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Deserting The Enemy Author: Innle Draco is tired. His eyes are grit-surfaced, staring, in the frigid still clarity of very early morning. The pre-light sky seems almost unnaturally perfect, domed washes of colour mazing his vision, as if to convince him of the unreality he's living. It's working. The Australian desert, After, is at once the most and least real place he's ever been. The moment is both timeless and time-lapse. He sees double. He's not thinking. He's being, the extent of his power after aeons of shuffling through the deceptively slow process of shifting weight, lifting foot, swinging foot, dropping foot. Shifting weight, lifting foot, swinging foot, dropping foot, through the utter darkness of annihilation. He's carried the goddamn pack for so long that he can't balance without it. He's terrified of losing it and what little he has left. At the same time, he hates it for the pain mandala radiating from his shoulders, and for everything it doesn't contain. He hates it sometimes, when he's been thinking too much, more than he's ever hated anything. More than Potter. More than his father. More than life. This close to the light-time, he's swaying under his burden, but he needs to keep moving until his knees give out. He's going forward. Forward on the white line, furthest from predators rustling in the saltbush, most visible to traffic. He makes himself promises he probably can't keep - to the next dotted line. The next double line. The next dotted-solid line. The next dotted line. Magic wouldn't've helped much, even if there were any left. The absence of power tingles inside, like phantom internal organs. Draco occupies a quarter of his body, and the rest is just desiccated tracery, a frangible skin bubble. Between magic withdrawal, the disorienting pain and exhaustion, and the intermittent patches of nothingness, he isn't doing very well. Sometimes he's above, watching the dim dirty figure of a youth sway onwards. Vertiginous shifts of perspective assault him: suddenly he swings far behind, low, and the youth's a giant, his dim arachnid shadow looming ahead, like a nightmare of etiolation. The shadow suddenly grows edges. He snaps back into the walking figure, but he was never really gone. He's nauseous while he's awake, now, and his tongue is huge in his mouth. It's hard to breathe. Harder with the light. Shadows mean light. He twists his head - can't break the rhythm or he'll fall - and is pierced by the baleful fiery glimmers clawing the horizon. His head. Sick. Eyes hurt. Keep walking. Head down. See the dotted line. Light is wind, and wind is red dust and flies. Light is the lying-down time, in any shelter he can find. He slept under a tree once, but the shadow kept jumping, leaving him flattened and logy in the sun. Saltbush is thin shade but it's less ambitious, better for dozing. He's learnt his lesson about ambition. He can walk a little while after the light comes. Heat and glare and stones and pain. Not as far now as when he started walking. When he was thrown out of that last truck. It doesn't really matter. More light. Shadow sharper in the sharp air. All the frantic mind-tumble of Before is gone now, boiled away in the eternal crucible of the desert. He walks in the dark and hides in the beating light. Tries to. His water dwindles. Stumble. Seasons are something that happens to other people. This rust-and-saltbush world *is*. This newly-burning blue sky, this passively resistant scrub, this faded and dispirited tar road, in aeternam. White lines brighter burning paths in his brain. The double lines. Middle of the road - danger - don't care - Pain pain eyes head feet down no ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Harry drives fast in the desert. He can see an eternity of road stretching ahead, heat-shimmer straining his vision. It's deceptive, a mixed blessing. He's highly visible. He drives fast, periodically checks the shotgun in its rack. There's no more magic, but his lightning scar, a magical scar, still aches. Especially when he tries to think about his dead. After the last battle, the final confrontation between good and evil, things fell apart. The sheer magnitude of the powers colliding caused a flashover, ripped the magical field from the earth. This magical field had bound the planet into the multiverse lattices, into time and space. It was destroyed. Time and space stopped functioning. He's going West. The populous area Before is far too dangerous. The landscape there is half-present, prone to…uncertainty. So. West. Places with too much of an attachment to a particular time, places of constant change, don't really exist any more. Places with humans: Muggles or Wizards, it doesn't matter, humans are all the same. Addicted to change. Changing everything around them. Creatures of time and space, and therefore magic as well. But places unaccustomed to constant human invasion, places that change only very gradually (in the ways that matter), they are still mostly there. Harry has discovered that the further he leaves the ghostly husks of civilisation behind, the less likely he is to be mired in terrible colourless unbeing. The filthy green four-wheel-drive he appropriated only works intermittently, and his hoarded petrol won't last, but he jolts westward regardless, towards the centre, where maybe things will be better. (Dumbledore's last known act was to Apparate his protégé far away from the battle.) Harry has a theory about why he's still alive. This is only an idea, but it seems all right to be going on with. He wasn't expecting to escape this time, to cheat his overdue fate once more. He was resigned. The Apparation took him off guard, and he stumbled as he hit the ground at his destination, moments before he felt the tumult of magic's destruction begin. He didn't know where and when he was; he wasn't attached to space and time. Once again, he is The Boy Who Lived. So many others died, or, at least he thinks they did - there aren't as many remains as he would've expected. Hardly any. Most of the bodies he's seen were recently alive - still bleeding, sometimes. The quagmires of unbeing had probably swallowed up the rest, the silent millions of silent dead. When time failed. The other survivors don't seem particularly…anchored in reality. Maybe they were the mad, the distracted, the artists, Before. Then again, what has happened would drive anyone mad. Which came first? Does it really matter who they are, as long as he stays away from them? Yes, the living. He fears them. Fears what they have made him, and how much further he might go. Only a handful has survived the aftermath of the Change: the strong, the ruthless, the unlucky. Harry thinks he's probably just unlucky. It would be easier to die. Direct or indirect method? Either would do. If his subconscious still doesn't like the direct, honest way, it would be easy enough to slow down. (Is he doing it now? Pedal to the floor again to be sure. His head snaps back with the renewed surge of power.) He still hasn't learnt how to give up, despite everything. Not when his body still functions and he's sane. Mostly. Kind of. Plus, he has eleven years of living without magic to fall back on. He never thought he'd be grateful to the Dursleys at all, let alone like this. Then again, none of them had ever thought this would happen. … If he's lonely forever, so be it. He didn't die when he was meant to, when it would've done some good. If he'd died before the final battle, maybe Voldemort would rule the earth but magic and time and reality would probably still be intact. Without them there is no hope. He'll live instead, and hate it. Hermione and Ron would've smacked him over the head and told him to stop blaming himself. But they are dead. Because of him. So he feels free to blame himself. He's at least been right about that all along. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eyelids flicker. Not right. Too hot. Skin tight, tight. Can't move! Rumbling near his ear. Can't move. Can't move. Exhale. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Harry's been driving fast for a long time or no time, nothing to entertain him except his own morbid thoughts and the BeeGees. He's heard that CD about four hundred times already, and to sing along properly he needs the other pair of shorts, slung in the back. They're tighter. The sun creeps towards its blazing zenith. Or does it? Later, he thinks he sees something in the heat haze, but he's not sure. His sight is strained through technicolour blotches, a migraine struggling to be born. There aren't enough vehicles left for much roadkill, but that's probably what it is. Dangerous to slow down again. Unless…? (His subconscious whispers at him, the myriad seductive voices of despair.) Harry drags a hand down his face, hard. He briefly squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them, concentrates on the irregularity in the heat haze. It's not conscious, whatever it is, he decides. Nothing conscious would choose that position. Anything conscious would be in the shade. I'll take the gun. I can always steal the gear, he reflects. If it's a trap…well…. Harry stomps on the brake, puts the clutch in, skids the four-wheel-drive to a halt twenty metres from the incongruous mound. He checks the surrounding scrub before switching off the ignition and his grip on the shotgun before opening the door. He's learnt a lot. He leaves his door open for a quick exit, if he needs it. Stalks closer, holding his breath. He is always ready for stench, now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ He stirs again to the tread of filthy boots next to his head. Draws breath - explosion of pain in his ribs! Tries to roll over, away, can't. Wheezes feebly. Inhales a lungful of dust, coughs once, then more. Throat so dry hurts to breathe hurts to cough everything hurts - fight for air - flipped on back, oof, boot again eyes slit squint crusty lashes dark shape so tall " - Malfoy?!" ~~~~~~~~~~~~ He hadn't expected it to be alive - few things are, After. He also hadn't expected it to be his one-time tormentor and rival. Draco Malfoy. Death Eater's son. Poster boy for Slytherin values. Assumed forsworn to Voldemort. General all-round bastard. Someone he knew Before. He's almost sorry for the boot to the ribs now, but at least he's sure he's alive. Dead things don't wheeze as much as this. Whatever happened Before, whatever he's done After, Harry still can't leave Malfoy like this. He could probably have reprieved that tumble of rags and flesh, like the other pitiful things he found in the cities, but he can't kill something that shared breakfast with him, Before. When he didn't even realise what Before meant. Harry decides. He glances around again, once. Still nothing to be seen but stringy saltbush, the crumbling highway cutting a blackish swathe to the horizon. The chances of anyone hiding in ambush out here are laughably small. He pokes Malfoy with the shotgun barrel, twice. A crackly moan, that's all. That's enough. Harry walks back to the 4WD, places the shotgun on the rack again, jogs to kneel beside his old enemy. They're vulnerable here. Harry feels the itch of inaction shudder through his body. Have to keep moving. He briefly considers the figure sprawled across the double lines. He hasn't helped anyone for a very long time, except to death. Helping is a sign of weakness. His skin shudders, but there are few flies this early. He itches. Harry forms a plan and finally kneels. He reaches for his knife, lifts the pack strap and saws the nylon away from the slack-skinned twitching shoulder and the stinking excuse for a shirt. Draco collapsed face-first, he thinks, from the bloody nose and gravelled face, but has rolled to his side with the boot to the ribs, one arm flung over his head against the sun. He looks like shit. Nonetheless, Harry rolls him to cut the other strap, filthy with ingrained dirt and sweat. Where was he going? This isn't a place, this is nowhere. Can't he give up, either? The pack is off. Harry peels it from Draco's back and wrinkles his nose at the sullen tide of stench. He picks up the pack, deposits it quickly in the four-wheel-drive's boot, strides back to Draco. Itch. No time. He's tall now, and necessity means he's more muscle-bound than he used to be. Draco's husk isn't too difficult to carry. Harry leans the body on a leg propped up on the running board, swings the door open with his free arm, hefts the body into the passenger seat. He reaches into the back for one of his drinking-water bottles - not much left, but enough, and Draco needs it more than he does. Sluices the flaming face and the caked-brown hair. Watches the craquelure lips twitch as rivulets of mud form. Tilts back the wet sun-blistered head, drips several precious shining drops into the mouth. He's going slowly, so slowly, yet still some flows down the chin, drops in glistening polka dots on the dust of his chest. A part of Harry mourns these drops. A swallow, a faint grimace. Thirst swells the throat and tongue. Harry knows this intimately, but not as intimately as Malfoy, it seems. He's not too far gone for reflex. This is good. Harry waits, scans the bush and road again, itches to go. Masters himself. Gives Draco a little more water. Draco swallows a little more. Harry does it again. Again. Stops - too much is dangerous, now, and he has to move. The susurrus of breeze through the saltbush is more eerie than no sound at all. It is lonely and eternal and Harry has to keep going right now because anyone could be watching and on the move is safer. He reaches across Malfoy, clicks the seatbelt home, straightens his burden's legs and folds his hands across his belly. Don't throw up, he prays. Harry slams the door, scrambles around the front of the 4WD, ducks through his open door into the driver's seat, feet on the pedals, clutch in, checks he's in first as he twists the key and revs. Engages and shoots off, dead in the middle of the highway. He still wears the seatbelt, after everything. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Less hot. Wet in mouth. Greedy. Face so tight. Water. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Harry pulls over to dispense water as the incandescent sun slowly dies. Driving west means driving into the sun. His migraine has finally won. He can't stop - what if he was seen when he picked up Malfoy? They could be following, and there aren't any dust clouds on the bitumen highway to betray them. He sees so far ahead and behind, but he hasn't stayed alive so long by denying his paranoia. Just another quarter-tank of petrol before they can hide, he promises himself. Just another five trees. He races the sun, waits it out. Headlights would give him away. Once an old man in a corner talked at him. About the Min Min, in particular, hovering eldritch desert presences blamed on the refraction of light in rapidly cooled air, but really a sort of native ghost. Harry knows there are no more ghosts, just as there are no more sprites, pixies, goblins, trolls, unicorns, griffins, owls, dragons, Boggarts, grindylows, merpeople…he made a litany, once, the first time he was shot. Wallowing in his loss seemed acceptable for once, if he was going to die anyway. Unfortunately the gang's lone gunman had only managed to graze his left shoulder, and Harry is a master of trajectory, thanks to Quidditch training. There weren't any Quaffles or Bludgers to hand but the principle has universal applications. He killed one with a well-aimed rock and drove the other four away. But back to the fantastic beasts, as his textbook so aptly called them. They all died: they were even more dependent upon the time-space-magic force than humans. So Harry can reject the Min Min story as bullshit. He falls back on Muggle physics. Headlights will get him killed. He used to drive fast (between breakdowns) during the light times, and pull away from the highway at dusk. Slept until the itch of inertia forced him on again. The stinking unconscious presence beside him might change things. Then again, he might be a short-lived problem. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ At the trickle of wetness down his chin, Draco's eyes finally crack open. He squints automatically, but the dark is reassuringly deep. He stretches his abused eyelids open, rolls his sandblasted eyeballs around. Where the fuck is he? Potter's head looms in front of him - shit, startled him. Potter's head looks like a Dali painting, all melting thin features and the wrong colours. "How are you holding up, Malfoy?" he asks, slightly warily. And they talk, huddled in blankets near the back tyres of the car. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Later, they are in the car again. They have been on the move, occasionally cursing the car when it refuses to go on. These mechanical failures seem more frequent now, although there's no real frame of reference any more. Maybe it's just that they have someone to talk to now, someone else to consider. They can worry about silences now. Or maybe it's the car trying to attach itself to time and space again, now that things are happening within. Conversations and revelations and musings and sleeping and eating and conserving water jolt them back into the temporal world, where they are vulnerable. Harry thinks he sees Malfoy's form stretch and lump like candle drippings, sometimes, but he says nothing. He's not sure how Malfoy feels about the future. How can there be a future without time? His brain isn't meant to deal with this. For the time being, he just drives and listens. Malfoy is improving. He only threw up once after his first solid meal. His skin is no longer dull and doughy but red-brown, elastic, and his scalp peels off long sheets of epidermis to reveal the tender paleness below. A newer start. They can almost afford to share the water evenly, now. Malfoy has not complained about their direction, or anything, really, which worries Harry in a perverse way. Malfoy always has something to complain about. He isn't challenging Harry's authority, either. It's very strange. He sits and stares most of the light time, punctuates this with odd flurries of comments, theories, apologies, rhetoric, then lapses into silence again. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ If they sit and drive long enough, they might get somewhere. Draco imagines there would have been signs at some point but their brave new world abhors the specific, the unique. He has no idea where they are but West. If he doesn't say anything, this newly forbidding Harry won't kick him out of the car, like the last guy. So he shuts up except when he can't any more, when his ideas and memories come spewing out like water held too long in the mouth. His speech is similarly lukewarm and undistinguished. He hopes he's not boring Harry. He hopes to stay. He fears the timeslip changes he can see accentuating Harry's lankiness. This far out, he can believe they're the only people left. Is this a bad thing? Will it make it worse when he has to leave, to save them both from the sinks of nothingness? ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Harry relaxes enough after dark, finally, to light a small fire. The desert dark is freezing and the stars wheel overhead in a ponderous echo of the eddying wind. Harry and Draco huddle as near to the flames as possible. They know the consequences: they can see edges blurring out of the corner of their eyes. Fire is the epitome of change. Fire will bring the unbeing faster. But Draco is tired. Tired of fighting the inevitable, tired of trying to discern a way out of this impossible situation. Their world is fucked. Irrevocably. There is nothing they can do about it, and the longer they stay together the closer ruin comes. But he doesn't want to die alone. Draco can feel his face fixing into a funeral mask of despair. His down-turned mouth and staring eyes, scorched by the firelight, will give him away, but if he moves, he'll break. Breaking together is still better than dying alone but not breaking at all would be best (he loves denial). He freezes, tries to capture the moment of almost-collapse. There are no more moments. It doesn't work. A roaring ache in his chest and belly, and Draco can feel himself losing control. His eyes are blurring. A hand shocks him out of his freezing plummet. Draco snaps his head around, stares at the grimy scarred fingers resting on his shoulder. Stares at the old enemy attached to those fingers. Harry meets his eyes once - a shock of grim recognition - and turns back to the fire. Yet his hand remains, slides over to Draco's other shoulder, after a pause. The dimensions distort a little more; the edges of the spinifex to Draco's right are no longer in sharp relief against the firelight. He doesn't care. No-one's touched him in sympathy or recognition or whatever that was in Harry's eyes since…he can't remember when he was touched like that. He's not sure whether that's time trying to accumulate around them and ripping bits of him apart, subtly. It might be he's never been touched like this. Draco shifts closer to Harry, quietly, still not quite believing. The ball of misery inside is expanding. Every moment brings them closer to time, tries to fix them more strongly in the now-alien lattices of the universe. Draco pauses. He thinks he's found a way out. He rests against Harry's unnaturally jutting shoulder for a moment. They both stink of sweat and dust and deprivation, but that's the least of his concerns right now. There need not be an After any more. He watches the fire eat away their remaining nearly-seconds. Draco shifts again, sits up, watches with satisfaction as the fire crackles, as Harry's emaciated face loses some of its definition. This will work. He meets Harry's eyes. Does he know what this means? How does he ask, anyway? This wasn't covered in - Before. Draco's eyes ask the question for him, and Harry seems to understand. Those torrents of speech in the car must have done some good, after all. Harry asks once, "Are you sure?" Draco nods. He couldn't give up when it was just him against the world, but now it's a team effort. It's even a strange kind of winning, in a strange kind of unwinnable game. They stare at each other for a moment longer. The wind and the stars above hesitate in their circling. Draco glances up once at the pitiless whorls of galaxies, but returns his gaze towards Harry. They can only help themselves now. Harry's steadfast face checks for permission one more time, with eyebrows raised over the glasses' rims. Draco nods again. He reaches out, cups Harry's head between his palms. They breathe in once, deeply, together, and then laugh abruptly. It is rather absurd. The tension broken, Draco leans in and kisses Harry. They think of nothing but each other. The point of fixing hits them and Draco pulls away briefly, stunned at both the kiss and the sensation that his limbs are evaporating from the outside. Without magic, this irrevocable act cannot fit within the timelessness they have so carefully preserved around themselves. The unbeing is upon them. Harry resumes the kiss as their atoms begin their fatal dance, from the outside in, twirling faster and faster into non-existence. They move apart just as they feel the final unravelling begin. Draco opens his eyes to meet the jaded green gaze directly in front of him. They smile. End Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their owners/creators/copyright holders. This fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights. |
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