Left Behind


 * Jasonb.jpgZacariah Piecemaker: 32 years old, muggleborn, wizard, leader of Albane, playby: Jason Behr
 * Amelia Natalie Leggett: 25 years old, muggleborn, witch, refugee, playby: Kirsten Dunst

She woke up with blood on her hands--thick, dark blood that was heavily caked under her nails, as if she'd clawed something hard enough to break the skin, to really dig in. She tasted it in her mouth: the blood and gore. As she came to, it made her ill, made her half-crazy. Amelia felt the hands clamped hard under her armpits, felt them dragging her. Her toes drug the ground, but she was too weak to draw them up underneath her, to put one in front of the other and walk by herself.

But she wasn't afraid. The feeling of danger had passed. She'd saved herself--of that she was certain. Whoever these people were, they were taking her away from the scene of the battle. They'd swooped in, out of nowhere, as if they'd been watching all along. So why hadn't they saved her before?

Because no one could save her. No one could have found her. She had been underground, locked up tight. They'd held her in that cell for two years. Two mind-numbing years in which she'd huddled in the corner of the white, empty room--covered in dirt and grime and the sticky stain of tears. They'd questioned her and tortured her until she'd gone mad, until the people they asked her about had no longer been real. Had she made those people up in her head? She'd never been a terrorist, had she? That was what they'd called her, but she'd never done anything bad. Had she?

They had asked her about her family, but she had no family. She had no friends. Life had never existed outside of that white room. She'd been born there, she'd come to believe. She'd been born to torture and misery.

Amelia released a pitiful moan, trying to remember who she was. That was why she'd murdered that man. She'd murdered the man with the key to her cage so that she could break free, so that she could escape the room and discover who she was again.

Amelia felt the air condensce around her, heard the unmistakable popping sound, and knew that she'd been apparated. Apparated. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been--

She heard a door open, felt herself being dragged forward, and then, for the first time, the man on either side of her attempted to help her stand on her own two feet. Amelia felt her knees wobble as she stared at the wooden floor of the house she'd been brought to. She told herself to lock them, and they locked.

"Merlin, bloody hell. No way. No way this is real."

The voice that spoke connected to some fragmented part of her brain, but, for some reason, it made it more difficult for Amelia to look up and register the face it belonged to. She felt her chest clench, as if she'd just attempted apparation again, but she knew that this reaction was connected to the voice. She felt her heart trip over itself, and it was only then that she remembered that she had a heart.

"We were doing our usual eavesdropping, sir, when we heard a commotion," the man to her right said. "Apparently, they've been holding her underground in some cells we didn't know about. Murdered her guard with her own hands. Surprised everyone so much she made it outside before anyone really reacted. Most people didn't even know she existed. We caught her outside, brought her here."

"Amelia," the voice in front of her breathed, and she looked up.

And she remembered, in the worst way ever, who she was, where she'd come from, and how Zacariah Piecemaker had sent her to hell, allowed her to rot there.

"You--You bastard," she growled. "Y-You ruined my life. I'll kill you."

But her body had other intentions, overtaken by the stress of what she'd been through. Her knees buckled, and she fell backward, swamped by a deluge of memories, by the truth of who she was and how she'd arrived to this point. She released a grunt, and blacked out.

-

After having his guard escort--or carry--Amelia to an available hut in the small district of Albane, Zacariah sat heavily behind the desk of his own hut. He had given instructions that she be monitored, bathed, clothed, and given something to eat when she woke up, and he'd remained behind, because he knew that he was the very last person she'd want to see when she woke up again.

Amelia Leggett, his childhood friend. They'd grown up side-by-side, on the same block. Their parents had been friends. They'd spent quite a good deal of time together. Amelia had been seven years his junior. At first, he'd found her a bit annoying, what with the way she seemed to have developed a school girl crush on him. But right before the war--right before he'd gone into hiding in Albane--he'd started to..appreciate her more. She'd been with him during what he would always refer to as his last stand.

Amelia had been among the group of friends he'd recruited to give the Ministry one last, good send-off. What was really nothing more than a childish prank, however, had turned into something more. They'd crashed a Ministry banquet, had only meant to cause a little stir, and suddenly they had been terrorists. A fight had broken out. Spells had been flying. He'd only just escaped when he'd realized that Amelia hadn't gotten out with the group.

He could remember what his friend, Marcus, had said to him, "She's dead now, Zac. Whatever happened in there, it turned into a good excuse for the Ministry to eliminate a few more muggleborns. I never knew that it was this bad."

In truth, he'd seen someone get hit with a spell, had watched them fall. It could have been Amelia. He'd told himself it was, because there was no way that he could ever go back and see. He'd all but left for Albane that night, when things were at their worst, and it was obvious that being muggleborn meant risking death. A little prank, after all, had gone so terribly wrong. He should have seen before, how dangerous the idea had been, but he'd been so desperate to take a stand.

Zac leaned back at his desk, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He'd thought she was dead, had given up on her, and all the while Amelia had survived, and, today, she'd won her own freedom. By the amount of blood she'd been coated in, he could only imagine what she'd done to earn it. The woman that had stood before him a second ago with the wild eyes and the crazed voice, that wasn't the girl he remembered. There was no telling what they'd done to her.

Or if he could ever make things between them right again.