Lily-Ryuuji RP.
((Set during this.))
is one-in-a-million/and they can call me brilliant/if i succeed/gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound/i'm just going to get my feet wet/
until i drown...'>"Lily!" Spotting Lily, remembering that she'd been good enough to talk to him and try to comfort him when he'd been distressed (and also, rather guiltily, remembering that he'd made her cry in return for her pains), Ryuuji smiled at the woman brightly and made his way down the corridor towards her.
Intending to make amends for his former lack of response, he greeted her in his friendliest tones, "Lily, hi! So glad to see you. We're going to hold a party for Seto's birthday -- it's today -- and you're more than welcome to attend, if you'd like."
Relieved, Lily grinned at Ryuuji. Relieved that he was here, relieved that he seemed to be up and talking, and, most of all, relieved that he was no longer curled up into a ball. His words caused a small frown of confusion to cross her face, however, though she quickly brushed it away. "Ryuuji," she gave the boy a hug, holding him tightly for a moment before pulling back. "Thank you, love, but I really just came down here to give you."
Holding out Sarah's note, she smiled a little. "She sent it to me to pass on to you. I think she really just wanted someone to come and check on you, rather than sending it by owl. I've gotten a response from her - she's fine, she's safe...I think she just needed a bit of a break."
She? Not sure who the she was, Ryuuji returned the hug warmly before taking the note from her, slightly bemused. Opening it up, he quickly scanned over the contents. One eyebrow instantly arched, protective instincts kicking into gear, and he glanced at Lily as if expecting her to have the answers to all the myriad questions that bubbled up in him at reading Sarah was off the safety of the no-kill grounds.
"Break from what?" Pause, then a self-reproaching look, Ryuuji screwing up his face with dismay, "Man, I hope this isn't my fault. Do you think I was being too much of a downer?" He was well aware of the fact that there were rocks that had been more responsive than he had, after all.
"I've already lectured her on warding, protective spells, and the fastest routes out of London and back here," Lily said softly, reading his _expression. Hell, she'd had the same reaction. "There was also a location charm on my last note. If something happens, I can be by her side in less than ten minutes. She's fine, Ryuuji." His question threw her off and Lily shrugged, studying him.
"Er...no, I don't think you were a...'downer'? I mean, I think it's just a lot of things. It's not easy to go one day thinking you're normal to the next finding out everything you thought was a fairy tale is now real. Add that to everything else she's going through and..." Lily smiled softly. "Well, let's just say a 'break' starts sounding fairly brilliant." Hesitating a moment, Lily reached out to gently squeeze Ryuuji's arm. "How are you, then, love?"
"Thanks." Ryuuji said softly, reassured to know that Lily (as well as Stephen, surely) was looking out for Sarah. The more the merrier, right? Except when cooking, because that was when things got oversalted. Oversalted food was bad. Oversalted food was very bad.
...Oversalted food had nothing to do with the conversation.
Brushing that off, he focused instead on Lily's words again, back to his usual hyper self, practically brimming with energy. Gesturing as he spoke, he explained, "A downer is -- well, you know emo, short for emotional, right? Well, a downer is someone who's being emo and bringing your mood down, hence the term downer. Downer can also be used to refer to a piece of bad news, like 'that's a real downer, man!'. It's like a more modern version of 'bummer'."
Done with that, he frowned slightly at her explanation, head canted to a side quizzically, "A lot of things? What happened that I missed? And I'm fine, pretty much. Throwing the party, going to run Kaiba Corp in Seto's absence, in need of writing thank you cards and buying thank you gifts, but pretty much fine. And if you don't want to join the party, can I at least convince you take a slice of cake home?"
Well. Ryuuji was certainly...the opposite of unresponsive. Blinking a bit, Lily gave him a slightly bewildered smile. "Right. Downer. Got it. Seems easy enough, yeah?" He wasn't fine, that much Lily knew. Not so much because she knew him but because she knew grief; and, knowing grief, Lily also knew that pushing him wouldn't do a sodding thing. Instead she focused on the conversation at hand. Her eyes, though, were concerned and fixed on Ryuuji's face. "I think Sarah will want to tell you all about that when she gets back. Just a lot of things seem to have caught up with her at once and she needed to get away, clear her head for a bit. But none of that had anything to do with you."
Chuckling a little, Lily nodded, "Fine. Cake. But only if you promise to have a cuppa with me sometime soon. Deal?" The least she could do was provide an ear if Ryuuji wanted to talk. Merlin knew how things like this - losing someone, being unable to save people you felt you should, somehow - could wear on a person. Plus, quite apart from the fact that Ryuuji was a mate of her son's and Sarah, Lily liked him. He reminded her a bit of Harry, a bit of James and Sirius when they'd been younger. He made her want to take care of him, somehow. And, for Lily, the place to start was tea.
"For a given value of easy." Ryuuji responded easily, not quite understanding why Lily looked concerned. Seto and Mokuba were popcorn, and that was sad, but Seto would yell at him if Seto came back to Kaiba Corp in ruins. Ryuuji had to take care of it for him! Because even if it wasn't his Seto that came back, it would still be a Seto who needed his company, and therefore, that would give Ryuuji a reason to talk to him and maybe explain the whole brother thing to Seto again.
Maybe they'd even get on better and function as a proper family this time, who knew?
And Mokuba was always easy to get on. Ryuuji had no worries there.
Lily was easy to get on with too! Despite her red hair which supposedly signalled a temper (but Ryuuji thought that was about as stupid as green eyes signalling demonic tendencies), so Ryuuji didn't hesitate before nodding in return to her offer. A smile on his lips, he promised, "Any time you feel like having me drop in, just owl. I'll be there with biscuits."
Right. Well, denial was certainly something Lily was well acquainted with. And, normally, she would just let it go at that. Ryuuji was up, he was walking about, he was talking, he seemed fine - and she was just a passing acquaintance. Perhaps she should simply leave it at that. Sarah would be better equipped to figure out if Ryuuji needed to talk or just be left alone or...or something.
But - always the cursed 'but'. Perry would tease her for meddling, and he'd be right, again - Lily couldn't help but at least try. "Once, during the war, we arrived at this house shortly after the Death Eaters had been there," she began, tone conversational and light. Late, again. Always too late, always just behind, always playing clean up. "A girl, a schoolmate of mine, and her younger brother had been killed. Her husband came home just after we'd arrived. He was sympathetic to us, worked in the Ministry and helped us out from time to time. Good man. Anyway, he went crazy with grief, as you can imagine. Inconsolable for weeks. But then, one day, he showed up at my house, had a cuppa. Like nothing was wrong. Talking about things as if that night hadn't happened." She paused and gave Ryuuji a half-smile. "And I let him. Because you can only stay so long in grief and pain before you have to find a way out. But you also can't just jump back to normal. Oh, you can pretend everything is fine for a bit. Probably can fool people, too. Definitely can fool yourself. But eventually the mourning catches back up to you. The trick is, you have to find a new normal. You have to let yourself falter a little, first, and then find a new rhythm. It's a process - you'll waver a bit from one side to the other, from grief to struggling for your old 'normal'. This bloke, he figured it out, eventually. I was sodding proud of him when he finally let himself realize that it was all right that things not be exactly as they were before. That no one was expecting him to do that, to be that guy. When he stopped expecting that of himself. When he allowed himself to be human."
Then, nodding again, Lily's smile widened. "I'll take you up on that. I like the chocolate ones." If she'd known Ryuuji's thoughts on her temper, Lily would have laughed. In her case, the stereotype was true.
"I--" Ryuuji got the message, of course. Whatever his faults might be (and he would be the first to admit that he had plenty of them), he wasn't stupid and Lily was being far from subtle.
With a half-smile, he reached up and undid his ponytail, the weight of his hair feeling somehow wrong, then fingercombed it and pulled it back up again, fixing it neatly. There. Perfect. Letting everyone else do his hair and push him into the shower might have let him avoid reality for a while, but it also meant that his hair had suffered for it. Poor hair.
"It's not about denial. Or fooling anyone. It's that I stayed there, and I waited, and I mourned them, and that cauterized it." His tone was soft, reflective, Ryuuji trying so carefully word what had felt right to his heart but his mind didn't quite understand. "Because it hurt that they weren't there. It hurt, and screamed, and ached, and it was like the world had shattered into pieces and every breath made me bleed a little more. But staying still and just mourning them, not feeling anything except grief -- it's like cutting yourself to bleed out poison, or holding a hot iron against your hand to close a wound. It might look unhelpful in the short term, might look painful but in the long term, it makes you heal more neatly. No scars or infection. Just the pure force of grief, and yeah, you might not be the same person afterwards because you did hurt yourself to heal yourself, and you are missing parts of you -- because when the people you love leave you, they take a chunk of your heart along so that they're not alone but you feel emptier -- but that's on the inside."
Was he making any sense to her? He wasn't sure, but he had to go on, "And I don't like hurting on the outside. They're still gone, but I can accept that now. I can run Kaiba Corp for when Seto comes back, and I can accept the fact that he might come back not remembering me. I can plan, and hope, and live. And even if it hurts on the inside, well--" A single shoulder shrug and a half-rueful, half-bittersweet smile, "At least it's on the inside, where it doesn't affect anyone except me. There's no reason other people should suffer just because I am, or worry about me."
And because that was ridicuously serious, Ryuuji made him laugh and shoved both hands inside his pockets, "One sec, I'll go get you the cake. You need it if you're putting up with me discussing grieving practices with you."
He jogged off towards the Popcorn Room, then returned quickly, bearing a slice of chocolate cake with lashings of icing in a white paper napkin, and held it out to Lily proudly. Hopefully, she liked chocolate cake as well as chocolate biscuits.
All of it made sense to her. All of it. And Lily, just for a brief second, envied Ryuuji. Merlin, to be able to let herself fully feel it, and then let it go... "Yeah," she said softly, eyes sad and old. But there was one fault with his logic, one hole she could see in a plan that sounded far too appealing to her.
"But what's inside," she continued, "that has a tendency to come out. I know. I spent the first four months I was here keeping everything tucked away inside, bottled up. So I didn't hurt anyone but me. So no one else had to suffer. And Merlin, Ryuuji, I'd give just about anything to keep all my pain away from the people I love." The cake he'd brought and she'd accepted with a grin was now picked at, an absent use of her fingers as Lily struggled to find the right words. "I've lost a lot of people. Some of them weren't even people I knew - just casualties, people I failed, people we'd all failed. But let's just say that I'm no stranger to grief. I understand what you're saying. I've done it. Maybe not to the extent that you did - I never had the luxury to completely shut down for days at a time. There was always someone who needed me, something that had to be done, one more thing that I had to do. Not saying," she smiled slightly, a brief flicker, "that I don't envy you that. I do. But I have shut everything up inside. Tight, locked away, never acknowledging the fact that there might come a day when I couldn't do that anymore."
Merlin, this wasn't making any sense. Shrugging helplessly, she met Ryuuji's gaze steadily. "I wager all I'm trying to say is that if ever you need to let some of that pain that's inside out, I understand the feeling. And...and I'd like to help, Ryuuji, if I can. If there's any way you'd let me. You wouldn't need to protect me." Another smile, this one wider and more sure. "I'm tougher than I look, love. Something I think we both have in common. And though no one can ever put a finger on your pain and claim to know it fully, I have been hurt they way you have. I can't take it from you, I can't say that I understand everything you're feeling, but I can at least sit and listen and empathize."
She took a bite of the cake, eyebrows going up slightly in surprise. "Bloody good," she murmured, corner of her mouth quirking up. "And you're right, Ryuuji. You do have to live and move on and all that. You should. I'm glad that you can. Just...remember that it's all right if one morning you wake up and can't breathe. Or if you turn a corner and something makes you remember so violently it's like you've lost them all over again. It doesn't mean you're weak or a failure...it just means you loved them."
Again, Lily was fairly certain she wasn't making much sense and a small measure of her frustration was evident in her eyes. "Anyway. Sorry, mate. The last thing you probably need is some random bird accosting you in the hallway and lecturing you on how to grieve. I just...you're not alone, Ryuuji. That's something I do understand, that feeling. And I just wanted you to know that you don't have to. Be alone."
In a sense, you could say that Ryuuji's extreme paralysis thanks to grief was because of inner pain suddenly being turned outwards. The pain of Seto ditching him when they were kids, the pain of his father disowning him, the pain of losing his father again and knowing -- even worse -- that his father had never cared about him in the first place -- you could make a pretty good argument to say that the reason it hurt him so much to have people leave him, the reason that Terry had damaged him so badly, was because of all the pain he kept inside, refusing to let it interfere with his every day life until everything came crashing down on him. At which point he was usually too in pieces to even care about holding that away from him.
"Thank you," And his voice was appreciative, but also filled with a quiet understanding of grief, both hers and his, "And hey, goes both ways, right? Drop by my suite any time you want to talk, whether about something good or bad."
A smile quirked his own lips at her enjoyment of the cake, "Like, for example, the best kind of cakes. Chocolate's always going to be my favorite, I think."
He rested a hand on her shoulder, a light, friendly touch, and gave it a reassuring squeeze before letting go again and sliding his hand into a pocket, "So, yeah, thanks. For the offer, and for the thought. I promise, I will take you up on the offer of tea, and bring you a tribute of biscuits to boot."
Lily nodded, accepting his offer even while knowing, deep down, she'd never take him up on his end of it. "As long as you bring the biscuits," she teased, grinning. The cake was finished with appreciation and small twirl of her wand cleaned off any crumbs left on her hands.
"I really should be going. But thank you, for the cake. And the talk. I'll owl you for tea sometime, yeah?" She inclined her head towards the popcorn room, "And, for what it's worth? I think it's a brilliant thing you're doing, for your brother." Another hug, Lily's arms wrapped around Ryuuji for a moment, before she pulled back and smiled. "Right. Have a good day, Ryuuji."
Then, with a small wave, Lily made her way back up towards Ravenclaw.
is one-in-a-million/and they can call me brilliant/if i succeed/gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound/i'm just going to get my feet wet/
until i drown...'>"Lily!" Spotting Lily, remembering that she'd been good enough to talk to him and try to comfort him when he'd been distressed (and also, rather guiltily, remembering that he'd made her cry in return for her pains), Ryuuji smiled at the woman brightly and made his way down the corridor towards her.
Intending to make amends for his former lack of response, he greeted her in his friendliest tones, "Lily, hi! So glad to see you. We're going to hold a party for Seto's birthday -- it's today -- and you're more than welcome to attend, if you'd like."
Relieved, Lily grinned at Ryuuji. Relieved that he was here, relieved that he seemed to be up and talking, and, most of all, relieved that he was no longer curled up into a ball. His words caused a small frown of confusion to cross her face, however, though she quickly brushed it away. "Ryuuji," she gave the boy a hug, holding him tightly for a moment before pulling back. "Thank you, love, but I really just came down here to give you."
Holding out Sarah's note, she smiled a little. "She sent it to me to pass on to you. I think she really just wanted someone to come and check on you, rather than sending it by owl. I've gotten a response from her - she's fine, she's safe...I think she just needed a bit of a break."
She? Not sure who the she was, Ryuuji returned the hug warmly before taking the note from her, slightly bemused. Opening it up, he quickly scanned over the contents. One eyebrow instantly arched, protective instincts kicking into gear, and he glanced at Lily as if expecting her to have the answers to all the myriad questions that bubbled up in him at reading Sarah was off the safety of the no-kill grounds.
"Break from what?" Pause, then a self-reproaching look, Ryuuji screwing up his face with dismay, "Man, I hope this isn't my fault. Do you think I was being too much of a downer?" He was well aware of the fact that there were rocks that had been more responsive than he had, after all.
"I've already lectured her on warding, protective spells, and the fastest routes out of London and back here," Lily said softly, reading his _expression. Hell, she'd had the same reaction. "There was also a location charm on my last note. If something happens, I can be by her side in less than ten minutes. She's fine, Ryuuji." His question threw her off and Lily shrugged, studying him.
"Er...no, I don't think you were a...'downer'? I mean, I think it's just a lot of things. It's not easy to go one day thinking you're normal to the next finding out everything you thought was a fairy tale is now real. Add that to everything else she's going through and..." Lily smiled softly. "Well, let's just say a 'break' starts sounding fairly brilliant." Hesitating a moment, Lily reached out to gently squeeze Ryuuji's arm. "How are you, then, love?"
"Thanks." Ryuuji said softly, reassured to know that Lily (as well as Stephen, surely) was looking out for Sarah. The more the merrier, right? Except when cooking, because that was when things got oversalted. Oversalted food was bad. Oversalted food was very bad.
...Oversalted food had nothing to do with the conversation.
Brushing that off, he focused instead on Lily's words again, back to his usual hyper self, practically brimming with energy. Gesturing as he spoke, he explained, "A downer is -- well, you know emo, short for emotional, right? Well, a downer is someone who's being emo and bringing your mood down, hence the term downer. Downer can also be used to refer to a piece of bad news, like 'that's a real downer, man!'. It's like a more modern version of 'bummer'."
Done with that, he frowned slightly at her explanation, head canted to a side quizzically, "A lot of things? What happened that I missed? And I'm fine, pretty much. Throwing the party, going to run Kaiba Corp in Seto's absence, in need of writing thank you cards and buying thank you gifts, but pretty much fine. And if you don't want to join the party, can I at least convince you take a slice of cake home?"
Well. Ryuuji was certainly...the opposite of unresponsive. Blinking a bit, Lily gave him a slightly bewildered smile. "Right. Downer. Got it. Seems easy enough, yeah?" He wasn't fine, that much Lily knew. Not so much because she knew him but because she knew grief; and, knowing grief, Lily also knew that pushing him wouldn't do a sodding thing. Instead she focused on the conversation at hand. Her eyes, though, were concerned and fixed on Ryuuji's face. "I think Sarah will want to tell you all about that when she gets back. Just a lot of things seem to have caught up with her at once and she needed to get away, clear her head for a bit. But none of that had anything to do with you."
Chuckling a little, Lily nodded, "Fine. Cake. But only if you promise to have a cuppa with me sometime soon. Deal?" The least she could do was provide an ear if Ryuuji wanted to talk. Merlin knew how things like this - losing someone, being unable to save people you felt you should, somehow - could wear on a person. Plus, quite apart from the fact that Ryuuji was a mate of her son's and Sarah, Lily liked him. He reminded her a bit of Harry, a bit of James and Sirius when they'd been younger. He made her want to take care of him, somehow. And, for Lily, the place to start was tea.
"For a given value of easy." Ryuuji responded easily, not quite understanding why Lily looked concerned. Seto and Mokuba were popcorn, and that was sad, but Seto would yell at him if Seto came back to Kaiba Corp in ruins. Ryuuji had to take care of it for him! Because even if it wasn't his Seto that came back, it would still be a Seto who needed his company, and therefore, that would give Ryuuji a reason to talk to him and maybe explain the whole brother thing to Seto again.
Maybe they'd even get on better and function as a proper family this time, who knew?
And Mokuba was always easy to get on. Ryuuji had no worries there.
Lily was easy to get on with too! Despite her red hair which supposedly signalled a temper (but Ryuuji thought that was about as stupid as green eyes signalling demonic tendencies), so Ryuuji didn't hesitate before nodding in return to her offer. A smile on his lips, he promised, "Any time you feel like having me drop in, just owl. I'll be there with biscuits."
Right. Well, denial was certainly something Lily was well acquainted with. And, normally, she would just let it go at that. Ryuuji was up, he was walking about, he was talking, he seemed fine - and she was just a passing acquaintance. Perhaps she should simply leave it at that. Sarah would be better equipped to figure out if Ryuuji needed to talk or just be left alone or...or something.
But - always the cursed 'but'. Perry would tease her for meddling, and he'd be right, again - Lily couldn't help but at least try. "Once, during the war, we arrived at this house shortly after the Death Eaters had been there," she began, tone conversational and light. Late, again. Always too late, always just behind, always playing clean up. "A girl, a schoolmate of mine, and her younger brother had been killed. Her husband came home just after we'd arrived. He was sympathetic to us, worked in the Ministry and helped us out from time to time. Good man. Anyway, he went crazy with grief, as you can imagine. Inconsolable for weeks. But then, one day, he showed up at my house, had a cuppa. Like nothing was wrong. Talking about things as if that night hadn't happened." She paused and gave Ryuuji a half-smile. "And I let him. Because you can only stay so long in grief and pain before you have to find a way out. But you also can't just jump back to normal. Oh, you can pretend everything is fine for a bit. Probably can fool people, too. Definitely can fool yourself. But eventually the mourning catches back up to you. The trick is, you have to find a new normal. You have to let yourself falter a little, first, and then find a new rhythm. It's a process - you'll waver a bit from one side to the other, from grief to struggling for your old 'normal'. This bloke, he figured it out, eventually. I was sodding proud of him when he finally let himself realize that it was all right that things not be exactly as they were before. That no one was expecting him to do that, to be that guy. When he stopped expecting that of himself. When he allowed himself to be human."
Then, nodding again, Lily's smile widened. "I'll take you up on that. I like the chocolate ones." If she'd known Ryuuji's thoughts on her temper, Lily would have laughed. In her case, the stereotype was true.
"I--" Ryuuji got the message, of course. Whatever his faults might be (and he would be the first to admit that he had plenty of them), he wasn't stupid and Lily was being far from subtle.
With a half-smile, he reached up and undid his ponytail, the weight of his hair feeling somehow wrong, then fingercombed it and pulled it back up again, fixing it neatly. There. Perfect. Letting everyone else do his hair and push him into the shower might have let him avoid reality for a while, but it also meant that his hair had suffered for it. Poor hair.
"It's not about denial. Or fooling anyone. It's that I stayed there, and I waited, and I mourned them, and that cauterized it." His tone was soft, reflective, Ryuuji trying so carefully word what had felt right to his heart but his mind didn't quite understand. "Because it hurt that they weren't there. It hurt, and screamed, and ached, and it was like the world had shattered into pieces and every breath made me bleed a little more. But staying still and just mourning them, not feeling anything except grief -- it's like cutting yourself to bleed out poison, or holding a hot iron against your hand to close a wound. It might look unhelpful in the short term, might look painful but in the long term, it makes you heal more neatly. No scars or infection. Just the pure force of grief, and yeah, you might not be the same person afterwards because you did hurt yourself to heal yourself, and you are missing parts of you -- because when the people you love leave you, they take a chunk of your heart along so that they're not alone but you feel emptier -- but that's on the inside."
Was he making any sense to her? He wasn't sure, but he had to go on, "And I don't like hurting on the outside. They're still gone, but I can accept that now. I can run Kaiba Corp for when Seto comes back, and I can accept the fact that he might come back not remembering me. I can plan, and hope, and live. And even if it hurts on the inside, well--" A single shoulder shrug and a half-rueful, half-bittersweet smile, "At least it's on the inside, where it doesn't affect anyone except me. There's no reason other people should suffer just because I am, or worry about me."
And because that was ridicuously serious, Ryuuji made him laugh and shoved both hands inside his pockets, "One sec, I'll go get you the cake. You need it if you're putting up with me discussing grieving practices with you."
He jogged off towards the Popcorn Room, then returned quickly, bearing a slice of chocolate cake with lashings of icing in a white paper napkin, and held it out to Lily proudly. Hopefully, she liked chocolate cake as well as chocolate biscuits.
All of it made sense to her. All of it. And Lily, just for a brief second, envied Ryuuji. Merlin, to be able to let herself fully feel it, and then let it go... "Yeah," she said softly, eyes sad and old. But there was one fault with his logic, one hole she could see in a plan that sounded far too appealing to her.
"But what's inside," she continued, "that has a tendency to come out. I know. I spent the first four months I was here keeping everything tucked away inside, bottled up. So I didn't hurt anyone but me. So no one else had to suffer. And Merlin, Ryuuji, I'd give just about anything to keep all my pain away from the people I love." The cake he'd brought and she'd accepted with a grin was now picked at, an absent use of her fingers as Lily struggled to find the right words. "I've lost a lot of people. Some of them weren't even people I knew - just casualties, people I failed, people we'd all failed. But let's just say that I'm no stranger to grief. I understand what you're saying. I've done it. Maybe not to the extent that you did - I never had the luxury to completely shut down for days at a time. There was always someone who needed me, something that had to be done, one more thing that I had to do. Not saying," she smiled slightly, a brief flicker, "that I don't envy you that. I do. But I have shut everything up inside. Tight, locked away, never acknowledging the fact that there might come a day when I couldn't do that anymore."
Merlin, this wasn't making any sense. Shrugging helplessly, she met Ryuuji's gaze steadily. "I wager all I'm trying to say is that if ever you need to let some of that pain that's inside out, I understand the feeling. And...and I'd like to help, Ryuuji, if I can. If there's any way you'd let me. You wouldn't need to protect me." Another smile, this one wider and more sure. "I'm tougher than I look, love. Something I think we both have in common. And though no one can ever put a finger on your pain and claim to know it fully, I have been hurt they way you have. I can't take it from you, I can't say that I understand everything you're feeling, but I can at least sit and listen and empathize."
She took a bite of the cake, eyebrows going up slightly in surprise. "Bloody good," she murmured, corner of her mouth quirking up. "And you're right, Ryuuji. You do have to live and move on and all that. You should. I'm glad that you can. Just...remember that it's all right if one morning you wake up and can't breathe. Or if you turn a corner and something makes you remember so violently it's like you've lost them all over again. It doesn't mean you're weak or a failure...it just means you loved them."
Again, Lily was fairly certain she wasn't making much sense and a small measure of her frustration was evident in her eyes. "Anyway. Sorry, mate. The last thing you probably need is some random bird accosting you in the hallway and lecturing you on how to grieve. I just...you're not alone, Ryuuji. That's something I do understand, that feeling. And I just wanted you to know that you don't have to. Be alone."
In a sense, you could say that Ryuuji's extreme paralysis thanks to grief was because of inner pain suddenly being turned outwards. The pain of Seto ditching him when they were kids, the pain of his father disowning him, the pain of losing his father again and knowing -- even worse -- that his father had never cared about him in the first place -- you could make a pretty good argument to say that the reason it hurt him so much to have people leave him, the reason that Terry had damaged him so badly, was because of all the pain he kept inside, refusing to let it interfere with his every day life until everything came crashing down on him. At which point he was usually too in pieces to even care about holding that away from him.
"Thank you," And his voice was appreciative, but also filled with a quiet understanding of grief, both hers and his, "And hey, goes both ways, right? Drop by my suite any time you want to talk, whether about something good or bad."
A smile quirked his own lips at her enjoyment of the cake, "Like, for example, the best kind of cakes. Chocolate's always going to be my favorite, I think."
He rested a hand on her shoulder, a light, friendly touch, and gave it a reassuring squeeze before letting go again and sliding his hand into a pocket, "So, yeah, thanks. For the offer, and for the thought. I promise, I will take you up on the offer of tea, and bring you a tribute of biscuits to boot."
Lily nodded, accepting his offer even while knowing, deep down, she'd never take him up on his end of it. "As long as you bring the biscuits," she teased, grinning. The cake was finished with appreciation and small twirl of her wand cleaned off any crumbs left on her hands.
"I really should be going. But thank you, for the cake. And the talk. I'll owl you for tea sometime, yeah?" She inclined her head towards the popcorn room, "And, for what it's worth? I think it's a brilliant thing you're doing, for your brother." Another hug, Lily's arms wrapped around Ryuuji for a moment, before she pulled back and smiled. "Right. Have a good day, Ryuuji."
Then, with a small wave, Lily made her way back up towards Ravenclaw.