you taste like heaven, but god knows you're built for sin

During her week in Russia, the Uchitel learned a few things about herself and other people that she had never expected. One, she liked shopping. Two, she could stand weddings more than she should. Three... Fabian would leave her alone in the middle of St. Petersburg (this was not once, but multiple times) just so he could visit a gift shop on the other side of town. And for what? To find a Christmas present for poor, heartbroken Leonora. As far as Lena could tell, the bitch didn't give a fuck about her break-up. So her so-called - perhaps adoptive - brother, in essence, was nursing a heart that had never been broken.

If only she had the guts to tell him.

Fiddling with the necklace enclosing her neck, Lena wandered the street she had been left in. She bumped into a businessman, how cursed her in Russian. The Prefect bit her lip; no one cursed a Vorstenbach without consequences. The least she could do to give Fabian some reassurance that she wouldn't start a fight or walk inside the first club she saw and got high, resulting in another visit to St. Mungo's and therefore, another of his worried rants that bored her to no end.

Of course she wouldn't. She wasn't going to give in her Prefect badge that easily.

The sight of a park bench relieved the blonde somewhat. She walked across it, her feet helping her weave her way among the relentless crowds, showering her with dark looks. Lena could feel the straps on her heels undo just a little bit but she supposed that she could fix it once she sat down. As she came closer, she flopped herself down on the edge of the bench, swinging her legs around until she sat right in the middle of it. She was the sole occupant of the stripped log of wood. She gazed at the crowd as the universe seemed to wash by her like the great crashing waves of a tsunami, not waiting for her to catch up.

It was as if she had been forgotten. As if she was alone.

It had long been determined that there were generally five stages of grief.

Rhys had spent months stuck in denial and isolation. He'd found there was little more isolating than ceasing to talk or communicate entirely. Clinging to numbness like a lifeline, the boy had managed to shut out... everything. Even that which he had never meant to alienate.

For Rhys, anger has always been something which burned brightly then quickly diminished. Even now, that was mostly the case - but not entirely. This time, smoldering embers remained, crackling just beneath the surface of the once happy-go-lucky boy. Perhaps, they always would. Part of Rhys felt he could live with that.

The 'what-if' game preyed on his mind, often; that overwhelming sense of helplessness and vulnerability referred to as bargaining. But who was there to bargain with? Fate surely did not care. Rhys could ask himself, What if I could have saved them? or What if I hadn't always been a pathetic klutz?" or even, "What if I had known?" for the rest of time. It wouldn't bring them back, though. It wouldn't ease the agony of their final moments nor lessen their screams.

That fact didn't stop him from asking.

Depression had come co-mingled with denial, though, it even yet lingered. It was normal, Rhys had heard. Even then, it didn't cripple him the way it had before the anger. He no longer wanted it to. His aunt and uncle wouldn't have wanted that for him; Ana would have demanded something better, something more. So, he was trying to move past it. It was a slow, difficult process.

Rhys hadn't quite made it to acceptance. It helped that those responsible had already met their punishment at a Dementor's lips, but he still wasn't there, yet.

The redhead had taken to wandering since his visit to the manor. He supposed he had wandered before, only this time he actually saw the places through which he made his way. Rhys was rapidly developing a fondness for the muggle world, for no reason other than the fact that no one felt the need to bestow him with sympathetic looks when they saw him in the streets. Muggles didn't know that the Zlobins and their daughter had been violently murdered and that only their nephew - in all ways that mattered, their son - remained.

Occasionally, however, he still saw a familiar face.

Rhys stood, gazing at her through the stream of people flowing around and between them. Lena Vorstenbach.

Ana reached to teasingly ruffle his hair even as his aunt's voice echoed in his ears, accompanied only by his uncle's unspoken solidarity; "We're all very glad to hear you've gotten back together with your girlfriend, Rhys."

Beautiful, brilliant, crazy Lena Vorstenbach: the girl he had loved since he'd first laid eyes on her in a dusty old library. It never had made sense that she had spent so much of the past five years with him. Yet, somehow, she'd been his; all that remained from a time he had had everything.

Only, now, Rhys had nothing left to offer her in return.

Winding gracefully through the crowd, he reached the back of her bench. It suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten to get her a Christmas gift. Was there so little of who he'd been left that he couldn't even recall a small thing like that? He shook the thought away.

"Hey, Le," Rhys spoke softly. The boy conjured a small smile, the expression no longer absent from his eyes as it had been in the past. His voice was still a bit hoarse from disuse, the sound just a bit abused. Still, his tone curled fondly around the pet name, as though it wouldn't have many more opportunities to do so.

She saw the world wash before her, and as she continued to sit still, the lines between fantasy and reality began to blur. Covered in a blanket of thought shells shaped like tunnels, the scuttling of people which mimicked the way crabs walked, the rise and fall of the water as it lapped against the shore which were the crowds moving towards - and further away - from her. It was during occassions like these that she sometimes wished that she wasn't so afraid of water. Brave enough to just dive head first into the seabed and lie there as her worries were washed away with the tide. Like a certain friend had said to her in a wintry forest, sometimes the best thing to do was to let go.

A voice interrupted her enigmatic tsunami. A voice that felt like a million velvet faces surrounding her ears, making a thick coat to protect her from herself. No. It couldn't be. Was this a dream, as cliched as it sounded of her? Or perhaps a product of her own fantasies gone horribly wrong? Of course it was! Rhys can't just start speaking out of thin air without telling her that he had spoken through owl.

She had to remind herself that he didn't have to if he didn't want to. She didn't own him, now did she?

Her heart leaped from stone to sodding stone, as it went from first being unconditionially being in denial, until ultimately, she finally agreed on having a little leap of faith.

"Hey," the blonde replied, giving him a twiddle of her thumbs. She glanced back up at him, a small smile curling on her lips. "So... you can speak again, huh? It-it's nice to hear your voice again. I missed it. A lot." She shuffled along the bench, motioning for the redhead to sit next to her. Whatever anger she had been attempting to hide in her was hidden, though not as covertly as she would have liked.

Goddammit. Why the hell was she mad at him when he was not at fault? All he had failed to do was tell her he was speaking again. Then again, she never owled to tell him that she moved to Fabian's because she was kicked out of her house after telling her parents about him. Now, Rhys, the boy she had unconditionally fell in love with at the age of eleven, the one who understood her better than anyone on earth, sparked her off quicker than a sparkler sparks a litre of gasoline to inevitably explode.

If she was so mad at him all the time, what was she thinking, keeping him around? Oh right - she was selfish. A selfish, heartless, demoralizing fifth year Prefect who didn't deserve the position she was granted. She cheats on her boyfriends, treats her families horribly, and was grateful for nothing. Then she has this explosion of sunshine that brought light into her horrible excuse of a life.

God, why did she even deserve him?

The blonde studied the ground, scraping it lightly with the bottom of her heel. "Right. How was Christmas, Rhys? Have the boys at the home treating you well?" she asked, her tone somewhat gentler than it had been before, "if they haven't, I'll kick their asses for you." Her eyes floated on the clouds adorning the sky, before blue eyes fell back on blue. "This is my last day in Russia before I get back to Germany... to Fabian's." She paused, pressing both feet into the ground like there was something beneath it that she wanted to unearth.

"Did you know Kas got married?" she asked, chuckling as she thought of the jovial celebration, six days before, "you'd never expect our wonderful Potions Professor to get married, wouldn't you? Even I didn't believe it at first... until the vows were said, of course. Headmaster Rusnak was there... you should have seen my face when I first saw him!" She snickered, brushing her hair with her fingers. She groaned as she decided on throwing out the dead fly that had tangled herself in her blonde waves.

Rhys took the offered seat, blue eyes focused intently on her. "You're mad." It wasn't a question. He could tell she was mad; he knew her too well to miss it. "If it... helps, you're only... second person I've talked to." The boy rubbed lightly at his throat.

"Oh," he breathed, wincing at the question. "It was... I visited. The manor, I mean. It..." Rhys shook his head dismissively. Zlobin Manor had been empty, desolate, it's memories haunting and painful.

He cracked a smile at her statement. "They mostly leave me alone." Shrugging, his gaze went to a spot on the ground. "Moving out end of break. I'm gonna return... home, next summer."

Rhys looked up at her, expression unreadable. "Fabian Frommelt? You live with him?" A wave of fresh grief washed over him, the pain of loss cutting into him once more - until the numbness started to creep in, again, trying to reclaim him. That was when he realized fully what letting go would entail.

"I didn't," Rhys answered. "That's great." He rubbed at his throat again. His voice probably sounded as raw as it felt. Really, he probably needed to start speaking more so his voice wouldn't be so misused.

The blonde raised both her eyebrow, tucking locks of her hair behind her ear. "In what context?" she questioned, trying to hold her blue eyes on his, "I've always been mad insane... but if you mean I'm angry at you..." She paused, letting the abrupt flow of his voice smother her. "Second?" she snapped, "who's the first? I don't mind if it's just an Auror, or a boy at the home, but anyone else..."

She'd rather not think of that verdict.

Lena's eyes widened, her mouth gaping open when the fact sank in. "You... you visited the Manor?" she whispered, spitting the first syllable of every word, "you w-were fine, weren't you? Are you sure it's not too early?" She lifted her arm, putting it back down for a second, gazing at the ground. She took deep breaths, flinging her arm around him. Her fingers gently stroked the ginger's shoulder.

The Uchitel tapped her foot once. She nearly burst into tears when she had seen his smile, beautiful as ever, though she took deep breaths, bottling it up inside for another time. "T-That's great," she grinned, "a-at least you know that you'll be... around where your biggest tragedy happen. I doubt you've accepted it happening" - not yet, Lena; it took me seven years for Vanka's death to be okay, remember? - "but it's good enough."

Biting her lip, Lena attempted to elaborate, "Yeah... I got kicked out of my house when I told my parents we're an item. Not like I really cared." Truth be told, as she said that, her heart sunk into an unfathomable abyss. "So the only choice I had was live homeless, or live at someone else's. Fabian's is the closest, and Mister Frommelt didn't mind me." She shrugged her shoulders, "I... I'm not sure if this is supposed to make you feel better, but he's very crappy when it comes to picking places to snog his girlfriend. He always does it in my bed." She laughed, sounding somewhat nonchalant, "Then again, what I call my bed is the back seat of a convertible...

"Do you need water?" she asked, gazing at his throat, "it can help you feel better, you know."

"It wasn't.. more than a dozen words, Le." Rhys' slight rasp had taken on a sharp edge, alien to any his tone had ever adopted before. "S'not like I planned it." A hand swept briefly through his hair, agitated, a parody of the bemused or embarrassed habit of before.

Rhys leaned lightly into her as she threw her arm about his shoulder. "Still in one piece, aren't I?" he joked. The humor fell a bit flat, but it was there, nonetheless. The boy shrugged a shoulder, deigning not to respond further. He had decided to let go of his loss. Moving back to the manor wasn't an attempt to hold on tighter, but rather to make peace with the memories which haunted that place and his heart.

"Le," Rhys said, the increase hoarseness in his voice not entirely due to doing so much talking. He gazed at her a long moment before he continued, unable to hide the trace of hurt betrayal in his tone, "I have an entire house."

He shook his head at the offer for water, mind still on the fact that she had yet again gone to somebody else in her time of need. Reaching out a hand, he gently stroked her cheek. Ana's voice played through his mind.

'Do you have a crush?'

'What's her name, then?'
'Well, aren't you a little heart-stealer?'
'Be sure you send me a picture!'

'I'm going to tell Lena you never stop talking about her.'
'Aw... isn't my baby cousin so cute when he's besotted?'
'She's always had you wrapped about her little finger.'

"I loved you," Rhys rasped.

That was cruel, particularly since the boy was quite certain that part of him still did and always would. At the moment, however, Lena was too closely tied to all that he had lost. Just then, loving her hurt.

"You've... done so much for me - shouldn't have," the redhead continued despite the increasing discomfort of speaking. "Could never repay you - you'd... never let me."

He let out a sound that was meant to be somewhere between a defeated sigh and a hopeless laugh. "Wouldn't... know how... anyway. I think..." Rhys paused, finding that he had to swallow, painfully. And then the words stuck in his sore throat, gaze of mingled grief and regret fixed upon her.

Fuck it all if Fate didn't have the worst habit ever of scheduling things one on top of the other.

"You should.. go home," he whispered. "I won't be an obstacle, anymore." And despite how badly he wanted to look away - in hurt, grief, loss and confusion - he didn't. Rhys had never been that sort of coward.

"Okay, fine, I believe you. You didn't plan it," Lena surrendered, lifting up her hands to show that she meant it. His tone, the way he ran his fingers through his hair - a habit of hers she had, admittedly, picked up from him - they all showed something different. She knew him well enough to know that there was something wrong, yet she didn't have the audacity to ask him.

The blonde smiled, sliding her arm off his shoulders, this time. "Yep, still in one piece," she agreed, as she crossed her fingers behind her back. Sure, he seemed as if he was in one piece, but mentally, she wondered how much of that statement was true. If he was broken, deep down... Merlin knows how many lives it would be before she forgave herself.

Lena parted her lips. Thinking it an unwise decision, she decided to press it shut. "I-I know," she sighed, sympathetically at first, "silly me. I should have gone to another country with no money and travel all over the place to look for your house, right? Maybe then, my parents can call me up one day and say, 'Hey there, precious daughter! I know you're looking for your boyfriend, and guess what? We found him! We really hated him, so here's a picture of his carcass! Do you want to come back home with us?'" Her sarcasm deepened as she went on, "'We'll give you a free ride to marrying Chuck if you do!'" She shook her head, "They're perfectly capable of doing that. And we're not married yet, Rhys! We're not even engaged, for crying out loud!" At this, she nibbled on her lip, tears fighting with her mind and heart to unleash their mark. Mouth, one. Ashling, zero. "I-I mean... I wish we were, but we're not. Not yet..."

The final crack of the whip came when Rhys had uttered loved. Past tense.

Resting her palm on her wrist, Lena made sure her nails dug into her flesh enough to make herself bleed as she heard him speak. The cat had stolen her tongue, cut it in two, killed her tastebuds and gave it back to her as a present. Third Year flashed in her mind as he went on.

I'm not stupid, y'know. You think I don't hear the rumors? You think I don't hear how people talk? she heard. You give me butterflies in the stomach, but right now... it feels like they've got razors for wings and they're cutting up my insides. I think - I need a break. We should just be friends.

Maybe people are right. Maybe, I need a life.

The conversation in the Common Room had also tangled itself in the midst of all those memories, right after their kiss in Divination. She chuckled, remember their odd position on the Common Room couch, probably at the wrong time, but she was so caught up with her own thoughts she didn't care, just for a moment.

Lena resurfaced as he had told her to go home. Home? What was home? Where was home? She had lost all meaning of the word. He was still looking at her. She gulped. She was not going to cry. If Ashling doesn't cry, then neither does Lena Vorstenbach.

"No, Rhys," she whispered back, leaning forward to press her lips on his cheek, "you go home. I'm the one who got kicked out of theirs, remember?" She curled herself up into a ball, and it felt like he was a million galaxies away, not a few inches. "I love you too," she replied, steadfastly gazing into his eyes for what seemed to be the final time, disconnecting his gaze soon afterwards. She looked at the floor as if it were the Rosetta Stone.

There was no chance of that engagement ring she'd wanted, the winter wedding, no large manor with three ginger kids. No dream career as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Not anymore.

"Naturally, you couldn't have owled," Rhys returned flatly. "After you were out and safe, you didn't even think to send a letter. Didn't... you think I would come for you?"

He gave a bitter laugh. "You know... everything I know about your life, I either found out from someone else, or you used as a weapon against me.

"You go... to someone else for everything. When you need to talk, or be comforted. When you get kicked out of your house. You don't even need me - you won't let yourself. You never have." A unmistakable strain of hurt entered his tone, though it otherwise remained frank.

"Listen," Rhys pleaded, gently taking her face between his hands, pulling her gaze back to his as a pair of tears escaped his tortured eyes. He wanted her to understand - needed her to - at least a little. "It's not tha- I don't..." A painful sob forced its way from his throat.

The redhead swallowed and when he finally managed to speak, his voice emerged a choked rasp. "I have to let go," he mourned, "and... right now, I can't let go of them and hold on to you. You... my family... you're all tied together. Part of when... I was happy.

"I'm sorry, Le... I just can't." Rhys leaned his forehead against hers. "Maybe-" Maybe someday... "I'm sorry." He pulled away, stroking her hair back from her face. Blue eyes studied her features, as though memorizing her features one last time. He resisted the urge to kiss her.

Rhys stood, tall and elegant and sad, tears streaking his freckled face. There were so many parting words he could have used, but they all seemed hollow, making requests that he knew she would not follow through on. They also seemed far too final. He himself was not ready for such words.

So, he opted for something more simple, succinct. Just two words.

"Bye, Lena."