[closed] the place was beautiful no longer

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: sonvisage & lumenrelegandus
When: Starts Wednesdayish, ends today.
Where: Their place.
Format: Prose
What: is love?
Warnings: Poisoning. And life.

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[sonvisage]

As the point of contact is broken (one arm jerking from beneath, jostling her unceremoniously forward) her eyes open, and her breath catches - something in between remembrance and wakefulness.

A nameless, formless pall is cast over the room - the bed suddenly feels empty. The gulf between them is wide and palpable and she does and does not know why. (Maybe she does. It’s just easier not to---) His sudden movement, his recoil is jarring - and it shocks her into further wakefulness, further remembrance.

The thin gown she's started to wear (never had need of it before even on the coldest night) - just one more thing between them - its perceived weight pinning her in place, as paralyzed as she was on the day of their first meeting.

Echoes of recent dreams consume her thoughts for an agonizing, frightening moment, and she’s still. Quiet as she lies, looking up at him for longer than it should take for her to realize he’s shaking. She opens her lips to speak, but it’s strained.

Remus...?

[lumenrelegandus]

It doesn't matter that they've shared a bed for months. It doesn't matter that they've shared far more. It doesn't matter that he is grateful to her and needs her and cares about her. It doesn't matter that going backward like this, after all this time of companionable solace, is probably cruel. The person beside him is not Dora and he can't bear that she's not.

Shutting his eyes tighter, he tries to stop shaking-tries to lie to her by seeming asleep.

[sonvisage]

Did his eyes shut tighter or is she imagining it? She doesn't know and doesn't want to care, but that's a losing battle. So the shadows spill as she turns and rises. Raises a hand to to hover in the empty air between them (it's not empty though is it? It's thick and suffocating, full of confusion and anguish and tension and---)

---she exhales in frustration.

Because for a moment she is reminded of Scar, and this is one way she doesn't wish to be reminded.

Reaches toward him, something about distance made palpable as Gluttony whines in his sleep (he's probably hungry) - and is it her imagination again or is Remus moving backward even more?

[lumenrelegandus]

In that moment between restlessness and slipping back into sleep, it was suddenly very clear. If impossible to consciously align.

How he'd come back. How Io had helped him. What Lestrange did. How Dora kept being pushed back. Now, now, when things should be improving-and were-relative stability, relative calm, impending healing, were causing her to flood back. All the grieving he'd evaded with Io. The fullstop gap, memorydeath when Lestrange impersonated Dora. Hermione arriving, that old world becoming real again. Of course it was flooding back now, stronger, not a backward step at all, but…

Without touch he must sense Io's hand near him. He turns his face toward it, facing up, so for a moment he emerged from shadow. He murmured, not conscious by half: "I'm sorry for everything. …I am, I do."

Which would be a marvelous thing right now to say.

Except in tone, in everything, it's recognisably what he'd said in that dream.

Thus doubtless not actually saying it to Io, now.