Chapter Text
The rhythm of one pulse was not nearly as loud as the rhythm of two. It was faint at first, irregular and frantic, but in the last few minutes of life, before it all went away, Harry could hear…he could feel…the very moment the two became one, and when they finally came to a halt in the confining cages of bones they were trapped beneath.
When his eyes closed, too tired to wait any longer, and he finally gave in to the undeniable need to sleep, the only thing he could see was Theo’s face.
Sleeping.
They were sleeping.
Light. Everything was light. Warmth. Reaching into the back of eyes that refused to open. Everything was light. A soft touch. Warmth.
Wake up.
The air was sweet with the taste of spring. Life was awake, plucking away at the cold terror that lingered in his bones.
Wake up, mon deuce.
This isn’t a dream.
Wake up.
When Harry’s eyes opened, his chest heaved with a sob. The heat of tears ripping from his eyes left him frantic, scrambling to sit up, but something stopped him as his hands braced against something soft. The light was soft. A warm glow. Somebody moved beside him, but his eyes refused to focus.
Harry.
The voice was soft. He recognized it, but his eyes burned, and he pulled his glasses from his face.
“I can’t—where—?”
He coughed. His voice grated through his throat. His mouth was soaked with the taste of copper and death. A hand squeezed his arm.
You’re alright. Just give it a moment.
Harry choked, and he could feel another sob tugging at the confines of his chest as his hands lifted through the panic. Seeking out whoever was there. Whoever he couldn’t see. That voice. He knew that voice.
Fingers laced with his. He knew that touch, and as recognition washed over him, Harry could feel the weight that trapped the air in his chest finally lifting.
Theo.
A soft squeeze, the brush of lips against the back of his hand.
Harry blinked, and when his eyes opened again, something soft settled over his senses at the sight of Theo slowly came into focus. In this light. It was so soft, breaching through a window behind him, softened by sheer muslin curtains that swayed in a breeze.
Harry could smell rain, soaked earth. Sunrays stretched around him where he sat, lining Theo’s silhouette with something genial and kind. A halo. He was glowing in the light, smiling against the back of Harry’s hand, his head canted lightly to the side as he watched him from the chair that was beside his bed. His eyes were so…blue. Bright. Full of life and warmth and peace behind a shimmer of tears.
“Hi, baby.” Theo’s voice was soft, coated in a gentle whisper of laughter as he pressed Harry’s hand against his cheek.
It was at that moment that Harry didn’t care about anything else. Where he was. Where he had been. What had happened. How he got here. It didn’t matter. None of it did. This was home. Living or not, home was wherever they were, together. Wherever Theo was.
Another sobbed racked through him, and Harry couldn’t stop himself from throwing himself into him, turning his face into his neck.
A quiet ‘Oh, chérie,’ met his ears.
“I thought you—I had to—you stopped breathing—I couldn’t—”
The feeling of Theo’s hand at the back of his neck was gentle, and Harry could feel himself sinking into Theo’s arms as fingers lightly coiled into his hair.
He was so warm. Theo was so warm. And his voice. A quiet whisper behind his eyes.
Slow down, chérie.
Harry couldn’t. Theo was so warm, he couldn’t let go.
“I thought you were dead—”
“I know, baby.”
“I had to—”
Harry pulled back, letting his hands find either side of Theo’s face as his eyes darted over him, threatening him with tears that pricked at his vision. “Did it..did it work?”
Theo sniffed, nodding in understanding at what Harry couldn’t finish bringing himself to say. He knew what Harry had done. The sacrifice he had made. A hand slid up Harry’s neck, brushing fingers over his cheekbone.
“It worked.”
“Are we—” Harry felt his throat tighten in panic, but the moment, the warmth of Theo and his presence and his touch and this place—the panic slipped away, unable to gain any traction.
They were dead.
Surely, they had died.
Harry’s eyes fell to his arm. It had healed, somehow. But the scar that had been left behind was jagged. He had torn himself open, with no hesitation. A hand dropped to run along the length of the scar. It was thick, winding up his forearm to connect with the body of the serpent that was wrapped around itself, consuming its own tail.
Harry found Theo’s eyes again, and that storm of blue had thickened with worry. With something heavy. But Harry shook his head, leaning to rest his forehead against Theo’s.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You would have done the same.”
The tears had returned, blinding them both, and Theo shook his head. The wire between them was flooded with visions of their life, and the last moments that Harry could recall. His attempts to revive him. The moment he realized that there was nothing he could do, until it hit him. Until it was no longer a last resort. The conflict, Harry’s determination to master his own fate, to hold his life to a higher standard of something that could not be taken away, quickly became something he would willingly give. If it meant Theo would live.
It had worked.
“Do you understand what this means?” Theo asked, his eyes dropping to the vicious proof of Harry’s last living act. His last sacrifice.
“I do,” Harry nodded.
Theo smiled, sniffing against tears. “Tell me. What this means.”
Harry’s hand lifted to rest against Theo’s neck, and a heavy weight seemed to lift away from his shoulders as he shifted to let their eyes connect while their pulses began to align.
“This means everything,” Harry offered a smile, swallowing back the taste of death in his throat. He knew what happened. He could feel it. He could feel the way Theo moved through his veins. The way Theo became life and charged through the ventricles of his heart. “It means I did this for you,” he smiled again, brighter. “And you did this for me.”
He could feel Theo struggling. He knew none of this made sense. This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t be this way. But it was. They were here. Warm. Safe.Together.
They were home.
“I did,” Theo said, as if confirming it to himself with a nod of his head before he straightened up, letting a hand rest on Harry’s arm.
“We did this, Theo.”
“We did.”
“We chose this, Theo. Do you understand me? We chose this. We made this choice. Because it was ours to make. Do you hear me, Theodore?”
Theo took a deep breath, and nodded. The imperceptible shake in Theo’s hands, and the waiver of uncertainty that shook down the wire between them was gone.
They breathed together, unable to ruin the synchronicity of it all. This moment was theirs. Not Draco’s. Not Hermione’s. Not Daphne’s. This wasn’t for anyone else. This was theirs, in the warmth of this space that shaped itself into a bright, comfortable room. With the glow of the sun and the taste of life and spring and something sweet in the air. This was theirs.
This is for us, baby.
Theo nodded again, and his smile was radiant, and Harry felt his heart blooming, on the verge of detonation, in his chest.
“Je t’aime, I love you, Harry James.”
“Moi aussi, je t’aime pareil, I love you too, all the same, Theodore.”
This was the way things were now. They remained there in the bed, with their voices low, exhaustion pulling at their laughter in moments that seemed to stretch on and on, until they gave in to sleep. Until true rest overtook them, driving their minds into a place where no worry could entertain them. They were together, in between the realm of life and what lay beyond it.
No shadows or tainted invasions of jealousy, no forceful charades of tug-o-war disguised beneath the art of caring, no bars or limitations of law and the boundaries they seemed so keen to traipse along in the land of broken people that always needed and expected and demanded.
This was a place of peace and rest that fulfilled their bodies in a way that no night in a mortal realm could begin to attain.
But as Harry slept, Theo began to stir. But it was without complaint because even now, here, the nature of creation, in the achievement of balance that he began to recognize as true, as it was intended to be–unlike what he had felt before, with the others in the confines of living–prompted him to open his eyes.
To see what he had done. What he had chosen to do.
Seeing Harry in a state of absolute peace was moving, and Theo couldn’t help but shift beside him, drawing softlines with his fingers over Harry’s features as he rested his head against the arm that Harry had outstretched behind him before they had fallen asleep.
His fingers passed through dark hair, reveling in its texture and the way it defied physics itself in order to remain disheveled and a proper mess atop Harry’s head. Pushing it from his eyes, he traced the jagged line of Harry’s scar on his forehead, a soft smile pulling into place as he watched the tips of his fingers connect with scar tissue in the form of light. The gentle glow of it faded on its own, and it wasn’t until Harry stirred slightly when Theo pulled his hand away that Theo realized that his touch, his presence here, was an important part of the dynamic of Harry’s peace.
Harry wouldn’t have this moment without him, and Theo wouldn’t have this quiet moment of introspection, one that he was desperate to cling to, with Harry by his side.
He dropped his head back, sinking into the bed beside a definition of equals, of checks and balances, of order and lawlessness that spun itself between them and pulled them together as one.
Harry was the right one.
Harry loved them.
He had said it.
And Theo believed him.
And in the moment, he could feel a twinge of sadness as it worked its way behind his eyes, nipping at the edges of his eyelashes in the form of tears. It had taken so much to get here. So much pain. Loss. Grief. Acceptance. Denial. So much repetition of cycles so vicious that Theo had died for the sake of the violence. For the hatred. For the anger. The abuse. Theo had put himself through most of it willingly, letting hands touch him despite knowing that they were not capable of holding the most fragile, or even the most volatile pieces of himself with crushing them.
This is the way it should be.
This is how it works.
This is what it is.
This is what I deserve.
But it wasn’t. None of it was right. Theodore was as much a victim as much as he was a casualty as he was a culprit. He was guilty of the same sins, his views twisted by lived experiences that shaped him into thinking that what he had done, what he chose to do, and how he chose to act towards those he cared for, was right.
But it wasn’t.
He had hurt.
And he had hurt.
There was a word for this, he realized, and it wasn’t until he lay there, sharing breaths with Harry as he slept, with the beat of his pulse drumming quietly in his mind, that he found it.
It was codependency.
He remembered the book. Hermione had found it low on a shelf in his study, an academic text from a muggle university on the study of muggle psychology. Or, buried in the retrospect that came with death, human psychology. It referred not to an over-dependence on a person, which he had learned to be a fairly controversial assumption, but on an overtly imbalanced relationship between two people.
The parallels had been shocking, and Theo had devoured the text, but the habits of giving too much, and taking too little, and the simple nature of power dynamics at play in his longest standing relationship, what had lived and died between him and Draco, had overpowered any sense of reason or any conclusions he had been able to draw on the matter.
His relationship with Hermione had been a venture of healing. They had needed each other in ways that could not be explained. They had filled in the gaps, provided to each other what Draco had failed to give them on their own, but they knew. They both knew. What they had was hardly a choice. He had loved her, but as much as she knew that it wouldn’t be enough for her, he knew it wouldn’t be enough for him. Draco was the common denominator, the static charge that caused the spark that kept them both alight and in flames. But for Hermione, it was more than that, in much the same way that for Theo, it was deeper than that.
They needed him, in their own ways.
But it wasn’t healthy.
He could see that now. Here. After life, and before complete death.
Perhaps that was what it took for him. Perhaps this was where it all made sense, and this was where he was meant to be. Right here. With Harry beside him. Resting and at peace.
He wasn’t sure, but as he turned to let his head rest against Harry’s shoulder, giving his breathing a moment to sync with the steady cadence of the heart beside him, Theo realized that it wasn’t important. None of it was important anymore.
He was here, now.
Harry was here, now.
They were at peace, finally.
This was the way things were now.
The sun was soft as it greeted them, blanketing their room in a gentle glow. Beams of light reached across their bed. Dust played in the air, and the light peaked through fingers that toyed in and out of shadow and soft luminescence.
Harry sat with his back against the wall, with a hand lifted to follow a sliver of light that poured over Theo’s shoulder. His eyes dropped to follow the course his fingers took, trailing along the dips of curves of a bare clavicle, up the sweeping line of his neck. Over scars that had faded in life, leaving sensitive marks in their wake after death.
Theo’s eyes captured the morning light, keeping it there, soaking it in, as if they were starved of it, neglected. They were bright, deep pools. The clearest blue, watching him with a smile of their own as Theo leaned into every touch. Theo had told him it would be this way. He had told him, many years ago, that death would open his eyes to things he had never seen.
But Harry had not expected this. Such beauty, mingling with such a definitive and impressive tranquility that there would be tears in his eyes. Theo said nothing of the way Harry would see more than just what existed in his hands, sitting before him in his lap with hands on his chest and in his hair, kissing his fingers with a look of so much love in his eyes. He had not been told of the way that he would see the energy between them take shape in the form of light that played beneath their fingertips when they touched or in the incredible magnetism of Theo’s touch. Like a force that he couldn’t deny. Like gravity. Like the dance between the sun and the moon in the sky.
But as Harry watched those eyes look at him, filled with an appreciation that was reciprocated in ways that Harry could not name, a question flashed in his mind, spilling in a warm stream of consciousness down the wire that connected them. He could almost see it now, in death. The connection was almost visible, like a string of light, thin and faint, but there. It was so strong that Harry knew he didn’t need to speak, but the habits of living were still there, so he did, smiling under the touch of fingers to his lips as they traveled over his features on their way to tangle into his hair.
“Did you know, Theodore?” Harry’s hands had traveled to Theo’s sides, his grip settling on his waist to tug him closer as he straightened himself where he sat on the bed.
Theo offered a soft smile, his eyes dropping to watch Harry’s lips form the shape of words that had echoed in his head before they had been spoken in that voice. “Know what, mon âme?”
Harry smiled, his lips turned into a soft expression beneath the brush of Theo’s thumb. My soul. Those words were coupled with a flood of totality down the wire. It moved through him, like a wave of warmth blanketed under the cool touch of moonlight that seemed to ripple from Theo’s very core. Harry never pictured death and the places it would take him, but this, the sensations of existing outside of a real vessel, outside of the trap that was a human body, was mind bending.
“Did you know it would be like this?” He leaned into Theo’s hand, turning his face to brush a kiss against Theo’s palm before it lightly gripped his jaw to turn it back to him, the other resting against Harry’s neck as fingers toyed in absentminded patterns into his hair.
Theo shook his head, rocking forward until Harry could feel the static of their skin when Theo’s chest met his, when his lips pressed to his in lazy fervor. “I thought so,” Theo said, his voice hitching beneath Harry’s smile, as if the smile itself was a feeling wholeheartedly new to him in this new space. “But I was wrong.”
Harry hummed, letting his nails trail in light pathways over curves of muscle along Theo’s back to keep him close. He arched into the kiss, letting his tongue sweep over the delicate, sweet flavor of Theo’s tongue as it met his. “How wrong?”
Something stirred in Theo’s throat, a soft whine that Harry could practically taste. He felt Theo shift on his lap as a hand braced against the back of his head, tangling into his hair as nails dragged into his scalp. Everything felt…more. There was no such thing as anything less than electrifying in this place. Death had been more than kind to them. It had renewed them, and they were now existing entirely as one.
“I was a fool, mon âme,” Theo’s words were nothing but a sigh against Harry’s lips, their pitch shifting slightly when Harry let his hips roll just enough beneath him so that Theo could feel him, entirely hard, needing him closer. “I was just a man who knew nothing at all.”
A broad hand cupped the back of Theo’s neck, and Harry craned his neck just enough to let his lips ghost along the angle of his jaw while a soft laugh shook in his throat. The warmth of Theo’s skin under his touch seemed to magnify as energy rippled between them, snapping with static that tickled beneath his fingers. The word transcendence echoed in his mind, and Harry felt himself smile as he shook his head, his lips parting for breath against the curve of Theo’s neck. They had become something more. Heaven, Paradise, Eden, Valhalla. Those places were childsplay, dream destinations that men hoped to one day visit.
But this? What they had become? They had become them.
Such ascensionism was within them, as was all of its glory.
“Just a man?” He asked, unable to stop the way his breath stopped its exit from his throat as Theo’s back arched in his arms. “Then what was I?”
Theo leaned forward on his knees, just enough to drop his chin and capture Harry’s lips in a kiss that deepened with the flavor of something desperate and hungry, but still soft, without the urgency that had plagued them in the past. There was a flurry of warmth, a gentle buzz of contact, and Harry could feel Theo’s lips turning into a smirk against his as a soft flood of lubrication swept down his length by way of Theo’s hand.
“You, mon âme,” Those words again. Harry’s chest tightened, his focus momentarily torn between the combat of the physical nuisance of their intimacy and the metaphysical tug that coiled around them. My soul. My soul. My soul. “You were a gift from God himself.” Theo’s words were paired with a roll of his hips, and the breath between them was simultaneously gone, disappearing in sounds that fell from their mouths on a united front. “Properly divine.”
Harry’s hands tangled into Theo’s hair, and a breathless attempt to deepen their kiss as hips rolled with treacherous intent was met with more words, traveling down the wire as the ability to speak required more effort than a pair of dazed souls were willing to put up.
Un être céleste, a celestial being. Theo’s voice eased beyond the open gates of Harry’s consciousness. There was no need for walls or mental defenses in this place. His mind was wide open, beckoning pathways to meddle and combine into a single entity. Harry could no longer hold onto his understanding of what vocabulary he had access to, instead flooding the wire and their open line of communication with images and feelings, a mortal replaying of life they had lived together. What they had survived together. The pieces they had been missing. But he knew, as they moved together and grappled for the physical traction that these bodies provided, should they dare to float away and leave them behind, that three words weren’t enough to portray what Theo meant to him. What Theo had done for him. What Theo had given him the room to grow into and become.
I love you wasn’t enough, but he said it anyway, again and again, because he knew, even now, even here, that those three words had been the only thing Theo had ever wanted to hear. As a boy. As a man. As something different. As everything else. Theo needed them. And so did he.
I love you, baby.
I know.
I love you, Theodore.
I love you, Harry James.
I love you.
Thank you.
What is this place? Harry’s words had failed him. The walls of this new home were sturdy, but with just a thought, they could fall away. They found themselves outside, enjoying the warmth and subtle scents of the garden that surrounded them. But when Harry’s question had reached into the air, grasping for the wire to float its way down, it was not Theo’s voice that he heard in response.
We affectionately call it The Space In Between.
‘You,’ call it that, brother. Not ‘we.’
Harry turned over his shoulder on the pathway, his recognition catching the images that filled his mind before his eyes could sync up and connect with the physical picture before him.
Two sets of striking grey eyes, distinct features and dark hair, one with a presence of refined elegance, quiet, and the other bold and rebellious. They were smiling, and in a single moment, Harry was pulled into a strong hug that brought memories of his youth crashing into view.
Sirius! What are you doing here?
Theo’s voice laughed in his head, and Harry couldn’t stop himself from glancing over his godfather’s shoulder. Theo was standing beside Regulus Black, his eyes dancing with humor as he muttered something behind a hand for only Regulus to hear. The other man snorted, licking his lips with a fine brow arching up at Theo’s remark before Harry’s attention was pulled back to Sirius.
We’re dead, Harry. This is where we go when we die.
Harry shook his head, a sheepish grin on his face as they released each other from their embrace and pulled away. More questions flooded from his mind, but Sirius could only smile.
I have something to show you. Answers will come.
Harry’s eyes found Theo, but he was reassured with a subtle motion of his head, but not before Regulus’s sharp stare judgmentally swept over him.
He looks like James.
Theo’s eyes were burning with insinuating humor. Is that where he gets it?
You have no idea. Regulus clicked his tongue, and before Harry could interject, Sirius shot the pair a look. That look. The we talked about this look.
Regulus, enough.
The younger Black brother rolled his eyes, clearly catching the inside of his cheek between his teeth as he gave Harry another look over, and between the pair of them, Harry was forced to turn away.
You were saying.
Regulus and Theo were laughing, but by the time Harry glanced over his shoulder, they were gone, and Sirius was leading him down the path.
Bloody Slytherins. I talked to them, I promise.
About what?
Sirius cleared his throat. “Jesus Christ, Harry.”
Regulus and your dad, there was history there.
What’s that got to do with me?
Sirius stopped in his tracks, his eyebrows popping up in that clearly Black way of letting Harry know that he had just said something he should already know the answer to.
What—oh. Oh.
Right.
Right. So anyway.
I need to show you something.
It was as if no time had passed. As if Harry’s entire lifetime had stopped the very moment that Sirius had fallen through the veil. His timeline fed itself down the familial wire that joined them together, and though Harry could feel a shift, a subtle weight that sank between them, Sirius asked no questions. He had the answers he needed, and Harry was content with the silence as they wandered down the path in the garden.
Wildflowers spanned as far as the eye could see, but after some time, the fields began to taper off as they neared rockier footing. The sun was breaking through a haze of overcast, breaching through marine barriers, bringing with it a breeze that tasted of the sea.
The shared silence was comfortable, and it wasn’t until the pair broke through a thickening of crags and stopped along the edge of sharp cliffs that Sirius finally spoke. He had settled with his back to the wind, and grey eyes were focused towards the sea as his hair flared wildly to frame his face.
A storm was brewing on the horizon, darkening clouds churning while the sea began to grow angry on the shoreline. The cliffs that overlooked the seaboard jutted out sharply as they curved around the shoreline, and Harry could see what appeared to be various cave systems opening out to welcome in the tides.
“This is where Regulus died,” Sirius said, his voice quiet, as if he refused to speak over the sounds of crashing waves and the crack of thunder that rippled through the air.
Harry watched as lightning reached across the impending approach of the tempest, a mirage of imagery beginning to overlay the backdrop of the sea in his mind. Waves crashing, a hand reaching through light that began to fade from view as a body sank deeper beneath the tides, a surge of air breaking through the water as it attempted to breach the surface of the sea. Another hand, with long, boney fingers webbed together, discolored and thin, wrapped around a fair-skinned wrist, and in a violent surge of displaced air, they were both gone. All that remained was a locket, sinking to eventually disappear into darkness.
When it faded, Harry’s brow was furrowed, and green eyes, normally bright and lively, had washed away into some diluted hue that mirrored the same notes of color that churned amongst the storm clouds and the sea.
“He drowned?” he asked, offered Sirius a glance, unsure if he would take it..
He did, and Harry could see something in those grey eyes that was desperate to keep hold of it. The wire seemed to startle under the loud snap of thunder, and a flash of lightning cracked along the cliffside, illuminating the worry in Sirius’ eyes.
“He made a choice—a series of choices—amidst a severe, and rather selfish lack of concern over his own well-being,” Sirius finally looked away, and the visible profile of his face disappeared as the wind shifted and sent wild waves of dark hair whipping around his head. “In the hopes that it would garner meaningful change in the lives of those he cared about.” His eyes fell to his hand, and Harry’s gaze followed, watched as Sirius revealed a locket. “Much like someone else I know.”
Regulus’s locket.
“I remember,” Harry’s eyes lifted, and uncertainty shook through the wire, echoed by a faint roll of thunder in the distance. “I gave it to Kreacher.”
“What you did,” Sirius met Harry’s eyes. “What Theo did. For each other. It was something Regulus yearned for, but his mind was too…molested. The Dark Lord and all that came with him ruined our family. Regulus died in the hopes that that would change. And when you came along…” Sirius shook his head, turning his eyes back to the seas, watching the storm as it began to thicken and draw nearer to the shore. “We’ve been watching, Harry.”
Sirius slipped the locket into Harry’s hand, enclosing his fingers around it before he gave his hand a squeeze and let it go. “You can’t stay.”
“Sirius, I’m not sure I understand.” Confusion rippled in the air, disrupting the static that popped when Sirius touched his hand with a tangible vibration that made Harry’s fingers itch.
His godfather was looking back towards the sea, watching as increasing violence of waves began crashing against the cliffside, breaching the caverns below to flood them and consume their space. Spray connected with the sky, and Harry could feel the bite of salt and cold air sprinkling his skin.
“The story isn’t finished, son. You have to go back.”
“Go back? Sirius, are you mad?”
“A little.”
“We can’t—how?”
Sirius’s eyes cut back to the amulet in Harry’s hand. “It’s his, Harry. I can’t answer that.”
Harry’s brow furrowed. “Sirius, what are you talking about?”
Sirius looked up, but not at him. He was looking over Harry’s shoulder, his eyes no longer clear, now veiled in something Harry couldn’t recognize as anything other than cunning.
Harry’s hand closed around the amulet as he turned around, only to be greeted by a similar look in similar grey eyes. Only these ones were sharp, twinkling derisively in a flash of lightning that cracked and brightened the dark skies around them.
“Don’t worry, boy,” Regulus’s voice cut through the sound of the wind that pushed through his hair. His head tilted to the side as his eyes fell to Harry’s hand, lingered there, and snapped back to his eyes. “I’ll show you.”
Before Harry could react, Regulus lifted a fine-boned hand, as if he were waving off a nagging house elf, and the ground beneath Harry’s feet crumbled.
He was falling, and the ocean below welcomed him, reached for him, the fractious crests of rogue waves wrapping around his body—paralyzed, trapped—to hold him tight, to bury him in something sharp and numbing and dark.
Everything was blue, and then black, and then cold, leaving only one voice to cut through the ice that pierced through his eardrums. It was clear in his head, taunting him—teasing him—just like before, in the garden. Where there had been light. Warmth. Life. Before it had fallen away in the blink of an eye, replaced with violent currents and jagged rocks. It was sharp with intention, and soon, Harry could see his face behind his eyes. Fleeting, before it vanished amidst the jarring undertow. Regulus.
Come find me, Potter.