Tonight

Hello there, everyone. This will be my first work submitted to this site, and I think I did a decent job with it. This little fic was inspired by a FM Static song, "Tonight", because it just seemed so fitting for George after Fred died.

Warnings: DH spoiler, implied possible M/M & incest, angstl

If any of this should bother you, please turn back now. You have been warned.

Tonight


He's gone.

Those words kept echoing in my head, resounding off the walls of my skull since it happened.

He's really gone.

I knew the exact second it happened. No one had to tell me. I felt it: a sudden chill that seeped into my bones, leaving me shaken. Leaving my soul half-empty. All of the carnage dimmed, silenced, paused around me. The entire world seemed to stop, and there was a crash inside of me that I'm sure the universe could have heard, if they cared. No one else knew yet, but I could feel him go. I felt him vanish from the world, from my mind. From my very being.

I felt him leave me.

I still feel the vast emptiness inside of me. I think that I'll always carry that hole with me, the hole Fred left when he died.

My heart lept into my throat and lodged there, still as stone, as the rest of the family met me in the Great Hall, their faces gray, grim, and tear-streaked. Percy was crying freely, silent tears making his freckles look like pebbles in a running stream. He was there when it happened; I could see it in his eyes. I think at that moment, I was closer to Percy than I have ever been. He was the closest to understanding how I felt.

As we walked to where Fred was, I looked around at the other people in the Hall. So many friends were laid out, lying so still and quiet, their loved ones weeping around them. The Hall quaked with sobs and screams, as if the room itself - the very castle - was grieving.

Then there was Fred. He lay there with his arms resting on his stomach, his eyes closed as if he were only asleep. But he wasn't asleep. He didn't look as if he were in the land of Nod, didn't look peaceful. He only looked... empty. Death had stolen the laughter, the mischeif, the intensity that had surrounded him. This body, which looked so much like my twin, was nothing like the Fred I had grown up with. The Fred I had loved. It was almost as if I didn't know this hollow shell before me.

My entire body felt numb and cold all over. Mum cradled his head to her bosom, crying and rocking him. Others held each other, some clung to his body. They voiced their grief over him, the great sorrow that filled us all. I alone sat there silent. I held Fred's hand in my own. Gradually, it became icy within mine, but I held on, wishing I could transfer some of my own life into him and feel our connection once again. See him smile at me again. Feel his arms around me, driving away my fears, warming me heart and soul.

Percy and I locked eyes over Fred's body. I knew he understood, to a slight degree, what I was feeling. Only Percy. He had seen what I had felt.

I barely remember the funeral. Peope cried around me, especially Mum. Great Aunt Muriel managed to keep her comments to a minimum. None of the kind words spoken about Fred made sense to me. They meant nothing; they were empty. Like me.

My gaze reamined on his coffin throughout the entire service. I watched as people filed up to it, speaking to him or laying flowers on or in the casket. I couldn't feel. I could barely breathe. As they lowered him into the ground, I went with him. Mum lost both of her twins that day.

Some people spoke to me afterwards. They all seemed awkward around me, as if they couldn't quite cope with the fact they were speaking to me. I can't blame them; all our lives, no one could ever tell us apart. And though I was missing an ear, I imagine speaking to me was like speaking to a ghost. That's certainly how I felt.

Percy came up beside me, but didn't speak. His hand rested gently on my shoulder, squeezing just hard enough to make me aware of its presence. I didn't speak to him, didn't look at him. There was no need for words. We understood each other.

After the funeral, I agreed to stay with Mum and Dad for some time. They wanted to keep me close so they could watch over me. I think they also thought I could help them retain some connection to Fred. They just couldn't see, couldn't understand that part of me had died with Fred. I was a hollow specter, a shell, cold inside. As empty as the body of the son they had just buried.

I had my own reasons for staying at home again; I couldn't stand to go back to the flat that Fred and I had bought. The memories would have haunted me endlessly. I knew night would never end if I returned there alone, among all of our things, surrounded by everything we had worked for. Together. The dark would swallow me now that Fred was gone.

As a child, I had never been afraid of the dark so long as Fred was there to hold my hand, to protect me, let me crawl into his bed and hold me until I was asleep. Without his comfort there anymore, having to face nights alone, there was no telling what would haunt me in the blackness of night.

No one tried to talk to me about Fred for a while. I suppose the hurt was too fresh within them to mention him. I spent weeks just wandering around the house and yard alone. I had to be reminded to eat or shower or change clothes. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing expect the raw pain in my heart. Some days, I couldn't get out of bed, the pain was so harsh. It ravaged my soul like a fire, fueled by every little memory of what we had shared together. It was out of control and I was helpless before it. Hell, I didn't want to help myself. I wanted it to consume me. I wanted it to end. It left me so weak, I couldn't even put myself out of my misery.

I knew I couldn't avoid my family's concerns forever. It was only a matter of time. It was all there in their eyes when they looked at me. Unasked questions hid behind their morning greetings. I started to avoid them all as much as possible.

Breakfast hour found me locked in our... my old room, as did lunch and dinner. Sometimes I would venture into the kitchen when I knew no one was around, scrounging enough just to keep my body going. Mostly, though, I found trays of food outside the door waiting for me. I assume Mum left them there, and I was as thankful as I could feel. I would eat as much as my stomach could handle. Too bad she couldn't leave me some cure for the vast blackhole inside that was sucking me in a little more every day.

Some afternoons, I would wander outside, trying to enjoy the fresh air. Dad and Percy would be gone to work by this time, Ron off with Harry and Hermione, Ginny with them. Mum almost always was conspiciously absent, though she did appear in the kitchen window now and then. I would see her there, apron on, pretending to be washing this or that. Her concern was written plainly on her face. She grieved for the son she lost. She grieved for the son she was losing slowly. Something small stirred within me when I glimpsed her like that, tears threatening to spill down her face. I think this was the closest I had been to feeling since the battle.

The days turned to weeks, then months. Eventually, I lost any concept of time. It all meshed together in a pattern of misery and lethargy. It seemed as if I had laid in my small, empty bed for an eternity, eyes trained on the empty space where Fred's bed used to sit next to my own. Darkness crawled across the floorboards towards me, its claws stretching and grabbing, absolutely hungry for me. Rain splattered against the window, its clouds adding to the suffocating darkness in the room. A storm had been brewing all day and it seemed as if it would break now, transforming the night into something even more fearful.

The room started to seem too enclosed. I cowered at the head of my bed, trying to make myself as small as possible. The chilling hands of the night inched towards me unrelentingly. There was no escape. In a panic-induced frenzy, I jumped from the bed and ran from the room, tearing down the stairs, heedless of the racket I could be causing. Nothing registered except to get out. Out of the room, out of the house, out into the yard, as far away as I could.

Rain lashed against my face and neck in icy torrents. It sliced against my skin without mercy, and I could almost feel it. I stood under the night sky, a lone figure in the darkness and storm, clad only in my pajamas. Soon, I was drenched through and through, my body responding automatically, shaking and quaking with the cold.

Warmth ran down my cheeks, mixing with the freezing rain. My hand went to my eyes, feeling. I was crying. There was something utterly amazing in this discovery. I hadn't cried in... I couldn't remember when. Not even when Fred died.

This realization seemed to open something within me. It was as if a dam had busted. All of the hurt, the pain, the anger, the sorrow I felt when Fred died drenched my body. It was laced with the rain, soaking into my skin. It seeped into my soul. The tears continued to flow without my control and it seemed like that hot flash of anguish within me flared and ebbed in turns. I was burning red. I was freezing blue. It was as if Fred surrounded me, filled me up, was suffocating me. Everything he had been, we had been, was in the rain, drowning me. Breathing became hard. My vision started to waver in and out. I could feel my body begin to weaken. I was falling to my knees.

Strong arms grabbed me about the waist, sinking slowly with me to soften the blow. Lightening streaked across the sky in a brilliant display of electric heat and I could briefly make out Percy before me, sitting on the ground with me, holding me tight. He was swathed in a thick house coat, his feet ensconced in tattered and worn slippers. Rain washed over his face, plastering his flaming hair to his head and face. He had forgotten his glasses, I realized. And for a second, without them, when the wind gusted harder and whipped his hair around wildly, he looked a bit like Fred. My heart constricted painfully at this thought. My fists clenched in anger.

"George, what the bloody hell are you doing out here," he shouted over the blustering and the roar of thunder. "You'll catch your death!"

"I..." Sobs hitched at my throat. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. My lungs began to protest.

Percy clutched me tightly to his warm body. He wrapped his arms around my back, holding me so hard that if I had been able to breathe, it would have been difficult to draw air. "George, you have to let it out. You have to let go. Let it go!" he shouted into my ear over the storm. "Let GO!"

His words released something deep in the confines of my body. I screamed, a primal sound of rage that gave voice to everything that had been battling for escape. Words mixed with it, curses, pleadings, nonsense that spilled freely. Why did you go, Fred? Why did you leave? Don't you know I can't carry on without you? I can't live. I can't exist.

My face turned skyward. My screams rocked the heavens, bringing the storm to its highest pinnacle. Nature's fury reflected the torment in me. Lightening struck a tree in the hills and fields beyond our house, setting it afire, and I knew how that tree must feel.

Coherent thought was long gone. Raw feeling pulsed through me. Percy clung to me, rocking the both of us there on the soggy ground. How long we stayed like that, I will never know. Perhaps it was because I shook so violently, or perhaps because he was crying too -- I'm not sure -- but I thought he was sobbing with me.

I looked up at the cloud-darkened night sky through my tears and the rain. I was drenched beyond hope, my skin felt like ice, and if there was a time before that when I felt alive, I couldn't remember it. I was attuned with every function my body carried out, every heartbeat, every little breath, every little cell that buzzed. I relished in it.

There was another flash of lightening, the thunder rolled again, then all at once, the storm ceased. As I watched, the clouds drifted lazily off and the rain slacked, then stopped, my tears moving on with those black clouds. The stars looked down on me, little cold faces against the sky. My sobs eased, my throat opened, and I could breathe again. The smell of the rain-soaked night and the lingering electric charge in the air set my head spinning. I buried my face against Percy's chest.

He continued to rock us, murmuring sounds rumbling in his chest beneath my forehead, seeming to reverberate throughout my being. It got increasingly hard to keep my eyes open. The fight was too hard. I gave up, my tired eyes closing, the wet lashes brushing against my wet cheeks. I was unbelieveably cold. Clutching tighter to my brother, I sought his warmth. He held me fast against him, and I could feel the love between us.

Reason and realitly left me. My body stayed safely against Percy in the cold night, but a different part of me seemed to drift off to a plateau of calmer existance. Nothing mattered here. I was at peace.

Vaguely, I wondered if I was dead. Rather than feel alarm at this, I merely smiled. It wasn't important right now. Nothing mattered. Nothing was important. I drifted away, a smile on my face.

This was complete bliss.

From far away, I felt both hot and cold in turns. It was like when your foot is asleep and something brushes against it. These feelings were disconnected from me. My body was feeling them, but I was not. Something pure and untouched within myself seemed to burn strong, adding to this floating feeling.

I began to notice that I could see the stars. They were brilliant burning torches of white-hot light, and though at first I thought they seemed empty -- dead -- I began to realize that there was something in the light they gave off that was comforting.

Fred.

The stars were holding him, caring for him. I felt so close to him, and a warmth flooded me. It consumed me, nearly burnt me, but it was too gentle to do any harm. It was all too beautiful here in the starlight.

I smiled, thinking of Fred, enjoying this while it lasted. I knew I would miss him soon. I knew I couldn't reach him while he was in those stars, but that couldn't bother me.

Slowly, so very slowly, I seemed to sink. The stars got further and further away. The absence from Fred grew stronger. That peaceful feeling began to fade. I was losing myself in the dark, and the stars were dimming faster and faster. That hole in me seemed to start sucking in all the good feelings.

I thought I could hear people speaking around me. Their voices sounded familiar; perhaps they were family. Hands were on me, though they seemed unreal, like shadows in this dark. I felt so scared.

Fred... I need you...