Fic: Where Comfort Can Be Found (1/1)
Title: Where Comfort Can Be Found
Rating: R
Pairing: Daniel/Luna
Word Count: 1,099
Summary: After the War, she runs. For mollivanders, who requested “Dan/Luna” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. General Spoilers through Season Six of Lost; Spoilers through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: So I may have butchered canon timelines a bit, but I hope it’s enjoyable, nonetheless -- I’m really enjoying this pairing, just so you know :)
Where Comfort Can Be Found
When the war is through, she’s seen enough. Enough of loss, enough of sacrifice, enough of bloodshed, enough of pain.
She could close her eyes forever, and she’d still have seen enough.
She slips off into the night, unnoticed -- despair thick like a shroud around her world, casting shadows, easy to escape. In her mind, there’s a field, a sunrise, a stream -- in her mind is a place that does not exist for her, but that she desperately craves, needs.
She turns on her heel, a tear on her cheek, and she disappears between breaths; prays that somewhere, that place she sees is real.
__________________________
She ends up doing for others what she cannot do for herself -- she uses her training and becomes a healer, a nurse in a Muggle care center in America, on the eastern seaboard; she forges her immigration paperwork with a flick of her wand, lives in a dank flat without a window, and only casts as many memory charms as she needs to craft a life.
She keeps her name, and the earrings her father gave her; they’re just about all that she keeps.
__________________________
She’s good at what she does, even without magic. She uses it sparingly, only when she’s in dire need; takes enough heat and too many prying questions to teach her restraint, at the lest, but she never loses a patient, not when she can help it.
Enough people have died. She won’t watch more slip into the night.
__________________________
It’s unexpected, the way she comes to take the in-home position for the son of a wealthy Briton. She’s recommended specifically, and for reasons she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t even weigh her options, doesn’t hesitate or wonder: she simply says yes.
She’s on a train bound for Massachusetts before she can process the question, before she can even entertain the uncertainty, and perhaps it’s for the best.
She doesn’t even think to simply apparate and save the time.
__________________________
There’s something about her charge. She notices it immediately.
His eyes are more familiar than any she’s ever known.
He doesn’t speak much, stares out windows and through walls with equal disinterest, tears streaming down his cheeks as often as not. He sleeps, he eats when she prompts him. She sits near him and hums for most of the day, helps him around when he requires it -- medically, she doesn’t see the need for her presence, but she’s not disappointed. She likes to heal, but she has the heart of a caretaker, kind and warm and full beneath the cracks and the grief.
But Daniel Faraday is a broken soul, and she just wants to keep him close, keep the pieces of him close together and make sure that no one loses any one of them, make sure they’re all near enough to maybe knit back into a whole, one day.
__________________________
He has visitors, sometimes; a man and a woman. Their lilts remind her a little bit of home.
She doesn’t like when he has visitors.
__________________________
She gets to know him in unusual ways. He was a scientist, a brilliant one -- she overhears that from the man. He played piano beautifully -- that’s from the woman. He can’t play anymore, she learns, in the way he pokes at the keys, blind; when she butchers Bach, though, he winces, sometimes comes up behind her and fixes the position of her hands as if in a dream.
He likes pasta, and isn’t particularly fond of anything too rich or too meaty. She cooks every dish she knows that uses noodles, and takes the time to learn more; does it with her hands because there’s a certain satisfaction in it -- fixes it with her wand when it approaches inedible, every so often.
He hates watching the news, prefers documentaries about nature and war. Films are touch and go.
He’s at his best when someone’s touching him.
She takes to touching him more and more.
__________________________
He starts talking to her, in single-word sentences. No. Yes. Please. Change. More. Other.
Come. Close. Touch.
Stay.
Kiss.
She doesn’t obey because she has to; she concedes because she wants to.
They both do.
__________________________
He sobs into her chest in the dead of night after he watches a plane crash into the ocean, before she notices that the news is on and gets to the remote.
She strokes his hair and whispers to him, tells him stories of her world where things are different, where there’s not so much heartache.
For the first time in years, she misses it.
__________________________
The man comes, offers him an opportunity. The woman comes, and urges that he take it.
What do you think, he asks her. She kisses him slow, tastes inside his mouth, alfredo sauce and Diet Coke, and she lifts him to his shaky legs, runs a trembling hand through his limp hair and stares into his eyes, sees what she used to see in people, all wonder and goodness and fear.
She remembers being fearless, and she leads him to the room where she sleeps, doesn’t close the door.
Her hands are trembling, but sure in their way; he’s sucking air too fast, and she kisses his chest, feels the rush of breath like the heart of a hummingbird; she mouths his pulse down from the edge, slow, and she guides him like she knows the way, and maybe she does -- maybe she can remember if she closes her eyes and hopes.
She hopes.
__________________________
He decides to leave.
She knows what that means for her.
He kisses her goodbye; he kisses her, and she can’t stop smiling.
She gives him a gift, priceless; drapes it over his neck, lets the gold chain hang low. He fingers it gingerly through the fabric of his shirt: circular -- concentric, dimensional -- and his nail catches on the rounded pyramid, its inverse: an hourglass at the center.
For when you really need it, she breathes against his cheek, gives him on last peck and lets her lips drag against his skin before she pulls away, waves from the window when he gets into the cab, sets off to sea.
She pulls out her wand, and breathes deep.
Time for them both to move on.
Rating: R
Pairing: Daniel/Luna
Word Count: 1,099
Summary: After the War, she runs. For mollivanders, who requested “Dan/Luna” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. General Spoilers through Season Six of Lost; Spoilers through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: So I may have butchered canon timelines a bit, but I hope it’s enjoyable, nonetheless -- I’m really enjoying this pairing, just so you know :)
Where Comfort Can Be Found
When the war is through, she’s seen enough. Enough of loss, enough of sacrifice, enough of bloodshed, enough of pain.
She could close her eyes forever, and she’d still have seen enough.
She slips off into the night, unnoticed -- despair thick like a shroud around her world, casting shadows, easy to escape. In her mind, there’s a field, a sunrise, a stream -- in her mind is a place that does not exist for her, but that she desperately craves, needs.
She turns on her heel, a tear on her cheek, and she disappears between breaths; prays that somewhere, that place she sees is real.
__________________________
She ends up doing for others what she cannot do for herself -- she uses her training and becomes a healer, a nurse in a Muggle care center in America, on the eastern seaboard; she forges her immigration paperwork with a flick of her wand, lives in a dank flat without a window, and only casts as many memory charms as she needs to craft a life.
She keeps her name, and the earrings her father gave her; they’re just about all that she keeps.
__________________________
She’s good at what she does, even without magic. She uses it sparingly, only when she’s in dire need; takes enough heat and too many prying questions to teach her restraint, at the lest, but she never loses a patient, not when she can help it.
Enough people have died. She won’t watch more slip into the night.
__________________________
It’s unexpected, the way she comes to take the in-home position for the son of a wealthy Briton. She’s recommended specifically, and for reasons she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t even weigh her options, doesn’t hesitate or wonder: she simply says yes.
She’s on a train bound for Massachusetts before she can process the question, before she can even entertain the uncertainty, and perhaps it’s for the best.
She doesn’t even think to simply apparate and save the time.
__________________________
There’s something about her charge. She notices it immediately.
His eyes are more familiar than any she’s ever known.
He doesn’t speak much, stares out windows and through walls with equal disinterest, tears streaming down his cheeks as often as not. He sleeps, he eats when she prompts him. She sits near him and hums for most of the day, helps him around when he requires it -- medically, she doesn’t see the need for her presence, but she’s not disappointed. She likes to heal, but she has the heart of a caretaker, kind and warm and full beneath the cracks and the grief.
But Daniel Faraday is a broken soul, and she just wants to keep him close, keep the pieces of him close together and make sure that no one loses any one of them, make sure they’re all near enough to maybe knit back into a whole, one day.
__________________________
He has visitors, sometimes; a man and a woman. Their lilts remind her a little bit of home.
She doesn’t like when he has visitors.
__________________________
She gets to know him in unusual ways. He was a scientist, a brilliant one -- she overhears that from the man. He played piano beautifully -- that’s from the woman. He can’t play anymore, she learns, in the way he pokes at the keys, blind; when she butchers Bach, though, he winces, sometimes comes up behind her and fixes the position of her hands as if in a dream.
He likes pasta, and isn’t particularly fond of anything too rich or too meaty. She cooks every dish she knows that uses noodles, and takes the time to learn more; does it with her hands because there’s a certain satisfaction in it -- fixes it with her wand when it approaches inedible, every so often.
He hates watching the news, prefers documentaries about nature and war. Films are touch and go.
He’s at his best when someone’s touching him.
She takes to touching him more and more.
__________________________
He starts talking to her, in single-word sentences. No. Yes. Please. Change. More. Other.
Come. Close. Touch.
Stay.
Kiss.
She doesn’t obey because she has to; she concedes because she wants to.
They both do.
__________________________
He sobs into her chest in the dead of night after he watches a plane crash into the ocean, before she notices that the news is on and gets to the remote.
She strokes his hair and whispers to him, tells him stories of her world where things are different, where there’s not so much heartache.
For the first time in years, she misses it.
__________________________
The man comes, offers him an opportunity. The woman comes, and urges that he take it.
What do you think, he asks her. She kisses him slow, tastes inside his mouth, alfredo sauce and Diet Coke, and she lifts him to his shaky legs, runs a trembling hand through his limp hair and stares into his eyes, sees what she used to see in people, all wonder and goodness and fear.
She remembers being fearless, and she leads him to the room where she sleeps, doesn’t close the door.
Her hands are trembling, but sure in their way; he’s sucking air too fast, and she kisses his chest, feels the rush of breath like the heart of a hummingbird; she mouths his pulse down from the edge, slow, and she guides him like she knows the way, and maybe she does -- maybe she can remember if she closes her eyes and hopes.
She hopes.
__________________________
He decides to leave.
She knows what that means for her.
He kisses her goodbye; he kisses her, and she can’t stop smiling.
She gives him a gift, priceless; drapes it over his neck, lets the gold chain hang low. He fingers it gingerly through the fabric of his shirt: circular -- concentric, dimensional -- and his nail catches on the rounded pyramid, its inverse: an hourglass at the center.
For when you really need it, she breathes against his cheek, gives him on last peck and lets her lips drag against his skin before she pulls away, waves from the window when he gets into the cab, sets off to sea.
She pulls out her wand, and breathes deep.
Time for them both to move on.