#fabriella

 “Still up, love?” The bustling in the kitchen had seemed distant up to this point, Fabian’s voice dragging her attention from the shifting light of dying embers in the fireplace. It sounds oddly clear against the silence that has fallen across the house, a faint rustling of bed sheets from a room far down the hallway, both of them pausing in anticipation for the creak of floorboards that never comes. “Can’t sleep?” His voice far softer –concern, she thinks, an odd feeling of guilt pooling in her stomach– as  he moves closer, placing a steaming mug on the coffee table in front of her.

 “Can’t sleep.” Nodding in confirmation; though if she was perfectly honest with herself she hadn’t even attempted sleep yet. It no longer felt the need to come easily, leaving her lying awake in the silence of her room with thoughts like wisps of smoke; blurring her vision but too faint to catch, slipping through her fingers once she thought she had grasped them. Thoughts of things yet to come, desires and dreams, the taste of fire whiskey and butterscotch, and holding hands with fingers laced together and lips pressed to her cheek But that itself is entirely too complicated of an answer. Not to mention one that she does not think she’d ever be able to string into words and form into sentences. Instead she offers a small shake of her head, patting the sofa beside her. “Think I could use the company for now though.” Dragging her bottom lip between her teeth – a sorry attempt at biting back a smile. “Unless you’re heading back upstairs, of course.”

That purely throw away statement gets rewarded with a chuckle, the cushion beneath her shifting as he drops down beside her, fabric rustling with the movement. “Nah, can’t sleep. Could probably use some company though. Since you’re offering.” His tone teasing, an all too familiar devilish glint in his eyes. This time there’s nothing to bite back and she lets out a small giggle herself, ducking her head to hide her flushing face and wide smile once again behind the comforting barrier of her stocking clad legs. “Tell you what’s keeping me up if you’ll tell me what’s got you up?”

Another question. The same twisted answer she can’t quite understand herself. Her smile falls as she too grows silent, studying the shadowy outline of Fabian’s face thoughtfully. There’s an answer somewhere. Dancing just beyond her reach. Perhaps it’s that it feels wrong to close her eyes and leave the house in silence, or it’s the chance to finally let her mind roam without the chatter that had all but bounced off the walls only a few short hours ago.

The answer comes of its own accord. Shrugging her shoulders she drops her gaze to her feet, smile fading as she wriggles her toes and still finding no answer but the jump in her pulse that seems to force words from her mouth with nerve-wracking ease. “I’ve missed you, y’know.” Her voice barely rising above its soft whisper. It’s hardly the answer to the question he asked. Anything but; yet it makes its way off her tongue with such fluidity that it must have been sitting and waiting to at last be spoken.

Silence. It’s the wrong answer and the wrong question, her stomach sinking as the internal berating takes its course. Stupid, stupid, stu-

“Really?” The lights behind him made it hard to distinguish anything in the dark silhouette of his face, but she was sure from the tone of his voice that his eyes would be alight. There’s little she can manage to do but nod, breath hitching in her throat as his hand rises to cup her cheek, and for a moment she was sure he was going to kiss her again. One of those wild dizzying kisses that played over in her head as she tried to sleep -that were the exact reason she was even awake now- and sent her heart fluttering in her chest.

“O-of course.” Feeling faintly ridiculous as her voice catches in her throat, studying his face closely. It’s not a kiss that comes as she watches his gaze drop from her eyes to her mouth. Instead a calloused thumb runs along her jaw line, her head turning as he pulls his hand away to press a tender kiss to his wrist. “Of course.” It had never even crossed her mind that perhaps he might have expected her not to. Let alone that it could even be possible not to. Surely it came with the baggage of a pounding heart that whispered tricky words like lo-… whispered tricky words into the darkness.

There it was again. That word. So fresh and crisp and new that daring to think of it for longer than that brief second it would cross her mind felt as though it would surely crumble in her hands. Too delicate to speak. Untested. And you had to test it out, didn’t you? Sound it out and see if it tugged your lips into a smile of their own accord. See how it sounded in your own voice. See if it came out with that ever so important ring of truth. Analyze each vowel and consonant. And she hadn’t. Not really in any case. You couldn’t count those wisps of thought as sleep engulfed her mind. Hardly counted as lucid thought. Hardly sensible. If anything, it erred far closer to the other end of the spectrum.

Love.  Foolish, alien and yet oh so tangible. If she stops to think for long enough she’s sure she’ll start feeling it pulsing through her already trembling limbs. For something storybooks would have her believe was so wonderful, the prospect certainly seemed more terrifying than expected.

“Ella?” She can practically hear the frown in his voice, an odd surge of guilt rising up in the pit of her stomach because of course it’s hardly his fault she’s acting so odd (though the voice in her mind responds that of course it’s entirely his fault). Hardly as though Fabian’s to blame for the fact that she’s started entertaining simple four letter words that add far more complication than any four letter word had the right to. Rough fingertips brush across the back of her hand, and again she lifts her gaze to the shadowy and unreadable face across from her. “Lo-”

“You’ll stay h-here with me, won’t you?” Cutting that oh so pesky word off before he can finish and praying that somehow he’ll have missed the crack of her voice. And for a brief second she thinks that it must have until Fabian’s moving again, plains of shadow passing across his face as he shifts closer, his gaze so solemn as he studies her face that it’s all she can do to drop her own guiltily to the space between them (it shouldn’t be there all that space with four letter words running around her mind.) Her bottom lip quivers; her breath shaky. It was absurd of course. Hardly the first time she’d found herself alone with the boy – man, the voice in the back of her mind reminded her carefully. Yet she was sure he’d never quite looked at her like this; with a gaze that felt so very like home in the dim glow of the fairy lights, in a place that felt so foreign to anything she’d ever called home.

Perhaps it was just Fabian that felt like home. With freckles like constellations, and warm hands he suddenly seemed determined to keep around hers, whose letters were enough to fuel smiles for weeks at a time, and who she… Who she was starting to have very real suspicions about being in love with.

“’Course I’ll stay… I’ve missed you.” Though this time there’s no tone of gentle teasing about it. It’s real. Real as green eyes and fingertip caresses and pesky four letter words that have moved on to practically hanging from her tongue; far too close to bite back. “Can stay up until morning if we feel like it.”

Of course that’s what does it. Fabian is home, and he’s adventure and he’s more than enough to set her heart racing and he’s holding her hand and he’s missed her. The words may as well have just spilt out of their own accord, leaning forward so her forehead rests against his. It’s barely a whisper, and at first she’s not even sure if he’s heard. Until the moment his lips are against hers, just as dizzying as she’d imagined.

They tell me that you are dead, and I suppose it must be so. I think perhaps that I am partly to blame. That maybe if we had not kept our secret you would be here, and holding my hand and the room would not be lurching beneath my feet. Am I to blame? These are the questions we ask when confronted with a being so loved. When you still love. To blame, I think no, but responsible. Because you took me home that summer and I let myself fall madly in love with you. Because I was the one after all who held your hand too tightly that day, and who whispered words in your ear and you smiled so widely at them and kissed me. Because I stood there beside you and signed my name next to yours and the muggle at the desk had said that there needed to be more good strong names like Fabian and that Prewett was far less ungainly of a name than Wakanda. Because perhaps I am right and what was ours and ours alone has been our undoing.

I watch you sleep. The frown that so often graced your forehead is gone, no longer crinkling with anger, with anxiety, with fear of life beyond our nest. It is gone. You’re fearless. You’re no longer frightened, for you have nothing to fear. You’re hunted no longer. It is done, and now, finally now, you rest. I look at you, and I know why you died. And why it’s all been so important and why even though continuing on feels impossible now I must do it. Because of you, my love. Because your slumber is so that others may live, though what I am doing now hardly feels like living.

You are still resting, Fabian. Dessie… Desdemona says I’m sick, though I don’t feel sick. Empty, I suppose. Hollowed out and withering away. Not sick. I just miss you, I think. She asks me sometimes what you were like and I tell her only that you were Fabian. Beneath it all, you were you, and it was all I wanted for you to be. That’s all.

I wept then, at your bedside. Cried while you rested and Lucretia asked what kind of a business is it that sends people’s children off to die and I knew just what kind, because we spoke the same language you and I, but I could not find the words then and did not want to yell and disturb you. And now… I understand it more now, I think, and the more I understand the more I fall. I dare not try to climb back up, love. Not now. My heart, I think is too tired to fight. Too worn, and it cannot be replaced lest the rest of me give out as well.

I’m not sick, love. I promise. Battered and shaken, but not sick. How is anyone but I to know if my heart is broken – and I hear them sometimes and they say that I am hardly a widow but little do they know, love, little do they know – and when the end of the tunnel is in sight?

I watch you sleep, and say that you loved me. That I loved you, and that air refuses to pass in to my lungs. I cannot breathe still now at the thought of you. Love may kill me yet, Fabian. My Fabian. I’m alone again, and your mother has left the room and I think to myself that they will never know, and that I can never tell for fear myself of falling further into this pit of despair that has made its home beneath me.

Three days of waiting… or three days of torture? Three days of capture? Three days of having been long snatched and snuffed out? A hold up with a mission could easily be explained. The Order could afford her that much. An explanation. And the lack of such had to mean that they had none to give. No explanation, no news no update. That they were as in the dark as she herself was.

And it was terrifying. At school there’d been walls. Some kind of deep and seemingly impenetrable layer of magic that kept the spooks at bay. The ever changing world beyond that was unthinkable, so far separated from what they knew as life. Too separated she thinks now that she’s been pushed from the nest with little more than her wand and wits to keep her safe; things that she can’t even rely on to keep the most important people protected.

Its hopeless to try for any more, hopeless and pointless and she assumes when she turns up on Molly Weasley’s doorstep the first day with soaked clothes and a chill setting into her bones that this is the reason no one has told her a thing. Because she reeks of uncertainty and loneliness and she’s gone from being a mighty eagle to a baby bird still waiting for their wings to form, and the flight that had come so easily before is now so far from reach. What use to anyone is a bird that cannot fly, she thinks, tugging the sodden woolen cardigan further around herself as though it still stands a chance of keeping out the cold.

Molly, it seems can see the defeat in the eighteen year olds eyes. Not so young, that there’s a reason to  keep what is happening from her, not so young as Bill, or Charlie who are old enough to know but far too young to understand, but she doubts the girl will sprout wings without help. The second day see’s her in another house entirely, soft words muttered to her by familiar faces in attempts at comfort that seem to bounce straight back off her skin. She prefers instead to keep her gaze fixed on the clock on the mantle. She sleeps on the sofa. She doesn’t say a word. Mariella is there in every physical sense, though her mind flits anxiously between far off battlefields and bodies in boxes.

And yet it has only been three days. How, she wonders, would it feel if it was longer? If this carried on for over a week before anyone knew anything, or how it would be if Fabian really doesn’t come back as he’d promised he would.

For all her hope and whispers in the dark of night when the weary figure appears in the doorway it’s as though a part of her mind refuses to work, the puzzle arranging and rearranging as the pieces slide together, pushing the doubts from her mind. He’s here. Speechless and broken, but here and she’s sure that there’s some way they can mend each other. That his very appearance is fixing it all already and that if she can remind him that he’s left those flames of battle behind then she can do at least some good.

“Fabian!” The rasped cry is all she can manage, rising unsteadily to her feet as her voice dies in her throat. She doesn’t need to say more, does she? It’s the only word she’s wanted to say for the past three days, after all. The only name she’s wanted to utter since he’d first left well over a week ago. And here he is at last, standing in the doorway looking worn, defeated and entirely lost. Screw any reports he has to make, or any hands that may reach out to catch her before she reaches him. He’s what she’s needed. And she the same to him.

One step. She could see the bags beneath his eyes, the strain on his face as though standing took far more effort than he could afford to give. Two steps. She feels her bottom lip begin to quiver, arms trembling as she reaches out. Three steps. They collide. The levee breaks. Knees give out and they fall back against the doorframe, enfolded. Sinking together as though bound by invisible ties that they can’t and won’t resist.

“You’re here.” His words mumbled against her ear. She can feel the cracked lips moving against her skin, feel the dampness on her cheeks that she is sure aren’t her own yet to be shed tears, feel his arms around her as they so desperately cling to each other. Everything she needs to confirm the echo of his own words that has been repeating in her mind. Fabian is here. Here at last where she is. Not snatched from her grasp. Not lost. Not gone. Here.

The response falls from her lips in a whisper. He knows, she thinks, just how much more she is saying than the two simple words. Knows, perhaps of the unspoken promise it comes with. The oath that if he is there then she will be too, and that as long as he comes home she will be there for him to come home too.

The apartment was silent enough, she’d supposed. Far chillier outside the confines of Fabian’s room –or was it just out of his bed, and away from the arms that had found their way around her in the night?-  but still enough for her to make the short trek to the kitchen for a glass of water.

She wasn't entirely sure where he’d even come from really. One moment she’d been alone, and the next there was some semi-conscious outburst of embarrassment across the room, her surname spluttered out and… and dear Merlin, if it was too early to be decent then she’d certainly found the best way of doing that one. Not that she was entirely sure of how exactly the list of “decency” went, but she was fairly sure that standing in nothing but your under-things in front of your boyfriend’s brother wouldn't be on said list.

So of course the only natural reaction was to let out a shriek and drop to the tiled floor, pulling herself back until the bench well and truly hid her from sight. Hopefully forever if she was being honest about it. Or until he bloody went away so she could make her escape back to Fab's room or potentially some far off Carribean Island where no one named Gideon had ever unintentionally -or even intentionally now she thought about it- seen her in nothing but a fairly brief pair of lace underclothes. 

"M-Morning!" Mentally cursing herself. There went any chance that he'd think she was some kind of odd mirage. A rather worrying one when it all came down to it but imaginary none the less. And unless Gideon was in the habit of engaging in conversation with figments of his imagination then she'd blown that cover entirely. "Merlin, these tiles are fantastic though, aren't they?" Her voice far too loud for the hour, raising higher and higher by the second. Tiles. Of course. There was all her problems solved, she'd just blabber on about ceramics until she could scramble away.

Gideon, to his credit, was doing a good job of keeping his gaze fixed on the ceiling, as though there wasn't a half naked seventeen year old on her knees across the room from him. "Bloody... Wakanda. What're you-..."

"Tiles! Bloody fantastic tiles!" 

Bloody fantastic tiles.