ha ha what’s that you want some final battle cho x marcus Angst TM okay cool:

• so
• it starts at the tail end of the war, when cho has her back pressed against a crumbling stone wall and a stubby, callused hand squeezing at her throat and she can’t quite reach her wand, can she?
• and adrenaline is thrumming like battery acid in her stomach, spurring her on and spurring her sour, desperate, frantic; and so she jams her knee up, a last ditch attempt at fighting back, just like cedric had taught her–god, a lifetime ago–and the death eater grunts, instinctively releasing his hold on her, and she gasps and she stumbles and she finally has her wand and–
• “oh, fucking–goddamn it, rowle,” a new voice suddenly barks. “again?”
  
• the death eater in front of cho–rowle, apparently–lurches backwards, swearing under his breath, and then darts off like he’s afraid of being caught. doing what, she doesn’t know. or maybe she does. maybe that’s why her blood’s been like ice in her veins since he’d grabbed her by the back of her skirt.
• “avada–” the new voice goes on, deep and gravelly, just as they round the opposite corner, and it takes a split-second, less than, really, for cho to understand that she’s going to die.
  
• like dumbledore.
• like cedric.
• except–
• no, she’s not, because she catches sight of broad shoulders and thick forearms and a corded, heavily muscled neck, huge hands and a square jaw and skin just a few shades darker than her own. he’s bigger than he had been. stronger. more intimidating. she’d recognize him anywhere.
• marcus flint.
• his expression flickers with something when he sees her–something fleeting and guilty and terrible–and she wonders if he’s remembering all the times he’d tried to knock her off her broom; all the times he’d tried to distract her from the snitch with muttered insults and slyly delivered come-ons; all the times he’d swung his beater’s bat and sent a bludger torpedoing her way. 
• competition. that’s what she’d always been to him. prey.
• “there’s a tunnel,” he blurts out now, lowering his wand, leaving the curse unfinished. he’s staring at her. she swallows, painfully, and stares right back. “third floor. people are…getting away. if you. if you want. i can take you.”
  
• he’s sweating, she notices. dark hair matted to his head and stubbled chin glinting in the weak early morning sun. his lips are chapped. brow furrowed. nose slightly crooked, like it’d been broken again recently. his eyes are piercing, though, a surprising honey brown, and his face is–different. she can’t decide how.
• “i don’t want to get away,” she tells him, wincing at the strain on her vocal chords. “this is–this is it, can’t you feel it? this is how it ends.”
  
• flint doesn’t reply, not immediately, but he doesn’t look away, either. and it’s intense. the silence. that’s what it is. how he’s studying her, how he’s weighing his words. there’s an undercurrent of anger there, too, a knife edge serrated by fear rather than cruelty. she supposes that’s the difference in him. rage and ruin. he must’ve figured out the cost of winning. must’ve paid it.
• “yeah,” he eventually says, kicking at an errant pebble. “yeah, i can feel it.”
  
• cho hesitates. a scream, shrill and sharp, echoes softly, eerily, strangely from inside the castle. “why?” she asks, quick as she can. “why didn’t you.” 
• kill me, she’s not entirely brave enough to say.
• flint shoves his free hand into his trouser pocket and glances up at the sky. “i know you. knew you. it’s–harder, like that.”
• “no,” she replies, steadily. “you don’t know me. not really.”
  
• his gaze swivels down again, scanning her face like he’s planning to prove her wrong, somehow. but then he’s ducking his chin, shaking his head, dropping the heel of his boot onto the pebble he’d been kicking. 
• a few years earlier, he’d have seized the opportunity for one of his mean, stinging jokes–he’d have smirked, or licked his lips, or bent down to whisper in her ear, something about getting to know her; something about her knickers, or her mouth, or the empty changing rooms after the game. she’d have blushed. sneered. ignored the heat of his palm against her lower back as he propelled her forward, out onto the pitch.
• “my mistake,” he murmurs now, turning to leave.
  
• two months later, cho testifies at his trial, watches them remove the shackles from his wrists, and doesn’t cry once.