Act 10 – Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
"Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough."
- 'Alice in wonderland'
"Where exactly did you think you were going to go barefoot?"
Anya kept trying to stabilize her breathing. She could not even formulate a coherent sentence in her brain. She was barren of means of expression as if he had stunned them out of her.
"What?" she couldn't help but ask and saw him roll his eyes.
This was not right. He was… This was…
What the hell was this?
Anya was sure she had no idea, except for maybe the fact that having him there, real, in front of her was… surreal. Seeing him was like falling from a nightmare into a hallucination. It was so startling that the surprise loosened the death-grip Anya had on her sorrow and for only one moment, she surfaced from the bottomless pit she was downing in, and took one single deep breath of fresh air.
To her genuine surprise, Anya was unable to feel anything about being there with him in the middle of the night. She was not curious she was not nervous, intimidated, anxious. She was an empty glass, too exhausted to make herself feel anything. And he was just there, existing and even though they were mere feet apart, Anya might as well have been in a different planet.
He might as well have been any other stranger for all she cared.
But Anya did react when she saw him take out his wand. Panic stuck immediately and she took a step back, tightening her hold on hers.
"Hey, hey, relax! I'm just going to conjure a pair of shoes." He said, trying to placate her. Before he even finished saying that he had a pair of black boots in his hand and… were those socks?
"Here… They used to be mineonce, they don't fit anymore. Maybe they'll fit you…" He extended his arm and Anya understood that he wanted her to take them.
She didn't.
She just kept watching him suspiciously.
Why was she still standing there? Anya asked herself that, but she had no idea how she was supposed to come up with an answer. Everything inside her was so painfully quiet, as if even her heart was whispering, afraid to be too loud. She had no interest whatsoever in anything…
But she still felt her lips move, mechanically, as if she was only hearing herself speak.
"What are you doing?"
Why did she even ask that, she didn't care at all. She just wanted to move. Go, anywhere. Faint somewhere, just so that she didn't have to feel so… so…
There was no name for what she was feeling. She needed hybrid words for complicated emotions, to express 'the emptiness that attends abandonment' or 'the blood-freezing fear after living your worst nightmare'. She needed a word to describe how 'the sadness inspired by the loss of family' connected to 'the bone-gnawing self-loathing that follows deep rejection', because when you fail at family, when even the closest to you, leave you, scorn you… then what could you possibly be good at? If you manage to ruin the most basic relationships in creation, how can you ever tell yourself you're worthy of any otehr love? Or capable of loving anyone else, if you can't hold on to the love for your own mother? Who else in the face of the earth would be able to love you enough, if she - a mother - could not?
When 'the loneliness so acute that the world seems desertred' is born from a this kind of abandonments, then it becomes inconsolable.
Anya didn't need words. She was already unreachable.
"Why don't you tell me what you're doing? It looks a lot more interesting." He was trying to keep his tone light, even though his eyes were sharply taking her in from head to foot. Dispassionately Anya noticed his scrutiny, but nothing in her shifted. She felt dead on the inside. The guilt, the anger, the shame, they weighted her down and at the face of his carefree attitude, she felt a sudden wave of revulsion for him, a reaction she didn't understand, but didn't fight either.
So she made to walk away, side step him as if he were nothing more than a character in one of her fantasies.
Which, in a way, he was… so it was easy to ignore him like one.
"Hey! Hey, wait. I was waiting for you, alright!" Sirius explained hastily, starting to walk beside her and trying to keep his tone as sure and steady as possible. "I knew you were going to run away tonight…"
Anya stopped, and a measure of surprise and cold dread slithered into her spine. She wanted to ask him how the hell could he know that… but then she realized that she knew the neighbourhood and, looking back, the building she'd just sneaked out of was more than just familiar. Everything about this place was familiar and it took Anya just a moment to realize why:
She knew this block! Her own house was just on the other side of the park! Anya knew the house she'd just sneaked out of too: it was the Potter residence. She ran by it almost twice a week every time she went jogging in the morning.
Anya felt torn between two reactions: paling and blushing. Apparently her body chose the first one.
"…and to tell you the truth, it doesn't strike me as the smartest move when you have a sadistic bitch on your heel."
Anya's breathing picked up. She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience or something: she felt lightheaded and her heart was beating fast. It was like trying to see clearly after you've turned on the spot for 5 minutes. Her brain was spinning around and she kept looking her balance, even though the world was perfectly still.
"How do you know…?" she whispered, the very effort of talking seeming too much for her at this moment, as if she had no energy to spare for anything but breathing.
She didn't finish the question but Sirius understood what she wanted to know: how did he know about Bellatrix? How could he explain that? 'Yeah, I heard the whole thing. Sorry about that, but you were yelling a lot, it kinda carried…all the way to Brazil.' Right, he doubted she'd take that too well. Sirius opted for a soft approach – an explanation that provided minimum information.
"Mrs. Potter is a great Healer and you needed one, after… so that's why you were taken to her house and well, I kinda live there."
But then again, judging from horrified look on her face the next second, that wasn't a good choice either. Her eyes looked like they were going to pop off their sockets.
"How much do you… Did you…?"
Why was the ability for speaking in full sentences eluding her right now? Her heart was hammering against her breastbone like crazy. Another high like this and she'd have a heart attack, but Anya found it impossible to control herself anymore. It was as if the dam had broken and there was no stopping the flood once it started.
"Not on purpose, but we kinda heard the whole thing…" he admitted, a little uncomfortably.
Wait… had he just said 'we'?
Full of trepidation, Anya voiced her doubt.
"Who's 'we'?"
Black hesitated a little before answering. "Me, James Potter and your friend Alicia. She was staying with us, waiting for Dumbledore."
Anya closed her eyes and the inside of her lids burned. The throb of her broken soul was overpowered by the embarrassment, by the indecency of her exposure. She was stripped of everything she had loved, of every hope that had proved a vain dream. She was falling, falling and she could not change direction - And though all this, she had not even been granted the decency to fall apart in private, out of the prying eyes of strangers.
Even in her self-destruction, she was found wanting…
How pathetic.
An unreasonable chuckle escaped her and maybe she was alarming Black with her unsteadiness, but she did not care. She didn't care about anything or anyone.
But he was still there. Right in front of her.
So odd…
"What are you doing here Black?" she whispered quietly, but strangely, the breathiness of her voice put Sirius more on egde then her shouting might have. He was caught off guard by the lifeless look she was giving him, as if even though she was looking right at him, she wasn't seeing him at all. The flatness of ehr tone, of her looks, inspired nothing good, as if she was above and beyond not caring, the lack of expression in her eyes adding something ominous to her apathy.
"I told you, I was waiting for you." He answered cautiously. Her eyes sharpened.
"Why?" she asked, her voice stronger this time.
"Because you really shouldn't be out on your own." He said slowly.
Something sparked in her glazed-over eyes, something that was very much like anger. It gave her a more purposeful look, it ebbed the emptiness that made her eyes seem hazy and made her look a crack away from shattering.
"It's no business of yours – nor anyone's - whether I'm alone or not. Goodnight Black, let's not meet again. In fact, I think we better be strangers." She deadpanned snidely.
Too bad that Sirius was not about to agree on that whole 'let's be strangers' part.
"Trying to forget anything this interesting would be an exercise of futility." He said calmly as he fell into step at her side. She did not answer. She did not even seem to have heard him at all. Her mind seemed so very far far away and for some reason Sirius felt it necessary to keep talking.
"In fact, seeing that we met in very interesting circumstances, and kept meeting in bloodier circumstances, I think I'm never going to forget you." He couldn't help a lopsided half-grin when he remembered their meeting at the Academy and tried to push back the chill he'd felt when he'd seen in her Moody's arms looking two inches away from her death. Still, the only response his words got from her was a scoff. She did not say anything for at least a hundred feet, but there was a different manner in the way she held herself, an irritation that radiated off her rigid pose.
"So what year are you in? I know we don't share any classes together because I would have known you if we did."
"Actually we do share classes… well, we did." she said calmly.
Anya didn't know why she opened her mouth and started that conversation. But he was there and kept blabbing on and it was so impossible not to be distracted by him, by the incessant noise he was making. He was like a bee stuck in her brain.
"Yeah? When? I bet it was before third year, right?" his voice was so conversational, so normal. She hadn't had normal in a while. It was making everything seem even more surreal.
"Yeah."
"Funny that I don't remember you at all. I usually have very good memory." He said pensively.
Him not knowing her was not unexpected. She was very good at blending in and she took great care to stay out of his way, but there was another reason for his ignorance. Probably if Anya told him a few of the names she was called by the other girls - and boys - in her year, they would sound familiar to him. Maybe then he would say 'Ooh right, you're that girl'. But she wasn't going to do that.
"Its not really that strange. There are hordes of students at Hogwarts."
"Yeah, you're right about that."
And the idle chatter went on, sounding more and more disturbing in Anya's ears because it was so pointless. It was small talk, so out of range with the rest of her night, with her walking in a nightgown in the middle of the street, Sirius Black by her side… making small talk.
Too strange…
But anything was better than letting herself be sucked into that black hole she had just resurfaced from. By teasing and bothering, he had managed to pry her away from that darkness she had been clinging onto. Anya wondered for a moment if she would have been this prone to talk back, had it not been Sirius Black harassing her… but she did not have an answer for every question that popped in her mind.
It was strange though, how quickly he had brought her back to the street in the middle of the night… Strange how she could walk and talk with of him of all people, because he, of all people, was there with her.
He kept babbling on – Sirius Black, a babbler, who would have thought – asking question after question and her not answering, or keeping with three word sentences. At one point she was trying to think of a way to get right of him when an unexpected pain made her stumble and loose her footing.
"Ow ow owow… Oh, just give me a break already!" She hissed to nobody in particular. The sharp stab under her heel was so painfully unexpected that she had to grab his forearm not to fall and felt his hand instantly grab hers and pull her upright.
For a second the anger at her rotten luck was stronger than the pain.
"What is it?" Black asked sombrely as he got a better hold of her. His hand spun his entire forearm with room to spare.
Anya was unsteady on her feet. She bit her lip to hold back other whimpers, but she just couldn't help that little burst of irritation. She really couldn't get a moment of peace. A sore heel was exactly what she was missing!
'Thank you God. Really. Thank-You!' Anya hissed in her head, every thought dripping with resentment without direction.
She bit back the tears. "I stepped on something sharp…"
"Sit down, let me have a look."
Her eyes snapped to his face, alarmed. She started shaking her head in denial before she could even fully process what he'd been saying, but Black would have none of it and he was pushing her down on the nearest bench. With only one foot to hold herself up and his hand like a vice on her forearm, it was hard not to go into the direction he wanted. Either that, or resist and end up with her face painted on the sidewalk.
Anya chose the lesser of two evils: she resisted.
"Nonono wait, I don't… Aghh!"
As if in slow-motion Anya felt herself losing her balance. Instinctively she closed her eyes, all tense for the fall – but before she could kiss the pavement hello, her fall changed direction and her face ended up pushed against something… a lot softer than expected, and warmer and that smelled so very…
Oh…
"…stubborn like a mule! Unbelievable." His voice was way too close for comfort. She felt the vibration right under her ear and the sensation of it went straight through in a shiver.
Anya pushed away from him, but didn't have the chance to go anywhere because he practically picked her up and manoeuvred her towards one of the benches at the side of the road and all the reaction she could manage was a small yelp. Anya watched Black kneel in front of her and suddenly she was incredibly aware of every single inch of skin she possessed and the way her heart was beating in her throat. Instinctively, she pushed the hem of the nightgown down, but it wouldn't go an inch past her knees. She was a breath away from hyperventilating.
Someone up there must hate me too much to just kill me. How can this night get any worse?
Oh, but it could… The second Anya felt his hand on her ankle, the heat of him burned on her cool skin and she was so startled that she immediately drew her leg back, and in the process almost kicked him in the chin.
"Bloody hell!"
"I'm sorry!"
They both spoke at the same time. He was half glaring at her and she hoped that her eyes said 'sorry' as much as her mouth had. Anya didn't know why her hand had reached out to him and now that it was there in between them, she didn't know what to do with it! She drew it back fast.
"I'm sorry, really. You just… startled me." Anya closed her mouth fast before the next idiocy came out of it. She watched him roll her eyes and felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment so strong that she looked down in her lap.
"Don't move." Black said firmly.
This time she had anticipated his touch, so she did her best to keep her flinch to herself. Her fingers tightened on the wood of the bench and wished that she could just have stayed in that bed tonight. Where he was touching her it felt like being prickled with little needles. Like warming by the fire after having held snow in your hands until the skin numbed.
Anya closed her eyes and wished really hard for this to be over as fast as possible…
"Would you relax! It's not like I'm going to bite your foot off… You're bleeding a little." He commented and a smirk made its way on her face, making Anya wish for nothign better than to slap it off.
"Waiting for me to ask what's so interesing Black?"
He looked up in her eyes, found them glaring at him and smirked even wider. "This is the second time you end up bleeding in my arms."
Anya narrowed her eyes down at him.
"I'm not in your arms and this tiny prickle doesn't count."
"Hmm if you say so." He responded vaguely.
Sirius didn't mention that he had seen what seh looked like torn up and covered in her own blood, beaten so badly she coudl not even breathe on her own. He did not tell her that, because even though it was her he had seen, he considered that memory too personal: it was one of those sights that chilled the blood in his veins, so he had stored it away in a dark corner of his brain where he kept his other fears, and would never speak of it, ever. Least of all to her.
"I think it's just a piece of sharp wood, a chip or something." He said finally. Her only sign that she heard him was an unspecific 'hmm'.
He had such a concentrated look on his face it was as if he was studying some intense book and not an ugly foot. Was it possible that every ounce of luck she ever had had suddenly dried up! He was looking at her feet, the ugliest part of her: full of blisters and hard skin and contorted finger and weird looking toenails…
"Oww!" Anya flinched and instinctively she tried to pull back her foot, but this time he was prepared. His hold on her ankle was unmovable.
"Don't move."
"You're hurting me! Ow!"
"Well if you stopped squirming maybe it wouldn't hurt this much!" Black snapped, glaring up at her from over her foot.
"If you stopped poking me like that, maybe I wouldn't have to squirm!" Anya snapped back. He looked at her intensely for a second then rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything. Bastard.
Sirius concentrated. He'd pulled countless of pieces of wooden debris from his flesh on so many ridiculous occasions that he didn't even feel like counting them. If she just stopped squirming, he thought irritatingly, this would be way easier.
Still, there was a silver lining in every situation: now for instance, he just learned the actual meaning of the expression 'legs for days'. And not just any legs. He'd thought her too skinny before, but her legs were not the twigs he'd expected. She was all lean sinewy muscle wrapped in soft skin… and had the most battered feet he had ever seen!
Ballerinas, the told himself. Apparently they had the ugliest feet imaginable. But for those legs, the trade was well worth it. Sirius circled her ankle with one hand, keeping her from moving and his thumb moved a little, just one tiny little bit, because he was too curious not to, over her skin there and he learned he was right… that tiny inch of skin he had touched was just as soft as he'd thought it was, like velvet.
He dared a quick glance at her and couldn't help a smirk. She was sitting there stiff as a board, her hands fisted tightly at her sides, barely breathing even though her lips her a little parted. Her eyes were huge and her cheeks burned pink and there was something in the way she looked at him. Sirius didn't know if he was imagining things, but it almost felt like… as if she…
He spared an inner derisive snort for himself.
There you go again, flattering yourself! Leave the girl alone, she looks as frightened as a bunny faced with a wolf.
"OW! What are you doing?" This time when she pulled her foot back, Sirius let her, but he couldn't help the chuckle as he looked at her amused with her reaction.
"Such a tough cookie, aren't ya?" He teased, looking up at her with a smirk on his lips.
Anya limited herself to glaring at him with the power of a thousand suns.
"Trying to make my head explode with your brainwaves?" he asked, giving her a lopsided smirk as he sat next to her on the bench, purposefully a little closer than he should have. Anya rolled her eyes and got back to massaging her foot.
"A girl can dream." She murmured and he chuckled. For a fleeting second he thought he saw her smile as well.
"Are you smiling? I was starting to think that was impossible." Sirius said, full of theatrical surprise.
Anya looked back at him with a dead-serious expression on her face. "A trick of the light, I assure you."
"Yeah, thought so. I mean, for all I know you could be grimacing from the excruciating pain of that horrible gash you got there…"
Anya pinned him with narrowed eyes.
"Hilarious Black, really. You're a regular riot." She deadpanned making him smile; that expression happened so easily on his face, as if it had been right around the corner. It changed his face, softened the angles of his features into a shockingly softer expression, almost sweet, one that Anya had not ever seen quite so close and privately until now…
He reached out and handed her the shoes as his smile turned into a self-satisfied smirk.
"Hate to say I told you so…" He started.
"Then don't." Anya snapped irritably as she took the boots from his hand gracelessly. In truth though, if she hadn't been the directly involved, she would have had to admit that a sound 'I told you so' was in fact very much in order…
"… but I did tell you so." Sirius finished his eyes sparkling with amusement. Anya rolled her eyes at him and sneered, mocking his smile.
She practically felt his chuckle sliding against her skin. It was a disconcerting feeling. The fact that she'd made him laugh made her feel all weird for a moment – something happened inside her stomach that she couldn't control, like someone was tinkling her from the inside.
"Yellow socks… fashionable aren't we?" She teased.
"Just wear them." He said with a hint of annoyance.
Small victories are worth it, Anya thought triumphantly. She was almost… comfortable? The heavy weight that had been messing with her insides seemed to lift a little and transform into something else that started fluttering its wings inside Anya's chest and made her insides tinkle.
Anya frowned at her momentary reaction, metaphorically stumbling on her feet as she realized what she was feeling. How infuriating confusing! Why was she so… so not unhappy? How was it possible that he had managed to distract her from the past 48 hours of her life? But even thought she loathed herself for being so fickle, so easily manipulated… she was grateful. It was easier to avoid herself by occupying her mind with something else. She was too afraid to face whatever it was that was chasing her. She'd rather just avoid it.
And what better way to do so than with someone as distracting as Black!
There was a little problem there though: even though she was glad she was not alone, having Black keep her company had significant drawbacks. Sirius Black was not just anyone. Whatever reason he had for following her tonight, it was bound to be trouble. He always was. Anya knew exactly the kind of situations that got his interest and she wanted nothing to do with that.
Again, trying not to show it, she looked over at him from the corner of her eye. He was staring off somewhere, his eyes the shade of grey that copied the colour of clouds before a violent storm. His stare was so intense that Anya was reminded why she always avoided his eyes.
She looked away and got busy with the shoes again.
She didn't smell in any particular way, Sirius decided. She smelled clean, of Mrs. Potter's soap and flowery shampoo. And there was a lingering whiff of the unmistakable scent of antiseptic on her, reminding him of how exactly they'd come to meet again this time. Reminding him what he was doing here in the first place.
Reminding him of Bellatrix…
"Have you thought about where you're going?" he asked, with a seriousness that startled her.
Anya frowned. Yeah, there was only one place she could go to before she was assigned a dormitory room in the academy. Sasha would be worried about her showing up so late – and irritated so much that she would probably remind Anya about it for years - but this wasn't the first time Anya took solace in her teachers home.
"Because if this place you plan to go to involves other people, then you better think again." Black said just as sombrely. There was something in his eyes, something not entirely harmless, that made Anya's heart beat faster. She resisted the impulse to put some distance between them.
"Bellatrix won't stop hunting you down, you should know that before you make any decisions. Involving anybody else in your life wouldn't be wise right now."
Anya couldn't tear her eyes away from his. For the first time, she was not uncomfortable looking in his eyes: she was too stunned by what he had said. She cleared her throat, looked around for a lifeline, but there was none. There was only Black… and his frightening, cryptic messages.
"What does that mean? Why should I leave people out?" Anya asked, frowning deeply as she tried to understand.
She had a very bad feeling about this. A feeling that solitude was going to have to be the rule from now on and that was not the same as being on her own. Being alone was never the same as being lonely… Suddenly that feeling of comfort that she'd felt so surely a moment ago was gone, lost forever, as if it had never existed and the absence it left behind was mocking her for her foolishness.
The depth of her situation began pulling her down again, as once again she remembered with characteristic masochism that she had nobody anymore, that she was alone. That she was abandoned, left behind.
Again…
Black looked up at her, confused. "What is that you don't understand exactly?"
"What do you know that I don't?" Anya snapped back, suddenly too impatient to play cool. What wasn't he telling her?
"That sounds like something between me and my god." Black said with a little smirk and Anya took a deep breath and counted to ten before speaking.
"Do I look like I'm in a joking mood?" she managed to say between gritted teeth.
"No. Just trying to lighten the air."
"I don't think that can be done right now. What do you know that makes you say that?"
Sirius looked at her sternly for a moment. Strangely enough, there was something in the way she was looking at him with those toad-like eyes that made him think he wouldn't be able to lie his way through this, probably because he didn't really want to. He felt it would be unfair to lie to this girl at this point, after all she had been through. He didn't want to scare her, but if she was going to run away, then she should know all the consequences of her actions before she made that choice.
"You know that Bellatrix and I are cousins right?" She ought to know. Everyone at Hogwarts knew… Everyone in the magic world knew who you were if your surname was 'Black'.
Anya's frown deepened. "Yes." What did that have to do with anything?
Sirius tried to make his tone as neutral as he could. He didn't want his feelings to seep through.
"I know her, I know how she thinks." He really hoped that his voice didn't sound to her ears as severe as it sounded to his.
"She is going to hunt you down just for the fun of it. And she is going to hurt everyone within a ten feet radius from you just to see the look on our face… If you care at all about people close to you, then you should keep them at arm's length for a while."
Sirius watched as her eyes fixed on the ground and stayed there for long moments. He thought he saw a shimmer in her eyes and thought she was going to cry, but when she looked up her eyes were dry. And she was looking at him differently. Her eyes were hard and cold, her stare full of suspicion and open resentment that hadn't been there before.
"And you're here just to tell me that?"
To give her another perfectly good reason why she should give up her life? Why she should get sucked into a world she wanted no part of, but that kept catching up with her in the most macabre ways.
Her eyes narrowed at him and Sirius knew that she would never believe it for a second if he said yes to that. Not that he was planning to.
"No." he stated simply and saw something shift in her eyes, some kind of imperceptible emotion that changed her entire attitude. She became cold, dethatched.
"Care to elaborate?" she asked curtly.
"I know this made you angry before when I said it, but it's the truth and I'm not insinuating that you can't protect yourself but…"
"You're not?" She interrupted. Sirius understood that she had no intentions of making this easy.
"No." He said calmly. Poker faces was something he was always great at.
He saw a wry smirk appear on her thin lips.
"Liar." She whispered coldly, with derision for herself as much as for him. They both knew he was lying and the truth was plain the their locked gazes and he could tell she hated it, that helplessness that rendered you a burden.
He knew the feeling.
"… but, I still think that you – or anyone for that matter – should get out of the protection range of the Order for now." He continued as if she hadn't interrupted him at all.
"Oh, so nobody is following me around under an invisibility charm tonight?" She asked, the disbelief plain in her tone, as biting as her stare was. Sirius dint trust that look on her face, it was too calculating to suggest anything good, but he answered truthfully just to give a proof of good faith.
"Not that I know of. You were supposed to stay in the house. I guess they didn't expect you to run away."
The look on her face was so frozen that it made her look like she was carved out of stone. In the dimly lit night, her skin seemed like shiny porcelain and in that white nightgown, she almost looked like a ghost. The way she was staring at him didn't betray any emotion, she seemed almost… vacant.
And it was slightly disconcerting.
Sirius was about to declare himself worried when she surprised him by simply and very calmly turning around and walking away.
What the f…
This girl was starting to seriously damage his calm. Sirius curled his fingers into fists but he didn't waste any time thinking. He followed her.
Walk away, walk away, walk away… That was what Anya kept telling herself. She just had to do a simple turn, and take a step, and then another and another… and keep going. She was such a tight mix of emotions that her feelings had almost disconnected from her consciousness. They were boiling under this thin and very delicate barrier of numbness, like hellfire contained by a thin sheet of glass. Anya was painfully close to erupting… and now the only thing that that was boiling in her now was pure rage.
She felt completely violated. From a completely normal, boring human being, she had in one day turned into a detail that was to be dealt with. A footnote, a body to be watched, someone's burden - like a four year old child. And what was most hurtful was that she knew the truth was not far from that. She was a burden. She had to have other people look after her because her mother's world was too much for her to handle, in every way. That was what hurt most: The truth. Forced upon her, not her choice. Unlike her mother, Anya had never had a choice.
And Black was supposed to be what in this picture? Some surrogate protector-figure? A bodyguard?
To hell with him! And you too, mother!
For a moment, the memory of her mother, of everything about her came back in a flash and the mixed feelings she had on the subject almost brought her to her knees. Oh, how it hurt to be without her. Loose from her grasp, away from her incredible strength, from her love. But how it enraged Anya to be anywhere near her, near even the mere idea of her!
Exhausted, Anya admitted to herself that she was not very good at doing either for those things. Her mother was right: even in her hatred, even in her most blinding moment of rage and rebellion… the love lingered. It was there, it could not be erased and it made breaking away as painful as biting off her own flesh.
And why wouldn't he stop following her!
What the hell did he think he was doing, as if he had the right to be there, as if he had every right to shove himself in her existence the same way he had appeared in front of her tonight: out of thin air and straight into being.
How she hated him too!
Anya turned to face him, a no-bullshit look on her face.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
He was characteristically shameless when he answered calmly. "Following you."
Anya could scream of frustration. "Stop it!"
"I don't like orders." He sounded austere but she really didn't care. She felt like pulling his hair out in chunks.
"Well I don't like Mondays, but they come around eventually." Anya snapped.
"I'm not leaving you alone when you need the help. I owe you one and if this is how I'm going to repay you then so be it." Anya listened to the seriousness with which he spoke and knew that he meant every word. Couldn't he just understand that she wanted him gone! Who were all these people that thought they had the right to attach themselves into her life?!
Anya turned and put up a finger in his direction as if it was the most dangerous weapon on earth
"If I'd known my actions would have come to bite me in the ass like this, I would have left you in that car. Now do yourself a favour: shut up and turn in the other direction right now." She said between gritted teeth.
"What if I don't wanna do that?"
Anya's fingers arched into claws at the sound of his laid back tone of voice. The fact that he seemed so completely unaffected angered her more than she thought she was capable.
"What… Just what do you want from me?" Anya hissed, her cheeks flushed and her hands balled tightly into fists. She was at the limit of her patience and she didn't know what to do.
"Nothing. I don't want anything. Look, I'm just trying to help and I know you didn't ask for it, but I know a thing or two about the people that are after your scalp right now and I'm telling you that you need to take the whole thing a little more seriously."
She snorted. "Right. And I suppose you'll tell me that going back into Potter's house is the serious thing to do, right?"
His eyes went cold, his mouth tightened a little. "I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I am going to tell you what you need to know. You're in the middle of something dangerous here. Those people will stop at nothing to shut your mother up, even if it means killing you."
His words took her breath away. She was left there, speeches, breathless, staring at him in disbelief and fear, unable to believe what she had just heard and the harshness of his whole demeanour when he said that.
"Actually, I don't think they want you dead. You're the perfect kidnap target. You'd probably be taken and held somewhere until they could get to your mother. Then they'd probably kill you both."
There was an unflinching calm to his tone, a deliberate cruelty to his words. To him she was just another stranger, but how dared he speak like that to her face. That was her life he was stalking about, that was her mother…
Who did he think he was, throwing those words at her in that way? Was he really that cruel?
Her voice shook when she spoke. "How do you… Are you…"
"I'm assuming you're not idiotic enough to think I'd be a Death Eater, therefore there is only one other thing I could be. And the answer to that is no, I'm not in the Order either. Dumbledore doesn't want us in until we're out f Hogwarts."
Her stomach tightened and Anya was sure she felt a wave of nausea.
"But you… you want to join?" She asked, her voice sounding so hollow, even as she spoke.
"Yeah. And I will."
She could hardly believe her ears.
"Why? Why would you ever choose to do that?"
There was such sincerity in her question, as if she truly couldn't understand why he would want something like that – which irritated Sirius to a very interesting degree. What was it that this girl didn't understand? Fine, fighting was something she wouldn't chose for herself, but why should she question it in other people?
"There seems to be a very important concept out of your grasp here princess: this is not a lifestyle choice! It's called 'doing what needs to be done'." Sirius said in the most scathing tone he could master.
"See, that's where you're wrong. By definition, this is a lifestyle choice for you: It's your choice and nobody is making it for you, or forcing you."
There was something in her countenance, in her anger that made the whole thing seem so much more personal for her, as if Sirius had taken something that belonged to her. Which was completely insane – he barely knew the girl. How could she feel so strongly for someone she'd only now properly met?!
"At least I've chosen a side." Sirius spat out, glaring at the girl in front of him. But it only made Anya scoff.
He was exactly like her mother: fighting for a cause. And because of that, no one would be able to truly have him. People of the likes of him, of her mother, were not meant to be had by anyone. They belonged only to themselves - holding on to them was like trying to hold on to the edge of a knife: It hurt and made you bleed.
People like those two always left the ones who were most counting on them alone.
"The fact that you think that matters is just further proof that you have no idea what you're doing. Do you really think that once a war starts, what side you're on will make a difference? You just can't wait to play hero, but you have no idea what you're getting yourself into."
"Really? What is it that you know and I don't?" he asked, his voice full of a calm that vibrated with a silent threat. Stupid girl! Where did she think he grew up, in the land of sunshine and fucking fairies? He knew better than anyone who he was up against; that was why he wanted to do something instead of sitting on his ass and complaining!
"I know what a war looks like, what it feels like… I know what it does to people." Anya breathed out.
Black blinked twice and fast, the anger in his eyes dulling for a moment and Anya read that as a sign of his surprise. He hadn't expected her to say anything like that. Maybe he hadn't expected her to say anything at all.
Sirius was calm when he spoke again.
"You know, it's strange to me that you were so ready to come and pull me out of that car the other night but you seem to be unable to understand that some things, important things, come down to how much a person would do, how far they would go, to help another person who needs it. I mean… I thought you already knew that."
He watched her as she worked to steady her breathing and watch him with hurt in her eyes.
"It's what you mother is doing." He dared to add, knowing that he shouldn't have but wanting to make her see anyway, because there was something in him that wanted to make her see that. To make her see how lucky she was that she had a mother that loved her so much she was ready to fight against the whole world to make it safe for her.
But Anya did not see things that way. And at the mention of her mother, she went cold as stone.
"You know nothing about my mother, so you should say nothing." She bit out and this time her voice was steady, cold. "I'm not running away or abandoning anyone. No one has the right to decide how I live or I die. It is my choice and if that is not selfless enough for you, well, that's really not my problem is it?"
Sirius opened his mouth to say something, but then he caught himself and closed it again. He didn't contradict her, because he couldn't. If he contradicted her on that, he would be contradicting himself. He didn't care to admit it, but knowing this girl – knowing about her - had pulled strings that he hadn't even thought he had in him. He'd never expected to meet someone that reminded him so much about himself and that was making it hard to stay unaffected. It wasn't her choices that made up the congruence between them, it was the way she felt, the way she wanted to claw her way out of her life.
The same way he had.
It had made him feel as if he'd known this girl for forever, as if he knew exactly who she was even though he had no idea.
Besides, she had practically saved his life and that was something else he couldn't ignore.
He'd wanted to help - that was the real reason why he was here tonight. He'd tried, in his awkward way. And yet, here she was still, insisting on the decision she'd first made in a plain show of what Sirius was starting to understand was characteristic stubbornness.
It was weird, considering circumstances, and the fact that she was so fucking irritating, that he respected her for sticking with her own mind.
Anya watched as Black hesitated and then with the deep breath he took, he seemed to let all his previous anger go. The nonchalant shrug completely baffled her and she couldn't help but stare.
"Fine then, you can handle Bellatrix on your own. Maybe after she plays with you for a while, you'll feel differently. Revenge is always a good motivator."
"You should know." Anya snapped coldly before she started to leave, noticing the way his eyes narrowed at her words, but he held his tongue. She'd only put a few feet between them when he spoke again.
"Hey, I want my shoes back!" he yelled and she could practically feel the smirk in his tone.
Anya's skin itched with irritation. Her finger twitched into claws and she wished nothing more than being able to hex that expression off his face for good. She hastily took off the black boots, all the while glaring at him and his little self-satisfied smirk. She did the first thing she could think of:
Threw one boot at his head with all the strength she could manage.
But he saw it coming and was fast enough to dodge it… the second caught him in the shoulder. HA! Victory short lived though, because Anya started running away before he could hex her socks off too.
Sirius cursed when the heavy boot made contact way too close to his head for comfort. But it didn't hurt that much and the truth was that once the initial irritation of being hit by something passed, he was even a little amused by her reaction.
Sirius watched her run away and didn't follow. He just kept watching her and once he was invisible again, he followed her from the shadows, deep enough into the darkness for her not to see him. Even if tonight had been a good night to spill blood, that girl had already given her fair share. Besides, he was not even remotely sleepy anyway and he needed a distraction badly, or the destruction of his own existence would drag him under again…
