I probably shouldn't attempt to leave feedback when I'm still reeling from the gut-punching power of this brilliant story. The depth and complexity and sheer literary heft of this fic have left me practically boneless. Thank you, Mystery Author, for this pearl beyond price of a gift.
The story reads like the finest of whiskies -- smooth and smoky at the start, but then, with each sip, incredible layers are revealed, each with its own burn and bite and kick and heat, its danger and reward. I'm becoming incoherently lyrical, I know, but I feel like Emily Dickinson or something, tasting a liquor never brewed. . .
Anyway, I knew I was in for something special when I saw the Auden title and took in the promise inherent in the tone of your wonderful warnings and summary. (I was already pretty damned excited just to see the pairings and the rating and the length -- 20K of Snape/McG! with Moody! and sex!) And that opening promise is fulfilled over and over again.
I'm going to stop trying to craft a reasoned response and just list some of the things that moved and disturbed and delighted and unsettled and shook and impressed me:
--the precise, painful, funny way you render Severus's various social and financial anxieties; they ring so true. --the humor and the IC dialogue (loved that "lure me out here" exchange, for instance) --The effective way you set up and then develop the suicide motif. Lines like these -- ceasing his study of the sharpness of his knife and using it to dissect a Yorkshire pudding instead and deciding that falling would take almost as interminably long as drinking oneself to death -- just resonate on so many levels. I'm not sure if dying is an art, but your use of it is. --the ocean/salt imagery, the unending rhythmic tide of sea and sex and death, bringing the eternal note of sadness in -- exquisitely done. --the whole mixed-up, enthralling, frightening, tangled parental motif. Brilliant. "Mother and father issues," you say. My god; no kidding. --the juxtaposition of Minerva's killing jars and skewered butterflies with the way she's got Severus formulated, sprawling on a pin. (Sorry for all my poetic allusions, but this story is a veritable poetry anthology -- it contains them all, one way or another. I can't help myself.) --Snape's believable relationship with Moody, the sex and violence indistinguishable, the weaknesses and strengths indistinguishable, both of them old before their time yet still such painful boys ("give it back" / "make me"), both of them irrevocably maimed in their own ways, yet fighting on. (Like a Freudian textbook, all these relationships.) --that beautifully-written paragraph about why Snape steals --so many wonderful details and scenes (the library! the bookstore!); you create such a dense, full world. --so many great, revealing lines (e.g.: smirked with a mixture of satisfaction and contempt that suggested he had just had the pleasure of killing Severus's dog)
Your depiction of these characters is so complex and multi-faceted; I'm awed. No sooner do I start to feel a bit warm-and-fuzzy about them than you complicate any straightforward response by peeling off another layer: saved!Severus becomes thief!Severus; understanding!Minerva becomes user!Minerva and thief!Minerva in her own right, taking things from Severus as surely as his mother takes his coins. Yet she is kind and giving, too. It's like Eileen's note -- "I love you. Give me money." Both are true at once. Snape is stolen from and coerced, by his mother and Minerva and Moody, and he steals and coerces in his turn. Yet they all, in their own ways, give freely (or as freely as any of us can, enmeshed as we are in our Freudian unconsciousnesses.)
Well, I'll stop for now, but like perverse_idyll, I may have to return later and say more. There's too much here to take in at once.
In sum, dear Mystery Author, I am thrilled to bits. I asked for complex, grown-up characters and writing, and you provided them beyond my best imaginings. I've heard the mermaids singing! To me! In this story! When I talk about it -- and I will talk about it -- I will rave and flail like a mad raving, flailing thing, so fine a piece of work this is.