Haze
(Post Mortem)
This drabble contains spoilers.
–
The sigh of haze covering the woods and hills surrounding Mordred’s Mend is unsettling. The air is cold and the sky is grey, and the cloak Theo is wearing does not keep him from shivering.
He coughs, the illness overwhelming his body, making him bow down and fight to breathe. When he manages to stand up again, he’s very nearly sobbing.
“I see the house,” he says aloud, to the emptiness that keeps him company. As he is now, more dead than alive, he could perhaps make his way through the woods to the house faster than an ordinary person could. He knows he won’t last for long, but survival was not his aim any longer. All he wanted to do – needed to do – was to deliver the information to Harry.
Harry would know what to do with it. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not years from now on. But one day, some day, he’d be perhaps pacing through the dark and shadowed hallways of his house and look for a solution only to think of Theo, because Theo has finally managed to be of use. Useful. To Harry, like he never was to his own father.
The folded parchment, hidden between the skin of his throat and the tight collar of his shirt, would be valuable. He’d need to tell Harry this. He’d need to tell him to not lose it, never lose it, because Theo is dying for it. Dying in an attempt to be significant somehow. To someone.
The haze parts before him, and he sees the front door of Mordred’s Mend now. Not long, now. Soon he’ll be there, knocking at Harry’s door. And Harry would open, pull him inside and Theo would, Theo would-
Theo would die, like he always knew he would, too soon. But he wouldn’t spend his last moments alone, and that, that was more than he had believed to have.
“Forgive us where we fail in truth,” he whispers, pressing his shaking hands against the wooden surface of the closed door. “And in thy wisdom make us wise.”
marlowfication 