Another drabble.
Title:
Beneath the Veil
Author: AdiaAdore
Genre: Drama/Angst
Pairing: Sirius, some surprises, and a whole host of regret.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Whoops, didn't create him.
Summary: Sirius dies. Nebulousness ensues.
Sirius is possessed at once. He knows this because there is no longer feeling
in his legs, then his arms. Finally, his chest. He vaguely finds this odd, as
this is where he is first struck, and it remains the last place where any
tingling lingers.
Then it is replaced by spirit and shadow. He has fallen, he finds, as he has
become enveloped in soft folds of darkness, whispers encircling a great void of
coming and going, a nebulous echo of life. He remains splayed in the nothing,
his limbs outstretched upon a place he cannot identify. He does not feel
compelled sit up. It is warm. He is helpless, and helped. There is sufficiency
for the time being, as he wonders when he will begin to think again, and
reason. And see.
There is no sight. There is no anything. He is dead, he finds. He
satisfactorially isn't.
Oh, he thinks hollowly. The realization hits him like a blanket; he does not
suffocate beneath it until it has covered the entirety of his face and self. In
vain, he struggles under his invisible bindings, but finds that the insides of
him have been replaced with a non-life, a non-existance. Merely spirit and echo
and shadow.
He is dead. He is possessed by darkness.
And then Sirius finds he is floating. Beyond his control, he is lifted and
treated to a flash of photos that are hodgepodge of his life, a scrapbook from
a beloved vacation. They lurk in front of him, almost material but mostly dark,
and distant. But he can recognize their features in any place and weakly tries
to reach out to them as they slip away in a whirlpool of lingering light.
One is quick, and darts in front of the folds like fish in murky water,
confused and frightened and fighting for something Sirius cannot comphrehend in
his eternal abandon. He reaches out instinctively with his fingers, trying to
flesh out the figure in what is left of his mind, almost hearing a voice but
content to trace this moment. Follows as it glides quickly and anxiously. And
then hurriedly away.
Harry. He mouths blandly, closing his fist around nothing. He wants to
wave goodbye, but then feels stupid with the absurdity. He feels as though he
should weep, but finds that he no longer knows how. He is floating, still,
caught in the thick of what is swiftly sweeping him away, when both his arms
reach out for salvation.
A figure commands the space now, possessed of itself an assurance that Sirius
knows of few. A slow series of swishes, and the figure vanishes and reappears,
but to Sirius this looks normal, the haze of shadows retaining little likeness
to reality. He suddenly feels trapped at the sight, and fights his bindings in
a struggle that lifts him further away from Harry, from Dumbledore and
Bellatrix and life and battle and redemption and pain and condemnation and
revenge and hiding and virtue.
What is left of a gasp escapes him as he strains. And Moony, he thinks. And
Moony. And Moony. And Moony.
The last of his sense switches to panic. The figure left, almost completely
still admist the fluidity of shadows, is mourning the emptiness that he finds
before him. Composed, Sirius thinks in a flash. As composed as he'll ever be.
Sirius struggles in vain and tries to scream from the contempt; he finds his
breath only ripples within the air, bleeding from him like a open wound. If
only, he thinks thickly, the thoughts now slurring together with his
surroundings, the echo in his brain is taken off mute and pounds inside and
around him. If only he can get to him. He can leave. He can live.
His brain switches out of English. What he feels and sees are now words, seething
thickly from him. He is drowning in his demise.
He stops struggling. The figure remains etched in shadow, but Sirius is quickly
slipping away. He drops the pretense of strength and watches vaguely, almost
blindly now, as love falls away from him like a empty dream.
He is not dreaming. But he is not awake. He is going somewhere, and does not
know how to face forward. The veil is vanishing towards an invisible horizon,
and he is traveling faster then he can comphrehend, the empty air rustling
around him.
He has not been trained to handle this moment. In all his life, his courage has
led him to believe that this is what he is fighting against, not heading
towards. Now his life lessons have been voided and he is careening in the
thickness of his eternity. If it is eternity. If it is anything at all.
Sirius becomes everything. Sirius exisits in omnipotence for a moment, before
he is nothing again, still in the shadow. He closes what is left of his eyes in
futility, finding that the dark remains in all places the same.
And then. Warmth. Sirius jolts from the surprise and finds that he can, moves
within his state, opens his eyes to what is behind him. What he finds, he
cannot express.
There. In the haze of the murky light, existing and murmuring in song, the
words that are not words becoming more distinguishable, the language of
everything and the dead welcoming him, suffocating him in open arms.
It is James. James is existing, a haze of love, and good, and of this place. He
is smiling, Sirius can see now. The whole world is smiling. His whole world is
smiling. Suddenly, the pall of darkness is lifting, and the shadow is an echo
of light, the words stringing together the answer to fear.
And then, the destination completes him. He is fullfilled within the emptiness,
a hole mended in a place he did not recognize before.
In an end where he trades his loves for others, the hard and soft warmths for
mere echos and shadow. Waifs that are as akin to him as anything, their
contruction one and the same.
Of which he has become. Of what he has always been, beneath his surface; what
he has always contained, now what he cannot help but embrace, what is left of
his cheeks and his arms finding themselves entwined in his welcomer.
He asks without asking, to be led on.