Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Roses of Redemption

I blinked again. The feeling was oddly glassy in the silence. Like I was disturbing some kind of sanctity. It seemed slow, like those tapes of moths or birds beating their wings -- a sort of rush of air breaking the otherwise complete quiet. My eyes were dry, stinging and sandy. As I gazed at the ceiling of my room, I decided that it really was too high. I lay on my back on my bed. I had my hands linked behind my head and I hadn't moved for ages. It's a habit of mine. My eyes seemed heavy enough to drag them open again. All the while, I wanted to shut them and have done with it. It was like a form of shock. Intense shock. The shock that meant I wouldn't eat or sleep. Whenever I tried to sleep, this was how I ended up.

I glanced across at the stained glass window where the moon shone through. A stretched oval of brilliant light smeared across the floor, looping its shoulder over the end of my bed before slithering back to the floor again. I had watched it move across the room. Right from when the moon had risen to now, when it began to set. It followed my thoughts, rising to thoughts of pure revenge and falling to the deepest lows. Right now, I felt smeared across the floor. I was stretched so thin that the moonlight showed through.

I wanted to sleep. I wanted to get out of this loop.

There was no way I would. I sat up eventually, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I shifted my hands underneath me and stood up. I was still working on overtime. It had been - what? - three days? I hadn't slept for a minute. I moved with the wooden certainty that I didn't have long left.

'Maybe I could visit Alethea,' I murmured through parched lips. My voice came out as a crackle. I needed water. Oh well, I could get some at the hospital. I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders and padded across to the door. I listened carefully to check that no one was there before unlocking it and sliding out into the corridor. My eyes took a while to grow accustomed to looking at something which moved. I closed my eyes until they sprang open, then started on my way to the hospital wing.

The corridors were bathed in moonlight. It was still so early in the morning that no one was up. Not even the servants had emerged to make the fires up for the day ahead. I was alone in this huge castle. It was better when I got up onto the second floor. There, the corridors were carpeted and tall leaded windows lined the corridors on at least one side. I walked along a gallery with a crimson carpet and windows from floor to ceiling either side of me. It hung like a bridge over the quadrangle in the centre of the Temple. Below me, the gardens were silver in the moonlight. All colours had been leached out of them and I saw it all in black and white. Little topiaries looking like they were made of foam.

My mind, however, didn't register this. I kept walking into the North wing. Not far now. I was stumbling slightly, unsure of my own tiredness. I was weak. Probably too weak. I had hardly eaten anything. Only that which I felt would make me better. My head was light, and odd colours danced in the corners of my vision. I couldn't do anything too quickly. It all had this magic sheen. Something untouchable and wild.

I turned left into a long hallway, bordered on one side by pillars and open air and on the other by a wall. I breathed as deeply as I could, feeling the icy oxygen replenish my sandy lungs. Maybe I would make it without water. Maybe. I went back inside again, treading the familiar stone staircase up to the corridor where the hospital wing resided. I was growing less and less sure of my ability to get as far as the hospital wing. It really did seem like an unnecessarily long way to go. I lifted my hands to my temples and ran my cold, stiff fingers through my hair. It needed brushing rather badly. I quickened my pace slightly, feeling a surge of wooziness shiver through my head. I really could do with something to eat...

I pushed out of another door and onto a second gallery outside. I took another few steps along the it, my numb feet protesting mildly. My knees shook once, and then all I had left was my tenuous grip on the concrete balustrade. I swung downwards, the concrete slabs rocketing upward to meet my face. I cried out vaguely, not entirely sure of what was actually happening to me. Falling? Well, maybe. I was just as likely to be flying, considering my current state.

Then suddenly, I wasn't falling anymore. Strong hands caught at my arms and I was pulled back onto my feet, where I promptly collapsed forwards against someone. A person.

Busted.

I moaned in despair. They weren't meant to know I was up and moving. I had endeavoured to keep out of their way for ... what? I couldn't remember precisely. Something along the lines of four or five days... maybe as much as a week. I had spent so long in my waking comas. I knew that the last one had only been two days or so, but there was one before that. Who knows?

I breathed in, trying to regain my senses, and a familiar smell filled my nostrils -- a nice smell. It had the tang of alcohol and charm, but it was tainted sour. I knew that that was not just the smell, but my own instinctive recollection of it.

In that case, there were two people it could possibly be: Ori or Draco.

I looked up through my bleary eyes. How much had staring into space for five days without pause damaged them? I couldn't tell at that moment. All I knew was that I couldn't see.

Blond hair, well, if that wasn't a give away.

'Draco,' I groaned, pulling back and trying to run away. His shock at my sudden movement was clearly in my favour, as he let go. As soon as I left his grasp, I spiralled and collapsed to the ground. My lip bumped against my bottom teeth and the coppery tang of blood drizzled into my mouth. My hands scraped along the slightly sandy stones and the skin of my palms was grazed up. I coughed in surprise, finding that I was winded. The taste of the blood livened my senses, though, and I started to feel more awake.

'Rae?' Draco asked, sounding very puzzled.

'Just leave me alone,' I wheezed, bringing my arms up to cover my head.

'I don't understand...'

'Well of course you bloody don't! You don't understand anything!' I cried, burying my face down in my hair. I felt a trickle of warm blood run down my lip.

'I hardly think that's fair,' he said mildly. 'Are you going to get up off the floor, or do I have to drag you like a child?'

'Leave me in bloody peace!' I growled. 'Let me die here, on my own! As if I ever meant anything to you anyway!'

'Fair point,' he murmured unpleasantly. I heard his footsteps on the ground as he walked away.

Why on earth was he out at this hour? He sounded like he was wearing shoes, too. Why was he still dressed? Of course, I had an excuse.

Unthinking, I reached out to him with my mind. That connection was nothing to do with the love spell. The love spell just made it more acceptable to us both.

At first, I met a crashing waterfall of destroyed emotions. Everything was falling down. I couldn't really gather myself enough to make sense of what I was feeling from him. It seemed that something was wrong. A picture of me flitted past my eyes. A picture of me laughing and smiling - did he really see me as pretty as that? - then one of me lying on the floor in Raven's tower, my eyes welling up with tears of hurt and despair. Accompanying that picture was the greatest sense of loss and pain. I assumed it was my own. Why would Draco even give a damn? After that was an image of my face as it had been the last time I saw him - tearstained and red with fury. Hurling insults - again with the pain and terrible sadness. Then there was me, covering my head with my arms so that I couldn't see him.

Then suddenly it all shut down and there was a blank flash in front of my eyes. I gasped in pain and surprise as an angry jolt slammed my head. It took me a while to realise that it had come from outside and not in my mind.

'Get out of my head, bitch!' Draco yelled, his face painfully close to mine as I wrenched my eyes open. He was livid. His lips were curled back in a sneer and his eyes were narrowed.

'I didn't - I wasn't...' I protested slightly, confused.

'What do you want from me?' he demanded, his voice slightly shrill.

'What do you want from me?' I retorted in bewilderment.

'What does it take to get rid of you?' he hissed, shaking his head slightly. A strand of blond hair fell loose from behind his ear. Without thinking, I reached out and slipped it back again. He leaned into my hand for a split second before pushing it away angrily.

'Don't touch me, Sewer Girl,' he spat. 'I don't care what we once shared. It's over know and I'm happy this way.'

'You don't look happy,' I pointed out, my true-self retreating in horror and despair and my autopilot taking over.

'Don't I? Well I'm fucking dancing,' he spat. 'Joyous day. I no longer have to look at your sorry face when I wake up.'

'You know I have nothing to say to that,' I said wearily, reaching out to the balustrade and pulling myself to my feet.

'And why not? You have nothing to say because you know you're fake and disgusting,' he said, answering his own question.

'You don't have to speak for me anymore,' I replied. 'I've seen the worst of you, and I don't think there's anything I might reveal that even the stupidest person wouldn't see straightaway. Obviously, I have some catching up to do.'

He smirked at me.

'Well even I could have told you that,' he said nastily.

'Even you,' I smiled, but with no happiness.

He paused. There was obviously no reply he could think of.

'So what do we do now?' I asked.

'I don't know,' he said eventually. 'Where do you want to go?'

'I want to go somewhere where we don't have to fight anymore,' I replied thoughtfully. 'You know how I feel - still. I don't think I can change that, not if I don't even understand it.'

'You still...?' He looked surprised.

'Of course I do,' I snapped. 'Wasn't that obvious? You know, by the way I burst into tears?'

He thought about it for a while, staring at the dark purple sky.

'I - didn't really think that was the way it is,' he said softly, returning his gaze to me. He had his hands in his pockets. Pockets of what? He was wearing a black shirt and jeans. The shirt looked too big for him and the jeans crumpled as they met his boots. The marble white skin of his neck was traced with pale blue veins and the tendons of his neck stood out as though with great tension. Borrowed clothes? Well, maybe. He wasn't really the type too borrow clothing. He hadn't worn this sort of thing since we lived at the Ministry.

'How could you not know?' I demanded, my voice crackling as it was forced to become louder.

'Don't ask me,' he said quietly. 'Really. I didn't know. I thought you hated me.'

'Of course I hate you,' I said angrily. 'I could never avoid hating you. I've always hated you for making me feel this way about you. There's no way I could love you like this and not hate you. Like I could never trust you.'

'I thought the spell...' he murmured. 'You love me?'

'God,' I muttered, rolling my eyes and looking up at the vaulted ceiling of the gallery. 'Yes, Draco Malfoy. I love you. I love you more than the earth. I love you like you're the oxygen that keeps me living. If I had to choose between you and breathing I would hold my breath until there was none left just to see your face for that last minute or so. I love you as much as I love the sun and the sky. You're my world, Draco. You're everything to me and I have nothing else but you. The fact that you hate me was enough to make me want to kill myself. You know that the only thing that stopped me is the thought that I would never see your face again if I did the dirty deed? I would never be able to look at you and that would be hell, even if I was in heaven. Looking at you makes me want to cry, because you're out of my reach. Your face is burned into the back of my eyelids, and I see you even when I close my eyes. You fill my dreams at night and I can never escape you. I could die and I wouldn't escape, because you're a part of my soul. '

He paused for a long time, looking at me. 'I didn't know that, no,' he said quietly. He looked at the floor, sniffing slightly. His hair fell across his face and he reached up a long, pale hand to draw it back behind his ears again.

I just looked at him, taking in the fine lines of his muscles under his shirt; the lowlights under the sun-bleached outer layers of his hair; the pale skin of his neck, as soft as warm velvet, and the long, dark lashes, laying like charcoal marks across his cheekbones as he closed his eyes and looked up.

'Why do you do this to me,' he asked briefly, squinting on eye almost shut and cocking his head to one side. I was suddenly reminded of teenage boyfriends.

'How dare you ask me that!' I cried, coughing through the lump in my throat. My resulting voice came out as a rasping squeak. 'How dare you? After all you do to me, pain, endless misery of missing you, then on some little whim, you go and destroy my life! Now, now, you say that you don't love me and you never did! How would you feel? I'm like some little boat on a big tidal wave. You could shatter me against the rocks or carry me to shore. I suppose you already made up your mind. You hate me.'

'I never said that...'

'Oh yes you did! You said that several times, interspersed with "I can't believe I ever slept with someone as ugly as you", and "Now I don't have to look at your ugly face." "You're disgusting.".'

'It's often been proven that we lie when we're hurt,' he murmured. I suppressed a glimmer of hope. Don't count those chickens...

'This is all rubbish,' I snapped, pushing past him. The feel of his skin, warm against mine, sent electric tremors through my body and I but my lip, wishing that I didn't want him so much.

'It isn't!' he cried out, trying to catch at my arm but missing. I took this little advantage and broke into a run, my bare feet slapping the flagstones painfully. I sprinted, regardless of my exhaustion and the chilled agony in my feet. I pushed through the door at the far end of the gallery and slammed it behind me.

The inside of the building wasn't noticeably warmer than outside, but I knew the hospital wing usually was. I dived through the door into the warm silence and slowed to a walk.

Beds lined the walls, and a hushed atmosphere filled the air. It smelt like old sparks of sizzling magic. The air was tingling with spells and power. Occasional flashes caught me off guard and I jumped. The air tasted of wood smoke and burnt sugar - the scent of magic in its purest form.

Alethea was in the bed at the far end of the long room. Her midnight hair was pooled around her like black ink, highlighting the sharp bones of her face and, most of all, the deep hollows in her cheeks and eyes. A shaft of moonlight slanted across her face, draining the shadows.

I dragged a chair over from beside another bed and sat down beside her bed. I couldn't bring myself to wake her, somehow. Draco had told me over a month ago that she had two weeks left. Now she was in 'magical stasis', and it was clear what was meant by that now. She was totally out of it. I could barely see her chest rise and fall. I held my breath, listening for hers.

Soon I caught onto it. A gentle rasping sound filled the air around her every three seconds or so. If it got much slower, her heart wouldn't be able to pump. I suppose that was the point. Only get her body to do as much as it needs to live.

I sighed, taking in the air with its smell of burning and potency. What was I doing? I was perfectly happy. Why did I have to have all these friends who were collapsing - figuratively or literally - around me? Rhea, Cloud, Spider and Tyger ... Tyger. Tyger wasn't fine. Not at all. It suddenly struck me. Cloud would probably die sometime during this war. He was only here for me. He would probably die because of me as well. Who knows what was happening to Rhea while I was gone? I had deserted her. She was probably sick with worry and miserable that both I and Cloud had vanished. Spider was dead for all I knew. Maybe captured, maybe still alive. Now I had all these new friends. Skye, Raven, Adura - well, she was more of an annoying presence -, Ori, Persephone, Alethea and, of course, Draco. Alethea was dying. Ori was dying - well, sort of. Draco was insane and upset. Raven had always been insane. Skye was in jail somewhere in Edinburgh. Persephone was technically dead and bloodthirsty but still fine and Adura was fine too, if a little underfed.

Skye... What were we going to do about her? We couldn't leave here until Alethea was well... Unless a few of us went. I could go. Maybe Draco, Persephone and I or something like that. Draco and Persephone would know how to get in and I, well, it was just unthinkable that I should stay behind. The others could stay here and save Alethea and Ori. It would all work out fine, and we wouldn't lose any more precious time. We were rapidly running out of time anyway. The minutes and seconds sifted through my fingers like fine sand, and every day poured more grains into my hands until it began spilling over the edges in an unstoppable cascade.

I was only wasting time by still being there. Who was I kidding? Raven and everyone had been with Alethea since the moment we got back, and they still had been unable to do anything to help her. Ori hadn't shown any signs of improvement yet, either. I got up wearily and crossed to where Ori lay, surrounded by curtains and on a drip filled with blood, noting absently that Draco hadn't followed me. Not yet, at least.

I sat down beside Ori. His face was clean and he looked innocent and almost sweet when he slept. I couldn't recall ever seeing him asleep before. The cuts on his face had healed over, although one contained black stitches, neatly binding the skin. His chestnut hair was swept back from his face, combed through with water to keep it away while his face was repaired. One or two rebellious locks had coiled back over to stick out above his forehead. I gazed at him for a while, enchanted by his dark beauty.

'I wonder if you're alright, Ori,' I murmured, trying to smooth the hairs back against his head. They scraped roughly against my callused fingers, stiff with water.

'Just fine, thanks,' he smiled, not opening his eyes.

I snatched my hand back, jumping.

'I thought you were asleep,' I said, holding a hand to my chest as I tried to steady my heart.

'I don't sleep,' he replied, crossing his arms over his chest, putting each hand on the opposite shoulder. 'Not really.'

'Me neither,' I said, sitting down on his bed more calmly.

He opened his eyes and smiled. 'I could tell,' he grinned, glancing at the clock on the wall.

I laughed slightly, feeling better already. What was going on here then?

'Look,' he started, sitting up, 'I'm sorry for all this stuff that's happened between us which makes things bad. You know none of it's my fault.'

I nodded, my mouth dry. 'I know.'

'And I know, even though you may not believe or trust me, how hard this is for you. I've been dead a long time now, and you see people fade. Since I was twenty-four, I've had to know that everyone I cared about would die and fade away, or I would kill them myself.'

He cursed softly and swung his legs over the side of the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress with his hands.

'I watched my mother grow old and be buried without a thing changing for me. I just had to watch from a distance. I was at my mother's funeral at the age of twenty-four, when she was eighty.'

He paused for a long time.

'I had a daughter, you know,' he said quietly. I didn't say anything. Neither of us looked at the other. We were both staring at our knees. 'She was beautiful.' His voice took on a reverent tone. 'Her hair was the colour of sunset, and her eyes were like the sky over the tropics.' He sighed.

'I had to keep away, watch her from across the street. I could never get close to her in case I killed her or hurt her. There's no way to control this. I'm only safe around you lot because this prophecy stops me from killing you all. I had to watch her grow up and I never met her. She never knew who I was. Her mother never spoke of me in case she found out who I was. Jennifer was her name. My little girl Jennifer.'

He looked up at the ceiling and was silent.

'She died,' he said. 'I was at her funeral. I watched my daughter be buried. Have you any idea how hard that is?' he asked, turning shining eyes to me. 'I had to get away. I sank deeper and deeper into drugs and crime. I joined a band, a rock band. No one cared if I was pale and hated the light, as long as I could shout and scream and play the guitar. And I can,' he added. 'We were famous. Of course, soon they started to suspect that something was wrong. They couldn't understand why I never ate, or why I never went out in public unless I could get away from them. They started to find out too much, so I ran off again. Then I heard about Persephone and her vampires in Russia, which was about ... ten years ago. Around the year two thousand or so. Since then, I've been with Perse and pals, drowning, fumigating and stoning my sorrows away.'

I looked up at him. He blinked several times.

'Anyway, I know what it's like to lose friends and know that you have to go on. I know that we're all meant to die. All of us except you. You and Adura are meant to live. I couldn't care less. Maybe I'll see Jennifer again. Maybe she'll be waiting for me ... but she'd be in heaven. I'm going to hell for being soulless and evil. You have to be human for heaven, that's what I was told when I was young. I shouldn't even try to stain her beautiful face with my presence. I should never have even let her be born. I should have killed her mother. I wanted to,' he added, looking at me again. 'But somehow I thought that having a child might bring me back from the edge. I don't know. Even if I wasn't a ... what I am, I was too wild. Too untamed. When I was alive I had always done the wrong things.'

I said nothing. I couldn't. I reached out my arms and wrapped them around him. He leaned into me, resting his head on my shoulder. I buried my face in his neck and cried for him - for me. It was too much to think that I would have to live this too. But maybe I deserved it.

'How touching,' Draco drawled from the back of the room. 'Would anyone hazard a guess as to how long I've been here listening to all this bullshit about dear innocent Ori's long and painful half life?'

'Too long,' I snapped, raising my head. 'Even if you just came through the door.'

Ori raised his head and sneered at Draco.

'Go and fall off a tower, Malfoy,' he hissed.

'I'd love to,' Draco drawled, 'only it would involve obliging you, and it is that hurdle at which I fall.'

'What do you want?' I sighed.

'I wanted to know if you were alright,' he said, standing up straight and pushing away from the doorframe. 'Obviously you are.'

'And why wouldn't I be?' I asked.

'You don't know him, Rae,' Draco hissed. 'You don't know what he's done. I suppose he told you that he watched his daughter be buried at a ripe old age. It's a lie. He killed her. He killed her and he probably enjoyed it.'

Ori said nothing. He just stood up and walked out, pushing deliberately hard against Draco as he passed. I stared at the floor. I couldn't look at Draco after he said that. There was no way I could.

'I hope you're happy about that,' I said finally.

'Oh, I am,' Draco said, a dark glee tainting his words.