Author's Note: I have absolutely no idea what brought this on. Really. I wasn't even depressed when I wrote it.
The Last Freedom
Severus can feel it. He can feel the hard marble his body lies on. He can feel himself floating. He can see the dark behind his eyelids when he blinks slowly, trying to keep them open. He can see clouds of blue. He feels no pain but does feel a strange sense of being detached.
And perhaps, just maybe, he thinks he might see green eyes looking into his own.
*** *** ***
It was simple really, the beginning of everything. For, as clichéd as it sounds, Harry feels that truly, his life began with Severus. With Severus he flourished, blossomed, grew. Before Severus Harry was like a seed in the ground, with Severus he realized his potential to grow into a flower (or an onion, weed, or anything else that grew in the ground, but Harry preferred the first plant.)
Sometimes, he saw his life as a Muggle movie. There would be ten minutes that showed how empty his life had been, and then he and Severus would begin their affair... or relationship, or fuck-buddies-ship, or whatever other label you wanted to put onto the story of Severus and Harry, which just did not have a label. It was unidentifiable, in whole, and no label or story would do it justice.
Harry didn't usually dwell on the ending. How could such a story end? Was an ending possible when there was no true beginning? Was it possible that their story would end in nothing but unfinished business? Harry hated unfinished business; it ate away at him like a disease, making him wonder about what happened. In Harry's mind, he could find no possible ending that he deemed possible. They'd never have the glorious, happily-ever-after ending with a carriage moving into the sunset and not a hint of bad feeling anywhere, but was it wrong for Harry to wish for that?
*** *** ***
The sky is blue, and though if Severus was feeling less muddled he'd probably question his sanity for thinking that a sky could promote a certain feeling, this bright blue horizon certainly seemed to exude peace and rest.
He is alone, in the sky. When his eyes open blearily to the dark room with its confusing flashes of light and panicked figures, it feels less and less like the place he should be focusing on. The green eyes come back to look at him every so often, but more and more Severus is missing them, having closed his eyes a second too early. He can hear shouts, both of pain and fear, but their meaning somehow fails to register.
Until, that is, Severus opens his eyes once again to find the green eyes –distantly he registers that they are Harry's eyes—looking into his own, filled with what must be tears, though Severus does not know exactly why he thinks of them as tears.
"Severus?" somehow, the words manage to penetrate the mist of his mind, sending green tendrils of knowing through the gray. "Just—just wait for me. Please. Just until I kill Voldemort." The words are choked with sobs, and Severus has the ridiculous urge to wrap his arms around the boy and comfort him, but his arms refuse to move.
In that moment, he knows with more certainty than ever before, that he loves Harry Potter as much as he know how to love anyone (perhaps more) and that he'll obey Harry's last request, because of the loves shinning out of the green eyes.
*** *** ***
Harry recognizes the ending to their story when it comes to meet them in a flurry of dark robes and bright spells. Not the happiest ending, not a fairy-tale ending, not the one they would have chosen, if given a choice. But the right ending.
It is simple, in the end, to destroy Voldemort. It is simple to kill Voldemort, with the overwhelming love he feels. He feels grief as well, but grief because he has loved, he can love, and those are things Voldemort cannot begin to understand. Harry wells all the emotions he feels, all the many different types of love, and throws them at Voldemort behind the Killing Curse.
Almost funny, Harry thinks distantly. I killed a man with love.
*** *** ***
It is even harder to keep his eyes open. The blue sky is so tempting, but a part of him remembers Harry's request, and wants to see it through.
*** *** ***
Harry can feel himself failing. He is so weak, mind, body, spirit, even in magic. He barely manages to drop himself beside Severus. It should hurt, Harry thinks. I should be angry that Severus is dying. I should be angry I'm dying. But I'm not. I just feel... peaceful, kind of floaty.
Harry drops a kiss onto Severus' lips. The black eyes watch him, and Harry sees more acceptance and love there than he has ever seen before. Both of them were prepared for Death. Now that it approaches, both are too weary to have last minute doubts.
*** *** ***
Severus is no longer alone in the sky. Harry is there too, his face peaceful and relaxed.
"Are you ready?"
"Yeah." Harry's smile is once again innocent and care-free, like it hasn't been in years.
There is no sense of dying, no snapping of the thread of life, no darkness. Instead, Severus realizes he can no longer see the room with the flashes of light. His mind is no longer slow. He feels at peace, exactly like all those stories say Death is like, but that you never truly believe. He can feel his body, is aware of each different particle of himself. And up ahead, he can see Harry, waiting for him against a backdrop of lightest blue.
*** *** ***
They try to tell the story of Harry Potter and Severus Snape after their deaths. Many people with many different perceptions write many different variations of their story.
All of them try to label it "Tragic" some will say. Others will comment on how the poor Boy Who Lived was forced into a relationship with a Nasty Death-Eater, still others will call it "Beautiful" or "Poignant."
But the story of Harry and Severus, the true story, is known to no one, as long as people continue to need labels for everything. There is still no possible way to define their story, no way to tell all that happened, all that the people felt, and did, and needed.
Perhaps you can try; you can string words together and try to make sense of their tale. Perhaps you could use "Blue skies, freedom, and peace" to try to tell a tiny, tiny part of their story. Even "Darkness, fear, and pain" could work, for there are parts of loving people that are dark, and painful, and make you afraid of many things, even if you do not add a war into the mix.
But Harry didn't need a label. He was perfectly content to forge their paths together, without any outside source. He accepted everything Severus gave him, and Severus did the same with everything Harry gave him. No, they did not identify as each others "boyfriends" or "partners." Harry felt that in many ways their relationship surpassed these words, surpassed whatever associations two words could hold.
And in the end, they were free.