Something I Can Never Have
[colloquial title : strands of hair on a pillow]
Authors Notes: Once again, spoilers for Order of the Phoenix ahead, as well as slash and angst and a whole bunch of stuff. JK Rowling is the Master, I am but a humble mourning author...
***
you always were the one to show me how
back then I couldn't do the things
that I can do now
this thing is slowly taking me apart
grey would be the color
if I had a heart
[come on and tell me]
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I'm down to just one thing
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I just want something
I just want something I can never have…
***
I want him back.
Grimmauld place is like a crypt without Sirius. Any moment, I expect him to come through the doors, or hear him laughing in the kitchen, or catch his footsteps on the stairs as he goes to feed Buckbeak. But Sirius isn't here, anymore. Sirius is dead.
No one has touched a thing in his room. No one's even been inside of it, except for Lupin and I. Sirius never even made his bed, that morning; the sheets and quilts are still thrown back just as he left them, collecting dust. His extra cloak hangs exactly where his hands last put it, thrown haphazardly over the bed knob. Time stands still in this room, as though waiting for him to return, not knowing that it waits in vain. There are still a few long, silky black strands of hair strewn across his pillow
I have nothing to remember him by except for what he's left here. I couldn't have the robes from his body, or the rings from his fingers, or even one last lock of hair snipped from his head post mortem. There is no grave for me to decorate with flowers. He has no final resting place where I can sit and feel closer to him, and cry on his tombstone. He is simply gone; gone from me on a breath of wind, nothing more, and this room is the only thing left of him. It's all I have, now.
Mrs. Weasley has been bringing my food to me. I meet her in the doorway, then set my tray outside of it when I've finished. Sometimes Ron and Hermione come knocking, and talk to me from the other side of the door. Once Lupin came, and sat with me in silence for awhile. I think that he was saying goodbye. It was nice to have him here, but he hasn't come back, and I don't think that he will.
I sleep on the floor, most nights. Sometimes I lie very still on the other side of his bed, on top of the covers, and look at the pillow where his head should be, barely touching those strands of hair with my fingertips. In the summer and over Christmas, I used to lie right there; beside him, and watch him sleeping in the moonlight until I drifted off myself. We were lovers in that bed, wrapped in those very sheets. No one ever knew but he and I; we were eachothers most precious secret, and when the sun went down we had eachother to hold in the darkness. We had both slept alone all of our lives - but in this room we were not pariahs, but whole and together and all that the other needed. Beneath the rotting roof of his mothers house, we had been able to give eachother what no one had ever given either of us before. We were In Love, here.
A famous vampire once said that every life - however short or long - has a Golden Moment in it; one clear, true, precious time when things are Right, one era - whatever the length of it - when Life is exactly as it should be, and you are as close to Perfectly Happy as you will ever be. That Golden Moment happened here in this room, for us. Never did the world feel so right as the nights I spent lying against him in the darkness, entwined with him body and soul and dreaming in his arms afterwards. Voldemort may have been rising again, but I had Sirius. In those Golden Moments, there was nothing that - together - we could not face down.
Now this room is a burial chamber, forever waiting for the corpse.
They all want me to come out of here; to come downstairs and look at them, speak to them. They want me to smile. They want me to bring my mourning to a close and move on; step over that threshold and close the door behind me, and leave this room "in peace". Peace.
Does he know peace, now? Does he even know what happened to him? He wasn't dead when he fell through the curtain. He Fell Into Death, body and all. There was no cold hand to cling to, no limp shoulders to shake, nothing to beg to Sirius to come back to. There was no corpse to carry home on my shoulders and lay in this bed until they buried him. There were no dark and beautiful eyes to close and kiss one final time. There was nothing, nothing; nothing but that split-second last look at his face before he fell and was gone. Surprise. No fear, no pain; just surprise, and then nothing at all.
I want him back.
Even if it's just his body, I want him back. I want to touch him one more time, to slide his rings onto my fingers and snip a lock of that dark, silky hair before I brush it away from his face and say goodbye. I want to close the lid of his casket and carry it on my shoulders to the graveyard, and lower it into the ground, strewn with roses. I want to let him Rest in Peace.
But I'll never have that. I'll never have anything more than that rumpled cloak, those thrown-back sheets, and the few strands of hair on his pillow. I have no one, even, who knew what we were to one another. That's why I don't want to be with them, right now; they think that they understand what I've lost, but they don't. They think they knew what Sirius meant to me, but they didn't. They never knew the way he kissed me; so gently, as though I were made of glass, and the way things that he whispered to me in those sacred twilight moments when we lay together in this bed and there was nothing but eachother. To leave this room behind would be to close the door on the Golden Moment and let go of it forever. I sleep on the floor because to disturb this place would be sacrilege - but this is as close to him as I will ever be again, until I die.
And when I die, I want them to bring me back here. If Voldemort murders me, I want them to pick up whatever they can and bring it back to this place. I want them to lay my body on those dusty sheets that he rose from a morning so long ago, and draw the covers over me, and let me lie where he lay on those soft, quiet evenings when we were together. I want them to perform a Petrificus Mortis spell on my remains, and close the door behind them, and leave my body here forever where his body now belongs.
But I am not dead. If I was dead, it would not hurt like this. If I was dead we'd be asleep together in these very moments, and the Golden Moment would last forever. If I was dead, I would not be lying here, staring at strands of hair on a pillow…
***
in this place it seems like such a shame
though it all looks different now
I know it's still the same
Everywhere I look
you're all I see
just a fading fucking reminder
of who I used to be
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I'm down to just one thing
and I'm starting to scare myself
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I just want something
I just want something I can never have…
-nin-
***
[colloquial title : strands of hair on a pillow]
Authors Notes: Once again, spoilers for Order of the Phoenix ahead, as well as slash and angst and a whole bunch of stuff. JK Rowling is the Master, I am but a humble mourning author...
***
you always were the one to show me how
back then I couldn't do the things
that I can do now
this thing is slowly taking me apart
grey would be the color
if I had a heart
[come on and tell me]
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I'm down to just one thing
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I just want something
I just want something I can never have…
***
I want him back.
Grimmauld place is like a crypt without Sirius. Any moment, I expect him to come through the doors, or hear him laughing in the kitchen, or catch his footsteps on the stairs as he goes to feed Buckbeak. But Sirius isn't here, anymore. Sirius is dead.
No one has touched a thing in his room. No one's even been inside of it, except for Lupin and I. Sirius never even made his bed, that morning; the sheets and quilts are still thrown back just as he left them, collecting dust. His extra cloak hangs exactly where his hands last put it, thrown haphazardly over the bed knob. Time stands still in this room, as though waiting for him to return, not knowing that it waits in vain. There are still a few long, silky black strands of hair strewn across his pillow
I have nothing to remember him by except for what he's left here. I couldn't have the robes from his body, or the rings from his fingers, or even one last lock of hair snipped from his head post mortem. There is no grave for me to decorate with flowers. He has no final resting place where I can sit and feel closer to him, and cry on his tombstone. He is simply gone; gone from me on a breath of wind, nothing more, and this room is the only thing left of him. It's all I have, now.
Mrs. Weasley has been bringing my food to me. I meet her in the doorway, then set my tray outside of it when I've finished. Sometimes Ron and Hermione come knocking, and talk to me from the other side of the door. Once Lupin came, and sat with me in silence for awhile. I think that he was saying goodbye. It was nice to have him here, but he hasn't come back, and I don't think that he will.
I sleep on the floor, most nights. Sometimes I lie very still on the other side of his bed, on top of the covers, and look at the pillow where his head should be, barely touching those strands of hair with my fingertips. In the summer and over Christmas, I used to lie right there; beside him, and watch him sleeping in the moonlight until I drifted off myself. We were lovers in that bed, wrapped in those very sheets. No one ever knew but he and I; we were eachothers most precious secret, and when the sun went down we had eachother to hold in the darkness. We had both slept alone all of our lives - but in this room we were not pariahs, but whole and together and all that the other needed. Beneath the rotting roof of his mothers house, we had been able to give eachother what no one had ever given either of us before. We were In Love, here.
A famous vampire once said that every life - however short or long - has a Golden Moment in it; one clear, true, precious time when things are Right, one era - whatever the length of it - when Life is exactly as it should be, and you are as close to Perfectly Happy as you will ever be. That Golden Moment happened here in this room, for us. Never did the world feel so right as the nights I spent lying against him in the darkness, entwined with him body and soul and dreaming in his arms afterwards. Voldemort may have been rising again, but I had Sirius. In those Golden Moments, there was nothing that - together - we could not face down.
Now this room is a burial chamber, forever waiting for the corpse.
They all want me to come out of here; to come downstairs and look at them, speak to them. They want me to smile. They want me to bring my mourning to a close and move on; step over that threshold and close the door behind me, and leave this room "in peace". Peace.
Does he know peace, now? Does he even know what happened to him? He wasn't dead when he fell through the curtain. He Fell Into Death, body and all. There was no cold hand to cling to, no limp shoulders to shake, nothing to beg to Sirius to come back to. There was no corpse to carry home on my shoulders and lay in this bed until they buried him. There were no dark and beautiful eyes to close and kiss one final time. There was nothing, nothing; nothing but that split-second last look at his face before he fell and was gone. Surprise. No fear, no pain; just surprise, and then nothing at all.
I want him back.
Even if it's just his body, I want him back. I want to touch him one more time, to slide his rings onto my fingers and snip a lock of that dark, silky hair before I brush it away from his face and say goodbye. I want to close the lid of his casket and carry it on my shoulders to the graveyard, and lower it into the ground, strewn with roses. I want to let him Rest in Peace.
But I'll never have that. I'll never have anything more than that rumpled cloak, those thrown-back sheets, and the few strands of hair on his pillow. I have no one, even, who knew what we were to one another. That's why I don't want to be with them, right now; they think that they understand what I've lost, but they don't. They think they knew what Sirius meant to me, but they didn't. They never knew the way he kissed me; so gently, as though I were made of glass, and the way things that he whispered to me in those sacred twilight moments when we lay together in this bed and there was nothing but eachother. To leave this room behind would be to close the door on the Golden Moment and let go of it forever. I sleep on the floor because to disturb this place would be sacrilege - but this is as close to him as I will ever be again, until I die.
And when I die, I want them to bring me back here. If Voldemort murders me, I want them to pick up whatever they can and bring it back to this place. I want them to lay my body on those dusty sheets that he rose from a morning so long ago, and draw the covers over me, and let me lie where he lay on those soft, quiet evenings when we were together. I want them to perform a Petrificus Mortis spell on my remains, and close the door behind them, and leave my body here forever where his body now belongs.
But I am not dead. If I was dead, it would not hurt like this. If I was dead we'd be asleep together in these very moments, and the Golden Moment would last forever. If I was dead, I would not be lying here, staring at strands of hair on a pillow…
***
in this place it seems like such a shame
though it all looks different now
I know it's still the same
Everywhere I look
you're all I see
just a fading fucking reminder
of who I used to be
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I'm down to just one thing
and I'm starting to scare myself
you make this all go away
you make this all go away
I just want something
I just want something I can never have…
-nin-
***