Flowerpot

12/31/2007

20:07

LOCATION: Côte-d'Or, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

It had been eleven years ago and, yet she can still hear their screams. Their laughter. His black eyes. She had dreamt, prayed, even tortured herself for this moment. To have him on his knees, his throat displayed as bare as she was, a knife piercing the surface of his skin. She should have felt… ecstatic, absolved, the nightmares of those days should be burning away. But, they did not.

“Look at you… you can’t do it, can you? My flower.” He was bound, at her mercy, and still he smiles. The same inhuman smile that has haunted her for eleven years.

Her feet lashed out, whipping against the torn flesh of his stomach. He crashed against the wooden floors, with a quake. His smile never broke, as his laugh poisoning the silent room.

Rage and shame cascading through her body, she lunged at him and stabbed the knife beside his head “You don’ think I can? You. Don’t. Think. I. Can!”

Her raw and bleeding fists pummeled down against his face, against his fucking smile. All she could see was that smile as her face warped in agonizing rage. Her roar tore at her throat until she could no longer breathe, and yet… he laughs. Yet, he smiles… broken and bloody.

Her fists stopped, but her hands ripped out to grip his throat, and she squeezed. His black eyes never wavering, she watched him gag and choke; blood spitting out from his shattered mouth. Her teeth grinded and her arms trembled, but the blood on her skinned palms betrayed her strength. She let go with a final push against his throat and reached for the knife.

Straddling his lap, she gripped it and tore it from the wooden floor. Twisting it around in her trembling hand, she brought the sharp edge to his throat. She heaved and gasped, their screams bellowing her ears, she was about to rend his flesh, but then he spoke.

“You won’t… You. Can’t.” Tom rasped; his words slurred from the broken teeth. His black eyes glistened in the dim light of the room “Do you know why? Because I tended to you… I cared for you… made sure you grew… to become the most beautiful flower in the garden.”

She stilled… doubt infecting her body. His words were true… his touch… her moans. Yet, their screams… Gabrielle begging for her to stop them... her sister’s tears. Her blue eyes ignited. The doubt cindering away by her blazing wrath. Perverse pleasure filling her heart, she saw fear seep into his black eyes. Her bare and bloody arm rising high above her.

Her voice lacing with hate, “Good bye, daddy.” “Drop the knife, Fleur.”

His voice. Fleur froze. Her rage thawed away, she looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. Saw the green eyes that had allowed her to forget all the pain, just for a few days.

“H-Ha-Harry?”

“Drop the knife, Fleur… please.”

Harry stood with a calm conviction, in spite of his ragged form. His clothes were battered and grimed, no doubt from the firefight at the vineyard. Small thin scratches trickled blood down his dirtied face, whilst in his right hand was a Glock; laying still at the side of his thigh.

“Why… why! “

For Fleur, the rage that thawed so quickly, came roaring back just as fast.

“So, he can go back to England and not pay for what he has done to all those people?! To my family?!”

Her wrath was fearsome, like wild fire. Her blue eyes burned Harry, even from across the room. “The fuck are you waiting for, Potter! Shoot the cunt!”

“I suggest you shut up, Sir Tom. I don’t think a bullet in the knee won’t go unnoticed, what with all the other wounds that this cunt did to you.” Despite his calm appearance, Harry’s finger twitched closer to the Glock’s trigger. Her eyes, ever penetrating and vigilant, noticed the small movement.

“Oh, are you going to kill me?” Fleur mocked him, her words spitting with venom and the pain of betrayal. “Will you kill me, if I don’t let him go?!”

“You dumb slut. Of course, he’s going to kill you. You’re just a cheap dried up whore! He’s Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Terrier sent to lap up the fucking mess that you ma-! “

Tom screeched in pain. The knife’s edge slit deeper into the flesh of his throat, at the same time Harry bolted the Glock up in a two-handed grip and lined up the sights with his target. His finger, now, on the trigger.

“Fleur, please… Drop the knife.” His green eyes unwavering, yet he spoke with a soft voice. “I promise you that he will never see the outside world, ever again.”

“No! Prison is a fucking luxury for him!” The muscles in her arm, strained taut, pressed and the knife dug deeper. “He needs to die! Slowly. Helplessly… like I did.”

“Like you? So, fucking selfish… You don’t remember your sweet little Gabrielle? How she fucked me, crying!”

“Shut the fuck up, Tom!” Harry roared. He stilled. Watching Fleur, Harry seethed with anger. Even now, Tom’s cruelty knew no limits… even now, he slowly twisted the knife in Fleur’s heart. His aim has never faltered, but tonight it just might.

“Fleur? Don’t do this… remember the bikes. Remember? How we’re going to fly across the world… together.”

His plead did not reach Fleur. She was gone. Her pain had swallowed her in its fanged maw. Tears began to fall from her eyes, her nightmares had corrupted her face into a horrifying rage. Everything seemingly stopped in time for Harry, his heat stilled. His breathing froze. He could see the slow pull of the muscles in Fleur’s arm.

The room exploded with the roar of a nine-millimeter Glock.