A ribbon of purple smoke wafted up to the ceiling. A mussed bed, with tepid sheets and no comforter, alluded to a memory of shared heat: there he sat, hours after she'd dressed and gone. Back-lit by the dim bedroom lamps, the symmetry of the night stands and the scuffed, shadowed headboard framed his silhouette. The end of his cigarette burned scarlet, failing to light his face except for a glimmer in the mirror black of his eyes.

Severus resented needing saving. He'd been lent into nastiness, made to inherit a stubborn disappointment with his life and the people who inhabited it. That was his reality, and he'd hardly the incentive to change it. He was physically incapable of lasting happiness, born without the capacity.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, "without some idea that it's worth the effort." He watched her, immobile, while she realized the cruelty of that. "Worth the effort" echoed in the silence between them.

"Leave, then," he said, after some minutes. She flushed, embarrassed: standing naked while fully dressed.

Nonetheless, she returned, bearing her sea glass soul. She gave, often and with regretful hunger; he reciprocated gradually less, as the scent of married life settled into her skin. After she left, he smoked and fantasized about her returning, forever. Her comings and goings defined his sense of his own gravity—his mass, his significance, were directly proportional to the trouble she went through to see him. Theirs was a relationship of minute cosmic disasters: a cycle of light pouring, in excess, into a man-shaped black hole. Or at least, that was his impression. Hers might have varied; he never thought to ask.

Now, they had involved another life. In the dark, grasping, they managed to create amidst the insidious exchange of energies.

Distracted, he inhaled the fumes from the burning filter. Sputtering, he scowled at the used butt and turned to smash it into the tray. Mixed in with the ashes there were the remains of her note from weeks before, asking to meet. Two words,"I'm pregnant."

"I'm not keeping it. I-I can't. James would know and this, this was a..." She cried into the crook of her arm while he stood by her shoulder, hovering. "A mistake, all of it. All of it. All of it."

That had been almost a month ago. He'd kept the note until he had memorized the quirks in the parchment, and couldn't stand its existence a minute more. He arranged for the necessities with the money she offered for emergencies. He brewed, and helped her drink, and bore her through the cramps and the vomiting and the sobbing and the rest. Since then, she had grown colder, smaller, yet called on him after a fortnight, wanting to meet again. Finally inspired, he asked why. Why? Why ruin the opportunity for annoyingly complete bliss? Why soil herself? What point was she trying to prove?

"This is me," she whispered into his neck while he shook, trapped by her arms. "This is me."

What was she? What was she becoming? He was frightened and oddly transfixed. He let her return, that night and the night before. She spent the afternoon reading in his sitting room, while he watched her from the open kitchen. He had never seen her inside of Potter's house, but wondered if she breathed as quietly there.

"I'm hurting you." He confronted her in the kitchen, while she stirred dinner on his stove. "You're Potter's wife, and I'm...not him."

"No, you aren't." Her response was curt; her face, carved from ice. The shadows under her eyes seemed to deepen when she looked at him.

"You are avoiding your husband. Something is wrong and you're-"

"James is fine, Severus. He's James."

"But-"

"Severus. Enough." She covered the pot, turned down the element, reminded him to eat. She took the Floo to Godric's Hollow, and when the fires died down, he snuffled the flames and sobbed into the cooling fireplace. He had no intention to expose her to his disease, yet somehow, from prolonged exposure, he'd ruined her.

Except for their latest encounter, which lingered in the folds of his bedclothes.

Severus stood for the first time since her departure. Snatching his dress robes from the his open wardrobe, he looked down on his rumpled sheets from the foot of the bed. He peeled them off the mattress with quick, angry jerks; balled them up without any outward expression of upset save the thin press of his lips.

Mechanically, he stuffed the ball of used sheets into the linens hamper, and thought of setting it ablaze. Fire might erase the smell of her perfume, except, of course, for what he imagined clung to his person. Instead, he left them there and left the bedroom entirely in pursuit of a shower.

"It's James'." She held his gaze. She had come to quite reasonably resent his need for saving, and he knew before she did that this was their last meeting. "I'm keeping this one."

"Obviously, it is worth the effort."

A tremor went through her; her hand twitched, betraying the want to slap him. He saw hurt, as much as was in her, writhing in her eyes. Still, she showed a steadfast refusal to look away, and he flinched.

They parted in a fury of emotion, the greatest being a sense of mutual grief. They lay together for the last time, mourning some as of yet undiscovered dream. He hadn't a real clue at what they had or could have had. He only knew the dizzying dimensions of the space they might have filled within himself. Severus suspected she had a better idea of the people they might have been.

Still he noticed that, at least on her part, there was warmth, and some love for a life James had given her. Unfortunately for him, her happiness wasn't enough. It simply wasn't enough.

Severus gave up on showering halfway through washing his hair. Instead, he leaned against the wall, and let the almost cold water drum on his scalp while he drowned in visions of paradise.