Summary: "You're having doubts," he says and he can't quite understand what she says. They're Lily and James, meant to live happily ever after. Right? One-shot set pre-marriage in the middle of war and love: life.

AN: Reviews are love, nothing is mine and English is not my first language.

"You're having doubts."

The words are so strange, so new and foreign, confusing even though he was the one to speak them in the first place and feels as if he must repeat them out loud to fully understand.

"You're having doubts."

Same intonation, same words. Same meaning.

She is standing over there, on the other side of the table, by the window, looking beautiful. She is always beautiful. She is always beautiful but today, now, right now, there is a different touch to it. Instead of that strength that he has grown so accustomed to, the one always shining from her very self, it isn't there. Absent. Replaced? He can see something else there, something he has never seen in her before. Fragility. How strange it seems to see it there.

"It's not about you, James," she says, the love of his life. "I love you, I really do. I just… This, all of this… It's gone so fast, and what if that's not the way to go? Don't you agree marriage is a bit soon?"

It is a leading question and she has taken a full step closer to him now. Somewhere in his mind the thought that there is two days to their wedding twirls and he blinks. It's supposed to be a small one. The wedding, that is. One with James' parents, the Marouders, Mad-Eye and Lily's best friend. Dumbledore. A small one. What else can be done in times like this?

She stands there, looking as if she expects him to say something, anything really. She has thought of phrases he will most likely use. I love you, you love me. What's the problem? Maybe It's only pre-wedding jitters, Lils. No worries. In her head she has seen him grow mad, furious because of the sole fact that he always walks in this bubble so sure of himself, his purpose and what he wants from life. On occasion she has imagined him crying. Not believing her. She has imagined the full range of it all but nothing is the way he tells it to her and nothing could have prepared her for it.

"I'm not going to convince you to marry me, Lily." He is calm, quiet almost, his eyes attached to the floor. "I won't force you. If you…" A pause. "If you don't want to marry me, if you have doubts, I won't force you. Lily."

He adds her name sounding somewhat forced, as if it pains him to use it. And then he looks up.

The pain in his face, in his eyes, his very being, it is raw and obvious and not hidden in the slightest, simply there and it hurts her to look at him, to see him standing there. Because he stands there. Not shouting or screaming, raging at her and the world, not refusing to hear what she's saying, just accepting. In his eyes she can see incredulity but no anger. Pain. Oh, the pain.

"I'm glad you told me now," he forces out. He has to force himself to say it. To continue. "And…" He needs another pause, a break, something to make him breathe, to give him streanght. "If you want to we'll call it off. All of it. I don't want you to marry be because you have to. I want you to-"

His voice cracks and fails and he has to avert his eyes. He can't continue anymore. He can't do this and the thought that she might agree, that she might say yes and think his offer is a good one makes him sick to his stomach and he thinks please don't, please, please but he can't help it, he can't force her because, Merlin, he loves her so damn bad. He turns his face, his body, away, because he can't have her see him like this but he knows that he will and any other day that would be okay because he really did think that she loved him too. A tear slides down his face and then one more, another and another. It splashes against the floor but despite glasses he can't see it, can't see anything properly. What's the point. Why would it help?

He has never cried for himself in front of her before. He has cried twice, but never for himself. The first time when her parents died; he cried with her and for her. The second time the world just seemed to crash around him and it was too much. The deaths, the fear, the pain and all the suffocating fear for people, young people, children, the Sirius who grew crazier and more desperate, classmates who should be out laughing making mistakes that got them embarrassed and not killed. Mistakes that got them laughed at and that didn't result in corpses lying rotten in a coffin, alone at the bottom of a graveyard. But this time, he cries for himself. For himself, for the fact that she might be leaving and that gut-wrenching pain the fear of it causes without fault. She is unaccustomed to see this on his face, because he will forever remain an open book to her. She has never before read this… sadness. Joy has always been his most prominent expression, joy and laughter and love and courage. She thinks that is what convinces her. The naked and unashamed display of pain.

"I love you so much, James."

He hears her only distantly and later he'll remember that this was when he thought she'd do it. When he truly knew – she'd leave him. But she continues.
"I think that's what makes me so afraid."

He is sitting down now and she walks up to him on the tiny couch they love to share with a blanket and she kneels in front of him.

"You mean so much to me. So much. And I can't imagine living without you. I mean, what if you'd die? What if you'd die, James. What if you'd leave me?"

Before he has time to reverently deny she has swiftly moved forward.

"I love you so much it terrifies me."

Now he looks at her and he sees: she's crying too.

"And I do James. I do wanna marry you."

Then his arms are full of her and all he can feel is relief, relief; relief so evident he has never felt the like of it before. He buries her face in her hair and it almost wiped away the tears, but not quite, not sufficiently, but that's alright, he's good, he's fine. She is there and he will forever be fine with Lily there. She's there. He can take a breath again. She is there. He smiles.