Theo was so quiet Katie nearly forgot he was there. In fact, she would have had it not been for the long, drawn-out rant she was going off on. It was usually safe to say she would not be passionately bestowing a redundant Ted-Talk had it not been for his company, and one quick glance over her shoulder confirmed just that. Her partner sat ( quite uncomfortably judging by the looks of it ) on the slab of rock they tried passing off as a bench a large stretch away from her. She was opposite him, her back posed toward him and gaze set on the wispy black curtain—just mere strides away compared to his impressive distance.
Katie sat cross legged. She could feel the cold concrete through the fabric of her black and gold embroidered cloak. She was hunched over, doodling on the uniformed boots the Ministry presented to the pair earlier in the year along with a new set of matching uniforms. Much like the robes the Returned were expected to wear upon their arrival back to the world, the boots were exceptionally uncomfortable. They cramped her toes, pinching and poking. Certainly cutting off the circulation, she mused to herself. But alas, coloring the blooming pastel bouts of wildflowers cascading down vines and between laces made the idea of them at least a little more bearable.
Katie eyed her fellow Unspeakable’s boots from across the way as he stood up, jotting down a quick mental note to recreate her display on his own pair when the time permitted. “ Tea would be lovely! ” She chirped far too enthusiastically for someone who sat with heavy feet anchored beneath her body for an obscene amount of time. “ But I want three actual scoops this time. Don’t make me get into my sugar reserve. So help me Merlin. ” She said with a threatening glare as he retreated out the Death Chamber.
Theo’s footsteps echoed throughout the chamber until every trace of him was gone completely. Katie was left to her own devices and the solitude crept on her like fatal nightfall in the winter. The voices humming their dark lullabies from the other-side were more distinctive now. She averted her eyes from the curtain and continued coloring fiercely on her boots. The voices persisted, but she didn’t appear to mind them from this hunched over position on the floor—seemingly in her own picturesque world. The curtain itself was more intoxicating to her than anything. It had its own alluring energy that resonated very much with her own. Many saw it as an object, but to her it was alive; a deeply enhanced personification of everything one had to lose in this lifetime.
Katie stopped the wild coloring to briefly admire her masterpiece. She was quite pleased with the artwork so far and decided to switch boots while humming a face-paced Real McCoy melody beneath her breath ( occasionally stopping to toss in some of the lyrics now that Theo was gone ). The Unspeakable didn’t know if it was the inexplicable chill in the air or gut-wrenching sensation alerting her to look-up from the floor, but she was relieved she did so because that is when she witnessed another Returned miraculously step through the veil. She sprang from the floor and moved toward them with quick, but gentle strides. They hadn’t yet collapsed to the floor, which was unusual. Was it possible she imagined such a thing? She quickly batted away the uncertainty from her eyes as she rounded the arch’s large columns, coming face to face with the newly Returned.
“ Are you — hi, who — “ Katie stammered a bit hopelessly as she took in his presentation. Like all the others before him, he too was naked, but not unconscious. Not yet at least. The Unspeakable had not yet found herself in a predicament of this sorts before. She always anticipated having a few extra minutes to prepare for the face-to-face that came after. Now that she was caught completely off guard, she recognized the importance of preparation ( and the role Theo played in diligently maintaining such for them ). She stopped mid-movement, her wand draped at her side. “ Are you okay? ” Her hesitant voice cracked in the wix’s direction as her feet continued edging forward.
In a moment, there was life.
He stood on the brink, toes curling into the cold stone floor and breath, miraculous and troubling and confusing, seeping into his lungs. A fog lived inside of him, thick and comforting, crowding in close with the promise of rest if he would just close his eyes, just let it close over him and welcome him back. His lungs ached with the cold, with the gasp that followed the first, greedy for more and the stillness, the quietness, that murmured fondly in his ear.
But there was something else there too — a rumbling of voices like thunder from a distance, a call that reached out over them that sounded like —
— He knew that name and that voice. The fog protested, shushing and smothering in, but his head turned, unseeing towards that voice, towards the soft ripple of something in the air that lay just behind him if only he could take those steps backward just one or—
There was another voice now, louder and insistent. Hi, who—
He didn’t know that one, didn’t much care to either, because the louder she was the less he could hear of the other one, the less he seemed to understand. His mouth moved silently, as if to answer, tongue tripping and numb, barely a rasp of a noise crawling out of his throat before, “No.”
He blinked. Once, then twice, the blurred ripples of grey and black and smeared peachy shapes in between reconciling to something, someone. Dread reared, like an ugly beast through the fog, understanding that this something stood between him and what lay behind him, behind the voice that seemed to fade and fade and—
He’d been in danger, hadn’t he?
“Where—” it rasped out of him, punched out of his lungs as his senses suddenly, violently clawed their way out of the soothing attempts to subdue him and instincts attuned to survival took over. Between fight or flight, he’d always picked fight. The figure approaching was barely more than a smear in his vision, but his fist reeled back and slammed forward anyway as the echoes in his head began to scream.
You idiot. We need to run — we need to —
With his back to her, Theodore had no qualms about rolling his eyes. Three scoops of sugar ruined the drink. She was going to make herself sick one day and he wasn’t going to contribute to her poor health if he could help it. Not when she spent what seemed like every night baking sugar filled treats, if her constant mornings of forcing baked goodies on their team was any indication. “I know, Bell." He could practically feel her reproachful glare, didn’t need to see it to know exactly how stern she attempted to look.
She was drawing something on her boots, the fiddling motion that wouldn’t cease grabbing his attention once or twice during the long night. That wasn’t regulation. That wasn’t allowed. He wouldn’t say anything of it to anyone but Katie could not believe she would get away with such blatant disobedience for long. “Keep your eyes on the curtain.”
Theodore moved down the hall, taking a left then a right. Another right, two more lefts and he was in the staff room where the ever just boiled kettle waited for the poor souls stuck on the morning shift after an overnight. Or in his and his partner’s case, two full days in a row. The act of preparing their cups, putting a scoop of sugar in his and two in Katie’s was one of solace. He had begun to think clearer as soon as he had left the death chamber, the allure of the veil extended upon the whole room. It was as though the voices had left his head entirely and Theo found himself looking over his shoulder for someone standing there. No one was. He was entirely alone in the staff room. It was just his father’s voice still in his head, telling him to touch that dark fabric full of life at once.
Drinks prepared, he made his way back to the Death Chamber with a well hidden reluctance. Even the possibility of discovering something about why people were returning to the land of the living in the first place didn’t inspire any true motivation to this assignment. He’d rather be in the research department. Not subject collection. Stalling at the door, after the twists and turns he now could navigate in his sleep, Theodore cast a warming charm on Katie’s cup and placed it on the small shelf outside the door. Food and drink weren’t permitted inside the chambers nor in any of the specialty rooms within the Department but some rules had been relaxed as their resources had grown thin. It was much preferred to have two Unspeakables on watch, one just barely within the confines of the room, then only one.
With one hand on his cup and the other on the handle, Theodore opened the door and closed it quickly behind him at the sight of another naked man standing in front of the veil. Even the Returned were due some privacy. He hadn’t fallen onto the cushioned charmed floor. He was speaking to Katie. This was not how it was supposed to go. They all came through barely conscious. They didn’t converse. Ever the watcher, Theo paused as his hand brought his wand out and up. A quick glance to his watch noted the time, 10:17, and he flicked his wand to begin a timer, counting the seconds until the man fainted.
His wand shot out in front of him before he realized it. The silent stunning spell a base reaction at seeing a fist meet his partner’s face. Reactions may save your life but they weren’t how Theodore worked well. He had fired widely too far to the left, missing the man entirely and hitting Bell square in the chest with his wordless stupefy. Fuck. Fucking hell. He didn’t operate well under pressure and dueling was very much not his forte. Remembering to place his cup at the foot of the door, rules always the priority, Theo began taking the stairs two at a time down to the chamber’s floor. He didn’t dare fire again until he was closer to this anomaly. “Please stand down! You must be very confused, sir. We’re only here to assist you in getting some care.” Katie was so much better at this, speaking to them. Theo hardly knew what to say, surprised his voice had even reached a volume loud enough to carry across the room. Figuring he had closed enough distance, and Theo knew now he really may need his glasses not just for reading, he mumbled a quiet ebublio.
