[reinhardt gallery] eidolon || cordelia

A couple of final notes - minors only, no fees, that cute quote about creativity - and Cordelia stayed the Quick-Notes Quill. Another person, another day, she might ask him to disclose some key funders and do some digging, just for fun. But now he was smiling at her, a joke at his expense, and she didn’t want to dig. She wanted to just joke around with Brennan Reinhardt again, pretend everything that had happened hadn’t happened. But the moment passed.

It wasn’t meant to upset you and considering that it did, I apologize.

It wasn’t the worst apology she had ever heard. It wasn’t like he had said ‘I’m sorry you felt that way’, he at least sounded like he was taking responsibility for how tone-deaf that whole exhibition had been. Cordelia didn’t feel inclined to forgive him, but at least that was a start, she could let go of some of the anger now-

Oh, Brennan, she thought, you should have stopped talking while you were ahead.

Proud of me, he said. Reminding everyone of the aftermath, he said. Wasn’t meant in jest. Bile rose in her throat, red rage hazing the edge of her vision. Every muscle tensed as she clenched her fists once and then then released them. “Proud?” Cordelia managed to say after a moment. She felt like she was being strangled by her own age. “Why would I be proud of you for that?” It was a rhetorical question, but Brennan was in interview mode (her fault) and would probably try to answer,  so she held up one finger. The universal signal for shut up.

Of course, he didn’t shut up. Why didn’t - “Why didn’t I say anything?” Cordelia exclaimed, a shout so violent she thought she felt her diaphragm hit her lungs. She couldn’t breath right, sitting here - Cordy stood up, not bothering to smooth down her skirt. It was so obvious, how could he not get it?

“You weren’t there, Brennan!” She answered her own question in the shouting. “You and your family and your money got to leave Hogwarts in October!” What was she doing in October? Torturing and getting tortured, risking more torture to graffiti the halls for Ginny and the DA. “How many letters did you get from your parents with almost all the information redacted? How many parents did you have at home that year? Two? No parents on the run or in Azkaban, huh?”

She sounded hysterical. She felt hysterical. Cordelia didn’t talk about this anymore because it made her feel like she was losing control, but now here she was, actually losing control, and it felt good to yell and scream. She was letting go of more than a year of resentment - Cordelia was burning through five years of restrained anger. “How many times were you tortured by the Carrows, Brennan? How many Death Eaters tried to kill you? How many brothers did you bury, Brennan?

Cordy hadn’t noticed how close she had gotten to Brennan - the anger had moved her, not her feet, it was like she had floated across the room to here, breathing heavily in front of him. “You don’t get to show off a grief that you didn’t earn, Brennan,” Cordelia said after a moment. “That’s the problem. That’s why I left. I was disgusted.” That was a lie - she hadn’t been disgusted until later. “Blindsided. I had flashbacks. Do you know how cruel that is? To make me remember?”

Brennan opened his mouth to clarify but it was obvious that whatever he had said had already been too much and in turn he fell silent again, slightly confused by the anger in the tone of her voice but he tried to keep the confusion off of his face. He truly wasn’t that idiotic, he reassured himself, just a little denser than others when it came to understanding the point. Of course it was not long before Cordelia rose her voice and finally gave him the response he had been waiting on for what seemed the entire year. “But it wasn’t my choice to leave, I was simply following orders from my family, I never thought—” he started, feeling a little nervous by the way she was acting but not quite sure how to offer comfort. If anything, it made sense for Brennan to simply offer her the truth but from the looks of it, she didn’t quite appreciate that gesture either.

He understood the way the war worked. In fact, he had spent countless hours discussing the matter with his tutors, going through great lengths to offer the money he had as a source of charity to those in need. But things had been considerably difficult for his family as well. The war meant less gallery showings, a few tragic deaths in the family, a fear for the safety of his immediate family as well as others. “I did what I could, my parents did what they could, it was fortunate that they didn’t end up in Azkaban but not everyone in my family was lucky, we’ve plenty of friends, some of my family doesn’t align well with those they consider below their status but I like everybody,” he insisted, feeling the need to reiterate that he, himself, had not felt any particular biases and that he, himself, did not agree with the war to begin with.

Of course he could not so vocally align himself with one side or another, it simply wasn’t the way of the Reinhardt family. More than advocators for the rights of others, the Reinhardts needed to keep their lineage and business afloat. It wasn’t kind but it was simply the way things were. “But the Reinhardts had to be realistic, too,” he added, though what he meant by that remained a bit of a mystery to him. They were words repeated from what his grandfather had told him during that time. The man was a bit staunch in his beliefs but had always come from a sensible place.

“I understand how you feel,” he said, though he wanted to insist that there were several Death Eaters that had gone after some of the members of his family, though it was more in the form of seeking support rather than torture. He had not agreed with it, he had to reiterate to himself. “And I’m sorry that you experienced that, Cordelia,” he added, looking up at her as she approached him, having enough sense to stand up form his chair. Brennan wasn’t necessarily afraid for his life but felt a little intimidated by her closeness and the anger in her voice and the expression on her face. Brennan moved closer to her to embrace her, holding her close as he took a deep breath and tried to pat her head in a comforting gesture. “I was wrong, I understand that now, and I should’ve taken your feelings into consideration, I was stupid and I apologize,” he added, his voice softening slightly as he spoke.

Brennan was saying words as she spoke. Cordelia wasn't listening. He had already made his voice on the matter abundantly clear, to so many witnesses. Some words floated by - the normal pureblood excuses. She had read so many of them, following the Death Eater trials in the papers. Heard so many of them, from former family friends who had turned her father in. Realism. Pragmatism. An easy excuse for those who could maintain their privilege by turning a blind eye. She didn't need to listen to that again.

Her mind raced through stills of her time with Brennan. Looking at a wall at the gallery, seeing a portrait of Iris, his cousin, and others of other pureblood casualties. No half-bloods, no members of the Order, a few students from Dumbledore's Army. A night in bed, drawing circles lazily on his shoulder, Brennan asked if they were any photos of Luke. "Of course,", she said. Did they want a portrait? I don't think so. So, no portrait of Luke in the gallery. Small blessings. If Brennan had done that, Cordelia might not have managed a graceful exit.

Brennan wrapped his arms around her in an embrace that was all too familiar. He used the same cologne, smelt of cedar and pine needles just like he had all those nights at the theatre. She breathed him in deeply, like his cologne was a smelling salt that would bring her back to earth. But instead of making her calm, the scent of pine just made her think of Michael. Michael, who knew this pain she bore too, who was good and dependable and would never make her feel like this. Michael who stayed and fought and rescued a goddamn first year by himself. He called himself a coward, but next to Brennan, with his weak excuses - I was simply following orders - who was the real coward, exactly?

She hadn't returned the hug, so her right arm was free to reach up and grab Brennan's wrist, stopping him from stroking her hair another time. "Don't." After a moment, Cordelia released her grip, stepping back just a couple steps to look Brennan in the eye. She had to tilt her head up to do so, jutting her chin out in defiance.

"You understand now," the witch repeated, her voice laced with disbelief. "That's all it takes for you to understand? Me raising my voice?" How laughable.

"Do you know what it feels like? The Cruciatus Curse?"

She reached for her wand. Being tortured into cursing her classmates for a year had changed something in Cordelia, something she tried now to bury with booze and boys and work and weed. The horrible thing was, Cordelia was good at the Cruciatus Curse.

Brennan had assumed that his gesture of good will would not be taken in stride, that Cordelia would understand what he meant when he justified his actions and that she would somehow find it in her heart to laugh off what had transpired between them as a simple act of ignorance. In a way, he had seen the topic of their breakup as a good way to revisit the topic of their relationship and how things had been perfectly fine before he had done something so despicable that she had walked out of the gallery and never turned back. He had gone after her but many moments too late, too caught up in a conversation with some vapid reporter about his relationship status. But that had always been his biggest fault, Brennan had always waited several moments too late to act, to see, and most importantly, to understand. So here he was, almost an entire year after the fact and only now beginning to see fault in his actions. However, in that time, Cordelia had seemingly grown cold and distant, the way she grabbed his wrist foreshadowing what he assumed to be the beginning of a very rapid downfall in their conversation.

“No,” he shook his head, “Of course not,” he added for good measure. Brennan had never liked being reprimanded, though he imagined no one did, but his understanding was not entirely dependent on that, “I understand you because you’ve explained it, you never spoke of it before, all of this,” he continued. It was a sensitive topic, one that he had never been entirely equipped to approach. But he was trying, and he figured that it had to account for something.

He took a step back when she pulled out her wand, it was the cowardly response, a perfect fit for someone like Brennan. For a moment he wondered if this had been the purpose of this visit in the first place. That Cordelia felt the only way to move on with her life was to take her revenge for him not being able to read between the lines. His friends had often joked that it would be the death of him, his inability to see things for what they were as he was too caught up in his own thoughts to make heads or tails of a situation. And that thought made him a little angry suddenly, an emotion he was not extremely familiar with. “And so what if I don’t, you intend to make an example of it on me?” he responded, his tone of voice only losing a fraction of the warmth he had spoken to her with up until now.

“I won’t qualify your suffering with my own but I don’t want to pity you either,” he explained as slowly as calmly as he could, “but don’t you understanding that things would’ve been much easier if you had told me how you felt rather than assumed I’d know?” he asked, keeping his eyes on her wand, “Is there a point to all of this? To you suffering in silence?” he added after a moment’s pause. Brennan had not expected her to react this way and it made him increasingly nervous to find out how else she had changed in the time they had been apart.

She raised her wand, not yet pointing at Brennan but it was raised, a weapon. Brennan went cold, as he should. You intend to make an example of it on me?

Nightmares, waking nightmares rushing through her head. Classrooms turned into exhibitions of punishment. Michael in the Great Hall. Bloody hands in the Room of Requirement. Her own wand, trembling in her hand as orders were shouted to fire. A phantom pain echoing the Cruiciatus burning through her nervous system, burning through her own reserves of magic. Cordelia trembled slightly, swaying in her spot. "Of course not." Her hand did not lower. "You would have known if you stayed."

"I don't want your pity," Cordelia snapped. Couldn't he see? How was he being so obtuse? "I don't want anyone's pity. That's- that's why I never brought it up!" Merlin's beard. She flipped her wand sideways, pressing the wood and her palms against her head. "I was blindsided by the gallery. It upset me. I left. I wasn't expecting -- anything from you. I was just done that night. I was just. Done." A low groan from the back of her throat, exasperated and tired. "You asked."

She dropped her hands, looking up at Brennan. "Fuck," she breathed, water at the corners of her eyes, hot and burning. "I'll - I'll have Craig send someone else." This was an embarrassment. She couldn't write about his art gallery after this. She turned, making to gather up her things.

A small part of him had expected her to laugh the conversation off, as he often did when he placed himself in uncomfortable situations like this, a skill he gained only Merlin knew where and one that hardly attracted the sort of company he wanted to keep around. But this conversation was making him terribly uncomfortable, to the point that he, himself, would willingly do anything to sort of just forget it was happening.

And it was then that he sort of realized why she probably had not told her in the first place, her feelings regarding the war or the exhibition because she might have wanted to avoid this very feeling. “It was out of my hands,” he gave as his excuse again, but he doubted anyone would have willingly stuck around for any of it had they the means to get out of it. His cousin, Wolfgang, had done the same after his sister had passed and so had several others. Brennan had not seen his act of what Cordelia seemed to interpret as cowardice as anything worth blaming. “But I’m sorry,” he said, feeling the need to apologize, “for not experiencing what you did, then maybe I would have understood you better,” he said. He meant it sincerely, though the words did not quite leave his mouth that way, and he feared that she might interpret them as callous.

“I’m being honest,” he said just a moment later, “I know, I don’t want to pity you but I still feel bad,” he said again, cautious not to approach her as that had not gone well as he had anticipated. Brennan was reading all of the signs wrong tonight and Cordelia was certainly making him pay for it. “Don’t” he started as she began gathering her things, cautiously taking one step forward, then another.

“I don’t want you to leave just yet, don’t worry about the interview,” he said gently, “have a seat, finish your tea, let’s keep talking?” he offered in the form of a question, unassuming but hoping that it would be enough to continue talking to her no matter how uncomfortable the subject at hand was.

It was out of my hands. Cordelia huffed a small, short, bitter laugh, hot and prickly on the back of her throat. Of course, it was. How many times would she hear that excuse, if she pressed? This is why she didn't press. Didn't talk about the war, except when she and Mary were in their cups in May. Hardly did, then. Hardly did, ever. How could she? It was all twisted up --

the cold air of Dementors in Hogsmeade
with the fear of not knowing where Dad was
with the sinking pit in her stomach of knowing where Dad was
with the stinging hexes snapping across her thighs
with the burning agony of clumsily cast 'Crucio' 
with the holiday dinners turning to ash in her mouth
with the heart-pounding sprints into secret passages
with the screams of Michael Corner in the Great Hall
with the whimpers of the first years bearing witness
with the screams of Death Eaters and students ringing in her ears
with the sight of Luke half-buried in the rubble
with the dark red blood on Luke's forehead
with the vacant stare in Luke's eyes that wouldn't close again
with Luke
with Luke
with Luke --

-- Cordelia sucked in a tight, shakey breath. The world was spinning, or she was spinning, she was lightheaded and unmoored. She folded her arms across her chest, digging her nails into the meat of her upper arm until the world felt solid under her feet again. Had Brennan said something else? Cordelia could feel the shape of the words, couldn't come up with a response to them to save her life. She just nodded, once, as an acknowledgment of whatever excuse he had voiced.

He wanted her to stay. She could have, maybe, but the air in here was too warm even for summer and she was so close to suffocating under her own memories. She had to leave. Have a seat. Finish your tea. Cordelia could do one of those, surely. She reached for her cup. The tea was just on the warm side of tepid, now -- she downed the glass all at once. "Tea's done," she announced, deadpan, setting the teacup back down. Cordelia twisted her wand hand wrist once, and her things began to assemble back into her bag. Don't worry about the interview, he said. Merlin, she was working. She couldn't burn more time here, knowing she was going to collapse at her desk at the Prophet with no story and half an interview. Then, because she hadn't been raised in a barn, Cordelia mumbled out thanks for the tea.

"Goodbye, Brennan," Cordelia said, taking her bag and giving him one long look, her expression mixed with anger and sorrow in equal measure. Her expression softened, slightly -- distantly, she knew she was being unreasonable, and she shouldn't leave this so that she could never cover the gallery in the future. But. Not now. She bit her lip, then breathed out. "I'll write you when I'm ready." Not soon, maybe not ever. But maybe when she was ready.

Cordelia swept out of the room, out of the house into the street in a blur. She sucked in the muggy summer air, filling her lungs as she tried to anchor herself to the world again.

But I’m sorry, for not experiencing what you did, then maybe I would have understood you better, Brennan had said while the floor had been falling out from under Cordelia's feet. Maybe I would have understood you better. Merlin, what was she supposed to do with that? Cordelia willed her heart to slow down, to stop drumming out a too fast tattoo in her chest. Maybe I would have understood. That was the rub of it, wasn't it? Nobody who wasn't there would ever understand, and to try and explain was a surefire way to become overwhelmed and detached from the physical world.

Maybe I would have understood. But what if she didn't have to say it, every time? What if there was a map to the trauma in her heart, that she could just hand out until everyone knew how to navigate her waters?

Maybe I would have understood. What if?

Cordelia took another deep breath, heart slowing and gears turning, before beginning the walk back to Diagon Alley.

[fin]