Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

25 June, 1994 - Change (II)

Lavinia barely slept the rest of that night. Not that she tried particularly hard. Or at all.

She didn't know how long it took her to finally stand up and drop Sirius's hand, but her limbs were stiff and sore from sitting on the hard table when she eventually did. And then she didn't want to go back to sleep because the bed would feel empty and the image of him would haunt her as it had early and that feeling of his hand on her face and his fingers laced with hers... She couldn't bear it.

So instead, she did what she always did when the nights were long and hard and she simply stepped outside, sitting herself down on the front porch and looking out at the horizon and the speckling of stars visible despite the light of a nearly full moon. And there she stayed, letting the sight of the stars steady her, letting the endlessness of the horizon and that night sky remind her that she was small and insignificant and that the world would move on. That she would move on. That she was wonderfully impermanent and so too were her problems.

Perhaps it was a morbid thought, but it had always been strangely comforting to Lavinia and it was no different now as she watched the sky slowly lightening and reminded herself that this too would pass. Like everything else, it would pass. It might hurt like hell and it might be confusing and complicated and when the time came, it might be over too soon, but it would pass.

Because the truth was that sitting there next to him, watching him fall asleep, listening to the rhythm of his breathing... she had remembered, really truly remembered, for perhaps the first time in those twelve long years, what it had felt like to love him. She had remembered the man she had known, the one she had fallen in love with. The one she had wanted to marry. The man who fought for his friends. Who fought for her. The one who laughed wild and free and felt with every piece of his heart. The one who cared. Even when caring hurt, even when it had driven him out of his mind, he had cared with a kind of ferocity Lavinia had never seen in anyone else.

And she had loved him for it.

The problem, she realized, sitting there under the fading stars, was that she didn't know if she could anymore. Not just whether or not she could love him as a whole, but whether or not she could love that wild heart because it was that caring, that wild, fierce caring, that had caused him to leave, had caused him to hunt down their friend. Because that heart had been broken and the ferocity, the vehemence with which it had loved and lost... Lavinia truly could imagine what it had felt like, even if she wished she couldn't. Because of course, that was part of what had made them such a good match. They had both felt so much.

But Lavinia's heart had always been the softer sort, the kind that loved with a quiet, gentle strength where Sirius's had been so wild and fierce. So her heart had been the candle to his wildfire, but at the end of the day, they had both burned.

And maybe she should have known, should have seen it coming, but those days when everything had fallen apart... it was perhaps the first time Lavinia had seen just how destructive that fire could be. Just how much a fierce heart could hurt and burn and tear. And Sirius's had. He had raged and burned and wanted some outlet, somewhere to lay the blame.

But Lavinia... Lavinia had let her own heart flicker and go out.

And that difference... that difference somehow mattered. Somehow changed things.

Which was worse, she realized. It was worse to know that the questions, the hesitation, the complicated caveats on the love she'd once thought would be easy and eternal, were not because Sirius was really, truly different. And it wasn't because she was really truly different. Though she knew they had both changed, at their core they were still who they had always been. And it hurt like hell to realize that even knowing that, even with that small bit of assurance, she still couldn't bring herself to love him. To trust him.