Closed RP: Stephen and Sarah, post-Ravenclaw party

[nopower_overme]

((continued in comments))

After leaving the party in the Ravenclaw common room, Sarah and Stephen returned to his (their?) rooms in the dungeons to capitalize on both their inebriated states. Happily spent, they now lay tangled tightly on the bed, Sarah bonelessly stretched on Stephen as they talked. Quiet really would be far easier at this point, but she loved the sound of his voice and loved what they shared... uniquely theirs. Right now it grounded her after the alcohol had given the memory-selves some footing where normally the strength of their own memories muted them to a large degree.

"You know me too well." Stephen's fingers idly combed through Sarah's hair, worrying gently at tangles. "Too well by half, I fear. I shall be utterly at your mercy before long."

That small hitch of breathing made Sarah smile, her grip tightening a fraction then. What brightened that smile were his words, a precious reminder of how much time had changed things, how she had once been so desperate to know him in any way. Now, in many ways she did, even if there were things that would take far longer to know and understand.

"Don't be silly, and even if that's true, it's not half as much as I'm at your mercy," she said softly, eyes closed completely at the simple pleasure of him playing with her hair. She truly would not have it any other way. "Though knowing you didn't turn out too badly after all, did it?"

The allusion at first eluded him, then he remembered. "Ah, love, I had no way of foreseeing any of this." Fondness suffused the words, but also a tinge of sadness: none of their present comfortable togetherness would be possible were it not for River's absence, and it was most of all for River that he had wished to keep his distance from Sarah, defying the connection he had immediately felt. He had not publicly mourned the loss of his wife, and most of the school did not even know they had been married. He had simply withdrawn from social interaction in the days following River's death, and Sarah had followed him into that seclusion.

He had never told Sarah, or anyone else, that he sometimes went to the popcorn room to view the kernels. He would have visited River's grave if he had been given even the small comfort of a funeral for her. With the popcorn kernels magically shielded from reach in impenetrable cases, and indistinguishable one from another, that was an impossibility. So he went, and silently paid his respects to the room, unsure where they should be directed, leaving nothing behind, no wreath or token.

He knew Sarah had tried (unsuccessfully, by his design) to visit River in the hospital wing. He did not know that Sarah, too, had been to the popcorn room, nor did he know she continued to do so. Their paths had not yet crossed in coming or going to that room, and they were furtive in doing so.

"Of course not, then you would be the professor of Divination, not the potions master," Sarah said lightly, but her touch was tender as she stroked his cheek, lifting her head a bit to look at him. Both emotions in his tone were noted, hence the gentleness in her touch. Though he could not know it, because she did not tell him (just as she could not know what he thought and did) River had never been banish from her thoughts just because there was so much good in Sarah and Stephen's lives now. She had told him they would never negate River and she meant it and she would do whatever necessary to make certain that never occurred.

In that determination, so she told herself, she still went to the popcorn room. While Stephen went silently, she did not. Much like the first time, she spoke out loud to the popcorn room as a whole, telling whichever kernel was River not only of Stephen, but of Ryuuji too and the school in general. The door under heavy wards and spells meant to alert of other visitors, there was a freedom in the talking that she could not have with another. What purpose it served, Sarah still could not precisely pinpoint. It never relieved her guilt that things had transpired as they had and her life was so good now in so many ways because of the loss of River. She was not certain even now that her once-thought that a telepath might retain those powers in the kernalized state held any merit, nor was she certain why she had the belief - it could be another way to deny going to the popcorn was more for herself than anything. It was like visiting a grave except that, unlike with the truly dead (well, unlike them anywhere else besides Hogwarts) Sarah still feared what could emerge from that room someday with no warning at all.

Of course, thinking on this often led to being reminded of something even now still painful, of being told she was interchangeable. She knew it had been said while he was in pain, that he likely thought no such thing in a complete sense and perhaps even now he had no idea he had said such a thing, but it was something that had added to the tension of the battle of the memory-self to be her own person. She sometimes still wondered - usually when cross-legged on the floor of the popcorn room - if words spoken in hurt, words she was normally all to happy to live in blissful denial of, had some truth.

Shaking that off, refusing to let the thought intrude any more than alcohol-dulled control might have let it, she stretched and kissed his cheek.

"If I were professor of divination, or put any faith in that art at all ..." The sentence went unfinished. He had been about to say, awkwardly and without thinking it through, that things would be very different now: had he known he would meet a woman to whom he felt bound in some way, as he did with Sarah, he would have kept from other entanglements. About to voice the words, he remembered with a pang something he had said to River once. Had you been born twenty years earlier, I would have married you instead. But you were not, and I did not know you would be, and so I had to occupy my time in some way or another...

It had been a strange negation, a rash one. Thinking on it now, he could not tell what impulse had led him to say such a thing; it was like forswearing Diana utterly; not that forswearing her would have displeased River at all, and exorcising that phantom had seemed at one time necessary, even vital; perhaps that was why he had spoken in such a way, thought what would once have been unthinkable? It was what River had wanted, and he had always wanted to give her what she wanted. That, too, had seemed vital.

How, then, could he think to negate River now in turn, even in the most vague and hypothetical way? True, Stephen had always been one to wish pain prevented rather than experienced: his long off-and-on affair with laudanum stood as proof of that. This, though, verged on disrespect to a woman he had profoundly respected, profoundly loved. So too had he loved Diana, though he had not always been able to respect her. He shut his eyes tightly. It could not keep him from seeing what he did not like to acknowledge in himself, this self-indulgent inconsistency.

While memories had given Sarah the ability to understand things in Stephen that had been actions of his memories, and time together later to bond and know each other as Sarah and Stephen had expanded on that ability to know each other, she still could not read his mind. On the heels of thinking of how he had once remarked on herself, River and Diana merging together, she wondered if he would have used Divination to alter all of this. Unfortunately, she also took his eyes closing to mean he was trying not to see what was in front of him - namely, her.

Doubt had been all but nonexistent at times lately, as Sarah truly had been happy when she was not feeling guilty even now. She was not certain what she was doubting right now, as she knew he did love her and would swear she knew it fully now. Perhaps, though, there was still doubt in some small way from the fear that even people often looked back in life and wondered what would have gone differently with the other half of a choice they had made. He himself had wished the memories had never come - something she realized still did bother her like the comment about interchangeability still did - while she could never make that wish herself now... even to make life perfect, even if it could have brought River back in some way for him.

And Stephen had known it all along. From the very beginning he had told her she would have never wished the memory life away, even though then it had been the memory self in him speaking to the memory self in her - it could not have been anything else, they did not even know each other then at all. Maybe this certainty she felt in herself came from the memory self after all, in that the memory self prevented that thing she felt a flaw in her character? She honestly did not know, though she hoped that this was all her, that for once she might actually be capable of control over wishing. A refusal to wish it all away could be viewed as selfish, and she had acknowledged her own selfishness a long time ago. More doubt, but this time in herself and who controlled her determination on that matter.

She kissed his closed eyes, still silent in thought. Could it have been a ossible goal to have kept this from starting or was this just another wish that it could have been stopped? They still did not know why they had the memories, but she did know that each time they touched, more came. In a school this size, even with his position as potions master, could it could have been possible to have never met and touched and activated the memories?

No. She could see that so very clearly now. "It would not have made anyone any happier if you could have predicted all of this from the very beginning," she said finally, kissing his forehead this time as she continued to stroke his cheek, still unaware that this was in no way close to what he had been thinking. "For all I believed the memories would go away, first in a desire to make everything normal, and then in fear for them to stay so I always had what gave me you, I know now we could never have avoided it. You seeing what would have come from us meeting, trying to avoid it all... it would never have been possible." It hurt, to think on things like this, but it felt like it needed to be said. He was the one person she felt most comfortable talking with, and not just because this was about them. Even now, that comfort was there in the closeness of their bodies twined together. "And I still can't wish it all away. I've always been capable of wishing things for my own selfish reasons, but apparently never to fix something for the person I love most in the world." Maybe it was both her and the memories keeping from that wish after all - the memories to never allow a separation and Sarah's need to hold on to what she had now that she had it. One more place the line was so blurred it was nonexistent.

"No." The denial was low, immediate. "I had not thought to avoid it. I remain convinced that would have been impossible. Lord knows we tried our best to do so, foresight or no. It needed no foresight to know what would come of this." He caressed her shoulders and back as he spoke, and the touch made clear what he meant. Whether they would have loved or hated, whether resentment could have won out over any genuine affection they had in the beginning developed, all human emotion notwithstanding, they would have come to some form of this: it was inevitable they should become lovers, at least in the carnal sense of the word. That was what River would never tolerate. Nor would she have relinquished him readily if at all. She had said as much outright: I know there's no other woman. And I wouldn't leave, even if you did--- I'd get out the barbed wire, but I wouldn't leave. I told you, you're stuck with me. He had lived in full expectation that she would someday tire of him, but he had never expected she would give him up before she was good and ready. A rival would only have intensified possessiveness already fierce and sometimes frightening in its scope and vehemence.

Somehow it had not seemed such a terrible thing, to be owned so completely. He recalled welcoming it, even craving it. After years alternately cosseting and chasing Diana, to be the quarry rather than the hunter had its appeal. He had been intensely happy, happier than he could remember having been for a very long time. Then, at the end of May, things changed all at once. Stephen began to practice Occlumency; River began to withdraw into herself; and Sarah Williams arrived at Hogwarts. The confluence of events could conceivably have been mischance and nothing more. Stephen often feared it had not been so, and blamed himself even as he came to believe things could not have happened any way other than they did.

For a moment, he entertained the possibility: what if something very small had gone differently? Not that Sarah would not have come to the school, or that the memories had not existed, nothing so significant as that; nothing not within their power to change. But what if he had told River, let down the barriers of Occlumency to show her what he felt for Sarah and why? She was a telepath. Surely no woman had ever been better equipped to divine her husband's heart. She would have seen the strange memories. She might even have understood why they moved him as they did --

-- if she had the lucidity to understand, or the mercy to forgive. And River Tam Maturin had never been long on either of those qualities.

"Some things," he said, voice hoarse and tense, "simply cannot be avoided."

It filled Sarah both with relief and her old frustration to hear his immediate denial of what she had imagined he had been thinking. She still did hate what the memories had done when he had needed less pain and worry and hated her part in all of it, that she had caused more of it rather than relieving it to some degree by being there for him. But even the knowledge that she was adding to that each time the memory reared over her own control had not stopped her. Perhaps that was why it was not impossible now to imagine the memories pulling them into continued intimacy even if their own feelings had been indifferent or, God forbid, hatred. She was certain it would never have been hatred on her part no matter what. She had already told him once, long before they had both loved each other, that she had been in danger of falling in love with him and it had proven true, though far more than she had ever imagined at the time. Even if he hated her, she would have still loved him - it had been the memories she had resented during those times, never him.

"Then tell me what you did mean, if you had been a professor of Divination or had any faith in it," she coaxed softly, pressing another kiss to his forehead. She wanted to understand what he had meant now that the conversation had turned this way and not in the direction she had imagined. She held tighter with the arm still wrapped around him, even now seeking to be whatever comfort she could be. Being there for him had always been important to her, and that had only intensified with time.

He sighed. "I thought for a moment, just now, that had I known you would come here, and what would be between us, I would have -- done what I could to keep from creating a situation that would endanger it. It was an unfair thought and I should not have forgotten myself so far as even to begin speaking it." Unfair in the sense it was not just, and unfair in the sense that it was ugly. He did not consider that some small part of Sarah might have liked hearing it.

It was only with a sizable amount of willpower that Sarah did not react outwardly to that revelation as she processed it, still stroking his cheek. It would be an outright lie to say that some part of her did not selfishly delight to the idea that he had even thought it and what that meant for his feelings. It meant she had significance to him despite worrying about comments best left in the past and she forced herself to leave it at that. It was the larger part of herself - the part that was both naturally compassionate and, in this case, still feeling guilty (and possibly always would) - that she focused on for it was that part that would not have wanted what he had thought. She had meant it when she told him she would not let him negate River and she refused to encourage the feeling in herself that would counter that effort. She also was not going to let him beat himself up about it because it was only human to think that way, as far as she was concerned.

"Who doesn't sometimes wonder about the what ifs," she asked softly, "or wish that something could have been changed to make life easier or better, even when thoughts like that aren't something to be proud of?" She rested her forehead against his and sighed softly. "I'm glad that you told me, because I do understand... to some extent. Wishing Toby away wasn't the first or last awful wish I made or thought I had. It wasn't even the worst, it was just the one that was answered. The thought of wanting my parents together would mean Toby never existed, but it isn't because I don't love him now that part of me still wants that. It just means life would have been different and easier... thought not always better at all, or something I really do want. I know, it's not nearly the same as what you were thinking, of course," she clarified softly, even now careful that her intent came across clearly as one of comfort and not as though she was claiming to understand something she didn't, "but... it's human to be that way. Or human and whatever else wanders around Hogwarts."