She stood stock still, unmoving, unfeeling, her expression frozen in one of indifference and calm. She did not care that he was staring at her, she did not care that she had just fought with him, and she certainly didn't care that she had made him upset. That wasn't her problem, it was his, all his, and he could deal with it himself.
She already had to deal with his love; he hovered around her, orbited her like a sad moon, followed her if she left the room. He kept loving her and cherishing her, even with the way she treated him half the time. He could deal with her anger if she could deal with his love.
It had gone like this for months.
When Maeve had met him, she had instantly fallen. How perfectly drawl, how boring, how Hollywood. But she had, and at the time, she hadn't cared. But then he had fallen for her, and at that point she realized that she wasn't just mean to some people, she was like the mega-bitch of mega-bitches. It was amazing, just how much patience he had with her.
"Stop giving me those eyes. I will not be persuaded. I am angry, let me be angry."
"Even if I don't want you to be angry? Even if I think you should give yourself time to breathe and calm down, and make it all go away? Why can't you just do that? Why do you insist on being so upset?"
He moved from his spot to worm his way around her, to fold his arms around her waist and pull her in. Oh, those arms, those wonderful, strong arms…but no, she wouldn't allow herself to be persuaded, she even told him that. But the amount of effort she produced to keep her word was increasing with every movement he made; when he moved his arms to massage her shoulders, when his hand brushed her long hair off her neck, when his head fell forward and draped her in his black curtain of hair, when his lips connected to her neck. All these 'when's caused her to use more and more energy. Because even though she was a mean, angry person, even Maeve could be persuaded by the gentle puppy-dog ways of her lover.
"Sirius…you never let me be, do you? I can't be angry for more than an hour around you, can I?"
"No. I will not allow it. Anger is bad for you, it makes you frown, and you're too young to ruin your face with wrinkles, not that they would take away from your looks."
"Uhuh. I'm only letting you get away with this because my shoulders hurt. And you know our looks don't change."
He chuckled and shook his head, his hair never once leaving her face. He smelled like pine needles and fire, and he always would. She had did a very bad deed to get him back. She had begged for him to be given to her, the new soul that had passed into their world. She had begged and pleaded and cried, and finally she was given the okay to perform the ritual that would give him a solid form. And that night, the night he had come to be in her long, never-ending, damned life, she had burnt up the pine trees in the Forbidden Land that surrounded her ritual circle, had set fire to the needles she had collected, and almost caused the destruction of precious, long-since dead trees. But she had done it, with permission, to get her lover.
She had been forced through that veil hundreds of years ago. She had once been the rival for the Minister of Magic, had once been a very powerful witch capable of many things. And he had been a greedy twat, so of course he pushed her through, made her fall into this land of the dead. Soon after, her loving familiar, an Irish Wolfhound she named Venus, was found walking into the world of the dead, faithful and loyal through it all. And even with her pet, she had waited, forever it seemed, for someone to come save her from her loneliness.
Maeve Cryer was a short (dead) witch who stood at five feet, three inches, head and shoulders, with long, golden hair that fell in waves down her back, and big, green eyes that stared at everything they could see. She was not thin, she had a figure, though it wasn't very heavy, slightly above the modern average, and she held herself with a grace that spoke her age.
Sirius Black, of course, was a strange contrast. Taller, dark hair, kind face, thin with amazing gray eyes, and he was strong, wise, caring, all these wonderful things. She was a demon compared to him, he barely ever hurt flies, whereas she would swat a toad if it came too close to her shoe.
Yet, even as they were opposites, they were very much in love, and they would sit up in bed for hours, just talking while Maeve's faithful familiar laid next to the fire and dozed. Of course, there wasn't much they could do, other than talk. They were both dead, and dead people couldn't reproduce, they couldn't make friends, they couldn't have dinner parties or talk to coworkers about how horrible their job was. She had been forced to beg the Lord of this world for Sirius's soul for a reason: each person dead from the veil was to spend eternity alone. The only reason her dog had come through the veil to her was because they had been bound; Venus had been only two years younger than Maeve when they died, which would have made her 24 years old when she went through.
Now, as Maeve tried to ignore Sirius and his attempts to cheer her up, she noticed the room around her change and warp, and the sinking feeling in her stomach returned. Normally, she didn't having anyone hanging on her when this happened, and she knew that he would be taken with her when she was dragged to the Memory Chamber. He never asked how she had died, she had never told him, and she wasn't in the mood for him to find out. She didn't want him to ever find out.
Her agreement with the Lord of Death, as he liked to call himself, was that she would have to perform forbidden spells, mix her blood with the sap of a tree from the Forbidden Land and burn it. Then, in the process of burning the blood-sap mixture, she'd have to burn down the Forbidden Land. She of course found a loop-hole, and saved the Forbidden Land, but because of this, the Lord upped the ante. In exchange for Sirius's soul, she would have to endure her death over, and over, and over again. Sometimes, it was just watching her death, sometimes it was reliving it, but every time, she had no control over what was to happen; she couldn't change the events, she couldn't say anything different than she had said in the beginning, and she couldn't cast any spells to make it stop. If she somehow got around this, in any impossible way, for she was clever, she would go back to the world of the living, but only alone, and she'd leave her Venus, and Sirius, behind. And the thought of another life alone scared her, chilled her to the bone.
And now it was happening. She was being taken back to that room, back to that evil room where she had lost her life, and Sirius was right behind her, holding her, face buried in her blonde hair, unaware of the change. But soon, soon he would look up, and see where they were, and he would panic, and wonder why they were back in the place of his death. But they weren't. They would never go back to his death; only to hers.
The time came that he looked up, just as the room came into perfect focus. She knew she had only a minute before she would come into the room, an older, happier Maeve who had been brought to this room by that horrible man, so many, many years ago.
And she had been right. He panicked a bit, his arms tightened around her, and he took a step away from the veil, taking her with him, and she was sorry. Oh, she was sorry.
"Maeve…where are we? Why are we here? How can we be here! We can't even go more than a mile from our home!"
"Sirius, dear, close your eyes. Close your eyes, cover your ears, don't pay attention to anything you hear. It's all a dream, you're having a bad dream, you dozed off, don't worry about a thing."
"I don't believe you."
"Then I'm sorry."