Severus Snape is tired of the lies. (fortiscadere) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-08-11 01:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-08] august, ! npc, severus snape |
Narrative: Severus Snape & Eileen Snape
Who: Severus Snape & NPC!Eileen Snape
When: Evening of 11 August 1979.
Where: Spinner's End, Snape Residence
What: Eileen is awake; Severus is curious.
Rating: G-ish
Status: COMPLETE.
The creak on the stair told her when Severus was home. She'd grown immune to the sound, knowing that it would be followed by the figure of her son in the door, waiting & watchful, as if somehow by his being there, he could change the way things were. Eileen waited, too tired to even count, and there he was. He was still clothed in his work robes, his dark hair pushed back from his face, which looked tired and pinched. Too tired, she thought. But the thought drifted away before she could put it to words, lost in a maze of memories and desires, lost dreams and fractured hopes, and the hard cold reality of life. He was preparing her potions now. Nasty tasting things, but she took them dutifully and without words. In another lifetime she would have asked, demanded knowledge of what they were, what they were for, and why she needed them, but she had lost the desire to question. It was simpler to proceed without argument. She should have known, at any rate. They had discussed it all with her here in the room. Severus and the healer, discussing her as if she could not hear them when she could, but when she tried to grasp the conversation details, they made no sense to her at all. Too much detail, and even stepping back from it she was unable to put it into order and it made her head ache in the trying of it. Potions: The pink one, the dark brown, and then a clear one, each accompanied by Severus' hand on the back of her neck, and his brows knit together in concern. He could be a gentle man, her son; and her mind posed both of the young women that had been in their house recently beside him each in turn. One elegant and refined, her visit had surprised Eileen, reminding her of the girls of her year at Hogwarts with protective fathers and brothers. The other seemed the exact opposite, neither elegant nor refined, but honest somehow in a way that Eileen had not been confronted with for a very long time. If she were choosing one... but Severus had said nothing of such things to her and it was presumptuous to assume either of them were more than a friend. "Thank you," she murmured after swallowing the final potion, her eyes moving up to meet her son's. She seemed to have startled him, and she tried to think why. She simply didn't realise that it had been nearly three days since she'd said anything to him without first being asked a question. "Careful," Severus said, as he put the potions aside to the desk he'd spent a number of evenings at recently. "You don't want to hit your head." The potions away he turned his attention back to his mother who was looking at him as if she actually saw him, for once, rather than looking straight through him as she had so frequently recently. He drew the chair towards the bed and he sat down next to her, reaching almost tentatively for her hand. "How are you feeling?" "Tired," was the response, but she didn't turn her head away from him as she had in previous evenings when she did not wish to talk and Severus decided to persist. Perhaps she could be drawn out a bit and it would help... somehow. "Well, you can rest," he said, his lips turning up in a brief smile. "I'm not going anywhere this evening, so I'll be here if you need me." To nod agreement felt like too much work, so Eileen simply acquiesced with her eyes never leaving Severus' face, trying to really look at it. He looked as tired as she felt. His skin was pale as it always had been, but there was an exhaustion in his eyes that she recognised and did not like. She had seen it in her own eyes frequently enough, after all, and she knew what despair felt like. She had not had Severus to have him take that burden. Thoughts mixed together and she worked to grasp onto one so that she could say something to him. For Eileen the world outside had ceased months ago, so she simply did not know the worst and even if she had, she would not have known how to share it. Haunted. That was the emotion she'd been searching for. His eyes were haunted. "It'll be fine, Severus," she said, and her voice sounded foreign to her ears as if it were not her own, and someone else were in the room with them. The statement startled Severus, not only because his mother simply had not spoken for days, but because the words were so familiar: Stop crying, it'll be fine. He's gone. The statement had repeated so many times in one vein or another. As he got older it was never tears, rather: Put your wand away, it'll be fine. He's gone now. Eileen had put herself between Severus and Tobias, fighting for her son, and sometimes in spite of him, and as Severus stared down at her he realised that he didn't understand. His father was gone now, and yet it felt almost as if Tobias were still in the room. As if he were at the end of the hall, and he might walk in at any moment, yelling at both of them when he saw the open potions, the evidence of the hated magical world right in front of him. "Why?" the whisper came unbidden to his lips, but once spoken he couldn't put the question back. "Why?" Eileen echoed him, her finger shifted slightly under his hand, searching for a slightly different position, but not for escape. "Why did you marry him?" A handful of daisies. A sharp smile. A notice of the extra time she'd taken charming curls into her hair, although he had not known they were charms. A kind, if awkward, gesture. The fear of remaining single for the rest of her life. The excitement of something forbidden: The subsequent pleasure of the same. The memories were fleeting, hard to grasp, and had she ever been able to define why she had married Tobias Snape it was impossible for her to do so now. The meanings and connections simply would not come, but as she looked into Severus' eyes she wanted him to understand that Tobias had not always been horrible. He had been passionate, exacting, but there had always been this promise of if tomorrow... "He was kind once," was the only thing she could come up with. "Before. He didn't understand us. Didn't understand you. Disappointment. Fear. He wanted something else. But he was kind once." Her eyes had brightened, and Severus frowned. It was a question he'd never dared ask in a serious way, and now he wondered if it was too late. Eileen's words were missing connecting phrases, and he could make no more sense of them than he could make from what he knew of his parent's marriage. But it had been on his mind, recently. Marriage, and his parents, and what both Agnes and Lily had said about heartbreak, and he wondered if his Mum still cared for Tobias despite everything the man had done to her, and to Severus. He didn't know what to say, certain his mother was unable to take any further questioning. Eileen was quiet, closing her eyes with brief memories here or there flitting through her head. "It does not matter," she said. "The why. Only the fact of it. Only that I loved him." Her eyes opened, and she stared into her son's dark ones. "He did not understand you. And I think you did not understand him. And I did not understand either of you. And it was wrong. I was wrong. I kept things from him. And you paid for that. Forgive me, Severus." The plea from his mother was more unexpected than the question had been from him and he blinked rapidly as his vision blurred slightly. His mother was asking his forgiveness for loving his father? When he had been the one that had separated the two of them, not understanding just how deep the ties went despite all of the bad blood. He shook his head to shake away her words. "It is no matter," he said. "You thought it was right." Her hand was so thin and she wasn't really that old. She should not be this ill. She should not be lying in a bed, not moving, not living. He had failed her as it seemed he failed in so many other areas of life over the past year. How many times in the past month had he wished that his father had been other than a Muggle? How many times had he wished for a wizard as a father, the full blood status that he would have had if not for his mother's choice, but sitting there tonight he could not blame her for it, even though he couldn't understand it. He had fallen in love with women, not once, but twice, that were in one way or another completely unacceptable for him. And who was to say that it would have ended up any differently for him had he been allowed to marry them? Eileen moved her hand to touch his face, but realised half way that it was too difficult, so instead it came down to rest on top of his hand covering her other one. Things felt somewhat more clear to her than they had seemed before and she remembered the question that had been on her mind for literally months. The question she had dismissed for being paranoid, but she spoke anyway - perhaps the potions were having some effect - and when she spoke it was not really a question. "You're involved with something, Severus." There was no point lying to her, Severus thought to himself. And considering that she hadn't spoken or moved in days, it seemed highly unlikely she would be sharing this with anyone. "Yes." "Does it make you happy?" Severus swallowed. This was harder. He could lie, he knew. Tell her that he was happy, that he was fine. She might believe him, she might not. It would be kinder perhaps, either way. "No, Mum, I'm not happy." The statement hung in the air between them, and he felt Eileen's thin hand close around his with a strength he wouldn't have credited to someone in her condition. "Is there... someone..." the words were so cautious, Severus almost didn't catch their meaning, but when he looked at her it was unmistakable, and the tears he'd neatly put aside for the past week demanded attention. "No, Mum, there's no one," and he turned away to dab at his eyes with his sleeve, embarrassed by the emotion in front of a woman who had never been particularly emotional. Her hand crept into his again, seemingly not bothered by the new moisture on the skin, nor inclined to ask questions about the reasons behind the tears. "You're a good man, there will be," and her tone changed, determined now, and instructional, as if she were giving him the proper ingredients for a potion. "You're smart, Severus. You're kind. I was afraid..." Tobias would beat it out of you "Be smart. Do what makes you happy. It'll be fine." Severus leaned forward, his elbows on the bedside as he looked into his mother's face. She had closed her eyes again, but her hand still rested in his and her finger twitched slightly. Severus thought 'fine' was the furthest thing from what his life was at the moment, but then every time she'd said that in the past, it had been the same hadn't it. That was the point wasn't it then? He'd never let his father's lack of understanding of who he was get in the way of being who he was. Why would he allow those who did not understand him get in the way now? They had even less right to than his father: they were not his flesh and blood. There was so much he suddenly wanted to ask her. Things he'd been afraid to ask before, when his father had been alive, but things he wanted to know: About his grandparents, her own feelings about blood and bloodlines - true feelings not just what had been spouted off at one point or another in anger or frustration - what she thought of the Death Eaters, what she thought he should do, and if he'd terribly messed up by not giving up the world for Lily. Would she still think he was good if she knew that he'd killed Tobias? That he'd murdered people in their beds? Cast unforgivables? If she knew that it was his poisons and his hand that were causing people to die in Tinworth? Would she still think him kind and good? Still say that he could be happy? That it would be fine? He slipped from the chair to the floor, kneeling next to the bed, laying his head on the bed next to his mother. His face buried in the bedclothes so she could not see the tears that were obscuring his vision. Everything was wrong. Eileen felt tired again. And she couldn't remember what they had been talking about really. Tobias. And Severus. And Severus was here right now, his head beside her. She didn't move except to place a hand on his head, fingers running slowly through his hair as if he were a small child, not a nearly grown man, and for a moment in her mind he was, and then she remembered that he'd been saying he wasn't happy. But he was her son, and he deserved to be happy. "Don't cry, Severus. It'll be fine." |