Chapter Twenty | Up or Down

Heat and cold, faraway blurs of fabric and flesh, it was a different person entirely that opened her bleary eyes in the galley, wet cloth draped across her brow and an insistent chatter tugging her away from unconsciousness. Distress, fear, all wrapped up in a doting concern bordering on a personality complex. Beside it were ramblings involving strange names as well as pirates of red hair and great strength only rivaled by their kindness, all of it told to her in high tones, stricken with excitement and an odd inflection of worry that felt alien to her. Worry that shouldn't belong to a voice like that, and instead should be replaced with cheer, emboldened by a lust for life unmatched by any other.

"...And Shanks, he grabbed my arm and it just stretched and stretched- then everyone started screaming! It was great."

A hum buzzed in her throat, and she glanced, askew, at the blurry image of Luffy sitting cross-legged beside her. "You real?" she rasped, the heat in her throat almost unbearable, as if a furnace was nestled in her guts.

"Quinn!" A weight pressed against her chest as Luffy all but fell on top of her, and even though her glasses had been lost between when she'd fallen and woken up, she could see his smile as clear as day. "I'm real. I think? I'm real, right Nami?"

Over Sanji's excited cries of 'She's alive!' Nami chuckled. "You're real, Captain. Now get off her, she just passed out." Luffy was hauled off of her and another blurry face replaced his, this one framed in red. Just as Quinn was about to open her mouth, her glasses were gently placed on her face.

"Cheers." She looked about, squinting, to see the rest of the crew nervously standing around. Well, all of them except for Zoro. "Where's-?"

"Watching Miss Goldenweek."

"Marianne," Quinn said, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Her name's Marianne."

"What!?" Astonished, Vivi somehow managed to stumble while standing still. "How do you know that?"

Smiling at the Princess, Quinn tapped the side of her head. "Magic. Now just- gimme a second here." She grunted as she stood, pulling the cloth off her forehead and leaving it on the sofa behind her. "I'm not dying here, you don't need to look so worried."

"Quinn, you have a fever of forty degrees."

"Huh? No- no." Waving Nami off, Quinn clumsily walked past her, breathing heavily all the while. "I don't need to stay in bed. Let's just- we're headed to Alabasta, right?"

"Seriously, Quinn-"

Pushing Nami's hand away, Quinn forced her way on deck, ignoring the worried glances of the crew.

"Quinn, my dear, you really should be resting," Sanji blurted, reaching out to tug gently at her arm.

She pulled away from him, huffing in annoyance. "Seriously. I'm fine. Leave it," she said, lurching flat footed outside the galley and immediately propping herself against the rail overlooking the deck. Zoro glanced at her from where he was sitting cross legged, balancing himself on the same rail, his sword held out in front of him with a straight, steady arm. Marianne sat on the deck a few feet away with her legs hanging over the side of the ship, mild curiosity tugging at her features as her gaze flitted between the ocean and her captors.

"Y'alright?"

"Really? Said the woman on death's door."

"Fuck off. It's just a cold."

"Whatever you say."

Glaring at Zoro, she went to turn around when her ankles wobbled, and Quinn slammed her elbow into the balustrade when she tried to steady herself, cursing loudly at the shock that ran up her arm. "For fuck's sake- I swear to god. It's a cold. A cold." Her protests only garnered an unimpressed grunt, and it was the helping beak of Karoo prodding at her side that righted Quinn.

He quacked at her, glowering, before jerking his beak at the galley and ruffling his feathers. "Like Pomfrey, you're a goddamn mother hen- oi!" She glared at the duck when he smacked her with his wing. "Bastard."

The venom in her words would have actually had an effect had her voice not trembled with exhaustion, eyelids drooping and a slump to her shoulders that spoke of the heat still bubbling in her throat. It pulsed insistently with every heartbeat, a drop of sweat running down her neck in reply.

Karoo quacked loudly, as if to say 'I'm not a hen, I'm a duck, thank you very much.' She could thank years of trying to interpret Hedwig's chuffs and chitters for that mental reflex, a habit so ingrained that it was practically knee-jerk for Quinn to anthropomorphize the call of a bird. Not that Karoo wasn't intelligent. He very much was, practically human at that. Strange, really, if it weren't the case that almost every magical animal displayed some form of sapience. Which made him not so strange, now that she thought about it. Perfectly normal, actually.

"You're a very clever duck," she said, staring him in the eyes. Karoo preened, just a little, but that ruffling of his feathers was unmistakably proud. She'd wager a galleon on that in a heartbeat. "Which is why you're an arse."

An indignant quack this time, and Karoo turned his back on her with a huff. Zoro, for his part, chuckled, and ahead of Quinn someone cleared their throat. She looked up to see Vivi leaning against the galley door frame, watching Karoo with a fond gaze.

"He's good at that," she started, making eye contact with Quinn as she spoke. "Worrying."

"Seems everyone is."

"You're not well."

"You sure?" Checking over herself with dramatic flair, Quinn reigned in the exhaustion whilst she turned on the spot, putting herself on display. "I'm chipper, feels like."

"I'm surprised you're standing, let alone speaking."

"Must be the air."

Quinn sniffed for good measure, though that backfired immediately, the cold sea wind sending her into a coughing fit. The pain of it could be heard in the rattle of her throat, rolling gravel and a dry rumble that anyone who'd been terribly ill, no matter how far back, was familiar with. That kind of flaying, hacking cough, one that felt like the skin of her throat had all the moisture drawn from it before being thinned with a sharp stone. Chipped at, until there were just flakes of hardened, brittle flesh remaining, those shards expelled with every heave of her shoulders, and with them the last dregs of air were forced from her lungs.

She gasped, sucking back the desperate, parched breath of a drowning woman breaching the water's surface. Her hand, trembling at the wrist, had curled with white knuckles over the balustrade, and were Quinn to fall any further she'd be forced to hook her elbow through the rungs to avoid crashing chin first against the deck.

Dimly, she could sense the insistent prodding of Karoo's beak against her waist, the duck holding her up with a neck as sturdy as a tree trunk while Vivi lingered a few feet away.

Quinn tried to put her hand up. Tried to push Karoo away and insist that she was fine but no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she wrestled with the muscles in her throat – straining, flared like the neck of a cobra, all that came from her mouth was the knucklebone rattle of her spine grinding against her tongue. She could feel it now, the sweat that clung to her brow. Too much to stick, to cling, to leave that cloying layer of paper thin grease along her cheeks. Instead her face slid against the hardwood, leaving a streak of wet across the deck that she felt seeping through the collar of her shirt, mingling with the sweat that was already ebbing from the other side.

Her skull rang, bouncing about with every jostled step. When had she been picked up? The thud, thud, thud, of stomping feet made her groan in annoyance, weakly attempting to pry herself free from the protective grasp of whomever had lifted her from the deck. And just once she realized she'd been picked up she was down again, on a sofa once more, her eyelids slowly peeling back to reveal the dingy walls of Grimmauld place.

The sitting room, fire dancing weakly in the hearth and the wallpaper torn, ratty, the crown moulding and dark corners littered with cobwebs. Didn't I- didn't we clean up this place? she weakly wondered, pushing herself onto her knees and glancing blearily around the room. What was crimson had returned to sun-bleached taupe, filigree and fleur de lis and all other finery emblazoned across the walls chipped from decades of neglect. Even the ceiling looked to be falling apart, slats peeking out from behind peeling plaster and, with a loud thud above, white dust pushed from its shadowy innards alongside wood chippings and flecks of rotted paint, all of it clattering against the coffee table, a broken leg leaving it askew.

"Kreacher? Is that you?"

Another thump, a raspy shout, and then nothing. From the kitchen, a kettle whistled, and Quinn looked over to see Ginny standing in the doorway, cup in hand and her face blank, devoid of all emotion. "Here," she said plainly, cup held out in offering.

"Thank you."

Quinn took the tea, the cold of the porcelain leeching into her fingers immediately. She frowned at it, hummed, and then took a sip, choking on the frigid tea when another thud came from above. The cup fell from her hands, shattering against the floor.

"Oh. Shit. Shit." Her wand was already moving, the pieces of the cup floating back together and settling atop the table, only to slide down its steep incline and break again, the shards rolling across the floor and out of sight. Quinn went to stand, to walk to the now shadowy kitchen but instead leapt, shouting as dust rained down on her from the shaking ceiling.

"Do you hear that?" It was like something was being dragged across the floor, Kreacher's raspy wails punctuating the thud, thud, thud, of something heavy falling. One after another, after another, it drummed out a steady beat only to stop abruptly. "Don't you hear that? You hear that, right? Listen."

"Why should I listen? You don't."

"What?"

Ginny was fiddling with the table, repairing its broken leg with short, sharp jabs of her wand. She did that for a minute, silent, before nodding at her work. "I don't want to listen," she stated, before snapping the table leg in two with a heavy kick. Splinters flew and it fell, heavy, onto the jagged stump that remained, bouncing a few times off a springboard step, like something the twins would cook up. A jinx, to turn a hardwood plank into a trampoline, and the table corner bounced once, twice, thrice – thud, thud, thud – against the floor.

"Why? Why does no one want to listen?"

"Because you're crazy. You're mad, Quinn. You've lost it. Everyone knows that."

"No I haven't."

Sighing, Ginny just shook her head. "You've no marbles left."

"Yes I have. I've plenty of them. Marbles and Death Eaters, all in a row."

"Why?"

"You see, don't you? Look. Gin, I've got them all here. Look," Quinn hurried, insistent, grabbing Ginny by the hand and dragging her to the kitchen. Her legs moved slowly through the air, clumsy. It felt like the sea, drowning in it, taking all her strength just to tread water, and all that was left were leaden weights, far too heavy for her little strings to carry.

But this wasn't the sea. This was home.

"Look. I've got them all here." Her hands found the refrigerator door and it swung open to reveal a gaping hole, pitch black and perfectly square. "I've got them. All of them." Cold steel, greased wheels, the fridge rattled as a long metal table rolled into the kitchen of its own accord. She could see the air that spilled out after it, frigid and cloudy. Atop the table rested a large cloth bag, fit to burst, its every contour stretched tight against the body it held, mummifying whoever was within. It was thin in places, along the toes, the nose, wherever the hills and valleys of the corpse wrapped up inside it peaked.

Quinn pointed at it, insistent. "It's Scabior. I've got him."

"You're in trouble."

"No, see? I've got him. He's in that bag."

"You're going to be in trouble."

"Look." Wrestling with the zip, Quinn yanked back once she'd gotten a grip, clipping the nose in her excitement and taking some flesh with it. "Shit- I didn't mean to- just look. He's right there."

She felt warm breath on her cheek, a flash of red, and Ginny was leaning over her shoulder. "No he's not."

"Yes, he is, see-"

But it wasn't Scabior staring back at her, stiff and pallid and half thawed from the mortuary icebox. It was her. It was Quinn. A doll of her, some ill-sculpted mannequin in a Raggedy Ann wig and a torn up, muddy suit. Its limbs were splintered birch, and the joints little ball bearings of cheap plastic and metal. But the eyes weren't buttons, and she floundered, confused.

A doll. A doll should have button eyes, Quinn thought, leaning closer to find they weren't meat either. They were marbles, proper chunks of stone that were black as night and duller than anything she'd ever seen before. Not a hint of gloss could be found, every millimetre of the inky things scratched and scuffed, the thousands of lines carved across their surface edged with flecks of dusty obsidian that, when she brushed her thumb across the eyes, clung to the furrows of her fingerprint.

"Why am I there?"

"Well, you died. Didn't you?"

She shook her head. "I didn't. I'm right here." Pointing at the body, Quinn shook Ginny's arm with her other hand. "That's not me. That's not real. I'm me. See? I'm me."

"I don't know that."

"Don't you, Ginny?"

"You died."

Quinn looked away from her stand-in corpse, trying to catch Ginny's eye. "Hey, look at me. Ginny, please- look at me. Look at me." She stepped around her girlfriend, grabbing her by the wrist. "Please, look at me." Another step, and Ginny turned away. A whine built in Quinn's throat as she spun around, chasing after Ginny who evaded her every clumsy lunge. Always, her eyes were just out of sight, barely out of view, or even hidden by a lock of hair, twisting as they whirled around each other. "Why won't you look at me?"

"I don't want to listen. I don't want to look."

"Please, Ginny. Just look at me. I'm begging you, please."

"I don't want to."

"But I'm not dead. I'm alive. I'm real."

"You're a little girl," Ginny said, freezing on the spot. "You're splashing round a pond, playing pirates. But you can't be playing pirates, because you're dead."

"I'm a witch. I'm not- I don't think I'm a pirate."

"You are. See?" A mirror was pushed in front of her, and Quinn stared into her murky reflection. It was hard to make out at first, all warped and smudged. But once she'd wiped the dust away and all but smashed her face against the glass she frowned, poking at the black cloth patch strung over her left eye. Atop her head was a tricorne made of newsprint, and a daisy chain of doilies stolen from Petunia's tea table had been wrapped around her neck in a clumsy cravat.

"But- those aren't mine. I'm a witch. This is wrong," she declared, taking off the hat and throwing it to the ground. The paper cracked, shattering on impact and flying every which way, now glassy shards bouncing off the walls and clattering to a halt in the shadowy corners of the kitchen. "It's the wrong hat. It's all wrong."

"Then what are you?" Ginny asked, grabbing Quinn by the shoulders and spinning her around. They stared into each other's eyes, Ginny's expression still stony, blank, devoid of any feeling or recognition. "Because I thought you were dead."

"I'm not!" With a roar, Quinn pushed Ginny away, watching as she fell backwards, arms flailing, only to disappear. She stepped forwards, her whole body lurching, and blinked only to find herself in a candlelit room, the gentle sway of the sea carrying her along. Running the back of her hand across her eyes, Quinn crooked her fingers and willed her glasses to come to her, the spectacles whizzing into her open hand a moment later.

Putting them on, the room quickly came into focus, and what once looked to be shadowy blobs littering the floor revealed themselves to be the crew, sleeping in a pile at the foot of the sofa. Sitting at the bar and poring over a newspaper, Vivi looked up from her readings and caught Quinn's eye, a soft smile creeping over her face. "You're up," she whispered, folding away the paper and then softly treading around the sleeping crew until she could sit gingerly on the edge of the sofa. She glanced over Quinn before her gaze quickly flicked back to the bar, her lips thinning. "We're worried about you."

Opening her mouth to speak, Quinn managed to croak out a weak, "I'm fine." All she got in reply was a shake of the head.

"You're dying."

She searched Vivi's gaze for any sign of a lie, any exaggeration, only to find none. Sixteen, and the haggard look she wore was uncomfortably familiar. Worry, fear, dread, any number of words all of which boiled down to one thing - Quinn really was dying.

"How long was I out?"

"A day."

Tilting her head, even through the morass of a forty degree fever, Quinn could tell there was something else on Vivi's mind. Call it a sixth sense, call it instinct, but a childhood built on lies had given her a good nose for when something was off. "What aren't you telling me?"

Again, Vivi's gaze danced towards the bar - towards the newspaper. Hands curled into fists, she pressed her knuckles into her lap, lip bitten and eyes downturned. "Nothing. There's nothing."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm not-"

"Liar. C'mon, I'm dying. No need to hold back."

"How can you be so calm about this? You're sick, we don't have a doctor or- or anyone who knows what they're doing, and you're getting worse by the day," she hissed, grabbing Quinn by the arm.

"I've died before. It wasn't so bad."

"What?"

"Died. No point mincing words, seeing as I'm on my way there and I doubt-" Hoarse, Quinn held a fist to her mouth and choked back the cough creeping up her throat. She held a finger up, shutting her eyes tight, before carrying on. "I doubt we're gonna' find a doctor out here. Don't even know if this world's medicine is up to snuff anyways, seeing as we're on a bloody wooden ship. They gonna' make me put onions in my socks?"

"I- you don't- what on earth are you talking about? We have medicine, you- you ass."

"Anesthesia?"

"Of course!"

"Inoculations?"

"What do you take us for, barbarians?"

"I'm sorry, I'm… still confused by… all this," she admitted, weakly waving at everything around her. "Wooden ships, barely any electricity - the technology here is all over the place. Back home… back home we hadn't even discovered germs when we were sailing around on these. Certainly didn't build them as big either."

"Is it true? You're not just… lying about it? Being from another world?"

"Not a word of it."

"You said- you said you died."

"I did."

"Was that a lie?"

"No."

Vivi stared at her, and this time it was her turn to search Quinn for any sign of deceit. It took some time, perhaps a minute, perhaps more. Quinn couldn't rightly tell with the way her head was swimming, but eventually Vivi relented, content with whatever she'd found. "Things… have gotten worse."

"Worse how?"

"Three hundred thousand defected from the Royal Army. They joined the Rebels." Her voice hitched and Vivi pressed a hand to her chest, as if to calm herself. "If I don't get home soon, well… out of anyone on this ship I think you know best what would happen."

"And how did you come to that conclusion?"

"You're a soldier. Aren't you?"

Breath caught in her throat, Quinn slowly nodded. "A long time ago. Yeah."

"...How old were you?"

"Seventeen. Fourteen, if you want to get technical." Drawing in a breath, Quinn crooked a finger and summoned a glass from the bar, filling it with water with a wandless aguamenti. She drank from it, ignoring the stunned look Vivi gave her, before setting the empty glass aside. There was… so much in Vivi that reminded Quinn of herself. To be so young and caught up in a vicious civil war, her friend dead and the guillotine creeping closer and closer - all of it was far too familiar. Maybe that was why she felt like being honest with her, or maybe it was the fever that was currently cooking her brain. She didn't rightly know, but if she really was going to die, well, there was no harm in a little help, was there? "It was a short, but vicious war. You had… extremists on one side. People who saw those without magic as nothing more than animals, and people with no magical family? Newcomers to that society? Thieves. Pretenders. Something so much worse than dirt. They wanted them all dead, no matter the cost."

"That's horrifying."

Nodding, Quinn wondered how to even go about explaining Voldemort. The indomitable shadow he cast that had lingered over Britain even long after the world assumed him dead. He was larger than life. The monster under the bed. Every bad dream and more wrapped up in a man that, were it not for a stroke of unfathomable luck, would have broken an entire country over his knee and then cast his gaze towards the rest of the world.

"When I was one, just a baby, he killed my family. He'd heard a prophecy about his own downfall, so he went to nip it in the bud." Pushing her sweat-soaked hair to the side, Quinn tapped the dim, jagged scar that still branched from scalp to eyelid, splitting her brow in two. "I survived a spell that no one had ever survived because of my mother's sacrifice and some exceedingly clever magic. He died… sort of, and by the time I was fourteen he'd killed a friend of mine and had regained his body. The next year he was forced to reveal himself after… his sixth attempt on my life? The year after that we were at war."

"He died, you died… does that mean something else where you're from?"

"No. No it doesn't. What he did… he tore his soul to pieces and hid those scraps inside artifacts. Until those were destroyed he couldn't die. But he made a mistake. He made another, entirely by accident, and it found a home right here," she uttered, tapping her forehead, to which Vivi gasped. A few feet away Zoro snorted, rolling over in his sleep. "At the last battle, right before the war was won, I walked to my death - because if I lived, then so would he. So he killed me, and I went somewhere… between life and death. I was given the choice there to pass on or stay and see the war through. Some days…" Quinn laughed a quiet, haggard laugh. "Some days I wonder if I made the right choice. And Vivi?"

Pale, tears in her eyes, the thin-faced girl before her tilted her head. "Yes?"

"I know exactly what you're thinking right now. You're trying to make a choice. A terrible, terrible choice no one your age should have to make. I've had to make choices like that my whole life, and… whatever you decide, I'm not going to hold it against you."

"But you could die! You're- you're going to die if we don't do anything!"

"Vivi… I don't belong here. This whole world, it's… it's all off. I've got- I've got nothing here. Nothing. I don't know how anything works, I don't have my wand. All I've got is the shirt on my back and even that isn't actually mine."

"You're a Strawhat."

"Am I? Do you think- do you actually think I fit in here? Because I'm certain the only reason Luffy invited me to join is because I once turned him into a frog." Sucking in a breath, Quinn choked down another cough, shaking her head. "I'm a killer. I'm a soldier. It's a miracle they didn't throw me overboard after that fight with Sanji. Just-" Yawning, Quinn put a hand out and squinted, bleary eyed, at the fading image of Vivi. "Go straight to Alabasta. Okay? Save your people."

"You know I can't do that. Why- why would you ask me to do such a thing?"

As the world continued to slip away, Quinn spoke aloud something she'd never put to words. Not to another living soul. "Because I'm scared," she croaked, a laugh slipping through that garnered another startled snore out of Zoro. "I'm proper scared, and I can't let you throw your country away for some terrified witch who's not got her head on straight."