Shortfic: Absolution, PG
Title: Absolution
Author: nice_girls_play
Rating: PG
Challenge: #303: Five Senses: Sight
Characters: Severus Snape, Sirius Black
Warning: AU, post-DH
Summary: A one-sided conversation after the final battle.



--

"I get it now."

Severus blinks slowly at the ceiling, brain slowly crawling through the fog brought on by sedation. On the other side of the fog is sensation: the itchy bandage around his neck, the reek of blood and iodine, Skele-Gro and Dreamless Sleep, the effluvia of triage; the rawness in Black's voice. He can feel the sharp prick in his arm where a needle was recently inserted; the dried potions cracking in the corners of his mouth; the dull heaviness below his chin that makes turning his head a monumental task.

He finally manages it, turning to look at the man seated in the window a few feet from his bed, smoking a cigarette. In twenty years, Black's silhouette in the dark has not changed, haloed by silver grey moonlight and red-orange ash.

"If I'd been sorry -- *really* sorry -- it would have been me that stopped it. Me that went in and got you."

In that moment, he knows it was Sirius who shoved the bezoar down his throat, knocking out two of his teeth in the process. Sirius who staunched his hemorrhaging throat with his own hands and dragged him from the Shrieking Shack back to the castle.

"Is it enough that I'm sorry now?"

Severus watches as Black's silhouette slips behind the fog once more.

--