Who: Jamesknap & Siriussquib What: unplanned Prongs & Pads time When: Monday morning Where: the Speakeasy Warnings: sad, at least on James's part
If there was one thing James had learned in the eight years since Lily and Sirius had been gone, it was that he couldn't let himself stop. He couldn't wallow in self-pity and sadness, or it would only get harder and harder to drag himself out of it. He was an optimistic and resilient person by nature, but even he had his limits. Eight years of searching for the wife and best mate he'd remembered had been easy, compared to finding them; it had been exhausting and lonely at times, but he'd never doubted what he was doing, or that everything would be alright again once he found them. His worst fear had been finding them dead, but he'd never believed that they were. If they were dead, they would have been easier to find.
And they weren't dead, but they had been going through hell, living in fear, living without any hopes about being found and returned to their family because they didn't remember having a family that would search for them. They had been emotionally ground down, raked over, until they feared the people that most wanted to help them. Searching for Lily had often felt like walking across an empty land, had made him feel directionless and lost at times, but having Lily here was like navigating through a field of emotional land mines. Stepping carefully where emotions were concerned had never been James's strong suit; so far, he had been unable to resist digging down to find the triggers when he became aware of them, which meant that (surprise surprise) they kept blowing up in his face.
He hadn't lost any limbs, of course, but it was breaking him down. It made him utterly miserable to consider what Lily and Sirius had been going through, what Lily was still going through, what Sirius would go through whenever they finally had him back, whether here or back home. And now Lily had reached the stage where she was angry about what had been done to her, at least for having her son stolen away from her; it was probably progress of a sort, in terms of her coming back to them, but James couldn't find it in himself to put a positive spin on it.
Which was the most depressing part, really. It was depressing that he was depressed. He hated that his heart was broken, that he didn't have the emotional resources to keep from falling apart for everyone else's sake, that he couldn't keep Lily's predicament from hurting him as well, since that only made it worse. And that was the most terrifying part, too; he was scared that it would break him down so much that when they finally got through to the end, he'd be unrecognizable from the youthful, optimistic, mischievous man that Lily had originally married. Of course, she wasn't going to be quite the same Lily he'd married either, and that was alright. It was just getting harder and harder to believe in the happy ending, to believe that bringing their family back together again would actually bring them all some kind of peace in the end, since being around each other was so painful.
He'd forced himself to leave the compound, but getting his mind out of this depressing train of thought wasn't quite so easy. Somewhere deep down he knew that the mood would pass; his bad moods always did eventually, once he'd weathered the storm of his own negative emotions. But being angry and sad and brokenhearted was getting more and more common lately, more difficult to shake. What if he woke up one day and it was permanent?
It was too early in the day for him to be working, but he went to the speakeasy anyway and let himself in. It was blessedly empty, and even though it really wasn't much better than sitting around in his room, James took a seat at the bar. He reached over it and poured himself a glass of the first bottle he touched, but didn't drink it; it was also too early in the day to be drinking, and he had never liked drinking to drown his sorrows, he liked drinking for distraction. He rested one elbow on the bar, rested his chin in his hand, and with the other hand ran his fingertips absently around the rim of the glass. Merlin, he needed to pull himself together; he tried to kick himself into pouring out the drink and going to do something else, but couldn't quite will himself to move. Anything that he thought of doing, anyone that he thought of writing to or going to see, all seemed like it would just hurt more, one way or another.
The sound of the door opening startled him; had he left it unlocked? He turned to look, preparing to say that they were closed (if it was a potential customer) or give an excuse for his presence (if it was his employer or one of the staff) but the familiar shape in the doorway rendered him momentarily speechless. Sirius. Not his Sirius, of course, but as blue as he felt, he had still hoped for a moment. "Bloody hell, mate, you startled me," he managed to say, almost normally. He gave a wry chuckle and turned back to the bar, folding his arms and resting his forehead against them. "Wasn't expecting anyone else to be here yet."