Ficlet: "Before and After", Lily/James, Remus, R
Title: "Before and After"
Author: scythia
Pairing: James/Lily, Remus
Length: 725 words
Rating: R
Summary: Lily and Remus, before the war and after
Notes: Like Hush, this began as fluff. I started writing this for tarie's James and Lily Challenge but Remus kept on poking his head in too. One of these days, damn it, I will write fluff! Xposted to my personal journal.
After the war everything will be different. After the war everything will change. At night James moves above Lily in the darkness and gasps out promises. After the war we will go walking, you and I, along the river’s edge. James likes to make love in the darkness, likes the way Lily’s hair burns brighter than the candle flames and more steadily. He likes to think that Lily likes to be with him like this, all the trappings of romance, gazes down on her earnestly, and Lily, who can never have enough light, smiles and tugs his hair.
Afterwards she stands, legs unsteady and white against the moonlight, and walks to the window and opens it wide. There is the wind, cool and damp and the faintest bitter tinge of rain, and the sound of the city murmuring in its sleep. James comes and stands behind her and wraps his arms around her waist and her skin is cold where the wind has blown but his hands are warm as a summer picnic and he says I promise, Lily, I promise.
*
After the war everything should have been different. It was what they fought for, wasn’t it? The Thames is caught up in its own currents and does not reply, and Remus picks up a pebble furred with algae and turns to go home. The streets are more quiet, perhaps, darker, or perhaps it is only his thoughts that have grown quieter and darker. This is what it is like to lose, thinks Remus. This is what it is like to have lost. It is a lesson he did not need to learn another time.
He meets with Ginny in a bar in a seedy part of town, and her hair is a riot of color in the dark, her face pale, two spots on her cheeks burning earnestly. She tells him about the underground, she tells him about resistance, she tells him about not letting hope die. If Remus lets his eyes slip out of focus, just for a moment, so, she could almost be Lily, pale and beautiful, Lily who burned so bright.
*
Lily sits there silently while they boast of battles won, voices loud enough to drown the ache. We have the bastards now, they say. Victory is nigh! Says James, and pantomimes smoking a cigar with fingers that had been boneless in an infirmary two hours ago, fingers that had rendered her boneless in a bed two nights ago. Of course it is, she says, and watches certainty perch on his face like glasses.
As long as I have you, says James as she rides him, shoulders scything through the darkness. As long as we have each other. Even now the war is everywhere, slips into bed with them, someone else’s cold feet beneath the covers. James believes in friendship, in love, in forever. James believes in victory. Lily believes in friendship and Lily believes in love, but she knows that war defies belief. The war lays a cold precise hand on the small of her back and she shuts her eyes and shudders as she comes.
*
Victory suits Lucius Malfoy, Remus notes in the pretty Death Eater tableau he sees from the street. Fine robes, fine crystal, fine people enjoying each other’s company in the fine restaurant. A familiar silhouette in the back, hook-nosed and dour, apart from the others, outside their notice. Their eyes meet through the thick wavy glass, distorted outlines, features smudged. Remus examines his face and sees guilt, relief, resignation. Remus squints and sees that Snape has never turned to face him (has he?), that it is his own face he is staring at, warped by the glass.
Off to meet Ginny then, the appointed time, the appointed place, but something, some instinct coiled beneath his skin prickles no and he walks past the doorway stumbling slightly on the cobblestones as he tries to be inconspicuous hairs on his neck quivering on edge and he keeps on walking and walking and he does not think of what is happening now happening there happening to Ginny and he does not think of what he could have done if he had been there if everything had been different if before the war and after the war if he had been different if he had believed.
Author: scythia
Pairing: James/Lily, Remus
Length: 725 words
Rating: R
Summary: Lily and Remus, before the war and after
Notes: Like Hush, this began as fluff. I started writing this for tarie's James and Lily Challenge but Remus kept on poking his head in too. One of these days, damn it, I will write fluff! Xposted to my personal journal.
After the war everything will be different. After the war everything will change. At night James moves above Lily in the darkness and gasps out promises. After the war we will go walking, you and I, along the river’s edge. James likes to make love in the darkness, likes the way Lily’s hair burns brighter than the candle flames and more steadily. He likes to think that Lily likes to be with him like this, all the trappings of romance, gazes down on her earnestly, and Lily, who can never have enough light, smiles and tugs his hair.
Afterwards she stands, legs unsteady and white against the moonlight, and walks to the window and opens it wide. There is the wind, cool and damp and the faintest bitter tinge of rain, and the sound of the city murmuring in its sleep. James comes and stands behind her and wraps his arms around her waist and her skin is cold where the wind has blown but his hands are warm as a summer picnic and he says I promise, Lily, I promise.
*
After the war everything should have been different. It was what they fought for, wasn’t it? The Thames is caught up in its own currents and does not reply, and Remus picks up a pebble furred with algae and turns to go home. The streets are more quiet, perhaps, darker, or perhaps it is only his thoughts that have grown quieter and darker. This is what it is like to lose, thinks Remus. This is what it is like to have lost. It is a lesson he did not need to learn another time.
He meets with Ginny in a bar in a seedy part of town, and her hair is a riot of color in the dark, her face pale, two spots on her cheeks burning earnestly. She tells him about the underground, she tells him about resistance, she tells him about not letting hope die. If Remus lets his eyes slip out of focus, just for a moment, so, she could almost be Lily, pale and beautiful, Lily who burned so bright.
*
Lily sits there silently while they boast of battles won, voices loud enough to drown the ache. We have the bastards now, they say. Victory is nigh! Says James, and pantomimes smoking a cigar with fingers that had been boneless in an infirmary two hours ago, fingers that had rendered her boneless in a bed two nights ago. Of course it is, she says, and watches certainty perch on his face like glasses.
As long as I have you, says James as she rides him, shoulders scything through the darkness. As long as we have each other. Even now the war is everywhere, slips into bed with them, someone else’s cold feet beneath the covers. James believes in friendship, in love, in forever. James believes in victory. Lily believes in friendship and Lily believes in love, but she knows that war defies belief. The war lays a cold precise hand on the small of her back and she shuts her eyes and shudders as she comes.
*
Victory suits Lucius Malfoy, Remus notes in the pretty Death Eater tableau he sees from the street. Fine robes, fine crystal, fine people enjoying each other’s company in the fine restaurant. A familiar silhouette in the back, hook-nosed and dour, apart from the others, outside their notice. Their eyes meet through the thick wavy glass, distorted outlines, features smudged. Remus examines his face and sees guilt, relief, resignation. Remus squints and sees that Snape has never turned to face him (has he?), that it is his own face he is staring at, warped by the glass.
Off to meet Ginny then, the appointed time, the appointed place, but something, some instinct coiled beneath his skin prickles no and he walks past the doorway stumbling slightly on the cobblestones as he tries to be inconspicuous hairs on his neck quivering on edge and he keeps on walking and walking and he does not think of what is happening now happening there happening to Ginny and he does not think of what he could have done if he had been there if everything had been different if before the war and after the war if he had been different if he had believed.