(no subject)
and go not gently/r
Lily recalls.
James on his knees in the kitchen recalls every other time he's ever been on his knees (Gryffindor common-room, Evans, oh, EVANS...later, in Spring, white flowers and I love you in his eyes). I love you still in his eyes, behind a dying man glaze (you're both creatures already dying).
"Go," he says, and then she loses him in a flare of bright light like sunlight hitting snow. And she runs (skirt up around her thighs so that it can't trip her, kicking the door shut behind her, snatching seconds, begging time).
They say that, in the moment before you die, you life flashes before your eyes.
On the stairs she trips on years and she stumbles.
James on his knees in spring.
He'd proposed three times in the time that she'd known him (those three things she kept and treasured, wrapped in the layers of her heart). She'd been so closed against him at first (him and Sirius, loud, bold stupid and brave, Remus and Peter bobbing in their wake). She closed herself so tightly but he'd opened her with kindness and with joy (always smiling, kind boy and a careful lover). He'd been taking the piss out of her the first time, on his knees in the common room with Sirius hooting and sniggering.
"Evans, oh Evans, be my wife and make an honest man of me?" She'd shied away from him, blushing (teenaged shame makes her angry now - why did you ever waste a minute?).
"Bloody idiot," she'd told him, stalking away.
Pissed the second time (firewhiskey after dinner with friends), and she'd silenced him with careful kisses: the corner of his mouth, his jaw (unshaved), his adam's apple (reminding her that love was at the centre of creation, and of the lump in her own throat when she thinks about loss). Down over his heart (speeding). Her own head had been spinning as she'd reached behind her to remove her bra. She drank her fair share with dinner.
"You're beautiful," he told her, his hands covering her breasts. (She was eighteen, nineteen, in her prime, her goddess aspect. She would never be that beautiful again. She would never be so loved again.)
For a moment, she saw herself how he must have seen her (love reflects).
"I know," she said, her body above him, leaning her weight into his hands as she lifted her thigh to slide across him. guiding him up into her. James always had that startled look in that first moment (all talk, never stop talking boy, but beautiful and full of grace). She bent for a kiss, almost lifting off him completely, took hold of his wrists and kissed his palms. He thrust up into her, and she smiled (slow and lazy), lifting his hands up over his head, kissing stretched muscles.
"Shhh, lover..." She whispered. "Slower."
She held his wrists above his head pinned to the bed (he could have struggled, if he'd wanted, but women are strong when they're in love). From this angle, he filled and completed her, made her. She lifted herself slowly (she ebbed like the tide), arching her back as he slid back into her, smiling at the way his eyes widened, his head tipping back. When he rolled her, she let him (felt ready to be taken over and conquered).
"Will you marry me?" He said, each word a thrust (when he pushed into her she saw heaven draped in white light). His hand was between their bodies, between her legs, his finger stroking her. Even drunk, he had sure and certain hands (would never touch her unless it made her bloom...not perfect all ways, but that way, always). She pressed her hand over his, holding it, rocking against it, against his width and weight inside her, a long loose moan spilling out of her.
"Ask me again when you're sober, James," she said, feeling like a sunrise.
It had taken him six months, but eventually he'd pressed the words into the hair behind her ear for the third time, and she'd nodded, opened herself wide open to him. She'd given James Potter her whole heart in Spring, with the white flowers blooming.
She can hear them coming for her now, and Harry's nursery is at the end of a very long tunnel, and she's thinking things like where would be the best place to meet them (where would she stand the best chance?). And then it's there, suddenly, unbidden: painting the nursery in summer, and Sirius in the garden in the dark, blue paint in dark hair.
"You're getting fat, Lily," he'd said, grinning, bare chested (summer heat clinging after dark).
"I've told you not to smoke around my baby, Sirius..." she'd said, her heart not really in it (too hot, hair knotted back, fanning herself with a day old copy of the Prophet). He was only teasing anyway. She could see it in his eyes (grey eyes, kind at their heart). He rolled onto his stomach on the scrubby grass, poetry in the smooth muscles of his back, his narrow waist (James was a handsome man, but Sirius was a shooting star, perfect and unmarked).
"The wind's a blowin', Lily." Still grinning.
"Put it out and come and sit beside me," she said. He'd looked at her for a second (don't look at me that way, don't give me that Black look, leave that to your rotten apple cousins, worms writhing in their hearts) and then he'd stubbed out his cigarette on the lawn and rolled back towards her.
"You feeling lonely, Lily?" He'd said, rubbing her knee through her light skirt. At first she'd only tolerated him for James' sake; because it had been Sirius who James had loved first and best and it would have broken his heart if she'd told him that, in truth, she found Sirius loud and brash and irritating. So she'd tolerated him, and she'd seen that underneath it all, under the play-acting, the playing the fool, Sirius Black was kind and good with a heart as deep and wide as the sea. In the beginning, she hadn't liked him. By the end, she'd have trusted him with her life, with her baby's life (never got a chance to trust him, darling, daring boy).
That night in summer, she just wanted him to be close.
He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, a beer cradled between his thighs (torn denim, hair knotted at the nape of his neck), with his head rolled back against her knee as she stroked and separated loose strands of his hair.
"Do you ever get scared, Sirius," she said, wiping sweat from between her breasts, tucking her hair behind her ear. There was a long pause before he nodded.
"Doesn't everybody?"
"I suppose so..."
"What are you scared of?" She'd rubbed her bump with both hands.
"Letting this one down."
He'd nodded, taken a long swallow of his beer.
"I don't know what I'm doing all the time, Lily...and it terrifies me." She stroked his head, and, on impulse, the line of his jaw. He'd turned his head and caught her fingers with her lips.
"Just do your best, Sirius..." she'd said, threading his kiss back into his long dark hair. "And nobody will love you any less."
In the nursery, at last, she closes the door and leans against it for a second (she can hear them on the stairs). Harry is awake in his crib, silently watching her. It's now that she realises that there are words for motherless children, but no names for the mothers of murdered sons (some things are too awful). She wants to hold him, but she needs her wand in her hand. She backs to the crib, turning at the last moment to look at him (these last seconds could last forever, her heartbeat centuries slow). Looking down at Harry, she thinks about her wedding and about Remus (another one she'll never see again now, she supposes). What he'd said to her...
"You be a good mother, Lil," said Remus Lupin, leaning in to dance with her at her wedding, in autumn. "You live a good life."
James and Sirius had dissapeared (no huge surprise), leaving her with discarded jackets and ties and (most worryingly) a single dress shoe, well polished, and she'd been sitting alone flouncing the skirts of her wide silk dress when she realised that Remus was watching her.
"Is it polite to ask to dance with the bride?" Remus Lupin, imperfect but so handsome in his suit of autumn colours (browns and greens going to seed, hair brushed like a filmstar from a muggle movie in black and white).
"Remus, when the groom has gone missing, it's positively expected..."
"Isn't it the best man's job?" He was smiling (he looked so much younger when he smiled).
"And who do you imagine has abducted the groom?"
"Come dance with me, Lily," he said.
She'd always thought him somehow fragile (how could he be, and stand up to all that pressure?), until he took her in her arms at her wedding and swung her in a circle.
"Oh, Remus," she'd whispered, lying her head against his shoulder, "I'm too tired to dance properly."
"Take off your shoes," he'd said. "I have an idea."
He'd danced them in slow circles (tiptoes on scuffed brown leather), one arm around her waist, the other holding her hand to his shoulder. It was a simple thing to do (child's play), but, at the time, it had seemed unbelievable, magical. Remus Lupin, miracle-worker, not fragile at all (the moon might shine with borrowed light, but underneath the glow it's solid stone rolling across the sky).
He was talking as they danced, something about presents, about money, about not having much money for a gift and being sorry. She'd reached up (borrowing height) and kissed him on the cheekbone (his history in scars).
"Just give us your blessing, Remus," she'd said. "Just make me a wish." The kiss he pressed to her mouth was short and sweet.
"Lily Potter," he said, smiling. "I bless you. Have many children but keep time for dancing. Be a good mother, Lil. You live a good life."
It had seemed like a miracle at the time, and would turn out to be false prophecy (she hears the door open and knows that she'll never have anymore children now). As she steals a final glance at Harry and turns, she can't bring herself to think any less of him and his promises.
He's not there (Peter). She'd almost hoped that he would be, after she realised what was happening. She wanted to look him in the eye (fourth wheel, also loved). She wanted to force him to be the one to do it, if it had to be done at all. Bastard bastard fucking bastard if I could get my hands on you i'd tear your heart out with my bare hands and eat it, choke it down, curse you with every mother's bone of my body...curse you to crawl for a thousand fucking years. You betrayed us. He chose you over Sirius and you fucking betrayed us. You betrayed him and you broke my fucking heart.
She can see him standing on the porch in the snow, Remus and Sirius saying their goodbyes, and his colours seemed to fade in the presence of all that light.
If she's going down, she'll take some of them with her...
If she's going to die, she'll fight. A mother in her aspect, she straightens to her full height. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world is ending...
And go not gently.
If she screams, it's torn from her.
Enough, she tells herself. Enough now...
And it is.
Lily recalls.
James on his knees in the kitchen recalls every other time he's ever been on his knees (Gryffindor common-room, Evans, oh, EVANS...later, in Spring, white flowers and I love you in his eyes). I love you still in his eyes, behind a dying man glaze (you're both creatures already dying).
"Go," he says, and then she loses him in a flare of bright light like sunlight hitting snow. And she runs (skirt up around her thighs so that it can't trip her, kicking the door shut behind her, snatching seconds, begging time).
They say that, in the moment before you die, you life flashes before your eyes.
On the stairs she trips on years and she stumbles.
James on his knees in spring.
He'd proposed three times in the time that she'd known him (those three things she kept and treasured, wrapped in the layers of her heart). She'd been so closed against him at first (him and Sirius, loud, bold stupid and brave, Remus and Peter bobbing in their wake). She closed herself so tightly but he'd opened her with kindness and with joy (always smiling, kind boy and a careful lover). He'd been taking the piss out of her the first time, on his knees in the common room with Sirius hooting and sniggering.
"Evans, oh Evans, be my wife and make an honest man of me?" She'd shied away from him, blushing (teenaged shame makes her angry now - why did you ever waste a minute?).
"Bloody idiot," she'd told him, stalking away.
Pissed the second time (firewhiskey after dinner with friends), and she'd silenced him with careful kisses: the corner of his mouth, his jaw (unshaved), his adam's apple (reminding her that love was at the centre of creation, and of the lump in her own throat when she thinks about loss). Down over his heart (speeding). Her own head had been spinning as she'd reached behind her to remove her bra. She drank her fair share with dinner.
"You're beautiful," he told her, his hands covering her breasts. (She was eighteen, nineteen, in her prime, her goddess aspect. She would never be that beautiful again. She would never be so loved again.)
For a moment, she saw herself how he must have seen her (love reflects).
"I know," she said, her body above him, leaning her weight into his hands as she lifted her thigh to slide across him. guiding him up into her. James always had that startled look in that first moment (all talk, never stop talking boy, but beautiful and full of grace). She bent for a kiss, almost lifting off him completely, took hold of his wrists and kissed his palms. He thrust up into her, and she smiled (slow and lazy), lifting his hands up over his head, kissing stretched muscles.
"Shhh, lover..." She whispered. "Slower."
She held his wrists above his head pinned to the bed (he could have struggled, if he'd wanted, but women are strong when they're in love). From this angle, he filled and completed her, made her. She lifted herself slowly (she ebbed like the tide), arching her back as he slid back into her, smiling at the way his eyes widened, his head tipping back. When he rolled her, she let him (felt ready to be taken over and conquered).
"Will you marry me?" He said, each word a thrust (when he pushed into her she saw heaven draped in white light). His hand was between their bodies, between her legs, his finger stroking her. Even drunk, he had sure and certain hands (would never touch her unless it made her bloom...not perfect all ways, but that way, always). She pressed her hand over his, holding it, rocking against it, against his width and weight inside her, a long loose moan spilling out of her.
"Ask me again when you're sober, James," she said, feeling like a sunrise.
It had taken him six months, but eventually he'd pressed the words into the hair behind her ear for the third time, and she'd nodded, opened herself wide open to him. She'd given James Potter her whole heart in Spring, with the white flowers blooming.
She can hear them coming for her now, and Harry's nursery is at the end of a very long tunnel, and she's thinking things like where would be the best place to meet them (where would she stand the best chance?). And then it's there, suddenly, unbidden: painting the nursery in summer, and Sirius in the garden in the dark, blue paint in dark hair.
"You're getting fat, Lily," he'd said, grinning, bare chested (summer heat clinging after dark).
"I've told you not to smoke around my baby, Sirius..." she'd said, her heart not really in it (too hot, hair knotted back, fanning herself with a day old copy of the Prophet). He was only teasing anyway. She could see it in his eyes (grey eyes, kind at their heart). He rolled onto his stomach on the scrubby grass, poetry in the smooth muscles of his back, his narrow waist (James was a handsome man, but Sirius was a shooting star, perfect and unmarked).
"The wind's a blowin', Lily." Still grinning.
"Put it out and come and sit beside me," she said. He'd looked at her for a second (don't look at me that way, don't give me that Black look, leave that to your rotten apple cousins, worms writhing in their hearts) and then he'd stubbed out his cigarette on the lawn and rolled back towards her.
"You feeling lonely, Lily?" He'd said, rubbing her knee through her light skirt. At first she'd only tolerated him for James' sake; because it had been Sirius who James had loved first and best and it would have broken his heart if she'd told him that, in truth, she found Sirius loud and brash and irritating. So she'd tolerated him, and she'd seen that underneath it all, under the play-acting, the playing the fool, Sirius Black was kind and good with a heart as deep and wide as the sea. In the beginning, she hadn't liked him. By the end, she'd have trusted him with her life, with her baby's life (never got a chance to trust him, darling, daring boy).
That night in summer, she just wanted him to be close.
He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, a beer cradled between his thighs (torn denim, hair knotted at the nape of his neck), with his head rolled back against her knee as she stroked and separated loose strands of his hair.
"Do you ever get scared, Sirius," she said, wiping sweat from between her breasts, tucking her hair behind her ear. There was a long pause before he nodded.
"Doesn't everybody?"
"I suppose so..."
"What are you scared of?" She'd rubbed her bump with both hands.
"Letting this one down."
He'd nodded, taken a long swallow of his beer.
"I don't know what I'm doing all the time, Lily...and it terrifies me." She stroked his head, and, on impulse, the line of his jaw. He'd turned his head and caught her fingers with her lips.
"Just do your best, Sirius..." she'd said, threading his kiss back into his long dark hair. "And nobody will love you any less."
In the nursery, at last, she closes the door and leans against it for a second (she can hear them on the stairs). Harry is awake in his crib, silently watching her. It's now that she realises that there are words for motherless children, but no names for the mothers of murdered sons (some things are too awful). She wants to hold him, but she needs her wand in her hand. She backs to the crib, turning at the last moment to look at him (these last seconds could last forever, her heartbeat centuries slow). Looking down at Harry, she thinks about her wedding and about Remus (another one she'll never see again now, she supposes). What he'd said to her...
"You be a good mother, Lil," said Remus Lupin, leaning in to dance with her at her wedding, in autumn. "You live a good life."
James and Sirius had dissapeared (no huge surprise), leaving her with discarded jackets and ties and (most worryingly) a single dress shoe, well polished, and she'd been sitting alone flouncing the skirts of her wide silk dress when she realised that Remus was watching her.
"Is it polite to ask to dance with the bride?" Remus Lupin, imperfect but so handsome in his suit of autumn colours (browns and greens going to seed, hair brushed like a filmstar from a muggle movie in black and white).
"Remus, when the groom has gone missing, it's positively expected..."
"Isn't it the best man's job?" He was smiling (he looked so much younger when he smiled).
"And who do you imagine has abducted the groom?"
"Come dance with me, Lily," he said.
She'd always thought him somehow fragile (how could he be, and stand up to all that pressure?), until he took her in her arms at her wedding and swung her in a circle.
"Oh, Remus," she'd whispered, lying her head against his shoulder, "I'm too tired to dance properly."
"Take off your shoes," he'd said. "I have an idea."
He'd danced them in slow circles (tiptoes on scuffed brown leather), one arm around her waist, the other holding her hand to his shoulder. It was a simple thing to do (child's play), but, at the time, it had seemed unbelievable, magical. Remus Lupin, miracle-worker, not fragile at all (the moon might shine with borrowed light, but underneath the glow it's solid stone rolling across the sky).
He was talking as they danced, something about presents, about money, about not having much money for a gift and being sorry. She'd reached up (borrowing height) and kissed him on the cheekbone (his history in scars).
"Just give us your blessing, Remus," she'd said. "Just make me a wish." The kiss he pressed to her mouth was short and sweet.
"Lily Potter," he said, smiling. "I bless you. Have many children but keep time for dancing. Be a good mother, Lil. You live a good life."
It had seemed like a miracle at the time, and would turn out to be false prophecy (she hears the door open and knows that she'll never have anymore children now). As she steals a final glance at Harry and turns, she can't bring herself to think any less of him and his promises.
He's not there (Peter). She'd almost hoped that he would be, after she realised what was happening. She wanted to look him in the eye (fourth wheel, also loved). She wanted to force him to be the one to do it, if it had to be done at all. Bastard bastard fucking bastard if I could get my hands on you i'd tear your heart out with my bare hands and eat it, choke it down, curse you with every mother's bone of my body...curse you to crawl for a thousand fucking years. You betrayed us. He chose you over Sirius and you fucking betrayed us. You betrayed him and you broke my fucking heart.
She can see him standing on the porch in the snow, Remus and Sirius saying their goodbyes, and his colours seemed to fade in the presence of all that light.
If she's going down, she'll take some of them with her...
If she's going to die, she'll fight. A mother in her aspect, she straightens to her full height. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world is ending...
And go not gently.
If she screams, it's torn from her.
Enough, she tells herself. Enough now...
And it is.