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rarepair_shorts2012-01-01 08:37 am
rarepairs_mod) wrote in rarepair_shorts2012-01-01 08:37 am
"Wartime Coming Like a Gathering Storm," for tinnuros
Author: ???
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tinnuros
Title: Wartime Coming Like a Gathering Storm
Pairing: Helga/Salazar, Albus/Gellert, Ginny/Tonks
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,094
Summary: Three different wars loom, and there is little place for love.
Author's Notes: This turned out to be more angsty than dark, but I hope you still enjoy it, tinnuros! Happy New Year!
Wartime Coming Like a Gathering Storm
They will call it The War because it will be the only one they will ever know. They have seen battles, and they have obtained their scars, but those will be so infinitely small in comparison, Helga thinks. The familiar, screaming battle cries like those of the carrion birds will soon seem soft as a lover’s whisper; the old wounds that still plague their bearers will lower their heads in concession and await new company that will resonate deep beneath the skin.
They do not know this yet, the others, and the feeling is unfamiliar. Helga is not usually the first to detect the signs; Rowena, with her diadem and scrying mirrors, her innate perceptiveness that Helga has always admired, seems at times to have the entire future lain out before her. Yet this time it is Helga who feels the stirrings and warnings in the pit of her stomach, and like Rowena always has before until now, Helga will keep her lips pursed and her eyes distant until the moment comes for her to speak.
Salazar will not notice, though he is the cause. No longer does he kiss her lips, and so he will not see that they lock away her secrets. No longer does he meet her eyes, and so they will not betray her as she knows he is about to, coming one day soon like a gathering storm.
Salazar will become The War, and already, Helga can feel the ache of future scars from a fight that no one will win.
They call it the War because they do not think that there can be others after this. But Albus knows that there have always been wars, and that there will always be more, a savage goblet always overflowing. This, at least, is what he tells himself: that this is not the end.
Some ask him for answers, though he has none this time, and they know it. He is still ashamed of the foolishness of his youth, of the golden curls whose smell he imagines he can still detect when the moon is full and the night is deathly quiet – more than thirty years since those curls were close enough to touch, and less than seven since they ceased to feature in his every dream. They were the cause of his own private war, the one that has now bled out into the open, though others do not know it.
Ariana would have known it, but she is dead. Aberforth must know it, but he will never say; he will sneer to himself in his stables and think that this is everything Albus deserves.
Albus will always agree with his brother’s silent condemnations.
So Albus avoids everyone and everything like the recluse he has never been, but perhaps was always destined to be, for while he tells himself that this is not the end, he knows he must someday soon venture toward the completion of that thought: this War is not the end of the world; this War is not yet over, because Albus has not yet ended it. Gellert started this War, but Albus once fed its fire with his own, always unknowing, but never truly innocent. It is time – almost time – to douse the flames.
Albus knows that this necessary confrontation will not kill him, will not be the ending that ends him at last. In his darkest hours, he worries that this is what stops him from carrying on.
They are calling it the Second War already, because those who remember the First can feel the familiar patterns in the air. They whisper about it amongst themselves, and Ginny tries to hear what they say. She is almost fourteen, and no one will tell her anything she wants to know. Her brothers are just as frustrated as she – at least, Fred and George and Ron are; Bill, Charlie, and Percy are all old enough to be given straight answers instead of sighs and crooked looks and impatient, shooing hands.
Ginny is too young to remember any wars, and too innocent to imagine what one will be like, if all the rumors are true. But this is why she asks, why she wants to understand. Will they still consider her too young when the people she knows or loves start to die? She will have war’s secrets memorized by the time the adults see fit to tell this ‘child’ a single word that might have helped her prepare.
A part of her thinks that her worries and frustrations are for nothing. The Order will stop You-Know-Who in his tracks. If they cannot, then maybe Harry will just as quickly, because he has done it so many times before, and the odds are in his favor. She and her family and her friends will be safe. The moon will set and the sun will rise, and this war that the others are talking about without her will disappear into the whispers from which it was birthed.
Ginny says this out loud once, and only once. And because it is Tonks who is her listener, and because Tonks is the only one who almost never lies to her, Ginny is almost able to push the idea entirely out of her mind. Tonks tells Ginny that a war is coming, even if she is not allowed to say much more than that, and Ginny believes her. She simply pretends not to, sometimes, just as she pretends not to notice that sometimes when they are talking, Tonks’s eyes stray toward Professor Lupin, making Ginny feel hollow and alone and ever more like the child her parents insist she is and be. And always guilty, of course, since she knows she should not pretend that there aren’t more important things.
War is coming. Perhaps it has always been on the brink of the horizon.
For now, though, centuries and decades apart, Helga remembers the secret flowers Salazar wove into her hair when no one else could see her blush; and Albus recalls two heads pressed together and bent over so many plans, lit by dim candles and Gellert’s brilliant smile, their hair and hands occasionally brushing by accident or intent; and Ginny laughs at Tonks’s changing noses at the dinner table, only hours later to dream of kissing lips that might stay the same, just for her, if only she wishes hard enough and proves that no one is young anymore; and if only for a moment, the black clouds above seem to slow in their wending, perilous path.
Recipient:
tinnurosTitle: Wartime Coming Like a Gathering Storm
Pairing: Helga/Salazar, Albus/Gellert, Ginny/Tonks
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,094
Summary: Three different wars loom, and there is little place for love.
Author's Notes: This turned out to be more angsty than dark, but I hope you still enjoy it, tinnuros! Happy New Year!
They will call it The War because it will be the only one they will ever know. They have seen battles, and they have obtained their scars, but those will be so infinitely small in comparison, Helga thinks. The familiar, screaming battle cries like those of the carrion birds will soon seem soft as a lover’s whisper; the old wounds that still plague their bearers will lower their heads in concession and await new company that will resonate deep beneath the skin.
They do not know this yet, the others, and the feeling is unfamiliar. Helga is not usually the first to detect the signs; Rowena, with her diadem and scrying mirrors, her innate perceptiveness that Helga has always admired, seems at times to have the entire future lain out before her. Yet this time it is Helga who feels the stirrings and warnings in the pit of her stomach, and like Rowena always has before until now, Helga will keep her lips pursed and her eyes distant until the moment comes for her to speak.
Salazar will not notice, though he is the cause. No longer does he kiss her lips, and so he will not see that they lock away her secrets. No longer does he meet her eyes, and so they will not betray her as she knows he is about to, coming one day soon like a gathering storm.
Salazar will become The War, and already, Helga can feel the ache of future scars from a fight that no one will win.
They call it the War because they do not think that there can be others after this. But Albus knows that there have always been wars, and that there will always be more, a savage goblet always overflowing. This, at least, is what he tells himself: that this is not the end.
Some ask him for answers, though he has none this time, and they know it. He is still ashamed of the foolishness of his youth, of the golden curls whose smell he imagines he can still detect when the moon is full and the night is deathly quiet – more than thirty years since those curls were close enough to touch, and less than seven since they ceased to feature in his every dream. They were the cause of his own private war, the one that has now bled out into the open, though others do not know it.
Ariana would have known it, but she is dead. Aberforth must know it, but he will never say; he will sneer to himself in his stables and think that this is everything Albus deserves.
Albus will always agree with his brother’s silent condemnations.
So Albus avoids everyone and everything like the recluse he has never been, but perhaps was always destined to be, for while he tells himself that this is not the end, he knows he must someday soon venture toward the completion of that thought: this War is not the end of the world; this War is not yet over, because Albus has not yet ended it. Gellert started this War, but Albus once fed its fire with his own, always unknowing, but never truly innocent. It is time – almost time – to douse the flames.
Albus knows that this necessary confrontation will not kill him, will not be the ending that ends him at last. In his darkest hours, he worries that this is what stops him from carrying on.
They are calling it the Second War already, because those who remember the First can feel the familiar patterns in the air. They whisper about it amongst themselves, and Ginny tries to hear what they say. She is almost fourteen, and no one will tell her anything she wants to know. Her brothers are just as frustrated as she – at least, Fred and George and Ron are; Bill, Charlie, and Percy are all old enough to be given straight answers instead of sighs and crooked looks and impatient, shooing hands.
Ginny is too young to remember any wars, and too innocent to imagine what one will be like, if all the rumors are true. But this is why she asks, why she wants to understand. Will they still consider her too young when the people she knows or loves start to die? She will have war’s secrets memorized by the time the adults see fit to tell this ‘child’ a single word that might have helped her prepare.
A part of her thinks that her worries and frustrations are for nothing. The Order will stop You-Know-Who in his tracks. If they cannot, then maybe Harry will just as quickly, because he has done it so many times before, and the odds are in his favor. She and her family and her friends will be safe. The moon will set and the sun will rise, and this war that the others are talking about without her will disappear into the whispers from which it was birthed.
Ginny says this out loud once, and only once. And because it is Tonks who is her listener, and because Tonks is the only one who almost never lies to her, Ginny is almost able to push the idea entirely out of her mind. Tonks tells Ginny that a war is coming, even if she is not allowed to say much more than that, and Ginny believes her. She simply pretends not to, sometimes, just as she pretends not to notice that sometimes when they are talking, Tonks’s eyes stray toward Professor Lupin, making Ginny feel hollow and alone and ever more like the child her parents insist she is and be. And always guilty, of course, since she knows she should not pretend that there aren’t more important things.
War is coming. Perhaps it has always been on the brink of the horizon.
For now, though, centuries and decades apart, Helga remembers the secret flowers Salazar wove into her hair when no one else could see her blush; and Albus recalls two heads pressed together and bent over so many plans, lit by dim candles and Gellert’s brilliant smile, their hair and hands occasionally brushing by accident or intent; and Ginny laughs at Tonks’s changing noses at the dinner table, only hours later to dream of kissing lips that might stay the same, just for her, if only she wishes hard enough and proves that no one is young anymore; and if only for a moment, the black clouds above seem to slow in their wending, perilous path.
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