Title: stained glass window
Summary: He leaves kisses like track marks, and paints you like a canvas, and still you can't bring yourself to care. / James, Narcissa, and living forever.
Notes: This was written for Camp Potter, and it is an AU with arty!James which I completely adore. I hope you enjoy!
"The sky was dark and you were clear - could you feel my footsteps? And would you shatter, would you shatter? Would you?" - Great Lake Swimmers, 'Your Rocky Spine.'
There is once a picture;
it hangs in the Headmaster's office
for seventy years.
Maybe it is symbolic, or maybe not,
because, like children, nobody thinks to ask.
Two people, dressed in blue,
have their backs to the world
and hold hands,
staring out at what might've been a castle,
or a cottage,
but, like most fairytales,
the details have been lost along the way.
The stained glass window
is broken long before I get here, dear -
seventy years bad luck.
They don't talk like magic portraits,
but sometimes their fingers
twitch
so though remembering.
The wind rages through their hair,
and something magical and colourful paints them like a rainbow.
It's -
clichéd.
And terribly, horribly ordinary.
They are going to live forever, and maybe,
just maybe,
it means something else.
(( maybe not ))
.
He paints mountains and moves them
so that he can curl you
into his heart.
The wind he whispers into your soul
curls your hair
and colours it like the rainbow.
He wraps his little pinky finger around your painted neck
to pull you back from cutting yourself
on glass and words and paints and the past.
(Doesn't it make you sick?
How he paints every eyelash like his life depends on it,
yet he can't even be bothered to
draw you a heart.)
The footsteps he trails leave prints
in that empty space that used to hold a ribcage
and scars on your paper wrists,
and darling, you are a stained glass window to be admired,
not shattered,
and he will break you, one day.
You are a landscape,
baby,
but half-finished and half-forgotten
and made up by halves of this and that;
a patchwork doll
who never knew any different.
Narcissa, dear,
people touch your lips and whisper about watercolours -
people caress your cheeks
and they say they picture porcelain -
they break your heart and they say you fall like glitter.
You have something to be treasured
and left as a trophy,
pride of place on some poor boy's mantelpiece.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
No one else is going
to treat you like a art gallery exhibition,
rather than a statue in the corner;
no one, but
him.
.
James, dear, now he is a masterpiece in himself.
His fingers are dotted with ink stains,
and charcoal lines the life lines
on his palms.
(He is going to live forever.)
He used to paint red and green and fire,
which twisted off of the canvas
and into the wind,
which poisoned and engulfed and left him broken.
But now, you see him -
his eyes twinkle with the blue
on his paper,
and the yellow that shines like sunlight.
(Do you really think he isn't going to leave you
as soon as red&green even smile?)
He has changed for the better, you tell yourself, darling -
maybe.
Maybe not.
Either way, after you, he walks like a dancer
and smiles like a poet,
and his fingers twitch around your hair
and under them, it feels like silk.
He is marble and charcoal
and you are stained glass and watercolours.
(He is immortal and you are - breakable.)
His friends laugh and point and they ignore the way his eyes
shimmer when he paint.
And maybe he cares too much -
he still plays Quidditch and winks at Lily Evans
and maybe
(not)
you don't care at all.
.
This is your life, now, sweetheart;
was it always like this?
So unbelievably Romeo and Juliet?
You are content with Slytherin and ideals
and your place on the mantelpiece;
you were perfectly happy
playing porcelain.
(So was I, so was I, but look at us nice, darling, look at us now!)
But he came with his paints and his talent
and his glasses and
his love for goddamned Lily Evans,
and you couldn't resist.
In another life -
in another life your blue eyes would have dulled,
that hurricane would have knocked you off your pedestal,
and you would have lost,
lost,
lost him, lost you, lost the whole goddamned war.
Look at you here, now, sweetie;
you are blue and rainbow and watercolours,
swirling on the edges
of a canvas he's yet to bring to life.
He leaves kisses like track marks,
and paints you like a canvas,
and still you can't bring yourself to care.
You are a glass ornament,
and if he breaks you,
well, it's not my fault, now is it?
I only tried to warn you against Gryffindor and greyscale madness;
however,
in the end,
you tried to warn me about Muggleborns,
and look how that turned out, princess.
(Some stained glass windows
were made to break.)
Your immortality won't last forever, dear,
so maybe you were right, after all.
(( but maybe not ))