Strange is All
Summary: One-Shot Even in the end, Luna finds there is no one she can be besides herself, though Remus worries she'll forget soon. A stylistic telling of two ill-fated lovers that is equal parts Remus and Luna. LL/RL
Disclaimer: Nothing recognizable from the Hp Universe is mine. That's all J.K Rowling's and co.'s. No money is being made here and no infringement is intended.
She had never run so far or so fast in her entire life. She doubted she ever would again. She knew her feet must be bleeding and ragged by now, and she suspected in some small way that they were actually no longer real feet, just bloody stumps that her lithe body managed to balance on.
He was behind her and to the right a bit. She could hear him breathing, and knew he must be able to hear her. He was old, and weak. She wondered how much longer he could last. She wondered how long she would last after his legs failed him. Every inhalation was encouragement. He's still there, she thought, there's still a reason for me to run.
Another maniacal laugh from far behind them rang out and spurred them on faster. It was too horrible to think about, but not horrible enough to paralyze them completely.
They were walking now. He was still somewhere behind her and to the right. She had realized long ago that he could have gone ahead of her, saved himself if he wanted to; he was not so very old, but instead he stayed behind her and to the right as if ensuring himself that something else in the world moved and breathed and felt just the same as he did.
But they were walking now, and all the noises that they might have heard behind them were lost in the thicket, and the trees did not moan in the wind, the secrets of their own terror and pain buried deep within their roots.
The stream that had been racing along with them the entire time they ran curved abruptly so that it flowed in their path. She did not stop walking until she was knee deep in the slowly moving water. It was cold against her flushed skin, but she felt it did not matter if she was cold, for a chill beyond the physical realm had descended over her so that she felt she would never be warm again.
She sat down, splashing the aches of the toils of life around her like her thin mane of hair.
He was stopped behind her and to the right, and his eyes, unseeing as the water glided past, over, and by her body, never left the small of her back.
I would have stayed to my death if I had not thought better of it, Luna said softly, if only I had not, so wrongly, thought better of it. He wondered if she knew he could hear her. She was talking about what had just happened. She was talking about how they had both just run away from the death and horror. He was angry and ashamed. He too had thought better of it once.
I would have stayed as well, if I had not spent my whole life learning how not to be brave, Remus said. She looked up and over her right shoulder with eyes that invited him to sit with her in the silt that coated the bottom of the stream. He came and sat, just behind her right shoulder. She turned to look upstream, watching the river bend anxiously. He turned as well, wondering what she intuitively felt.
This is no place to sit, she said, this is not a place to hide. Her eyes that darted back and forth across the river's bend were the only parts of her body that moved.
They waited, and small tears ran down her cheeks as she saw what would come. He would have held his breath had he not been too exhausted to summon the strength.
Blood came first, in a ridiculous parody of what Moses' staff must have done to the Nile. Still, neither moved as the tendrils of their guilt and the price they should have paid swirled around them. It engulfed them, but they failed to notice as debris began to choke the shallow and wide bend of the stream. The water around them got lower and lower, as more tree branches, as more dead things, and as more human bodies smothered the crying stream.
I was never meant to kill, she said in a whisper, the loudest tone she would ever speak in for as long as she might or might not live.
And I was never meant to live to learn to kill, he responded miserably, not caring as his clothes dried stained with the blood he felt was already more than his own.
They sat as the riverbed dried, crawling deeper into the ravine when it became apparent that the water was drying up. Sobs were the only sounds now, though to whom they belong could not be easily discerned as the last two clung in desperation to each other.
A strange magic was afoot, he thought afterwards, as the green foliage around him shriveled up, turning dark and blistered under a sun that rose, too hot to end the misery that the night had brought.
They were walking, covered in dust now, to disguise the sweat and blood. How quickly the Earth can die, Luna thought., we must have been sleeping for longer than I initially suspected, for she could not comprehend death coming more quickly than life.
Years, perhaps, she thought, have passed since that day in the riverbed with Remus. With Remus, she thought, with Remus, somehow, there was something nearly like life.
It was the first patch of land they had come across in three days that was not yellow or black, even if it was a sickly shade of green. We should rest here, Remus said as he already began lying down upon a decomposing bed of leaves.
Decomposition, Remus thought, was everywhere that blackness wasn't nowadays. He smiled. After death comes life, though Remus didn't think that would apply to wizards and witches and muggles and everyone in between, anymore. He opened his eyes to see her watching the sunset again. He closed his eyes, but opened his mouth to speak.
Some people, he said, will try to tell you it isn't so bad. She looked at him with far-away eyes, but he knew she listened. Some people, he went on, will try to tell you that it isn't so lonely, but you shouldn't believe them. He paused and then began again with urgency. They'll overwhelm you with reassurances, suffocate you with hope, but no one should live like that, Luna, absolutely no one.
Survive on something else, he told her as she continued to stare at him with no sign of hearing a word he said. Survive on dry leaves and insects if you must, but don't survive on their lies, on anyone's lies, and, if you can manage it, you should survive on the sunset. She turned from him and back towards the orange and red sky. Before, sunsets had been her favorite thing in the world.
But careful now, Remus said, not to survive on the sunrise, because everyone survives on the sunrise, and when that fails, you alone will be left standing, remembering the last sunset while everyone else stares stupidly into the East.
She turned towards him again, and leaned over his head with his eyes so bravely shut to the world, his lips so stupidly parted, and his hair so quietly dull. She kissed his lips in a reverent manner, and he kissed her back with only his lips, showing no other sign of knowing anything.
She pulled back after she felt the reds and oranges of the sky replaced by deep purples and blues.
You are not so very old, she said. He did not answer but sat up and kissed her again before worshiping her hair with his kisses and making love to her body with all his life.
Sometime later, they were found out: two muggle girls who had screamed and run home, only to return with a father who carried a long, thin muggle wand. He pointed the long, thin muggle wand at them and asked what they wanted.
Help us, Luna begged with her pleading eyes, so large but made larger still by fear and guilt and pain. The man with the long, thin muggle wand in his hands softened his eyes and brought them to his house.
His wife helped them clean the days old waste from their bodies, and she tucked them into a warm bed with an extra quilt because Luna had shivered despite the heat.
And then she went downstairs and her husband and her called the number from the messages that had been repeating on the radio and television ever since the government had been overthrown and a man named Lucius Malfoy had been elected unanimously to serve as temporary leader. The message insisted all suspicious persons be reported.
It's sad, Luna, Remus told her, it's lonely and sad; it is the loneliest thing in the world, actually, but for you, for you it is the only thing in the world. For people like you, he whispered even as his eyes drooped from the warmth of her body next to his under the blankets, there can be nothing else.
He slept then, but she stayed awake, stroking the quilt with her hands. She knew who was coming, and she knew what would happen when the people came. She did not, for once, though, know what Remus meant.
She had once possessed more than he could ever know, and now, she possessed even more. She wrapped herself into a tiny ball and snuggled closer to him in the darkness. She had so much, and she knew that was what they, the people who were coming, feared the most. They feared her imagination, and they feared her life, and they feared the power that her guilt gave her over them.
Strange, she whispered aloud as four flashes of green light shone under the crack in the door from the downstairs of the muggle home.
Remus moved next to her. Yes, love, he murmured as he sweated and felt as though his transgressions were being washed away, yes, Luna, strange is all, but if you watch the sunsets, it'll be enough.
She still did not completely understand, but she slipped out of the bed all the same. She opened the window and stood by it, listening to the thud of many feet beginning to run up the stairs. He moaned in his sleep, and she turned to look out the window to see the full moon rising innocuously. His moan was louder now, and seemed filled with pain. The many feet were still running. She climbed out the window and down the side of the house on the sturdy vine branches with their thorns that dug into her hands and feet.
She reached the bottom when he released the first howl, and she was already running due West as quickly as she could when the first human scream tore out from the room in the upstairs of the muggle house. She ran faster, and due West, towards a sunset that was already fading, with no other thought than to consider how strange it all was.
A/N: Constructive criticism is always more than welcome.