Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

27 June, 1994 - Love (III)

She shouldn't be here. Sirius was an idiot and she shouldn't be here. But idiot or not, he had seen the look in her eyes when she'd said that word that had broken his heart.

Please.

He shouldn't have agreed. He should have told her to say goodbye then and there because this goodbye had to happen and putting it off didn't help anyone. Giving either of them hope didn't help anyone. But...

Please.

And that one word had told him so very very much. That her distance hadn't been entirely by choice. That he hadn't been making up those moments when they met eyes and there was something tight and desperate in those lovely blue depths. That she really, truly wanted to fix this.

Of course, he supposed part of it was also that she was remembering the last time they'd said goodbye. Or, rather, when he had said goodbye and she... she hadn't. Because she hadn't known what was happening and it wasn't her fault in the slightest, but he couldn't help but wonder if she too replayed those words over and over and over in her head, as he had for years.

Remember I love you.

And Merlin he had hoped she remembered. Had hoped the words were enough even as he had known they wouldn't be. Known, as the week and months and years had stretched on that no words could possibly have been enough. Because he had left. She had been right about that. And when she'd said those words, told him why she hadn't been able to forgive him even after so many years.... He had been angry at the time, true, incredulous that she had managed to forgive a man for murder and yet hadn't forgiven him for leaving. But after talking to her... Sirius had realized that in some ways, it made sense, at least from her perspective.

They had talked about Peter, after all, and though Sirius didn't think he would ever be able to forgive the man... it did make sense that she would. Lavinia had always been too forgiving, after all, and once she'd explained... Well it was still awful what Peter had done, but at least her forgiveness had made sense.

So if that made sense, then the only question left was why she hadn't forgiven him. And that... that he thought he had started to understand too. Because when she'd mentioned her pain and her spiraling after Lily and James's death, Sirius had remembered just what her pain had always looked like, the wild self destructive torrent that had been her hell. But it had made him remember other things too. And one of those things he had remembered was just how many people had left her behind. How many people she'd lost over things that had not been her fault.

All her friends at school had turned their backs on her when all she'd intended to do was escape an abusive home. So she had lost all of them. They had left her.

And Regulus had died without giving her the chance to say goodbye and he knew that had hurt. Because he had left her behind.

And she had somewhere along the line lost her mother's love, which she swore time and again she'd once had and Sirius knew that whatever ridiculous reasoning Rhea Selwyn might have, nothing about that was even close to Lavinia's fault. Just like so many others, Rhea had left too. Had walked away on her own two feet and left her daughter standing alone.

So Lavinia had lost friends and she had lost family, not because she had done anything wrong, but because they had left, plain and simple. And when Sirius too had left, when he had run off and not come back... Well, he supposed it had been the last straw. The stone that had finally made the load too heavy to bear. And all her forgiveness, all the million times she had told herself she understood all the people who had left her, all the times she'd made herself forgive them out of some twisted sense of loyalty... It had finally come to a head and she had had nothing left to give. No forgiveness left in her because it had all been used up and all the pain, all the rage of a lifetime of being left behind had finally come to bear down on her all at once.