Ragged breaths tore from her chest as she scrambled through the bracken. The gnarled fingers of blackened oaks tore at her robes, ripping mewls of fear from her heaving body. She ran, helter skelter, eyes glazed, unwilling to accept what she had just seen. Even tears couldn't wash away the image that had emblazoned itself across her vision, it replayed like a sick, distorted montage before her eyes.
She felt him before she saw him.
In her haste, her foot snagged on an upturned tree stump. She staggered, pain lanced through her from an unseen wound on her shin. She was hardly aware she'd hit the ground. Unable to stand, she turned onto her back, only to look up into the black depths of his eyes.
Severus Snape had never been a beautiful man. His hair was too uncontrolled, his nose too pronounced, his lips too often twisted into a cruel grimace. However, tonight, in the darkness, he looked like vengeance. Harsh, unforgiving, relentless and alive. He took her breath.
She tried to edge away as he kneeled before her, she was trapped, there was nowhere to run. She shuddered at his tenderness, erotic thrills ricocheting through her insides at the warmth of his hand curling about the nape of her neck. She resisted the intimacy, turning her head way. However, with gentle force he pulled her close, and leant his forehead against hers.
'I want to hate you', she murmured.
His eyes flashed with something indescribable, before fluttering closed. She could count his eyelashes, she could see that they were moist. His lips curled upward into a hint of a smile. To anyone else it would have seemed sadistic, but to Lily Evans, it shot through her like seismic tremor.
'But you can't, can you'.
His words seemed to burst through her like water from a geiser released from its confines in an underground spring. He drew back and examined her face. She noted a weariness that had been imperceptible from a distance, she sensed his longing for what had once been. In those fleeting seconds, she thought she saw the old Severus. Within the darkness of his heart, she knew that she lit a flame. A flame which could never fully be extinguished; his eyes devoured her.
He wanted her in that age old way. His lips grew infinitesimally closer to graze the corner of her lip, but as she turned her cheek, his tongue met a rogue tear that rolled haphazardly down her downy skin. He reacted to her disgust as if he had been hit with an unforgivable, and quickly shuttered himself to her. They both knew they could never go back to the way things were.
In spite of his withdrawal, Lily craved his nearness. With delicate fingers she entwined herself in his robes, pulling herself closer to him. His shell. Her face contorted as if in pain as she revelled in his closeness, his maleness, his scent. She loved it, as she had always loved it. However she couldn't ignore it anymore. She couldn't ignore that it had changed.
His scent was intermingled with the metallic tang of blood.
'Severus, you know I can't do this anymore.'
For a second it seemed as if her words had gone unheard. As if he didn't want to hear them. But then she felt the unnatural slide of his hand on the back of her neck, his fingers digging into the softness of her flesh. She felt the wetness drip down her back, coating the ends of her hair.
'Lily. You are mine.'
His eyes burned her. She cried in fear as she thrust him away.
'No,' she screeched in horror 'this can't be my life. I'll not live with blood on my hands!'
Severus looked down at his hand, as if it was foreign to himself. Blood oozed from somewhere unseen, and oozed out from between his fingers. His haunted gaze flickered to hers, sad and woeful. It was a second before he spoke, his voice resonating through the stillness.
'So you'll go to James Potter? You'll tell him you love him.'
Lily could only stare at him. With one hand, Severus grasped her wrist and pulled her close. His other hand lingered on her hip, and with firm purpose hovered over to rest upon her mons.
'I have felt you. I have known you, Lily,' he moaned against her ear, 'I have known your body, and I have known your heart. If you go to him, you will go to him as mine. Your soul will never belong to another.'
Lily shivered, staggering away from him. But his grip on her wrist held fast. He faced her straight on, her fiery hair whipping in the wind. 'I thought you'd understand', he whispered in torment, 'I thought…'
Lily looked up at him, her face a placard of indefinite horror.
'I thought you loved me'.
Lily's breath caught in her throat as he leaned down to capture her lips. So quick, as if on impulse, as if knowing that this would be the last time he would ever taste of her nectar. There was so much desperation, so much loss. Yet she felt him like a mug of butterbeer, warming her from the inside out. She felt his hand edge about her waist, and pull her roughly against his lean body. She felt his pain, as he pressed her harder into the fallen leaves, bruising her, punishing her with his ardour.
He had been her past, her protector, her first. And in turn, she had known him everywhere. However, tonight as she had followed him here and watched him consign himself to the darkness. He had endured such pain, so willingly, it broke her heart. He had given himself, and it wasn't to her.
It took all of her strength to pull away.
Surprise and lust settled across his features, which seemed almost youthful in the mottled moonlight as his dark hair fell dishevelled and familiar across his face. He tried to force it away with a brusque movement of his hand, but he was stayed midway when Lily caught his wrist. Blood wet her fingers as it poured from a mark etched beneath into his skin, a dark mark which twisted and roiled beneath her fingers. It was as if a chunk of his arm had been cut out, and burnt over by heated metal. A symbol of his loyalty to something he loved greater than anything else.
She looked into the eyes of the man she had once known, only to realise that the Dark Lord had taken more than he would have ever imagined.
He had taken a truly good man, and a pound of her flesh.
The words seemed to catch in her throat.
'You're right, I loved Severus Snape,' she murmured into the night, 'I just don't love you.'