somewhere i have never travelled by QuillLumos Title: somewhere i have never travelled Author:quill_lumos Pairing: Severus and Harry. Rating: PG-13 (Totally safe for Torinas) Word Count: 1,049 Warnings: mention of previous violence. Disclaimer: I do not own anything Harry Potter, related nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. It all belongs to JK Rowling. Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Inc., Warner Brothers and any other entity involved. Summary: Valentine's Day was supposed to be of red posies and heart-shaped offerings, kisses and love-filled promises. It was not supposed to be like this. A/N: Thank you to my darling Cyndie-Lou, for being her wonderful, charming and erudite self. This story is a sequel to last year’s entry which used the same prompt. You do not need to have read last year’s story to be able to read this, but should you wish to it can be found here. I always loved e.e.cummings poem, ‘somewhere i have never travelled.’ This story is somewhat of a homage to that poem.
somewhere i have never travelled
A year ago I gave you a heart, a heart which had still been beating when I ripped it from its owner’s chest, a heart that served to shake you free from waking nightmares of perversions and torture and brought you back to us.
Brought you back to me.
I watch you still, drinking in your essence, always aware, protecting you, sheltering the man I love from those who might harm you by word or by deed. I have fulfilled this task for so long now, long before you were taken, long before you were brought back, near broken and destroyed. I came to know you so well in the time I took care of you. All those months, when, had it not been for me, you would have been alone. I cared for you then, fed you, held you, comforted you, thought of you as mine. But you are not mine, not in the way that I am yours, for I gave you my heart too, Harry, long ago.
They come to you now, your friends. They chatter and joke and try to make amends for leaving you as they did. You have forgiven them, I think, but then you always did forgive when perhaps you should not have done. I sit and watch from a distance as I always have, caring for you, with all that I am.
They know your fragility now; they have seen it, felt it. And even as you smile and laugh softly at their jokes, it is with a laughter that is hard won, that is even a little fearful, as if you have no right to express it.
I wonder if they notice that your eyes never smile, my Harry. They no longer burn with the fierce fire with which they once sparkled. But as each day passes you come back to us a little more, you open a little more fully, you become a little more yourself – though I fear the fire has gone for good.
Sometimes you sit alone, for hour upon hour, bolt straight yet small and fragile, staring at things that only you can see. Sometimes those images overwhelm you and you curl upon yourself like a rose at midnight, like a bud which has yet to open.
Sometimes you scream and beg forgiveness in your sleep.
But that is progress, because once, not so very long ago, you were too afraid to make a sound. So I treasure each scream as a sign of your emergence, evidence that you are returning from the blackest despair. For surely, my darling man, it is better to fight, to scream, to rage, to make your mark upon the moment than to give in to silence and despair.
So now it is Valentine’s Day once more.
Valentine's Day is supposed to be of red posies and heart-shaped offerings, kisses and love-filled promises… but for me it is so much more. Today is the anniversary of your journey back to us. Those first faltering steps which gave me hope.
Your friends were here earlier; they remember this day too. They bring chocolates and flowers in case I forget. As if I ever could. They tease you with stories of their lives, their normal everyday stories that once seemed lost to you forever, but that now seem increasingly within your ken.
I watched you from a distance, just in case you sought comfort or protection. But you didn’t need me today.
I breathe in the scent of you from across the room, content in the knowledge that you are close by… for now, at least. You are getting well again, emerging once more, opening like petals in the warmth of the sun.
One day soon you will leave me, Harry. And I will let you go.
My thoughts are sent flurrying by your laughter. Louder than I have heard it for the longest while. We are stunned – Granger and Weasley and Longbottom and me. Then you laugh again at our astonishment and a smile lights up your face, bringing sunshine flooding into the room, subsuming us with your light. Tears spring unbidden, emotion tightens my throat.
I stop breathing as blood stops pumping in my veins. Time, for me, stands still.
Your smile is in your eyes.
You and your friends are in a bubble of happiness. Happiness! I never thought you would know such a thing again.
I am separate, apart from all of you, and I think with dread how our time together is almost at an end. I know that soon you will go for good, that I will surely loose you, and I know a sorrow that wells within me and threatens to shatter me.
For an instant I feel frozen in time and space.
But then…
Then you look at me, Harry, and the smile is still there, still in your eyes.
“Severus,” you say, and I hear it as a whisper in my heart.
Later, much later, when your friends have gone, you come to me softly. You have always let me hold you, without complaint, but this time you come to me of your own volition and I take you in my arms.
“Severus,” you say again. Your head just reaches my shoulder and your arm snakes behind me and holds me in return. Your hand spreads wide across my chest, small and white, like edelweiss.
In my head, I hear the echo of a poem, “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”. Your hands are small and seemingly fragile, yet, at the same time, so very capable and strong.
I never thought you weak, Harry, your strength at times overwhelms me. You were so hurt, my love, so damaged but never truly broken.
I know what it is that made you smile, that made your eyes smile; the knowledge grows inside me and warms me to the very core of my soul. The voice in your eyes, Harry, is indeed deeper than all roses.
I hear the words before you say them. “I love you, Severus.”
And all at once I am shattered and remade and I know that together we shall go somewhere we have never travelled, not either one of us. Then I lean down and take your lips in a lover’s kiss.
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands ”