(TW: Intense gore, death.)

Skins, The Haunting

I am an anarchist
When I'm gone I won't be missed
But I don't want to die like this
I want to heal
And I don't want to lie like this
I want to feel
But I don't need that anymore

I want to...

Hurt
Feel
Taste
Real
Blood
Spill
Love
Kill

I need no introduction
Welcome to the greatest show

Harry woke like he'd been electrocuted, springing upright and gasping. No longer blind and no longer in the sitting room.

In his own quarters, Lydia standing next to his bed, wide-eyed, hovering a tray of potions and salves beside her, "You have extensive, serious burns-"

He felt them, "What time is it? Where is he?"

"I- you need more healing; I've done hardly half-"

"Has your mark burned? Has anyone's mark burned? What time is it?"

She shook her head, mouth floundering, "Uh, no? Narcissa found the fire. She came to get Cass… What the hell happened?"

"What time is it?" Raising his aching arm to cast himself before she did it for him.

Four thirty in the morning.

"Where is Narcissa now? Cassiopeia?" Tom asked, assessing the burns, rolling his shoulders.

"…I don't know. I thought- I mean it was a fire, right? Surely they're… Done repairing that by now? Lay back down Harry, for Merlin's sake," she tsked, looked him over, and shook her head again.

He didn't lay back down; Tom struggled out of bed and took three jars of burn salve from the floating tray. Snakewood wand and Squib snake blessedly unmarked in his pants pocket, clothes charred but charmed burn resistant. He probably had the spellwork to thank for most of his skin.

'…That was it, wasn't it?' Harry thought, 'Fusion? They…'

'I believe so.'

It didn't feel like a victory, though it was what they'd hoped for, a step toward apocalypse prevention.

But fusion had always felt like a threat with consequences he would have to bear for the sake of those who—as the Dark Lord had said—wouldn't bat an eye at his sacrifice. They certainly wouldn't bat an eye at Voldemort's sacrifice, made however unwillingly.

Walking—limping—down the hallway. Lydia followed him and cast, while Tom did the same. No idea where he was actually going. The sitting room first.

Half charred, black exposed beams smoking, semi-repaired, and no one there.

Harry's Horcrux had been unshakeable in his hatred for the Dark Lord. Though he'd tried to hide it, it had always been plain. Harry had been hoping they'd shift their opinion on each other before the inevitable…

He pulled his shirt sleeve up and stared at the Dark Mark, waiting for something, anything to happen. Debating his next move while chewing on his tongue. He then tucked his arm away because the cold felt like knives on his fresh skin, and watching the mark was getting nothing done.

"Did Narcissa say anything?" Harry asked, Lydia still casting over him, applying salve to his neck.

"She said there was a fire. That you were in there, she extinguished it. You were spewing magic all over the place. They brought you to me—still coughing blackness, mind you—then they left to come back… Here, I thought." She paused her work to examine the room, then the empty, quiet hallway. "It's nearly sun up?"

Tom did the only thing he could think of, reaching out along the thread connecting him to Voldemort. Violently rejected.

'That's a great sign,' Harry thought, eyes on the piano, burnt and toppled to one side. 'What do we do?'

Tom deliberated, then tried the thread again. Urgent in his insistence, forcefully denied a second time. A shot of pain in his skull for his efforts.

"Fuck."

"Fuck?" Lydia repeated, "Fuck what? What's going on?"

"Fuck. That's enough." He swatted Lydia away, took over the healing, frantic Parseltongue casting, mind whirring.

'Where would they be?' As he thought it, he knew Tom didn't know.

Harry's first stop, in that case, was Bed Sheet, thankfully left in the Dark Lord's quarters. He didn't expect to find Voldemort there.

"Harry? It's nearly sun up?" Lydia called after him, but he waved her off; Cassiopeia wasn't his main concern.

The vampire and her sun aversion didn't hold a candle to the growing dread, yawning in his solar plexus, open, shark-toothed maw in his middle, dragging him down, making his hands numb.

He jogged to the Dark Lord's room, pins and needles creeping up his legs, skin raw, chaffing every inch.

His second plan was to check the expanding crater where Voldemort fed Crux. Then he'd check the house near Hogsmeade. Hogwarts. Then Malfoy Manor. Then Nurmengard. He wasn't sure where after that.

After retrieving Bed Sheet—rather than running to the edge of the wards—Tom attempted Disapparating from within the castle.

Almost shocked when it worked, actually shocked to stumble into the now gargantuan pit in the earth. Dirt still warm, swallowing some on the way down, until he righted himself what seemed like halfway in. Hard to tell in the dark, half-moon struggling on the horizon.

At least four times the size it had been—Tom had accounted for potential expansion when he Disapparated, though not that much.

He was where the Dark Lord had been, but he wasn't there anymore.

Harry spat grit, hissed at the way fresh skin had spilt falling into the hole, and mumbled apologies to the grumpy Lethifold on his shoulders.

'…The house with the green wards, then?' Harry wondered, inactivity a poison, hoisting himself out of the steep pit with screaming flesh.

He didn't need to Apparate to Hogsmeade.

The Dark Mark lit like it never had before, stabbing into the bones of his forearm, spreading through his fingers, up his shoulder, and through his skull in an instant. Stomach-dropping, nausea-inducing unease came with it.

Tom Disapparated without destination to stand outside Malfoy Manor. Some relief that he would have eventually found him, followed by wondering why there. Still healing himself as he walked the gravel drive, slightly limping—annoyed about it—covered in dirt and soot, Bed Sheet flared like a striking cobra, probably because Harry had rolled him halfway to the Earth's centre.

The thread that bound him to Voldemort no longer felt like a thread. As he entered the wards, he felt another dome, gravity like the sun. The range more than doubled; had to be. It felt as though he was standing within metres of the Dark Lord, but he was nowhere to be seen. Inside.

He let the pull take him, stronger in the entryway—no one there, a few lamps flickering—and stronger again in the hall that led to the large dining room. Harry was as healed as he was going to be without stripping naked, nerves raw with pain and agitation.

Maybe it was fear.

He held the feeling down and pushed the doors open.

Though he saw clear as day it took him a few beats longer to fully comprehend what he was looking at.

Firstly, blood everywhere. He looked down and he was standing in it. All over the chairs, all over the table. Walls.

All over the people, sat in bloodied seats, stock still and staring. Snape, Narcissa, and Cassiopeia.

A body atop the wood, displayed revoltingly. Bizarrely. Missing arms and legs, barely stumps remaining—cauterised to stop bleeding, though they couldn't possibly be alive—rib cage open, bones like grotesque wings, to reveal the heart and lungs. A pink and white striped bendy straw was inserted in the throat through an incision in the trachea…

'I don't think he's dead,' Tom thought.

…The face. Gone. Features cut out. Scooped out. Turned receptacle for- something. A liquid Harry couldn't identify. Not blood. Like a bowl.

"You look like shit, Princess." And him, sat at the head of the table before the should-be corpse, dressed head to toe in red. Eyes crimson, whites gone. Grinning wild and swaying in his seat, one leg thrown over the arm. Eating barbeque chicken wings.

Heat washed through him, nothing to do with the burns or the pull like gravity or the probable corpse redecorating the dining space.

"…Crux."

"Come sit by me," he pushed the chair beside him out.

Tom debated putting his hand in his pocket, but Harry stopped him.

"Is this bothering you," Crux said when he was slow to move.

Apparent from the looks on their bloodstained faces that Cassiopeia, Narcissa, and Snape had watched the whole ordeal.

Only Cassiopeia tore her eyes from the Dark Lord.

"…Who is that?" Harry asked in Parseltongue, unable to identify the man on the table.

Crux dipped a chicken wing in the face bowl, and Harry understood it was sauce before the disgust hit—strange kamikaze between sense and irrational.

"Oh, you can't tell. Don't speak snake. Peter Pettigrew."

Harry sat down forcefully; if he didn't he ran the risk of losing his footing regardless. Close enough to hear the air whistling into the pink straw and see the exposed lungs breathing.

"He's stunned motionless 'cause I don't want to spill my barbeque sauce. But he can feel everything. Hear everything."

He searched Crux's expression for any sign that the Dark Lord might interject. "…Where- What happened?"

"…Stasis spell to slow his death right down."

"Crux-"

"It—is—my—turn—to—talk." He let silence hang for a moment, took another chicken wing and dipped it in sauce, "It was as easy as calling him to me. Wand to mark. Arrived simpering at my feet like a kicked stray. Followed me in here. Same with them? And watch this," Crux pointed at Severus, "Slam your head on the table. I wanna see blood."

Snape's eyes flicked to Harry's before he begrudgingly did as he was told. Bleeding from his temple when he sat up.

"So, I wanted to see if you were right, if vengeance murder relieves you some. And I guess it does. For my first it was okay. These chicken wings though, oh my god. Harry, try them."

Harry didn't try them.

"I did this for you. Don't be ungrateful. Credit where credit is due; I couldn't have done this without you Legs. I'm so fucking hungry? And my whole body is vibrating; what's up with that? Is that normal?"

"…Adrenaline," Tom said.

"Right, I thought so," his hands were shaking, bloody fingers fluttering as he stripped chicken from bone, always smiling, "I can tell you everything now."

Harry waited, pulse heating his skin, Bed Sheet spooked on his shoulders.

"When I woke up in his head, my first real goal was to get Morty to kill himself. You, too, but you were just collateral. It was the only way out I could see, you know?"

"What happened to him?" Harry asked.

"Stop interrogating me. When the Unspeakable told him we might fuse, I found something I wanted more than destruction. Then I had to think to myself what would break him like how you broke?"

Crux stood, braced on the table with both hands—slipping in the blood and sauce. Cassiopeia was staring at Harry, and Tom knew she was scared. Scared and debating drawing her wand. The impending sun couldn't help.

"Can I ask a question?" The vampire asked.

"You just did? No? Shut the fuck up, all of you?" Crux wobbled, and Tom held the pouch containing Sanctus tight in his fist.

'I don't want to have to do that,' Harry thought.

'…We might have to do that.'

"And I had to think about it for so long even though the answer was right in front of me," Crux put his hand inside Pettigrew's chest and squeezed an exposed lung, "…Sorry, his heart was beating a little slow there. Don't want him too relaxed. So it was right in front of me, the answer." He sat back down, wiping the blood from his hands on the shreds of Pettigrew's robes—poorly.

"What happened to him?" Harry asked again, aware it wasn't helping but desperate for the answer, fear making his palms sweat.

There was no sign of the Dark Lord in his own body. Like he'd been erased. Repeatedly assuring himself it wasn't what had happened, couldn't be the case.

"Harry if you interrupt me one more time, I'll kill Narcissa." Crux blinked at him expectantly, red eyes too wide, "…If you pay close enough attention, Morty will tell you everything you need to know. Isn't that right, Tom? He projects."

Tom didn't answer.

"When he found out that you two love each other, that Harry didn't know he loved you, he told you repeatedly that it would break our little golden boy, didn't he? Well, did it break you, Legs? Are you the one quivering in his head at the realisation of deep feelings?" He barked a laugh; then he was buckled in half with loud, cracking giggles.

And Harry and Tom both realised what that meant before Crux said it.

"Yeah love broke someone real good."

He felt the room staring at him like a tangible thing, heart beating uneven in his throat.

"So now I'm going to destroy everything," Harry's Horcrux dipped his last chicken wing in Pettigrew's face, and Harry said:

"…What?"

'…Harry,' Tom thought, tone unsurprised, as though Crux had said the inevitable.

"Yep. Everything he's built. To dust. I'm gonna undo all he's done and burn the whole world down. But first, drugs and nachos. I don't give a fuck about the order. We could get drunk?" Crux examined Harry's face and laughed again, "There's nothing you can do. Unless you kill me. And good luck."

"I-"

"Narcissa, get me nachos."

"My- my Lord? I- nachos? I'm not sure I-"

"You don't know what nachos are, do you," Crux had the Elder wand in his right hand.

Tom quickly said, "We can get you nachos; there's plenty of time for that. Narcissa, get him drugs."

"Don't—pander—to—me. I'll do what I want. Narcissa, get me drugs."

Narcissa stood like her legs had failed her; pale as a ghost, she excused herself. Harry wondered if she'd come back.

"Really hate to be a party pooper, but the sun is up," Cassiopeia said, her hands palm down on the wood.

"What is the meaning of this?" Snape held his temple, no longer unsteady in his seat.

"Bold," Crux said, "Seriously, Harry, check the balls on this motherfucker I mean…" His Horcrux threw a bloodied chicken bone at Severus and hit him in the cheek, "Should we tell him the meaning of this, Princess? That around a half hour before this greasy, slimy cunt came into my bedroom and held my mum, my dead mum, like he meant anything to her like she meant anything to him, after he told fucking Voldemort all he needed to hear to put her there, lifted her off the floor and didn't even look at you, did he, Legs?"

If anything, Snape seemed far more confused. And Crux couldn't have remembered those events, gone with the Dark Lord before they took place. Harry didn't recall them either. But Tom did.

"Around half an hour before she was dead on the floor, two Horcruxes were made in that room, my room. One in Harry, one in Morty. Crucio."

"What do you mean you're going to destroy everything?" Harry pressed. This felt like something the Dark Lord should react to, but he didn't.

As though Voldemort had predicted his incapacitation when he'd given them Sanctus.

'He didn't predict his incapacitation; he… He knew it would shatter him. Crux isn't stopping him. At least, I don't believe he is,' Tom thought.

"Listen… Damn, that's- that's fun," Crux watched Snape grind his face on the tabletop under the Cruciatus for a moment, then got to his feet—shaky as a fawn—to observe Peter Pettigrew's heart. Looking at Harry from the corner of his eye like a dog about to bite. He released the curse, leaving the man unconscious, "There's some muscle memory, but it's really not as helpful as you'd think. I think he's dead. Yeah he's dead."

"It doesn't have to be this way-"

"Shut all the way the fuck up. If you think you can say the right words and change my mind, correct the thought." Crux's Parseltongue was still harsh but far smoother. Natural. "How can you forgive him if he's never shown remorse? Has he told you how he felt when he killed them? Blood lusting ego bleeding out of his rancid skull, through his skin, are you listening to me? He doesn't deserve forgiveness, he doesn't deserve love, and neither do you."

"You care about Harry, I know you do, I'm certain of it," Tom said.

"Me? Legs? Aw, has something misled you? Are you out of your fucking mind? Sweetheart. Don't be stupid."

"Then why this?" Tom gestured at what was left of the body.

Crux shrugged, "Princess did a lot of heavy lifting. And I wanted to. Do you need me to spell it out? Here: Oh my god, I hate you, Harry, you're a treacherous… traitor. I played you all like fiddles; like I've got six arms. I got what I wanted."

Cassiopeia was digging her nails into the tabletop. Harry agreed with the sentiment. Velvet like sandpaper in his hand. With the other, he slowly reached for Crux. He didn't want to fight him, and the quickest, surest way to subdue the demon was to touch him.

Far more vulnerable to the bliss of contact than Harry. Uninitiated in sensation, it would hit Crux like a tsunami.

And his Horcrux knew it, stepping clumsily out of his reach, wand raised, face wild, "Don't you dare touch me. Don't be a hero, it doesn't look good on you; it's not your strong suit, hear me?" He dragged his chair between them, though Harry hadn't stood.

"…And alright, maybe I hate you. But I- so what?" He shrugged and shook his head, one hand on his seat—holding him upright—wand raised on Harry, "…I'll give you one chance to make the right choice. You could help me. Help me ruin him for what he did. I don't need you; I don't need your help… But if you wanted- I don't even care. What you do. So." He shrugged again, wand faltering for an instant.

"Is he… Letting you do this?" Harry didn't speak in the serpent tongue, though Crux had—it seemed to piss him off.

The question made him angry even in English, "Oh my god, the Dark Lord this, Voldemort that, why bother asking I know where your head is. UP—THIS—ASS. If you stand up Cassiopeia I'll open the curtains it's dark in here I think."

"…Okay." She said, then whispered, "What the fuck do we do?"

"…I know you don't care about Cassiopeia," Harry said, "You could let her go."

"And what, she goes and finds someone to help you?"

"…Help me what? And who? Would she find some Death Eaters and say, 'Come on, we've got to go and fight Voldemort?' You let Narcissa go."

"She's sworn a Vow—she couldn't say boo to a bird—she'll be back," Crux gestured at the door and as though he'd summoned her, she knocked. When she entered he said, "Sit down Narcissa," without breaking eye contact with Harry.

"…I brought Grave Dust and Epiphany. I wasn't sure—"

"Great," Crux said, still not looking at her. "I suppose you're right, Harry. I don't care about the vampire. Who could she go to, what would she say, and so on. She looks more likely to crawl into a hole than mount an insurrection."

"…Right. Exactly." Exhaustion seeped into his bones with the knowledge that there was no easy way to do this.

"Alright. Get out. Don't make a liar out of me," Crux told Cassiopeia.

She looked at Harry for confirmation, and so he told her with his eyes that there truly was nothing she could do. The doors were loud behind her, and he was blessedly relieved to see her go.

"Then I guess we have to fight? First, I wanna kill him, but I want him to see it coming."

"…Crucio him again?" Harry said. Still in his seat. No desire to fight him. No desire to Squib him.

Just an aching despondency.

Crux did as he suggested; a quick, sharp Crucio woke Snape from his curse-induced unconsciousness.

"I hope the meaning of this isn't lost on you, Severus, but I'm also okay if it is. Avada Kedavra."