A/N: There is torture and blood, so this is a Trigger/Content Warning. Thank you for reading! Also, you should listen to Glory and Gore by Lorde as you read this, it makes the experience 2000% better.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, they completely belong to JK Rowling.

"And the cry goes out
They lose their minds for us
And how it plays out
Now we're in the ring
And we're coming for blood"

Glory and Gore by Lorde

Coming for Blood

She'd been in and out of consciousness ever since they'd shoved her into the empty chamber. Lily knew she would have to accept the fate of being beaten from then on. She didn't regret ending up there, and they'd be kidding themselves if they thought she'd be passive in there. The only regret that surged was the guilt James must be feeling at this moment.

'I shouldn't have let her take on three Death Eaters at once, Padfoot!'

She imagined James pacing with Sirius, waiting for Dumbledore to let them help search for her, for surely it's what would be happening.

Lily knew how to get out of her ties. They were weak and it took some time for her to figure out how, but she had had a lot of time to herself in there. If it weren't for the fact that the guards would usually walk around and talk about Voldemort's plans out loud like the idiots they were, she would've left a long time ago. She just needed some time.

And the correct guard.

There was only one that she knew she could physically overpower, and according to what she'd heard and calculated, her target would arrive tonight.

Severus Snape.

She'd taken Avery's blunt, forceful blows to her face. He crouched down to her level - seeing as she was kneeling - and yanked her by her hair.

"Shame about that face; it's too pretty to be so disfigured. I can't even remember your charming smile," he'd whispered with a sweetness that made her want to throw up some bile on his face. She just spat out blood from her now-missing teeth on his feet.

"I've been told red looks well on me, though," she said with a bloody smile that earned her a punch on her side.

"That's not nice," she groaned.

"Who said anything about being nice, Mudblood?" he spat at her, straightening his back.

In turn, her eyes flared with hatred and with a swift move she jumped to her feet, kneed her attacker on the groin and as he doubled over, kicked him behind the knee, bringing him to his knees and making it easier for her to maneuver around her tied hands to choke him.

"I said, that's not nice," she harshly replied.

By the time someone noticed Avery hadn't come back he was practically dead in her hands.

She was Crucio'd to unconsciousness with a strange, maniacal laughter emanating from her lips for her troubles.

Lily trailed her lips with her dried-up tongue, tasting the all-too familiar metallic flavored blood in different places they'd split apart during her abuse. She sighed, caressing the weak spot in the knot behind her with her thumbs. She was growing impatient and could imagine a clock going tick-tock for her life.

She'd been lucky Voldemort was out of the country and thus his minions didn't know what exactly to do with her. It's not like she knew a whole lot. Mostly they'd been trying to get names of member of the Order and where they lived out of her.

It'd been growing harder and harder each day to trust people. Members were a bit paranoid, and left and right witches and wizards would eventually end up dead in their homes after a simple confrontation.

She could count with both her hands the amount of people she trusted and she'd still have spare fingers.

One more hour.

Knot's still weak.

Why would Voldemort hunt down Muggleborn for being 'weak' when his own followers couldn't even remember how to do a simple knotting spell?

She'd won herself a giant slap on her face –with a huge ring no less- for expressing that one out loud, she recalled smugly.

After all, one of her torturers himself let slip that Voldemort had mentioned using her abilities.

'I really don't know why the Dark Lord insists on trying to recruit her; it's obvious she doesn't want to do it. Besides, she's a Mudblood bitch that should know that her rightful place is sucking dicks.'

The next time she saw him, his right arm was broken in three different places and he'd begged for mercy. He never came back.

Lily leaned back against the wall. It had been a week since she'd been there, and though she'd enjoyed making the Death Eaters' lives hell, she had to wonder why they wouldn't just kill her. It would save them a great deal of trouble, though she knew that the Marauders were a vengeful bunch and wouldn't rest until every last one of them went to burn in hell.

The girl shook her head of images of James - foolish, lovely, James, who would do anything for her except letting go. The amount of nights they'd spent fighting over their mutual sense of protectiveness towards each other were endless.

If she closed her eyes she could see the playful glint he would get in his hazel eyes, the way his brow furrowed the more time he had to spend writing, the loving look he would spare only for her when he thought no one was looking. The distance between them had created a sense of heaviness in her heart for lack of James Potter.

Her entire body ached and she wished the pain would take her away, but she'd have to fight it. She needed to go back to James.

Lily was snapped out of her reverie when she heard his footsteps. Showtime.

Shaking her head to mess up her dirty hair, she tried to shrink herself into the corner of her improvised prison. She pressed her broken fingernails into the palm of her hands as hard as she could. Lily thought of her dead friends lying side by side in front her to garner more tears and used the heaviness in her heart to pretend she was dry sobbing.

The figure approached the room and entered, leaving the door completely open.

"Lily," she snapped her eyes, wide and innocent like a confused doe, looking for the voice. "You have to talk." Severus approached her and she pressed herself to the wall.

"No, please don't," she murmured, her voice like that of a child. "I want to go home."

Severus crouched in front of her and cradled Lily's face in his wand-free hand.

It took all of Lily's sheer force of will not to spit his face. How dare he look at her with pity! She forced her eyes to the floor with a trembling lip.

"Oh, Lily, you had your chance to save yourself from this, but you chose the wrong side of this war very early on," he said condescendingly with a small tsk.

Lily was seething inside with his comments and she ought to have kicked herself for thinking he could believe her farce, but she felt a tear trail down her cheek and with a broken voice she whispered, taking a deep breath, "Please, Sev."

The subsequent moment of hesitation proved to be his weakness, for with a small yet powerful movement by grabbing him by the front of his cloak with her now free hands, he dropped to the floor knocked out of his senses.

Lily then saw his limp form by her feet and had to shake her pain away for a while. A head-butt had been a very bad idea, but it was going to be the hard way.

She quickly undid her ties and picked up Snape's wand from the floor, taking care of treading softly towards the door and closing it. She wordlessly did a knot-tying spell and Snape's hands were all tied up in seconds. Taking care of impeding his limbs from flailing about with another spell so that he could move but not attack, she hovered over him, wand raised.

"Ennervate," she muttered and Snape took a deep breath, his eyes darting around to find her.

"I'm right here, Sev, dear," she whispered to him. He finally found her and opened his mouth, probably to alert the others, but she stopped him by placing her foot on his throat.

"Now, now, you don't want to do that. I won myself a good beating for doing that when I was being dragged here. You wouldn't want the same, would you?" she said with a ruthless smile. His eyes were glaring at her with an insurmountable hatred. "Don't look at me like that, I thought I was special, different from the weak Mudbloods," she said while applying more pressure on his throat.

"Are you going to kill me or not?" he choked out.

"Kill you?" she said with fake surprise. "Merlin, no." Lily took the foot from his throat and covered his mouth with her rough hands and leaned over to his ear. "I need my wand."

She never thought she would actually have to use Severus Snape as a human shield. Lily pressed his own wand to his neck and made him walk. It appears like today was the day Snape decided not to die in the hands of one Lily Evans and cooperated with her.

Luckily, it was late and the few people she'd encountered around what seemed to be a house, she'd managed to dispatch quickly. She was a girl with a mission and not one brute would get in the way of her target.

At last reunited with her wand, she didn't take a moment to rejoice with the familiarity of what had grown to be her extended limb as she continued on her war path towards the exit with her 'human shield' and ignoring the pains that shot through her body with every step she took.

"What are you doing?" he whispered roughly.

"Making sure no one's following me out the exit. That's a stupid question."

"You can Apparate by the doorstep, there're no traps."

"You're forgetting that I don't trust you," she said while pressing both her wands to his throat and walking. Her eyes darted around towards the door. "Run, now."

She ran, but her body pleaded otherwise. She blew the door apart with a wicked sense of satisfaction.

Outside the door she dropped Snape like a sack of potatoes and propped him up to a sitting position. Before she could hesitate, she slapped him, taking note of how her palm left a reddened mark across his cheek. She walked backwards as she directed her last words to him. "That should show you exactly how weak a Mudblood is."

Lily heard the furious stomping down the stairs as the people she'd stunned realized what had happened. She clutched her aching side and begun to see patches of black in her vision.

She turned around one last time to see someone barking orders near the doorway, and threw Snape's wand on the nearest bush, wagging her fingers with a crooked grin and Disapparated away from there.

Her knees gave out when she arrived at her destination, feeling the softness of what seemed to be a carpet. Or maybe it was a cloud taking her away at last. The last thing she felt before everything went dark were strong hands grabbing her limp body.

"This feels so good."

"I know, love."

Lily was currently trying to burrow herself into her pillow with her eyes closed.

"You know he's still coming though, right?"

She took a deep breath and mutely nodded. She felt his hand gently caress her hair, strewn all about her pillow and opened her eyes with a small smile. James was occupying most of the cot in her small room, though, staring at her and appraising the simple fact that she was there with him.

When she had arrived in the middle of his living room, he almost hadn't recognized the bloodied up body that had plopped to the floor, until he saw her unmistakable red hair. He had immediately taken her to St. Mungo's and the Healers there had taken her away.

Fractured ribs and a few ruptured organs, dent in her skull and missing teeth: that was the Lily that had come back to him.

'It was lucky that she was able to Apparate here, really. She's a fighter,' the Head Healer had told James.

Didn't have to tell him that twice.

Lily had refused to say what happened to her until she saw Dumbledore, creating more ridiculous answers each time a Healer passed by and asked. It ranged from - 'I was waiting for my gentleman caller when I slipped on pearls from a broken necklace and fell down a flight of stairs!', 'The ghost of my wicked great-grandmother decided to haunt me while I was taking a shower.' to, 'I was sleep-walking and fell into a pit full of Devil's Snare; didn't wake up until the sun came up and the roots stopped attacking me. I shall never look at any plant the same ever again!'

All James could do was stay with her and crack jokes about how now she could just smile and food would go through her missing teeth, and how she looked like his great-aunt Lucinda. Even in her fragile state she'd hurled pillow at his face for those.

They heard a knock on the door and James went to open the door but Lily grabbed his wrist.

It was moments like these when you could see how vulnerable she actually felt. The panicked look in her eyes and the paleness that had so quickly overcome her body were not signs of the Lily he'd seen trying to avoid everyone's questions.

James took her hand and kissed it. "You don't have to do anything if you're uncomfortable. Dumbledore would understand. In fact, I'm sure he could just take your memories-"

"No, I want to do it," she said, clearly convincing herself to do it. "But I want you to stay here with me; I don't want to repeat myself."

He nodded and pressed his lips to her forehead before opening the door for Hogwarts's Headmaster.

"James, Lily," the man greeted.

"Dumbledore," James acknowledged, inviting him to sit down.

"I trust that you're well, James, and that Miss Evans is making a swift recovery?"

"We're doing the best we can."

"Very well," he turned towards Lily with an apologetic gaze, "Miss Evans, I am truly very sorry for what's happened."

"No need to apologize sir," she said confidently, "I should be the one apologizing for my reckless behavior during the raid. I'm lucky to be here in one piece." Lily reached out for James' hand and he sat down beside her at the edge of the bed.

"Except the teeth, that is," James said with faux seriousness to which Lily rolled her eyes at him.

"Nonsense. You fought your way back, and that's not something you see every day, especially at times like these. What you did was truly remarkable."

"You don't know half of what I did," Lily snapped before realizing it. "Sorry."

"You're completely right, Miss Evans, and I would understand what you went through better if you could relate what happened in the house you were held captive."

Lily nodded at his words and looked into James' eyes, which were encouraging her to go on.

As Lily related the violence she'd had to withstand during her captivity, he could hear the pride she felt, from each blow to the face to the verbal abuse they whirled at her constantly. He knew she could sometimes come off as harsh, letting go of her sweet façade and showing her more sarcastic and sometimes vindictive self towards those who would fault her.

James had seen only a glimpse of the more ruthless side of her, but only when she realized she didn't have to pretend with him, he'd seen through all of her masks, and it was then when she realized she could be herself with him. She let him in; he didn't try to fight his way through.

The more things she confessed, the more infuriated James became. But their joined hands kept him grounded, and he was sure it was keeping her grounded too; what she needed was understanding, not him going on a rampage.

"Miss Evans, you're saying that you stayed there for such an amount of time in order to listen to their conversations?"

"Yes, but the only thing worthy of my time while I was there is probably going to shock you," she paused looking at him intently, "There's a spy in the Order. It was how they knew about the raid and why we were a bit outnumbered. I think I heard the Death Eaters saying that the person was there, but I couldn't tell if it was a he or a she. I know they were tortured into loyalty, but they don't have the Dark Mark."

Dumbledore's gaze hardened. "Are you sure, Miss Evans?"

Lily glared back at him. "I'm sure. I was the one who was threatened to have a stick up their arse for asking though; sorry I don't have enough details for you," she spat at him.

"This is a serious accusation, Lily."

Lily straightened in her bed and James was still holding her hand in silent support. "Do I look like I'm joking, sir?"

Lily and Dumbledore stared at each other in a silent confrontation until the leader of the Order sighed in defeat. "I will look into it." Dumbledore gathered his cloak and thanked Lily for her time.

Before he left, Lily had to ask, "Sir, do you have a hunch as to who it could be?" Dumbledore kept his back towards her and his hand on the doorknob.

"No," he answered finally.

"You hesitated," James answered with a suspicious gleam in his eyes, but Dumbledore was prevented an explanation when they were interrupted by knocks on the door and the door burst open to reveal the rest of the Marauders peeking in.

"Is this a bad time?" Peter asked from behind Remus.

"No, I was just leaving," Dumbledore said to him with a smile and left swiftly, leaving James and Lily confused as to why he'd leave them like that.

"Lily Evans, light of my life," Sirius exclaimed with a grin and a bouquet of roses in his hands. "How did you like your stay in Casa Black?"

"Wait, that was where you lived?" she said alarmed.

"Unfortunately for me and you, yes," he shrugged and Lily grit her teeth at the memory of her improvised cell. Sirius gave her a kiss on her cheek and grinned. "We're all in one piece at least," he grinned at her.

Remus came over to her side and gave her a few bars of chocolate. "I'm really happy you're all right, Lily," he said with a small smile and Peter nodded in agreement.

"Look at it this way, they could have sent us your little finger and kept you captive for longer and made us think that you were blown to bits and that was the only thing they found," Sirius said, to which everyone turned to stare at him with horrified looks. "What?"

"What the fuck, Padfoot?" Remus asked scandalized.

"Creating imaginative murders was one of Bellatrix's favorite games when we were children, I highly recommend it if you want to have to go to therapy for most of your life," he said with a smirk.

"They could have sent us your teeth," James murmured to Lily, and she tried not to laugh as he leaned over at pressed his lips to hers.

She gave him a small smile and looked around her hospital room, her chest finally swelling with her long-lost joy. "Yes, at least there's that."

"Mr. Pettigrew, I think it'd be best if you lay low at the Order, there are suspicions going around of a spy and you're looking very exhausted nowadays. Perhaps the exertion of being loyal to the Death Eaters is starting to show," the man said without even looking at him.

"Y-yes, I'll do that," Peter said silently. After visiting Lily, he'd arrived to his mother's house to be received by an owl soliciting a meeting with him. "Why haven't you said anything, sir?" he tried ask the old man, still fidgeting in his place.

"You're going to be useful later on, I'm sure," the man knotted his hands together and rested his chin against them, surveying the traitor, his bright blue eyes sparkling behind his half-moon spectacles. "For now, I'm keeping your true loyalty a secret. Is that understood?" Peter eagerly nodded in response. "Peter, I'm counting on this act of betrayal. Now, you may leave," the man waved him off.

"Y-yes, thank you, Headmaster Dumbledore," Peter said softly as he scurried away from his pretend-leader.

Sometimes Peter just wished he could disappear forever.

Thank you again for reading! :)