Work Text:
Sebastian was drowning.
His mind was a never-ending sea of grief, anger, and despair– choking him all hours of the day and threatening to suck him under every waking minute of his wretched life. He was always angry, fuming with the kind of rage that stirred hot and deep inside of him and burned anyone that got too close. He existed in a perpetual state of self-loathing that not even Ominis could pull him from, and it was no wonder why.
The only person that could ever talk Sebastian down from shitty feelings like these was gone. At his own hands, no less.
The same hands that had protected, soothed, and treasured you from the moment he met you, had taken you from this world in a split second. Another resulting tragedy of his visceral, untamable temper. It didn’t matter that he’d been aiming for Solomon, or that his intent behind the killing curse hadn’t even been directed at you at all. In the end, you had jumped in the way to stop him, and the green cords of the unforgivable curse had wrapped around you and forced your last breath from your lungs all the same.
His hands used to fit perfectly with yours.
He couldn’t fathom that so much time had passed already without you beside him. Two years ago to the fucking day. Seven-hundred and thirty days of unimaginable agony, to be exact.
On the one year anniversary of your death, Ominis had found him shut away in the Undercroft screaming bloody murder, setting every last barrel and crate ablaze with the force of the damn sun. There had been no getting through to the brunet then, and there certainly wouldn’t be this year either– seeing as Sebastian had taken his anger off of the school grounds entirely to fan the flames of fury that burned bright behind his dark, hollow eyes.
Sebastian clenched his bloodied fists and stared down at the mutilated corpses he’d been standing over for a while now. The Forbidden Forest was void of any light, save for a few strands of moonlight that broke through the canopy overhead, casting a dim glow on the mess before him. Hot tears swam in his eyes and blurred the horror scene that painted the ground, and his throat struggled to swallow the all encompassing thought that you weren’t here.
A sob heaved from Sebastian’s chest as he fell to his knees, pummeling the shit out of one of the already dead, messy lumps he’d been using as a punching bag. His wand was somewhere in the grass beside him, but he didn’t need it. Not for this.
No one was there to stop him, and he was almost glad for it.
Until he remembered that no one was there to stop him.
Sebastian screamed, shredding his already torn up throat further as he punched and kicked the bloody heap until the tears finally started to fall down his freckled face. His fists sank deeper and deeper into the pale, marred flesh of the dead Ashwinder, the body cold and unmoving, and the foul coppery stench of blood was like a distant memory burned into his nostrils.
The gaps between his fingers were too wide; your fingers used to fit there perfectly.
Sebastian felt a bone within the corpse crack under the force of his punches. He couldn’t breathe.
Cold blood met with cold hands, and Sebastian swore there used to be life in his extremities. It wasn’t enough, he decided, almost desperate to unleash the boiling rage inside of him; all of the frustration and hopelessness, every last lick of anguish and pain.
He stared at his hands. The spaces between his fingers were like gaping voids, sucking in the tiny remnants of joy the world had left him with. His legs trembled and gave out from under him, his knees collapsing against the lifeless body beneath him and soaking his trousers with even more blood. It was a non-issue compared to the massive rifts that tore open in his psyche. Sebastian shifted and let himself roll to the side, the ground meeting his back with a thud, and the world spun for just a while longer while he blinked up at the thin strips of light that snuck through the branches overhead.
The sight reminded him of how much you’d loved astronomy. You used to drag him all over school to stargaze for hours.
Sebastian couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, his dirty fingers spreading and grasping uselessly at empty air. He stared at the darkening sky, short gasps punctuating wordless sobs as more tears than he’d ever produced before rolled down the sides of his face and into his ears, moistening his hair.
The Slytherin stayed that way for hours, digging his fingers into the grass to try and fill the aching chasm in his chest. It was the last time Sebastian ever let himself cry.
His fingers never stopped spreading, and his hands never stopped searching. But they never found anything, either.