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Loyalty like a Tourniquet
Topic Started: Apr 21 2011, 09:24 AM (344 Views)
Ian McFadyen
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Blood was everywhere. It dripped down his forearm as if it were mapping out the veins beneath the skin. A small puddle of crimson liquid formed on the dying, grey tree root next to his feet, giving reason to why he felt so lightheaded. Ian ripped his shirt off just before hobbling into the dense woods around the Shack, ignoring the sting of cold air that stole the heated breath from his lungs. Everything had gone horribly, horribly wrong. He had come to Hogwarts to knick something off his little brother, and instead Reed chose to start his sodding war and ruin everything. If anyone really knew how valuable the artifact he had come for was... his little brother would never survive. Of course, Jude would never know how priceless the heirloom had become. Uncle Phin never would have put him in that kind of danger. Not his ickle-Jude-ikins.

Ian winced, scrunching his eyes, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny vial that he kept on his person at all times. Working with dragons required certain precautions to be taken, such as keeping a blood coagulant on him at all times. You wouldn’t want to bleed out in the middle of camp, have all your peers thinking you’re a tit. He uncorked the vial with his teeth, ignoring the beads of sweat that dripped down his forehead, over his brow and down the crevices of his face. The stinging hex that hit his hand was causing convulsions; getting the coagulant into his mouth was tricky while his hands shook.

In the distance, screams and curses being growled blended in with shuffling feet on the cobbled pavement. Slamming doors, breaking windows. Explosions. It was the war that Reed had been waiting for. Ian’s lips puckered when he finally got the brown tinted liquid to his mouth. A heavy breath left his nostrils before he took another one in at the same rate of hard labor. It tasted of rust and earth and was thick as it slid down his throat. The effect was instant, however. The bleeding in his arm slowed and he could only guess that the wound at the back of his head was reacting to the coagulant in much the same fashion.

A series of wizards in dark robes passed by his safe haven, not sparing him a glance. He rested his shoulder against the trunk of the nearest tree and bowed his head, eyes still scrunched in pain or exhaustion or a combination of both. Ian needed a moment to think; he had acted brash and it got him hexed so badly he wondered if his arm would ever function normally again. No, he had to stay away from the dark wizards for now, lest they get him killed.

When he finally raised his head, he squinted to stare at the tiny village being maimed by Reed’s army. The sunlight lost its brilliance in the smoke from spells being cast. The overpowering stench of burnt clothes and skin filled the air all around, Ian reckoned for miles in any direction. It would only be a short time before the Ministry and all their Aurors came charging through. He had to be gone by then. He couldn’t risk another row with the Ministry.

Ian pushed off of the tree, staggering forward while he attempted to regain his balance. A figure stood out to him against the backdrop of Hogsmeade Village; a tall, wiry frame that was so much like his own. Too much like his. It was hurling hexes, casting impressive blocking spells, moving in such a fluid, sprightly manner that Ian almost thought he was watching a professional dueler. There was no way it could be Jude – not such a young bloke battling with someone twice his age and size.

He took a moment to watch the other blokes he was alongside. A gangly looking fellow, who seemed to have a knack for making a dog’s arse of his spells, with dead accuracy, seemed to be the biggest cause of concern. Who knew where those gargantuan arms would fling next? Certainly, Jude had much the same thought as he ducked one of the fleshy torpedoes that swiped over his head. The other, on Jude’s left side, looked a bit of a barmpot with a confident smirk on his face as he lashed his wand through the air. He definitely had some training, Ian though, but he left his vulnerabilities too open; Ian would take him out in an instant. His brother appeared to be the only one of the lot with any sense of urgency about him, having the sense to look worried and poised at the same time.

Ian could sense the three were close, probably the best of mates. Jude would get himself killed frolicking around with those other two. The other one that he seemed to spend the most time with, however, was the prudish one he met when he and Jude first started squaring off. Calleigh – of the Bancrofts, he learned. She was the younger sister to Bea, a rather bitchy girl Ian had gone to Hogwarts with. The family was a large one, wealthy, full of secrets, he was sure. If Calleigh was anything like her older sister, Ian fancied Jude without his bollocks in a few months’ time. He’d watched from a distance; they ate together at every meal, walked to every class together. Most of the time they were surrounded by their friends, but always caught next to each other, probably without even realizing it.

Ian saw it so clearly. His brother was feeling for the girl. The girl was feeling for his brother. And through the course of the weeks he’d spent at Hogwarts watching them, he was amused that neither of them was aware of their own feelings, nor each other’s. It was rather disgusting and ultimately disappointing.

A streamlining jet of orange light flew toward the three boys and only one reacted; Jude. Uncle Phineas had trained him well, apparently. Ian was loathe to admit it, but his feet were moving in his brother’s direction before he’d had a chance to think rationally and stop himself. A twig snapped under his feet. And then their eyes met, blue on green. Intense. Suffocating. So much animosity flowed in their fixed gaze.

Ian lifted his chin, grinding his molars to avoid showing any kind of loyalty one way or the other.

A shot of brilliant blue light collided with Jude’s shoulder. This time, Ian didn’t hesitate. Instinct carried him forward as his friends went on the offensive, braving stupidity for their fallen friend. They had so much growing up to do, Ian thought as he reached his brother. Without waiting for any type of agreement or argument, Ian wrapped his arm around Jude, stepped forward and spun.

When they landed, Ian dropped Jude to the ground and pulled out the knife from his back pocket. He landed on his knees next to his brother and put the blade against Jude’s damp shirt.

“You’re going to die if we don’t make you a tourniquet, you know. It’s pretty fucking stupid of you to think you and those buffoon friends of yours could take on a two dark wizards without any proper training.” Ian sliced the knife upward and ripped a strip of cloth out of Jude’s shirt. He immediately grabbed his brother’s arm – not gently – and began tying the cloth tightly around his brother’s shoulder to cut off blood flow. With every word he spoke, he pulled the threads of cloth tighter. When he finished, he pushed Jude away and leaned back on his heels.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing? Showing off for that chit by way of getting yourself murdered?” He hoped not. There were things that Ian needed from his brother. Or, things that Ian needed to get ahold of with his brother’s help.




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Jude McFadyen
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None of their missions had ever been like this.

It was all Jude could think in the midst of the frenzied chaos they’d been hurtled so violently into, with almost no warning at all. One minute, laughter and ease, no different from any other trip they’d made to Hogsmeade in the past, a cloudless day, bright and pleasantly warm. And the next… bedlam. Screams. The once quaint and peaceful village pitched into an all-out war.

He could barely remember how he’d even gotten here, fighting alongside his friends in the middle of some path or another, a desperate focus guiding each one of his actions in a way he’d never needed to fall back on before, not even when he and Sebastian and Silas had been at their most misadventurous. Everything blurred. Time lost meaning. Instinct, alone, ruled him now.

Later, Jude would say it was the day he grew up. Definitively. That one last needed shove into adulthood.

A massacre will do that to you.

They were everywhere. Scattered, malicious groups of them coming in a rush, mingling with students and adults alike; a confused flood of guttural, shouting voices and dark robes. Turmoil. Destruction. Shards of jagged glass from broken shop windows littering the street, bits of wood from blasted doors, rubble from annihilated walls... and worse things. Pools of blood. Limp bodies. Ash. The air reeked of smoke and fear, so heavy it coated your throat with every inhalation, the sky so thick with plumes of black it made it easy to think, for one terrifying moment, that it wasn’t just Hogsmeade ablaze and in tumult, but the entire world too.

Then again, Jude didn’t really have time to linger on the details. His senses were already on overdrive, trying to focus on ten things at once: Sebastian on his left, Silas on his right, the large group of hostile, black-clad figures before them, and, of course, the most basic thing of all, which was simply to stay the hell alive. Not exactly an easy feat with a barrage of curses rocketing towards the three young men almost unrelentingly; phosphorescent flares of violent light that singed the very air around them and sent searing blooms of heat across their faces, necks, hands, anything that wasn’t covered. The spells were lethal, ruthless, and they hammered against the walls at their backs with shocking force – too damn close, all of them – detonating with loud bangs, explosions of stone, sparks, and magic.

Jude had never been forced to think more quickly on his feet, or be so aware of so many potential threats at once. Never. If he wasn’t dodging one of the wild torrents of burning magic that roared around them, he was seizing the back of Silas’ robes, yanking him out of the way before a jagged portion of crumbling wall could crush him where he stood. They covered each other, all three of them, working as that unit they’d learned to perfect over the years, though this particular mess was undeniably out of their league. No amount of Merry Men adventures could have prepared them for it. Something this coldblooded. This remorselessly evil.

Another curse shot Jude’s way – he ducked swiftly, crouched low, and raised his wand to shoulder level before slashing it horizontally, magic singing in his blood. No, he’d never been in a fight this brutal before, was severely unprepared, but he did know how to be brave without being stupid, and instinct stressed upon him the importance of getting in the first strike with these people. Hit them before they hit you. That seemed the only plausible strategy, what with their frightening abilities to wield such dark magic with such seeming ease and lack of hesitation. Make them block. Keep them busy. That was all he had.

So he used it, despite having a spell repertoire that was obviously very limited compared to theirs. Even at his fastest, their attacks were powerful enough to make up for any of the ones he actually did manage to block or prevent entirely. At one point, he had to hurtle himself to the right to avoid a streak of scarlet fire that thundered viciously towards him, such a near-miss he could feel, even without looking, that it had torn a gash in his sleeve, scorching skin beneath. But there wasn’t time for pain, and already he was on the offensive again, a lightning-fast slash of his wrist that parried the attack in a brilliant bolt of jetting hazel. Again, he swiped. Again. Again. Faster. No time. Don’t stop.

He found fluidity in frenzy. Each reaction perfectly timed, matching his assailants’ speed with his own nimble swiftness, curse for curse, block, attack, block, attack. This was where those nights spent sparring with his uncle finally came in handy, and Jude used that experience to the best of his ability, helping both himself and his friends stay alive in the gruesome fray.

And it was working. Actually working. Hell, they might have even had a chance to get the upper hand soon had it not been for an interruption in the form of a sound that edged suddenly into Jude’s awareness, small and sharp, just at the ridge of his periphery, alerting him to what he thought was some new, encroaching danger.

Snap.

Instinct made him turn. Heart pounding. Concentration severed. The world going quiet as haunting blue eyes met his from the edge of the tree line.

Everything stopped.

Jude paid dearly for it.

The moment spanned a beat, a breath, nothing more, but this was a battle measured in half-seconds and blinks, centimeters and certainty, and one instant’s hesitation could get you killed before you even saw it coming. A mistake he made and couldn't afford.

A repercussion he didn’t even see coming.

Blue eyes. A hideous crackle. No time to even turn before a blazing bolt of azure light slammed into his shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer, a deafening, ugly hiss of wrathful magic that blasted the wind straight out of him and sent him flying like a rag doll. He hit the ground so hard he saw stars, but the violent impact was nothing, nothing, compared to the agony wreaking havoc on his shoulder. It felt like someone had tried to tear his arm off with their bare hands, rending the tendons with sheer, ruthless strength. Excruciating pain made it almost impossible to breathe, but he tried, gasping raggedly, arrested with the sharp, coppery scent of blood he knew must be his own.

His vision only allowed him vague, bleary impressions after that. A glimpse of his sleeve, shockingly red. Warm blood streaming freely from torn arteries, threading down his body in wide rivulets to soak a shirt that smoldered even still. A shout was heard, distantly, as though issuing out from a very deep abyss. Nausea made him close his lids again, tightly, teeth bared in a grimace. Black. Red. A flash of light. The ground humming beneath his ear with echoes of pounding footsteps. Hands. Hauling him up. A gust of wind parting his tawny, sweat-soaked hair. A violent jerk. More nausea. Pain.

“… going to die if we don’t make… tourniquet… fucking stupid of you…”

The harsh string of words was the first thing to fade in and out of his awareness. Someone was speaking to him, handling his clothes with impatient roughness, tearing at the cloth. Jude forced his eyes open blearily, seeing nothing but indistinct patterns at first, but then… that same blue gaze. Sharp features he recognized instantly.

Ian. His face a mask of stone broken only by the hard, irritated tensing around his mouth.

Even if he’d wanted to respond, or say anything at all, Jude wouldn’t have been able to; not at that moment, when his heart seemed to be occupied more than enough already, staggering just to keep beating in a life-sustaining rhythm in his chest. It was hard to think, let alone speak, and as Ian quickly set about wrapping his wound, the only sounds Jude could manage were a few agonized hisses and grunts, features contorting in pain with each savage tug of cloth. Through half-lidded eyes, he saw his brother in duplicate, blinked, tried to refocus his vision, but it wasn’t easy when it felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen reaching his brain. Everything was red. Red. Everywhere.

Abruptly, the pressure ceased.

Ian’s cuttingly callous voice sliced through the air like a blade. Another weapon to wound him with. “What the fuck did you think you were doing? Showing off for that chit by way of getting yourself murdered?”

But this time the pain was grounding, not paralyzing, and it was exactly what Jude needed to surge back into the present, foregoing the tempting call to let the dark take him under; clinging, instead, to a life raft that took the shape of rage. He reopened his green eyes, and the wrath gave him a brief moment of perfect, focal lucidity, pupils dilating in uninhibited fury as his gaze locked on his older brother.

His brother who was not his brother. Who didn’t give a fuck about him. Who’d left, left, left, and had the audacity to come back into his goddamn life just to scorn him again, burn him for the hundredth time over, and now, now he wanted to sweep in and save the day? Now he showed an interest in what Jude did or didn’t do? Now he cared if he was wounded? Died?

Fuck wounds. And fuck him.

Jude was done.

“Stay the hell away from me,” he hissed quietly, a seething, ragged breath. The words were gruff and fierce and deadly in his throat, the first he’d spoken from his prone position - a refusal to acknowledge the demanding questions just asked of him lurking in the low and chilling threat. “I didn’t ask for your fucking help. You—” he stopped, unable to prevent a wince, swallowing back bile. Determined anyway. “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

Wherever ‘here’ was. There was dirt beneath him, a blanket of fallen leaves, shade. Jude struggled to sit up, but even the tiniest movement labored his already shallow breathing and made pain bloom behind his eyes like a cataclysmic explosion. He felt woozy, violently ill, and for a moment the world tilted and blotted out from existence entirely. He coughed, weak, but opened his stare to try again, fingers clutching at damp earth, mind thinking only of the place he’d left behind and the friends he’d abandoned to what was, in all horrific likelihood, a grim fate. Sebastian… Silas… all those innocent people…

No.

“I’m going back,” he rasped, so ferociously and so determined only a fool would have stopped him.

Injury be damned.

And Ian with it.
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Ian McFadyen
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Ian wondered if his brother was always so transparent. He could see the rage brewing behind Jude’s green eyes, could almost hear the torrent of angry curses rolling around in his mind. It was a problem that Ian never had. He always let it out instantly, never bottled it up and saved it for a bad day. The way Ian saw it – he was honest, whereas Jude was living a lie every day. All that anger boiling under the surface, it was exactly why Jude would get himself killed in this war.

What he needed was to let it all out – open up and just be angry. Pissed off. Hateful. It would keep him from acting brashly, committing suicide. The way he was glaring at Ian was neither intimidating or hurtful, and that was exactly the reason why Ian would survive through Reed’s war. He had nothing to lose, he had no emotions driving his needs and his mind was completely focused on the goal.

Ian leaned forward, insults on the tip of his tongue to make his brother lash out. Let it out. All those years of being cool and collected – he wanted to see his brother explode and start fresh.

“Stay the hell away from me,” Jude ground through his teeth, taking Ian off his guard. He hadn’t expected that Jude would finally blow. A small smirk lifted at the corners of his mouth. The undiluted rage issuing in a hiss from his brother’s mouth was like a symphony. “I didn’t ask for your fucking help. You – you shouldn’t have brought me here.”

Ian’s face didn’t dim. This was the only way to get Jude in the position he needed him in. Alive. And, hopefully, spent of animosity. He’d goad him, dry him out, and then he could get what he was after. Only after his brother trusted him. He needed Jude to survive this ordeal; Ian needed the heirloom. And he knew that the only way to get what he wanted was to give Jude the truth. Or at least part of it.

“Oh, I was supposed to sit back and let you be a martyr? Because that’s what family does, is it?” Ian whispered coolly, attempting to lure out the temper he knew his brother was capable of.

And then Jude shocked him.

“I’m going back.” There was power behind Jude’s words, though as he made to push himself from the ground it was apparent that he was in tremendous pain from his injuries.

No fucking way, Ian thought. He was not going to traipse back out into the village and get himself murdered. That wasn’t the way Ian planned on this going. He needed Jude the way that he’d always been, even as a child – astute and patient, controlled and uncompromised. His attempt to provoke more anger out of his brother was meant to, ultimately, tame him. Keep him from doing stupid things.

Of course it backfired. Jude wasn’t anything like Ian. There was no instinct to survive regardless of consequence. Instead, he had instinct to ensure others’ survival regardless of consequence. There was a fine line. And Jude had crossed it into absurdity.

“Not fucking likely,” Ian muttered, placing a thick, scarred hand on Jude’s uninjured shoulder and holding him down with light pressure. Jude shrugged him off, hissing an oath. “You’re not going out there and getting yourself bloody killed.”

Any rational person would have agreed. Jude, however, was so out of his sodding mind that he attempted to stand. Rather poorly, as it were. Ian watched him struggle to stand for a moment and then with the control of a recently fed chimaera, Ian raised his hand to Jude’s throat, clenched his fingers tightly around it and forced his brother to meet his level and unemotional gaze.

“While your health isn’t at its peak, I think you and I should have a chat.” Ian’s voice was smooth and condescending. Jude jerked, but Ian’s grip only grew firmer. “Ah-ah, don’t try to move.”

With his free hand, Ian reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial of brown liquid he’d used earlier to heal his wounds. He held it up to his brother and whispered, “This will heal you. It’s a draught I was given by a colleague on the Dragon fields in Romania. You can have it and run off to your peril after you listen to me.”

If Jude was going to run off and get himself killed, he’d at least be smart enough to be fully healed and able to stand without falling over. Surely his little brother wouldn’t be idiotic enough to pass up Ian’s offer.

“Don’t be daft, little brother,” Ian started again, inciting a flare of anger to flash through Jude’s eyes. Ian curled his lips again. “Despite not being around for a decade, I don’t want to see you snuff it the way mum and dad did. Bloody hero complex runs in the family, you know.”

He absolutely had Jude’s attention now. Had he not figured it out before or had Uncle Phin kept it a well-guarded secret for all these years? In any case, maybe this was the way to make Jude trust him. Obviously, anger didn’t have the desired effect.

“Uncle Phin is still telling you that the fire was an accident, then?” Ian felt a tremble from his brother and narrowed his eyes. “Have you never guessed? Two wizards in a house with magic, succumbing to fire? Does that make sense to you? Maybe you don’t remember just how skilled with a wand our mother was… Well, it wasn’t a bloody accident. Mum and dad were murdered.”

The words ignited a new, visible fire in his brother. Perhaps he wasn’t comfortable speaking about their parents so off-handedly. Funny how that trait was different in Ian. He felt nothing when speaking of his parents. The burial of his past was so deep now he hardly remembered if he had spared any grief for them at all.

Whether it was fury or emotional pain, Ian guessed that it was enough to keep Jude’s interest. He dropped his hand from Jude’s neck. He then tossed the vial to his brother and stood up from the ground. He wondered if the hook would be enough… if he knew Jude at all, he wouldn’t be able to pass up this new information.

“But, if you don’t want to help me and would rather die in the same cold blood, then by all means, go dancing off to your death. I’ve said my bit.” Ian waved pompously for his brother to go, guessing that he wouldn’t be fool enough now. “Off you trot.”

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Jude McFadyen
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The pain was lacerating. Even the smallest shift of movement had his stomach lurching until he couldn’t taste anything but acid in his throat, his heartbeat fast and metallic in his mouth—the only thing keeping him from throwing up the fact that his jaw was clenched so tightly he was probably in danger of cracking one of his molars.

None of it mattered. Not his pained intakes of air, not the hot blood welling out and dripping in streaks from beneath his sleeve, not the way the world around him swam and wavered. All he could think about—the only important thing left in the world—was getting back. He had to get back. They’d been outmatched to begin with, they’d barely been holding their own, the only reason they weren’t dead was because there’d been three of them, and even that—

No, God. He heaved himself forward, one hand to his wreck of a shoulder, filled so explosively with the need for action he didn’t care about pain, about blood, about dying. Dying was what he’d have to do before he abandoned his friends. People he cared about. People who trusted him.

Obviously Ian wouldn’t understand.

“Not fucking likely,” his brother scoffed, daring to try and dissuade him with a staying hand to his uninjured shoulder. Jude just shook him off with a dark curse, his anger big and ugly and blazing like a sword ahead of him, ready to cut down anything in his path that would hold him back. Even Ian.

“You’re not going out there and getting yourself bloody killed,” Ian’s voice came again, incredulous.

Watch me, Jude would have answered if he could have spared the breath. It was taking everything in him not to collapse again, but Gryffindor conviction fueled his renewed struggle to stand, his heart pounding so heavily with the effort it seemed to knock against his ribs. But this wasn’t bravery.

This was desperation. This was Jude on the knife-edge of complete panic and unendurable worry and it probably would have been enough to defy even his waning strength if a hand like a steel trap hadn’t clamped around his throat and rendered all further movement momentarily impossible.

His eyes shot to Ian’s in a hostile glare.

It didn’t seem to have any effect at all. Ian’s tone was almost idle when he spoke, his manner infuriatingly calm. “While your health isn’t at its peak, I think you and I should have a chat,” he said, his hold merely tightening when Jude grabbed his wrist and tried to jerk away from it, fuming. “Ah-ah, don’t try to move.”

The silence cut between them like a scalpel—a dangerous quiet broken only by Jude’s quick, reedy breathing as he watched Ian dig into his pocket to retrieve a vial he then displayed in the hand that wasn’t threatening to cut off the rest of Jude’s air supply. “This will heal you,” he explained evenly. “It’s a draught I was given by a colleague on the Dragon fields in Romania. You can have it and run off to your peril after you listen to me.”

Jude’s rejection of the notion must have been glaringly evident in the way his jaw set with a hard, immediate edge, because it had Ian’s brow lifting in response—a sardonic slant so familiar it ached almost more than his wounds did. Seeing him after all these years was like pulling nails out of a coffin—like digging up a ghost and dressing it in flesh again, and with a pang of feeling deeper than shock, he realized this was the most physical contact they’d had since the day Ian had left.

His hand around his throat.

“Don’t be daft, little brother,” Ian cut in again, with that same calm, terrible tenacity, reminding Jude just how much things had changed. There was nothing of the old Ian left in this one’s unfeeling stare. No flicker of remorse or affection. Even Jude’s anger seemed to amuse him coldly, like it really couldn’t matter less to him. It just made Jude angrier. Made him shake with it. Made him want to shake him, until something recognizable spilled out. Until something cracked the way Jude was cracking.

Ian’s lips ticked upward like he could almost read his thoughts. Like he knew the things was about to say would do more than shake him. They would turn his whole life on end.

“Despite not being around for a decade, I don’t want to see you snuff it the way mum and dad did,” he went on, absent of censure, tone blithe in a way Jude's never would have been while mentioning the most painful event of his life. “Bloody hero complex runs in the family, you know.”

For a moment, the only thing he could hear was the sound of the wind skimming off the leaves of the forest as he let the words soak into his consciousness without really registering them. He stared at Ian uncomprehendingly, frozen still, like a bloodied-up statue, even as a creep of sickening suspicion began to roil his stomach.

“Uncle Phin is still telling you that the fire was an accident, then?” Ian’s gaze – a cloudy, oceanic blue – held his unrelentingly. Ruthlessly. “Have you never guessed? Two wizards in a house with magic, succumbing to fire? Does that make sense to you? Maybe you don’t remember just how skilled with a wand our mother was…”

His voice was impassive around the little grenades of his words, a merciless hail of them, and Jude felt each one. Felt the wet heaviness of his robes and how his fingers were freezing in the mud. Felt the world and the way it had grabbed onto him rushing in until it was all just white noise, waves crashing – so loud he almost missed Ian’s big finish, blunt as the backside of a rifle.

“Well, it wasn’t a bloody accident. Mum and dad were murdered.”

Five words. Jude tumbled them numbly over and over again in his head as if the repetition would help them make sense, but he felt oddly disoriented, like he’d been clubbed and was still waiting for his senses to come back. Like his own memories had been told back to him wrong: a beloved record played backwards, the dissonance so jarring it was enough to unmoor him for a moment, and suddenly there was no forest, no wind, no freezing mud—just the crack of burning timber, the acrid smell of smoke, and he doesn’t have shoes on, he remembers that, he remembers how rough and cold the pavement felt beneath his feet, despite the blistering heat rushing at him in waves, and his head is swimming, the world coming to him in fuzzy saturations of color and nothing made sense, nothing—

With a start, he realized he’d been holding his breath, starving himself of oxygen, like a diver gone too deep. He inhaled shakily, let it out again in a shudder, only realizing his throat had been freed when Ian tossed the vial to him, which he caught against his chest out of instinct.

Risen to his feet, Ian regarded him apathetically with that face like a dream, an echo of a life no longer Jude’s, his voice dry and sidelong. “But, if you don’t want to help me and would rather die in the same cold blood, then by all means, go dancing off to your death. I’ve said my bit,” he dismissed with an indifferent wave. “Off you trot.”

It was like being told to walk off being blown apart by an air raid.

A feeling of unreality had begun to settle over Jude. His fingers tightened around the smooth glass of the vial, his other hand pressing hard into the dirt—any kind of gesture to make space around him, keep back the new history that was closing in, threatening to rewrite the past ten years of his life in a more ominous language. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Uncle Phin would have—he would have been told, someone would have—

He had a mission. He had loved ones—people still alive, please, still alive—who needed him. But he wasn’t moving. Was, in fact, slowly forgetting how he’d even gotten here, what had led him to this place to begin with, what he’d even been doing before this exact moment—like spectral hands had begun dragging him back into shadows he’d long since crawled his way out of, the past suddenly more real than the present, and when he spoke—when he could speak—his voice felt flat and strange in his mouth, like it wasn’t his mouth. His voice. Him.

Like he wasn’t Jude anymore. The same way Ian wasn’t Ian.

“What are you talking about?” he said, the question sounding gouged out of him—one he barely dared to ask. “What do you mean they were… they weren’t…”

But already he could feel the fissures and cracks, the spaces where doubt had started to creep in. Too many missing pieces he’d never been able to rationalize – too many conversations he’d simply never had, because it had hurt too much, because he’d resisted, never asked, never even wondered. But he couldn’t resist now. Had no strength left to fight it. The pull was brutal.

Fever-thick and ragged, his voice fell to a mere scrape of sound. “How?”

How do you know? How could it happen? How is this possible?

He didn’t know which one he meant. Maybe it was all of them meshed together. Maybe it wasn’t even Ian he was asking.

He didn’t know.

That was the problem. That was the whole, entire, unforgivable problem.

And for the first time in his life he wasn't going to move until he got answers.
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Ian McFadyen
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Ian recognized the war behind Jude’s unfocused, green eyes. The very same look that had graced his own troubled features numerous times over the previous decade. Anger, even rage, building inside like a volcanic eruption waiting to strike out at the world. To collapse it. To engulf it in a fiery chasm of pain, to make it understand the sheer torture he’d felt since the morning after his parents were murdered. Because Ian did blame the whole world, from the guise of innocent breezes as they carried Summer into Autumn, to the ocean tide that forced the bluegill to meet its end by the jaw of a hungry shark. He blamed it all because that’s all he knew how to do.

“You’re not telling the boy. He’ll never understand. He’s one of the good ones.”

Uncle Phin’s words damaged the older brother more than he could possibly imagine. Jude was all that was good and pure in the world, void of the callousness that the darkness of the world demanded of its harder, much more emotionally empty occupants. Like Ian. So much like his father; very little of his mother’s softness.

The words still killed him after all this time. Fueled his anger at Jude even.

But, as Ian watched the stormy upset in his younger brother’s eyes, he empathized if only for a moment. Ian had this moment so long ago and buried the feelings down, below the surface that bubbled with apathy, iced with distance. Jude’s wounds were fresh, scar tissue torn open. That Ian was the bearer of the news only served to pour salt into it. Stinging and burning. Itching, like a scab trying to heal itself even as the world carved new abrasions into his flesh.

Even as the turmoil peaked, and the words formed his lips into the ghosts of sound, Ian recognized something he’d never witnessed in his little brother: himself. Staring back at him out of haunted, confused eyes.

It softened him for but a second. Eyes losing the tightness in their corners that crinkled the skin far ahead of its time, lips plumping out of their rigidity, shoulders loosened and aching with knots.

“What are you talking about?” The words were nothing more than an attempt by Jude to keep what he held dear to him. A sweet childhood filled with playscapes and holiday parties. The guise of their life, nestled among the dangerous games their parents were playing. Ian could hardly fault him for trying. Hell, ten years ago, he’d tried, too.

Nothing gold can stay. A quote from their mother, from a book she read them when they still shared a bedroom. Before Ian’s life had crumbled to ash along with the false pretense of pleasant family dinners and goofy ballroom dance lessons with dad.

The charade was over. A decade later, and Ian found himself finally breathing. Ironic that it came when his brother could barely glean enough oxygen to keep himself conscious.

“What do you mean they were… they weren’t…” In Jude’s words, the illusion began to shatter. The heaviness that lay between them melted away, as if uncovering even a modicum of truth made it easier for Ian to be the brother he should have been all along. If Ian’s heart hadn’t decayed down to its core, he’d reach out to his brother and console him. Maybe even share a moment of sorrow, of remembrance. Of brotherhood.

He didn’t. Instead, his eyes fixated on a point just beyond the top of Jude’s sandy-colored hair. Red spells flew through the air, clouds of smoke rose from the streets just out of sight in the thick brush they were hidden within. The smell of singed robes – school children being fired at – must have permeated the air through all of Scotland. Ian’s lips tugged down at the corners, the edges of them lost in a shadow of stubble. Kids were dying in a war that adults had started. In what world was that fair?

The anger for a cruel and spiteful world returned. A world that had catapulted two rapscallion boys into such maturity that they’d never find themselves back to their youthful start. Not one of them, at least.

“How,” Jude asked, pulling Ian from his lament for childhood. His heart stuttered, its tempo rising and falling as he weaved skillfully, almost familiarly, in and around the feelings of this very painful topic. He’d rather be fighting, would rather be dodging curses, would rather be telling his brother to pull his head from Phin’s backside and grow up.

He could do none of those things now. Not with Jude’s gaze caught up in his own, like the overcast sky meeting the dehydrated grass. Like mum and dad’s eyes. His blue and her green, tangled up in mischief that taught these two boys how to be family.

And it was all a lie. A lie, which Ian would have to reveal to Jude, finally. After a decade of veils and secrets. He’d thought of writing to Jude over the years; even once he tried to approach Phin’s house – when Jude turned sixteen and was of age to hear exactly what killed their parents. Phin’s firm “no” still panged Ian, still pissed him off. All of the bloke’s work for the Order, and what had it done? Turned him into a lying, deceiving old man like the wizards he fought for so long.

Ian sucked in a breath; wasn’t even conscious of doing it, just a habit he’d developed when having to tell families that their children, parent, cousin, best friend, were gored by rampaging dragons. A habit so clearly learned to devoid him of emotional output, Ian’s face adopted an even graver, icy façade as the breath slowly left through his nose.

“Did you question nothing in the past ten years, Jude?” Ian’s biting words were more out of agitation from Uncle Phin coddling the damn kid. “A fire that starts out of the blue, in the home of wizards who collect valuable artifacts for a living?”

Ian shook his head; it wasn’t so much due to his annoyance with Jude (and he was annoyed with Jude), but trying to clear his head enough to make it through these next few words. He’d not talked to anyone about it in almost a decade, not since Uncle Phin shut him out and banned him from telling Jude the truth (which he should have ignored, but Phin being Jude’s legal guardian was tricky; now the boy was seventeen and no longer had the protection of just “being a kid”).

When he brought his eyes back to Jude, they were unnaturally soft. Almost kind, though piercing and calculating. Losing his parents had killed Ian, but finding out that they were murdered in cold blood destroyed him. There was a distinction to be sure; Ian could hunt down the bastard that ended the last piece of happiness Ian had ever known.

“Dad and mum,” he stuttered on the word, which instantly caused his eyes to harden. No weakness, no room for prickling sensation at his eyes and the sudden dry, raw feeling at the back of his throat. He pressed on, rougher than before. “They were in possession of something dangerous, something highly sought after. Think of all the things we had in the house. Can you remember?”

Their living room, the den, even their kitchen, had been laden with old objects from various regions of the world. Dad told them stories about their histories, some of them with sweeping tales of merriment and ruckus, and some daring and risky, only just scraping by with their lives. Ian idolized the life they led, spent years planning to mold himself after his parents, the adventures. And then… it was gone. A void. A cautionary tale of the family who ventured too far, searched too deep. A tale of death, and the destruction of an entire family.

“Jude, they were killed,” he reiterated it to Jude, pulled him from memories. Jude’s eyes as glossy as Ian’s felt. “Reed and his lot – “

Ian was prepared for Jude’s reaction and immediately placed a gentle hand on his brother’s shoulder. Not as forceful as before; he couldn’t bring himself to be so cruel. Not now. Not while Jude was reliving the nightmare all over again. When he was sure that Jude would stay put, he continued and removed his hand from the sweaty fabric on his brother’s shoulder.

“Reed has been searching for one of mum and dad’s artifacts.” It was becoming harder to remove himself from the emotion of the memories. Harder to ignore the way his stomach roiled as the thoughts flickered like the spells in the distance. Constant. Unrelenting. “The night of the f-fire, they was there. All of them. Reed, and his two right hands. They disapparated before the aurors arrived, but I swear to Merlin that they were all there. They started the fire. They murdered mum and dad.”

Ian’s tone left no room for argument; it was final. Sure. And the only person to ever believe him had been Uncle Phin, who turned him away for the sake of precious Jude.

The fire rose inside of him again, heating the words that left him next. “Phin knew, and he’s been lying to you since the day he took you in.”
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