A/N: A sad, pensive Ron/Hermione oneshot. The poem is "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman. The title of this story came from the Coldplay song.
Spoilers: none.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine. Surprise.
Summary: "Perhaps that's how he'll always see her. She'll always be smiling at him with her eyes before turning and walking down another road, forever fading into the distance, an indelible sunspot in his mind." Ron/Hermione Oneshot.
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:Swallowed in the Sea:
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He's been sitting in that same overstuffed chair for hours now, his gaze set at some point past the grimy windowpanes that he just can't seem to make out. The room is and has always been in dusty but amiable disarray. The gulls putter and swoop outside and the receding sunlight catches the water with a harsh sparkle. He remembers suddenly where he is and only then does he let the sea's gentle rhythm lull him.
He's waiting, or maybe this is just his requiem, a solemn song that only he can hear. But maybe, he hopes, she can hear it too.
They were gone to dust a long time ago. He barely thinks of her anymore, but sometimes she features suddenly and fleetingly in his dreams and the back of his mind. She isn't more than that. A faded picture creased down the middle that wafts unexpectedly out of the pages of an old book. The sound of young girls' laughter on the sea pier and the scratch of quills that haunt him whenever he leaves this hermitage.
There isn't much to say or even anything that he could say. He left his old home and his friends because he discovered that he liked having nothing to say. The sound of waves accompanies him to sleep every night and he has lunch each day with a sea captain's daughter.
But now he thinks of her and it is strange because she's been preserved in his mind for so long now. He's scared because the edges seem blurred, but he supposes that that's better than her being cracked, soiled and wrong in his remembrance of her.
One day she looked back at him, her eyes smiling. "I'm going to the shop for some milk, Don Juan. Try not to fall in love with anyone else while I'm gone." He laughs and she walks away, her silhouette forever fading against the afternoon sun, her flip-flops leaving scuffs on the pavement.
It is nothing more than a snatch, a snippet, but he always seems to remember that moment as the last time he ever saw her. Perhaps that's how he'll always see her. She'll always be smiling at him with her eyes before turning and walking down another road, forever fading into the distance, an indelible sunspot in his mind.
The sea pulls him and he gets out of the chair, tracing one finger along the fine film of grit covering the window. He flexes those same fingers as if in wonder, staring at that translucent skin stretched taut over a large, bony hand.
A ray of bouncing sunlight catches him through the one clear line in the window. She's gone to him now and he doesn't know if he even wants her back. Perhaps she'll walk through the front door, her bushy hair wet from a swim, crystalline droplets plopping onto his shoulders as she leans down to kiss his cheek from behind. A jewel of a water droplet landing on his nose, a brief flash before he's alone again.
Yes, she's gone to him now, a shadow where there should have been a full cutout of a real girl. That life he used to live had faded and been bricked over too. Only the sea and its bewitching, flashing surface and that calm ebb and flow could fill his senses now.
She had whispered to him, words and verses that he would never have known if not for her.
"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring."
Murmurs and clean white sheets. They had weathered a storm together but here he was alone. Maybe she would be there for him just over the horizon, a glimmering figure against the sun. His captain. For that's who she was.
My captain, swallowed in the sea.
The End.
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A/N: Read and review please! This was a bit of an experimental style for me. I kind of like how ambiguous and unclear it was, but I'd be interested in some feedback.