Kirasha (kirasha) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2010-04-11 22:25:00 |
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I. He shouldn't have survived. Any normal man would have died from that curse. But, he had lived. It had taken almost a year before he woke up. His son was now a year old. Yet, miraculously, wake up he did. It wasn't the world he knew any longer. His wife was dead. His mother-in-law was fighting to have him declared unfit as a parent to prevent a werewolf from raising her grandson. The world was still fighting to free itself from the ravages of war and the remnants of old enemies. But Remus survived to start life all over again. |
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II. He shouldn't have survived. A lesser man would never have planned for such eventualities, would never have considered the possibility of success. But, he was a better man than most when it came to his job. He had known the likelihood his own mortality would catch up to him. And, he had made plans. An antidote and an accomplice were all that was needed. Now he lived and the world he'd given everything to save called him a hero even as they condemned the actions needed for survival. But Severus survived to clean up the pieces of his broken life. |
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III. Rain on the windows of the old castle was a melancholy comfort. Familiar halls full of unfamiliar faces. Well, maybe there was one familiar face. Thin and pale, with an aristocratic nose that had once haunted his adolescent dreams, that face was a walking reminder of all that had been lost and all that remained. Perhaps they were simply two more ghosts walking the halls of this ancient institution and that was why old fascinations returned. Or maybe they were nothing more or less than two old warriors drawn together by shared damage, old fights renewed for memory not truth. |
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IV. It wasn't that he actively sought out the werewolf's company. It wasn't that at all. They were both trapped in a playback of their lives, walking the halls as they drifted to all the places their memories tugged. It was simply coincidence that memory tugged them in the same direction more often than not, too many memories shared. The werewolf was as much a part of the past he sought to escape as the ghosts only the two of them could see. That afternoon, they were both called by the rain to the place Severus had avoided for many years. |
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V. "Back where we started?" "So it would seem." "Do you regret any of it?" "Some things." He wondered if the tall, dark man standing beside him, staring out the rain obscured window was seeing the grey afternoon of the present. Or, if he saw that sun-dappled morning what seemed a lifetime ago when two skinny young boys stood at this same window, oblivious to the world on the other side. So many things had changed since then. So many things had ended or been destroyed since then. But, even despite the wife and son, one thing had not. "Which things?" |
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VI. "Which things?" he repeated. "Never mind." Silence stretched on between them, an unending road of shared secrets and stolen memories. It was not the peaceful silence of communal comfort, but the painful silence of insecurity and trust long shattered. He should have known better. Should have known the shy boy he'd started growing close to wouldn't have had any part to it. But he'd been too young, too angry, and too bitter. It was easier to hurt back than try to understand. "No," he said at last. "That is not one of the things I regret. Only what happened after." |
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VII. It didn't seem like a conscious choice. But after the fourth or fifth meeting in front of that same isolated window, he had to admit he might have been making his rounds take him by that quiet corridor with some purpose. The sight of the tall, dark silhouette standing in front of the window each time he came by the corridor only seemed right. As right as that first time. Two boys looking for quiet escapes bumped into each other. Glares were followed with sighs, then shy words. A scarred hand covered thin fingers where they drummed on the windowsill. |
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VIII. He could still see the two young boys they had been when he looked passed their adult reflections in the window pane. So shy and unsure, neither had known how to express their curiosity. The memory of fingers over his still burned in his mind the way the touch had seemed to burn his skin. Through the cold that had settled into his heart in the years since, that warmth was what kept him from giving up. The fact it still gave him hope now scared him even more than that fleeting gesture or the things that had followed after. |
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IX. It had been so easy, both then and now. Almost too easy if he stopped to think to hard on it. A series of simple gestures led to an instant when time seemed to stand still. Then time began again and the world was lost. All beginning with simple gestures. A gentle touch, fingers brushing over fingers. A soft gaze, eyes speaking words that would never be heard. Hesitant lips brushing against hesitant lips, unbelievably chaste and heart-wrenchingly sweet. For one moment breaths held, thoughts whirled then stilled as decisions were made. Then thin, long fingers tangled in tawny hair. |
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X. And lips crashed against each other, no longer sweet or gentle. Now they dominate and submit, drag moans across seeking tongues. Fingers are no longer cautious as they leave the werewolf's hair to grasp needily at robes no longer as patched or shabby as they once were. Shadows of the past had haunted them both for weeks. Memories plagued his own waking hours. But now those shadows have revealed second chances offered in the only language that never betrayed them. Reunited in a way neither believed possible, redemption and acceptance began with a single moment's simple gesture and a kiss. |