Time:
Lily wonders if it should feel like this. She's read books, thousands of romance novels, describing how time freezes, crystallizes, fossilises two bodies together, locks them in an endless embrace so they can never be parted, no, not even by Death himself.
He's still asleep, lashes pressed innocently against tanned, slightly flushed cheeks, hair dark in the Sunday morning sunlight that is trickling into the room through semi-open curtains, falling half on them, half lighting up the cream curtains to look like old parchment. Behind the gently closed lids are chocolate-brown eyes, Lily knows, that are capable of making her slightly weak at the knees, especially when they are in the sun, hints of gold and bronze and copper making them burn bright.
She feels the hand on her waist and sighs, because this, this is perfect- but it still feels strange. She doesn't feel cosily encased in amber, tranquil and ready to stay this way until the end of time, like the books tell her to.
As she closes her eyes and snuggles slightly closer to the warm plane of James' chest, she tries to ignore the slightly raised edge of a scar that wasn't there last week, hands that had once been soft as a baby's, calloused, with broken nails. There is a new way that James' arms wrap around her now, becoming less of a blanket and more of an armour, day by lightning-fast day.
She is sure she can feel his heart beating slowly along with hers, pumping blood to every inch of their bodies. Lily has seen blood- it's hard not to, if you work in St. Mungo's and it is war- but she is pretty sure that what flows in their veins is not blood. It is slow, and molten, and sluggish, and it terrifies her.
There are large gashes in their sides, Lily can almost feel them (she fears for the tiny bump in her stomach) - it's hard not to. They are deep and metaphorical, yet cause much more pain than anything literal ever could. And from those deep, dangerous gashes, time, like blood, is seeping out as they lie there, warm, cosy, happy, helpless. Oozing out into the cold, hard world outside, the world that wants Lily dead, the world that they are fighting against.
Being encased in amber would be different, she supposes. Not frightening. They would be cut off from everyone else, and Lily would be able to smile with her eyes and James and Sirius and Remus and Peter would be able to stop fighting an endless, hopeless war. They would spend evenings by the fire, surrounded by a titian light; James' eyes would be sepia and not worried. A toddler with green eyes and black hair would rest softly on her lap as she would nestle against James on one loveseat, Remus and Sirius sprawled along another. Peter would sit on the footstool, stroking the cat, and she would sip warm, sweet red wine from her glass, as her boys would laugh and joke.
But that is a coward's way out, and Lily Evans is a Gryffindor. She catches a glimpse of her auburn hair against her cream shoulder, reminding her, for a second, of blood, and tries to be cynical and bitter- she can't. Because time may be leaking away with a steadily increasing drip-drop-drip, and may soon be drained dry, but now, she is with James, sheathed in sunlight and bronzed arms, sealed away from the rest of the world in her own little cocoon of warmth, and time-
"Morning, love."
- well, time can afford freeze for a minute- or ten.
A/N: Look guys, I actually managed something that is semi-decent and short and not (too) depressing! When I was writing, I saw it in a kinda... apricot coloured light, if that makes sense. No? Oh, well. Reviews are for telling me what you thought!