Green Eyes
With his last breath, the man bleeding on the floor had told the boy to look at him. Now the green eyes looked into the black and Snape felt a pain worse than his savaged throat. What he saw in those eyes cut sharper than Nagini's fangs.
The boy was Lily's and those were the eyes he knew so well. He knew this, of course, which was why he had always sought to protect the boy, though he did it with no love for Harry himself, because the boy's outward ways were so like those of James Potter, yet he had her eyes. Now that Snape was broken down enough to actually look into the eyes of the son, the soul he saw behind them was also Lily's. Those eyes looked at him with compassion now; honoring the last request of a dying man he thought a foe. James Potter would never have done that. The courage, kindness and the capacity to love he saw in Harry's eyes seared him.
Dear God, the love! If he had gone to the boy and told him about his mother, showed him kindness, it would have been returned to me ten-fold, thought Snape. It had been so easy to be cold. He had put up a wall of ice between himself and others that only Lily had penetrated and a boy with the face of the man that had taken Lily from him had no chance, not that Snape had given him one. Still, he had seen Harry's memories, seen him run to the aid of Arthur Weasley and Sirius Black, and seen how Harry cared for them. He, Snape, could have had that love. The boy, after all, had bestowed his love on all who had shown him kindness. Now his only hope that Harry would ever know the truth about him was if he caught the memories spilling out of him like liquid moonlight. Maybe his memories would sway Harry's heart as Harry's memories had not moved him. If the boy defeated Voldemort and had occasion in life to think of him softly, it would all be worth it!
With the world collapsing into a dim tunnel around him, Snape's thoughts ceased to be coherent and scattered into the void and the pain fled with them. He felt as though he had been dozing on the grass on a sunny afternoon, soft and warm and blank. His saw warm green eyes. Lily must be watching over him as he slept. Why did she look at him with such sad eyes? Then he felt no more.