Twin Flame // Fred Weasley

55

TW: bereavement, panic attacks, implication of self injury, general sad themes, reader discretion advised. 

A/N: firstly, I'd like to say I'm sorry if you've messaged/commented/reached out and I haven't responded, I decided to take a few days off social media to catch up with the mountain of uni work I have and also for my mental health. It is no longer feasible for me to be able to see/reply to all the comments I get, I'm inundated with love from you guys and I appreciate every comment so so much and I'm so sorry if I miss one of yours. 

Iris' POV 

Empty. 

Of course the flat was fucking empty. Of course he wasn't there. He never was anymore. 

My fingernails continued ruthlessly scratching against the skin of my arms. Feel. Feel. Feel. It was the only thing keeping me grounded. Without the pain I'd get lost in my own head, nothing would be real, I wouldn't know who I was or where I was, or why I was here. So, I scratched. I scratched and paced the small distance of the living room until my lungs burned. Gasping and retching was the only way air could get in. My nails moved to my neck. Then my face. And my hair. I screamed into the empty void of the place I had once called home. Home. What a laughable concept. A feeble notion. Something so distant, so turbulent and idealistic. Home was as fragile as the wing of a butterfly, so beautiful, so damageable, an ideal to spectate, too far to grasp and destructive if you did. 

Home shouldn't be a place or a person. They were too disposable. I realised, in that moment, as my lungs pleaded for air and my skin seared, the only place home was safe was if it resided in me. Without my father, that house couldn't be my home. And, as desperately as I wanted him to be, Fred couldn't be my home either. 

Heal separately. 

Our foundations were entirely shattered. We were living in ruins. Hopelessly wallowing in dust. There was no other choice. We had to rebuild ourselves as individuals; two broken homes could never fix each other. We had to heal separately. We both had so much to heal. 

I had to get away from this place. I'd never be happy if I didn't. I couldn't settle knowing there was an entire world I had yet to explore. 

My racing thoughts were silenced as a small pop ricocheted around the room. For the first time in a long time he was there, I was standing in front of him, just metres apart. Even now the magnetism pulsed between us, every part of me drawn to him. The distance was cold though, tense, woven with unspoken words and broken promises and unresolved conflict. I could reach out and touch him but he was still a million miles away. I felt frozen in place. Like, everything around us ceased to exist, just him and I, and our racing hearts and ragged breaths and whirring thoughts, a lifetime of memories between us, an ineffable amount of feeling, a love, a resentment, turned sour by circumstance. I could hardly fathom it; he was there. The world melted. 

I wondered if he'd even recognise me. God knows I was a mess. His gaze wandered from the crown of my head to my feet, slowly, drinking every part of me in; calculating. My heart thundered against my chest as his features softened. Hot fury burned through me, months of pent up emotion bitter on the tongue as everything I had refused to feel came to the surface. 

"Iris-" He breathed, stepping toward me cautiously, considering his next move, digesting my reactions. One hand reached towards my arm, gently grasping it between his slender fingers, running his thumb along the lines carved by my nails. His other hand delicately rested on my shoulder, sweeping his fingers along my jawline, collecting the tears that fell on the pads of his thumbs, tracing, again, the lines scratched into my skin. His touch. God, his touch. It felt like water in the desert, like heaven and hell and all that was right and all that was wrong and the sun between the clouds and the first blooms of spring and claps of thunder and risk and ardour. It was so right. It satiated something starved in me. It was dangerous. One touch and I was his again, willing to crawl back into the safety of his skin, not to heal but to drain the life of each other until there was nothing left. His touch was a devil disguised, so tempting, so ethereal, I wanted to drown in it; and I would, if he didn't have to drown with me.