29. Breakdown / Bob the Skull
Title: Now Is Found
Author: Cyloran
Fandom: The Dresden Files (tv-verse)
Characters: Harry, Bob
Prompt: 29. Breakdown
Word Count: 339
Rating: PG
Summary: Harry's POV
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files do not belong to me. Just passing through.
Author's Note: Spoilers for "What About Bob?" This is the flip side of What Once Was Lost. Yes, I know the scene has been done to death, but Harry needs his POV, doesn't he?
Table: Here There be Ghosts
The eyes are the windows to the soul, especially to a wizard. Most people instinctively avoided meeting Harry's gaze, as if understanding on some primal level that to do so was to open that window and reveal the truth of what lay deep down inside. The conscious mind might lie but the soul would not.
But Bob was no ordinary person. A soul unbound by mortal flesh, there was nothing to see beyond his gaze. What lay within his eyes was exposed for all to see, should anyone care to look.
But no one had cared. Not even Harry. Until now. Until it was too late.
How many times had Harry met that pale blue gaze and never truly seen? Had he taken the time to look - really look - he would have understood long ago that Bob could never betray him.
As the light within those eyes began to fade, Harry finally recognized what had always shone so clearly: devotion, concern, and, yes, even love for the boy Bob had taught to defend himself against the Dark. The boy he had helped survive to become a man. If Harry's father had taught him to protect the weak and helpless - to tilt at windmills, as Bob was so fond of saying - then it was the ghost of a damned sorcerer who had taught him the self respect and confidence needed to do so.
How could he have been so blind, not to have known that Bob would sacrifice all for him?
"Please don't die on me, Bob." Not now. Not when I finally understand.
Harry clung tight to the sorcerer as the blue eyes fluttered closed, the lean body sighing away the last remaining breath of borrowed mortality.
"Please don't die," Harry pleaded, his voice an echo of the lonely child within.
Now, too late, he knew. He'd lost the last, best part of his childhood. His friend, his confident, his surrogate father. The one person in the world who still loved him unconditionally.
He'd lost everything.
He'd lost Bob.
Author: Cyloran
Fandom: The Dresden Files (tv-verse)
Characters: Harry, Bob
Prompt: 29. Breakdown
Word Count: 339
Rating: PG
Summary: Harry's POV
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files do not belong to me. Just passing through.
Author's Note: Spoilers for "What About Bob?" This is the flip side of What Once Was Lost. Yes, I know the scene has been done to death, but Harry needs his POV, doesn't he?
Table: Here There be Ghosts
The eyes are the windows to the soul, especially to a wizard. Most people instinctively avoided meeting Harry's gaze, as if understanding on some primal level that to do so was to open that window and reveal the truth of what lay deep down inside. The conscious mind might lie but the soul would not.
But Bob was no ordinary person. A soul unbound by mortal flesh, there was nothing to see beyond his gaze. What lay within his eyes was exposed for all to see, should anyone care to look.
But no one had cared. Not even Harry. Until now. Until it was too late.
How many times had Harry met that pale blue gaze and never truly seen? Had he taken the time to look - really look - he would have understood long ago that Bob could never betray him.
As the light within those eyes began to fade, Harry finally recognized what had always shone so clearly: devotion, concern, and, yes, even love for the boy Bob had taught to defend himself against the Dark. The boy he had helped survive to become a man. If Harry's father had taught him to protect the weak and helpless - to tilt at windmills, as Bob was so fond of saying - then it was the ghost of a damned sorcerer who had taught him the self respect and confidence needed to do so.
How could he have been so blind, not to have known that Bob would sacrifice all for him?
"Please don't die on me, Bob." Not now. Not when I finally understand.
Harry clung tight to the sorcerer as the blue eyes fluttered closed, the lean body sighing away the last remaining breath of borrowed mortality.
"Please don't die," Harry pleaded, his voice an echo of the lonely child within.
Now, too late, he knew. He'd lost the last, best part of his childhood. His friend, his confident, his surrogate father. The one person in the world who still loved him unconditionally.
He'd lost everything.
He'd lost Bob.