ataraxionlogs | I wanna find another daydream, another nightmare

CHARACTERS: Harry Potter & ???
LOCATION: Triple Hit: M&M's rooms, the med bay's incinerator (optional), and some part of the gardens.
WARNINGS: Death, some gore.
SUMMARY: After returning to the Tranquility, Harry has a few final chores he feels responsible for.
NOTES: If you'd like me to put up a prompt for him visiting the med bay, let me know and I'll cobble it together.

Mairon and Melkor's Quarters

It’s an ugly job, but someone has to do it.

Someone has to go and visit Melkor and Mairon's old rooms, sort through their things, and dismantle any magical traps that might have been left behind. Familiar, perhaps overly so, with their pretences and skills, Harry reasons that he's a good fit for the unpleasant duty. It's being pragmatic, not giving into a guilty conscience or an over-active sense of responsibility.

He does not tell anyone where he's going, but as he works he wards the doorway to give him notice of visitors and leaves the door itself open. No secrets here.

Oxygen Gardens

There's a little, cheap blue plastic bag in his hand. It's neatly sealed and he hasn't buried it or opened it, but it's there and it feels as if it weighs more than it actually does. Sitting on the grass, Harry looks out into the depths of the gardens, past the neat rows used for cultivation and into the wild heart of the thing.

Since he got onto a returning shuttled, he'd felt cold, almost empty, but the rust of returning emotion isn't welcome. It hurts. His anger is hot and burns worse than the brand on his chest. There's no target for him and so all he's left with is a new set of regrets, another scar, a few pictures, and this thrice-damned bag of ash.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When he was younger, his temper ran more in line with Sirius'. He used to shout and rail against what he felt was unfair, but he's grown up and his temper hasn't cooled so much as gone cold. He's so very angry at himself and at Melkor and Mairon - his dead, stupid friends who turned out to be very poor friends, indeed.

"That's for the best. They planned and failed to carry out a sort of rebellion. Took a few people from the ship hostage, some to be useful, some to be used...they used them for parts, Sirius. Butchery," he almost growls out. There's a low, sibilant anger curled below his breastbone. "When you said you could buy and sell anything on Arima, you weren't wrong and clean, healthy meat and organs goes a long way to filling a coffer."

"They used something worse than the Imperius Curse to make people follow them. I know what that feels like and I can shake it off, have been doing so for years." Harry gestures that he still has more to say and he would appreciate if Sirius gives him a moment to get it out. "We learned the Unforgivables in fourth year. How to defend and how to cast. They say, being able to do that damages a wizard, makes him susceptible to other forces. They're not wrong, I'd wager."

Sirius is more than willing to give Harry the room to get any of this out--mostly because he's taken off-guard by the extent of the story. Parts, butchery--his posture sharpens a little at that, his eyes narrowing. He wouldn't have been in the right places to see things like that for sale, right? Not at the open bazaar--livers nestled among the scarves and the trinkets. They weren't that stupid, surely, whoever this they were. Melkor, Mairon--whatever contacta they had on Arima--

He wants badly to interject something, ask some question--nearly does, a few times, but manages to restrain himself, to let Harry talk. He needs to talk, it seems; he says a great deal, and all of it in this chilly cold voice that Sirius can recognise, even if it doesn't run with his own expressions.

But it's the last bit that's somehow more chilling than any suggestion of butchery. Sirius looks around at Harry, studying him for a moment in silence.

"You mean you," he says, finally. It seems like stating the obvious, but he has to be certain. "You were-- what did they do?"

What did they have you do, is maybe more accurate. But he doesn't ask it.

"To start with, I flew the shuttle." Harry isn't yet ready to elaborate on what he did or saw. He's still processing it and he's not sure if he's telling this to Sirius because he just needs to say it all aloud or if he wants the other man to judge him. "The thing about Imperius is, the thing they don't say, is that it feels great. It really does and there's no conflict, no worry, and you just do as you're told. That's how you know you've been hit with it, actually. Everything, for once, just makes perfect, clear sense and once you've broken it, you can see the neat dividing line between your thoughts and the actions that have been forced on you."

"Once we were on the planet's surface, I broke free. I didn't get too far."

There's no guilt in flying the shuttle. Maybe something like residual guilt, survivor's guilt--being involved without being involved, properly--but it's not as if the story ends there: Harry flies the shuttle and then gets to go home. That's not it by a half, not after what he's hinted at--Harry goes on, and Sirius does his best to listen without interrupting.

"How did you get free?" No point in asking why he didn't do it again. Whatever he'd done, they would have planned for. But how do you work against something so like the Imperius curse?

"From the control? The same way like you do with the Imperius curse and I stayed, well, somewhat free. You know that charm so you can write cheat notes on your arm? The one McGonagall always catches? I wrote myself notes so I'd remember, just in case they put me under again." It wasn't actually a bad plan. "But I didn't get away and ...and Melkor was not pleased."

"I'd really thought that it must've been the ship or some alien doing it and making my friends, my friends, turn on us."

But how the hell did you make friends with them in the first place, and Sirius nearly asks it. Like there should have been some tell, some little tic that would have given Harry cause to suspect.

But that isn't the way that people work. He thinks of Peter, turned traitor just a few short years after Hogwarts. People can be a lot of things. Your friends are your friends. And isn't it easier to assume that whatever evil is being worked isn't really the work of your friends?

"'Course you thought that." It comes out rather gruffly. Sirius digs in his pocket for another cigarette, half for the action of digging, to give himself something else to focus on. "And he brought you back." That's not a guess, that's just confirming what Harry has left unspoken. "And did what--put you under their influence again?"

"No, he didn't." Not really. Not the same way that he had done before. Harry's still not entirely sure just what Melkor did to him and while there's at least one person on board who might be able to untangle it, he's certainly not going to ask Snape. "He gave me a reminder or two and just seemed content to wait."

"While, all in all, it was unpleasant, but hardly the worst thing he did. A bit of a burn and getting roughed up isn't anywhere near as bad as regular Cruciatus." There is something fundamentally askew about Harry's perspective on what injury is like.

Sirius--who has cheerfully borne Quidditch injuries, who has broken his arm jumping out of a window and laughed about it (after staring white-faced at the wonky bones for a few seconds), who isn't really fussed about being hurt--

Well, even if knows there's something a bit off about measuring pain on a scale from a bit of a burn to withstanding the Cruciatus curse. He stares around at Harry for a few seconds, trying to work out how best to respond to that casual mention. Merlin's beard.

"Hardly the worst thing he did," he repeats, after a beat. "Meaning what, exactly?" Meaning it got worse, obviously, but that's as much a prompt for Harry to go on as anything else.

"Meaning, I'm used to that sort of stuff. I can deal with it, I can expect it, I can heal up from it without much fuss, but I worry about everyone else." And with that, Harry's expression and tone shift from quiet and contemplative to wry, "And I'll look even worse in a bathing suit. Really, I was never going to win prizes for Mr Wizarding Body, but this is the final straw."

Har. Har.

I wanna find another daydream, another nightmare

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sorry i'm so late!!

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