Ten Song Challenge: Part Deux
Here's Song 4 and 5! Unfortunately, I doubt I will reach 10, but here's another Remus/Sirius fic and also a bit of Sam/Frodo. Enjoy!
Song 4: "Un Bel Di" from 'Madame Butterfly' - Ying Huang
Fandom: Lord of the Rings (Not a Parody this time. :p )
Pairing: Frodo/Sam
Rating: PG to be on the safe side. It's Hobbit-love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpW8Jvl9low
Mi metto là sul ciglio del colle I stay upon the edge of the hill
E aspetto gran tempo And I wait a long time
e non mi pesa a lunga attesa. but I do not grow weary of the long wait
...
Tienti la tua paura - Hold back your fears -
Io con sicura fede lo aspetto. I with secure faith wait for him.
The request had been unspoken. It needn’t have been spoken, in his mind at least. The quiet aching wish that had settled in his heart and warded off grief with a stubborn mantra of ‘one day... one day...’ had never had to be asked for; it just was.
The wooden boards beneath his feet creaked slightly and the heavy, warm rain began to clear from his old eyes and cease its rhythmic pulse against the deck. His stomach no longer felt queasy except with some sudden realisation that, as usual, he’d foolishly stumbled into a decision with seemingly little thought for the consequences past easing the tight cord about his lungs that drew him West.
A shore could be seen now, pale and grey in the pre-dawn. At the sight of it, his heart filled with wonder like none he’d felt since he’d been a young lad. The expanse of land growing on the horizon was greener than he could’ve believed grass to grow with all his years of knowhow on the subject; it hardly seemed like a real colour at all in Sam’s mind.
He breathed in the air, fresh from the rain and watched mesmerised as suddenly the white sands began to brighten to a golden hue. The sun was rising behind him, but Sam did not turn as the glorious land before him seemed to clear the cobwebs from his eyes and ears and draw out the poison that had caused all his joints to ache as he had become old and weary.
He gasped at the sensation, the cleansing that the rainwater drying on his face achieved in the early light. His body seemed strong again and he no longer had to lean heavily against the stern as the ship slipped through the shallow water as if it were molten mirror. He did not dare glimpse his reflection in these magic waters, worried it would break this spell that had fallen over him.
He had dreamt of this day, seen a hundred variations of his arrival, wondering if he would find some buried youth within himself. His Mam had always said ‘You are only as old as you feel’ and hearing the waves lapping up about him and seeing the dawn glinting off the land before him made him feel like a giddy tween again.
His heart was pounding a deep rhythm against his ribs, similar he thought to the jigs his girls would perform, laughing and breathless and so very very beautiful or so he thought with only a little blind pride. He thought back to his Elanor, her eyes warm even when wet with sadness, her lovely hands holding Mr Bilbo’s book to her chest reverently. He would miss her most of all, he supposed, miss her constant worriting and the sound of her singing inside the smial when she’d been younger and he’d been working in the garden. He wondered if...
He wondered if he remembered her.
Before he knew it, the bottom of the boat scraped soft sand and the sailors about him leapt over the side to pull the elegant vessel fully onto the land. Songs and rhymes seemed to be exhaled from the trees further inland where soft petal-coloured lights glowed like a flowerbed made of stars, elven voices welcoming him as if he truly deserved it.
A tall body lifted him up and lowered him to the fine sand which prickled against his toes just like the excitement skittering all over his skin. As he touched this new land, he felt a last burst of hot rejuvenation exploding in his heart like a red and gold firework and then an over-whelming urge to weep at the sight of this land, the knowing that he’d find true peace here at last, the missing part of his heart.
“Master Samwise,” one of the elves said with a respectful bow and fond smile. Shaken from his thoughts, he looked at his companion, who merely glanced further down the beach, the opposite direction to the lights, as glittering white cliffs began to rise from the sea.
With rekindled speed and impatience, Sam left with only a few hurried words of gratitude. He left the sand and began up the winding path towards the top of the cliffs, the pale stone warm beneath his soles as if it had been under an August midday sun for hours.
Time told him it was Autumn, both for the world and in his lifetime; Sam felt like Spring, like he’d been drowsing for a long, long winter, finally awakened and hearkening to some silent call from within him that it was time to start again.
He climbed faster, only restraining from running for fear that he might wear his newly-healed joints out.
As he reached the crest of the cliff and looked towards the next bay, a silvery haze of smoke could be seen rising from a chimney sticking out of a small hillock with windows and flowerbeds and...
Sam’s lungs were heaving from the climb and he choked on the sweet air at the unimaginable sight, his eyes falling on a pale figure stood close to the edge of the cliff, barefoot in the untrimmed grass, moss green cloak flapping in the westerly wind, the wind that had brought Sam home. Blue eyes were fixed on the horizon, a small frown between dark eyebrows, hand clutching a vial of starlight hanging from his neck.
It was his master, looking like aught had changed for him in all these long years.
No, he had changed; he was how he’d been before, before the wearying burden and the sickness and the grief. Sam couldn’t take another step, knees all turned to jelly as he hoped he wasn’t just seeing things, that his one wish was really, finally, coming true.
Then his master’s spine stiffened where he stood and Sam knew he’d been spotted, although Frodo’s eyes never left the sea. Sam remembered how he’d been unable to look at his reflection in the waves for fear his face would still be wrinkled and weathered.
He took a step closer and he could almost hear the shivering sigh that escaped Frodo’s mouth in anticipation and dread of disappointment. He wondered how many times Frodo had stood and watched the horizon, wondered how long the time had felt waiting for him to come.
Sam felt sick in his tightly knotted stomach, knowing that things should never have been this way. That Frodo should never have had to go anywhere without him, even to get better.
He took small slow steps, feeling every inch of him mourn for time lost and pain caused, but also rejoice at the sight of the only thing in his life that had seemed far too great, far too big for Sam’s humble world. No simple gardener’s son, no hobbit, should ever have felt this, this fierce throbbing of passionate feeling that he’d once thought only elves and men in long troubled tales could truly experience.
Then Frodo’s head snapped over to look at him and Sam froze mid-step, not a hobbit’s arm length away from him. Frodo’s stare was wide and doubting and Sam wished he could find voice to reassure him. Frodo drew a sharp breath in through near-gritted teeth in a hiss, eyes damp as a hand rose between them as if caught on the breeze. Sam didn’t look at it as it stopped to hover close to his chest and then floated up with an eddy to cup the air around his jaw. A deep shudder ran through him as if that palm were already caressing his skin, but he kept his eyes on Frodo’s, or rather Frodo kept his eyes there, for Sam knew of no greater power to draw his gaze away than the one in their depths that held him.
A tear dribbled down his master’s cheek as Frodo’s maimed fingers wobbled unsteadily where they hung; he choked and a deep moan tumbled from his lips as they came into contact with Sam’s face before his body was suddenly crashing into Sam like the gusts of sea air, wrapping about Sam within the blink of an eye, tight and shaking.
Sam clung on fiercely as Frodo sobbed between panted breaths, hands sliding frantically from the corners of his shoulders to the opposite hip and along the slight furrow of his spine erratically. The gardener just squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding tears and clung on all the tighter to the shape and weight of his friend in his arms, seeming so familiar as if he had held it every day. And there was a scent in his dark hair that Sam had never noticed clinging to Frodo before, beneath the warm salt of sea spray, a scent of Bag End; that musk of the earthen larder walls and the Lavender that grew under what had been Frodo’s bedroom window and the sweet smoke that was exhaled by the logs as they burned in the study.
Sam had been able to taste Frodo on the very air he breathed for sixty years.
“I hoped...” A violent shudder stole over his master and Sam hung on to every breathed syllable of that soft voice, “I wished you would...” Frodo’s voice was stolen by the wind again, but the meaning still seemed to seep into Sam’s heart and fill his chest with hot joy.
He sniffed, tears hard to distract from their determined fall, as he mumbled thickly, “I said I’d follow, didn’t I?”
And then Frodo laughed and drew back a little, his eyes seeming to fix on parts of his face he himself had never given much heed to before. Slender pale hands rose to possess Sam’s jaw in their palms, watery eyes trailing over and over the crinkled damp crows’ feet and thin bottom lip and once-broken nose.
Sam knew he would never be able to have his fill of seeing Frodo’s face again and so did not bother trying to start a task he could never finish. He let his eyelids slide shut and felt the wind-chilled clammy skin of Frodo’s forehead beneath his own. He sighed deeply and wrapped his arms tighter about his master. Frodo laughed again quietly, voice husky, and sweet Eru, if that weren’t the most glorious sound his old-young heart had ever felt reverberating against it.
Frodo’s hands pulled his face down slightly and Sam smiled at the feeling of slightly chapped and salty lips scratching against his own lightly as he whispered on a sigh, “Well... I’m back.”
~~~~~~~
Song 5: Stormy Weather - Ella Fitzgerald
Fandom: Harry Potter.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius (because Remus + Ella = Love)
Rating: Um... PG-13 to be safe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezGHapF8-lY
Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky,
Stormy weather.
Since my man and I ain't together,
Keeps raining all the time.
It was raining.
Not that that made much of a change, he thought.
It did, however, mean that he couldn’t boil an egg or make some soup as all his saucepans were scattered about the room on magically-supported towers of books or the sparse furniture. The constant plop of raindrops through the roof would not even be held off by an Impervius Charm and trying to keep one in place that did the trick was exhausting.
So the plopping was drowned out by Ella and lots of her.
Or, at least, the plopping added percussion somewhat ironically to the current melody.
He hummed along quietly, glancing at the door to the only other room. Pale candlelight, sickly urine colour showing it was a flame that would be producing no warmth, spilt from the cracks and was occasionally broken by the shadow of the man moving inside.
Remus hurriedly turned back to the small gas hob (the kind used my muggles on camping trips), trying (and failing) to work out a way to make something edible from his meagre stores without any need for a saucepan.
The only option so far was the three cans of baked beans heated in their tins and eaten with the two least bent forks and the mould-less third of a loaf he had managed to preserve from before the last Full. Maybe, if he could dry his wand enough he’d be able to toast slices of it without burning them, but his wand was being more than temperamental since that crack had appeared along its length a couple of Fulls after he left Hogwarts and the continual damp only seemed to aggravate the situation.
Sometimes the only thing that stopped him crying for his dignity was just that; dignity.
He glanced at the backlit door again, hearing a gruff mostly tuneless voice murmuring along with the words, stumbling over a song he probably hadn’t heard in fourteen years.
What had Dumbledore been thinking? Sending him here? Probably something to do with ‘Love being the greatest shelter’.
Remus sighed and rubbed cold fingers over his eyelids, hard enough to see bruise coloured flashes. That was just it, though. It hadn’t been love, had it? Remus had seen love, had lived with love for years and knew what it was. Love was Lily and James. But he and Sirius?
There was a creak from the other room, the wardrobe opening, and a soft expletive, no doubt at the pitiful contents. Remus gritted his jaw and switched on the gas, lighting a match and watching as the rings were wreathed in blue.
His lower back and both his knees ached and the scratch near his elbow itched like mad; it was far too soon to be considering food or even movement, but he had a guest and said guest had appeared last night only minutes after he’d transformed, panting from what had no doubt been a sprint to get here in time, and had still found enough energy to calm him slightly, keep him from beating himself up too badly.
And that deserved a lot more than baked beans.
He picked up a can determinedly and scrabbled around in the cardboard box which held his kitchen utensils until he found something that was probably a can opener. It worked pretty well and eventually he was placing the can carefully on the heat and grabbing another.
‘Dinner’ was bubbling sluggishly when the door from behind him and more faint light spilt across the shadowy room. He didn’t move from where he stood and instead set about sawing the slight stale bread into reasonable slices. He heard Sirius’ near-silent approach, somehow avoiding clattering into one of Remus’ rain-catching constructions.
Hands clasped around his biceps and he felt a snort of breath against the topmost bump of his spine protruding from the baggy neckline of his jumper. He shivered at the surprising warmth of it, more used to the chill of his pathetic subsiding shack, the chill of isolation.
Merlin, even sat by the fire in his study in Hogwarts he’d not felt anything like the prickling heat now searing inches from his spine so acutely.
The hands on his biceps gently began to chafe the coarse material about near-numb skin. The touch was self-assured, as it always was with Sirius, even now when his appearance was not. The friction about his arms slowed slightly after a few moments, until the palms froze clasped about his skinny arms.
He tried to toast the slices before him with his malfunctioning wand only for them to gain a crisper coat, but no colour whatsoever. Even the toast was monochrome.
Remus sighed a little at the pathetic fizzle of magic and murmured, “I know it’s feeble but...”
“Do you know James’ mum, bless her, used to make us these on rainy days? Haven’t had them since, well, since I was seventeen I reckon.”
And although he should’ve told Remus that his food shopping abilities were appalling as were his eating habits and that it wasn’t really poverty but something far closer to laziness and lack of care for himself that made the werewolf buy little and eat even less, Sirius had made him feel a little less gloomy.
Remus put ‘Baked beans - for rainy days’ on his mental list of items he’d go out for in the morning.
He turned awkwardly, trying not to bash into Sirius who was standing very close, but from lack of human contact, Remus couldn’t quite judge how close. He managed it and Sirius smiled at him a little, all the hungry, tired angles in his face subtly hidden by the only soft curve his face had left.
Remus nabbed the wadded up tea towel from the garden furniture kitchen table. It was good enough for a makeshift oven glove and he managed to transfer the hot tins to the table along with two small saucers with barely toasted bread on them.
Still, Sirius sat down and began eating without another word, looking at the food like it was Lily’s roast chicken they’d been presented with on a Sunday; even this was twenty times better than rats, Remus was willing to bet.
And then Sirius’ eyes moved from the food to Remus’ face and didn’t change much at all.
If he wasn’t chilled to the bone and recovering from a transformation, he was willing to bet his cheeks would’ve been nearly pink. He stared at his fork and followed it path into his meal carefully, spearing a few of the dull orange beans.
He felt twenty-one again, and that was dangerous.
For thirteen years, thirteen years, he’d had to tell himself again and again it hadn’t been love because...
Because his heart had been convinced it had been and determined to break itself even when it was only held together by the knowledge Harry had survived.
Sirius rolled his shoulder stiffly and scooped up a mouthful of beans; Remus watched him chew and then dunk the barely browned toast into his tin knowing that this sort of reawakening to feeling should not be coupled with images of poverty and incarceration, of lost youth and lost hope and the loss of anything else that had ever made them feel like they belonged in this world.
Maybe Dumbledore was right after all...
“Remus?”
He snapped out of his embarrassing thoughts to see warm silver eyes and an empty tin. He hummed in response, taking a bite out of the toast hurriedly which was getting soggy just from the damp air.
“Hurry the fuck up and finish. I’m sick of English rain. We’re going south.”
Remus stared at the man across for him in surprise for a moment before he began to laugh, hard, and Sirius rose from his seat with a smile far quieter than the sly grin he’d been expecting, collecting up the detritus of their half-eaten supper and placing a hand over one of Remus’. The werewolf tilted his head up towards the pale face, framed with dark hair which didn’t shine any more, but that was fairly smooth and untangled now. And it finally seemed like he was looking at the same person he’d once known, not just a sad portrait, and that he was looking at him with his own eyes.
“Hey Moony,” Sirius said quietly and then gripped Remus’ thin hand a little tighter and dragged them both towards the door and out into the deluge towards a tethered, restless Buckbeak, leaving a chorus of drips behind them.
.
A/N: Feedback would be cherished and petted and taken for lovely long walks!
Sam x