Author's Note: Long time since I've actually written anything, huh? I was listening to "Here's to the Night" by Eve 6 and this came up. I was also really upset because I was told my dream of playing volleyball for Purdue was never going to happen because I'm supposed to row (which I hate). Without a scholarship, I can't go to college. Too many people play volleyball. Crap.

Enough with my own drama. I'm feeling sorry for myself. I thought I'd try something different—limited dialogue. Like it or no?

Here's to the night I felt alive.

I pour the amber fluid into my old chipped glass. The drink of unwanted remembrance and desperate forgetting.

You lounged in your seat, beautiful in flawless teenage youth, eyes lit in naivety and shadowed in secrets. I was one of them.

I sat in the overstuffed armchair across from you. I couldn't look…I couldn't…my dreams were nothing short of impossible…

I down half the glass.

Your hand cupped my face so perfectly. I turned toward the one wound I had no visible scar for. The only scar I desperately wanted. Perhaps there was just no space left on my pathetic figure. Hell, I was pathetic. Still am.

Another half a glass gone. I reach for the bottle again.

Those silver orbs searched me for just a moment. There was nothing to say. Our eyes closed. As your lips met mine, I felt my soul being ripped afresh even as another tear healed. I pulled away.

I turned toward the fire again, wishing to throw myself into it. I couldn't meet your face; your disappointment, your lack of surprise at my frigidity.

"Listen." I do. "If you let me, if you just give me a chance, I'll stay with you." I faced you, skeptical.

"Walls will fall before we do, love." The weight of your own humanity was infused in those words. You embraced me like no one else ever had or has to this day. "I promise." A kiss on the cheek, a tear to wash it away. What pretty words.

What pretty liquid burns my throat again. My glass is abandoned. I gulp straight from the bottle.

"Sirius." I pulled away again. "Sirius…" I choked. Your hand absentmindedly began to trace the side of my face. I almost gave in right there. I caught myself. "I-I can't do this anymore…I-I'm through." I stared you straight in the face this time. I saw my own horrid portrait reflected in your pained eyes. "You abandoned me. I just can't anymore." I'd seen her. She was a goddess and just what he needed. Everything I couldn't offer. I'd seen her pressed against him, doing things that were done only in the darkest of corridors. "I'm sorry."

You pressed something into my hand. A ring.

I reach for a second bottle.

Years later, you returned to me. The circumstances were quite different. James was dead. Somehow you convinced my stilled heart to trust again, though I'd never stopped loving. Maybe it was the same embrace from so long ago. You were always good at that. Resurrecting the good while crucifying the bad. No matter how terrible it was.

You promised me forever, but first we must care for the only child we'd ever had. To try to relieve just a sliver of his pain, maybe we thought we could forget about our own. We swore to it. One thing led to another however, and nowhere was safe. The years slipped right through our fingers until I found myself weeping over your forever still form, a ring on my finger. Through my blurring tears, I saw a matching one on yours.

I don't know how much more alcohol I can take. I don't know how much more of life I can take really. I break my oath to you tomorrow. I'll be wearing someone else's ring. I wish I could die. I live only to protect him, the last piece of you I have.

I raise my bottle.

Here's to the night, love.