Disclaimer: Everything you recognise belongs to Jo Rowling.

Rated M for graphic violence. Oops.

A/N: So, this is what roleplay hiatus does to me. I was just having a lot of feelings okay. Roll with it.

Dorcas stares into her teacup. It's just about empty, save for a few drops of amber Firewhiskey. She knows she shouldn't be drinking, because the Order could call on her at any minute. She isn't usually this irresponsible but something about the tension in the air and the smell of lightning is getting to her. She taps her fingers against the translucent china, the clinking sound loud in her silent flat. Marlene painted her fingernails sunshine yellow the last time they'd met. She'd ignored Doe's protests that yellow didn't look good on her. Yellow was Marlene's colour, sometimes sunshine, sometimes gold. She sighs and pushes the cup away, but not before tracing the embellished 'D' on its surface. She smiles at the memory of Marlene giving it to her. She had laughed when her friend had filled it with alcohol instead of tea. She hasn't used it for anything else since.

Dorcas turns her mind to Marlene. She's on a mission today. Doe has the utmost confidence in her, but she's terrified at the same time. She's always terrified for Marlene.

A voice echoes through the kitchen suddenly. Doe jumps to her feet, wand at the ready, but she finds herself face to face with a silvery Patronus. It looks like a fox, and it speaks with Doc Dearborn's voice.

"Come quickly. We need your help with the injured."

Doe whirls around as the Patronus dissolves, her elbow knocking the cup off the kitchen counter. She's gone before it falls to the ground.

The usual crushing feeling comes with Apparating, and she takes great gulps of air when she lands in an open field. There's a farmhouse nearby with people swarming around it. Doe breaks into a run. She's at the gate when someone catches her arm.

"Doe," Benjy Fenwick says seriously. "Slow down."

"Doc said - you need help?" she pants, brushing her hair from her face and wishing she'd thought to tie it first.

Something unreadable flits over Benjy's face, but he doesn't say anything immediately. "Stay here and Obliviate the Muggles, all right?"

She frowns. "That's what you called me for?"

Benjy shakes his head. "We - I - it was a mistake. It's supposed to be your day off, Doe."

Doe tilts her chin defiantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I can handle it."

"I know you can," he says, smiling sadly. "There, to the left side of the building. I'll take you home, yeah?" With that, he hurries into the smoking building.

"Wait - where's Marlene?" she calls, but he's already vanished. Sighing, Doe walks to the makeshift camp where Order members are taking care of the injured. She catches sight of Alice Longbottom, who looks surprised to see her.

"Dorcas? What're you doing here?" Alice asks, her eyes wide.

Doe laughs shortly. "For some reason, no one seems to want me here."

Alice shakes her head. "No, I just thought - isn't today your day off?"

"Well, I'm always ready to help. Benjy said to help you Obliviate the-"

"Already done," Alice smiles. "I have to take care of a couple, but I know how you hate doing that... Why don't you go home, Doe?"

"Yeah, maybe I will," she says softly. Turning around, she strides away until she's out of Alice's sight. Then, she slips into the building.
There are cracks in the plaster everywhere, evidence of duels. Doe chooses the corridor which seems the most damaged and wanders down it, gripping her wand so tightly that its familiar grooves cut into her palm. After only a few minutes of walking, she hears the distant murmurs of voices and follows the sound. She pauses right before the room where the voices are coming from. She knows this must be where the main attack took place - Marlene would be there too. Encouraged by the thought, Doe steps through the doorway.

She stops.

There's a body on the floor, and blood is splattered over the walls as if someone halfheartedly tried to paint them red. It's a woman, her pale hair the only recognisable thing about her. Her face looks like a wild animal tore into it, and her body is much the same. The woman was a witch too, Doe realises, seeing the wand some distance from her outstretched right hand. She kneels beside it, turning purposely away from the woman's body. She hesitates to pick up her wand, but the woman is already dead. There's no harm in it, she convinces herself. She takes it in her left hand, squinting at it in the light of her own wand. She can see the exquisite carving around its handle and the tiny letter its owner scratched into it.

'M'.

She drops the wand and backs away, hand clapped over her mouth. The sound of it falling to the floor seems louder than anything else in the world. She wills herself not to turn back to the woman, but she can't help herself. The woman is not just any woman. She knows her better than she knows herself. And now her face is scarred beyond recognition, her blonde hair - it'd once been the colour of sunshine, Doe thinks numbly - tinged with her blood, the walls covered in it. Parts of her - Merlin, parts of her body - litter the floor in bloody chunks.

As though it's coming from very far away, she hears someone screaming. It's muffled at first; Doe moves her hand from her mouth to pinch her wrist. It must be a nightmare. God knows it's what she fears most. The screaming gets even louder. She dimly registers three figures at the far end of the room running towards her. Through her fuzzy vision, she recognises the Prewett brothers and Benjy.
Benjy pushes her down to the floor - doesn't he understand, she can't sit on her blood - and Gideon crouches in front of her, taking her face in his hands and softly shushing her. Fabian pries her wand away from her, murmuring something to Benjy.

Benjy lets out a cry of frustration. "Who let her in here?!"

"Benjy, we'd have to tell her eventually-" Fabian says quietly.

"Not like this!"

"Doe, listen to me," Gideon is saying to her. "You need to stop screaming."

She's the one screaming - oh. How funny, she was screaming and didn't even realise. Suddenly, she's laughing at the top of her voice, laughing so hard she thinks her lungs will burst. She's laughing so hard that she's blinking back tears. How funny, that she's standing here laughing, but at the same time, parts of her are painted over the walls, parts of her are scattered over the floor, a part of her is lying dead, just a few feet away.

Gideon is shaking her head, saying something she can't hear over her own laughter. If she laughs hard enough, she can hear Marlene's laughter too, loud and obnoxious and devil-may-care. She won't ever stop laughing, because she doesn't want to lose that sound. Fabian and Gideon pull her to her feet again, and she stumbles into Benjy, who leads her out of the room.

"Doe, please stop, just stop laughing," he pleads. "You're acting - let's just take you home, you should get some sleep."

Marlene was supposed to come over later, and they would've laughed and talked and sipped Firewhiskey from their delicate matching teacups. Marlene wouldn't be telling her to stop laughing. But Marlene is lying in pieces in a desolate farmhouse. Funny how little things like death can ruin girl time.

Doe clenches her hands into fists, turning to Benjy. "Then bring her back!" she screams, so loudly that he takes a step back.

"Doe-"

"BRING HER BACK!" she screams again, and after that, things get blurry until one of the Prewetts have to pry her off Benjy. "Bring her back," Doe sobs. "Why can't you just bring her back?" She doesn't even know who she's hugging, and she's soaking his shirt through. But all she's conscious of is that it isn't Marlene. She can never hug Marlene again. "Bring her back," she whispers.

They step out into the chilly evening to the sound of thunder. She's passed from person to person, and everyone whispers their condolences. None of them is Marlene. Alice strokes her hair and kisses her forehead; Doc embraces her, looking terribly guilty; Edgar gives her his usual bear hug. Emmeline volunteers to take her home. No one seems to know what to do with her, and she can't stop crying. Doe thinks she might just cry forever, until she dries up completely and becomes a shrivelled prune. She gives a hiccuping laugh. Marlene hated prunes.

Emmeline takes her arm and Apparates back to her flat.

"I'll go get my extra set of clothes," she murmurs. All the girls have clothes at each others' houses, just in case it's too dangerous to separate after a mission. Doe realises Marlene still has her clothes, dozens of sets even though she couldn't possibly fit into any of them. She wonders if they'll ever be given back to her, or if they'll just lie there, gathering dust with Marlene's own clothes. It strikes her as particularly ironic that their clothes are together when they themselves aren't.

She stumbles into the kitchen and stops short when she sees the remains of her teacup. She rummages through the fragments frantically, naively hoping that the 'D' would be in one piece. But the cup has shattered into tiny shards, like her brittle heart. She can fix it with a spell, but it won't ever be the same again. She sinks to her knees and stares unseeingly at the wreck, her palms dripping blood onto the pieces. And as the white turns pink and the rain comes crashing down, Doe feels something tear away from her, something shattering within her, some little part of her lost in the howling wind and still looking for sunshine.