Fear and Loathing in Romania
Disclaimer: I swear on my favorite pair of pink sequin-y shoes I am not JK Rowling and that the Harry Potter empire does not belong to me. And on that same note, I swear on my magic green skirt from Anthropologie that I did not write the song lyrics listed below. They belong to Coldplay, and alas, Chris Martin belongs to Gwyneth Paltrow.
Rating: R (language, sex, violence)
Summary: Tonks is begrudgingly sent to Romania to fetch Charlie Weasley and bring him back to the Order. Everything that can go wrong manages to go wrong and the two find themselves running for their lives, without magic, from both Death Eaters and the Muggle police and somehow manage to re-discover each other along the way.
Author's Note: Are you as shocked as I am that I managed to produce yet another chapter within the same month? Gasp, and, don't die from shock here, within the same week? I am slowly getting back on my game. It's taking a bit. But thank you for the feedback and the enthusiastic dedication, and I do hope you enjoy this installment. I like to think of this chapter as the "turning point" and because of it's transitional nature, it's a bit shorter than the others have been, and I apologize for that. Anyway, please read and review! Thanks!
Chapter Twelve: Ignition
"High up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just watch and learn
Lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"
- "Fix You" – Coldplay
Riding from Bucharest to Bulgaria was steady and silent, a deep and constant meditation she found she needed, not just desired.
She watched the Romanian city slip back into her past. She watched the boy across from her bleed into the hazy disappearing act, the gradual change of scenery. She watched a childhood flame blink into a stranger.
She found herself seated across from a man she did not know. And she had cherished the thrill that raced through her, the idea that this man, this idea, which for so long had consumed not just her mind, but spirit, heart, existence was now an unknown to her. Seven years of fading into the past as she continued into the present. She cataloged silently all which she no longer knew. His favorite color, favorite shirt. His bedtime, his tea time. His favorite book, his colloquialisms; the songs he would belt out in the shower, whether he slept in boxers, briefs or in the nude, his favorite sex positions. What languages he spoke, what hobbies he employed. How many lovers he had taken in the past year or seven; how many women he had loved on that timeline. She found sheno longerknew what made him happy anymore.
She had stared at the clean slate in front of her and relished in the idea of scribbling upon him. Once again.
And then it had hit. Like the weight of the very train they were riding upon, it struck her; struck her dumb and understanding.
The man, the man who had sat in front of her from curious city to another has one older brother with hair more extravagant than her own. He has a younger brother who mastered the concept of perfectionism, cleanliness and order seeing as the rest of the family was utterly inept in this domain. He has a younger set of twins, eternally youthful, pockets choked with contents willing to turn teeth black, skin orange and warp oneself into a walking practical joke. His youngest brother is a model of idealism with an awkward penchant for heroics while his baby sister is the sanity, the soft-spoken voice of reason. She knows he used to spend holidays with them all, but since reaching Romania had put his family on hold in the name of a career. She remembers the collection of freckles on his right shoulder can create a profile of a rabbit with pointy-ears, if looked at from the right angle and the correct muddiness of absinthe. She knows he runs his hand through his hair when frustrations have gotten the better of him or the nerves have morphed into butterflies and are now dancing deep within him. She knows he takes his liquor straight up and it was she who first introduced him to the smoky allure of cigarettes. She knows how his nose scrunches when he cries, his ears flame when embarrassed, his eyes squint while coming.
She had sat there, the entire soundless journey creating that mental list. All that she knew belonged to the mystery man placed on a pedestal before her. All that she knew and all that she questioned. She had charted the length of his nose and the space between his eyes. Measured the distance from shoulder to forearm and hips to ankles. She sized him up without staring him down.
She had found herself at eleven again, held in the charm of a certain redhead whose name was of her own invention. She was falling in and out of love, like the wayward crayon that can't seem to manage to stay inside the lines.
She watched shadows dance across his face and wondered why she was letting him go.
She's standing there now, before the train bound to hometown London. And there he is. Her Doubtful Date with Destiny, her Mysterious Messenger of the Past. There he is.
The passengers crowd in around her and she asks herself if the past can become the future. Or must it be buried with all the relics and the dead.
Hearing the train scream into the station, she knows what she remembers best about him. His anger, his temper. The way he can yell with that glint in his eyes, utter hate with a glimmer of grief and not a shade of compassion. She knows. The power to reduce her down to not only tears but broken pieces.
She remembers he can break her. She remembers he can hurt her. She remembers she can hate him.
She averts her eyes and sighs.
And the train screeches into place.
He's not sure where the words are hiding between the two of them. They used to come so easily. But it seems the chasm has been opened even further, and somewhere at the base of that canyon are all the things he should have said days ago when meeting her for the first time.
It wasn't a reunion. It was an introduction.
He had dozed the entire ride to Bulgaria. He knew he had been cold to her that entire morning and really couldn't find the reason.
It's a lie and he knows it.
Quietly, like the mutes they've been pretending to be since the mistake of grabbing her hand, they ascend the train, jump through the bureaucratic hoops showing off their tickets and lack of baggage needing to be claimed or the like and make their way to their seats.
She places herself across from him, slouching low in her seat, pulling fraying sleeves over small hands, nipping at the already chipped nail polish with dull teeth.
He can hear a voice over the loudspeaker some minutes later but lacks the energy to digest the words.
His mind's on overload as is.
He has discovered over the course of twenty minutes that she, Tonks, Nymphadora, Dora, whatever her name is today, refuses to look at him. Not even the casual, semi-appraising glance in his general direction. He has blatantly watched her stare at the train parked on the tracks next to theirs, witnessed her battle with the loose threads hanging off the shirt he gave her. Saw her eyes glaze over, taking in nothing positioned in their car. Including him.
He finds it odd. Especially considering she couldn't take her eyes off him a train ride ago.
He has always hated the city.
Watching the scenery whip by, the trees, the dead trees, and the city itself growing tinier and dimmer in the background is what he needs, but is yet not enough to quell the disquieting feeling churning its way through him, fueled by the knowledge that they are off to an even larger metropolis.
He remembers how she used to tease him. Called him a "mountain man," a hermit. Told him he loved being among animals and their shit more than he did among humans. He would just laugh; there was no sense in arguing.
It was true. There was something appealing in the premise of unconditional love and respect and the guarantee they would never talk back. Bite, yes. Talk, no. And the sting of a nibble is far easier to subdue then the crushing pain of words. He knows this for a fact.
The irony of it all being that she was his greatest teacher.
Sometimes it's the lack of words which hurts the most.
He looks up from the wringing of his hands unto her turned head.
They have failed miserably. They had taken something pure and something right and through machinations all their own allowed it to twist and writhe into something neither will now mention.
He hated her once. He knows this and has a feeling she does as well. He hated her for hurting him, hated her for betraying him and their love he believed they had shared.
He had left after their apocalyptic romance. He had left Hogwarts, left England and gone to Romania, in theory for his job, in practice because of her.
Even today, he still finds it bitterly lame.
The sun is setting low. Another day wasted. The ticking of time not stilled throughout the waiting and delays of travel.
He wonders where they go from here. He knows the obvious answer: London. Merely their physical destination. The metaphysical is still up for grabs.
Will they forever hate each other? Or leave it at resentment, avoiding any possible random collision, he remaining in Romania until the day he or she dies while she claims England as her own? Will it rest in the realm of indifference, void of emotion and investment? For some reason, he fears this fate the most. The loss of any emotions between the two of them might be just too much for him to bear.
He watches her profile, tinged with an anger, a resignationthat never existed upon her face and he wants to erase it, eradicate it.
And he can hear it, drumming in his ears, in beat and in tandem with the clicking of the tracks and the whistling of the wind which rushes past. It doesn't have to be this way. He can be he and she can be she and they can be something they never were but always knew they could be.
He remembers how it was. And now thinks of how he wishes it to be. Free of the ties that bind, anchoring them in a place all-consuming as opposed to consoling. They've become the haunted, allowing a past to dictate the future. And he's tired of it. He's better than this. They are better than this.
She used to be strong. He hates that she, now, slumped shoulders and ragged hair, appears to him as weak.
I can change that.
He can hear that quiet voice in the back of his head. He can hear it, and knows the words it whispers but refuses to truly give in and acknowledge them.
He literally shakes his head to empty out the thoughts. Then instantly feels the urge to laugh, running a hand through his hair, reveling in the mess that is their lives.
This is Tonks. This is her now. And maybe, just maybe, they…
"I'm sorry." His voice sounds funny, off, the words caught in the hurried stream and rushing to form one lump of gibberish.
Her head snaps toward him. She blinks. He can't stand that her face is expressionless. He remembers the days when her emotions seemed to just pour from every pore and one couldn't help but get lost in the sea of it all.
"For what?" Her voice soft. He thinks it deceivingly so. He knows the fury of the furnace behind the façade.
"I'm sorry…for earlier. I was…I wasn't really…being myself." He doesn't know what it is he's saying, or rather, attempting to say at this point.
"Earlier when?" She's not going to let him off easy. But then again, she never has. He always loved that about her. She never tolerated his shit. She threw it right back at him, served far more eloquently and coolly, sliding off of her.
"Just…earlier. I'm…sorry." And she's staring again. Confusion written across tired eyes. She turns away from him again.
He takes a deep breath. Now or never. "Hey, um, we – uh, we never really got a chance, to, you know, catch up, or anything. Like that..." Tongue-tied and swollen thoughts he can't seem to get the words to flow.
"We talked in the car a bit." Cold, cold, cold. Too cold. And he thinks, here she is, freezing me out. And here I am with the lone match attempting to set the house on fire.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We did."
Silence for minutes and miles. Dark descends and lights switch on. He fears the hollow circles beneath her eyes, quietly terrified of the resemblance she finally bears to her family name.
He watches her, she watching him, and he can feel it, seeping through him.
"You know…I – I've…I've really missed you."
She raises her head enough for him to see her eyes instead of the emptiness beneath them. "Charlie, please. Don't do this."
"I'm sorry. I was just…being honest, I guess."
She sighs, loudly. "And stop bloody apologizing. It's not you."
And he can feel the anger rising, coloring his face. "Yeah, well, the whole Narcissa Malfoy act isn't really fitting on you either. I thought I'd role play right along with you."
"Fuck you." Almost like a prayer falling from her lips. Wrong in so many ways.
He looks away. And back again. "Forgive me, Tonks, or whoever the bloody hell you are these days. I was just trying…I was just. Fuck it, Tonks. How long are we going to do this? I am sorry, okay? I'm sorry for being an asshole earlier today. I'm sorry for fucking you three days straight and resurrecting apparently something neither of us seems to be able to handle. I'm sorry you came here. And…" He hates that he feels so emotional. Hates that he could cry if he let himself right now. Sitting there in front of her. "I'm sorry I left. You." He swallows."And I'm sorry I hurt you."
He watches her close her eyes. And open them slowly. Taking him in, word for word and piece by piece.
"I just…well…" he continues, "I figured after all these years of you apologizing to me, I…I still owed you something…too."
She doesn't move.
"And, um, that's fine…if it doesn't make a difference. But it's out there. And…it's there."
He can hear the wheels turning beneath them.
"Alright…then."
Standing, he turns and walks to the other end of the car. He stops in front of a window and imagines he can still see the trees racing by.
It wasn't supposed to go this way. She knows this much is true.
He was supposed to be the utter bastard giving her reason upon reason to resent and hate and villainize. But instead…
It shouldn't hurt her to think of what has just occurred. But it does. Anticlimactic in its own little way; what she had craved for the past seven years was just handed to her without prelude or dance.
And she had let it drop to the floor.
This is Charlie. Her surprising, unpredictable stranger.
She has never been good at guarding her emotions. She has been trying.
His voice broke her recently flimsy resolve.
She can see him by the window, his reflection bouncing back at him. He with his phantom self.
She stands, moving towards him, jelly legs and nervous, tingling fingers.
There they are. She stands there next to him, staring at themselves in the window. Gazing at the pair they make.
"We have made so many mistakes…" He turns to her, speaking. "Haven't we?"
She can only nod.
She finds her voice. "I forgive you. If you can forgive me."
He chuckles softly. "Forgiven." He states it like a pardon, and the reverence he uses with the word almost makes her smile.
She turns back to the faces in the window. And he too does the same.
Three people watch the couple in the window, curious to their next move as the city lights grow steadily towards their train.