Disclaimer: Harry belongs to Jo, Song For The Asking belongs to Simon & Garfunkel, and Latin belongs to the Romans. I think.
A/N: so... what d'you guys think? Should I continue?
IIIIIIIIIII
Chapter One
A seventeen-year-old boy fell to the ground; leaves fluttered up about him, disturbed by the sudden movement as they rarely were by human activity in this long-forgotten hollow. When, he wondered vaguely, was the last time anyone else had clawed at this tree trunk, fingers scraping furrows into the bark, trying to haul himself to his feet? When had another person—man, woman, or child—dragged himself up out of the ravine to lay, panting with exhaustion, on the cool, earth-scented bed of wet leaves?
When had any other person experienced the horrors he had, in the last twelve hours?
He grimaced, gritting his jaw and closing his eyes, trying in vain to ignore the persistent pain in his right leg. He remembered back to the night, so many months ago, that he had awoken screaming from another nightmare. A girl with curly brown hair had knelt on the bed before him, murmuring, while a red-haired boy had looked on anxiously, ready to run for help. Breath. Deep and slow and even. It will help you calm down.
He did as she had told him, breathing in the scent of forest and earth and rain, inhaling slowly, exhaling slowly, counting the seconds. Four seconds in, four seconds out. Gradually his heart stopped pounding, and he opened his eyes, staring up into the deciduous canopy above his head, aware of several things simultaneously.
First of all, he had no clue where he was or how he had gotten there.
Secondly, he was still alive (though barely), and he had succeeded.
Thirdly, he didn't know what he had succeeded at, where he should have been, or who he was. And even now, the memory of those two concerned sets of eyes fixed on him was fading—
A jolt of panic ran through him. Who am I? He sat up abruptly, then moaned with agony as pain shot through his leg. He grasped it, and when the spasm had passed, he stared at it in horror. Blood had seeped through the torn pant leg; it looked like it had been clawed open. And there was a tear in his shirt, too. As he moved, the shallow gash across his chest protested. He bit his bottom lip to keep from screaming as what seemed like a thousand other small wounds burst into life.
Panting with the effort it took just to remain conscious, he tried the breathing trick again, and slowly it began to work its magic. He opened his eyes. Something had—he had almost remembered—almost—
But it escaped him the next moment, and he still had no clue who he was, nor whom the two teenagers he remembered were.
He did, however, know one thing. He had to find help—and soon. He wasn't sure how much longer he could fight off the pain—
Moaning low in his throat, he managed to, over the course of about six minutes, lift himself to a shaky standing position, feet spread wide and hands extended like someone on a balance beam as vertigo swept over him. He lifted one hand carefully to his head; he winced as his fingers traced a long cut going from the end of his eyebrow, down over his temple and along the jaw. He cried out when his fingers touched what felt like an old scar on his forehead. Raw pain swept through him, like nothing he knew before—not that he knew much before. But beside this, the agony of his leg and his chest and his broken ribs combined felt like nothing much more than a bee sting.
Taking deep, shaky breaths, the boy pushed his way onward, trudging aimlessly through the forest, leaning on trees for support, occasionally noting in horror the bloodstains he left on the silvery birch bark and rough-furrowed skin of the oak, and a thousand and one other trees he couldn't rightly name, though he somehow knew that he should be able to.
"Just—keep—breathing," he whispered to himself, his voice hoarse and rusty. Holding on to the image of the girl and boy from his almost-memory, he lurched onward.
He didn't know how long he went on like this. Time seemed to have no meaning to him. The whole world was contained within three things; pain, those two anxious faces, and the thought that he must find help. He must return... there was still so much to be done. But what, he did not know.
Finally, as delirium swept him and half-recognized faces appeared in the ridges of trees' bark, laughing at him or weeping or chewing their lips anxiously, a voice drifted past the unconcerned songs of the birds.
"Siste, viator!"
He tried to look up, but felt like he was moving in water. His eyes were fixed on the ground, his head too heavy to lift—and now his feet were, too. The pain in his leg was unbearable.
"Viator?"
He tried to speak. His tongue was dry and lifeless in his foul-tasting mouth, and it took quite a deal of effort to convince his lips to shape the words.
"Help me."
Then he was on his knees, and a girl was screaming someone's name. He felt small hands on his shoulders, and one of them gently lifted his chin. He looked up into a child's frightened face. "Viator?" she asked anxiously. "Are you all right? Who are you? What happened?" She turned her face from him and screamed again. "PAPA, PAPA! COME QUICKLY!"
"I—I dunno," he said, slurring the words.
"You have to stand up," she said, her voice high and panicky, her voice coming in quick gasps. She was terrified. He would have been, too, if he'd had the energy.
Obediently, the boy complied. Leaning on her proffered shoulder, he pulled himself to his full height, face contorting with pain for a brief moment; but then he brought his expression under control. He would be disappointed, to know how the boy had let his pain be seen by a child. Not that the boy knew who he was... a pang of loss made the boy's throat close, as he leaned on the child.
"That's good, that's right—this way, viator. My mom and papa will see to you—it's all going to be all right, just come this way—no, this way, viator," she said as he stumbled, dragging them off course and almost into a rather large birch. "PAPA!" Her voice rang shrilly through the forest.
Time seemed to speed up. A moment later, a tall man with a close-trimmed red beard was picking the boy up, cradling him in his arms as easily as he might the child. The boy looked down—there she was, with her sunshine-bright hair and large gray eyes, running alongside as her father made his way down the path with titanic strides. Soon there was a house in sight, built to resemble a log cabin but so much larger! On the deck a woman with softly-curling blond hair stood.
The child ran to her mother, whispered something, and then headed inside at her mother's behest.
"Jack—"
"Get the first aid kit, Annie," was all he said, walking past her and into the house. The boy shivered as they entered the air conditioning, and the red-headed man—Jack—looked down at him in concern. "Stay with me, lad," he said. There was a slight Irish brogue to his voice—yet the woman and the child had had a different accent, one that was foreign and yet familiar. "Rose, call the doctor!"
"Yes, papa!" The child's voice was no longer shrill, and the boy relaxed. She trusted her father implicitly. So would he. What other choice did he have?
The next few hours passed in a haze of pain and voices and questions that he couldn't answer. His tongue felt as though it had been disconnected from his brain, and his eyelids drooped wearily. As the doctor bound his leg, he screamed—and everything went mercifully black.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Dr. Sullivan finished washing his hands and turned to the couple, who were watching him concernedly. Before he'd even begun to speak, their daughter whipped into the room, coming to stand in front of her mother, who put her hands on the child's shoulder. The doctor grimaced; he could only imagine the girl's reaction when she had found the boy in the woods. But Rose Kelly had always been a peculiarly fearless child. In fact, she'd always been a peculiar child, plain and simple.
"Well, Jack," Dr. Sullivan said heavily. "He's been through the mill, this one—and I can't say as I have the slightest clue what happened. It looks almost as though he was attacked by a mountain lion—" Annie Kelly held Rose closer to her, "—but I don't think that's the case. There hasn't been a report of mountain lions in this area in decades, and the wounds around the head make me think that he was beaten. I really don't have the slightest idea what to think," he said, glancing towards the rarely-used guest room, now inhabited by the sleeping boy.
"And his injuries?"
"Extensive and painful, but I think with proper care he should be fine. It may be a while before he can walk properly, though; he has a hairline fracture in his left leg. I don't know how he summoned the courage to stand at all, let alone walk close enough to be found by Rose."
Rose kept her wide-eyed, innocent expression firmly intact. She could run a lot faster than either her parents or Dr. Sullivan thought—and the wounded boy had actually moved fairly quickly with her, once they'd gotten on the path to the house. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them.
"I'll come back and check on him in a few hours. In the meantime, if he wakes up give him some broth with toast. Nothing too fancy—we don't want him getting any sicker. Try to get some answers out of him, too. Unless, of course, you'd prefer that we took him to the hospital—"
"Do you think he should?" Jack asked.
Dr. Sullivan shook his head. "I don't think there's any need. Annie's as good as any nurse he could have down there, and I'll check in regularly. If things start to go bad, then we'll have to take him in—and of course, we'll report him anyway. But if you don't want him here—"
"No!" Annie said, looking back at the room where the boy slept. "We'll keep him here. Between the two of us, we can do as well as any harried surgeons."
Dr. Sullivan smiled. "There you have it, then. I've got to head back to the office, but I'll stop by on my way home. My cell phone's on—if anything happens..."
"We'll let you know," Jack agreed, shaking the elderly doctor's hand. "Thank you, Gordon."
Rose edged away from her parents as they exchanged their final farewells with the doctor, and made her way quietly down the hallway. Clinging to the door frame, the twelve-year-old looked in at the boy, who was whimpering in his sleep. Sympathy won out over obedience—her mother had distinctly warned her not to disturb the mysterious boy—and Rose tiptoed in, sitting down in the chair that was still warm from Dr. Sullivan.
Uncertain of what to do, she decided to follow the same course of action that her mother took every time that Rose was ill, or couldn't sleep. Gently stroking the boy's palm and fingers in soft circles, she sang to him, a soothing tune she remembered from one of her parents' old albums.
This is my song for the asking
Ask me and I will play
So sweetly I'll make you smile.
This is my tune for the taking,
Take it, don't turn away
I've been waiting all my life...
Thinkin' it over I've been sad
Thinkin' it over I'd be more than glad
To change my ways
For the asking
Ask me and I will play
All the love that I hold inside...
Gradually—ever so gradually—his breathing calmed, and his face, which had borne an expression of sheerest agony and distress, relaxed. He sighed in his sleep, and Rose smiled at the boy—not so much a boy, she realized with the acuteness of a girl who was not so much a child anymore. There was a slight fuzz of dark facial hair along his jaw, and his shoulders were broad and strong. Not as broad and strong as her father's, but then, few could match Jack Kelly in size or strength.
She rose and walked over to the full-length mirror that hung on the door in an antique gilt frame. After glancing over her shoulder at the boy and the door to make sure no one saw, she examined her own reflection. Just as the boy wasn't a boy, Rose wasn't a child anymore. She saw it quite clearly herself—but then again, Rose saw just about everything clearly. Her legs had lengthened, and she'd grown four inches since Christmas. But despite the fact that her mother kept complaining about how quickly they had to replace her clothing, neither Annie nor Jack had seemed to notice what their daughter saw so clearly—Rose Kelly was growing up.
"Rose?"
She jerked away and ran lightly back to the seat beside the bed, settling herself comfortably as her mother's footsteps progressed up the hallway. Annie stood in the doorway a moment later, looking with a peculiar sort of stern affection at her daughter.
"You're not bothering him, are you?"
"No, Mom. He was crying, so I sang him a lullaby," she explained in quiet tones, then lifted a finger to her lips and turned her attention back to the sleeping young man.
In the hallway, Annie Kelly smiled, shaking her head as if at a joke that she knew was amusing, but didn't quite comprehend.
Rose watched her mother go; her eyes gazed, unfocused, in the direction of the door as she listened to the footsteps vanish once again. Sucking on her lower lip, she crossed the room and settled down on the chair again, her legs folded under her body, to watch the unexpected guest. He wasn't crying anymore, but his eyebrows were knotted and his jaw was clenched so tightly that she was surprised he wasn't splintering teeth. She began to stroke the palm of his hand again.
"Don't worry, viator. You're safe here," she whispered.
In his sleep, he sighed.
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Translations
Quaere verum -- seek the truth
siste, viator -- stop, traveler