Double-Edged Rainbow
Not a single person had ever committed suicide in the wizard prison. She found that odd. Odd, that the knowledge of a life sentence in a cold, dank cell twelve paces wide with Dementor guards, inedible food and nothing to do but think wouldn't drive a man to kill himself. There were very few long term woman prisoners in Azkaban. Most succumbed to the ever-present despair and died of it. The men tended to lose their minds.
When he arrived, she was sitting on the floor as usual, wedged between the bars and the wall with her knees drawn up tight and her eyes closed. She wasn't asleep. She wished she was.
The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps opened her eyes. A group of annoyed-looking Aurors strode down the corridor. That was odd, she thought. New prisoners were common, but the Aurors rarely dealt with murderers. They preferred to leave those to the Dementors, and focus instead on the minor offenders, those who would see the sun and stars and sky again, not sniveling, sobbing, murderers reduced to the intelligence and bravery of a child by the Dementors and the prison itself.
That was when she saw him, the man with hair as black as his name, so black it was almost blue in the shadowy, elusive dusk. His face was unreadable and his eyes slate gray. She watched impassively as he stumbled on the same crack she had that day when they shoved him into the cell opposite and to the right of hers.
He was lucid and angry.
She didn't trust the man, him with the charcoal and stormy and slate-gray eyes, him with the blue-black hair.
He was angry, the first few days. That was not unusual. But his anger didn't fade. His anger remained as fresh and raw and painfully powerful as the day he arrived for all the days after. He didn't begin to forget himself like most did, either. He knew exactly who he was and why he was there and why he shouldn't have been. She could tell. She was the same, after all.
Each morning, after a semblance of breakfast was delivered, she listened to him scratch a mark onto the wall. Three the first day, and one every day after. She wondered what they were.
He was standing at his cell door one day when she awoke. "Why are you here?" Her voice was rough. She did not realize she had spoken until he answered, swirling patterns on the wall with a scarred finger.
"I tried to kill a traitor." His voice was low and steady and his eyes only flicked to hers for the briefest of moments.
She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and regarded him. "I killed a man," she said.
She grew accustomed to the gentle rustling of his endless pacing. Twelve steps up, pause and turn, twelve steps down, pause and turn, twelve steps up...
They were vicious, violent steps wrought with curses and muttering. But he became a constant in her life just the same.
And he had a wild, reckless beauty about him still. In this place of death, he was the only living thing, the only reminder of life. Azkaban had not broken him. She did not think it ever would.
She watched him thrash through his dreams and mutter, "I'm innocent." She watched him snark to the guards, baiting them, goading them, taunting them. Anything for a response. She watched him pace and curse and punch the wall and cradle his bleeding knuckles and finally sink to the ground and drag his hands down his face. And each day, she fell for him just a little bit harder.
"There's no space for anyone else. We'll have to double them up."
"Not the lunatics; they'd kill each other. It's not worth the paperwork."
"Who, then?"
The Aurors paused in front of her cell and looked at her for a moment before swiveling around and looking at the man in the cell opposite and to the right of hers. "Them," he said.
"I suppose introductions are in order," he said without looking at her as he stood at the door of her- of their- cell.
She looked at the man with the tangled charcoal hair and the dull gray eyes. "I know who you are," she said.
The rain poured down and the wind whipped it though the high, narrow window. She reveled in the feel of the cool drops on her skin. They dragged at her worn clothing, misted on her hair and eyelashes, and gathered in beads to run down her face. The edge of a rainbow reflected on the frame of her glasses. For the first time, she smiled through the tears.
He was at her side, just as wet, if not more. She turned to look at him, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She nestled into his side and glanced up through the mist in her lashes to his. A rough thumb brushed away the drops slipping down her cheeks. She was breathless. She'd never been breathless before.
That was the first time he kissed her.
He was all hard angles and straight lines. He tasted like heaven was breaking.
She did not imagine her first time would be on the cold, smooth stones of the wizard prison.
It was.
She did not imagine hearing the deranged babbling of the insane as they kissed.
She did.
She imagined she would trust him.
She did not.
She did not imagine she would love him.
She did.
She did not imagine her first and only man would be a killer.
He was.
There were dark, finger-shaped bruises on her arms the next morning, the mirror image of those on his.
I love you, she wanted to say. Don't leave me here alone, in this joyless place. Stay here. Stay here with me. I love you.
She knew he would stay if she asked, stay in the damp and cold misery of Azkaban with her.
I love you, she wanted to say. Don't leave me here alone. Don't go without me. She knew he would stay if she asked.
She didn't say a word.
She loved him, so she let him go alone.
She let him save himself.
She looked on as the man with the stormy, charcoal eyes and the hair so black it was almost blue turned his head and caught her gaze one last time. He stood silhouetted before the bars for what seemed like an eternity, bathed in the scarlet, bloody light that reflected from the sinking sun. In a single movement almost too fast to see, he fell into his dog and slipped through the bars. He paused for a fleeting moment, and then he was gone.
There was a loose brick in the outside wall. A pencil stub and parchment scrap mixed in a cloud of loose mortar tumbled out when she tugged. So did a slender, silver knife. She touched the tip with a finger. A bead of sunset blood sprang to the surface, and she touched it to the tip of her tongue.
She sheathed the knife in the niche and replaced the brick.
I love you, it read.
I would die for you, but I won't live without you.
And then on the back, in smaller, more intimate writing,
Thank you for freeing me, Sirius Black.
A/N: This story is also posted on , HOWEVER, it is under both a different title and penname. IT IS STILL ME. I did not plagiarize, I just haven't gotten around to changing the title on that one yet and someone else had the same penname as mine on this site. :(
Let me know how I could improve and what you liked. I've got another SB/OC oneshot in the works, so suggestions and advice are welcome. Also, I'd love to beta anyone's work if anyone would want it...
I'd also welcome any title suggestions, if you have them.
Thanks for reading.