James Potter (brocket) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-05-01 17:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !scene, 1991 : 05, black sirius, potter james |
Who: Sirius Black & James Potter
Where: The old, shuttered-up estate
When: Right after the big reveal
What: Sirius swears his fealty to James, & other Game of Thrones like stuff.
***
dThe mayhem of the May Day celebrations had been broadcast through the kitchen in crackling, intemperate waves by the old radio (from his father's day, this relic, but still able to perform this basic task, albeit after a pound of his fist against the set and much swearing), where it was met by a sort of sickening astonishment as done by Sirius Black, former convict and murderer who had thought he had been going mad (madder), plagued as he was by tantalising glimpses of his best friend's shade.
But it had been James Potter's voice that filled his kitchen; the old tempo of his words could not be mimicked. Sirius knew that voice, that old fervency.
Regulus was elsewhere. Kreacher too, which was odd, for Sirius was rarely out of one or the other's presence. After emptying his stomach of what little it held and fiddling with the wards, Sirius let himself out of the house, feeling himself blinded by the May sun and all the promise it held. James. James James James.
-- James is dead. I killed him. He is dead because of me.
A wavering touch to another old relic (a port key that had once seen much use in those troubled days of his adolescence) took him to another old house, one that had once filled him with joy, the warm feeling of being wanted and loved.
The old Potter place.
Shuttered and derelict, James Potter’s family estate knew nothing but the inhabitance of time for ten years. Not precisely haunted, but inauspicious, it stood as a warning to those who would rebel or in whose magic one placed far too much of their trust. In flapping drapes and coating of dust perhaps young adventurers would dare themselves in for a look at he wasted wealth of a dead line, and the brave ones would scrawl their names into the walls and spend the night or fuck madly in the halls. It was well enough that for those years the wards decayed, permitting the passage of nearly anyone but those who meant the property harm.
But today, re-awakened, they stood crackling and erect. There would be no more passage for those not specifically keyed into their boundaries. Because James Potter had come home. James Potter, whose live rage illustrated the inconstant truth of Dumbledore’s regime, was a creature of habit and creature of need.
What he needed - what he longed for - was his family. What he needed more than anything was the firm weight of Harry in his arms, the gentle breadth of Lily’s brow upon his shoulder. And so in the midst of the sheeted furniture and the dust he sat. In the midst of ten years of nothing he sat and wept.
Sirius registered his own surprise -- distant, overshadowed by the doubt gnawing away at the pit of his stomach, but there -- that the wards still permitted him entry, as though he were still friend, as though he hadn't committed the worst sort of betrayal. It didn't cross his mind to wonder at how alive the magic was; it didn't occur to him to wonder why they hadn't decayed into the dust and wood rot that inevitably ate into houses left uninhabited.
Doors creaked and floorboards groaned in protest as he made his way inside, picking a path out of mindless habit (turning the corner here would lead him to a flight of stairs, and climbing those stairs would take him to what had once been James' room).
And then, he stopped, for there was a sound that was not of this house.
Could ghosts weep for what was lost? A wife, a child, a brother. And could James Potter, whose glasses lay discarded upon his thigh, finally discover a way to make the blood cease ticking in his veins? Could he - in one fell swoop - make all their sacrifices mean enough to push himself into a comfortable oblivion?
No. It was unlikely.
But then again, so was the shallow thud of his chest against the span of his ribcage. But those were rational thoughts in this, an irrational time. So irrational that when he lifted his gaze there was enough lack of recognition to make him wonder if it was his son, come to shock him. Come to tell him that they yet lived, but in the nether reaches of this house, and far from any wandering eye.
No. And his voice cracked -- “Sirius.”
Sirius had long hated the sound of his own name, but hearing it now, hearing it like this, hearing it from him? The man who was meant to be dead, this man whose ghost had been haunting him, not just in the past few weeks, but through all the years he had sat in his dank cell in Azkaban, left with nothing but the treacherously constant beat of his own heart and the painful memories of James Potter, closest of his found-family.
It was unbearable.
And yet -- this was him. Sirius knew.
"How?"
Godric’s good graces, as far as I can tell. And the Cloak. It’s a Hallow, you know. Weeks of research and quietude on Diggle’s estate turned up this much. But the question, the question that deserved an answer, wrought from him no such response. And he pushed his spectacles upon his nose, clattering to a standing position.
“They’re still dead, aren’t they? I don’t see how it matters.”
James was alive -- and Sirius was still a murderer-by-proxy. In the rare moments where he’d allowed himself the dream that none of this had happened, that James and Lily and Harry were still alive and happy and whole, he’d never been filled with this overwhelming sense of horror. Because James alone being alive would never be good enough for James, even if -- perhaps -- it was good enough for Sirius.
His face -- already gaunt, dominated by the dark circles of sleep-lack and the never-to-disappear reminder that once, he’d been skeletal -- took on a pinched expression even as he stumbled back. “I thought -- I thought I was losing my mind, I thought… Fuck, I don’t know what I thought.”
“I don’t see how that’s remotely relevant, Padfoot.” He rose slowly, legs unfurling wearily as if the day’s exertions had taken much more from him than intended. “You’re cunting mental.” Then, he shrugged. “But so am I.” And he struggled in vain, attempting to appear blithely disaffected - sure enough, he supposed, that Sirius had his fill - but ultimately failing.
“So I guess you heard. That’s why you’re here.”
In a lurching reflection of James, Sirius had to grab onto the doorframe with a shaking hand in order to keep himself upright. “I heard,” he said, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper as his gaze -- eyes glassy with unshed tears and shock -- tracked James’ every move, as if he were thirsty for the sight of him and eternally unable to drink his fill. “I heard and I saw you everywhere, in those fucking journals, on the corner of the street the other week. Oh, bloody Christ, James. This isn’t… this isn’t a dream. You’re real.”
“I was there, Sirius. I was everywhere you were, whenever you peek your damned head out of Grimmauld. Watching you. Watching you suffer.” Lurching at his one-time brother, he fisted the other’s collar and gave it a shake before pushing him toward the wall.
“This feel real enough for you?”
The wall met the press of his spine with a dull thud. “Yes,” he breathed, and his initial grimace became something unsettling, for a sort of relief now filtered across his expression. There was nothing of Remus’ werewolf to his senses, but he didn’t need that heightened vision or sense of smell to know that this was real, that this was happening. That this was really -- finally -- James. And James had every right to tear his jugular apart.
Sirius grabbed James’ wrist, moving his hand from collar to throat. “Do it, Prongs. Come on, do it.”
A well-placed antler to the sterum could pierce Sirius’ heart and free them both from the yoke of guilt that knit them to one another. A squeeze -- oh Godric, one long squeeze -- could choke the breath that Sirius owed Lily and Harry. It would be nothing to the world to lose Sirius Black, convicted murderer and betrayer. But it would be everything to James. Everything.
Perhaps he squeezed. Perhaps his hands convulsed as soon as the warmth of Sirius’ throat was measured. Perhaps James was just as weak as he’d ever been. But his hand sagged, and his body lost all its bulk. And he buried his face in the hollow of Sirius’ neck.
“No.”
No? “Yes,” was something less than a whisper, a damp exhale against ever-disheveled black hair: the only thing he was capable of in the seconds immediately following the press of James’ weight. This wasn’t forgiveness, he knew, nor was this acceptance -- but it certainly wasn’t the righteous violence and rage he craved, that he dreamed of. An antler to the heart was more than he deserved, but he wanted it.
Sirius’ hands picked at James’ neck, his collar, the lean muscle that corded his back beneath the thin shirt. “Please. Please. For--” he couldn’t bring himself to say their name; “them.”
“Stop.” The word - brief, a punched expelling of breath - was quiet at first before it roared out of his lungs again. Stop throwing yourself on my rage, expecting to make a killer of me. And he stumbled back, his arms akimbo against the nearest wall.
“Live with it. Live with it, like I live with it.”
The realisation that he wasn't going to get what he wanted -- that he was, instead, going to get what he deserved -- sank through his chest and Sirius, with a clench of teeth and a growl, sunk back against the doorframe, hands clenched into fists and dropped by his sides.
"This isn't living."
“You’re a selfish-cunting prick, Sirius Black.” Something righteous flared in James, something which made him want to tell him about all the wrong there was within the breast of a man who would sacrifice his best friend’s family and then ask the survivor to assuage his guilt with murder. For the first - and perhaps, only - time he was happy to know that it wasn’t Lily or Harry that survived to this.
“Get out of my house.”
Dully (there was little that was righteous about Sirius Black these days) -- "Aren't I just." Then, after a long moment of a strained silence that was punctuated by the pound of his heart and the ragged draw of James' breath, he looked up, daring a long study of his once-friend.
"Maybe Peter will oblige me." And he pushed himself away from the door.
“ -- look here.” The door slammed shut, of its master’s own accord. “Look here, Black. If I have to live, you have to live. And there’s nothing else about it. Remus, Pete. I don’t care. You’re going to draw breath as long as I do.”
He pressed his long forelock away from his brow and shook his head so forcefully it fell back into his eye. “I mean it, Sirius. You can’t die, and you can’t go asking for it. If my family’s life bought your brother, then you owe me this.”
The abrupt closure of the door had little effect on Sirius, who simply -- slowly, almost dumbly -- blinked at it, as if stunned beyond any another response by such a display. Or perhaps there was little left of him that could be startled, so overwhelmed was he by... James.
"You're putting too much value on what you call my life." Sirius dragged his teeth against the inside of his cheek as he turned back to James. "But it's yours to do as you like with it. It’s all I’ve got."
"Perhaps," James agreed, and gave a wave of his hand before sitting heavily in one of the seated armchairs that once housed his father and mother as they told tales of their many travels together.
"... but it's mine, now. So wait on my word, and tell your slip of a brother I want to see him."
To his shame (and oh, he could still experience shame in drenching waves), Sirius felt the unsettling paranoia he had nurtured toward the sanctity of Regulus’ safety rise up, threatening to choke him with the acid gathering in the back of his throat. He was James’ to command, and yet...
“I’ve dealt with Regulus.”