Green Eyes
beta: the incomparable JayRain
Author's Note: So I went to ReaderCon and one of the panels was about professional authors writing fanfic and I was like YES THEY ARE SINGING THE SONG OF OUR PEOPLE. Ahem. And one of the authors was talking about how she loves writing in Snape voice and I was like oh hai a thing I have not done yet and then I was on the elliptical and BAM. So yeah. Here ya go. I own nothing. Except angst.
The air smelled of earth and primrose. Dense and rich and yet delicate, soft.
He was dying as he inhaled it. He could feel his end beyond that air, a cold, comforting silence somewhere far off and yet just within reach of his fingertips.
His neck burned, an icy fire that spread in growing vines over his skin, twining around his shoulder, seeping into his face. His blood dripping out onto that shabby floor but it wasn't the only thing. His eyes, always sharp and now sharper, able to discern every crack in the ceiling, every smudge, saw a mist rising over him, escaping from the very depth of him.
Little Potter was nearby, he knew. And he gave him that mist, all the parts that the boy could understand.
All the warmth inside his heart.
Lily.
But he didn't give him everything.
Some things even death couldn't rip from his grasp. For he was a master of life and death and the lord of his own memory.
He didn't hate the little Potter boy because his father was that imbecile James. He didn't hate him because that messy dark hair reminded him of humiliation, degradation, mocking laughter. He didn't hate him because he was a sign of loss, a symbol of Lily gone far beyond his reach.
He hated him because his eyes were green. Because Lily stared right out of those verdant windows into straight into him.
Because he hated Lily.
It was that frozen, crystalized moment when he did not think his shabby, threadbare self could be turned out any more for the amusement of others, hanging upside down, his guts laid bare for scorn in all the ways possible. And she defended him, she did, she diddididid. But she was there too. She saw it. And when he reared back and he snarled, she was gone too. Because she didn't care to see past the words, past the screen he drew tight to get her away, to keep her from witnessing another moment when his pride, his blood was cast into dirt. Because she knew, didn't she, that he didn't mean it. But the apologies didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she had that convenient excuse.
She took that excuse. She didn't have to stand by him anymore, not scrawny, greasy, little Severus.
So he hated her.
Those green eyes that only cared just enough. It was easier if they hated him too.
His vision was still sharp and those eyes stood before it. Lily's eyes again. He still loved them too.
He welcomed the cold and that scent of primrose.