Severus Snape is tired of the lies. (fortiscadere) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-08-13 22:39:00 |
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From the street, the row house at Spinner's End looked entirely dark and deserted. But while it was dark, it was not deserted. Severus had come home from the dueling practise and found his Mother in her bed as she always was. It had taken him nearly ten minutes to realise that something wasn't right. And it had not taken him much longer after that to realise that something was that his mother was no longer breathing, and her body was cold to the touch. He'd moved to try to make out a pulse, a heart beat, he'd shaken her in his sudden paranoia, but it was quickly apparent to him that not only had she died, she had died probably an hour or more ago. Sinking to the chair beside her, his reaction had moved from stunned, to pacing, to sitting beside her bed in silence for probably nearly an hour. Finally he'd reached for his journal, scribbling the note to the few people he could bear to say anything to. Aberforth, Lily, Astra, and Agnes. The list was rather shorter than it might have been at one time, but to tell anyone else was to make it more real than he wanted it to be. And to ask for sympathy he did not want from anyone, the others would find out in their own time. Aberforth was looking for his friend, Lily would not be able to come and Astra obviously would not be able to. Severus didn't like to ask people for anything, but Agnes was the one person he'd dare to ask to come over. He did not want to be alone tonight. Severus closed his mother's bedroom door and walked out to the small living room, pacing from one end to another, which was really only about six steps, in the semi darkness. A street lamp outside shone some light in and he realised that he should turn on a light. Particularly if Agnes was coming over. If. He felt numb. It wasn't as if he hadn't been expecting this, he had. Eventually it was going to happen, but he had hoped that it would be later - much later. He'd kept hoping that she would get better for a while first. That he'd be able to try to talk to her... to ask her things. If he'd felt alone before, it was nothing to this. He stopped his pacing by the window, looking out into the street uncertain what he was even waiting for. Agnes wasn't supposed to be out this late - particularly without telling anyone where she was going. She'd tried to compromise by leaving Marlene a quickly jotted bit of parchment on her pillow, and James a note that she'd headed out and would be back in the morning (probably, and please not to lock her out of the wards), but in the end, she'd taken a few things and ducked through a side window, carefully working her way through well-wrought wards and onto the street. She didn't dally, apparating almost immediately north and stepping foot onto the long row of unfriendly looking muggle houses. It was amazing what sort of atmosphere the industrial cities cast upon their tenants. Agnes thought for one brief, foolish moment that Severus could have been so different if he'd lived in a commune like she had, surrounded by loving and free spirits... but she realised she couldn't imagine Severus in that sort of environment - ever. It made her sad. Two quick knocks upon a front door (she had to write down the number as she hadn't been there often enough to remember), and she crumpled up the directions, thrust them into her pocket, and pressed herself against the cold door, small fingers curling upward as she struggled to listen for signs of movement. "Severus?" She murmured inward. "Are you there?" Severus saw her before he heard her knock and he made his way to the front door, lifting the wards and throwing it open. He hadn't been certain she would come, or that even her friends would let her come and seeing her on his front stoop was enough to make his throat tighten. He would not cry now. He would not cry in front of her. He had not cried yet, why start now? But he was afraid that if he did say something that it would give him away, so he merely pushed the door open further so that she could walk in realising almost at the same time that he should turn on a light. She wouldn't know the house like he did; She'd need a light to see where she was going. He waved his wand at the light and the hall was illuminated, brighter than he'd expected and he turned back to her. "I-thank you," he said around the tight lump in his throat. His voice sounded odd to him, and he didn't know what else to say. The first time he'd seen her for months, and he'd been looking forward to seeing her again, and it was because of this: more sadness and grief. Well. He didn't have to bloody cry - because Agnes didn't give him a chance. She paused a moment as he opened the door, as he turned, as he lit his wand, as he returned his (black, cold) eyes on her - and she threw herself forward, not giving a damn about propriety and decorum but about this human being who had to be hurting and deserved a bit of comfort. She wrapped two thin arms around his narrow angles and just squeezed, and yes he could push her away, and yes he could get angry, but she wasn't about to let him go a second in the self-serving delusion that no one gave a shit. "I'm so sorry Sev. She was a real nice lady." Severus didn't pull back and he didn't push her away. He couldn't have made himself do so even if he'd wanted to. As her arms reached around him, he could feel his face hot, and his eyes moisten with tears and he buried his face in her neck, desperate to not cry and yet thankful that he didn't feel like she'd judge him at all if he did. He stood in the hall way, his arms around her and for a moment, he was only thinking about her, and the way her hair smelled like pot and Merlin, she was just so Agnes, and he was so very thankful that she was there. And he took a deep breath, his body shaking slightly as he did so, and he pulled back from her a little. He nodded, because what else could he say? His mum had been a fine witch, and whatever complaints he'd had about his childhood, he knew he owed a lot of what he could do and who he was to her and she'd been the only thing he'd had left. "Um..." his breath came out a bit shaky, and he rubbed a hand over his face to wipe away the small points of moisture threatening to overflow. "Tea maybe?" He asked. "I haven't had anything since I came home. I think I could use some." Everything he knew about proper behaviour in these situations had fallen out of his head, and he couldn't remember what he'd read in those damn books at Hogwarts, and as soon as the thought crossed his mind to be worried about it, he realised that it was Agnes, and she wouldn't care. She'd probably laugh him out of the country if he tried to stand on propriety at a time like this, and there was something very relieving about that realisation. "Sure, if you want," Agnes mumbled up at him, finally squeezing him a bit and softening her hold - a quiet permission to move away now, if he so desired. "I brought some weed in case you want to, like, you know. Do shit you ain't normally supposed to." She wasn't quite sure how to handle it. With Marlene, she'd just sobbed her fucking eyes out and that had been that. When Mr Potter had died, everyone had been very quiet and sad and it had made her exceptionally uncomfortable. Severus didn't seem especially quiet and sad so much as repressed and distraught, and though she wasn't exactly comfortable in the situation, there was some relief in knowing she might be able to evoke from him a stronger emotion. Those she knew how to deal with. It was the quiet she found so unsettling. "Thanks for askin' me over, by the way. I can leave soon if you's got other folks comin by and don't want me hangin' about." Agnes wasn't usually one to encourage the social worrying Severus seemed to indulge in, but tonight she supposed she could make an exception. Severus shook his head. There would be nobody else, at least not tonight. Nobody else he'd told would be people that could come over. Well, he wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to show up if he hadn't been otherwise occupied but nobody else would be. "No, I want you," he said, far more blunt about the fact than he normally would have been. "And there isn't anyone else right now." Tea. He could do tea. And for the first time in his life he wasn't automatically turning his nose up at her drugs. It wasn't his thing at all, but it was her thing, and maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. He gave her a small smile, trying to not look utterly in despair. "I suppose if there's a time to do it, it's not like Mum's going to yell at me for it, is it?" He was trying to keep his tone light, but it didn't quite succeed and he had to look away at the end to keep from crying. "Let's get some tea," he said, forcing his voice steady as he stepped back and walked towards the kitchen, vaguely motioning for her to follow him. The preparation of tea was actually a relief. As distinct and precise as potion making he boiled water, prepared tea leaves, and pulled two cups from the cupboard, quiet for most of the process until he poured the water in with the tea leaves to start brewing and he turned around to face Agnes. "How have you been?" He asked her. He didn't know what to say about his Mum's death, about his Mum, about the fact that he felt Agnes had been right with her guess so many weeks ago, that it was heart break that had killed his Mum, and that in reality, he might as well have slipped her poison for it was certain that his father's death that had killed her spirit in the end. Agnes took a seat in the small kitchen, legs all curled up under her, elbows on the table and chin buried in her palms, looking mixedly concerned and uncertain. Severus's joke would have been funnier under different circumstances, but right now Agnes only managed the smallest of quirks at the corner of her mouth - a gesture of disquiet rather than humour. "Yeah." She replied breathlessly, wishing he'd quit with this stupid charade and just be - whether it was sad or scared or uncaring. "Don't ask me shit about myself, Sev. Your mum just died. You have to be upset about it. Talk to me." But unlike Agnes's usual anger or assertiveness, she was now quiet, wheedling, sad. She wanted to hug him tight and never let go - but Severus Snape wasn't the sort of person you really hugged frequently, and she may have already used up her voucher for the night. "Cry to me. Do something, but you can't just sit here like there ain't nothin wrong." Severus poured two cups of tea and brought them over to the table, setting one down in front of her and another down in front of the second chair, and he sat down in it wondering if it would even hold his weight and almost not caring if it did. But the chair held and he put two hands around the cup of tea, letting the warmth seep into his limbs. It almost felt as if where he'd touched his mother had turned him cold, and he didn't know if he'd ever warm up again. "I don't know what to say," he said finally. "I don't..." and he stopped, trying to think of words. Merlin it should not have been this hard. With Tobias he'd had to be strong for his Mum, and he'd done so, and ever since then, he'd been strong for her, and suddenly he no longer had to be strong for her and he didn't know what to do. Somewhere in the past year he felt as if he'd gone numb, and he didn't know how to tell Agnes that. He didn't know what he could tell her without her figuring out the truth. A sip of the tea and then the cup was back down in front of him. "I just feel so bloody alone," he whispered. "At least I had her, even if she wasn't awake most of the time, even if she was dying, at least I had her," he looked down his eyes locked on the surface of the dark liquid, and as he stared at it, it blurred slightly, and he pulled his hand away from the tea cup once again to wipe it across his face. "I'm sorry." Though Agnes's fingers twisted around the cup, as if the warmth could shield her from the tragedy that lay thick in the air between them, she bore no interest in the tea itself. Her own family's deaths had struck her in a hollow way - she'd been so unable to grieve for days, even weeks afterward, that when it hit her she was almost numbed to it, a remnant of denial and outpoured emotion that protected her in some vague, necessary way. Now -- now she was forced to watch someone she'd once thought imperturbable break down. Be it guilt or grief, she could see Severus's insides crumbling. His support was gone. His mother had been his stalwart, his reason to carry on, his reason to bear his stiff upper lip... and now what did he have? A bird who he fucked occasionally and a sad cup of tea. Poor recompense for his years of struggling. Pulling herself from her chair, Agnes trudged toward him, unsure what to say, but lip set resolutely outward. She couldn't cry just because he was. It wasn't fair to him. She was a Gryffindor. She could be brave. And she was - all the way till the moment that she wrapped her arms around him, pulling his stringy hair into her fingers and pressing him into her chest. "I'm SO sorry." Emotion had always come easily, and now it spilled over her cheeks, hot and free, though not freeing. She was as helpless as he - moreso, for though he was bound by his guilt, it gave him something solid to cling to, some resource to pull from. "You don't deserve this shit." Maybe I do, Severus couldn't help but think, but he allowed Agnes to pull him into her, more than that, he surrendered to it. His own arms wrapped around her back, and he buried her face in her chest. The tears he'd been holding back for the past hour squeezed out of his eyes. Her tears made his tears safer, and she was warm, and she was soft, and she didn't blame him, even if he blamed himself. And unlike everyone else around him, she wasn't afraid to hold him and although he would have never asked for it, he wanted to be held. He stayed in her arms, his thoughts on nothing but his mum, Agnes, himself. For the moment, he couldn't even think about how he was going to go on. And he stayed there until the tears slowed and when he finally pulled away many minutes later, her shirt was damp, and his tears had mostly stopped, although his eyes were red, and still moist. "Agnes," he said, his voice cracking slightly. "I-" But he didn't know what to say to her, and he looked up - although it honestly wasn't that far to look up, even though he was sitting. He couldn't tell her half of what he wanted to, and if he told her why he was so guilty, she would leave - he knew that she would. And he couldn't bear for her to leave. And one hand reached for her hand, looping his fingers through hers. Her hands were so familiar to him now and it was something he could not have predicted. He reached his other hand up, to touch her face, wet from her own tears. She'd lost family too. She'd lost family, if not directly because of him - thank Merlin, he didn't think he could have lived with that knowledge right then - indirectly so. And she knew what it was like, in her own way. He stood then, his eyes still on hers, his hand tilted her chin up and he leaned down to kiss her. Her fingers were in his hair, on his shoulders, along the thin lines of his shoulderblades and across his jaw, and though she ought to have felt awkward cradling Severus (of all people) and letting him cry, she didn't. And though she ought to have resisted when he pulled away, when he pressed his palm into her jaw, when he kissed her with his poor dead mother only a room away - she didn't. Agnes reached up to his shirt and grabbed him, instead, aggression mingling with grief and confusion. Fuck this war. Fuck it and every piece of shit going on. Fuck Azkaban. Fuck Alice. She was so tired of everything. Lips mingled and mashed, fingers everywhere - she didn't know what she was doing or how to do it, everything was fucked and turning on its ass and the only thing she had was this body, in this moment. So she used it, used him, was used - or maybe, in this tiny moment of grief and honesty, something more meaningful. This hadn't been why he had asked her to come over; he merely had not wished to be alone on this night when he felt so very alone. And perhaps that was part of it, the reason he reached for her almost in spite of his better judgment. And his hands were wrapped around her, fingers running through her hair, the two of them so tangled up in each other that he wasn't certain where he ended and she began. The intimacy affirming that he wasn't completely alone, and neither was she. For the moment, at least, they had each other. Afterwards, Severus lay on the wooden floor, the worn planks smooth against his back and he turned his head to look at Agnes. His hand grasped for his wand, and he waved it, an accio pulling a large afghan from the back of the sofa. The blanket there, he turned to his side, spreading it over both of them, and he pulled her into him without saying anything. His leg threaded between hers, his hand playing with her hair, so that she was still close to him, and he breathed out the shaky breath of someone who wasn't used to so much emotion. Later they might relocate. He would talk, one story after another, the small memories he could remember that were good: the things he'd loved about his mother. Later he would thank her for staying with him tonight, and try to make certain she was, if not happy, at least okay. It seemed that under the circumstances, it was the most that they could hope for. |