Written For:
- August Auction Day 6, Auction 2: Barty/Luna
- Writing Club/Written in the Stars: 19. (dialogue) "Why do you do this?" / "Because it's what I'm good at."
- Writing Club/Showtime: 15. (color) White
- Writing Club/Bromance to Romance: 5. (setting) Jail
- Writing Club/Film Festival: 9.(setting) Prison
- Writing Club/Elizabeth's Empire: 4. (au) prison
- Writing Club/Amber's Anime Adventure: 3. (action) smiling
- Writing Club/Artist Appreciation: 7. (dialogue) "I don't want to hurt this much."
- Summer Quarterly/Meats: 5. Hot Dog- (AU) prison
Word Count: 2,727
"You're new here."
The statement hung in the air as the two people looked at each other; prisoner and nurse.
Luna Lovegood glanced down at her clipboard to re-read the name that was printed on the sheet. "Bartemius Crouch."
"Junior," finished the man. "My father was Bartemius Crouch. And I prefer Barty."
"Barty," Luna corrected politely. She eyed the man across the table from her. His wrists were shackled to the table and he wore the plain khaki uniform that the secure hospital gifted all of its residents. Barty's uniform was pristine, and he'd combed back his dark, sandy hair for the occasion. "I'm going to be your visiting nurse. I'll come, and we can talk about your feelings, and try to find ways to improve your mental health if there are any issues—"
"—feelings," scoffed Barty. "Mental health? No one in this dump cares about any of those things."
"Things are changing," Luna said, her voice light yet firm. "The new warden wants to rehabilitate sick inmates, not continue to punish them."
Barty leaned back as far as his shackled wrists would allow him to. "Do you think this is punishment?" He eyed the restraints.
"The restraints are to keep the pair of us safe." Luna's pale eyes studied him intently. "I've read your file, Barty. I know what happened to the last nurse that was assigned to you."
Barty's face cracked into a smirk. "That nurse was trying to get a rise out of me," he said. "And it worked."
"You…" Luna looked back down at her clipboard. "You jumped over the desk and punched him so hard he blacked out, and then you smashed his face into the table." Her voice was clear and almost emotionless, as though she was simply reading from a gnarly fictional book.
Barty's eyes glowered at her, but the smirk didn't falter. "Aren't you scared of me? You people are always scared of me."
Luna placed the clipboard down on the table and stared back across at him, folding her arms. "No. You don't scare me at all, Barty Crouch."
Luna's hand was quick and deft as she scribbled across her clipboard while the pair sat in silence.
"What are you always writing?" Barty asked finally. "We've had three visits so far, and I never say anything, but you're always writing."
"Well, it gets quite boring sitting here in silence." Luna tore the page away from the clipboard and slid it across to Barty. He couldn't pull it nearer due to the shackles, but he was able to lean forward to get a better look.
She hadn't been writing at all. She was drawing. It was a sketch in black biro, mostly done with scribbles but there was still detail. It was Barty—sitting across from her like he always was, though there was a distinct difference—he wasn't wearing the shackles in her image.
Luna pulled it back once he had looked at it for long enough. "You're good," he said. "Can I keep it?"
Luna tucked the drawing into the pocket of her white jacket, and smiled blankly at him. "You know you can't have paper, Barty."
Barty rolled his eyes. "Of course. I might decide to slice my own throat out with the edge of the page." His coppery eyes burned into Luna. "Or someone else's."
"Why do you do this?" Luna asked Barty during another session. She had called Barty for an earlier appointment than their usual one, because the inmate that Barty shared with had been inexplicably poisoned with the diluted cleaning products that Barty was expected to use to clean the prison bathrooms.
No one had been able to find any evidence to suggest it was Barty who had attacked his roommate, and none of the guards really cared. That's what the inmates were here for—because they were criminally sick. It didn't matter who did what, so long as they were all locked up and away from the public.
But Luna knew it was him, and she cared. She cared about why.
Barty shrugged, the best he could with his arms shackled down to the table. "Because it's what I'm good at."
"Hurting people?"
"It's what was expected of me, so it's what I do."
Luna's pen scuttled across the clipboard, and Barty tried to lean forward. "Are you writing this time, or drawing again?"
Luna smiled; an unreadable smile that she always wore when Barty asked her a question. "You've actually given me something to write about today."
"I think you've been crying." Luna mused as she looked at Barty. His eyes were rimmed red and his skin was splotchy. He sniffed angrily.
"I don't cry."
"Everyone cries."
Barty scoffed. "You never look any different. You never seem to show how you feel. I don't think you ever cry."
"Of course I do."
Barty raised an eyebrow. "What do you cry about?"
There was a long pause while the pair stared at each other. "I'll answer your question if you can tell me why you've been crying."
Barty smirked, but his eyes looked watery. He didn't appear as mean and unapproachable as he usually tried to be. "I cry about being stuck here. I cry about being hurt. I cry about my father and how much he hated me, and I cry about my mother and how much she loved me, but how pointless her love was because Father wouldn't let her be motherly. I cry because she got sick, and she died, and then everything got worse. I cry because he left me."
Tears were streaming readily down Barty's face now. His eyes were cloudy, and he was staring at a spot behind Luna, as though seeing something she couldn't.
"Your father?" Luna asked, leaning forwards.
"No." Barty straightened up and shook his head uselessly, as though trying to shake the tears away. "No, I didn't care about him. That's why I'm in here, aren't I? Because I killed him. See, I'm not crazy, not like the judge and the attorneys and all those other idiots tried to say. If I was crazy, I wouldn't believe I'd done it. But I know I did it. I had to do it, because of what he was doing to me. He wanted to keep me locked in his house in the dark and—" Barty's voice broke, as though he was suddenly strangled by something. It was like he had finally allowed the words to leave his mouth and now he couldn't stop them from spilling.
"Are you afraid of the dark?" Luna asked softly. She had abandoned her clipboard now and had reached out, resting a pale hand on Barty's arm, above where the metal shackled him to the table. He focused on the hand that was touching him.
"I tried to find him. When he left—when Regulus left. My friend. My…" Barty's voice tailed off. "Well, it doesn't matter anymore. He didn't know Father was keeping me locked up in the basement. He thought I'd left and not said anything to him, he thought I didn't want to be with him anymore. I managed to escape for a little while, and I tried to find him, but then…"
Luna hadn't expected Barty to open up so much, so suddenly. She had only wanted to know what had caused him to be upset, and see if he would be willing to talk about it a little. His story was falling out of his mouth in broken parts, as though he thought Luna knew the bits that would fill in the blanks. She didn't entirely understand what happened, but she patted his arm softly, giving him the encouragement to continue.
"Father got hold of me. He...he told Regulus's parents...about us. And they…" Barty's eyes filled with fresh tears.
"It's okay, Barty. You don't have to keep talking if it's too hard."
Barty swallowed. "They killed him for it. Because he loved me. Father was too much of a coward to give me the same fate, so he locked me back up in the basement. Only this time…" Barty paused. "He didn't leave the lights on. He left me there for days, weeks on end...I never knew how long it was. I didn't know if it was day or night. So when he let me out…"
"You killed him," Luna finished.
Barty nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off the hand that was holding his wrist.
"I don't want to hurt this much."
Luna read up further on Barty's story before she visited him again. The fragments started to make sense as she poured over his file. He had an abusive father who pushed him too hard through school, and was relentlessly disappointed whenever Barty failed him. While his mother was alive, things were somewhat better, but once she succumbed to her sickness, his life took a turn for the worse.
His father seemed to blame Barty for his mother's death, and that only meant that he treated his son worse than ever. When Barty went home from boarding school for the holidays, he would spend entire weeks locked in the basement, with his father only letting him out to do menial chores and eat.
It wasn't until Barty graduated that his father became aware of a relationship with an undisclosed male, who Luna assumed was Regulus. He started to lock Barty away for longer, leading to Barty escaping to try and find the undisclosed male. Barty discovered that he had died from 'suspicious circumstances', though no evidence had ever been found to suggest foul play.
Within a few months, Barty had vanished from the public eye yet again, only re-emerging with his father's blood on his hands and a fractured personality.
…
When Luna visited him again, Barty's eyes lit up, and he straightened up in his chair as well as he could with his bindings.
Luna masked her surprise. In the little experience she'd had working with people in this field, when a patient finally allowed themselves to be vulnerable, the following visit would usually be full of hostility. She had expected Barty to fold back in on himself and be determined to show her that he wasn't vulnerable.
"I want to thank you," he said as soon as Luna sat down. "Can you...can you…" he looked at her hands, then back at her face, then back at her hands again.
Luna blinked back at him. "What can I help you with?"
A pink tinge spread across his pale, lightly freckled face. "This is ridiculous, I know…"
"Nothing is ridiculous." Luna smiled.
"I've been here...God, for nearly twenty years. I'm nearly forty. And…" he glanced at Luna's hands again, which she had folded in front of her. He took a breath. "Since I've been here, no one has touched me, unless to push me into a cell or tie me down." Barty's face looked as though it was burning. "You don't realise how much you need human touch until it's missing."
Luna realised, and slowly reached a hand forward, letting the tips of her fingers touch Barty's. He couldn't do much with his hand, but his eyes closed as their fingers connected.
"Thank you."
"I've been visiting you for a year now," Luna said. "I believe we've made progress."
Barty raised an eyebrow questioningly. "You do?"
"Yes. You're more open about your feelings with me. You're accepting treatment more readily. There have been less violent outbursts when you're in the general population."
"Okay…"
Luna pulled a key from the pocket of her jacket. "I think you've earned some freedoms. I spoke with the warden, and she has allowed it."
Barty watched as Luna leaned over the table and slid the key into each lock of the shackles on his wrists. When they popped open, he rubbed the skin and then looked back at Luna as she returned to her seat. There was a dangerous glint in his eye.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked. "The guards don't come into these meetings to maintain confidentiality. That's why the extra restraints are in place."
"Why shouldn't I be sure?"
"Because I could jump across this table right now and strangle you."
Luna smiled idly at Barty, tilting her head. "I thought you knew by now, Barty. I'm not afraid of you."
During another visit, Barty had been crying again. "I have to get out of here."
Luna reached over the table and entwined her fingers with Barty's. It had become customary during their meetings—it started with light touches during Barty's more tender confessions, but once he was relieved of his shackles, he wanted to hold Luna's hands throughout.
It wasn't...exactly professional, but Luna let it slide. She wanted to tailor-make how she cared for her patients, and if that was what made him comfortable, she was all too happy to allow it. Also, she didn't quite mind the harmless hand-holding.
It only seemed to deepen the connection she had to Barty.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Barty lapsed into a train of conversation, his honey-brown eyes brimming with tears as he spoke. He spoke of how he was going crazy here, and the meds weren't helping, and the doctor wanted him to have electroshock therapy again. He'd only just recovered memories from the last time, if they did it again, his brain would be fried. He was afraid of losing time, of forgetting, of doing something to make him lose the privileges he had gained with good behaviour.
"They're trying to catch me out," he explained, his eyes shifting from left to right as he spoke. "They want me to fail. They want to see me do something wrong so they can punish me, so they can kill me." He lowered his voice and leaned further over the table. "Luna, I think it's...I think it's my father. I think he wants to come back and kill me."
Luna furrowed her brow slightly. Bartemius Senior is dead, she thought to herself. She had seen the autopsy photographs, and she knew the story. She remembered what Barty had said to her before about not being crazy because he knew what he'd done to his father.
Was he having a breakdown? She scanned his face for clues, picking up the deepened lines in his forehead caused by frowning, and the way his eyes skittered this way and that, as though he was expecting someone to jump out of the shadows.
"I can't stay here," he whispered, his eyes full of fear. "Please help me."
It wasn't in Luna's nature to ignore a cry for help.
Freeing Barty meant that Luna might lose her job, possibly be arrested—if she was caught. It went against everything she had been taught was right, but she couldn't sit by and watch Barty break, not when he was doing so well.
So, she took the keys from the warden's office when he left work. After all, he had no reason not to trust her. She hung around, assuring the orderlies and guards that she had some more paperwork to finish. When the lights went out, she crept through the halls and corridors like a ghost, waiting for the guard on Barty's corridor to take his break.
When he left for his ten minute break, Luna slid the key in the lock and quickly entered his cell. Barty rubbed his eyes with his arm and sat up, blinking groggily at Luna.
"Am I dreaming?" he asked stupidly.
"Shh," Luna pressed a finger to her lips. "You wanted my help."
Barty stumbled to his feet. He was wearing grey leggings and a matching t-shirt, standard prison sleepwear given to the inmates. He wasn't dressed to escape, but it hardly mattered. He moved closer to Luna, and Luna suddenly became aware that she had never actually seen Barty standing up before—he was always sitting at the table when she entered their meeting room, and he remained sitting when she left.
"You're the only one," he muttered, his voice still thick with sleep. "You're the only one I trust."
Luna nodded, and reached down to take one of Barty's hands in both of hers. This is a mistake. A terrible mistake.
She ignored the voice in her head and took a breath.
What was life without a few mistakes?
