Chapter Forty—The Edge

It was like a dark red. A dark red that went acidic and yellow at the edges. A dark red that smothered and suffocated. A dark red that came at the end of all things. A dark red that smelled of death.

She remembered times past. She tracked over her earliest memories that were mixed in with those difficult years where she learned that people hated those different from them, who were suspicious of anything that stepped outside the rigidly-imposed and accepted norms of behaviour and being, and there were few as cruel as children in that respect. She'd hated them as powerfully as they had hated her, no matter what her aunt had told her. She never believed that they would ever find acceptance, so she shifted her attitude to a detestation of fitting in, of subsuming who you were and what you wanted to be just to avoid notice. It got her in so much trouble that even her Handler despaired, and she was more lenient than she should ever have been with her Striker.

She thought wistfully of those times with her family, when they were all there for each other, making the awful instances just a fraction less difficult to manage, knowing they could always start again if the persecution got too great that they would have to move on. Before they were sundered apart.

Oh, they fought. Sometimes bitterly, always wholeheartedly. But they were inextricably bonded to each other, and that made them stronger than any disagreement could ever be. They had enough to deal with without being resentful toward each other.

It had all fallen to pieces. Tears stung her closed eyes, and she pulled her body inwards tightly to close her shame off from any who might see.

"Discipline. Fortitude. Strength. Protection. Justice." Her aunt had drilled those words into her since she could crawl. "Validus quam nex. Never forget that, Striker."

How could she? Those words were engraved on her heart as surely as they were engraved on her knives, engraved into the very core of who she was.

Dear God, is this what it meant to die? To go through a review of your life that held no order, no comprehension, where what you had thought were pivotal points were nothing more than pallid actions that were no more crucial than waking and sleeping? Where you resented the very thing that gave you the guts to go on? Where you whined in misery at the memory of all the times you had failed? Where you nearly welcomed death in your despair of what you had done?

She was a child, tottering towards her aunt who crooned encouragement as her stubby legs marched erratically but determinedly towards those outstretched hands, hands that were scarred and calloused, hands that saved and hands that caught. Hands that taught, that punished, that held her to the right course, merciless but just. How she missed them!

A salty, hot trickle slid down her face.

She was arguing with Remus two months ago for being careless enough to cause trouble, earning her detention for her childish lack of self-control at being baited. She was mortified, her face burning scarlet as he told her how disappointed he was, ashamed that she had disgraced him in such a fashion, but stubbornly determined that she would not suffer standing by whilst another was unfairly treated in her stead. She had never been able to do so.

Her fingers curled into the wounds in her palms, the sting sharp and white-hot as it ran along the nerves in her arms to deep inside her brain.

She was standing outside their house as it burned to the ground, her teenaged body shaking in rage that this had happened a third time. Why couldn't they just let them be? Why were they allowed to get away with it? It wasn't right!

Her throat tightened in an effort to stop the keening sound coming from her mouth: pathetic, weak, surrendering.

She was twelve, standing in shocked surprise after a boy in her class had spat in her face as his friends had jeered at her. She had done nothing to provoke such treatment, she was sure of it. She punched the boy in the face nonetheless, earning her a stern punishment from both her teachers, but it didn't matter. She knew she had been right to hit him.

Her teeth clenched in indignation and searing agony as the wounds in her neck screamed in high-pitched voices. Or perhaps she was the one screaming. She could no longer tell where pain ended and she began. It had been so very long.

She was eighteen, standing behind her Handler for the first time in pride and achievement, sworn to protect her at all costs, even if it meant her life. She was pleased to do it. It was all she had ever known that she could be, all she had ever been trained to do...the greatest honour that could be granted her.

She bit her tongue until the heat of her blood ran out of the corner of her mouth.

She was standing in the hospital room, her knife clenched tightly in her fist as he stood in front of her, his face forever burned into her memory with that look of utter hopelessness, his words tightening around her throat as he forced her to do something she swore she never would, something that he knew she couldn't deny him. "Bastard!" she had shrieked at him, even as she did as he had asked.

She felt the gap her actions had left inside her: icy, vast, acidic. Her body clenched in denial and desperation to hide from the self-indulgence of her loss. She should never have coveted him in the first place!

She was nine, hiding in the stairwell and looking through the wooden slats of the banister, watching her mother and her aunt argue about allaying themselves with those that could protect them, that could welcome them into their society as equals, as those who had something positive to offer instead of being nothing more than objects of revilement and persecution.

She was thirty-two, standing in the laneway behind her Handler moments before the trap closed around them, condemning them both to this most miserable of situations because of her lack of awareness, her carelessness in not seeing it coming, her fault. All hers. All.

She was three, stroking the glossy fur of the neighbour's cat, then crying when her aunt said she could not have it for her own. She cried for days. Inconsolable.

She was twenty, stroking the glossy fur of her Handler's cat. Aristotle. How she loved him, spoiling him rotten as he slept on her lap or next to her at night, his purr so soothing, his claws hooked lightly into her clothing as if to say "Stay awhile? Just a bit longer?"

She was thirty-three, struggling like the captured creature she was as they chained her, blades puncturing her neck like a beast's ragged teeth to control her, to stop her from tearing them all to shreds for what they were doing to her Handler. Her vision was blurred from tears of such vicious fury that the room fractured into a multitude of repeating horrors she could never escape.

She was seven, laughing as they played a game.

She was twenty-eight, heart racing in anxiety as they neared their mark.

She was fourteen, listening to her mother as she showed her how to mix the ingredients just right.

She was eight, wailing as the notch was cut in her ear.

She was twenty-two, falling for him.

She was nine.

She was thirty-three.

She was eighteen.

She was six.

Dear God, is this what it meant to die?

She was standing in front of the doorway, the chill from it seeping into the front of her body like water. A doorway that stood alone, with no wall around it, the fractured stone framing the membranous ripple as the whispered voices behind it shifted it in hypnotising waves, drawing her towards it. A doorway to beyond.

She reached out her hand.

"No!"

She recoiled in confusion, the triple voice coming from all around her, from inside her. From her.

"Validus quam nex," a single voice whispered directly behind her. "This is not where it ends."

She sighed out her exhaustion and sank to her knees in the gritty dirt, sharp pieces of flint digging into her skin.

"You must go on."

A single sob escaped her as she wrapped her arms around her body.

"Your duty is incomplete."

She nodded in the shadows thrown by the doorway, this monolithic crossing-point that loomed over her in susurrant judgement of her weakness.

"Why do you fight?" a second voice asked her from behind her left shoulder.

"Death and I have a very special understanding," she replied through gritted teeth, her body shaking in the frigid air as it stole the warmth from her spirit.

"Which is?"

How she wanted to smack him for asking that, for making her remember the vow she had taken.

"I win, she loses."

There was a pause.

"Death is a woman?"

That made her laugh. "Was there any doubt in your mind?"

The doorway vanished with a flicker of regret.

Words reached her, distant, thin, incomprehensible. They coalesced and sharpened, their edges coming into focus as she lay gasping on her side in dampness, as many voices as there seemed to be words.

"... my utmost, but he refused."

"Why?"

"He said she was too much of a risk to other patients. He had to think of the needs of the many."

"Couldn't they send someone, at least?"

"They couldn't help her when she was there. What could they possibly do now?"

"What about a Muggle hospital? They helped her before."

"For broken bones, yes. But this?"

"Surely it's worth the risk?"

"We cannot let her out from under our protection. It's too risky."

"Albus, please? We have to do something."

"We could bring the Muggles here!"

"The Ministry would go ape-shit!"

"They don't need to know, Tonks. We've hidden things from them before. We can do it again."

She stopped.

Time passed.

The pain stayed...her stalwart companion in the darkness. She cursed it in as many words as she could dredge up even as she held onto it doggedly. She must not let it go.

Something touched her shoulder.

"Chara? Can you hear me?"

Her jaw creaked as it moved, its hinges rusted in place. "Yes."

"Can you sit up for me?"

A groan escaped her before she could stop it. "Yes." She tried to move her body. She couldn't find it. She'd lost it somewhere along the way. A single sob slipped out at this latest failure. "No!"

"It's OK, sweetheart, I'll help you."

Hands lifted her. Blood pulsed cruelly through every sore point in her body, gravity's light pull turning into a tearing wrench. Her head lolled forward, allowing something to leak out of her mouth.

"Poppy?"

"Yes, Chara?"

"Morphine. Please."

"I can't. You've had too much already."

"Please?"

"Your kidneys–"

"Please?"

Voices murmured to each other. She couldn't hear the words hidden under the roar of blood in her ears, drowning her in white-noise.

"Can you wait, sweetheart? I have to go and fetch it."

Liquid slid out of her nose, smoother than oiled silk.

"Yes," she whispered.

Hands left her. She swayed slightly against the blackness, dimly wondering how she managed to stay upright, how she avoided collapsing like a boneless mass of flesh. A pressure under her heart that her breathing moved against. A caress down her left forearm, turning it underside up ever so gently.

The wait stretched on into eternity, and she felt the up-swell rolling towards her with terrifying speed. It dwarfed her. She'd never be able to hold it back...it was too overwhelming. The certainty of it escaping her nearly crushed her lungs flat.

"I'm sorry, Caroli," she whispered through a rictus of despair as she stared into the face of the wave that would surely pulverise her beyond all recognition.

Everything went white.

Perhaps she screamed. Perhaps. She never heard it. She was glad for that at least.

White bled red.

Undoubtedly she fell. Undoubtedly. It went on forever. Terror reached a new level of meaning.

Red bloomed black.

A single point pierced right into her and stopped her fall, more painful than the stab of a knife. She clung to it, this point that was so small, tearing her fingers into it until it widened into a rent that she could push her heart into in a last-ditch attempt to remain whole while the blast-wave shredded her with an infinite number of razor-sharp edges.

Black went clear.

She ended.

AN: 'Validus quam nex' is Latin for 'stronger than death'. I hope. My high school Latin is pretty poor!