A / N : This is the result of another prolonged battle with formatting. Just in case it doesn't emerge the way it's supposed to : each drabble predates the last, and 'Touch' is three drabbles in one. The title comes from a song by Ravens and Chimes, which is definitely worth a listen.
Thank you to Inkfire, who was kind enough to read it over for me, and to Mesteria, who gave me the idea. Reviews would be wonderful, if you liked it!
Sight :
It is the middle of a winter's night. Wrapped in safety, hope, and the promise of a future, Andromeda cannot sleep.
She opens the curtains. Closes them. Buries her nose in a book. Tidies her dressing-table.
The house is silent, and before long all she can feel is her own pulse, throbbing tight and tense in her neck. Flat grey light presses down upon her eyelids, a dreary netherworld midway between waking and sleeping.
At last she relents.
The rocking chair creaks beneath her, but Teddy does not wake. His hair shifts from one colour to another as she strokes his sleep-mussed head.
Andromeda falls asleep watching her grandson's dreams dance before her eyes.
Smell :
The week after the battle is a busy one, but for Andromeda, it passes impossibly slowly. She might as well be suspended in amber – sleepwalking through a life she has almost stepped out of entirely.
She doesn't notice what she's done until she enters the kitchen a week after Dora's death, and is assaulted by the stench of lilies. Crowded on every counter, clustered on every chair – they are even crammed into the sink.
She did this - stuffed them out of sight and hoped that they would rot.
When she comes to her senses she gathers up armfuls of the wilting, withered flowers and dumps them in Ted's compost bin, stamping down hard on the lid. She waits another week, until the sickly reek of sympathy has evaporated entirely, and then she sits down at the table with Teddy, and begins to plan the funeral.
Sound :
She has seen the scars after every full moon, the breaks and bruises that prove he has tried to tear himself apart. But Remus has never looked worse than when he returns to her daughter at last, agony and indecision warring with his every movement.
"I'm sorry," he says hoarsely, and she almost slaps him for it. All that stops her is the white of his knuckles as he grips Dora's shoulders, as though he would rather split the skin than let her go again. When he buries his face in her hair and starts to shake, Andromeda knows she ought to leave. This moment – this man - belongs to her daughter.
Instead she shuts her eyes, and listens to his whispered refrain.
I'msorryI'msorryI'msosorry . .. .
I know how he feels, Ted whispers in her head, and his wife chokes back a sudden, violent sob.
Taste :
At first, Dora tells her they are cravings. When she finishes the lemon drops Remus left in his coat pocket, it's a craving. When Andromeda finds her curled up on the sofa with his slab of emergency chocolate, that, apparently, is also a craving.
Eventually her mother can stand it no longer.
"Steak," she snaps. She slams the plate down, bitterly pleased to see Dora recoil. "I wasn't sure how Remus would have liked it, so I left it raw."
Ted was better at this, she thinks.
Ted would have seen the good in Remus Lupin. And Ted would never have been so brutal, no matter how much Dora needed to face facts.
Ted would have challenged her on her dislike, on the voice which tells her she ought to have seen this coming, from a werewolf.
And – she swallows - he would have kissed away the bitter taste that left.
Touch :
"Don't – no – I won't let you . . ."
Ted's grip is firm, pulling them apart, splitting her in half.
"See you after the summer," he says with a faded smile, and suddenly she knows what he does not. He won't escape the Snatchers.
They are crammed together in the tiny kitchen, elbows in each other's ribs as they raise their glasses high. Dora's ring glitters gold, the twin of her own. "The future!" she cries, one voice in four.
"The future," Ted tells her, raising a Thermos flask of tea. The wind whips her hair as he hugs her close, and the world feels wide, and oh so empty. It scares her. The world is bigger than she ever knew, and she only knows one person in it.
"The future," she whispers.