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Language:
English
Series:
Part 2 of Four Walls
Collections:
Ink Stained Fingers
Stats:
Published:
2015-10-22
Words:
261
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
3
Hits:
61

Break the Silence

Twi [archived by ]

Summary:

Related to "Reunion" and "Four Walls," though not quite a sequel. Lying low.

Notes:

This story was originally archived at Ink Stained Fingers, which was created in 2002 as a home for Harry Potter slash fiction. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in January 2015. We e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author or artist, please contact me using the e-mail address at the Ink Stained Fingers collection profile.

Work Text:

Break the Silence

 



Quiet in everything, you, as a child
and even now: not quite shy, just
listening. Waiting, nose and ears
to the air. It's funny that I took
so long to realise what you were.

Quiet your breathing as you sleep. I dared not show my proper face while you were walking awake, not afraid so much as wanting to avoid useless worry, soft questions whispered over cups of tea.

The locks on my cell couldn't keep out
the sounds of screaming, you know.
I missed most of all the voices of friends, all your old laughter,
stupid jokes we made, late-night plans and plots, songs sung near-silent under your breath, all the ways the human voice is used
for frivolousness.
Other things I missed as well, things
that would have been hard to admit when I was young: A hand on a shoulder, felt through layers of clothes; the faint smell of you that would cling to my robes. Things that get bred out in polite society become anchors outside it, memories carefully contained, slowly sucked away but clung to all the same.

All these things I thought I'd never feel again, things questioned in years of silence
as though you'd never existed. I really almost thought that I'd made you up in my imagination, like I'd made up sunlight, made up fields, made up running wild beneath the full autumn moon - Of all the things I need right now
I most want to hear you speaking.
For now I know I'll have to be content with breathing.

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