[closed] from green to gold

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: sonvisage, lumenrelegandus, and the fact of Tonks.
When:
Part I (flashbackdated) right between this and that.
Part II (slightly less backdated): as everyone picks themselves back up after the Abyssal War (which ended, belatedly, for these two here to there.)
Where: Lust and Lupin’s apartment
Format: Prose; not bothering to color-code: Lust is Lust, Lupin is Lupin.

Comments

[lumenrelegandus]

[looks at her for a moment.

At last says softly,]

It's not just about struggling with your own feelings of humanity, is it? Not just learning what it means in yourself. It's learning what it means. For everyone.

You didn't know-you couldn't possibly have known, what you were getting into… with someone only human. It wasn't real, until it was forced on you, that I could get hurt or killed, and what it would be like for you to endure that… And that I… that any one person's heart and mind can get overwhelmed by their own preoccupations and pain, shape their choices, and again how it would effect…

[his voice trails off. His finger curls against her hand. He'll maintain that contact until she pulls away, whereupon he wouldn't try to keep it.

Says slowly at last,]

I don’t think there is a right way to do what I did. There may at least be better ways. But I don't know how…

I won’t keep telling you how sorry I am… I hope you know, if there’s anything, ever, I can do to make it…

[better? right? not have happened?

Impossible… and impossible that it wasn't going to happen… they'd both known, they must have…

But no, the point was she couldn't know.

And on the most important level, he really hadn't realised. Everything he's saying now is genuine discovery and questioning; not a hint of lecture.

As much to himself as to her:]

We were both entirely honest from the beginning. But that doesn't mean we were capable of understanding.

I just…

[his mouth tightens; still no right way, undeserving to ask for himself and presumptuous to ask for her; can’t help but ask for both:]

Do you-can you understand-or believe-why I had to?

[sonvisage]

I think I can.

[...and there's a space of silence here that seems to stretch eons as she stares into the ruin of their former life.]

It might have been easier if you'd died.

[Yet she doesn't pull away. And her voice holds no malice. Her own fingers move, but barely, a curl and a brush before they're still.]

[lumenrelegandus]

[a faint very-nearly smile]

Isn't the problem here that we all come back?

[sonvisage]

Do we?

[Come back from death? From this? From all of it?]

I'm not sure it's up to us.

[lumenrelegandus]

[a pause. At last, the briefest, lightest squeeze of her hand-sad agreement. For most else he would say otherwise, but sometimes one must follow evidence…]

I'm not sure either.