart broke. She laid there, her hand independently waving up and down from her mouth, trying to force back the waves of new born pain. But they came any way, causing her bandaged eye to bleed again. It released the blood of her fallen love… and never-to-be-born child.
Petunia wasted away in the days fallowing her release from the hospital. She went back to her apartment instead of coming back home. Shadows wrapped around her and none of the blinds or curtains in the place were allowed to be opened. Hours passed, days, weeks, and still she laid in bed staring at the ceiling. She didn't eat, didn't sleep, and barely breathed. Her beautifully proportioned body melted beneath her. Her neck, long as it was when obscured by a modicum of body fat, now seemed to suit a giraffe better then a human. She cried until there were no more tears left. Her mind churned and tried to rationalize her woe-is-me attitude.
Again she was the little girl, bleeding on the school lawns. Like a diver running out of air she flailed about for something that would help her to the surface. A log, a prayer, a notion, a hand, anything would do. And then, late on Saturday morning, the day before Neo's funeral, she woke up with her life jacket firmly in her grasp… it was my fault.
It hardly made any sense but I was the thing floating by as her lungs threatened to burst. The idea flowed and spiraled and grew a body of its own. Glorious in its rock hard, blood thirsty body and glowing red eyes it consumed Petunia. Logic and rational thought stood quivering in its wake. By the time the sun burned its way beneath the lonely roof tops there was no turning back. I had become the demon spawn of Satin himself.
