Apollo Walks

Tommy was flailing.

Though, on the surface, she didn’t appear markedly different from the other traveler’s. Travellers- that's what they were now. A penned-up mishmash of bodies that all moved in the same rhythm, like the pendulum swing of a flat palm against war drum. Before they left London, there was a slight chance that this entire charade would be put to rest by midweek. That she might yet return to her bed in the boat house, drop a few notes on Enoch’s piano, and go back to business as usual with the death mask in her hand and a dead cult leader's blood beneath her nails. With a living father, or whatever the hell he was, and a viable excuse to kill Regulus Black and have it be over with.

That prospect had gone out of the window with the tipping of the carriage and with a coach's entrance into Paris, pulled by the desecrated bodies of the Vitruvian. Along with the vein of distrust on every member of her factions brows.

She had dragged them from their beds in the night like the orphans that they were; hadn’t even bothered to properly weapon them. They could kill her and be justified. Throw her over the ivory ramparts of the Chateau de Vincenne. Drown her in Seine until bubbles stopped rising through black water, leaving only the trail of city lights to brusk the surface in auburn strips. Nobody was watching. They could.

But, they wouldn’t. They would never do such a treacherous thing. Which made it so much worse.

Muggles moved in waves down the side streets, toothpicks in their teeth, a chatter on their lips. They funneled out of bars, unafraid of any psychopomp or psychopath which might greet them at the end of an alley. Paris didn’t know true darkness yet, not like London. The inhabitants guards were so low that Tommy would have been able to crawl inside their ribcages and nest there without them even realizing they had been infiltrated. Under street lamps, they kissed until their lips were red with wine and pressure. Music wafted over the remarkably visible stars, swinging and waning with every turn of the coach wheels.

Meanwhile, Tommy flailed.
Her only comfort was that nobody would suspect her of slowly losing it.

Maison Rose was a dingy hotel on the inlet of Rue de Princesse. On the outside, it melded into the black brick of every other night time establishment, open doors and a glowing red neon sign that claimed vacancy. There was no doubt that it was a magical hideout. A gargoyle flapped on the fire escape. The bellhop was a house elf. A finely tuned snap of his fingers loaded the Deatheaters luggage into a cart. The deadest tell was how Regulus lied to the check-in agent at the door. A name wouldn’t have mattered anywhere else.

His left eye twitched, en français.
“Nine rooms for Patrick Delavore.”

Once the agent had cleared the way, Regulus lit a cigarette, sucked in the midnight waft of petrichor, and turned to her. “Stop shaking like a wet dog; you’re going to get us caught.”

So it was noticeable.
Or, he was only being a prick.

Regulus was sturdy. A limber body completely unmoved by events that would have driven weaker men to tears and bottles. His white t-shirt had been unsoiled. Though, the knees of his trousers certainly required a stitching. Otherwise, he was as he always appeared to be: apathetic, narrow-eyed and strikingly good looking. Tommy hated him for it all; for the grace and the strength.

She briefly wondered why he hadn’t left her on the forest floor. The answer came swiftly; he wouldn’t let her die until his needs were met.

“Good luck Regulus Black,” she whispered. Her voice was weak and each word left a bad taste in her mouth.

“What does that mean?” He cocked his head, “Are you being cryptic?”

“It means what I said,” she skirted past him, thieving the Ouroboros’s keys from his palm.

His lip turned up in sneer. Christ, she was tired of that. “Are you leaving? We have a fucking deal, Crane.”

As expected, the inside of the Maison Rose vastly differed from its outward appearance. The doorway was rank with freshly cut roses, cologne and cigar smoke from the lobby bar. It wasn’t a packed establishment, but it had flair. Chandeliers, a fountain, and a well-marked exit route.

“Right now, I’m going to take a shower,” she returned. “You should do the same; you smell like a corpse. Don’t worry, I certainly won't be watching. I know how flustered you get about that.”

“I will hunt you down,” his threat was near silence, like wind rustling leaves. She had spent enough time in the wilderness lately to hear it for what it was; empty.

“And I will see you coming.” The elevator was full, so she took the stairs. The rest of the faction followed behind in varying lengths.

Dmitri bumped Caius’s shoulder hard enough to jostle him forward. Atlan laughed. Perhaps, some things hadn’t changed.

“That is quite enough of that.”
Arkady Kallizov pushed the bridge of his wide-rimmed glasses up the thin steeple of his nose.

Tommy hadn’t noticed she was pacing until he raised a brow at her. Though, it had taken some amount of attention to step over the cerulean throw pillows scattered about the finely crafted rugs. The Maison Rose was what Enoch would have referred to as ‘Gauche’ and what Dmitri called ‘fucking atrocious.’ Tommy thought it looked like an easter egg had hemorrhaged all over the wallpaper. The expansive windows were a nice touch, allowing rose-scented air to billow over the pages of the books she had brought.

It had been Arkady’s idea to condense all of their belongings down into singular pieces of jewelry. The entirety of her closet and personal library had fit nicely into a stolen teardrop necklace. Looking at the mess now, dresses and cloaks thrown over every bare surface, she had drastically over-packed. Not only in belongings but people. Dmitri hung limply over the side of the bed; open book thumbed to a page of an alchemy text while his brother tossed about on the carpet. The others slept in their bedrooms. Tommy imagined their rattled breathing after such an excruciating day.

She paced.

“You’re giving me whiplash,” Arkady moaned.

“I can’t think unless I move,” she retorted. The option to return to London and pretend that the previous day hadn’t occurred racked at her mind. They could beat feet for furthest rosses, though, that would make her something of a coward. By proxy, the Ouroboros would take a hit to the ego, which was preferable to the bolt of certain death. Dignity and martyrdom were too heavy to weigh side by side.

“Well, it’s horribly distracting.”

Tommy paused, only long enough to kick a book under the bed to give her ample space to move. “Then you try moving since you’re not doing any thinking down there.”

“I am pondering, actually. That Mulciber creature is awfully pretty. I wonder if she tastes like strawberries,” Arkady crossed a plaid-covered leg and mused.

Tommy made to take a step, but her ankles had been chained together with an invisible tether. She teetered on her heels as Arkady flicked his wand into a resting position.

“Untie me,” she barked.

“Stop pacing then,” Arkady shot back.

Tommy rolled her eyes, “Mulciber is a Deatheater. I’m shocked you haven’t considered bashing her skull in with a rock.”

In her peripheral, Arkady’s eyebrows raised to the ceiling. But, it was Dmitri’s stun gun stare that eyed her down from the bed. The words had slipped from her mouth before she had time to wager the implications of them. It hadn’t even been aimed at the correct target. Dmitri was the one that had been in the Triwizard hellscape, cracking a boy's eye socket open with a boulder ledge at the command of a Deatheater general.

He clicked his tongue. “Don’t you dare apologize. You already look weak as it is. Doe-eyed and flapping.”

“That was unkind of me,” she let her gaze fall to a naked cherub carved into the baseboards.

Dmitri flicked his brother on the shoulder, “Christ on a cross, she’s gone further off the deep end than we thought. Should we have her put down? It’s sort of cruel to watch her suffer.”

Arkady pursed his lips, “Below me, hell is freezing solid. Is that really the same Crane that threw herself over the kitchen table to bite a girls ear off three christmases ago? Has she gone defective?”

“She worked for a while,” Dmitri mused, “Do you remember when she called Enoch a pompous twat?”

“He must have whipped her too hard. Something knocked loose in her brain.”

“Can we have her returned? Is there a gift receipt lying around?”

Arkady shook his head in mock remorse, “I am afraid the orphanages are all closed. There’s a war, you know?”

“Shame,” Dmitri clicked his tongue, “We’ll have to turn her into glue and stew meat.”

Tommy folded her arms and straightened her chin. At a pause in the ample mocking of her character, she cleared her throat. “Are you finished?”

Dmitri blew her a kiss, running a hand down his naval. “I could go all night, my love.”

She tried to take a step, but her legs wobbled in the tethers. “I miss the days when you two were shorter and feared me.”

“I never feared you,” Dmitri lifted a finger to make his point. “However, I do long for being eye level with your chest again.”

Tommy sneered and retrieved the bone wand from the shoulder strap of her dress. Smooth in her palm, she sent one shock of magic to her ankles to untie the chain, and another to the soft flesh of Dmitri’s collarbone. If the electricity hurt, he didn’t make it known. Which seemed worse. If anything, he enjoyed it.

“Stop lamenting and come here,” he ordered.

Dignity in hand, martyrdom in mind, Tommy slipped across the room and sat at the base of the bed. Arkady moved his head into her lap while Dmitri sighed in her ear. For a split second, they were younger. Three parentless troubadours grasping onto the only comfort they had ever known. Necessity called for certain lines to be drawn in adulthood; there had been a time where they could play marbles in the low lamp light, or sneak chocolates from the cupboards in the boathouse kitchen. The older the twins grew, the hungrier they became. Confines made them ravenous. Keeping them out of the dangers of their own making was a full time job, one that she hadn’t exactly applied for, but took most seriously. But tonight, they wore their youth like shrouds- pink lipped and tired eyed on the throw pillows.

“We can go home. We can walk away, skip the Delavore’s ball and pretend none of this has happened,” Tommy said, chewing her lip absently. Such a place existed, ticking away in Arkady’s pocket.

“But, why would we?” Dmitri asked. “What is there, anyway? We’re too tall for those ceilings.”

“We’ll have to return eventually,” she hesitated, almost answering his question. They all knew what was there, Enoch, they had only avoided the topic for months. If the twins had ever visited him in his makeshift hospice, it was not to her knowledge. But, she liked to pretend they were still on the same page, filled to the brim with hope that he would miraculously pull out of his fever; that Tommy wasn’t entirely alone in her venture, only delegating orders to find a cure for death that nobody else truly believed in.

At least Regulus believed in it, not that it was a comforting thought.

“Eventually,” Arkady mimicked, “but now-“

“Fuck London,” Dmitri finished. “I want to see the sun a few more times before I wither away.”

“I wont drag you into certain death,” she wiped a finger on the baseboard, over a scratch in the wood that reminded her of the slit that Artemi the vampire had fallen ash crumpled into, then checked her finger pad for bubonic plague.

“I’m walking willingly,” Dmitri said.

“I’m practically sprinting,” Arkady mouthed.

“You always have to one up me,” the other twin sighed with a crestfallen tenor. “If I jumped off of a bridge, you would do a backflip from it.”

Once in a while, the Kallizov’s achieved a feat that very few had managed, making her laugh. This was one of those instances. It was the sort of simple argument that those who had spent far too much time with each other would have. There was a word for it, but it escaped her at the moment. Joyful annoyance, perhaps.

She abandoned her dignity further, slinking lower into the bed frame, “I know you’ll be ok. But what about them?” Her hand motion was to Atlan and Sinai, dozing in rooms further down the hall.

“If they decide they can’t take it, then let them go home,” Arkady shrugged. “More room in the coach.”

“That’s not very democratic,” she sighed. “It’s too dangerous to be apart. More so than being together, which is already a danger hard to beat.”

“Well, this is a fascist regime, anyway,” Dmitri whispered. “Then order them to stay. You’re thinking about it too much.”

At a pause, Tommy motioned to Arkady’s pocket. “Make sure there’s still a home to go to.”

At the order, Arkady flipped the watch out of his pocket, dangling the gilded chain inches from her nose before dropping it on the rug. With a crack of his neck, he rose. He waved his wand, the clock face opened, and he stepped gingerly into the ivory glass, slipping between the roman numerals into another world.

Arkady hadn’t vanished for more than a minute when Dmitri leaned in closer to Tommy’s ear, taking a strand of her hair and twirling it between his thumb and index. Once finished with that examination, he tucked it back into the crook of her helix and brushed his lips over the lobe. Whatever child-like innocence had overtaken him with his brother in the room had dissipated. Tommy rocked her head onto her shoulder, away from his advance.

“At least I am persistant,” he said.

Tommy hmmph’d.

Five minutes later, Arkady bounded out of the watch. It skittered across the room as his steps met the floor of the Maison Rose. He wore a scowl on his lips, and something else etched between his brows. Tommy’s heart beat a second rhythm. It didn’t look hopeful.

“Is Enoch ok?” She asked.

“He’s alive,” Arkady returned.

And that had to be enough for now.

The major issue with being able to see the present unfold like a paper owls wings were the grating questions that the past left unanswered. Like starting a story in the middle, some things would never be fully fleshed out.

Caius Avery looked up from a gin and tonic in the velvet clad bar of the Maison Rose as Tommy entered. There was no question of how he had managed to rise in the Deatheater's ranks, standing as a version of a general beside Regulus. His sheer brute strength would have made him a valuable asset for any organization that prided itself on death before dishonor and took the first half of that oath most literally. The boy could probably squeeze a confession out of a silent monk. What puzzled Tommy was how he had mastered the art of blending into the shadows despite his hulking frame. If she hadn’t had her gaze set on him before even leaving the bedroom, she wouldn’t have been able to distinguish him from a crack in the wall. He had learned that ability somewhere, had likely cultivated it over the course of a career that required stealth. But how? That was the question of Caius’s past. And as she approached, he lifted his glass, and knit his brows into a very pretty question mark.

“Hello serpent. What do you drink?” The words veered off of his front teeth as if he were chewing on them. “Not scotch, I hope. This place waters down every drop.”

“Red wine,” she said, taking the seat beside him in a far booth that hadn’t exactly been offered.

Caius snapped his finger at the bar maid, which made her blush despite the obscene gesture. It wasn’t charm that blended him with the bustle of wizarding business men that whispered as much about politics as they did high society, their wives, and the mistresses of that society whom their wives hadn’t caught on to yet. Though, he was dressed the part. He wore a strapping waistcoat over his barrel chest, a button-down shirt open an inch from the collarbone, and oxfords that had taken a beating from the overturned coach. The scuffs on the leather only added character. His dark hair was slicked to the side, accentuating a bold nose and thick eyebrows. In another life, he would have been softly handsome. In this one, his natural predisposition to curling his top lip made him difficult to keep eye contact with.

He was also, plainly, quite drunk.
This was preferred. Tommy wasn’t much of a drinker and hadn’t slipped down the winding staircase to have a glass of Malbec amongst the traveling suits and their bored dates. She had come with a question that needed to be answered before she could continue this foray into certain death. Speaking to Regulus only turned her in circles; a power he had over her that she had made attempts to leave unacknowledged. But, it was best to know ones own weaknesses.

Caius made an easier target. He sent another glance to the barmaid, tapping his wand on the counter to turn a bottle of red wine over into a carafe. In exchange, she sent it to float across to the room to him with an accompanying glass.

“Why don’t I remember you from Hogwarts?” Caius turned his attention to Tommy, neither wholly interested nor pretending not to be.

“I didn’t attend. My knowledge of this realm came late and by that time they had barred the doors to the school. For the best, I reckon. From what I gather, the curriculum didn’t exactly do any favors for anyone who wasn’t already versed in the dark arts.”

Caius scowled so hard it seemed that his lip might take flight. He may have raised right through the rafters if not for the low-hanging chandelier. “You’re muggle born?”

“Half muggle,” she corrected, taking a swig of the staunch red wine. It tasted less of fermented grapes and more so the memory of them. “I’m sure that turns your stomach.”

“It’s unnatural,” he spat.

The Avery’s were famous for their obsession with purity. Even long before Voldemort showed up on their doorstep to convince them that their red blood was really made of gold. Enoch had a file on them in the locked cupboard, a manilla envelope thick with the sins of their pasts. Mistreatment of muggles was of the higher treasons, though they did have a certain flare in their escapades. Treating a charmed human like a house elf was highly illegal before the turn of the war. But, it hadn’t been of exceptional priority for the ministry to imprison them. There were larger fish to fry before the wizarding authority came crashing down.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“So you agree?” Caius’s words were mostly slurred, but the contempt was clear as day. “Though, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you hold some deep-seated hatred for yourself. Is it the self-loathing that has led you here? Do you think if you take down Vittra that Enoch will finally acknowledge you as the heir to his crumbling throne?”

Tommy hadn’t asked the question. It had answered itself, falling from his drunken mouth to land between the polished dinnerware and the napkin folded at her wrist. She had to suspect that the Deatheaters did not know the entirety of the deal made between her and Regulus. He had conjured up a half truth, leaving the death mask out of the equation. This was why they had looked upon the Ouroboros’s involvement with such confusion.

Though, it did not clear up her next question. Did Regulus even know where the mask was in the first place? Or was this simply a larger trap set only by himself?

“What does your leader think about you running rampant with the enemy faction?” She whispered. Nobody in this bar would remember them tomorrow, not beyond two young dreamers sharing a carafe of acidic wine. Still, it was best to keep voices lowered when talking of war.

Caius cleared his throat, “I don’t see how that is any of your business?”

“Enoch thinks it’s a fine idea,” she crossed her hands as she lied. That man hadn’t thought about a thing but water and the painkillers pumped into his blood for months. “Though, he knows we cannot trust you.”

“I’m sure the dark lords sentiments are similar.”

“You don’t speak to him directly?”

“What am I?” He chided, “an owl? Flying back and forth with whispers? If he says something is to be done, it is done.”

Tommy leaned back in the cool arch of the chair, “of course I wouldn’t call you an owl. You’re doing what your general says.”

“What Voldemort says,” he responded.

“Right,” she nodded, “What Regulus says.”

Caius smiled. “You’re trying to piss me off.”

“Yes,” Tommy smirked back. “Only because I am interested in this dynamic you have. Wouldn’t it be unwise not to ponder on such things?”

He pointed to her, savoring the words before letting them fly. “Watch your tongue, mudblood.”

Tommy waved him off, “Be civil. We’re in high company.

The French Minister hadn’t so much as wandered into the room as he had grabbed the space by its coattails and ripped it to attention. Tommy kept her eyes locked on Caius, watching the light in his irises slowly dissolve. Piere Ancout was not a formidable man. Not in the way that men seek to be feared, anyway. His stance was a foot lower than Avery’s even with the assistance of shoe lifts. He wore a dark grey suit that accentuated the salt of his peppered black hair.
Piere was no one in the sphere of British government. He was everything here and had not been quiet in his aims to dissolve the war across the pond. This wouldn’t make him public enemy number one to Caius Avery and the rest of his crew. But, he was certainly up there.

Tommy was quite sure Piere didn’t give a shit about the Ouroboros. This irked her.

“That’s your trick, then?” Caius asked. “How long were you watching him before he entered the room?”

“Only from the valet stand,” she sipped her wine.

To turn and look directly at the official wouldn’t result in anything dire. Still, she kept her eyes locked ahead until he was safely seated in a booth at the furthest end of the bar. The maitron swept by, bottles and olives clonking in her hold, and placed them before the man with a bow. Tommy supposed it paid to be incorrupt. People were more willing to assist you and throw bouquets at your feet. She had never particularly liked roses, though.

The booth was too dark to see who Piere had come to meet with. A shadow, even better concealed than Caius, sat slumped on the other end of the velveteen fabric. Tommy risked a look with her true eyes.

“Allow him to live long enough to gain more influence in Europe and he will tear out your throat. Take your steak knife and drive it in him,” Caius whispered. His voice had gone disembodied, fragmented in the stale air. It was discomforting to hear it hushed so close to her ear drum that he could have bitten the lobe off.

Tommy reeled her head around to push him away. But, there he was, sat on the other side of the table with his lips pressed firmly to the gin glass.

“As if killing him would do any good,” she sneered. “Especially here, of all places.”

Caius glared back with confusion knit between his brows. “I wouldn’t have thought so. He’s nothing more than a slight nuisance while he’s sat in Paris.”

“He’ll need to be taken care of eventually,” she retorted. “If you want him dead, use your own steak knife.”

Caius folded his arms on the table, “Harsh words, mudblood. Are you feeling alright?”

Tommy wasn’t sure that she was. The world had turned a bit, and she bit back the feeling as if she had suddenly been dunked beneath cold water. The wine had coursed through her blood faster than she anticipated.

“I need sleep,” she finalized.

Caius stood as she veered toward the exit. She kept her internal eye on him long after she had made it to the elevator. His waistcoat bulged at the pocket, and if she focused long enough, she could nearly make out the shape of a vial.

Perhaps poison was his game, and the dagger he trailed between his fingers was only a distraction. She didn’t have the time to develop that thought fully. The beds in the Maison Rose smelled like sweeter dreams, and she hit them at full speed.