AN: This guy's death is apparently a big well of inspiration for me. I like to think of this as a sort of prequel to Beyond the Mirror, the other drabble I have up, so feel free to read that one if you're in the mood for more Snape feels.
Sirius was right: dying turned out to be as easy as falling asleep after a long, long day. The few seconds before it were what made you so eager to do so, though.
One moment he was fading, leaking blood all over Harry's hands from the screaming maw in his neck and straining to see a hint of green as the world blurred. In the next, an irrational but absolutely clear thought rose, white-hot, above the physical pain of his body. He wanted to die with hope, the hope that Albus had told him lay in that child, the one who was so much James and yet so much Lily- but there was only one truth that seemed certain to him, as his soul teetered over oblivion. One moment left to think:
I will never be with her again, for what I've done.
And the next should have been nothing. He shouldn't have hoped for an afterlife in the first place, because the paths they had chosen had lead them to very different places even in life: Lily a brief place of respite, where she had died with purpose and a love that still flowed in her son's veins- and he to a hell of endless regret, an creeping maw of flame that he had watched set fire to her heaven. Despite having never seriously considered the Muggle concept of the afterlife, governed by deities he couldn't believe in, in the last moment of his life, Severus Snape was certain that he was going straight for a damnation to match his sins.
You can imagine his surprise, then, when hellfire didn't immediately consume him.
Severus Snape woke up to a world made of white mist, his clenched hand the only thing he could see for miles and miles. This place was soft, but without texture; cloud, but without cold or water. He was the only form here, it seemed, in a hall beyond space and time.
He thought maybe he would have to stay here for eternity- but someone on a bench materialized in the distance, swinging their legs in the ebbing swirl of white nothing.
It struck Snape now that he was nude- but no sooner had disgust at the thought filled his (somehow living, thinking) head than a pile of robes had appeared beside his pale hand. He pulled the warm, black fabric over his head with hands suddenly trembling. The person on the bench, who was staring down at their hands as if out of modesty, could be waiting for no one but him.
There was a sweeping, as though of bird wings, in his chest as he climbed to his feet- but coming to his feet, Snape couldn't help but notice that the figure was not that of a slender woman with long red tresses. No, it was a man seated before him, twiddling his fingers and, as he finally slid eyes over Snape, reaching up to nervously muss his own hair.
"Severus," James said welcomingly, smiling in a woe-begone way.
"So I am in hell after all…"
James barked with laughter, eyes crinkling. He was an old twenty-one, more fatherly-looking than Snape remembered him from their school days. Hunched over and twiddling, he didn't seem such a bully or a Quidditch star; now he just looked like any other Londoner in a cardigan, waiting forlornly for a train that would never come.
"No, I already gave you hell on earth. Please, sit." he murmured, gesturing to the empty side of the bench. When Snape didn't move, his smile grew more forlorn still.
"You were expecting Lily." It was a statement, not a question.
"I-I had hoped…" was all Snape would allow himself to say, before he remembered who he was talking to again and anger kicked back in.
"She'll be here soon," the tousle-headed man assured him, gazing off into the unending white. "She's coming on the next train, for you."
And now Snape noticed they were standing in King's Cross station, though stunning white, immaculate, and empty of souls but theirs.
"Please." James asked again, patting the seat beside him. When no other seat presented itself, and no Underground train bearing Lily appeared barreling down the track before them, Snape did so- though scooching as far away from Potter as he physically could.
"Came to get in a jibe before we go on to eternity?" Snape growled, trying not to look at his seatmate.
"Actually, no, if you can believe it," was James' glum reply.
"Word of your offspring you want, then?" Snape countered; his venom was depleted from the long journey he could not remember, though, and rather than triumphant, he merely felt tired.
"I can assure you he's fine- and very like his arrogant father, to boot-"
"Oh, yes, he has a bit of me… But I rather thought he had more of Lily's good heart in him than my tomfoolery, thank goodness." He chuckled; another hair swipe.
"I've been sitting here for quite a while, Severus. Waiting for you, in fact."
James couldn't have said something stranger if he had just confessed love; the dark-eyed man now deigned to gaze over at him, though James did not meet Snape's eyes.
"Me." Snape repeated, trying to understand the joke in all of this.
"You." James reiterated.
More silence followed; Snape waited for the other shoe to fall. When it didn't, he realized either James had developed an excellent poker face in seventeen years of being dead, or that he was about to experience something else as strange as this ethereal station: something profound from the toerag Potter.
He wanted to snipe back, he really did- but he found himself asking instead: "Surely you haven't waited all this time…"
"Oh, no. I've been in My Place," James affirmed mysteriously. "A wonderful place, it is- and we all get our own, you see. The next train will take you there."
"To where?"
"Wherever you want to go," James said blankly.
"See, we good people get to go on to a life that we choose after this one…even if we don't feel that we deserve to."
The train tunnel smoked silently, solidifying and falling back into whiteness when Severus' eyes drifted. They'd both been Chasers, he and James: James chasing Lily, a beautiful something that had brought him joy, and Snape chasing something that had brought only misery. James had been cruel as a child; Snape had been cruel, too, even to Lily's orphan. And yet fools and bullies, they were still sitting in the same place, waiting on the same train.
"I'm so sorry, Severus."
This wasn't the voice that had once taunted him, calling "Snivellus" from a long-ago lakeside. Almost before it could register, James tilted his head and the tears Snape had heard became undeniable, sparkling down the man's cheery, lined face.
"I've had an age to regret, and I can't help but think that my happiness came at your expense. Not just when we were children, but later… Lily was- is, my soulmate. But I'm sorry I had to take her from you. If things had been different… If I hadn't been so cruel, maybe you wouldn't have chosen the Dark Arts over her. I've been thinking about it for a long while, now-"
"I chose."
The words flew out of his mouth, more certain and sure than the entire world around them, before he knew it. "I chose, James. Don't think I don't regret it. You were a horrid shitehawk, but I chose power over her, in the end. I've had a long while to think, too… And a long time to realize how foolish that was."
James smiled into his clasped hands.
"I was a shitehawk, you're right," he grinned. "And I know saying it doesn't change things, but-"
"I'm sorry for my choice." Snape said quietly.
Silence. There had been many choices, and not one but many had decided on their final course. How responsible they were for each one was moot, here, past life and the point of altering them. He heard James nod. They had both made wrong choices, at so many points.
He took the offered hand, and shook it back. James had strong hands from playing Quidditch; he was strong, now that Snape thought of it. It had taken strength to make the right choices for Lily. One of them had died loved, which was about as right as anything could be, in that old world.
A train came around the bend of the tunnel, still out of sight.
"I wanted to make sure you went on, knowing." James offered, shaking himself out of reverie.
"Thank you." Snape found himself saying.
Chugging thick clouds of noxious coal, the locomotive pulled into view. Still they sat, side by side.
"Thank you for what you did for Harry. For all of us."
With the sickening grinding of old metal parts, the train car pulled into the bay.
"You'll go on from here with her, to your own Place." James said quickly, looking at the ground. "She's in my Place too, but that won't stop her from being in Yours… You can tell her everything you need to, Sev, and then… then you can go on."
Only Lily had ever called him 'Sev'- and yet he found himself alright with this bit of familiarity. Snape nodded, watching the mullioned windows for a glint of brightest red.
Snape rose; the doors opened with a distant, squeegee sound. A woman wearing a dress made of moonbeams beckoned, in front of an advertisement he couldn't read for his suddenly-stinging eyes.
"We'll see, Potter. I don't know about yours... but we may end up friends, in My Place," said Snape quietly, just between them- and then he stepped over the threshold, reaching for Lily's hand.