Retribution

Chapter 1

Am I Alive?

The earliest memory I have of myself is of me lying on the cold floor.

It's my face against the freezing granite that makes me twitch uncomfortably. It's certainly outlandish, because that can't be right, that can't be my first memory; I should know how I've gotten there, what I was doing, who I am.

I should certainly know my name.

But I don't.

I don't know or feel anything other than this cold that seeps into my bones. It's overpowering and painful, making me want to both lose consciousness and shoot away to the sun to escape the feeling at the same time.

I spend a second to wonder how I know of things like the granite and the sun, but not my own name.

The answer eludes me completely, slipping through my mind like sand slips through fingers: unreasonable and relentless and absurd. My eyes are drawn to my own fingers at the thought, slowly, slowly, as if someone is having trouble raising the curtains that are my eyelids. They finally fall on skin that is pale and stretched over too-thin hands, the limbs trembling slightly.

It is strange then, that I notice for the first time that I'm bleeding.

Something locks into place. It's like the pain follows the realization and not the other way around. The cold of the floor becomes a secondary concern in my mind because my arms have wounds—small round punctures—that release a steady dribble of blood onto the floor.

It burns terribly, as it should. I'm glad that at least I can feel something else.

The sigh of relief almost leaves my lips but turns into a groan at the last moment.

I try to push myself up, and the pain follows me like a phantom lover. Everything inside me cries, my elbows slipping against my own blood, my eyes burning from disuse, hips and shoulders and ribs throbbing and I think—I think I must have fallen from some balcony and broken my bones or hit my head or maybe even died.

But when I look up, the room I'm in is terrifying in its steely grayness. There are no balconies, no windows, no sun, no people, no life—apart from me, but I haven't completely discarded the 'being dead' theory yet.

The ceiling is several feet high, possessing the same air of lifelessness as the rest of this room, the rest of me. A row of artificial lights throws a semblance of visibility around, but the view is so dreary I almost wish it were pitch dark instead.

I stagger onto my feet, and I'm surprised when my body allows it. There is no crack of bones, no falling face-first onto the floor, no sense of broken joints. There is pain, however, and I figure I'm probably alive if I still feel discomfort.+

My eyes travel down, head muddled as I stare at the gray shift dress covering my form. It strikes me again that I know what style of outfit this is—such an inane, useless, superficial piece of information—but still have no knowledge of anything consequential.

My legs are unsteady like a new-born foal's underneath me, knees knobby and scraped, and I think, this can't be healthy. The panic hasn't set in yet, though I wonder why, because everything about the situation feels rather bleak: from floor to ceiling to clothes and head, all I can see and think is gray gray gray.

After this brief self-assessment that does nothing but solidify my own sense of doom and foreboding, I take a step forward.

Immediately, sharp red pain shoots up my right ankle.

I'm instantly crouching, certain that it's broken and feeling somewhat relieved—here's a part of me that guessed correctly—but I'm wrong.

It feels like floating through an underwater current as I take in the long opaque wire that sticks out of the back of my ankle. That almost does it, it almost sparks that panic that has been escaping me thus far, but then the feeling vanishes in a blink.

I reach out—same, trembling white fingers—and tug the wire out with a jerky movement. The agony isn't surprising but still unwelcome. I know I've bitten down on my lip only when the metallic taste of blood touches my tongue. The sensation is too jarring, and I wonder—finally—how long I've been here, if I've eaten anything, tasted anything beyond this flavorless, gray air.

The wound left behind by the wire is eerily similar to the punctures dotting my hand, and a sudden image of those wires stuck inside every inch of my skin fills my mind. That, of all things, seems to set me off. I touch my face, my neck, my head, but all I feel is dry, smooth skin and dirty, cropped hair.

It's too short for me to even pull forward and look at it. It shouldn't bother me—out of everything in this situation, that should be the least bothersome aspect—but I feel a flare of annoyance nonetheless.

With the wire out now, I manage to take that step forward, almost slipping on the small puddle of blood that has coated the floor under my heel, but stay upright.

Something strange skitters in my chest, and I turn around.

That whole sense of being underwater is in my veins again as I take in the large contraption that stands in front of me. It's something of a tripod lookalike, except that it's massive, rising halfway up to the ceiling. An uneasy shiver runs down my spine at the wires that snake out of the rigid structure, like they're tentacles of a fantastical creature and not a machine made by the real monsters. They're all facing inward—except for the one I just tugged out—and the ends are all smeared in blood. I know with an unsettling sense of calm that they were indeed inside my skin recently.

A large glass jar is suspended above the whole thing, inside which a light-green liquid bubbles silently. From this jar extends the thickest tube of them all, the needle-pointed end of it now lying uselessly against the slightly raised dais in the middle.

The entire scene means absolutely nothing to me.

Having taken in the only interesting thing in the room, my mind goes blank. I have nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to think. Because to think, I would need to know a morsel of something, which I don't.

Seconds tick by, and my eyes feel drowsy again. Perhaps it gets colder in this feelingless room, or perhaps it's all the blood that I've lost, but I find myself sitting down on the floor again, gentle and unhurried in my movements even if I feel entirely miserable on the inside. I wonder if this is how I'll die, if these paltry few minutes or hours of my life were all I was allowed to know and experience.

That's a rather shitty way to go, I think.

One should at least have the luxury of knowing their own name when passing.

I feel jolted awake by noises, and it's impossible to tell if it's been a second or a year since I laid down on the floor.

My body is at its limit and refuses to move, to investigate, or to even care about what's going on. Instead, I watch like an unwitting spectator in front of a tele —as if removed from the whole scenario and not sprawled out on my own blood like a damsel for the dark storytellers—as a small portion of wall across from me in the large, yawning room shifts aside.

It's too far for my half-hooded eyes to make out the faces of the people that rush inside. There are three—I blink—no, four of them: all men, all dressed in identical drab gray suits.

My ears malfunction, and it's impossible to decipher what they're yelling about. I almost ask them to leave, to let me sleep, let me die in peace, but I don't because that's crazy. And I don't really know if I'm supposed to be crazy—maybe I am, and maybe this is an asylum—but I don't want them to leave.

I want to ask where I am. Who I am. I want to know my name.

But I do none of these things. I simply watch, still and quiet and staring. I realize I'm having trouble breathing now, my breaths coming out in wheezes and tearing through my lungs with the effort.

And as I'm lying there, struggling to live and move and be, I see him for the first time.

There's no preamble, no amount of preparation for it. He doesn't walk over to me steadily on a breeze or smile at me slowly as his eyes lock on mine from across the room. I can't know the relevance of this moment, and nor can he. I can't brace myself for what's to come, because it's not possible to brace against him.

His presence hits me like an overpowering wave when he crashes to the ground in front of me, knees buckling to the floor in a way that must definitely hurt.

And then I feel his hands on my arms, gentle and hurried at the same time, flying over my skin like current and sparks of light. His hazel eyes are frantic behind black wire-rimmed glasses—centered around scratched, dirty lenses—and his face is pulled into a devastated frown. His fingers almost ghost over my face, but don't touch.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit," he says, voice breaking.

Do you know how beautiful you are? I think. If my mouth worked, I might have said it.

Instead, I blink sleepily.

His hair is a wonder; black as night and disarrayed like the wind has flown through it with the sole purpose of kissing the strands. I can tell with my half-aware gaze that my own hair—too short, plain and boring—could never even pursue that softness.

Someone else falls to the floor beside him, disrupting my shallow musings, but I can't move my head enough to catch their face. That's okay, I think—I'm okay with this view.

"How's it—fuck, this looks bad."

"I know."

"Is she—"

"She's alive."

"Can she hear us?"

Of course, I can hear you, I want to laugh. But everything in me is tired, muted, like the muscles in my face have run out of oil to function and can't be bothered to even pull up into a smile anymore.

"I think so."

"Why is she…just staring at us?"

"I don't know, Sirius," he says on a sigh, a sob, a curse, "shit, Lily."

Lily. Lily. Lily. Lily.

Is that me?

I'd like it to be. It's a pretty name, a poetic one, carrying enough strength to be powerfully impressive and yet appropriately soft for the tragic and hopeless situation of the present. It's also ironically the flower of death—another little bit of pointless knowledge tucked into the recesses of my confusing mind.

"We have to go. Now. They'll be here any second."

"How?" I watch him turn his head to shoot the other man a desperate look. "While she's like this—"

"I don't know."

Something passes between them, because suddenly his expression is hardening. It makes him look fiercer, wilder, braver, and I think no, he's not beautiful. He's rather magnificent.

"I'm not leaving her."

"Then we do it with her. Despite the risks."

His eyes move back to me again, the only vibrant color in this otherwise colorless world, and I want to sigh in relief. Emotions fight amongst themselves in the hazel before he nods, unhappy, upset. "Okay."

"Sirius! James! Come on, we have to go!"

The actual sense of the phrase—shouted in an unknown voice—knocks around in my head before losing its meaning altogether, and the only thing I hold onto is that name. James. It sounds even better than Lily, but only if he's the one wearing it.

The other man leaves.

James shifts closer to me, and he must think I don't see or understand or live because he says, "we need to get you out of here, okay?"

Okay.

"I don't want to hurt you," he adds. That one phrase almost makes me move, smile, talk, because it might just be the most obvious thing in this tiny gray world. The one thing no one needs to tell me because I know, I see it in his eyes. He doesn't want to hurt me. "But I'll have to pick you up, because I don't think you can walk."

It takes a second for me to wonder how that one fact relates to the other—my mind is slowing, getting colder—and in that time, he has already put his arm under my knees, around my shoulders.

It makes sense then, why he said that.

He doesn't want to hurt me, but it's out of his control just as much as it's out of mine because hurt it does, and bad. Even at the slightest movement, that first tug which has my body dragging on the slick floor like a rag doll, pain shoots up my spine, arms and legs in a way that is incomparable to the pinpricks I had felt initially.

It convinces me that I've been lying on the ground for far longer than I'd thought.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he says, and I think he might be crying, but I think I'm crying too because there's something wet on my cheeks. "You shouldn't be here, not in this hellhole."

I want to tell him that I don't mind as much because this hellhole is all I know of the world; all my eyes have been allowed to see since I woke up on that cold, cold floor. I don't think it would soothe his agony much, even if I could pry my mouth open.

I let my head loll against his chest instead because he's warm, warmer than anything I've felt so far, which isn't much, but I burrow against him the best I can. My breaths have turned into near-silent rasps now, but I catch a distinct, pleasant smell from him that feels merciful on my senses.

I'm not weak, I think. I'm not ready to give up yet. I don't want to disappear without knowing anything, without finding the purpose of me, without understanding how I came to be or what I'm capable of.

But if I do draw my last breaths like this; here, in his arms, bleeding, lost, existing and gone in the blink of an eye, I don't want him to know this.

I tap my forefinger twice against his chest, foolish in my hope that he'll understand despite the fact that my hands have been shaking uncontrollably all this time. He doesn't—of course, he doesn't; this is hardly a fictional tale, he can hardly read my mind—but he looks at me, looks right into me, into the core of what I am beyond this shell of a trembling body and fluttering, watery eyes.

I'm okay, I'd meant to say.

"You'll be okay," he says. "I promise."

He doesn't look like he believes himself, but that's fine. At least I know my name.

And then we're moving forward, his arms around me steady and trying to limit any unnecessary movements. It still hurts, but I let my eyes shut close, welcoming the darkness behind my eyelids and easing the strain that had emerged from the ugly, artificial lights of the room.

"That's her?" asks a voice I don't recognize. To be fair, I don't recognize many voices. "Um, James, she looks—"

"She's breathing."

"Okay."

"Later," someone else says, the nerves in the tone not escaping my notice, so it can't possibly escape anyone else's. "We'll take care of this later. But for now—Sirius?"

"Yeah," says Sirius, and his is one other name I know. I feel stupidly serene, even if nothing about this situation is. There's a palpable tension to the breath he draws. "Look, I—this is a lot of pressure. I haven't done this in a long time, and with so many people—"

"It's okay."

"Mate, she's barely alive."

Arms around me tighten somewhat. "It's okay."

"We already planned this, Sirius."

"I know, but—"

The words in his mouth are eaten up by a gasp that compels me to try and open my eyes again, but it's a struggle, like the same force that has been holding my voice captive now controls what I'm allowed to see as well. I fight against it, screaming inside with the effort, but finally find a sliver of visibility grace my sight.

And I'm once again rendered confused, because the wall—much closer to me now—is sliding aside again. But not how I remember it doing the first time. There's a loud noise now, like a wailing siren that's a creature of its own; angry, tortured and tired.

It sounds almost as bad as the screaming inside me.

Had it been ringing even when these men had entered the first time? Had I been too out of it to catch the sound?

My insignificant thoughts are snuffed away with the harrowed curse that drops from James's lips. "Fuck, they're here. Come on, come on—get a move on—"

I find myself unable to keep up with everything that happens in the next second.

James pulls my body tighter against his, and the pain from this almost drops me into darkness, but I hold on for long enough to see another hand—almost as white as mine—latch onto the gray arm of his suit. Something strange, terrible, awful passes through me, like I've been turned inside out or squeezed until I've popped like a useless balloon. The little vision I had managed to bargain gives up as the world disappears from view.

"No! Potter!" someone yells like they've lost everything in life.

The last thing I catch is frost: cold, bitter, jagged icicles that erupt over the room, cover those bleak walls and floor with a blue that almost freezes what remains of the pitiful beats of my own heart.

That's insane, I think. There can't be frost out of nowhere.

And then I'm gone.