clinging to life [cora]

[beckett sirius potter]

they make me dream your dreams instead of my own

❝

He didn’t remember waking up. He just remembered that he felt a burning sort of pain between his shoulders, and as he tried to move, only his arms responded.

The rest of his body felt…numb. Disconnected.

It took a great deal of effort - and every single movement shot waves of pain through his upper body, but Beckett forced himself up onto his elbows. He tried and tried, but he could not get his legs to move. Couldn’t even twist beyond just his chest to try to make sense of things. Every movement was excruciating in every limb above his waist, but despite how hard he tried, he couldn’t get anything beyond his abdomen to move. Couldn’t feel anything - no pain, no tingling, nothing - in his lower body.

Beckett’s forehead slumped back against the ground as a sob heaved from his chest, tearing from his throat in a strangled sort of cry. He lay like that for moments. He would never quite know how long. He tried to move at intermittent intervals, blindly hoping that sensation returned to his legs. Nothing came.

Accepting his fate, he pushed back onto his elbows again, heaving deep breaths into his chest before summoning the little remaining strength he possessed and flipping himself over. His legs twisted one over the other into awkward positions, but still, he felt nothing. No pain, no discomfort in his lower body. Just the burning pain in his back.

The mere effort alone made his vision swim, and he lie back down to look up at the sky. Dawn was starting to lighten the edges of the world, making it a sort of grey. He didn’t know how long he’d been laying there - or how he hadn’t died of whatever injuries he couldn’t see. But he knew they were there. Laying on his back made the stinging, burning sensation intensify.

His eyes began to flutter shut as he slowly reached for his wand. He thought of Nana Weasley and her hugs, the way she always pulled him close. He thought of his mother and the gentle way she cared for him.

It took three tries to summon the Patronus charm, but it flickered weakly to life before him.

“Cora Simms,” he croaked, the first name he thought of just spilling out of his mouth. “Get Cora. Tell her I need help. I-I can’t feel my legs.”

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[cora raquel simms]

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cora simms

Cora woke when the wisps of silvery light sneaked between her closed eyelids. She groaned, at first not wanting to move, but getting a weird, sinking feeling in her gut that whatever this message was- it was important. Did she always have to be needed immediately after a full moon? Cora had barely shrunk back to human form from the night she’d spent holed up at Hanson’s and everything hurt. Especially her stupid leg. Cora knew her mother wouldn’t mind her staying home at full moons, but she wasn’t quite ready for her family to see the new, animalistic side of her just yet. They knew of it, but Cora had gotten it in her head that they would be frightened of her, that they wouldn’t treat her the same if they saw it.

She blinked her eyes open, squinting at the brightness of the patronus against the dimness of the living room.

“Cora Simms. Get Cora. Tell her I need help. I-I can’t feel my legs.”

Was that… Potter?

Exhaustion suddenly forgotten, Cora pushed herself off the couch. Why he’d called for her she couldn’t say, only that whatever had happened was emergent, and for whatever reason, she’d been the first to come to mind. She ignored the screaming pain down her leg as she paced across the room, fetching her wand and her cane, feeling her heart hammering practically in her throat. Cora paused just long enough to send a message for backup to the Order, she didn’t know what she was getting herself into, only that Beckett was hurt or in danger or both. Cora apparated as soon as she’d clomped past Hanson’s wards, landing hard on her feet in the alley where the message had come from.

Her nose was immediately greeted by the scent of blood, too much of it, and wolf.

“Beckett!” Cora cried when she spotted him, lying in a tangled pile on the ground, drenched in his own blood. She closed the gap between them in as close to a run as she could get, her cane clattering to the concrete behind her as she dropped to her knees. He was alive, the rise and fall of his chest was enough to attest to that, but he’d been torn practically to ribbons. Cora did her best to stay calm, but the surge of adrenaline made it hard, she breathed heavily, cautiously taking his hand. “Help’s coming, just stay with me, yeah?” Cora said, squeezing his fingers which were eerily cold. How long had he been exposed to the elements in this state? It was freezing.

The proximity revealed the source of the wolf smell, beneath all the spilled blood, it was the very boy whose hand she cradled. The boy who she’d sat across from in the Gryffindor common room, talking practically the whole night to keep his mind occupied. It felt like a lifetime ago and now, in a way, it had been. Hogwarts was gone, but Cora wouldn’t lose him too. She healed the wounds she could see, though there was little Cora could do elsewise, she wouldn’t be able to move him on her own.

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[beckett sirius potter]

they make me dream your dreams instead of my own

❝

Why Cora? It was a question that hadn’t really crossed his mind as he had lay there, desperate and surely dying. He was on the outs with his siblings, he supposed, since what had happened when they were last all together. None of them wanted to admit that they were all too caught up in their own shit to care about anything or anyone else. His eldest sister especially.

Cora had been a friendly face at Hogwarts. Friendly enough, without taking his shit. And in the brief time he had spent with her before the closing of the school, he had found it…easier. Less tempting to make that potion. Less burdensome to handle his losses.

Plainly, she had made him feel safe in a world where there was precious little of that security.

Even more of it had been ripped from him now. Beckett was desperate, dizzy from the agony of his wounds, which he could not even bring himself to assess. There was something very, very wrong, and he would not be able to fix it.

He couldn’t feel his legs.

Again and again, that sentence reverberated in his mind. Beckett was stuck without the ability to use them, unable to Apparate or even walk to safety, and he was in too much pain to be able to muster pulling himself around by his arms. Not when the simple act of turning himself over had proven to be far too much to handle.

He didn’t know how much time had passed from sending his message to Cora’s arrival. The time had passed in a blur of consciousness, where his thoughts streamed forth across his mind as he slipped in and out of reality. The torment of his pain made him near-delirious. Her voice was an anchor when she arrived, holding him firmly in the world that was too sharp, too bright, too hurtful.

Beckett! Help’s coming, just stay with me, yeah?

Vaguely, Beckett was aware of the sensation of her hand taking his. He could, at least, feel that, and it was a marvel that made him crack his eyes open. She was warm and real and alive. His chapped lips parted and his dry throat cracked on the words that made him realize that in the intermittent time before Cora’s arrival, he had been screaming.

“I won’t leave,” he croaked, though it felt like the weight of a dragon was separating him from her, pulling him farther into an abyss that tried to soothe, to comfort, to heal. He half-let it, unable to keep the vitality in himself much longer.

But she would not be there. This angel he had conjured. She was not waiting for him in that darkness.

“I can’t…move anyways,” he struggled to articulate, the words requiring a gargantuan effort to force from his lips. “Not…going anywhere…”

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[cora raquel simms]

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cora simms

Cora chewed on the inside of her cheek, but aside the slight twitching of her jaw as she chomped, her expression was otherwise one of calm. That’s what one was supposed to do when someone was gravely injured, right? At any rate, Potter was smart enough to know his condition was nowhere near good- Cora didn’t need to compound his anxiety. She tore her eyes away from him for only a second, scanning the alley, looking for signs of the backup she’d called. What in Merlin’s name was taking them so long?

Her stomach was twisting itself in knots, the parallels to her own turning were too strong, ripping open the scabs of trauma that she normally kept tight under wraps. Was this what Hanson felt like, coming across her bleeding out from the curse to the leg, so sickly pale, so unmoving… Cora swallowed hard, giving Beckett’s hand another squeeze. No, this had to be worse, Beckett hadn’t been cursed, he’d been mangled, he’d been mauled. If it had been anything other than a werewolf that had attacked him he’d be gone. The curse was mostly that- but the Turning process could keep someone on the brink of death alive. Beckett was simultaneously the most and least lucky person in that regard.

But should she tell him?

Cora looked down at him again, trying to keep her panic at bay. There was a weird glaze to his eyes, like he was on the verge of slipping away. She brushed her free hand across his cheek, hoping to keep his attention on her.

“I won’t leave. I can’t… move anyways.”

Cora offered what might have been a sarcastic sort of smile, but it instead looked more like a grimace.

“Not… going anywhere…”

“Even in peril you’re a smartass, Potter,” said Cora, smoothing his blood-drenched hair away from his face, “but if you know what’s good for you eyes stay open.” The idea of those eyes closing, not reopening, was enough to make tears sting in her own- she blinked them away furiously. Beckett didn’t need her crumbling, he needed the stubborn, no-nonsense Cora, the one who would, quite literally, smack sense into someone when needed. “You’re not allowed to die, you understand me?” Cora added, managing a stern expression rather than a scared one. She looked up at the pops, snaps, and cracks of apparation. Finally. “Over here!” Cora yelled, waving a hand overhead to get the attention of the Order members who’d responded to her distress call.

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