The pub was dimly lit, with dark corners and a faint smell of old dust. It was the closest place James had been able to find to the haunts they used to frequent back home, even if the ales they had on tap were slightly on the sweet side. James nodded to the man behind the bar and grabbed the two drinks that were slid towards him, sliding out from between the other patrons and making his way back towards the table at the back, where his old friend sat waiting.
“As good a way to piss away $1000 as any, right?” he commented, throwing himself a little ungainly into his seat. He felt a little off kilter, Like the world was tipping slightly on his axis. He supposed he hadn't really drunk for a long time… Maybe since they'd found out Lily was pregnant.
James' gut gave a painful twist and he reached for his drink, focusing his attention instead on Marlene. A faint smirk curled at one corner of his mouth. "It's still bloody weird that you're here, you know."
“I s’pose,” Marlene chuckled. The first thing she’d done after arriving was get coffee — a choice for which Emme harassed her for to this day — but she figured in James’ shoes, she’d probably have thrown her $1000 stipend at a bartender as well. A wife and child left behind, coming from a world where he’d gained far too much knowledge about a future he wasn’t a part of?
Yeah, getting bloody knackered sounded like a fantastic choice in those circumstances.
“Bloody weird for me, too, mate,” she agreed. “I’ll take it over being dead, though.” Pardon her, she couldn’t help herself. She’d come from a strange spot, something unique even to Outlanders from what she understood. She’d been very well aware she was gone, shared some sort of odd dream with Emmeline, then next thing she knew, she was here.
Vallo itself was fucking weird.
"That's the spirit," James deadpanned, swallowing his mouthful of his pint and resisting an urge to drag his fingers through his hair. His knee bounced instead under the table. For a moment he looked around, taking in the scene surrounding their table. Even after his time in Cardiff, there was still a part of him which half expected masked figures to erupt from every dark corner. James wondered if that was the kind of thing you never really got over.
"So you were dead dead?" He felt the need to clarify. After all, he had been friends with Marlene long enough to skip beating around the bush - they'd known each other since the sorting, more or less.
Marlene laughed. “Yes, dead dead,” she confirmed. “Like, I dunno. Floating in the ether or what have you. Then I got sucked into some sort of dream phenomena that was going on here, figured it was a way to get some sort of closure with Em?” She shrugged a shoulder. She didn’t understand half of why Vallo did what it did, but that was the nature of most magic, wasn’t it?
“Then, I ended up here, somehow. Alive again. And y’know, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth, right?” Even if she wished things were still a tad different, Vallo was a good place, overall. She had Emme, now Ginny, Ron, James — her people. She was content.
“Cheers to that,” James agreed, leaning forward to ‘clink’ his glass gently against Marlene’s. After all, how many times had they all lain awake refusing, stubbornly, to believe that ‘dead’ meant ‘forever’? Even if, after a certain number of fallen friends, the fight went out of you a little. If this place meant life for people that he cared about… well, that had to be a good thing, right? No matter what so many of them were leaving behind. James wondered if he told himself that, firmly enough and often enough, it might start to feel less uncomfortable.
“You're dealing with the whole death thing a whole lot better than I am," He commented, taking another sip of his drink. It was going down quicker than expected. James had found that the simplest way to deal with his early demise was simply to ignore it, which was easy enough to do when you had more pressing matters to worry about. Harry, Lily, Sirius, Remus... Still, he supposed it was one thing to hear about it, and a whole other thing to have lived it. Absently, he reached across the table and grabbed her free hand briefly, giving it a squeeze.
"Sorry. It’s shit. I really thought..." James shrugged, feeling a bit thick even saying it. "I really thought we'd all get through it."
The clink was followed by a small smile and a raising of her glass, then a sip. This was certainly an evening that called for a good stiff drink, and they’d gotten exactly that. This conversation was never easy – it was why she preferred to make light of it, make a joke of it, no matter how much Emmeline wagged her finger at her. Accompanying it with a drink, strangely, made her a bit more somber.
“Me too,” she admitted quietly. She had held onto that hope fiercely, even knowing there was a very real possibility that they would all die, that they would lose, that Voldemort would get what he wanted and the entire world would change. She had hoped they were invincible, somehow; it was childish and foolish, and she regretted that mindset more than she could express.
“You and Lily, though…” She reached over and gave James’ arm a squeeze. “That’s the worst of it. I’m so sorry, mate.” Part of her was glad she’d gone first, so she didn’t have to live with that anguish. But a much larger part wished with every fiber of her being she’d been able to escape, that she’d lived. Maybe something would have changed if she had, maybe it wouldn’t. At the very least, Emme wouldn’t have had to suffer so much.
"Harry’s okay, though. That was the whole point, yeah?” James gave a faint smile, offering Marlene a half-hearted shrug before his gaze turned momentarily downwards. “Peter –” he started, but something stopped him.
He wasn’t totally sure he could find the words for whatever was going on in his head. He’d known Peter for most of his life, since before Sirius and Remus, before Lily and Marlene, even before Hogwarts. The idea of betrayal still refused to line up in his mind, no matter how true he knew it to be. So instead of carrying on, James took a large couple of gulps of lager, letting the glass fall heavily back to the table once it was empty.
“Merlin, this is depressing,” he decided. “We’re here now. And I bet the others will be along sooner or later… You’re just going to have to be my tour guide in the meantime.” Hoisting a wider smile into place, James settled back in his seat to give Marlene a knowing look. “Plus, sounds like there’s a lot of gossip to catch up on.”
Marlene beamed, reaching out to give James’ back a soothing pat. This was inherently depressing shit. Peter, Sirius, so many of them losing their lives. It came with war, but that didn’t make it easy to deal with in the slightest. And while it needed to be addressed, moving into more chipper territory was her preference, too.
“Happy to oblige you there, love,” she agreed. She still hadn’t memorized every inch of this place herself – she wasn’t entirely sure it was possible, really – but she knew enough to get by. And what better way to do that than exploring with an old friend? “And I’m here for all your gossiping needs. Wherever shall I start…”