wc: 26503
It was hot and sticky under dark blue robes and the harsh daylight seemed incongruous with the fact that Pepper and Aubrey were both bleeding, huddled behind a hastily-constructed barricade with a Death Eater pinned down across the alley. Or possibly a Death Eater pinning them down. It was a little hard to tell, really, though Pepper wasn't particularly trying, distracted by the fight and trying to keep track of Aubrey's defensive spells and the Death Eater's attacks and his retaliations and the prickling on the back of his neck that was a combination of sweat and proximity to an awful lot of dubious magic. "Recast," he said tersely.

The advantage of always bossing Aubrey around was that he knew how to follow an order. Pepper's protego covered them while Aubrey dropped his weakening old one, shook his hand rapidly to ease the cramps and put up a new one; all in all it was a matter of seconds before Pepper was back to shooting flocks of flaming magically conjured birds at their opponent. Even if the wanker managed to get away, he already had some pretty impressive burning, and that at least afforded some satisfaction.

Two crucios hit the shield, one after the other, and it shuddered dangerously. He hissed a curse, popping up to fire off a stupefy and a petrificus totalus that didn't do much except knock loose more of the stone from the wall, small crumbling pieces raining down harmlessly onto the Death Eater.

A lull - comparatively speaking - maybe a second or two longer than normal while he dusted himself off or whatever, and Pepper was just taking advantage of it to cast more spells when a powerful blasting curse came at them, hitting the shield, deflecting slightly upwards, crashing into the building behind them, the force enough to cause a noticeable wobbling in the already strained structure.

Pepper felt the wall shift. Then it collapsed.

*

Waking up in St Mungo's got really, really old. Two, three years of war did that to you, particularly when you spent enough time in the office that statistics were certain to damn you to responding to a rather large number of call-outs, and while Pepper was in no way Gryffindor material, he wasn't a complete coward.

The floating, disconnected, half-asleep-still feeling was sort of nice actually. It was like being pleasantly buzzed on weed and red wine, lounging around the flat with Jo, trading lazy kisses even though they couldn't be bothered fucking, pretending the world didn't exist outside those rooms. Where he used to struggle against it, force himself into full wakefulness, he now drifted gently upwards, enjoying the feeling for a while before finally opening his eyes and admitting to the reality of the situation.

Jo was sitting next to him, though she didn't look at all like he felt. Her face was streaked, tears obviously having stained it before she'd had time to wipe them away in frustration, her robes apparently thrown on over whatever she'd been wearing, the red cloth stained darker in an awful lot of places. "Fucker got away," Pepper groaned.

Her laughter was sort of choked and wet with relief and her hair fell over her face as she leaned forward. He wondered how bad it was, but only vaguely. Whatever was blocking the pain was doing a good job, he hardly felt like his body belonged to him. "He'll wish he hadn't when I find him." The vow was firm and sure, but it lacked something, compared to those she'd made the year before, the year before that. He thought probably she was starting to get tired of making threats she wasn't able to follow through on. "Thirsty?"

"No, I'll spill it everywhere."

She picked up a glass of water anyway, holding it carefully to his lips, and probably she knew him better than he did because it did feel nice, easing the feeling that he'd been chewing on cotton balls. "Most of the bone damage is nearly fixed up," she told him, because she knew he'd want to know, "and your blood's back up to healthy levels, but there's still internal bleeding and they're not sure about some of the muscles. You're probably going to be here a few more days."

It sounded bad. He supposed that was what happened when a wall fell on you. He could see it in his mind, how it must have gone, the mortar breaking apart so that large pieces of stone hit him in different ways and places... It was just imagination, though, really, the sort of scene where he could replace himself with anyone else and feel the same. "What about Aubrey?" His words slurred a little, the ts at the end dropping in his weariness.

The pause was a little too long before she answered, some wishy-washy words about how she hadn't really heard, and he scrunched up his eyes in an attempt to focus properly on her. Something was growing heavy in his chest. This wasn't right. "What. About. Aubrey." Dread made him enunciate. Funny that.

Jo hesitated again, looking not-quite-at him before meeting his eyes again. "He's dead."

Well that... that just couldn't be right. The shields didn't do so well against physical attack but they'd still been up, they'd have taken a little of the hit, and Aubrey had been hunched down, Pepper would have landed on top of him and shielded him, it wasn't-- it didn't make sense. He'd been right there. There was no way he could survive and not Aubrey.

He realised he was shaking his head, a denial on his lips, and Jo's expression was strained and tense and sure like she fully believed what she was saying and his addled brain couldn't come up with a reason why that would be so if it wasn't the truth.

"Where is he?" he asked, the words coming out thick and low as he tried to lift himself up and oh there was the pain. It lanced through his abdomen and up one arm and he grimaced, teeth clenching as he resisted the urge to collapse back onto the mattress because there was no way he could just lie here when Aubrey was somewhere else, somewhere, somewhere too far away when he'd just been right there muttering filthy comments about hand cramps and practically getting off on the thrill of the front lines. Jo tried to stop him, to push him back down, and he twisted onto his side to free a hand to wave her off, sliding his legs over the edge of the mattress, the sheets coming with them and his vision swimming with dark balls of floating matter as the potions gave way to the pain. "I need to--" Fuck. He'd barely gotten a touch of his weight onto his feet before half-falling, gasping and catching himself on the edge of the bed, Jo simultaneously protesting and insinuating herself under his arm to prop him up.

"Where is he?" he asked again, the words coming out ragged as he hoped to all goddamn fucking hope that it was nearby.

In the end Jo half-carried him past the curtain splitting the room in half, three of the four beds at this end crisp and immaculate, the lighting charms off so that everything was in shadow. A white sheet lay over the last and he struggled towards it, the pain making his throat close up and his eyes fill with tears and by the time he was close enough to stop he had to pause just to breathe, to get some fucking air into him and to clear his vision.

"You don't have to look--" Jo said even as he reached out to pull back the sheet and when he'd done it he saw why she'd make the suggestion. One of Aubrey's eyes was closed. The other was gone, the upper part of his face torn off to the skull, past the skull, edges of the hole matted with hair and blood and dirt and gravel and shredded skin and brain matter. There were tiny bits of rubble in the wound still, they hadn't even cleaned it out properly and what did that mean, that they hadn't taken the time to do that, that he'd been dead already when they got here? That he'd been alive, but past the point of saving? That they'd left a skeleton team to watch him die while they worked on saving him?

Nausea bubbled up in his gut and suddenly he couldn't find the strength to stand, his body crumpling as he fell, properly this time, to the floor, despite Jo's support. He didn't think he could make it back to his bed. He didn't think he could even stand up again. He wasn't sure he wanted to.