LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE…
THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.
ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION.
AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END ONE DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.
LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?
WHERE: Former Chamber of Secrets, now the Batcave.
WHEN: 7th January 2024, 10:30pm.
NOTES: In the aftermath of the Red Wedding, Louis Weasley received a letter containing condolences from the Professor in charge of his beloved Fencing Club. It also came with an offer.
“My condole-”
“Why don’t we just get straight to the point. I can’t be gone for too long.” cut off the blonde boy, seated opposite the powerfully-built man of legend. He bit his tongue afterwards. Bruce Wayne was not someone you spoke like that to. In between the two of them was a small round table, dominated largely by a chessboard.
There was a grin. Or a smirk. Or a mixture of both. Not jovial enough to be a grin. Not cocky enough to be a smirk. An unknown quantity that wavered uncertainly enough on the line to unnerve Louis enough.
“Very well then.”
There was a significant pause.
“Let’s see what you can do.”
Cold metal bit into the cushioned back of the armchair he was seated in, the strike having come so fast Louis heard the whistle of the air by his ear being parted. He vaulted himself over the side of the chair, catching the flat of the sword on his side as he tried to put some distance between him and his teacher.
“Slow.”
There was no reprieve as Louis dove for the fireplace despite the growing pain that was starting to numb the right side of his rib cage. A desperate parry with a retrieved poker carrying the momentum of his turning self sent him overcompensating the other side, forcing him to scurry away from the next thrust that came from the hulking man.
And here he was, a moderately fit Ravenclaw in the Sixth Year, forced to go up against a man that, despite being a Squib, carried enough of a reputation to make the hardiest criminals quaver in their boots.
But once he regained his footing, Louis knew that he had a fighting chance, which led to a more than pathetic scramble in the other direction. He got up just in time to strike back, strike before the Batman could get onto him. It was his only chance at regaining any sort of footing in the pace of the fight, to force Bruce Wayne onto the reactionary and stop letting him dictate how things would go.
“Sloppy,” came afterwards, a counter-stroke that left his fingers tingling.
As Batman loomed over him, sword pressed to his and forcing him to backpedal towards the wall, Louis realised that he was looking into the eyes of a madman carrying too many disorders in his head to even function.
Yet somehow he did, and the product was something very close to destiny manifest.
He managed to elicit a grunt of surprise when he forced his poker down into the bladeguard of Batman’s weapon, and using that leverage to pivot around the side, dancing away as years of instinctive footwork came back to him.
But there was hardly any time to be smug about denying the Professor his victory when the next few seconds felt like minutes, his eyes darting from corner to corner, trying to keep himself from being impaled by two feet of steel.
“Weak. How do you expect to defend even yourself?” spat the man, bashing away Louis’ poker so hard it went flying, leaving his fingers unfeeling.
“Pick it up.” His voice was coarse. Venomous. None of the refined gentleman they all saw in class any more. This wasn’t Bruce Wayne, the Potions Professor. This was Batman, the Vigilante of Gotham, the man who had faced down Darkseid when everyone else had fallen.
A powerful hand grabbed his shoulder and threw him to the floor when he went for his poker.
“No rules in a real fight. No breaking away upon contact like in fencing.”
“You’re soft. Useless.”
“No wonder your family died.”
Then Louis saw red, and next thing he knew, he was on the attack. Strike after strike, blocked and avoided and parried with perfection. None of which was of any use at all. He lashed out with anger, going wide, earning himself another whip of the blade’s flat side across his ribs.
“You’re angry, but you’re not making good use of it.”
“Slow.”
The taunts kept coming, coming, coming. Bile rose at the back of his throat, a disgust wrought out of his own cowardice, tears invoked by memory blinding him as he took another hit on the shoulder. He swung again, again. Deflected, kicked in the thigh, palmed in the face.
“Be angry. Control it.”
“Let it know that it works on your terms and not the other way around.”
He was thrown to the floor when the shoulder of a man one and a half times his size bashed into his chest.
“It’ll be demanding. You’ll hate me. You’ll hate yourself.”
Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you'll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.
That is what happened when [she] smiled at me.
Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
You’re like a potato!” I shouted after her. “In a minefield.”
She froze in place. Then she spun on me, her face lit by a half-grown fruit. “A potato,” she said flatly. “That’s the best you can do? Seriously?”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Listen. You’re strolling through a minefield, worried about getting blown up. And then you step on something, and you think, ‘I’m dead.’ But it’s just a potato. And you’re so relieved to find something so wonderful when you expected something so awful. That’s what you are. To me.”
“A potato.”
“Sure. French fries? Mashed potatoes? Who doesn’t like potatoes?”
“Plenty of people. Why can’t I be something sweet, like a cake?”
“Because cake wouldn’t grow in a minefield. Obviously.”
She stared down the hallway at me for a few moments, then sat on an overgrown set of roots.
Sparks. She seemed to be crying. Idiot! I thought at myself, scrambling through the foliage. Romantic. You were supposed to be romantic, you slontze! Potatoes weren’t romantic. I should have gone with a carrot.
...my heart is made of stronger stuff than glass. When she strikes she'll find it strong as iron-bound brass, or gold and adamant together mixed. Don't think I am unaware, some startled deer to stand transfixed by hunter's horns. It's she who should take care, for when she strikes, my heart will make a sound so beautiful and bright that it can't help but bring her back to me in winged light.
