-------
The Potter Identity
Ch 3
By Sigil
-------
Pain.
It was everywhere. It came like a tide, then left him stranded, wave after wave after wave.
Water pushing him against wood, in his lungs, tearing at his chest, and the pain oh the pain……….
Cold and white, swimming in and out of view, voices around him, screaming.
Darkness.
Red eyes in the night, laughter that tore him ragged, betrayal, and death, so much death……….."Cedric. Cho. Moody. Hermione………."
"What?"
"He's delirious. Help me with this."
Dead. They were dead. No going back. Savior, but what was it worth? Fragments of a dream, all a dream.…………
He'll never forgive me...
----------
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
When he opened his eyes, it was white. The dream replayed itself; white walls, red blood. Laughter. Death. And somewhere, a woman screaming.
Panic gripped him, and he flailed angrily, ripping tubes from his arms. They're coming….they'll get me….Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, a tiny voice whispered, "Who?"
Shying away from that thought, he staggered to his feet. Have to get out, can't stay here, can't let them find me….
The door burst open, and a group of orderlies descended on him, throwing him to the floor and holding him down while another pulled out a needle.
"No!" His voice was ragged; his throat felt as though he'd been screaming for hours. The needle plunged toward his skin…
And broke.
Stunned, the many grips on him slackened, and he took advantage of their surprise to push them off with inhuman strength. Something within him screamed that this wasn't right, this wasn't natural, but a dark corner of his mind whispered that this power was his by right, his for the taking….
Blood was soaking his bandages, and he could feel himself getting weaker. No, won't go back, can't go back…. Furious, his vision almost obscured by the red haze in his eyes, he sprinted for the window, dropping his shoulder at the last minute. It shattered easily, to his great surprise, and he braced himself for a long fall and the inevitable impact….
He hit the ground. While it did hurt, the pain was not nearly as bad as it should have been. Opening his eyes, he realized that, rather than falling many stories to a painful end, he had simply jumped out of the first-floor window.
For a long heartbeat, he stared at the window he had broken through. Wire mesh crisscrossed the broken frame, yet he had smashed it as easily as breathing. Once again, a wrongness pulsed within him, but he pushed it back and struggled to his feet. There would be time to think later, when he had reached….Where? A vision of a black-haired man with sunken eyes swayed dizzily before his eyes, and he took a step, reaching for the mirage. There was his bedraggled appearance.
Must reach the black man….
Galvanized into action by the shouts from the broken window, the man without a name stumbled into the stark daylight, seeking shadows in which he could hide.
It is a measure of his luck (if, indeed, that is what it might be called…) that his pursuers could find no trace of him.
-----
TBC
-----
Sorry about the wait. HBP brought me back into the HP world for a while, and I remembered that I had this waiting for me.