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Hours after Evan’s death, Barty kneels over his limp body.
They are tucked into a narrow corner of Diagon Alley, the aurors not bothering to move Evan from his disjointed form. When Barty had arrived, heart thrumming with adrenaline and trembling all over, he had found Evan unceremoniously slumped against the brick wall, his left leg twisted unnaturally and his head slumped over his chest — a chest that was blown apart by a wretched curse, emitting pools of blood that stained Evan’s tattered shirt. The tips of Evan’s dreads were stained red as well, the blood finally beginning to harden and flake off in shreds of brown.
Now, Barty has righted Evan’s position, carefully moving his legs back in place so that he sits up on his own, tucking Evan’s hands behind his back to hide his fractured and blown off fingers. As for himself, Barty is thrown across Evan’s lap, clasping his friend in an unflinching embrace. His face is pressed firmly against Evan’s empty chest, still looking for a heartbeat from a heart that no longer exists. He mindlessly traces his initials in the swirls of blood amassed on Evan’s waist from where his shirt was burned away, clinging desperately to the way his name looks embedded in Evan’s dark skin. Only a few seconds after he writes his initials, blood seeps over the indentations, creating a steady waterfall to the quickly growing pool of blood underneath their bodies.
Broken glass, too, rubs abrasions into their skin, adding to the pool beneath them. When Barty had first realized the hopelessness of the situation, the depth of the wound, and the loss of his friend, he had flung himself not to the ground but towards the discarded bottles overfilling the nearby trash. He had raged like a typhoon, hurdling glass against the walls until his hands bled and the ground was covered in crystalline knives. When all the glass was gone, his knuckles were the next to hit the wall, and the hands that now dug into Evan’s sides were bruised a deep purple and covered in soot. His throat ached from screaming, his eyes were red from tears, and his stomach churned from when he had eventually vomited.
It was the same reaction he had experienced when he found out about Regulus’s death no more than a few months ago, yet it was amplified till every nerve in him had been lit aflame and burned away, leaving nothing but the cold reality behind. At least, when Regulus had died, Barty had been distanced from the event. Even prior, he had heard nothing from his friend for weeks aside from the occasional owl. At least, when he received the news during a Death Eater’s meeting, he had Evan’s reassuring nails digging into his thigh under the table, a careful reminder to save his reaction for later. At least, when they finally returned to their apartment that night, Evan had held Barty for hours as he sobbed into the cushions, eventually carrying Barty up to bed when the alcohol and pain had numbed his mind beyond comprehension, until all he could feel was the steady press of Evan’s fingertips as he checked the heart rate on Barty’s neck before pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead.
There was something else different about this pain as well. Barty had always considered Regulus his best friend, but with Evan, there was always something more. Something visceral and electrifying, that both terrified Barty and excited him all at once. It was the same sensation he had before doing something that would inevitably get him in trouble. It was the feeling of a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, of crashing tidal waves and howling winds, a desperate force of nature that drew them together. Regulus was Barty’s first love, but Evan was the other half of the soul. As Barty lay with his face pressed into Evan’s chest, the silence echoed back like a slap to the face. It pierced into Barty’s own heart like a freshly sharpened cleaver, as if one could not live without the other.
Eventually, the sun begins to dim, casting shadows across Evan’s face. Even now, he looks like an angel ascended from hell, sharp cheekbones and sinfully dark eyes. Yet where there used to be a spark of mischief, his features are now dull, like a marionette whose strings have been cut, limp and motionless. Barty refuses to move, to sever the connection between them, to accept the truth. He stays with Evan throughout the entire night until only the moonlight casts them in a glow of silver. The rings on Evan’s fingers glint like fallen stars that Barty clutches hungrily in his bruised hand. Only when the first rays of sunlight reemerge does Barty eventually apparate them away. By then, the pool of blood on the ground had almost tripled, seeping down the alleyway in crimson rivers.
Barty apparates them to a field in Northern Ireland that overlooks the sea. A gentle breeze sends a spray of saltwater over them, and the faint smell of lilies mixes with the humidity of morning dew. Only here, separated from the wizarding world, does Barty finally remove his arms from around Barty. There is no time for a funeral with the war at large. There is no one left alive to attend anyway. Still, Barty is not willing to leave yet. He lays Evan on his back on the grass and grabs a handful of flowers to press over his chest, hiding the wound that has now dried in an ugly black hole. He carefully presses Evan’s eyes closed, wipes the blood off his face, and presses a feather-light kiss to his lips. When he is satisfied, Barty sits a few feet away, dangling his legs off the cliff, and lights a cigarette.
Regulus, dead. Pandora, gone. Dorcas, murdered. Even the McKinnons and the Longbottoms, people who he barely knew from school, had sparked a flicker of regret in him when the Dark Lord had toasted their slaughters. Barty was overcome with loss but, only now, without Evan as his anchor, did the despair set deeply into his bones. He remembered Pandora’s gentle laugh as she painted his nails black. He recalled Dorcas’ sly smirk when they got away with breaking the rules. But most of all, his head swarmed with memories of Evan. Of Evan’s warmth as they sat next to each other in the Slytherin common room. Of Evan’s sharp smile when he beat Barty in a test. Or, strikingly, of Evan’s soft eyes when they lay next to each other at night, whispering secrets into the darkness that they had never shared before, testing how far they could go before scaring the other one away. The next night, they would always come back, unable to break apart.
The cigarette flickered out, snapping Barty back to reality. With a final glance behind him, Barty forced himself to turn away from his last friend. Stiffly, he walked down the cliffside, stopping to kick his shoes off into the dirt before sitting along the coast.
The tide rose steadily, each wave coming closer and closer to Barty before they began to engulf him wholly. As each wave receded back to the ocean, they washed away some of the blood that was still soaking through Barty’s clothes, leaving tracks of maroon in the sand. Barty watched this pattern in a haze, thinking wistfully of how part of Evan would always exist in the earth. Eventually, he caught his own expression in the water.
Barty’s face was covered in blood. Tendrils of Evan’s blown-away flesh clung to his matted hair, and his once-white shirt was practically black with dried blood and grime. His lips were chapped from dehydration and eyebags hung like corpses down his cheeks. A small piece of glass was embedded into his forehead, causing a small trickle of his own blood to trace a line down Barty’s face. He was grotesque, marred beyond recognition, all the beauty sucked out of him and replaced with an ugly brutality. His mouth was twisted in a permanent frown, and his eyes were soulless.
Evan had always kept him whole. Now, he saw his unfiltered self, the mirror image of his father and cruel to the aching core of his heart. Staring into the inky black water, Barty saw himself truly for the first time. Alone. Fractured. A monster.