A/N. Since it's been about four months since I've last written anything, at all, I'm going to have to ask that you lovely readers be gentle with me. I, more or less, stumbled through this from beginning to end, but I did try my very best, so hopefully you'll like this even a little bit. ;)

On another note: Happy birthday, Ellie! I am so sorry that this is so late, but just know that had my inspiration come any sooner than it did, this would have definitely been posted much sooner than it has. Hopefully, however, you will like this enough to forgive me, aha. I love you, and I hope that you had a positively wonderful day! x

Oh, and of course, much love and thanks to Cassie and Jenny who were always willing to lend a helping hand. :)

(Edited: 5/15/11)

Rating: High T for excessive swearing.

Disclaimer: Disclaimed!

It's Easy With Eyes Closed

— i —

He only gets a fleeting glance at her as they brush past one another at the door — her hood up, head bowed, shoulders hunched forward protectively, wordlessly letting everyone know to keep their distance — but he knows her, he knows he does. There's something about her form, something about her gait, something about how light and lithe her movements are ... And he knows it's all very familiar, she's very familiar, even though he can't manage to identify the name on the tip of his tongue.

Of course, it doesn't really matter, he thinks as he settles into his seat in the far corner of the pub, his warm hand wrapped around the cold, perspiring glass of his first drink. He hadn't even seen her face, only a small curl that had escaped from under her hood, dancing with a breath of wind admitted through the briefly opened door, and that wasn't enough. She could be anyone, just as she could be no one, nothing more than a vaguely familiar face. And, yet, he finds that his eyes still trail after her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, he still watches curiously from behind the window glass as her long red hair whips about every which way and ribbons of cigarette smoke unfurl from behind her umbrella. He takes in the way she walks, back straight and legs long with their purposeful step, and he realizes with a jolt that she reminds him of someone from Harry's family; maybe one of his nieces, or maybe of his own daughter, little Lily Luna.

Hadn't she just graduated last year?

It occurs to him that it's been over a year since he last saw her or anyone of her family aside from Harry, and he no longer knows where she is or what she's doing now that she's left Hogwarts behind.

But, no, still — innocent little Lily Luna wouldn't be smoking cigarettes and leaving pubs, and sweet Lily Luna wouldn't have such hips with such an unforgettably seductive sway. Not her, with her always comfortably serene expressions, her easy conversations of generalities, her richly-coloured eyes and pretty face and gently captivating air. She had always been so quiet and so soft and so studious and so good, with her tender hands and her soothing smile and her voice of spring-time melodies. Everyone had always been surprised at how mild of a nature she held when firefirefire and passion and tidal wave-hurricane strength was widely known to be woven throughout her ancestry.

But that was just the way she was, and the girl he was watching turn the corner wasn't — couldn't possibly be — her.

Then his friends are arriving and their laughter is filling the air as they fall into their seats and their drinks slosh over the rims and she's pushed from his mind, leaving not a trace, wholly forgotten, as if she were never there in the first place, because she's Lily Luna Potter and he's Teddy Remus Lupin and she's never been anything more to him than Harry's daughter: They speak and he's listening with a far away mind; he sees her and he's looking through water.

It had always been this way.

(He never imagined feeling regret, he never thought it would change.)

But he sees her, that lovely, fiery haired stranger, and she plagues his thoughts.

— ii —

It isn't raining this time. The sun is beaming down through the glass and pooling onto the backs of her shoulders and neck and down her spine, casting off gem-coloured glares onto her milky white, freckle-glittered skin and the navy fabric of her dress. She isn't wearing that jacket or those jeans or holding that umbrella but she doesn't have to because he still knows that it's her, her, that damned girl who his mind has been coming back to again and again and again; creating faces that crumble at his first focus, because they just aren't right, and wondering a name and a voice and a history and of the exact sensation on his skin of her hands and lips.

He's furious and he's confused and he's embarrassed and he's at his wits end because he can't understand how a girl who, to him, is little more than a phantom can so boundlessly haunt him. Even if this is the last time they see each other, even if this is the only time they speak, even if his efforts prove to be pointless, he has to meet her, look at her, speak to her, just one time so he can put behind him this echoing hindrance.

(He doesn't understand how a girl he saw for but a fleeting moment can be so impossible to erase.)

She's moving away from the window and placing bottles back behind the bar, her body shaking with laughter and one hand raising with goodbye as she surfaces with a sweater and a purse, and some people are actually turning their heads to watch her go.

Teddy shifts nervously from foot to foot.

And then the door is opening and his hands are sweating and he's looking into those green eyes and at that wild, vibrant tangle of hair as she flicks her wrist and looks down at her watch while his heart jumps into his throat because, Merlin, he knows, knows, knows her (of course he does) but how in the world can this be? Then she's returning his gaze, innocent little Lily Potter who clearly isn't the girl that he once knew, with her smoky eyes and dark, scowling mouth and her pretty, so pretty, (extremely) flattering dress and guarded expression — and he can't believe it, he can't, and Lily sees this.

She looks between his disbelieving eyes and his gaping mouth, her eyes quickly flit down his body, but she clearly doesn't care, her dispassionate mask remains unmoved, because she's striding past him as if he were nothing, shrugging on her sweater and leaving behind the scent of roses, citrus and cigarettes. "Sorry, Teddy, not today," she says, and her voice is stronger than it ever was before — confident; no longer cherry blossom delicate and sweet. "Gotta run!"

(And four times in a row he stands there under that streetlight, wanting to talk to her, waiting to make sense of her; four times in a row she breezes past him, always with the same excuse, always with the same glower, always with the same chilly tone and quietly angry air.)

He stares after her, watching her walk away, and he knows that there is something wrong when seeing her leave makes him feel not right.

— iii —

"Don't get too excited, princess," Teddy says caustically, gaze trained on her pleasantly surprised face, and he realizes that the reason his jaw is aching so horribly is because he's been unconsciously clenching it so fiercely.

He really loathes how appreciative the smirk adorning her face is when she doesn't see him under the street post.

Lily starts, her head jerking to the side to take in where he is leaning against the side of the building, and her eyebrows raise: "So you are here," she deadpans. "I suppose I shouldn't have allowed myself to get carried away."

Her blatant preference for him to be out of her sight is a strong blow to (what he believes to be) his pride, and he grimaces, his shoulders pushing against the brick wall and legs propelling him forward to the spot in front of her even though he is more than certain that he would prefer to just turn in the other direction: He thinks that he could do without having her look at him as if he were an insect she would like to crush beneath her heel, but he knows it's because of that strange magnetism, existing only when she's around, that's keeping him there, rooted to the spot.

"What's new with you?" he asks, expression stormy, and he doesn't have to elaborate or go any further for the true question behind his words to be clear.

Lily's head raises slightly, her hand shooting up to run through her ample curls, and there is no pleasantry in her tone or face, no beating around the bush or skirting around the real matter at hand, when she speaks.

"I grew up."

Glass shatters inside of the pub, laughter bubbles and dies from the inside of a passing car, and a small group of children race by. The air is thick with the promise of rain, the poison of exhaust smoke and passersby sickly-sweet, heady perfume. Teddy and Lily stand there while the rest of the world spins almost out of control, staring one another down, attempting in vain to pull out all of secrets from behind the others eyes while making sure to conceal their own.

"If smoking and surrounding yourself with drunks is what you call growing up," Teddy replies keenly, following with a shrug after a long, loaded pause, but this is clearly the wrong thing to say because she immediately bristles in response.

"First of all, I never asked for your opinion. Second, just because I'm not following in the steps of every other person I know and getting a job at the Ministry," she says with a pointed glare, "or becoming an Auror or going into Healing, it doesn't make what I do any different. I make money, I fill my own cupboards and I pay my own bills, so I don't need someone like you trying to belittle me or insignificize what I do."

Teddy feels his eyebrows shoot up, stunned, because he has never, ever in his life heard Lily talk like this before and it's all he can do to keep his mouth closed and attempt to form an even slightly coherent sentence.

"I'm not trying to — What do you mean someone like —," he stutters, blushing, and suddenly he doesn't feel like an adult, fully grown man, but a stumbling child.

Out of the corner of his eye he catches sight of a violently fuchsia splotch in the reflection of a window on a passing car and a quick glance tells him that it's his hair; the colour within his cheeks deepens.

"I'm surprised that you even noticed me, truthfully," Lily carries on, just as sharply, her lovely face flushed with her enmity. "One would think that you would have continued to walk right on past without even the slightest idea of who I was. Honestly, I'm impressed. Clearly something has changed, hasn't it?"

Something tells Teddy that he should keep as calm as possible in response, that he shouldn't attempt to match her temper or rise to her bait, but he ignores that something and rolls his eyes as he barrels head on: "You've got to be kidding me, Lily. Growing up, I practically lived at your house —,"

"And you never noticed me!" Lily cries, and the loud indignation in her voice is just enough to make several heads turn. Her eyes are flashing with a promising storm and the knuckles on the hand wrapped around the strap of her bag are white and she is stunning in all of her china doll, wild fire beauty; she's absolutely blazing in ways he never before imagined for a second that she could.

(They spoke and he was listening with a far away mind; he saw her and he was looking through water.)

But, fuck, he knows she's right. She's right, she's right, she's right, and even though he could kick himself for it, he still doesn't have the slightest idea why knowing this hurts so much, or why hearing this makes his stomach twist, or why the look on her face is making the thumpthumpthump-ing of his heart suddenly the most painful thing.

"Don't you dare try to pretend that we were ever something or that you ever had a place in my life because we never were and you never did and I truthfully don't want anything to do with you. We were never anything more than strangers, living inside of the same walls never did anything to change that, and I neither know nor care why you now want this to change. So, let's just go back to the way things used to be, yeah? You see me, I see you, and we both keep walking as if it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter, and we both know that — we've always known that."

Then she's stalking past him and her hair is teasing his arm and she's telling him not to come back again while he vows just as furiously that he won't.

(And it makes no sense that he wants to punch a wall or kick over every rubbish bin he sees or just collapse onto his bed and stay there for the rest of the day but he's quickly starting to accept that there isn't much that makes sense when it comes to Lily.)

She screams at him, she reveals a side he never envisioned before, and he knows that there's no more turning away if he ever turns back around.

— iv —

Several weeks pass and Teddy (almost completely) stays true to his word of not returning (and the few times he does walk by he just doesn't let her see). His friends ask why he doesn't want to go to their usual place for their usual drink and he nearly snarls when he replies with his usual no reason, damn it, just leave it alone! He works late shifts and pores over his paperwork and he doesn't listen to anyone when they try to tell him that he's working too hard because he isn't, thank you, and it's none of their business anyway.

And it works, it does, because it keeps that girl off of his mind (most of the time) until the sun falls and the moon lights up and everything, what seems to be the whole world, is blanketed with that horrible, endless dark. Then Teddy is left trying to occupy his mind with innocent pass times because sleep just doesn't come simply anymore and trying to not remember memories of someone who he really, really shouldn't be thinking about just brings up more and pulls him farther into the world of insomnia and insanity.

(Needless to say, ignoring and avoiding the matter doesn't work.)

Benjamin, his best friend, suggests a couple of girls to take out on a few dates, and instead of rejecting them as he normally would (because he's been alone all of this time and up until a month ago this was fine), Teddy says yes because now, for reasons he won't admit, he's desperate and now he's willing to give anything and anyone a try.

The girls are nice and the girls are pretty and the girls are successful and the girls positively crave him, but he hardly sees them because Lily, Godric, Lily is under his skin. She's young and she's angry and she's so different from who he knew but, yet, she's everywhere and no matter what he says and does and tries, every night consists of the same thing: Her. Her, her, her. Drawing, sketching, painting, pulling from his memory and elaborating with his own creativity her face and her body and everything that is Lily; everything that he knows and everything that he doesn't, everything he used to believe she was, because normally transferring his thoughts to paper and canvas helps.

And sometimes (very few times) he's able to convince himself that it does, even though deep down he knows that it really isn't doing anything this time, that nothing is helping at all.

(He isn't an idiot, he has a very good idea about what it is he's feeling and a very good explanation for why she's suddenly radiating like a sun, but because he isn't an idiot he makes sure that no one else has a reason to suspect what he is already gathering to be true, and tries to distance himself from anything and everything involving her.)

But she's gone, she isn't there, and suddenly this is the only thing that matters — even though he knows it shouldn't — and, because he actually is a bit of an idiot, he accepts that he's fighting a losing, losing (already lost) battle and throws in the towel, waves his white flag in the air.

— v —

Her reaction would have been priceless if his heart hadn't been throbbing so erratically and his hands fidgeting so anxiously — moving from his hair and to the back of his neck, jumping from the collar of his shirt and to the knot of his tie — but, as it was, he had become a bit of a wreck and laughing at her dazed expression and hitched breath was the last thing on his mind.

It didn't help either, of course, that the moonlight above and the lights surrounding were glowing and kissing and sliding over her in ways that did things to him that shouldn't be done.

"How long have you been waiting?" Lily asks, still staring up at him in shock, her cigarette held and forgotten in her hand, even though they both know that it's been hours because of the extra shift she decided to work tonight. The problem is, though, that he's much too embarrassed and she's much too amazed and neither can build up the courage to address this directly aloud so he just shrugs, swallows thickly, hopes acutely that the Metamorphmagi in his genes isn't causing his appearance to do something strange.

"Not very long," he lies, but she doesn't move to correct him, and when he holds out his charmed-to-still-be-fresh bouquet, which he had originally come to give as a not-so-subtle peace offering, they are both again struck silent at the oddity of the situation because, really, what is there for either to say?

He can't admit how he was a nervous wreck at work throughout the whole day while he tried to decide what he should do, and he can't tell her how he nearly spent an hour in the flower shop, and he can't tell her how many different arrangements he looked at, and he can't tell her about how the flourist nearly threw him out, so he closes his mouth and clenches his jaw and watches as Lily's stunned hands reach out for the lush, vibrant bundle.

The moment is tense, the air awkward, and all of the people passing by are much too loud; she's too caught off guard to do anything but breathe a lovely and sincere thank you, he's too tightly strung to speak to her or even look at her, so he glances down the street and through the window into the pub and at the moving vehicles; he scratches his neck and pulls at his tie and wonders why he feels how he did back when he was about to go on his first date.

Then he glances up and catches sight the stars, their incandescence leaping out against the midnight sky, and for one inexplicable, thunderous, heart-crashing moment, the image of her dark freckles trailing down the side of her neck and disappearing downdowndown, under her clothes, appears in his head and pulses in his chest and it's wrong, so wrong, but there's something right about it, too, amongst all of the wrong and the why? and the twisted and the bad.

(He wants it to be right and he wants her to be his and, oh, Merlin, what has he gotten himself into?)

"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Lily muses — more control to her voice and in her face than there was before — with a new, gentler air (a reminder of the girl from before) and eyes so alluringly star-stained, a mouth curled so invitingly and dark, that Teddy realizes with a shock that he is literally, honestly, absolutely speechless.

There isn't much time for him to wonder on this, though — or on the irrational thought that she maybe, could possibly, know the thoughts he's thinking — because she smiles, smiles, and he accepts that he already lost some time ago.

(He doesn't object when she turns and leaves without waiting for his reply, he doesn't mind that neither say goodbye, because he has to try to pull himself back together after that hesitant, girlish grin devastated his mind and that part of his chest like a bomb.)

He sees her smile and he knows that it won't be long now, there's not a thing he can do, because from the moment he saw her exiting through the pub door he was going, going, gone.

— vi —

"Don't you have better things to do on a Friday evening than to sit around by yourself, writing paperwork, while you wait for someone who only likes your company half of the time?" Lily asks, curiously, as she rounds the corner from her bedroom.

She's using a bright purple towel almost violently to dry her hair and when Teddy glances up at her through his glasses he has to fight a smile: If he hadn't gotten to know her as well as he had, he would have seen the quirk of her lips and heard the edge to her voice and mistaken her harmless teasing for mockery.

Of course, he did still have some difficulty at times when it came to distinguishing between, but maybe the most humourous part of it all was knowing that she was telling the truth, at least partially, no matter how she said what she said because Lily never told lies.

Over the past few months they had slowly but steadily gotten to know one another better than he had ever imagined they would; spent more time together, put up less walls, and he had quickly found out that the girl he had thought he had known had been nothing more than a carefully constructed façade built out of a vain attempt to live up to her name. She had tried perfection and found that she had become nothing more than a puppet in a play, nothing more than an actor in a show, doing nothing but wearing herself out and making herself part of the crowd and living a life which had very little to do with living and everything to do with lying.

There is no freedom for the marionette caught and bound to strings, she had told him once, breathing her smoke-laced words around her cigarette, as she tilted her head back and stared blindly into the mid-day pouring rain, and he had wanted to ask her more, press her more deeply for answers, but something about her stance and tone had convinced him to let it go.

"M'sure I could find something," he responds, stirred from his thoughts, and he stretches, wishing he wasn't in one of his stiff, work-place shirts. "Although it would have been a shame to miss tonights events," he says, smirking, and it's clear by Lily's expression that her mind is travelling back to the too drunk man, too far from the loo, who had gotten sick all over the bar and her front. "Exciting."

She looks like she wants to head back into the shower for another half hour again, and the glare she she sends him could probably kill if the recipient wasn't expecting, but instead she pads past him into the kitchen and he tries his best not to stare.

"Then why don't you?" she asks, blatantly ignoring the latter part of his statement, and her eyes are watching him like a hawk's because this is her way of testing him and he knows that she's just waiting for him to fail.

Lily's bitter and she's a cynic but she loves to laugh; she's blunt and she's honest and she's so passionate about everything she does, even if it's in her own sullen, quiet way. She pours her heart into her words (the words he is still hoping she will one day trust him enough to read) and she loves hot chocolate and she has zero patience when it comes to absolutely anything and everything and he likes all of these things about her much too much, so much more than he should.

(But if he had been given the choice of one thing to change, it would be for her to trust him because he knows — and she knows that he knows — that she doesn't trust him, never has, and no amount of teasing and hours spent together seem to even make a dent in that.)

"I'm sure that there is someone you could go to who hasn't been thrown up on this evening. Someone who wouldn't make you sit in their shoe-box of a flat and treat you with an endless amount of mild scorn. I'm certain that there is some bird out there positively dying for your company, a mate who had already proposed utterly riveting plans for today before you came to me ...," she looks up at him through her eyelashes, her hands still fiddling with the coffee-maker, and it's all he can do not to gulp and look away because, damndamndamn it, she can't look at him like that and expect his heart to not do crazy things. "So, why don't you?"

And then the only noise in the room is coming from the rain against her window, that melodic Muggle song humming out from her radio, the whisper of one of her far-off neighbours who, in reality, must be screeching at the top of their lungs, and he finds himself almost at a loss for words. There are a lot of things he could say, and a lot that he wants to, but there's something in the way that she's staring at him that makes his throat too tight and his pulse too fast and his skin too hot and he can hardly think.

"I want to spend tonight with you," he finally says, settling on honesty because she doesn't have to put any effort into knowing when he's not, and then the implication of his words dawns on him and Teddy can feel a splash of heat in face.

It's hard to try and predict her practically unpredictable moods, but Teddy suspects that she will either laugh at the slip or try to maim him with her eyes because this isn't the first time his mouth has worked faster than his brain (successfully making a fool out of him) and he's already done so several times — but, wait, no. That isn't what's happening; she isn't reacting in either of the ways he had thought she would at all.

Suddenly she isn't across the room, looking at him over the kitchen counter, she's right there and she's perching on the end of the couch and she's looking at him as if he were a stranger, someone who was sitting on her sofa although she had never seen him before.

"You'd rather be here, with me, than with any of the other people you know?" she whispers, hands clenched tightly around the bottom of her jumper (about two sizes too big and dwarfing her body).

He can only nod.

"Even though half of the time I can convince even myself that I can't stand you?"

He nods again, slowly removing his glasses, not shifting his gaze from her own because, despite the fact that her looking at him the way she is makes him think she's seeing more deeply into him than she should, he wants her to trust him and he wants her to believe him and he wants her to know his words don't hold even the slightest trace of a lie. "Even though your temper flares faster than I can blink and even though you sometimes look at me like I'm a bug and even though some days pass with you only glaring at me and giving one word, monotone replies, I still would rather be here than with anyone else, anywhere else, tonight," Teddy assures, and he feels like — he knows that — he's confessing more than he should.

Lily blinks, her face a pretty petal-pink, and her teeth bite down hard on her bottom lip as the clock above their heads strikes the new hour.

"Why now?" she finally asks, and everything about the question and the moment is tense; she's asking something that means so much more than what she is letting on, and it is so much more than he knows, so he does what he can and he keeps looking straight into her eyes and says the the only thing he can think of as a reply.

"Why not?"

Then her face is blooming with an emotion he doesn't have time to register and she's leaning down, slipping and fitting easily into his lap, her fingers webbing through his hair, and she's pulling him close and he's staring into her heavy, brightbright emerald-forest eyes and at those lips and he's surrounded by the damp curls of her hair and Godric, Merlin, she's right there. Then she's kissing him, pressing him close, and that's when he realizes that he is no longer safe because he can no longer pretend all he feels for her is need.

Need is lust, and lust is easy enough to ignore, but want ... Want is to hold her, to wake up with her, to look across the table over breakfast and see her sleepy, smiling face. Want is to have her (all of her) every day and every night and to know her every side, her every mood. Want is to fall for her, not just once, but again and again, another thousand times. Want is his desire for him to be her number one, for her to want everything and more only ever him — and want isn't safe, want isn't good, and this isn't right.

(Still, he can't help the way he wants to hold her tighter, he can't help how that tiny part of his mind is telling him to flip them over and press her down into the cushions, he can't help that he just wants to be closersomuchcloser — and then a larger part is wondering if those could be, but they just can't be, tears falling onto his skin ...?)

She kisses him and he knows he's in danger — earth-shattering, life-altering, hurricanes and tsunami's and the-sky-is-falling dangerdangerdanger — because he wants her.

— vii —

"Lily, damn it, just open the door!" he yells, pounding heavily, because for a week she's managed to evade him at the pub, ignore his letters, block his attempts to speak with her through the floo, and he is so frustrated and so confused and so furious at her and at everything and at himself and at the whole sodding world.

Why couldn't he have stopped that blasted kiss? Yes, her touch had been like electricity humming over his skin and thunder roaring through his veins — and, yes, her kiss had been gentle and deep and intense and warm and fullfullfull — but it had only been a mistake because, clearly, something was wrong if she would suddenly push him out of her flat and sob behind the door and disregard him so completely just like she did when they first saw each other months before.

Teddy hates that he wasn't strong enough to pull away, he hates that he can't understand her in even the most simple of ways, he hates that she won't let him in and he hates that he has no idea of what it is that he's supposed to do. He hates that his every waking thought is about her, that every sleeping one must be too, and he hates that not talking to her has him functioning like a man who has nothing left in all of the world; he hates the way nothing and no one matters the way they did before, now that she's come into his life, blazing and broken and quiet and sad and (regardless of what she says) still masked.

But, most of all, he loves her. He loves her. He is in love with her and the angry, bitter part of himself wants to believe that it's the worst thing to ever happen to him but it isn't, it isn't at all, because Lily is Lily and she is so difficult and impossible and perfect and she is everywhere and everything and she matters so much more than anything else in the world.

And if she can give him this feeling, the absolute best feeling imaginable, then how can this possibly be the worst thing to ever happen to him?

(There is no sound coming from inside of her flat and his determination has withered underneath the crippling familiarity of defeat, so he drops his hand and leans his forehead against the door and hopes, even though there is no point to it, that the handle will turn and she'll pull him in.)

She cried, and the heart-wrenching sound became the soundtrack he lives by, the one he can't escape, from day to day.

— viii —

Harry is the first one to notice the sleep-deprived bruises around his eyes, the way he just can't sit still or pay attention (fidgeting and pacing and disappearing into the crumbling world inside of his mind) and more than anything he wishes that it could have been someone else, anyone else, because how is he supposed to explain?

Teddy can't tell him that he can still taste Lily's lips, he can't tell him that her face and her body occupy every spare sheet of parchment in his apartment, he can't tell him that every time he manages to (finally) get her out of his thoughts she just comes back, stronger than before; he can't tell him that he can't stop worrying about those tears and he can't tell him that he thinks he might have honestly, completely, lost his mind. After all, what other explanation is there for what he is thinking and feeling for her?

In the end, he has no choice but to lie and hope that Harry believes him (and, although he doesn't push any further, he is sure that he doesn't), and Teddy hateshateshates it because there has been enough lying and enough pretending and enough covering up.

(And when he goes home he finds that it's worse, so much worse, and he fills sheet after sheet until the early hours of the morning when he finally manages to fall asleep, drifting into blissful oblivion the moment he closes his eyes.)

She locks him out, and as she leaves she takes the vital parts of himself that he needs with her, too.

— ix —

Some people might argue that it's fate that has them bumping into each other at the entrance to the pub, but Teddy thinks that it's more of an unexpected stroke of luck than anything else.

She's lighting up a cigarette and shouldering open the door just as he's reaching for the handle, lost inside of his head, wondering how it came to the point where a Saturday night could come with him just wanting to drink all of his thoughts of her away, and neither see the other before they collide; his lungs empty with one quick breath, she fumbles with her lighter, and the apology that had been dancing behind his lips fades on the tip of his tongue because the eyes he's staring into don't belong to a stranger and the perfume he's inhaling has for months already clouded his mind. It's inexplicable and unbelievable and every single definition of fantastic because she's right here; here, where there is finally no more room for her evading games.

It's only when he wraps a hand around her wrist to urge her away from the door, when he feels the tender heat of her skin, that he's confident she isn't just a figment of his traitorous imagination.

Maybe she's surprised or maybe she's just resigned but, for what ever the reason, Lily doesn't put up any sort of a fight when they stop in the alleyway next to the pub, pretending they are in their own private box, and the only time she moves is to step away from him and lean back against the wall, crossing her arms loosely. Her expression is cold, her brilliant eyes frenzied, but the hard line of her mouth is softening the longer he looks at her and Teddy can't help but wonder if she is reading and seeing all of the thoughts and emotions that have kept him in a constant state of chaos.

But, even if he is right, even if everything is unmasked, even if she sincerely knows, when she speaks her tone is still carrying winter's most bitter, merciless chill and it's apparent that she just wants to go.

"I don't want to talk to you, Teddy," she says bluntly, not bothering to play with pretenses or pay mind to emotions, "and I'd thought that everything I'd said and done up until now had made that perfectly clear. Tell me, if I told you that I never actually read any of the notes you sent before tossing them into the fire, would that remedy our miscommunication?" she spits, and Teddy actually winces as something stabs-twists-pulls painfully, lingering, inside of his chest.

(He knows that this is going to bad and he doesn't know how he can change that.)

"Listen, Lily," he says, a definite pleading edge to his voice. His hands clenched into fists inside of the pockets of his jeans and he has to force himself to hold her gaze. "If this is about what happened in —,"

"Shut up," she whispers, one of her hands reaching up to run through her hair, her expression twisting with some powerful and striking emotion he wouldn't be able to place no matter how he tried, and she lets out a tiny, humourless laugh. Her eyes haven't left his for a moment. "Do you honestly think it's all that simple? That this is all just about that ridiculous, regretful kiss?" she murmurs, all frost and blizzards and snow, and everything about her is reminding him of that moment, those two words, that question:

Why now?

He still doesn't understand everything it means and he still doesn't understand why she would ask and he still hasn't the faintest idea about how he is supposed to respond; the only thing that seems to be certain at all is the distinct sensation he's getting in the pit of his stomach telling him that he's about to be part of some all-consuming crash.

"Do you really think anything could be so clean-cut?" she asks, and the derision in her voice is palpable. "Did you forget that I never wanted anything to do with you in the first place? Did you forget that I had originally told you to piss off? I told you the first time we spoke, so don't talk to me and look at me as if this is all some big surprise when I've told you from the very beginning!"

"Damn it, Lily, I understand that — I am the dirt underneath your shoes, yes, you've made that pretty fucking clear — but you can't tell me that something wasn't changing! You can't look at me straight in the eyes and tell me that during all of that time when we were together, when you were the one to come to me —,"

"My seeking you out only happened once or twice! There isn't anything at all remarkable about that —,"

"But there is!" Teddy explodes because, fuck, how can one person be so utterly impossible? "You've changed so much that the fact alone that you would share my company is evidence enough that things were changing! You, Lily, are so unbelievably stuck up, so caught up in your own little world, and if you honestly never wanted to be around me then you wouldn't have given me the time of day — Just like you didn't in the beginning!" He's yelling now and he can't help it; his heart is locked within an irregular pace and he can't settle it, everything is spinning out of control and he can't clear his head long enough to stop it. "Quit acting like you never cared and just fucking tell me whatever it was I did!"

(Confusion.)

Her hand tattoos her agony, her anger, her frustration in a brilliant mark on his cheek just as the sky rips apart with a crack and rumble of thunder, forked electric tongues streaking in vivid dashes between the clouds.

Rain pours.

(Ache.)

Her eyes are squeezed shut, her face is red, her wet hair sticking in clumps against her neck and her cheeks and her shoulders, and she's feeling something that he can't imagine and seeing something that he can't and, no, those can't actually be —?

"I loved you, and you never saw me!"

She's crying.

The world explodes.

(Painpainpainpain.)

"Didn't you ever wonder why I lied? Why I wore make-up and masks and always my best, smiling face? Why every evening I studied into the early hours of the morning? Why I kept up such a foolish façade? Didn't you wonder anything at all when I told you that all of those years and all that I was ever thought to be was nothing more than a young, desperate girls fabrication?" she screams, and her eyes are open wide, her eyes are beseeching, her eyes are arresting and spilling over and her cheeks are veined with droplets that are in no way connected to the rain. "It was because of you! Because you were so much older and so much more mature, so smart, so handsome, so perfect, and all I ever wanted was for you to see me! But you didn't ... Not once, not ever ... No matter how hard I tried and how much I gave and how much of myself I lost. You didn't see me when I came home for Christmas in my fifth year as nothing but a beating heart inside of a skeleton, as nothing but skin on bones —,"

(And he wants to tell her that he did notice — how could he not? — but he can't and she's right because he never noticed her, never saw anything, in the way she's talking about, in the way that mattered.)

"You didn't see me when I was unhealthy and sick and sad and alone because I had given everything to reach perfection and had only ever managed to bring upon myself my own self-destruction. And I know," she cries, voice thick, her words divided by quick, almost hysterical breaths, "I was so stupid and sonaive to try and change myself for you, such an idiot, but, Godric, Teddy —," she breaks off with a sob and her hand is pushing her hair back again and she looks lost and he can't stand it but his throat has closed and his muscles have turned to ice and he just can't move.

"I only wanted you to see me."

And somewhere, something vital and pulsing in the world shatters.

(He still can't move when she sends him that look, full of sadness and anger and accusation and regret, and he still can't move when she turns away; when it is only him, when she has gone, it hurts to breathe and his thoughts make no sense.)

She reveals to him who she honestly is (just another flawed, broken, achingly beautiful girl) and he loves her as much as he hates himself, and the fact that he's always been her greatest torment makes him want to die.

— x —

His closed blinds blush sunset glow as afternoon sunlight falls down. The hands of the clock tick away. His sleepless eyes burn.

He stands up, kicking off his blanket, and begins to unconsciously retrace all of his previous steps from the other dozen times he's paced his floor in the past twenty-four hours.

Damn it.

He still can't think straight. He still can't make sense of anything that's happened — nothing that's been said and nothing that's been done and nothing that he's feeling and, damndamndamn, did she really say that she loved him? (Was that much of her really so dedicated to him? Did he honestly, unknowingly, break her? Did she really suffer so much alone? Had he really never seen?)

And does she love him still?

He has to talk to her, he has to let her know, but if that love she said she had for him is now nothing but a faded memory, nothing more than smoke and dying sparks and ash, then maybe ... maybe he shouldn't.

Does he really want to put her through such a calamity again?

The image of her tears, the memory of her grief-stricken voice, of the bursting-dying worlds behind her eyes, they all come back, looming in the forefront of his mind.

Merlin. Damn it.

Teddy covers his face with his hands, stifling his groan, and when he collapses into his chair a drawing flutters up and off of the desk at the stirred air.

He picks it up.

Muted colours, patterns of both soft and sharp lines, shadingshadingshading: It's Lily (of course it is) with her scorchingly tameless hair, her thunderstorm eyes and the tough-as-nails, breakable-as-glass curves of her body (because she no longer portrays herself as the very essence of delicacy even though she's more fragile than she has ever been before) and, Godric, how is it possible for one person to feel so much?

He stares at the stack of his drawings; corners softly curling, colours and lines jumping off of the pages, each gentle brush stroke a confession of too much care.

Lily.

He doesn't know what to do.

(And each face he replicated with his hand seems to stare at him, glare at him, shed tears and cry.)

He hurts because when she suffers, he suffers too.

— xi —

I can see you now. I'm looking at you now. I'm sorry, Lily, I'm sorry. I see you. I see you. I see you. I love you. I

But Teddy crumples the parchment inside of his straining fists.

(Everything is shadowed with regret.)

She doesn't even have to be there; everything about her still manages to haunt him.

— xii —

"You haven't been at work in three days."

Teddy looks back at the man across from him — arms crossed and expression stony — and because he can't think of a suitable reply, he opts to remain silent.

"You've locked yourself up inside of your apartment, you've rejected any and all forms of human contact —,"

"I'm not a child, Harry, and I don't need a lecture from you," Teddy snaps, scowling, and he immediately regrets his words when he sees a familiar, protective sort of anger flare.

"Then don't act like one," Harry tosses back, words stiff, and his eyebrows pull together into a rigid line. "Hiding yourself away from the world in an attempt to ignore all of the problems in your life is unhealthy, an action that won't help you in the least, and something that I, of all people, know isn't something you're prone to do."

"Harry —,"

"You can't just slip away when the going gets tough and expect the whole mess to blow over —,"

"Harry, for Merlin's sake, I know!" Teddy shouts, the furious racing of his blood matching with the pounding inside of his head, as all of the fatigue from countless sleepless nights and hours of near frantic worrying suddenly catch up with him; the room spins, the weight of his body shifts, as if he's being repeatedly filled and drained of lead, and he has to lean back against the wall behind him to keep his balance.

There is no longer any question about it: If he keeps going on like this, it is only a matter of time until he drops.

(He doesn't know what to do.)

When Teddy turns his focus back to Harry, giving him his full attention for the first time, he is shocked at what he sees and at all he has missed; surprised at the concerned face etched with the beginning of new lines he couldn't remember seeing, eyes and a countenance more tired than he had ever imagined.

Harry's exhausted, of course he is, and all of this time when Teddy has only been adding to his worries, he himself has been too caught up in all his own troubles to notice or see the rest of the world as it should be seen.

(And this makes Teddy feel sick.)

There's a long moment of silence and wandering thoughts as both stare off at something the other can't see, as footsteps and voices trill past the front door, as a vehicle's horn goes off from somewhere below on the street, and when Harry finally speaks, Teddy is brought back to the present with an almost violent jolt.

"It's Lily, isn't it?" Harry finally asks, quiet, resigned, appearing to be determinedly not looking at him, and Teddy's throat constricts.

There are a lot of things that he could do then — apologize for putting Harry in such an awkward position, although that would be like apologizing for loving Lily, which he had nothing to be sorry or regretful about, or he could flat out deny because this was Harry fucking Potter and he was her father and Teddy was positively terrified — but he pushes these ridiculous (if not self preservative) thoughts from his mind, steeling himself and settling for a low how did you know?.

The answering incredulous disbelief on Harry's face is almost comical.

"Don't tell me you actually believed that I never noticed how you turned the photo of her on my desk to the wall every time you entered my office?" he exclaims, eyebrows almost at his hairline, and he looks distinctly torn between laughing and not.

Teddy feels his skin go warm under his fingertips as he scratches his prickly jaw. He ruffles his bed-head hair, straightens his glasses.

Well, now he knows better, at least.

And then, even though his face is worn and the colour slightly off with fatigue, even though he looks as if he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, Harry shakes his head and rubs his eyes behind his lenses as he laughs. "Now I remember why you never made it into the Auror department," he says, grinning, and his amusement makes him appear to be years younger. "Along with your skill of finding a new way to fall on your face every twenty minutes, you were always incredibly one-track minded and completely unaware of your surroundings."

"Okay, hah, very funny," Teddy replies darkly, the heat in his the tips of his ears increasing, and he knows that if Harry were anyone else, someone who he didn't respect and admire so greatly, he would have allowed himself to admit a few choice words. "I thought that there had been a mutual agreement to not bring that up again?"

"Right, right," Harry concedes, nodding, and the chuckles that had been spilling from his mouth stop so suddenly that Teddy finds it more than a little disconcerting.

He shifts; as of now, he is thoroughly alarmed.

"There were a few things, actually, that tipped me off," Harry says after a moment, solemn, continuing his reply to Teddy's earlier question, "but those don't really matter right now. Er, listen, about Lily ...," he takes off his glasses, stares at them, and pulls out a cleaning cloth to painstakingly rub at the lenses.

Either Teddy is more tired than he thought, or Harry is blushing.

"Er, listen," he repeats, and to say that he looks uncomfortable would be an understatement. "About Lily ..."

"I never saw her."

Harry looks up in surprise, squinting, trying to read him without the aid of his glasses.

Teddy isn't sure what makes him say that, he doesn't understand why he would confess such a thing to her father of all people, but, at the same time, Harry is Harry and he's always been the one Teddy has gone to and he would be the one to understand his words.

The movement of the cloth pauses, the moment is long, bloated, and when Harry finally speaks, his words send Teddy reeling.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing."

The air escapes from Teddy's lungs as Lily's tears and her pain and her shouts and her hand slapping his face come to mind, shooting out from their dark little corner, trickling like poison through his veins, and Teddy is caught off guard at how livid the emotion is that's rising up inside of him.

He's on his feet before the action can register.

"Are you — You're not actually saying that — All of that, everything that we saw, everything — damn it — it was because of me! How can you even think that any good came out of my, my, my ignorance?" he spits, temper and voice soaring, but Harry adopts that tone of his, the one that demands silence and attention, the one he doesn't use very often against Teddy, and opposes him.

"Calm down, Teddy, and let me finish, because there was a whole lot of good that came with you not noticing her the way she wanted, and if you would put your feelings aside for just one moment so you could look at this from a neutral point of view, you would understand!"

"Nothing could possibly justify —," Teddy tries to argue, practically snarling, but Harry yells right back at him as he pushes his glasses back onto his face, glaring just as severely.

"She was just a child!"

(And the truth of his words affect Teddy like an earthquake and a tidal wave combined.)

"No matter how real her feelings for you are, no matter how real they have been all of this time, she was just a child and you can't forget that!" he says harshly, nostrils flared, although behind all of the fire and the frustration his eyes are still kind. "It's remarkably easy to forget that Lily is eleven years younger than you are, almost scarily so, but the fact remains that she is and she was not in the least bit ready or prepared for what she wanted to have with you! And you wouldn't have been either! Now, I'd be lying if I said that I'm overjoyed about both of you, I'm her father, that would practically defy all of the rules that come with parenthood, but you mean just as much to me, Teddy, and if there is one person in the world that I would feel comfort in giving my blessing to, then it would be you!"

"However, at the same time, don't you think for a moment that I would have stood by and allowed for something to have started between you two while she was still in Hogwarts. She's always come across as so much older than her years, because of her maturity and the level head on her shoulders, but what it comes down to is that she was still little more than a young girl — She wouldn't have known what she was doing because, back then, the moment you walked into the room, everything she knew and everything she was seemed to fly out of the window! She ... rearranged herself to fit you, she had no defined shape!"

Teddy's legs give way and he slides to the ground without grace.

"Forcing her to wait, allowing her to grow up, giving her time to get an actual grip on love and reality and life and what this whole mess means are the best things you could have done! If the thing keeping you locked up inside of your flat is guilt because of what she went through, then you're going to have to try and get past it! Seeing her pain was one of the most difficult, most unbearable, things I've ever had to endure, something that I don't think I could go through again, but it was the most beneficial for her in the long run. Teddy, you have to understand what I'm saying and you have to accept that none of this, none of what happened, is your fault!"

Harry is breathing irregularly, no doubt as taken aback as Teddy at the sudden outburst, but he still eyes the young man critically and, when he speaks, his voice is once again calm.

"It isn't your fault," he repeats, much more gently than before, "so, don't ... let it get in your way. Some things have to happen, sometimes some not so great things, in order for good things come."

Teddy's heart gives an almost painful beat and he has to put sincere effort into swallowing down the aching thing that is caught in his throat.

"Now," Harry says as he clears his throat, pocketing his cloth as he paralyzes Teddy with another hard look, but there seems to be some uncharted and unseen shift in the air. "Clean up this pig-sty of a flat, go use a comb and a razor on your hair so you don't look like you've been living in a bush, and —," but Harry breaks off, flushing, looking as if he would rather be anywhere but here.

His discomfort is tangible and it immediately envelops Teddy, who is still gawking from his place on the floor, as well.

"And, er," Harry clears his throat, "er, get what needs to be done, done, because I expect to see you at work tomorrow," he mumbles, and this seems to be his farewell as he makes a hasty retreat down the hall and to the door.

Teddy thinks that he may have managed a hoarse okay in response, but he isn't sure.

Did this mean Harry was telling him to tell her? That he thinks Lily's feelings for him are still alive? He did say not to feel guilty (although, getting over that gnawing, burning, almost unbearable feeling would be a difficult thing to do) but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's telling him to go confess to her, does it?

Teddy buries his head in his hands, fingers ruffling his hair harshly, while he pretends that he hasn't already made his decision, that he has no clue what he's going to do, and ignores the poundingpounding (too fast, too hard) of his heart —

"For God's sake, put these away!" Harry suddenly cries, just before Teddy hears quick, stomping footsteps and the none-too-light closing of the door.

Teddy is sure that his heart stops as recognition slams into him like a wrecking ball.

The drawings.

Right there, on the shelf by the door, was where he had last night slipped that blasted folder in a desperate attempt to shut out her haunting face so he could finally get some sleep.

Right there, where Harry would have had to grab his coat.

Teddy shoots to his feet, face burning hot, more thankful than any words could ever express for the fact that those most innocent were at the top.

(They've been running around in circles ever since the very beginning.)

He knows it's time for this cycle to end.

— xiii —

Chipping paint, squeaky hinges, stools that creak; the scents of alcohol and sadness, heavy perfume and laughter, cigarettes and tears.

The place is a dump, really, so run down and crumbling and out of the way, but he has always liked it best for these reasons. Just like all of the regulars who come in and who seek it out, it's never decorated and made aesthetically pleasing with dense, gossamer illusions. That's not what you come for at this pub; not for smooth, glossy counter tops and floorboards that don't tell stories of time under footfalls and fancy, purposely subtle themes — no, not here. This place and these people signify reality; the genuine reality of the world without all of the concealment and lies; the truth that no one is ever always happy, rarely are things perfect or as they seem, and around every corner there is always an awaiting roller coaster of highs and lows.

This is the place he goes to when he's had it with dealing with other people's façades, when he's sick of constantly sifting fable from actuality, when he's tired of being prodded and observed and surrounded by people he honestly doesn't give a damn about, and who sincerely doesn't give a damn about him. This is where he comes to unwind and this is where he comes to think and this is where he comes to enjoy a little bit of time with his friends.

This pub.

(He has always liked this place, yes, but he never once imagined that it would come to hold so much for him.)

It's strange, he thinks, that there can be so much change from one point to the next, that there had been from the first time to this time; strange how everything can be so different and, yet, how it can still be the same.

Right then, as he climbs the few stairs before the entry and catches sight of her, he sees all of the stepping-stone girls she's been: The long, twisting redred of her braids and the smudged dirt on her knees and the bright, ruddy cheeks of her child self; the unassuming fluttering of her eyelashes and the picture-perfect smiles and seductively sung lies of her adolescent self; the unsatisfied turn of her lips and the complete disregard held for everything and the restless darting eyes of her from-only-months-before self; and then her. The sunlight spilling on her back like wings and the bloom-electricity-sparks of her eyes and the contradicting smiles of a woman who has had her heart broken (of the woman who has stolen his in return).

Her, her, her; the one she is today, the one he is seeing right now, the one that has been plaguing him for what feels like forever now.

Something hot and aching knots within his throat as he opens the door because, fuck, does he love her and, damn, does he want to be with her.

Face ashen, her expression lucid and blank, Lily's eyes lock on him immediately, the moment he enters through the door, as if they were being lead by some imperceptible gravitational pull. She stares at him the way she did before, at the beginning, as if he were just a piece of the wall or an unfamiliar face on the street, something and someone you look at but don't actually see — and realization dawns.

His movements momentarily stop, his stomach drops so fiercely and suddenly that he thinks he might be sick, and can't help himself from thinking horrible, unwanted thoughts.

Could this be, but this couldn't be, how he used to look at her?

Something trembles like beating wings inside of his stomach, ripples shiver down his arms and bead his flesh, and he isn't able to even make it over to the bar before she is turning away, countenance twisting.

"There's nothing left to talk about," she says quietly, firmly, and her gaze is trained fixedly outside on the beginning rain, her freckle-dusted, slender hands pressing slack against the countertop. "So, unless you're here for a drink, I suggest that you leave."

(Teddy wonders whether he is the only one who can see behind her cool and collected mask, see the misery and the chaos underneath her skin.)

His throat is tight, his heart throbbing painfully, and he moves to stand in front of her so there is nothing but the bar separating them as he places the folder, that folder, before her.

But she flinches the moment he begins to urge it towards her hands, pulling away, and her eyes find a spot even farther from him, her lips pressing together as if she were checking quivers, and her words when she finally speaks are anguished and callous and thick:

"Go away."

"Lily ...," he begins to say, his tone one of hushed desperation, but his words suffocate and his voice dies and he swallows heavily. (How is he supposed to do this or say this or even look at her when it is so damn hard because feeling her pain has become as solid as feeling his own?)

"Lily, I'm sorry ... I —,"

"I don't want your apologies!" she exclaims, the words bursting from her lips in the same moment that her tears do from her eyes, and every head turns around because she is much too loud in the tiny place. A man (piercing Teddy with a look of the greatest distaste) attempts to intervene but he is all but pushed aside as Lily barrels on, her palms slamming down and her rich curls swaying and her face lighting up with angry rouge and sorrowful rose. "Who do you think you're appeasing with your I'm sorry's? Is it your own tainted pride — wounded because you couldn't help poor, broken hearted, foolish me — that you're trying to make better?" she entreats, acridly, all sunbeam bright and dangerously ablaze. "Because I don't need your regret and I don't want your apologies —,"

"Just look," he nearly bellows, whipping open the front of the portfolio and smacking picture after picture down, time and care and colour over-lapping. "Just fucking look and tell me if you still think that this is all about me and my ego!" he spits, harshly, because it actually hurts to know that she doesn't have a clue, not even the slightest, not even the faintest, about all that she means to him.

(Awe.)

And she does look: examines it all with long, sweeping, wide-eyed glances,her breath catching in her throat and her fingertips hovering above the sound strokes of his most passionately delivered; biting her lip and visibly swallowing as she blushes at the ones he's in that moment too desperate and sore to be embarrassed about.

"If you honestly meant as little to me as you think you do, do you think that you would be inside of my head constantly? That I would lose sleep over you? That I would honestly wonder at times whether the things that you do to me — the things that you make me feel — have me treading the line between sanity and insanity? That I would stay up until the early hours of the morning, every fucking night, trying to transfer even a fraction of you from my mind so I could just sleep and function — because I can't; I can't and I haven't been able to for a long time now."

(Shock.)

One hand is grasping at the place above her heart, almost as if she wants to plunge it through her chest to grab the beating organ, and it's clear to any eye that she is torn.

"It was January the third when you walked out of here with your hood up and that cigarette in your hand, and I never had to even see your face for you to still be—to still be programmed into me. Tattooed in a place I can't see. Made into this vital part that I just can't properly go on without."

(Disbelief.)

Her tears are still collecting inside of her stony eyes, painting her ache in the patterns trickling over her cheeks, and her mouth is set into a grim line. She doesn't believe him (but, of course, she hasn't ever) and she doesn't have to say this out loud for him to know.

"Damn it, Lily," he says, beseeching, leaning closer to her over the counter as his voice drops low with his urgency, "I never saw you before and I don't understand how, I don't, but I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, because you — Godric, Lily, you're everywhere! You are everywhere and you are the very core of everything and I can't see anyone but you — more than that, I don't want to. All of these," he gestures to the drawings spread out and in piles over the counter, "these are from all of the moments I just couldn't —," but he can't continue because his words catch in his throat.

He's never been in such a position before, nothing he is saying is getting through to her, and he doesn't have any idea of how he is supposed to be explaining himself to bridge the gap.

Eyes are still piercing and mouths are gaping and quiet words are being hissed throughout the room but he hardly knows, he hardly sees, he doesn't care, because the only thing that matters is making her hear him.

If he can, Merlin, if he can ...

"Why ... Why now?" she finally asks, hoarse, almost liltingly. "What could have possibly changed to such a degree for you to notice me now? After all of those years, after all of this time ... What? Why now? What's different?" she whispers and, although her voice is soft, it's laced and threaded with something bitter as well; she doesn't sound as if she even wants an answer to her questions.

"Everything, Lily, everything's changed — you and me and everything. Time has taken from us and from all of the world things we can't get back, days and years we can't return to, and everything's changed!"

"I, I don't —," she stammers, shaking her head, and something inside of him unwinds at the sight.

"I love you."

(Silence.)

The whole world seems to stop.

She stares. The lump in his throat grows.

"You can't," she finally whispers, so wilting, so resolute, and she's pulling back into herself, her walls are raising, her expression beginning to transform back into its usual mask.

Sunlight from the clearing sky hits the glass and breaks, slicing over the bar.

He leans closer, earnest and tender, as every nerve and every cell inside of him and throbs and bursts and ignites in some sort of deliriously feverish frenzy because he's never been this tightly strung or this nervous or this terrified before and her icy, distant-shore retreat is driving him mad. "Lily, do you think I would do this to you, risk hurting you again, if I wasn't absolutely sure about what I'm feeling? I love you, I'm in love with you, and I've had months to figure this out."

But Lily is shaking her head, her lips are quivering, and she's a lovely mess of emotions, soft and hard. "Teddy ...," she falters, speaking almost as if she wants to warn him off, but there is nothing in her tone but grief and surrender, a question that needs no spoken answer.

He reaches for her, the counter top biting into his skin, and cradles her head in his hands, tangling his fingers through the thick strands of her scarlet hair and trailing his fingertips across her jaw, moving them to slowly whisper down her throat.

(Her breaths are trembling, his are erratic, and he's sure that his heart is going to break out of his ribs. A distant part of himself can feel all of the gazes trained on him and her and them but it doesn't matter, it doesn't, because for once the woman before him isn't just a sleep-constructed dream; her touch and her scent are all better than he had remembered and, most importantly, they are all real.)

He leans down, she stretches up, and their imperfect, senseless moment seems to stretch out in time as they kiss over the bar.

— xiv —

"It's finished."

Teddy looks up from his desk, quill pausing over his paperwork, and he stares at Lily's sudden figure in the doorway; her face is flushed, twisted with what can only be described as anxiety, and he can feel his answering smile falter.

She's clutching a stack of parchment to her chest.

(But even though the air is thick, even though there is clearly something amiss, even though her expression is more than a little worrying, his stomach still flips at the sight of the ring glittering against her pale hand.)

"What —?" he begins, not understanding what she's getting to, and he is staring back into her strangely flickering eyes, pushing away from the desk, when it hits him.

There is only one thing she could be referring to, there is only one thing the stack in her arms could be: her story.

His eyes flicker down, taking in the pages she had spent countless hours bent over — always so intense and so passionate and so driven and so completely consumed in — as she poured her whole heart and her entire being into the ink, into the words, flowing across the pages.

He hasn't ever read anything that the sheets contained, but he doesn't have to see what's written to know how much it all means to her; he, more than anyone else, knows how close and how dear and how treasured and how intimate all of her writings are.

"It's done, finally, after all of this time," she continues, almost breathlessly, as if he hadn't spoken, and she moves with slow but steady steps into the room. She places it in front of him. His heart begins to crash. She swallows, looking down at him piercingly.

"It's done, and I want you to read it."

(He couldn't say who moved first — whether it was she, burying her face into his neck and clutching at his shirt, or whether it was him, gathering her into his arms and pressing fierce kisses to her face — but, he thinks, it doesn't really matter, does it? Not when he knows what this means and he knows the significance of her gesture and, damn it, how is it possible for him to love her anymore than he already does?)

They curl up in his chair and she breathes onto his neck and he just hopes she can't hear the almost bursting of his poundingpoundingpounding heart.

The fire to their side crackles, its light dancing and shivering along the walls, filling the room with a heated, gentle glow.

He opens the first page ...

— & —

A/N. Just to clear up any confusion that may sprout from implications in the last part: Scene xiv isn't immediately set after xiii. ;)

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