A/N: Inspired by and written for:

Danie's Song Inspiration Competition, song #35: The Ballad of Mona Lisa by Panic! At the Disco

After Midnight Challenge

A Jury of Your Peers Competition, angst

The Obstacle Course Competition, Round 2: Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Emotion: Fear, Phrase: "I can't."

Warning: Blackinnon AU set during the First Wizarding War

Smile for Me, Darling

Your feet automatically drag you towards he Hog's Head and you shuffle in with your head hung low, ignoring the fact that it's past midnight and that you're supposed to be tucked away in your dorm room.

There's a war waging and over half the country is in hiding, but here at the bar there's always a lull of whispers that drown your sorrows in their eddies.

Your arm rises of its own accord and you signal for a bottle of firewhiskey. It barely registers in your mind that the barkeeper that night isn't the regular and you vaguely wonder if she, too, was mauled by Greyback the way half of Hogsmeade had been a week ago. There's no reason for you to worry about your own safety as you have a werewolf for a best friend, but you conveniently forget that your best friend was actually turned by this vicious monster against whom you stood no chance.

"Sirius Black. I was wondering when I'd grab a sight of you!" the familiar voice dissolves your thoughts and prickles your neck, and when you raise your head you find yourself staring into a pair of huge midnight-black orbs.

"I know you," you whisper urgently, images teasing the edges of your memory as they refuse to settle into something tangible.

"Who are you?" You greedily drink in the distinct curves of her body which are only emphasised further by the fitted black dress she has on. It ends at her thighs and your eyes boldly rove down the length of her long, creamy legs.

"Enjoying yourself?" Her eyebrows arch in question. "I don't have all night, Black. Is there anything you'd like?"

Your head snaps up in sudden attention. "I thought I'd already ordered a firewhisky," you snap impatiently. She lifts something from the counter and waves it a centimetre from your face and you suddenly recognise her.

"Marlene McKinnon," you gasp suddenly, and her red lips curve into a smile as she sets the bottle before you with a firm thump.

"Very good," she purrs, pleased. "Also, your firewhiskey has been waiting for you for quite some time now."

Her words crash around your ears but you hardly register any meaning because you're drawn to the wide curve of her ruby red lips, and the way right canine (which is incidentally sharper than her left) peeks out from below her upper lip. You see that her lower lip is deliciously full and you find yourself wondering just how it would feel to have those lips pressed up against yours.

You are suddenly flooded with warmth and you sure as hell know that it isn't from the firewhiskey you haven't even taken a sip of yet. Suddenly, you are desperate to recollect the previous barkeeper's face and find yourself delving into your memories, only to come up with nothing.

"Hey. Are you alright there?" Marlene walks around the counter and towards you, but all you can do is starestarestare at her. Her sashaying hips and sensuous lips make you want to abandon all sense of valour and it takes immense restraint for you to remain seated.

You settle for a barely-mumbled yes as you down your glass in one shot but you know she doesn't believe you by the way she cocks an eyebrow up, teasing you till the truth is out.

"Maybe not," you give in, but only to watch the smile widen her lips. She walks over to you with a different bottle and two glasses in hand, and you briefly wonder if she doesn't plan on working her shift anymore. It takes you some effort to swivel your neck around, and only then do you see the pale wintry light of the morning make its way into the bar through the broken blinds at the windows and realise that the bar is empty.

Except, of course, for her. And you. And the rather tempting bottle of butterbeer that's hardly out of your reach now. But when your hand eagerly stretches out for the bottle, she swats it away with a catty smile and you wonder what she's got planned for you now.

"Not just yet, Sirius," she scolds you, but she's grinning and you're laughing and the world feels like a happier place than it did to you a few days ago. Or was it a few hours? You really couldn't tell anymore and you find yourself realising that you couldn't care less.

"Okay," you consent, pulling your hands away from the tantalising bottle.

"What do you have in mind?"

The days bleed together as the bloodbath begins and you can't find a stopper. Your days begin and end with the war, with fights and curses and screams and end with the haunting stare of eyes that died in a flash of green. Your lips and tongue are unable to form his name anymore. Your weekly visits to the bar have become daily ones, and the only thing that allows you to clutch on to the last vestiges of your sanity is her smile.

"How was it today?" She asks you as she sets the glass before you. You silently thank her for never asking you how you are, for you don't know how you would be able to reply to a question that has become meaningless in the face of such thorough destruction.

It takes a few minutes for the horrific images to stop flashing past your eyes and you clutch your head as your head begins to throb and pulse with unbearable pain.

"I can't," you gasp, heaving as the floor begins to swim before you. She abandons the bottles she's dusting and rushes to your side, catching your fevered hands in her cool ones.

"Look at me," she instructs in cool, even tones, but even though your mind is contorted with pain you can discern the clear undertones of fear that emanate from her steady voice. And in that second, all you want to do is grab her by the waist and kiss her till the world collapses around you two in a shower of invisible debris.

"Marlene!" you yell as you run into the bar as though chased by the demons that haunt your nightmares. Your clothes are tattered and the whistling winds have chilled you to your bones, but you only begin shivering when you see her willowy figure walk out from the stock room.

"Sirius?" she calls out in response, quickening her pace as the clatter of your teeth loudens.

"Here, have some," she instructs, placing a bottle of butterbeer between your shaking hands and, ever so gently, covering your hands with hers before she helps you drink some of the warm liquid. Before you can move in for another mouthful, however, she whisks it away from you.

She walks away to the back of the bar and you numbly wonder if she is alright. Her eyes lack their usual dazzle and you feel like your world is ending for the second time because she hasn't smiled at you for the first time in months.

Your heart stops painfully at the reminder of James' smile and Lily's tinkling laughter and how you're never going to be able to join them in a cacophonous symphony. You don't quite realise when the great, heaving sobs escape your lips and fat tears roll down your eyes, tears that cry for the countless lives lost and families destroyed and loved ones torn apart but mostly, you cry for James and Lily, the only family you've ever know and the godson who'll never know his wonderful parents.

"Here, this is for you." She's back with a huge bowl of steaming soup and you mutely accept it from her, allowing the warmth from the metal bowl to seep into your frozen bones. You stir it round and round and watch the vegetables get sucked into the little whirlpool you're creating. Her voice cuts in to your blankness and it's only then that you her how packed her very voice is with worry and fatigue. You look into her face only to observe newly etched creases and wrinkles where there was nothing but smooth, creamy skin before and you're too scared to ask her of the horrors she's been forced to witness while you're away.

It kills you to be the one to let Pandora out of her box but you do it anyway.

"James and Lily are dead," you say flatly and watch as the curiosity in her eyes collapses into hurt.

"What?" she asks in horror, but you know she's heard you and that you can't use all those words in a single sentence for the second time in a row. So you nod instead, trying to convince yourself more than anyone that you must go on to avenge their deaths and destroy the man you believed was your best friend. For how could a best friend dig your grave and then bury you in it?

Your hands shake with fury as James' hazel stare and Lily's emerald one greeted him vacantly, a ghost of their former vivacious selves and you throw the soup bowl hard into the opposite wall, deriving irrational satisfaction from the resounding clang.

"He was our best friend, and he sold them out! He sold James and Lily out to bloody Voldemort, and now they're dead!" You scream the words out and almost miss the tears that are softly trailing down her cheeks.

"Marly. Hey, don't cry," you say desperately as you cover her cheeks with your rough palms, disrupting the trails that the tears leave as they roll down her cheeks. She looks at you with an expression so devoid of hope that it frightens you. Till then, you had always seen the hope burning through her rube red smile.

So you hold her to you and kiss her forehead, her checks, her nose, revelling in the company of a human who wasn't out to kill you and who you might just be able to imagine a future with.

If such a future even existed, you thought, you'd be the first to claim it as yours. Yours, with her.

"I can't, Sirius," she says flatly, refusing to look you in the eye as she cleans the counter.

"But you're not safe in here, Marly, half the Death Eaters know about us. Who do you think they'll attack first when they want to bring me down to my knees?"

The words come out harsher than you expected them to and she cringes lightly. But your heart sinks as you see the stubborn set of her jaw and you've heard her refusal before she's said it.

"You know I can't," she whispers brokenly and only then do you realise that there's something bigger holding her back. "I'm all these people have, every one of them who comes in here having witnessed the most terrible of things, people who've been tortured, people who…"

"People like me," you finish for her and there's hurt inscribed in every single word. You despise yourself for behaving this way, for staking a claim on someone who doesn't belong to you but you need someone after losing just about everyone you had in your life.

"I just thought we…damn it, Marly, I was beginning to fucking fall for you!" You laugh at your pathetic stupidity but there's absolutely no humour in it.

"I don't belong to everyone, Sirius," she says sadly, picking up the dirty rag and turning away from you for a minute as she cleans the other side. "I…I like you," she admits, but you imprison your heart, too scared to let it soar with a happiness that you haven't been privileged enough to feel for several months now.

"Then why can't you just come away with me?" you beg as you get up from the stool and turn her towards you.

"I can't be useless and hide away while the rest of the bloody world is busy fighting a war out there, Sirius! Half my customers are dead and the other half are only here because they're longing to hear something, anything good!" The words tumble out of her lips with dizzying speed.

"There are children, children who come here to hide, first and second year muggleborns from Hogwarts who have no idea of what's happening and if I could save these children, Sirius, I swear I would give my damn life just to see them grow up and…" she's unable to go on but suddenly, everything is so clear to you, so obvious.

Of course.

You went off to war after abandoning the security of your filthy pureblood family to save lives, to satisfy that gnawing need in you to make a difference. What had deluded you into believing that you were the only one with such longings?

"I'm sorry," you whisper, abandoning all sense of propriety as you grab her by the waist and snake your arms around her. She doesn't protest. She steadies herself by placing her palms on your chest and you feel the beat of your heart respond eagerly to her touch.

"What can I do to make you feel any better, love?" she asks softly, whispering the words against your lips.

"Just smile for me, darling. Smile for me."

fin