Along The Stone. PV| A. Athanatos Finished

He read the simple message several times over. "Meet me at the middle of the Viaduct," that stone bridge that spanning a deep gorge. Real romantic site. Also a real good place to lose a body. "Before noon," it instructed forgetting the fact that there was a large span of time between the start of the day and noon that could be defined as "before." When was he supposed to arrive?

"Skip your tea." The note added, but he had no idea what that meant. what tea? Breakfast? There was tea on the table. Don't drink it. Why? Was it poisoned? Was she providing him with better tea? Telling him he did not deserve tea? Why did she need to speak in riddles!

In fact, there was no date on the letter. Was he supposed to arrive tomorrow, today, some other day? There was one thing he learned about Nabi as he pocketed the letter - she really sucked at writing letters or providing instructions. He had to make some assumptions and try to not overthink it.

Before noon. So sometime between midnight and twelve noon. He could not reasonably wait on the viaduct all day. The best he could do was look out the window on occasion and look towards the viaduct to check and see if someone was standing there. Maybe the person standing there was Nabi, maybe it was a house elf, it was pretty hard to tell because they were about the same size.

The first time he saw someone walking the viaduct was around nine, he spied the back of someone ambling towards the stone arch and he rushed to the grounds and attempted to cross the stone bridge, only to realize it was not Nabi. He was polite, he did not stop them or touch them but still blurted out a random apology for no reason before he spun around and rushed back towards the castle.

He did not drink the tea with breakfast but he did save a cup. He slapped the tea out of one of his housemate's hands in case it was in fact poison. "Had a fly," he lied. Eventually his periodic checks on the viaduct would reveal a Nabi-like shape. He would scurry down the shifting stairs and rush out the door. His wool coat and scarf on all day, he even attended class wearing his jacket.

With a to-go porcelain cup of cold tea in hand, Aamon nearly startled when she spoke. It was nothing dramatic, nothing someone could see from a distance. There was no drama, no sharp intake, no flinch, but there was a very real hitch in his breath. The kind of breath that came from being caught mid-thought. He stopped walking for a moment, one hand shoved too deep into his coat pocket, like he might disappear into the seams if he tried hard enough. Unlike his brothers, the fog did not bend for him. The fog clung to him cold and damp, soaking into the hem of his trousers, making his shoes feel heavier than they should have.

He cleared his throat once. Then again. "I... no. I mean, yes... Sort of." Aamon winced faintly at himself, rubbing the back of his neck as if that might physically untangle his words. "I didn't run-run. I just… walked fast. Which is totally different." He was trying to convince someone, perhaps himself.

"You're... you're too close," Aamon blurted, pointing vaguely at the railing before realizing how that sounded. "To the edge. Not- not me. I mean... you are close to me, but that's not... that's not a bad thing." Merlin. Then Slytherin swallowed, his cheeks warming despite the chill of the viaduct, as he forced himself to slow down. Breathe in. Breathe in. No, that was not right. Breathe in. No, not again. Breathe out! That's right. In. Out. In. In. No! So close. Just randomly stagger them, eventually he would get the air he needed. He looked at her again, properly this time in spite of the possible hyperventilation or asphyxiation. Her gray eyes sharp and steady in a way that made his pulse pick up for entirely different reasons.

"I got your letter," Aamon blurted out. "I didn't skip tea since I had no idea what it meant. I just… brought it with me." As if that explained anything. His fingers flexed inside his pockets, restless. "I wasn't sure if you meant now now or… metaphorically now. Or if you had tea..." His mismatched eyes flicked about her in search of tea.

Nabi's mention of Gideon made Aamon's mouth pull into something uncertain. Not quite a smile. Not quite a frown. "He is odd," Aamon repeated. "That's… that's one word for it." He hesitated and exhaled, then added, softer, "He says things to sound important. Like if he stacks enough words together, they'll... or he'll stop being empty."

Aamon paused, unsure of what to do next. He shifted his weight, his leather boots scraping lightly against stone. "I didn't come here to talk about him, though," he said, almost apologetically. Giddy could take a long walk off a short viaduct. "I just... you asked me to meet you, and I didn't want to… not show up. I thought maybe if I didn’t come, you’d think I didn't care, and I..." He stopped himself, lips pressing together before he said too much. Again.

His eyes rested on Nabi's, earnest and a little worried, searching her face like it might give him permission to exist here. "So," Aamon finished anxiously, "I'm here. I didn't fall in the lake. I didn't get lost." A tiny, nervous, self-depreciating breath of a laugh escaped him. "What… what did you want to talk about?"

Timing was everything.

What many called luck, Nabi called strategy. Having placed the letter somewhere, she thought the brute of a boy Aamon could find it with ease; the dried ink left a lingering feeling. Perhaps one of expectation; that he would understand her rather blank note that made complete sense to the cryptic mind.

Of a girl who may as well be a vault.

Or perhaps it was the ghost of his words before the candlelight muted and she found her breath leaving her.

━━━━━━━━━━━━

Morning would arrive, the birds would chirp, ticking like the cold metal against her pale skin pointed at the hour mark. Aamon should have figured it out, should have been walking along the stone. Perhaps he was late? Giving her a taste of her own medicine for arriving late to the ball... I told him not to drink his bloody tea. Merlin knew if the young Athanatos was preoccupied stuffing his face like a greedy gremlin watching his teammates play Quidditch.

Oh wait- that was him... I do not think he even swallowed his food. That would not have been a surprise.

A small hum danced with the wind that blew as her elbows grazed the cold railing, gray eyes gazing toward a young Aamon. Her hands would fall to her sides with the rustle of a letter, Gideons' or hers? You seem a bit too nervous for someone who, "Walked fast?" The water rushed below, sweeping memories of his threat beneath the candlelight as she echoed calmly, tilting her head in thought before a faint smile began to creep along her lips, "Shame... You could have played the lamb..." The pelt you chose to store away before the ball.

Before the unsuccessful kiss.

Nabi's eyebrow raised before momentarily glancing over her shoulder, then back at him, "worried?... or trying to get me to venture closer?" She paused before teasing him gently though there was no hint of mischief in her gaze, "To you, I mean." A gleam would shine against her collarbone as she observed the young Athanatos, of intentions there was one... "an enchanting siren..."

Whispering a sweet tune before dragging the soul deeper into the dark.

"Past the edge."

Emitting a curt hum when her eyes flicked to the pristine porcelain in his hand, Nabi calmly raised her hands to show him the lack of tea, her tone blank, "No tea here, Aamon..." Her hands moved slightly, tilting with a crack, noticeable if the boy had finally remembered how to breathe in time. "Would you say your words are also empty?" It was not a question, not really, but as his demeanor differed from the entitled king he had previously presented himself to be, Nabi decided to chip at the wood to see what hid beneath.

Her hands would finally fall to her sides, giving an unbothered shrug before walking over to him, humming a faint tune in thought. "I suppose you are right. I did leave you a note to meet me here..." A small pebble would scatter as she kicked while walking around him, her gaze falling on his leather boots, reaching out and taking the pearly white shine in his hand "You?"

Pausing briefly, she would look up before taking the teacup he brought and moving to stand in front of him. The teacup smooth against her fingertip that traced the edge, "No, I see you managed to figure out your way over here without needing a map." The sound of his subdued self-deprecatory laugh caused her eyebrow to raise, "There was a time you would not sound so..." pathetic, "nervous."

"Though I suppose I ought to thank you for coming, no?" Her jaw clenched as she broke eye contact to look down at the porcelain in her hand. "For not falling into the Lake...", her grip around the teacup tightening as the wind whisked her hair over her face when she moved to look back up at him, the wooshing sound muffling his question. Her free hand moved to pull her hair away, the corner of her mouth tugging slightly at the feeling of her hair sticking to her wrist, as if soaked once more. The memory of his snark returned as her focus resumed upon him.

"Is that not what you would like?" Her tone lowered with rough edge, "To consider your care a gift." She would press the teacup against his chest as she took a step forward, leaning closely to whisper, "You were right about one thing, Aamon... My parents would have been proud that I decided to give my attention to an Athanatos." Her eyes narrowed as her tone grew harsh, "But you merely carry the name, worn like a tag on your coat. A mask."

Nabi had seen what he could be; she felt the effects of her decision as gravity gave way and the lake reached out to her in the form of a cold blanket that weighed her down. Her other hand would gently move to cup his face; her eyes locked onto his, "Do not pretend to be a lamb after you pushed me into the bloody lake at the ball, Aamon."

Aamon had been watching Nabi with a characteristically blank expression. It was not that he was not listening, he was absorbing. He was observing. He noticed the way that Nabi held herself against the railing like it belonged to her. He could hear the shift in her tone, when it sharpened, when it softened, and when her words were intended to cut. This was a confrontation and an accusation wrapped into one, with the added insult and inconvenience of hurrying up and waiting for her at this out of the way meeting place. A normal person would have met after class, in the common room. But no, not her.

Still, he let her speak and he didn't interrupt. Which, considering everything that had happened, his silence should have been deeply concerning.

By the time she pressed the teacup against his chest, Aamon exhaled, like he was deciding which version of himself to respond with. Lambs and their shepherds. Was he a lamb? He could have tried, but he never did well in flocks anyways. "Oh, good," Aamon replied, exasperation threading his words. "We skipped straight to attempted character assassination. Efficient. Soulless... very you."

Aamon tilted his head, studying her like something half-understood and mildly disappointing. "Do you know what your problem is?" Aamon announced defiantly, his voice shaking as if he was attempting to muster courage he did not know he had. "You actually don't have a personality. Not a real one."

He breathed in the words, the admission. "You have presence," he corrected, gesturing vaguely at her as if one of his hands suddenly became Italian. "You occupy space very well. You stand there and you look composed. You say just enough to sound intentional."

His mouth twitched. "But there is nothing beneath it. No mess. No contradiction. No human error. It is like talking to a beautifully arranged room that lacks a clock and calendar." She had summoned him to this vague location with a notion of what, some point of the day. Did she expect him to wait around until she graced him with her presence. Of course she did and he actually did it.

"You left me a note that looked like it had been written by a haunted filing cabinet," he continued, tone dry. "No time. No context. Just enough implication to suggest I'd regret ignoring it. Which, to be fair..." He could concede one other thing, "you were absolutely correct about that."

"Impressive, sure," he conceded. "Memorable," he shrugged. "Maybe. But ultimately, you're empty."

His hand came up, not to push hers away, not yet, but to steady the cup before it tipped. His fingers brushed the rim, careful, almost absent, like the object itself required more consideration than the conversation. The cup cost more than her entire outfit.

"I don't know what lake you're talking about or if I was even there," he debated with the worst alibi known to man. "You probably stepped back," Aamon continued. "You leaned away, like you always do. Someone was probably having an emotion and you had what I can only assume was an allergic reaction."

A small humorless breath left Aamon. "God forbid anything unpredictable, real or human gets too close. Wouldn't want to wrinkle that carefully curated stillness now, wouldn't we?"

Soulless.

Was the boy who claimed innocence with a moronic excuse.

Another lie.

Like the courage he attempted to muster over her, his exasperated tone following his silence should have made her falter, yet she pressed the teacup a mildly harder as if aiming to mark though his "I don't have a personality? I am not the one pretending to affect another."

There was a time the boy did affect her while he stood with a cower like a stitch that was never meant to be seen on a perfectly adorned gown. But she would not allow him that honor as she sneered, "I am not the one pretending to be worth more than the fabrics you wear, hoping to be worth a mere thought." A mere feeling that kept the soul awake, yearning to be acknowledged as something priceless, something to be protected.

But presence never required protection.

It demanded more than the meek existence of a swan whose feathers had been ruffled by the water's edge. "I could have been the clock of which your veins pulsed with, you had the chance..." The sear of his word's arrowhead as his fingers brushed the teacup's rim made her jaw clench, pushing, guiding him backwards, "but like this teacup... like this..." Her gray eyes would look at him up and down before leaning in closer to whisper, refusing to let him think he could be the only one who knew how to limit the air between their shell of souls. "attempt at normality. Your intentions were empty. Weak like your excuse of not having pushed me into the lake."

The hand that once cupped his face would lower slightly, her forearm resting against him while her fingertips tapped along his cheek in thought, "There is a reason the olden folk heed of venturing into still waters, Aamon... it is not about maintaining pristine silence, or keeping a teacup steady in expectations for tea." Mother warned her of the never-ending depths that could swallow a looming creature whole, "devoured with the weight of corruption never meant having stained hands." She understood where she stood from the moment she drew her first breath in the cold room. The creature that roamed in the quiet labyrinth. "Human is just an excuse to play victim, to excuse yourself from the stain you are marked with... but we both know you can be just as soulless as the shell you think I am."

Her gaze would flicker momentarily to his touch against the teacup before looking back at him as she raised the teacup between them, "Will you keep waiting for tea to fill your cup?"

Aamon let her push him back. Boys were not supposed to hit girls, or some elementary lesson along those lines.

The teacup pressed between them like something ceremonial. Or ridiculous. Quite possibly both. Aamon looked down at it and then back at Nabi. "You do realize," the Slytherin boy said slowly, voice tight with something that was not quite anger yet but his voice wavered with an undefined emotion. "That threatening someone with porcelain is significantly less intimidating than you seem to think it is," at least his brothers had the civility to threaten him with a knife or a wand.

He swatted away her touch. She can demean her next pity project. "Oh, brilliant," Aamon continued, sharper now, that practiced composure cracking at the edges. "Now I'm weak and empty? We're really covering the full emotional vocabulary today, aren't we?" Did she even know four letter words like rage, hope, love, pity, and zeel? Or were those filthy things in her mind?

Aamon backed up. No longer interested in being near the girl who demanded his presence only so that she could express her ire. He just wanted to breathe like a person instead of a decorative object.

"'You could have been the clock?'" the Athanatos echoed Nabi's statement, incredulous. Did she think this was a cutting remark? "What does that even... what does that mean, Nabi? Do you hear yourself, or is this argument just… aesthetic now?"

His brow furrowed, genuinely baffled for a moment before the irritation that had set this encounter off in the first place came rushing back in. "You don't talk to people," Aamon snapped. "You deliver monologues at them and then act surprised when they don't immediately understand the metaphor you invented halfway through the sentence."

He took a breath. There was no defusing this and even if there was a means, Aamon had no interest in seeking it. "And for the record," he added, jaw tightening, "I am not pretending to be worth more than anything. I am worth something and won't let you tell me otherwise. At least I'm just not pretending to be nothing nor am I telling you that you are nothing, shame the same curtesy was never reciprocated." Pretending to be more than nothing, and I am the bad guy eh?

"Is me being empty some great revelation?" Aamon went on, quieter now, but far more pointed. It was a projection and he knew it. Maybe she wanted to be nothing, to feel nothing, but that was her psychological condition, not his. "We both know that is not the case. If anything, there is too much going on in here." It would be nice to be a bit hollow. To worry less. To not feel like some vulnerable aspect of him was not being seen. "You just can't accept that I don't perform whatever cold, curated version of existence you've decided counts as 'real.'" It must be terribly dull in her head.

Aamon's eyes flicked to the teacup again and then to the cannister he had brought with him. "'Will you keep waiting for tea to fill your cup?'" he repeated, flat. Aamon stared at her a moment too long, allowing the moment to extend to the point of discomfort. "No," he said after a beat. He unscrewed the cap and poured out the contents. "I'm just waiting for you to finish one coherent sentence so I can respond to it properly."

Clarity did not always come by at the right time.

Nor was it a pretty sight.

Nabi watched the pristine procaline crack while he moved away from her, his words like shards coated in sanding anger. Curiously, she tilted her head, as if she had felt they had discussed vulnerability before, "Too much? Do enlighten me, Aamon..." She would pause as if weighing the consequences to what she would say next, "Were you hoping I would fall in love with your supposed act of innocence? That I would call you sweet little names?"

You once agreed that fragile things were dangerous...

She would look away for a moment, sighing as her gray eyes traced the river flow below, "What a foolish desire that will only leave the wish for a different outcome." The wind whispered as she stood in silence, the chains weighing as a hand extended, gesturing closer to the edge. "One day you are this lamb... this creature that seeks to hide under its overgrown wool and then the next you act as though you are some elegant swan expecting to have things go your way...." She turned to look at him, rust touching water, "You are less coherent than my words, Aamon."

The teacup would clink as she set it down on the railing, twirling it with her index finger in thought, recalling when the young Aamon had interrupted her reading, "Appearances lie... just how long will you keep lying to me? Just how many times will you act intentionally and suddenly disappear? Say that it must not have been you." A mild feeling of anger would tense her jaw before she took a breath in an attempt to maintain some control, the words slipping before she could register what she had said, "You disappeared at the wedding and came back like it never occurred. Nothing makes sense with you. If it was the glass in my back or the thought of you gone..."

She would blink and quickly add, as if to cover up, to deny the existence of something she had to keep unspoken. "But I must have thought it was you at the wedding. Mistaken someone else for you." Tipping the teacup over, she muttered, "It would not be the first time..." She had mistaken him in a crowd; Matthew's reaction to having been stopped by her in the corridors while she thought she had stopped Aamon made her hum before looking at the tipped teacup. "Fragility is like this teacup, beautiful..." Without warning, she pushed it off the railing, watching the fog swallow it, "But once broken, it is never the same, no matter how much one tries to bring it to completion." She would look back at him, her expression lacking its usual stoicness.

Her pale gray eyes were lighter than normal, as she spoke in a hushed tone, a confession wrapped in stubborn liability.

"I must never be broken, Aamon."

"Right," he said after a moment, voice quieter than before, though not softer. Just… tighter. Controlled. "You summon me here to let me know you're what... angry with me. You wasted not just my time, but your own. I'm not sure if I should be honored or infuriated," he mused. His gaze dragged back up to her slowly.

"No, Nabi, I wasn't hoping you'd fall in love with me," he paraphrased her assertion, the tone sassy again but his usual commentary was thinner now, stretched over something less stable. "That would require me to believe you're capable of something that… inconvenient." Yes, 'inconvenient' was the word he was looking for. Something that did not immediately and fully benefit her. Because love is not about convenience for oneself but rather the sake of someone else. It would have required her to consider him, something she had not done. Not today, and as he contemplated the concept of love, he quickly concluded that no... whatever this was, it was opportunity and convenience not for another but for oneself. It was about self-love.

A flicker of something cross over him when Nabi mentioned the wedding. A half-remembered memory that refused to resurface, but gave his bones a deathly chill. Whatever that feeling was, it passed. Mostly in any case. He shook his head side to side as if he could shake away the feeling. he couldn't. The edges of his lips tugged downward and then his shoulders slumped slightly.

"Whatever Nabi," Aamon finally said, his tone one of finality. Not an act of submission, more a phrase of acceptance. He turned his back to her. "Things don't always make sense with me," Aamon admitted as he began to walk away, the admission was not hard but it still cost him something small but measurable. "You're not wrong about that." He was not sure what exactly this was even about, but a battle with her would simply prolong his confused misery. "But you don't get to decide that means I'm lying."

He would leave her there on that chilly viaduct, more confused and less hopeful than he started his day.

Inconvenience, ironic coming from the boy that made her question why she felt the desire to wander towards the water.

The hand that gestured closer, the siren's call that kept her up.

What an inconvenience it was to fancy such a creature, knowing the trance was a walk to her own demise. Ruin. Dishonor.

Madness dressed in silk and adorned in pearls.

She was a Park after all, curated for perfection in jeweled gowns too elegant to be alive. Utterly untouchable. Yet her gray eyes would look from the glass case, lace holding porcelain in place as his words tapped on the glass in sharp clinks.

Children never seemed to care for the art.

Until the doll shattered.

Her hands would tremble slightly as they curled into tight fists, his back to her like a boy fleeing the scene of the crime, pretending the floor was not covered with fragments. That he had not tipped the glass case over like she did the teacup over the Viaduct's railing.

Nabi never quite understood why the pages in her books depicted lovers driven to madness, sitting in a silence that would often go into sundown as she tried to find the logic to the concept of love. Where was the benefit in drowning in the cold waters of love? To follow the siren into obsession, the unwillingness to live without the other?

The wind would sway her robe as the sound of the now crumpled letter from Gideon rustled deep in her pocket, calling her to reach into the abyss.

Singing the promise of information Gideon had begun to twist.

Like the necklace that still sat along her collarbone, hidden under her uniform.