Prompt: #12 – "Lua" by Bright Eyes
I've got a flask inside my pocket / We can share it on the train
And if you promise to stay conscious / I will try and do the same
Yeah, we might die from medication / But we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening / By the morning seems insane
And I'm not sure what the trouble was / That started all of this
The reasons all have run away / But the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend / But it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight / By the morning never is
Warning: DEATH
Summary: One last trip on the Hogwarts Express.
Author's Note: Written for the April 2006 rtchallenge ficathon. I wrote other drabbles as well, but I am happiest with this one. The rest (particularly the drabbles) need further elaboration, or will wind up as inserts in my other fic. I'm not very keen on putting drabbles up as fic; it seems like too much trouble to make readers click on a story, only to find that it's 100 words. I could get behind collections of drabbles, though. :) Eh, enough from me, onto the fic. Remember: CHARACTER DEATH so DO NOT READ if you want them alive.

-

Blood, Vodka, Pain

-

"No, no, please, stay with me, stay with me, look at me, dammit, LOOK AT ME!"

She drags him into one of the carriages and lays him on the floor. Ripping off his shirt, she gasps in horror at the seething mass of maggots over one nipple, the the long gashes of reopened wounds from his recent change, and ... she closes her eyes and shudders with revulsion... the skin over his open windpipe that flaps as he breathes.

Mute now, his eyes watery and his gaze glassy, he stares at the ceiling, turning his head to and fro, his lips moving in a soundless benediction to whatever gods that might be listening.

The wet sucking sound is more than she can bear, and she casts a numbing and suture spell in quick succession to take care of it. Another three repeats of the suture spell takes care of his wounds, but the maggots... She takes a deep breath, and plunges her fingers into his chest, dislodging the maggots and clearing the wound. It must be done properly, or he'll end up with a maggot underneath as she heals the wound. She knows that they'll only eat rotting flesh, but still, to imagine it still in there... she tries to stop her shivering, but finds that she cannot. She continues to clean out the wound anyway, her teeth clenched and her fingers shaking from disgust.

"Dammit Remus, this is bad. I don't have anything to clean this before I spell it shut, and there's no way this train is getting to Hogwarts in time. I've fixed your throat and your cuts, but this is different; I've got to accelerate the flesh growth and you KNOW that takes as much energy from YOU as it does from me, and there's so much blood, so much blood, Remus..." Her eyes fill with tears, and her vision blurs to shades of black, deeper black, ominous black as her gaze falls on his open robe, fanned open beneath him as he bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds. And there's so much blood, so much blood...

When her tears fall, her vision clears a little, and she sees that the glassiness has gone from his eyes. He is more alert, and is making noises.

"Please save your strength..."

"...ket"

She bends over and places and ear over his mouth.

"What?"

"Pog...get."

"Pocket?"

"Vod...car."

As dire as the circumstances were, Tonks couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the little hip flask.

"Really." She took a sniff and both eyebrows shot into her hairline.

"100 Proof Smirnoff coming right now. This is going to sting."

His fingers clench and he writhes in agony. The anguished moan that rips out of his newly-healed throat causes her heart to pound and her heart to break, but she has to do this. She looks up at him with fresh tears, and realises that he has lost consciousness, which is never a good sign. She slaps his face gently, then harder.

"Wake up!" Shite, it was all going to hell.

"Wake up!" Shite, shite, shite.

"Look mister, you have to wake up because there's a reason why I didn't use all that alcohol on your sorry behind, and that's 'cause I want to get nice and high with you so that we could do something that I've wanted to do for a long time, and if you're thinking christening the Hogwarts Express, you're damned straight that's what I want to do, but that means you HAVE to wake up now please, you HAVE TO have to wake up now, now now now, nownownow. Please, Remus. Please try. Wake UP, please... " She clutches at his torn robes and weeps. "Please don't leave me here without you."

Picking up her discarded wand, she wipes it on her own robes and scrubs her face tiredly. She leans in closer to look at the maggot wound. It is free from maggots, but needs to be spelled right away if Remus is to have any hope of survival. It is bleeding buckets, and he is deathly pale. She hopes Madame Pomfrey will have blood replenishing potion ready for consumption - it takes two weeks to brew a good batch - if Remus does not have any within the next fifteen minutes or so, he'll literally be skin and bones only. She knows that she is taking a risk with the healing because the magic requires energy from both the spell-ee and the caster, but she knows she cannot wait anymore. Brushing his hair away from his face and kissing his forehead, she takes a deep breath, and begins to weave the incantation.

-----

It hurts, and she wants the churning motion to stop. She turns over to her side and vomits on the floor. The retching exhausts her, and she stays curled up in the foetal position, which gives her an excellent view of…

"Remusss…"

She drags herself over to him, feeling for his pulse. It is slow, too slow. She squeezes her eyes and hot tears spill over her cheeks and onto his hands.

"Please wake up… please, dearest. I cannot live without you."

There is no response from him, and she feels something break inside. She pulls herself beside him, and folds herself into an awkward cuddle. There is something pressing against her back, and she pulls it away. It is his hip-flask. She stares at it, seeing their distorted reflections on the body of the silver canister. 'No, not silver, probably pewter,' her mind reminds her.

She unscrews the cap and takes a swig, feeling it burn all the way down. She has no idea why he was carrying this, and why she suddenly feels the need to drink.

She looks over to him and nudges him with her shoulder. Harder.

Still nothing.

She takes another swig, feeling her head begin to achieve that ethereal lucid quality that only drink can achieve.

Another drink.

Even if they could reach Hogwarts in time, there is nobody to meet the train. They were ambushed on a perfectly random trip to King's Cross. It could not have been a planned attack as the decision to take a walk to the station came completely out of the blue from Remus.

"Let's sit and stare at the departure screens, and pick destinations to visit when this is all done," Remus had told her. He had been so chipper that she had agreed at once – not really needing an excuse to agree. He so rarely asked to go somewhere that she would have willingly obliged apparating to the moon, had he asked.

Then, they attacked. In the muggle side of the station. The Ministry of Magic responded almost immediately, but the Auror force that responded was too small. Remus had taken some awful hexes before she managed to drag them away to Platform 9¾, where the Hogwarts Express had been pulling out of the station. She didn't think, she just dragged Remus on.

She didn't know why they attacked, she didn't know how they knew to attack, she didn't know… she didn't know anything at all, except that the train would take them to Scotland and Scotland was where Hogwarts was, and Hogwarts was Sanctuary, where Minerva was, where Poppy was, where Dumbledore… where Dumbledore used to be.

She blinks as the train lurches to the side a little, and realises that she had passed out, just a little. Remus!

She turns her head to check him, and sees him staring at her, glassy-eyed. Is he… she cannot bear to think that, and tentatively calls his name. "Remus?"

His lips move.

"I thought… I thought you were dead…"

She smiles, a tremulous smile. She knows from her own symptoms that she has overdone the spell, she has woven too much of herself in it, and now her fate is linked to his.

She can think of nothing better.

"Where you go, I go."

Why didn't she think to send a Patronus message before starting on the weaving? She lifts her wand, dirty and slimy with half-dried blood. She remembers that morning (how could life change so fast?), how he woke her early with his fingers, and how she had accused him of using sex as an inappropriate alarm clock to cure her punctuality problem, and –

"Expecto Patronum."

Her wolf bounded up, and she encoded a message to Minerva, begging for help and medical supplies to meet them at the train station. The spell takes the last of her energy reserves, and she flops back down on the floor, and closes her eyes.

"Nym?"

She is too tired to answer him.

"Nym?" His raspy tone sounds panicked, and she turns over and looks at him.

"Stay awake."

Unsmiling, she nods, but the urge to slip away is so great…

"Nym! Please… stay with me…"

"Said… said that to you earlier but … you didn't listen…"

"If you promise… to stay conscious…I will do… the same…"

She pulls open her eyes. Through her vantage point on the floor, she cannot see the sun, but it looks like it is still late afternoon. They will not reach Hogwarts in time. She shifts her gaze, and looks into his dark ones.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

They continue to stare into each other's eyes.

It has stopped hurting.