AN: So this is the first fanfic I've every actually finished, so I love this quite a bit.

This is just a little angsty vision of what might have happened the last time Severus Snape saw Lily Evans.

Let me know what you think :)

Bella

Always

It was over.

If he was honest with himself (which he very rarely was, hiding his pain behind cutting words and beliefs he clung to fervently), it had been over since the word "Mudblood" had wormed itself through his tight lips, shattering any love between them. That had been the moment when she had released him from her heart. He had seen it in her perfectly emerald eyes and his heart broke in that moment. He hadn't felt the sneers and taunts of Potter and his cretins that day. His mind was full of her. Only her.

As it has been every second since he had first peered through the bushes and saw her bent over a flower on the ground, flipping her dark red hair over her shoulder as she frowned.

He thought about the infinite memories of her between that moment and this one. The moments where she smiled at him. The moments they sat huddled, talking in whispers. The moments where she cried. The moments where she walked in the halls, not knowing he was watching her. The moments where he was out of her life and he burned for her silently.

He closed his eyes and let the moments fill him. The pain, the beauty, the love, the hate, the indifference; they swirled like memories in a penseive.

"Expecto patronum," he whispered, needing something, anything corporeal to remind him of Lily tonight. The doe burst out, shook her head, and turned to him, blinking her beautiful eyes that were so similar to Lily's.

"Hey girl."

"Hey yourself."

The doe shimmered out of existence as Lily walked through her, striding purposefully towards him. She glided gracefully, such a perfect vision of beauty that it physically pained him to look at her. Sitting on his bed with him, she ignored his confused face, as she asked, "Sev, will my doe always be your patronus?"

It was a question she had asked a thousand times since she had first discovered it. It had always been her way of asking if he had loved her. It was scripted, such an oft repeated query that his answer came easily.

As fervently as ever, he caught her gaze and said, "Always."

Her eyes clouded over with tears at his answer, but she nodded and drew her knees up to her chest.

He surveyed her from the corner of his eyes. She had her long hair down to rest on her knees. Her face was unmade and with the tears glinting she looked about twelve years old, instead of the eighteen years she was. A shoot of pain went through his chest looking at her so close to the way he first knew her, the way he first loved her.

The silence stretched out between them, thick and full of broken hearts and unfulfilled promises. They would both look at each other, and then look away. Neither were exactly comfortable, they'd been too long apart for that, but it was still easy to just sit there.

In the end, he spoke first. Lily had always been more stubborn, and when it came down to it, he had always loved hearing her voice too much to continue the silence.

"Lily," his voice coming out harsher than he meant, "What are you doing here?"

She sighed, looking up at him under her eyelashes, silently pleading that he wouldn't need her answer. Any other time he would have did anything she wanted, just because she asked. But it had been two years since he had heard her voice outside of his dreams and seen her eyes outside of his patronus. He stared at her until her lips softly parted.

"I couldn't just leave, Sev. I tried. I made it two years. But I just couldn't never see you again. It was different, at school, because I knew you were there. Just because we weren't talking and we never ran into each other didn't mean you weren't there. You always were. I could see you watching me and every time I had to force myself to walk away. I hate everything that you got into, and I hate those friends of yours and I hate what you called me but I could never hate you, Sev. I tried so hard, but I couldn't."

He watched her weep in silence. A thousand times he had wanted to reach across the gap between them and hold her one last time. But he couldn't. They needed this conversation, this clearing of the air. It was catharsis. So he forced himself to stay silent as Lily hiccupped and went on.

"I wanted to hate you. I thought it would hurt less. No one understood why I cried so long over you and I couldn't make them understand. They would tell me that you were useless and creepy and wrong and I just wanted to scream at them to stop talking about my best friend like that but I forced myself to nod because you weren't my best friend anymore. You'd broken my heart." She sobbed helplessly into her hands. He fought himself to stay still even though every one of her tears sent a crack through his heart. It had been two years apart after five years of their worlds revolving around each other. It was never going to be a happy reunion.

"You were my everything, Sev. You really were. I mean, how could you not be? You were the first person to tell me who I was, and since then you'd been defining me. I was only Lily when I was around you, when I was who you thought I was. Even when we started growing apart, it didn't matter. Coz I was your Lily, and you were my Sev. And then you called me… that. And how could I not listen? You'd been telling me who I was for five years. But if that's who I was to you, I couldn't be your Lily anymore. Don't you get it, Sev? I didn't just lose you. I lost myself." She had stopped crying now, her eyes getting that fierce gleam that he both loved and feared, in equal measure. "So I had to work out who I was. I've spent the last two years making myself a new person, making myself my own Lily. I should be thanking you, really. Now no one else will ever make me who I am. Not even James."

He hated to hear his name. Hear it from her lips. But that was her life now. And he couldn't help but feel exultant that not even James got to define her now. He had been the only one who ever had.

They sat in silence again, letting the conversation sink into their bones with a heavy weight as they simultaneously realised that this was it. If the conversation was over, so were they.

The thought smothered him. He wanted to say something, anything, that would make her stay. Anything that would stop her from going to him and spending the rest of her life with him. But he knew, deep down, in the heart most people thought was nonexistent, that she would go. She would walk out of his life, and this time, she wouldn't be coming back.

She wiped away the tears coursing her cheeks and spoke again, "Sev. I loved you. I really did. And I had to tell you that, before I left. And if things were different, I would never leave you. I would stay with you the rest of our lives because my life was empty before I met you and I can't imagine it without you. We were always two parts to a whole, weren't we?"

She was right. She always had been the better half of him. The kind, loving part. They were two sides to a coin, but she didn't deserve his tarnish. He would give up her light if it saved her from the dark.

Why was she still here? She had the love of her life waiting for her in a new house in Godric's Hollow. She had her entire life in front of her but she was here, in his dingy Spinner's End hovel, so close to where it all began.

"Lily?"

She looked up at him, wiping her tears away clumsily, looking very much like a child. As she blinked owlishly up at him, he understood why she was here. Why she couldn't let go.

"You need to go to him. To James." He forced the name out between his teeth, hoping the grimace wasn't too obvious. "You need to let me go. We broke each other's heart, and if you stay now, that's just going to happen again. Except this time it'll be worse, because you're not mine. I can't break what isn't mine. Even he deserves better than that."

Her sobs had dissolved into wordless keening as she shook.

"We can't be in each other's lives anymore, Lily. I want nothing more than for us to be together, but it can't happen. You are destined for so much more than a life with me, and I have to make my own life worthwhile. I won't hold you back anymore. Go to him. Leave me. Just, go."

He put his face in his hands, his hair no longer enough to shield him from her. He couldn't face her right now. He wanted her to leave, saying nothing, leaving nothing but her sweet scent behind.

But she didn't. She sat there as the minutes stretched endlessly, breaking like elastic pulled too thin. Neither moved for what seemed an eternity, terrified of shattering the moment before they both broke and were left to put themselves together alone.

He finally raised his head to look into those eyes he loved so much, for perhaps the last time.

She moved closer, slowly, softly, giving him all the time in the world to move. But he didn't. He wouldn't. Even if he spent every second of the rest of his life breaking over it, he would never regret it.

Her lips met his and it took all his strength not to die just at that simple touch. Everything was Lily and she was burning herself into his memories with magnificent colours and a thousand shades of pain. Her smell, the touch of her lips, the sound of her voice, the perfect shape of her eyes. He closed his eyes and still saw here. She was on his eyelids now, printed on his soul, consuming him in a delicious torture.

When he opened his eyes she was gone. But now it almost didn't matter. She was in him now. Forever a part of him.

Always.