Hello there, the angel from my nightmare
--Blink 182
Angel
He finds himself standing over the bed again. It's the middle of the night, and he knows everyone else is sleeping soundly in their beds. It's where he should be too, head on the pillow, thoughts asleep and dreams of happier times filling his head.
But it's hard to do that when around every corner is a bad memory come to life and regrets do nothing but stare him in the face.
The boy in the bed turns in his sleep, and Sirius turns himself, unable to take a closer look. The shadows dance against the far wall in the moonlight, and he spends his time looking at them instead, because it doesn't hurt like a blow to stomach to contemplate them. He's not strong enough to be taking this on, and he knows it. He wants someone else to step in. He wishes there were someone else who could take this weight off his chest and he needs the space to breathe away from here and away from the boy in the bed.
Because it's not James that he sees sleeping there, despite everyone's objections to the contrary.
There's symmetry and Sirius doesn't like seeing it. It gets all mixed up in his head. The way the future melts into the past and blends into the present and bleeds into his consciousness. There are plenty of ghosts in the bed with the boy, but Sirius can't tell who they belong to or if there's even a defining moment that sets any of them apart from the group.
James and Lily are the obvious. Friends, parents, lovers, enemies. He wants to ask them what they think now. He wants to ask them if they're disappointed with the way life turned out and he wants to laugh with them when James says, "Hell yes. I'm supposed to live forever." There's old anger at having let them die like that. New anger at them for having left him here alone with this. Old sadness at seeing that no matter what happens, nothing ever gets better, and that in fact, the past is forever doomed to repeat itself.
He hates this loveless house and all the moldy memories it holds. Father, mother, son. Perfect picture of familial bliss. Just cut away the freak, and the picture is perfect. He's seen Petunia in action, and he remembers meeting her pathetic worm of a husband. Conform, conform, conform.
It's easy to act out, because the negative attention is familiar like an old baby blanket. Comforting in its repetition and predictability, in the words that anger gives voice to and the responses that cheek gives rise to. Remus always frowned on it, saying he was too wild and full of himself for his own good. James went along with it, interested in trying new things. Peter never liked calling notice to himself. And Sirius finds himself agreeing with them all, because everything they say is true.
He doesn't want to be known for the things that he has no control over. He doesn't want to be the person they all assume he is, but he fails to see how he can change their minds. They've already decided they know exactly what kind of person he is. Fame and notoriety precede him, and people have no patience for the truth when it contradicts what they would like to believe. Hello the House of Black, pureblooded beyond a shadow of a doubt, and rigidly Slytherin to the core.
Like him, there is no give and take. There is no middle ground, because to give is to give it all, and no one wants that. Right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, Gryffindor and Slytherin, innocent and world weary. There is no place in this house to be standing in the midst of contradictions. Particularly not the contradictions inherent in oneself.
He stands over the boy in the bed, trapped. Boxed in by good intentions. Kenneled by the high hand of righteousness and misunderstanding. For his own good. For the greater good. For the amusement of his enemies. It's hard to tell anymore who it benefits the most.
No, the boy in the bed is not James.
Reaching out with his own fading hand to brush wayward strands of hair off a sleeping face, he sees that with utter clarity. He wonders how anyone who knew them both could not. James knew darkness in adulthood, felt trapped only once out of school, saw evil in death.
The boy in the bed can not say the same.
The boy who is his responsibility now. His burden to care for. His reason for living, and the motivation to keep going on. The boy he wants to cry for, and the one he wants to change the world for. His reality is tied all up in him.
Failure is inevitable. He knows this because he can feel it pulling him down below the surface just like the musty old memories of this decaying house drown him. He can't solve the boy's problems anymore than he can solve his own.
They are the same.