CHAPTER 23

YOU'LL BE ALL RIGHT

Sirius stumbled inside the house and slammed the door shut.

He tried to run to the kitchen, but his strides were painfully slow. His muscles burned; his heart pounded with exhaustion and sickening anticipation. He couldn't be too late.

He finally reached the kitchen and staggered inside, and slumped to his knees by Snape's side.

"I'm here." Sirius panted. "I'm here."

Snape was there too, still breathing — in shallow gasps — and shivering terribly. He looked at Sirius, disoriented, eyes hazy. His face was chalk-white, almost translucent, and the blood was — the blood was everywhere.

"I have everything." Sirius struggled clumsily to pull the sachet out of his pocket.

It would have been easier if his hands weren't shaking as badly, from the effort and the adrenaline and the trepidation of finally reaching Snape, and the shock of finding him like this.

Sirius had expected the worst. It didn't mean he was prepared for it.

He managed to take out the sachet and tugged at the tiny knot that tied it together.

The blanket he had covered Snape with was pulled aside, and the wound was uncovered, and the blood had dribbled and souced and soaked everything bright red — the side of Snape's abdomen, the cloth, Snape's hand, his forearm, the leg of his trousers, all the way down to a small puddle of blood on the floor.

"You'll be all right," Sirius said. "I've got everything."

He glanced at Snape's feverish eyes, briefly, then back at the knot.

That damned knot!

At some point, Snape must have decided there was no point in keeping pressure on the wound, or perhaps he no longer had the strength for it. His hand was resting in his lap now, bloody and shaky, blood-drenched cloth still in it. In his other hand, Snape was clutching his wand, barely.

Sirius finally pulled open the knot and took out the glass container, careful not to break it, took the vial with the blood replenisher out of his pocket and set it on the floor by the wall. He squeezed the small jar with the healing gel in his hand. His own hands, Sirius only now noticed, looked as always; the de-ageing potion had worn off — before exiting Mongo's, maybe?

He squeezed the jar tighter in his fist — ten minutes for the gel, Minka had said — and glanced at the clock.

"It won't take long."

Snape said nothing.

He was watching Sirius in silence with an expression that Sirius had never imagined could fit on Snape's ever-inscrutable face.

There was nothing inscrutable left to him.

He looked every bit hurt and borderline delirious, his feverish gaze flitting over Sirius, incredulous, as though trying to discern whether Sirius was real at all.

"You came back."

"Of course I did."

What had he thought?

"Of course," Sirius repeated, suddenly driven to reassure him — and struck with disbelief. "You thought I left you…?"

Snape frowned, bleary. What in God's name had he come to believe in all this time he'd been alone.

"At first, I didn't, no. But then it—" Snape stammered, glancing over Sirius' shoulder, where sure enough, there was nothing to see.

"When you didn't, and the — I couldn't make sense of," Snape tried explaining, and Sirius was certain he'd never been as incoherent in his life. Or as sincere. "You weren't coming, and—" Snape pressed his mouth to a terse line, frowning deeper, annoyed and unnerved with Sirius and everything else.

"It's all right; it doesn't matter," Sirius said, resting a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly, watching the frown on Snape's face melt away — "I'm here now" — and his expression soften, in a single second.

"I'm sorry I took so long."

Snape's dark eyes glistened faintly as he fixed Sirius for the moment fully unguarded.

Sirius' heart sank.

He shut the fuck up.

Snape was barely holding it together.

If anything, Sirius' poor attempt at reassurance had breached whatever shabby defences Snape still had in place, and they were one misfitting word away from tearing it all down.

Sirius doubted Snape could take that well. More to the point, he doubted Snape could take it at all.

He tried to figure out what to do, only to find he was absolutely clueless.

Sitting across him on the floor, shivering with cold, Snape was regarding him quietly. He had lost a lot of blood and his strength was fading. He looked lost and overwhelmed — and on the brink of a meltdown.

Sirius pushed back the impulse to hold Snape's shoulder tighter and glanced down at the small glass in his own hand; it hadn't yet changed colour.

"A few more minutes," Sirius mumbled. "It needs to warm up a bit to work. It's freezing cold outside, I'm telling you."

The label on the glass was facing upwards, and Sirius pretended to be reading it — not staring at the bloody mess covering everything, nor at Snape's blood-drenched hand trembling weakly in his bloodied lap.

"It's supposed to be good, this gel," Sirius said. "It better be. I nearly froze my arse off retrieving it. Well, it was the dog's, actually — and it was probably his tale. You've never seen me as a dog, have you?"

Not trusting either one of them to meet eyes yet, Sirius checked the clock instead: a few more minutes before the gel would be ready.

"It looks as though it might snow soon," Sirius said. He tried to recollect the quietude of the almost frosted sky; he hadn't noticed it while he'd been outside, but somehow he had captured the memory of it, unknowingly. "There's that smell of winter outside, floating in the air. Do you know it? You must know it…" he murmured. "That feeling settling in just before the first snow… as though the air is suddenly lighter and everything around a bit clearer, and the world is so silent you can almost hear it crinkle."

Sirius glanced up briefly, tentatively.

"I'm not making much sense, am I?"

Snape, still quiet and shivery, did not answer for a moment. His gaze was steady, though, and he seemed to have regained his composure. Whatever was left of it.

"No," he replied, vaguely uncertain, "you are."

He paused for another while to search for his thoughts.

"When you didn't come, " Snape said. "I thought that maybe —" He tried to steady his voice; it hurt to speak, Sirius had no doubt. "Maybe you tripped on your shoelaces and broke your neck… I quite fancied the thought."

"Yeah, I'm sure you did," Sirius smiled with a dull ache in his chest. "Don't be foolish, Snape. I'm not leaving you."

He picked up the blood-soaked cloth from Snape's hand and tossed it aside. He wouldn't be needing that.

"Though I did consider staying for a drink on my way back." He caught Snape's gaze, bleary but contained. "...I quite fancied the thought."

Snape's corner of the mouth drew up, not really a smile, but the beginning of one.

He had never seen a genuine smile from Snape, Sirius realised. Maybe they'd both live to share a laugh someday.

"It hasn't changed colour…" Sirius said, looking at the small glass in his palm.

"Bluterny?"

Sirius read the label glued to it. "Yes."

"It's good. Rub it between your fingers. It's quicker."

It made sense. And Snape knew potions.

Sirius did that. Turned out, the gel was gluey, and he barely managed to scrape it out of the small, brown jar. He rubbed his fingers together, and it changed from colourless to blue.

"It might sting a bit."

Sirius leaned in closer and pressed his fingers lightly over the wound to apply the gel. Snape, clenching his jaw shut, averted his gaze to the clock across the room.

The gluey texture proved to be a bugger, and Sirius had to pat a couple of times to get the sticky thing off his fingers and on the actual injury. Snape didn't seem very comfortable with the sore dabbing, and Sirius quite hated him for not taking Yarrow.

"There, almost done," said Sirius, smearing the last trace of gel.

He set the empty glass aside on the floor, waiting for the medicine to work its miracle, to mend the punctured flesh and stop the bleeding. But the gel just sat there, slathered over the incision, and the blood slowly found its way to trickle out from underneath.

And that was it.

And nothing was happening.

"It takes a bit; it will work," he told Snape, who finally looked away from the clock to check not the wound but Sirius.

"A few more minutes," Sirius assured, convinced that Snape was fully aware he didn't have a clue in hell what he was even talking about. "Just a couple more minutes."

He kept glancing between the injury and Snape's face, and again the injury, and still nothing.

Not a single thing.

"I have the blood replenisher," Sirius said. "Can you take it before the bleeding has stopped?"

Minka had said no, but what did she know?

"No."

"That's all right. We'll wait then. A while longer... It's all right."

Snape nodded in assent.

And Sirius nodded back, a bit too vigorously, a bit too edgy, wondering since when the fuck did Snape assent to anything.

He kept thinking of how Snape must have felt all those hours, waiting alone, believing Sirius had left him. It broke his fucking heart.

All the while, the injury still wasn't healing.

"You know," Sirius said. "I ran down Diagon Alley just now. It's been a while since I've been there — yes, I hear you taking a jab at that, Snape, save your breath — it changed a bit since then. Some new pubs popped up. Well, I think they're pubs — they were all closed."

There must have been an incantation to the Blunterny gel or God-knows-what Mediwizard gibber that Minka had forgotten to mention, because nothing was happening.

"I could do with a drink when all this is over; I can tell you that much." Sirius tried to chuckle. If this didn't work, they had nothing else — "a drink, or two… three maybe" — and Sirius wouldn't know what to do further.

Snape, for his part, looked rather composed, whatever that meant for a man who was half-covered in his own blood.

He wasn't saying anything or doing anything. He still hadn't glanced down at the injury, though.

"You talk a lot when you're nervous…" Snape said. "Don't you?"

"I do?"

Snape gave a small nod. "Quite."

"Would you — Am I making you nervous?" Sirius asked quietly. "Do you want me to shut up?"

For a few seconds, Snape considered the offer.

"No… I don't think so."

"Really…?"

Another pause for thought… "Surprisingly."

That was surprising.

"Weigh it well, Snape, it might be the only time you told me to shut up and I actually obliged."

Sirius glanced down at the injury that wasn't healing and the bloody mess all over and back up into Snape's hazy eyes — he looked rather calm, if worn down.

"Well, that's something," Sirius concluded, trying to sound light, "missing your chance of shutting me up. You've grown quite fond of me, haven't you?"

If the wary frown on Snape's face was anything to go by, he should have been looking sceptical.

Sirius brought himself to grin.

"Admit it, you're enjoying my company."

That did cause Snape to smile, just a little, and he was looking faintly amused.

"The competition, lately," he said, "must have lowered the bar for you."

Sirius kept private how humourless he was finding Snape's reply.

"Don't worry," he said. "We're getting out of this, and you'll be back to telling me off like in the good old days. I bet you're itching for it."

He glanced again at the wound.

Just the same.

Again at Snape.

"It's going to work, you'll see," Sirius said, and for a second he thought Snape was about to interject something to that, but then Snape clenched his jaw shut, his body tensing in discomfort, and Sirius looked down to find the gel had become translucent once more.

It was nearly glowing, and the flesh beneath it was visible. Sirius had the impression he could just about make out the tissue mend and suture together. By this point, though, it could have well been just a figment of his imagination. Some wicked deception his tired brain was throwing in, in an attempt to mend this mess.

But then the gel vanished as if it had suddenly absorbed, and all there was left on the bruised and bloodied skin was a thick purple line — a scar.

"It— I think…" Sirius barely trusted his voice to say the words. "I think it worked."

He grabbed the blood replenishing potion and held it up for Snape, who drank it with small, unsteady gulps.

It seemed unreal, and Sirius was staring in disbelief at the now healed wound, checking and double-checking and triple-checking, over and over again, to make sure, to make absolutely-beyond-a-trace-of-a-doubt sure that it had truly healed and the bleeding had stopped.

It had.

"It worked."

Sirius let out a shaky laughter.

"It worked!"

He let himself fall back to sit on the floor, relief washing over him so suddenly, he could hardly acknowledge it. An incommensurate burden had been lifted off his chest, and for the first time that night, Sirius could breathe.

Just breathe.

Breathe and stare at Snape, who was watching him guardedly — stolid as always and, just as always, slow to give away any trace of a reaction.

Sirius broke into a laugh of relief.

"It bloody worked!"

He wanted to hug Snape and kiss him — collected and inscrutable as he was — kiss Minka for getting them the medicine, and Remus for being right as always. He would enjoy kissing Minka the most; surely, Rem wouldn't mind the competition. Snape most certainly wouldn't mind.

Sitting opposite him on the floor, still shivering, Snape looked as though he hadn't yet processed their accomplishment. He was observing Sirius intently, curiously even, as if Sirius were some funny-acting toad in an experiment.

Come to think of it, it must have been quite a sight: Sirius sitting on the floor, smiling stupidly, happily, regarding Snape. He was looking like a fool, probably.

Sirius found he didn't care.

He pulled his knees to his chest and couldn't wipe the grin off his face. He laughed again, feeling so relieved it seemed surreal.

"You'll be all right."

Snape's expression did finally lighten, changing from incredulous to uncertain to slowly making sense of things.

And he smiled, only a bit.

"Had I not known you better," he said, "I would think you're quite happy about that, Black."

"Yeah."

Sirius should have retorted something irritating, some snarky sardonic jab — but couldn't find it. Not right now. He would have all the time in the world for that later.

"You've no fucking idea just how much."

Snape smiled at that and gave a small nod of acknowledgement. He leaned his head back tiredly and closed his eyes for a moment.

He would be all right.

AUTHOR NOTETwo chapters coming up tomorrow.