And after all this waiting for skies to fall
I need this to be real; oh, please let it be real
-Yellowcard, "Be The Young"
i. James
They found her body - broken, bleeding, face filled with signs of pain and fear, and the Death Eaters had clearly enjoyed what they were doing - amidst the rubble of a ruined book store.
The first thing James saw was Lily. The redhead was on her hands and knees at Cynthia's side. Her face was streaked with tears that left tracks along her pale cheeks. One hand had extended in front of her, hovering over Cynthia's unseeing blue eyes.
Cynthia's blonde hair was splayed out across the ground beneath her head, the golden locks mixed with the debris. She would have hated that, James thought to himself. She would have hated that her hair had gotten dirty. She had been vain about her appearance - and with good reason. She had been beautiful.
She was still beautiful. But her perfect features were dotted with specks of dried blood and there was a large crimson stain spreading out along the front of her robes.
Lily drew back her hand and rested it on the slightly visible bulge at her stomach. Their child. A child they would bring into a world filled with hatred and bigotry, with danger and violence, with war.
He hurried to her side, crouching down before her and pulling her towards him, trying to shield him from the view of Cynthia's body. She shouldn't have to be here, shouldn't have to see this. He wanted to give her happiness, and he wanted to protect her from the horrors of this place.
Too late.
He knew he couldn't do either.
"Lily," he whispered. "Come on. You don't need to stay here." He kissed her forehead and ran his hands through her hair, murmuring, "I've got you, Lily. It's okay. I've got you."
She turned and fell into his embrace, clinging to him tightly. "Don't let go," she whispered in reply.
"I won't," he promised, "not ever," and for a moment the strain and tension of the past few months seemed to fade away, and he wondered if, in this grief and pain, he might find his wife again.
But Lily seemed to be constantly moving away from him.
The room was silent except for the crackle of flames in the fireplace. Lily had sunk onto one of the large sofas the moment they returned home, and she hadn't moved since then. It had been two hours, and James didn't know what to do. His pregnant wife was staring blankly at the flames, and nothing he said seemed to register with her.
How was he supposed to help her? He wanted to take away her pain, would have given anything in the world to erase that look of grief and heartbreak and resignation from her eyes. He knew that expression; it was the same one they all wore every time an Order member was killed. It was the expression that reflected all the pain they were feeling - and the fact that this attack, this death, hadn't been a surprise.
These deaths were practically expected now.
But Cynthia...
Cynthia Connolly had been a pureblood. The Connolly family could trace their blood back through seventeen generations of witches and wizards, which was more than most other families could manage.
Her father had been a solicitor in Ireland before he died, and both her uncles were merchants. Her older brother worked at the Ministry, and her sister had married a German wizard who worked at a bank on the Continent. They were solidly middle class jobs, and as such, the family was often looked down upon by the more affluent purebloods in Britain. But although the family was by no means wealthy, no one could deny the Connolly's pure blood.
Cynthia had not been killed because of her blood.
She was not a member of the Order. Though her feelings on the matter were firmly anti-Voldemort, she was not one of the few that Dumbledore had asked to join his secret organization. Lily had been surprised and even a little bit upset about it, and James had often wondered why Cynthia didn't ask Dumbledore to join. The elderly wizard would have let her - James was sure of that - so why had Cynthia decided not to fight?
Had she hoped it would keep her safe?
The Connolly family was not outspoken about the war. Voldemort's reign of terror was mostly centered in England, and only just reached into Scotland. It had less of an impact on Ireland, and the Irish magical community had never been known for getting involved in English politics anyway. So although the family might not have agreed with Voldemort, they would not have been particularly high on his list of targets.
That should have kept her safe - right?
Cynthia had not been killed for her loyalties.
"Lily? Can I get you anything?" James tried again, but the redhead gave no answer to his whispered question. She didn't look up, didn't meet his gaze, and he found himself wanting to grab her by the shoulders and shake until she showed some emotion. Something. Anything.
Anything that would remind him of the Lily from Hogwarts, the Lily he had first known and first loved, the Lily he truly believed was still somewhere inside her.
She had clung to him and begged him to never let her go and he had thought...
But no.
He closed his eyes and pictured Cynthia's bright blue eyes, now clouded in death.
James had dated Cynthia for a few months during their fourth year. Cynthia had been fun. She'd flirted with him shamelessly, snogged him in the center of the Quidditch pitch after one particularly brilliant match, and laughed when he spiked Sirius' pumpkin juice with a Babbling potion directly before their Transfiguration lesson.
James felt his breath catch in his throat at the thought that he would never hear Cynthia's laugh again.
He turned away from Lily and stared out the window towards the sky. The night seemed even darker than usual. A few clouds had rolled in, blocking the stars from view and obscuring the half-moon.
He shivered suddenly.
He hadn't been there, when Cynthia had died, but he could so easily imagine what it had been like. The circle of Death Eaters in their hooded robes and masks, the raucous laughter as Cynthia screamed in agony… There had been no swift and painless death for Cynthia. No, it had been long and slow and agonizing.
The blonde witch had not been killed for her blood, and she had not been killed for her loyalties.
She had been killed for fun.
"I don't understand."
James started at the sound of Lily's voice. He turned to face her. She was still staring at the fire, and as James walked around the sofa so that he could face her fully, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears. The raw emotion in her expression was enough to fill James with the nearly uncontrollable desire to hurt the people who had killed Cynthia.
But her voice was hollow. Empty.
"I don't understand how this happens. I don't understand why she died. Why we're all dying. I don't understand the point."
James crouched in front of her and took her hands in his. She felt cold and stiff, almost lifeless, but he pushed away that thought. He couldn't even bear to imagine what his life would be like without Lily in it.
Lily looked at him then, dragging her eyes away from the fire and settling them onto his features. She was searching for something, and through the grief and pain so prominent in her expression, he saw something else. Desperation? Hope? She was waiting for him to explain, waiting for him to make everything better.
He squeezed her hands. She didn't squeeze his back.
"I don't understand, either," he admitted.
She pulled her hands back sharply and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "I don't want to bring a child into this," she whispered.
"I know," James said. "That is why we're fighting. So that this will end before the baby is born."
Lily blinked several times, forcing back tears. Then she said in a choked voice, "Do you really believe this is ever going to end?"
"Yes," James answered emphatically. "It will end, Lily. One day it will all be over."
Lily stood up. "And which side will have won?"
It was the question they never asked, the possibility they refused to consider. It was going badly for the Order, and James knew that. It had been going badly for a while, perhaps before he and Lily even joined the organization. They were outnumbered, and the bureaucracy of the Ministry did nothing to help them. The Death Eaters were slowly picking them off, killing their loved ones and destroying everything they held dear, and the only thing that they had to cling to was the belief that one day this would all end.
But they never spoke of how it might end.
And in that one moment, Lily had ripped apart the safety of their silence and forced that painful truth to the forefront of James' mind.
Long after Lily had fallen asleep, James sat on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling as though it might have answers for him. The fire died in the grate, the last sparks sputtering and the embers finally ceasing to glow, and James still could not bring himself to sleep.
Which side would win?
Lily had believed in the good in people. She'd had more faith in humanity than almost anyone he had ever met, and although that faith had been severely shaken once or twice at Hogwarts, he had never seen her as bitter and angry as she was now.
The anger had started with the onset of her pregnancy, and he had originally assumed that it was nothing more than hormones. But time had dragged on the few brief bursts of fury had become a constant, and their arguments had turned into screaming matches and then...
Then they had stopped talking all together, and his Lily had slowly started to fade.
He wondered vaguely - when she looked at him, did she think he had changed, too?
He curled his hand into a fist and pressed down on the sofa cushion. He hadn't cried for Cynthia before, but now that the house was silent and he was alone, he felt the burn of tears in his eyes. They wouldn't fall, he knew that much. They never fell. Not anymore, not when he experienced pain and grief every day, when it had become so common place that it didn't even surprise him when someone he knew, someone he cared about, was murdered.
And still the world turned. People went to work and came home and had dinner with their families and ignored the world going up in flames all around them.
Which side would win?
It was nearly four in the morning when he climbed into bed next to Lily. She didn't wake, but reacted subconsciously to his presence by curling onto her side and pressing herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her close, and inhaled the smell of her shampoo.
"I love you," he whispered.
He didn't say it that often anymore. Love never seemed like quite the right word for what Lily meant to him. Four letters - it could never encompass everything that he felt.
"I don't understand what is happening to us," he continued. "The war… I don't understand that any more than you do. But I really don't understand us. You and me. How did this…"
He stopped, almost choking on the words.
How did this happen? How did we get here?
He simply couldn't talk to Lily anymore. That had never been a problem in the past - although, at least in their earlier Hogwarts years, talk might not have been the most appropriate word. But even when she had been yelling at him and he had been attempting to impress her by acting like a complete fool, they had still been communicating.
Now, when Lily looked at him with that deadened expression in her eyes, he couldn't think of what to say. The words always seemed to die on his lips, or maybe it was that he didn't know the right words in the first place. He'd stumble over platitudes and promises, and her gaze always seemed to slip past him.
He let go of Lily and rolled over onto his back.
When was the last time he and Lily had really talked?
That answer came to him readily enough. It had been in the first few weeks of her pregnancy, when the emotional turmoil of her hormones and the steadily worsening war had caused her to lash out at him more than once. But even then, even when she was screaming at him… at least they had been talking.
He let out a slow breath as the memory washed over him.
She was standing in front of him, eyes blazing with fury. Her red curls stuck out in a jumbled mess, framing her too pale face. There were spots of color on either cheek, and both hands were resting on her hips.
That was a bad sign.
James took a deep breath. "Ah… Lily. You are awake, I see," he said, trying to keep his voice light.
"Yes, James," Lily said, and her own voice was dangerously close to a sneer, "I am awake. And you'll be pleased to know that I was also awake when Remus came by to tell me that your mission had gone well." She paused, an eyebrow raised accusingly. "The mission I assume you were going to tell me about?"
"Yes. Well." James glanced around the small kitchen. He was wet and tired and sore, and the muscles in his shoulders and neck were screaming at him, demanding that he lie down and let them rest. There was also a dull ache behind his eyes, and the bright glare of the kitchen light was not helping matters.
He wanted - needed - to sleep. Couldn't they have this argument some other time?
But Lily was staring at him with that anger still on her face, waiting for his response.
He licked his lips and said, "It wasn't a big deal. And it was very last minute. I didn't plan on going anywhere tonight… Moody got a lead on Rosier and Wilkes, and he needed backup. The Ministry sent Aurors, of course, but Moody didn't think that they would be enough so he got word to some of the Order that we should go too, and…"
Lily's expression had grown even harder, if that was at all possible. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, and it was an expression that would have easily rivaled any of the looks of disapproval McGonagall had given James and his friends during their seven years at Hogwarts.
James scowled, annoyed at her disapproval. It wasn't as though he had been off having drinks with Sirius. They were at war and these two particular Death Eaters had caused a lot of trouble in the past.
He sucked in a breath, and snapped, "It took six months to find them and you know what Wilkes did to Fabian and Gideon's mother…"
Lily's eyes darted away for a moment as pain flickered across her face, and James allowed the silence to last just long enough for them both to remember what had happened to Mrs. Prewett.
Then he cleared his throat and pressed on, "Moody needed backup, and I was at headquarters so…"
"So you thought you were better qualified to handle this than the several other more senior Order members who were also there?" Lily interrupted, her eyes moving back to his face, her voice positively glacial.
"Remus, Longbottom, that insufferable Edgar Bones, and McGonagall were the only ones there," James protested. "Remus couldn't go because it's the full moon in three nights and he's not up for it, and Bones and McGonagall both had other things they had to do. That left Longbottom and I."
Lily gazed at him. "Frank Longbottom is an Auror," she said coolly, "and he was no doubt calling for backup as soon as he received Moody's message. You didn't need to go with him."
"We're fighting a bloody war, love," James growled, his patience growing thin. "What did you expect me to do?"
Lily narrowed her eyes. "Did Frank call for other members of the Order? Or Aurors that he trusted? Or was your presence so vital to the mission that they couldn't possibly have succeeded without you?"
James closed his eyes. This wasn't an argument he was going to win.
Longbottom had called for a few other Aurors, as well as Fenwick and Dearborn. It had taken a while to get to the two Death Eaters, though, because both had been smart enough to put up wards and James and the others had been forced to trudge through an overgrown forest without using magic for fear of alerting the enemy to their presence. By the time James had even arrived at the scene, the battle was almost over. Wilkes had blasted off part of Moody's nose and Rosier had taken out an Auror James didn't recognize, but the two Death Eaters were outnumbered.
Wilkes had evaded the Aurors and fled, but Rosier had dueled until the end, preferring to die rather than allow himself to be captured. James had arrived in time to see Rosier's death, if not in time to do much else.
So he wasn't going to win the argument. The problem was that he didn't even understand what it was they were arguing about.
He opened his eyes and looked at Lily. "We're members of the Order, love. This is what we do."
Lily snorted. "Right. Run off without any preparation or planning to fight Death Eaters who are apparently powerful enough to evade capture despite the fact that Moody and half the Aurors have been looking for them for six months."
"We don't always have time to plan," James argued passionately. "The world is unraveling all around us. Nothing is ever going to be as perfectly ordered as you want it. This isn't Hogwarts anymore; life isn't planned out like a class schedule."
"Don't patronize me, James," Lily snapped in reply, stepping away from him as though his words had caused her some sort of physical pain. She wrapped her arms around her chest and said in a softer voice, but one that was still laced with anger, "I know that this is a war, and I know what that means. But you could have died, and it's like you didn't even think about that. Like you never think about that."
"There are Death Eaters constantly threatening to kill me. Voldemort himself has tried it, more than once. I'm always in danger. We're always in danger," James protested.
"And that is not a reason to go looking for trouble," Lily hissed.
"I didn't go looking for trouble," James shot back. "I went on a mission. That is a part of this, Lily. It's a part of the war - I thought you understood that. You certainly didn't have a problem with it before. You used to go on the missions with me!"
"And now I don't!" Lily cried, throwing her hands into the air in frustration. "Now I let other people go on the missions, now I defer to Dumbleore and Moody and McGonagall and Merlin knows who else. Now they fight the battles and I..." She trailed off, shaking her head and looking for all the world as though she had no idea how to finish that sentence.
"We're in the Order for a reason! I'm not... not Cynthia or Mary or everyone else who is content to just... This is our war!" James retorted furiously. "And I'm not going to sit here and let everyone else fight my battles for me!"
"But it's alright for me to do that?"
The question brought James up short, and he stared at Lily in complete bewilderment. "That's… different," he argued, gesturing towards her stomach. She wasn't showing yet, but the pregnancy potion had turned pink, and they both knew what that meant. "You can't fight… the baby…"
"And what happens if you die, James? Won't that hurt the baby, too?"
"I… I, well… of course. But it's different," James stammered.
"It's not different enough," Lily answered simply. She sighed, the anger draining from her expression to be replaced by a look of weariness that was more than just physical.
James took a step towards her, wanting to pull her into a hug, wanting to kiss her, wanting to give her all of his strength so that she didn't have to look so tired.
Lily reached up and cupped his face gently with the palm of her hand. "I love you," she said softly. "I love that you stand up against the odds, no matter how bleak they might seem. But you rush off into each battle without stopping to think about what you are leaving behind. It's like you think that you are invincible… or that your death won't hurt me."
"I don't think that," James said firmly, wrapping his arms around her waist. "But this has always been dangerous, and before you were pregnant…"
"But that's just it," Lily interrupted him. "There isn't a before anymore. There is just now, and tomorrow, and the day after. I'm going to have a baby, James. And every time you recklessly, needlessly, risk your life, it is more than just me you are leaving behind."
But they were at war, and the missions didn't stop and the battles didn't end, and James didn't know how to fight and stay safe. It just wasn't possible - a contradiction that Lily asked of him, one he just couldn't give. He promised her, over and over, that he knew he wasn't invincible, that he was being careful, that nothing he did was needless...
It wasn't enough.
It couldn't be enough, because he couldn't promise his own safety, and they both knew that. And he had to participate in missions, no matter how risky they were, because he couldn't change who he was, and he couldn't compromise what he believed in. For Lily, he would do almost anything - but not this.
He couldn't turn himself into something that he simply wasn't.
Lily was no longer angry at him, but now she showed him almost no emotion whatsoever. Her once-vibrant personality was slowly being replaced by someone so lost, and he didn't know how to stop it. He didn't know how to reach her.
He turned his head and looked at her.
She was still lying on her side, her unruly hair obscuring her face and fanning out on the blankets around them. He pressed a kiss into her hair, then awkwardly curled himself underneath the covers so that he could kiss her stomach as well.
"I love you," he said again. Then he let out a slow breath and added, "I need you."
There was no response from the redhead. He hadn't expected one - she was asleep, still, and couldn't hear the words he said. But even if she could hear them, even if she did hear them, would it make a difference? Would she respond?
She had once looked at him as though he was the only thing she could see, the only thing she wanted to see. And that was gone. Now, more often than not, her eyes moved through him, past him, like she wasn't even aware that he was standing in front of her.
He'd fought for her love, and it had taken time and effort and a slow unbending on both their parts. But now it was fading away. He supposed he should be happy that she hadn't gone back to hating him, except…
He gave a dark chuckle in the silence of the bedroom.
He would take her hatred now, if it only meant that she would show emotion towards him again.
The invitation to the funeral came two days later, a cream-colored card in a black envelope. It was delivered by owl, and signed by Cynthia's father.
James read it and handed it to Lily. She read it, her expression hardening as her eyes scanned over each word, and then she threw it into the fireplace.
James watched her, and tired to remember what it had been like before.
All This Waiting For The Sky To Fall by Dawnie
Story Notes:
The first line from this (and the inspiration for the plot) comes from my other story Epithet, though no knowledge of that one-shot is necessary to understand this.