Proscenium Arch, Fourth Wall, Centre Stage

by notbang

It's a pity your parents can't supervise your dreams.

harry potter fic

Title: Proscenium Arch, Fourth Wall, Centre Stage (Watch Humanity Beget You)
Genre: drama/AU
Rating: light r?
Pairing: Lily/James, Lily/Remus

Disclaimer: James, Remus, the saddeningly-unhot sex god Sirius, Lily and everyone else worth mentioning don't belong to me. I can't write seven hundred odd pages of rubbish and still be filthy rich. Yet. Music From Another Room owns the coin plot point.
Warning: Language? Sexual References? Probably.

Spoilers: Nothing major. Possibly inadvertent OotP references. HPB spoiler free.
Summary: It's a pity your parents can't supervise your dreams.

"All I do is act on my passions and they call it sin.
All I do is tell the truth and they call me a hypocrite.
All I feel is pain and sorrow and they call it love.
All I do is pour my heart out to empty pages and they call it poetry."

- Benito Behar

"Take out your blades, get out your guns;

We'll drink our poison, then wait and see what we become."

-- What We Become, Kisschasy

p.

there's no aphrodisiac like loneliness, bare feet like a tom-boy and a crooked smile, truth youth beauty fame boredom red hair, saturday and a picture of you

Some days she can still remember his touch; the soft velveteen of fingertips tenderly stitching old wounds shut and words like cotton blowing hot on the back of her neck. And in memories of old there are no awkward moments, no feeble excuses uttered, no silent pleas falling upon deaf ears and for this she can pretend that maybe what they had was a little like love, and not at all for the sakes of youthful lust and selfishness.

His eyes are an unspoken ultimatum, unreachable and real and beneath his gaze she is brittle and broken like shards of shattered bone.

Some days she can remember his touch; others she loses herself in the endless sea of another's.

i.

green eyes you are just in time, i will clean you up and show you then to all of my friends, and we will walk around town hand in hand to show that you're mine

She reads every sign, joins every dot and connects every fact.

Mildly responsible + studies + reads + smiles at her godlikethat + brown eyes + kind + Prefect – obnoxious friends – Marauder (trouble efficiency amount of trouble caused / number of trouble causing attempts, compared with total trouble caused / number of trouble makers, with a Marauder ratio M-W-P-P of 1:1:4:4. 10 give or take) + calm + smart + sensible – (only sometimes)2 equals Remus Lupin, frightfully nice enough boy, if not for the company he keeps, in which case, a reason why…

Boggart turns into a silver disc + disappears at full moon + tired + secretive + pitied by the nurse werewolf.

His lips are as soft as his eyes, and she smiles and tells him gently that it doesn't mean a thing to her, she understands, don't listen to a thing those numbskulls say, and he looks afraid and grateful all at once, vulnerable yet relieved all in the same breath.

She toys with the coin he wears around his neck, tracing its contours with her fingertips. Something about the feel of it isn't quite right, and she looks down to examine each side more closely. She draws in her breath slightly - barely noticeably and yet he notices it still - and pulls away.

He knows exactly what she's seen; knows she's keen enough to sense that she's been cheated. But then he sees how she hesitantly returns to the chain, turns it over in her hand and smiles up at him, eyes shining, and what he sees in her eyes is distant fondness over betrayal, and his stomach jolts almost painfully.

She knew, and for some reason, she chose him anyway.

ii.

i see you in the mirror, you're outshining everyone, so cold it makes me numb

The war changes everyone in its own subtle ways; it changes Sirius the least and for this Lily is grateful.

She tends to his wounds with ink stained fingers wrapped in bandages, ripped to shreds by needle points and sharp spores, keeping busy and the worrying of her own teeth. He clenches his jaw and hisses occasionally and in between, he tells her all she wants to know but doesn't want to ask.

Lily isn't allowed on the raids because though she is fast and furious, and quick and smart and sharp and sassy, she is also kind and tender and strong, and her efforts are much more needed on the homefront, and besides, neither James nor Remus, nor Sirius for that matter, would've allowed it.

Sirius watches over her like a guard dog providing false security to a flower, and protecting her wilting petals is like holding the fragile core of his best friend's life in the palms of his hands, because he knows that should anything happen to her James's heart would surely shatter. And so stormily he keeps his vigil, soothes her distress as best he can and wonders when his friends will follow him on home.

"I always thought it was very brave, what the three of you did for Remus," she tells him one evening, sitting down to steaming soup and bread. "Not to mention awfully dangerous, but… it was real friendship. The kind of loyalty and devotion that a lot of us can go our whole lives looking for and never find."

"They offered that loyalty to you," he replies, evenly. "Both of them."

She nods and turns away, distancing herself from his too-grey eyes and rough appeal, searching for an explanation, an apology, anything.

"He's changed, hasn't he, Sirius? I can see it in your eyes that you've noticed it too. He's not the James Potter I used to know."

"You loathed the James Potter you used to know," he points out, and she feels she should have an answer to that but there's nothing, nada, zero, zip, zilch.

And then later she's pulling away because she's right, something tastes different; the kiss is all raw need and no James, and this is all wrong and not what she's been waiting for at all.

"I missed this, so much," he says. "Missed us --"

"I missed you," she whispers, brushing his hair back from his face. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know, Lil," he murmurs against the crown of her head. "I honestly don't know."

iii.

and i'll try not to break your heart darling, if you keep smiling, i'll just keep you on the shelf

It is a cold winter's day – colder than most – when she receives her first proposal, the only rejection of many she ever looks back on and achingly wonders what if, why not, if only.

"Marry me," he says breathlessly, and she would have to lie to say she is not intrigued.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Come away with me. Let's get married."

"Don't," she says, pointing a finger at him. "Don't do this."

"Don't what?"

"Don't make promises you can't keep. Don't say things you don't mean."

"What is it going to take to get you to see I'm serious, Evans?" James demands. He matches her, stride for stride, brow creasing in frustration. "Why can't you give me a chance?"

"Because this is a ridiculous infatuation that will last no longer than a week from the moment I foolishly choose to indulge it!"

"Why are you afraid of having someone love you?"

She stops in her tracks, eyes widening. Shaking her head slowly, she tugs at her scarf and resumes her brisk pace.

"You throw that word around so easily, James Potter. As if you know what it means."

"You know I might just have a better idea than you do!"

His nose, cheeks and ears are tinged with pink from the cold, and his hazel eyes burn furiously into hers from behind his glasses and the stray locks of his thick, messy hair that always falls into his line of vision, no matter how many times he runs his hand through it. She wriggles her fingers deep within the woolen cocoon of her gloves; there is no excuse for this.

"We'll flip for it."

"Excuse me?"

"A coin," he elaborates. "We'll flip for it. Heads, I win. And you'll foolishly indulge me, as you put it."

"And if it's tails?"

"If it's tails," he says slowly, "If it's tails, then you win. And I will never bother you ever again."

"Ever again?" she asks, and she can't say there is no suspicion in her voice.

"Ever again."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Temptation lies in the form of a single gold galleon, smooth faced and ordinary, hanging around his neck. Tails she wins, heads she loses, though she's not entirely sure between each word and faded letter that the end result could be positively, truthfully, correctly classified as losing. She calls it --

"Tails…"

-- and rocks on her heels.

And yet: her very first kiss with Remus had been soft and subtle, and as innocent and chaste as everything she'd once thought she'd stood for. Her very first kiss with James Potter is almost its opposite; heady and crushing, with warm, pliant mouths fusing and teeth knocking and fingers twisting in tangling locks of hair and suddenly, Lily Evans doesn't know what exactly what she's in for, all alphabetised and neatly filed away.

For once in her life she decides she doesn't care.

"Things like that don't matter anymore."

It's legs wrapping around waists and hands in hair and parting for breath, and leading towards something they both know can never be undone, not by peddling backwards at half the speed of light, or erosion, or time, or tomorrow.

"I lied."

But he'd known that; just how he knew now, hands spanning her stomach and red curls spilling out a halo on the bedspread, that this was how things were meant to be. He lowers his lips again and kisses her – god kisses her, so different to the way he'd kissed Gemma or Lisa or Frankie or April – and presses them to her ear.

For this moment, she allows herself to believe everything he says.

iv.

hey there brown hair you will compliment my image this week, and we'll get along fine just as long as you never speak

In her seventh year, Lily Evans, Head Girl kisses James Potter, Head Boy fiercely on the mouth. She brushes her teeth that night like she's trying to scrub him away; a catharsis like rinsing and gargling away the residue of a nasty cold from your throat.

James and Sirius show up at the ball with a girl on each arm – last week it was Lucy, Regina, Jessica, Bronwyn1 – tonight he stands with Maigon as if they're stitched at the hip and they dance slowly, suggestively while he slips his hand under her skirt and her tongue flicks in his ear.

Maigon's eyes are blue and her hair is brown, she wears a flowing dress the same colour as her eyes and Lily drinks punch until she feels like she could drown, drown, drown, and Remus brings her water and begs her to stop. She hates herself for thinking she should just take him upstairs and fuck him and see how James Potter likes that.2

"Lily, please," Remus says quietly, but she ignores him and walks outside instead, leaving Remus to wonder how James Potter finally got to her.

1 Bronwyn's mouth was hot and soft and tasted like strawberry lip gloss and sugar quills, and Lily was sure she could taste him in there, too. The rumours had already started by breakfast, but James kept trying to catch her eye and that was the only thing that mattered.

2 He received his just desserts; not even two hours later and Maigon and Sirius were upstairs collapsing on James's bed in a tangle of arms and legs. They couldn't get out of their clothes fast enough.

v.

i'm counting black sheep to reacquaint myself with sleep

She feels her world in the shadows.

They come alive by night; seeping pools of pain, anger and hatred, more than just a dream because they are nearby and tangible, and if she just reaches out to touch one she can almost --

Each fades as she grows close to it, replaced by newly forming clouds of emotion in spaces she has previously occupied. They move like rainbows; clever illusions cast not by light but the absence of it. She feels nothing that can be defined as the touch of darkness, merely sensations akin to a warm breath on the back of the neck, a soft breeze ruffling hair or the gentle beat of a butterfly's soft gossamer wings in the moonlight.

The path she walks is one that angels fear to tread.

A forest sheaths the shadows – extended branches of copper leaves and olive gleam. There is no sun, no stars. Only gloom and no gloom, and the echo of approaching footsteps through the twilight, harsh and foreboding like bone scraping on bone, grinding joints into chalk, light and heavy all at once, and the feeling grows stronger every day.

It's a buzzing that she senses but cannot hear; nor touch, nor see, nor taste, nor smell. She can't help glancing up with each stronger sensation, though, searching for a sign, the sign, any sign, of what ought to be causing it, and days like these she wishes for colours.

Colours of the world before the war, the landscapes stretching out green and magical, and the velvet expanses of sky, with no nasty tinges of grey, no fading to sepia or rusting with the tainting of blood. Where the newspapers are black and white and not yet yellow with age, ancient and extraordinary without even being a day old because every second, every moment, feels like history before it happens – it's too good, too horrible not to have someone writing it down, and the life is drained slowly from them until the words themselves, gorged with meaning, seem to control the future.

She wonders if it's possible - for something to be history before it's scripted, fate before it's told, destiny before it's seen – and it shows in the angry slopes and furious curls of her usually scrupulous writing.

-- the shadows keep me awake at night.

you can feel them growing closer, now, and the ground shakes with their every step. people stare and you can hear them whispering behind your back.

the shadow? who/what/when/where/why? how? i don't see a shadow…

they've forgotten how to feel.

She imagines her fourth dimension - her second sight, her extra sensory perception - as a sort of echolocation of the soul; an interminable radar supplied by free spirit and unhindered by the buoyancy of her innocence whereas those around her are blinded by the foggy distortions of ignorance.

It's near impossible to think that only she can see it coming; that the one person aware of its arrival is the one person who perhaps needs it least, and that maybe – the crux of the matter – she alone can save them.

they want to fight. they want to feel like they're doing something even when they know it's a useless cause.

they'd rather battle futility than stand by and watch as their whole world comes crashing down around them.

them? look at them. look at us. we are them. look at what we've become.

She can blink, and in an instant it's gone -- what if eternity is a ship that only the elite can sail? what if even forever can only wait for so long? what if when we die, it's really the end? are we too far gone? -- and all that's left before her is a colourless page with too many words, too much to read, to understand, and it seems like the easiest option is to ignore them altogether until she feels a hand slide into her own.

all you need is but one follower…

"If we fail," he says, "we can fail knowing we tried."

-- and it's better than watching everything she's ever known crumble to pieces in the shadows.

one by one, we'll save them all.

vi.

i'll be your dream i'll be your wish i'll be your fantasy; i'll be your hope i'll be your love be anything that you need

The wedding will be held in May.

Tell me, Lily. In ten years time, how do you picture yourself? Who with? How about twenty years? Thirty? Who do you really imagine yourself growing old with? And don't tell me what you think is the answer everyone wants to hear. Tell me what you want.

She will be dressed in that which defines her; soft and gentle and lily-white, with shimmering eyelids and rosy cheeks covered by a delicate veil. She will remove her shoes and swing them by the straps from one hand as she pads across the grass, laughing, and is swept into his arms. They will dance and twirl well after the sun sets and they are bathed in moonlight, because they will be young and in love, and will have their whole lives and a dream coming true ahead of them.

You want to know the truth? The truth is I want you, I want you more than I'd ever thought possible and that scares the hell out of me. But the reality is that with you, it wouldn't be growing old together. Remus, he's the kind I can depend on to come home at the end of the day. The kind I'll never have to keep dinner warm for, who'll buy me flowers and never forget our anniversary. With you there'd be none of that.

When he pulls out the pin that releases her copper tresses and lowers his lips to hers, her smile will be heartbreakingly radiant.

With you it'd be stolen kisses and late nights spent wondering where you are, who you might be with or if you're still alive. Being with you is so dangerous, so risky, so much of a gamble… that I don't know if I can handle it.

This smile will reach her eyes.

I love you, Lily.

Love isn't enough. Not for me.

It's a pity your parents can't supervise your dreams.

vii.

but happily ever after fails; we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

Sticks and stones may break my bones…

When Lily Evans was six and her sister Petunia was seven and a half, summer was the best time of year and the wind in your hair and sand between your toes at the seaside was the best feeling in the world. Life was far simpler then; games of My Mother, Your Mother, Red Light, Green Light, Poison Letter and What's the Time, Mr Wolf? There was no venomous words or harsh accusations – years before hatred, animosity, jealousy ever existed.

Tears were shed over melted ice cream cones and grazed knees rather than spite and judgement. Toys and places in mum's lap were fought over by tugging at red hair, brown hair, and by harmless pinching and the poking of tongues.

"Petunia, I -"

"I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you!"

"I wanted to say I'm sorry."

"For everything."

"I forgive you."

"Don't you think it's time we put this all behind us and move on?"

"Word has it you're getting married."

Years later, when her belly should be swollen with child, her feet bare and a band encircling her finger, she reaches for the phone and dials;

"Hello, Petunia Dursley speaking."

"Petunia? Do you… do you remember when we were kids?"

"Who is this?"

"Do you remember in the summer, how we used to always go to the seaside, and I used to get so frustrated, because you'd always want to race me, up and down the beach, but my legs were so short, and I'd always get bogged in the sand, and -"

"I think you have the wrong number."

"Petunia? Petunia, it's your sister, Lily, I -"

"I don't have a sister. Please don't call this number again. Goodbye."

Her hand moves to her stomach – flat – and she replaces the receiver in the cradle, tears streaming down her alabaster cheeks.

But words will never hurt me.

She does not think herself unbreakable, and with no one to protect, one year later, dies not for love but lives, loveless, alone.

(avada kedavra.)

viii.

it was good, it was bad but it was real and that's all we have; in the end that's all that matters

It's the night after Remus asks her to marry him for the second time that she finds herself leaning giddily over a balcony, the clean crisp air in her tangle of copper coils and her cheeks rosy from cold.

She hasn't seen him or Sirius for months now; he's grown a few more inches if possible and his eyes are less sparkle and more brutal truth. She can tell he's seen things, and wants to tell him she has too, in her dreams – but she can't speak, not yet, all she can do is lean close and drink in his scent until her head swims and breathe across his skin. She inhales the essence of war and the fragrance that is its casualties, and it stirs something inside of her.

Their words are his fingers beneath her jacket, her lips behind his ear. She doesn't know what she's doing, why she's doing it, other than something like living her life through him. He tastes like danger and everything she's ever been prevented from feeling, and it's fire on her skin and intoxicating.

"James -"

She doesn't want to be one of them, one of James Potter's slags that come and go from his bed like quicksilver, leaving lipstick kisses in the mirror and offering body without soul. She doesn't want to be her, doesn't want play Ophelia to his Hamlet but she lets him fuck her on Remus' bed, just once, and they lay in a tangle of limbs and wait for someone to speak.

"It could have been me."

"No, it couldn't have been you," she says, pulling the sheets around her and walking to the window. "Not ever. You know that."

"Look me in the eye and tell me you don't wonder. Tell me you don't think about us."

She calls his bluff, baffled still by society's misconception that lying to someone's face presents such difficulty.

"I don't think about you, or us. I love Remus. We went through this three years ago. Things haven't changed since then, James."

She's still telling herself this when she closes the scarlet box encasing the ring that once again she will not wear.

"I chose you," she says simply. "Isn't that enough?"

"No. You didn't choose James. There's a difference."

"Oh, Remus…"

And like a sad song you'd sing at Christmas, she kissed him.

ix.

free at last - they took your life, they could not take your pride

And now, this propaganda:

War breeds in the quiet, dark, well sunken places that people always forget to look, twisting and turning and spreading like vines and wildfire, choking and suffocating and searing and burning, leaving scars on scars and tearing open wounds not properly closed. Its shadows, and shadows of shadows, are thick and insidious, and they creep like cats along the fences of dawn, enveloping the wizarding world and blocking out the sun in ways that humanity disallows most to fathom. The seeds of fear and mistrust do not need light to grow; they thrive in its absence.

She senses it long before it arrives, predicts the lack of incentive to shake it loose and fights the burning fist trying to clench around her heart for as long as it is possible.

Green eyes see the fear come full circle; see the circle shatter and turn on itself, again and again. Watch it tear itself apart from the inside.

This, this is what it comes down to.

This is what we become.

They'd already lost, and nobody else could see it.

They could win the war, it didn't matter. They'd lost the first battle and its casualties had been all that had separated them from the other side – they were left nothing but another faceless army, another snarling monster, vicious and protective and blindly following a blind man's lead.

Truth, youth, innocence, humanity, so many goddamned unmarked graves. They could never raise the dead. These could never be regained; these no longer existed for them to protect, to preserve.

and as long as we have nothing left worth dying for, there's hardly anything, anything at all, worth living for. worth fighting for.

"Except pride," she whispers. "Pride, and maybe, just maybe, there's still love."

The smallest shred of hope kindles in her heart, and a hand - dark, withered and icy - is withheld a little longer.

x.

you should leave him, i should be him, i could be an accident but i'm still trying, and it's more than i can say for him – where is your boy tonight?

"How do you tell someone that their whole world is a lie?"

"You don't, Moony. That's the stink of it. You don't," Sirius tells him soberly. "That coin gave James a chance at something he'd always wanted. But with or without it, Moony, I know you – you were always going to wonder if it was worth it. If you hadn't have lost her to him, you'd have lost her to someone else. James makes a living out of cheating fate," he says. "It'll be the death of him one day."

And this is when your own trick turns on you; playing with your own deck of cards, your own double-headed coin but your opponent beats you at your own game and it's heads you lose, heads you lose again, and again, and again, and again.

Suddenly it doesn't seem so fair.

James Potter walks around Hogwarts likes he owns it (struts) – and he probably could, if he only asked it – and wears a gold, double-headed coin around his neck; the sign of a marauder, the mark of a trouble maker, one of four enchanted by a kind-faced boy with a once-a-month-dread and a yearning for normality. James Potter's girlfriend is one of many and one of a kind, and he treats her like the goddess she should be rather than date number one hundred and seventy two.

There are two rules:

Watch what you say, and watch what you watch.

(You have to live with your dreams – don't make them so hard.)

"James, I was wondering if -"

"Peter, shut it, would you? Nobody cares. Lily?"

This happens often; Pettigrew has learned not to scowl.

It is also often made alright by James Potter's girlfriend, Lily Evans, who squeezes Peter's hand gently as she passes, and gives him that don't-mind-him-he-has-a-big-head look that she does so well, and not for lack of practice. Peter smiles back, but by now Lily's green eyes have traveled to Remus's. Both faces light up, just noticeably, and then it is gone, and she is James's, just James's, and untouchable once more.

Being treated like dirt by school royalty that just so happens to be your friend on a daily basis is worth it, if only for a single instant of pity and understanding from those beautiful green eyes.

(We make our own beds; then we have to lie in them.)

Life isn't fair but green eyes and the prettiest smile in the world makes it bearable – if only for so long.

We always forge the sword that slays us.

xi.

maybe redemption has stories to tell; maybe forgiveness is right where you fell

The black cloak that lies covering the corpse speaks for itself, creates its own metaphor and mocks her harshly, slipping and sliding and all consuming, leaving slivers of broken heart in its wake. She refuses to cry –

drop,

"Who did this?" she asks evenly, proud of herself as she does not quaver.

"Lily, you know -" Sirius begins.

"No, I mean… I mean, he was protected. Untouchable, you know what I mean. This shouldn't have happened. You – you…"

drop,

It is only Remus standing behind her, hands on her shoulders that hold her back, and perhaps the last few shreds of trust and faith that she has managed to hold onto, enough at least to allow him seconds to defend himself.

drop.

"He was in hiding!" she hisses angrily, rogue tears escaping. "Nobody knew where he was, not me, not Remus, not Peter… if he told anyone, he would have told you, Sirius!"

"I think… I think you should read this."

Hurt and betrayal haunts Sirius's grey eyes and they darken with irony as he hands over the parchment, later evidently for more reasons than one, and it makes her stop her struggles and read while a single tear slithers down her cheek.

Twelve days later they lower his casket into the ground; twelve months later it seems that the emerald has faded even from her eyes and the shadow claims its final victim; the last hint of colour, of hope, vanishes from the world without a trace.

"I can't be who you want right now, Lily," Remus says, his hair a little more grey, just like his words. (Just like everything else.) "I can't be him. I'll never be him. But at least let me try to be someone you need."

This is the third and last time he will ask her to marry him.

This time, she says yes, and whispers as she slips her hand into his.

One by one, we'll save them all.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

xii.

and then I wrote this letter, in my head, because so many things were left unsaid

31st october

dear lily,

i am forwarding this letter to peter in the hopes that it will reach you without placing you in direct danger; you cannot begin to comprehend how much it pains me that i have to ask you to tell no one, not even remus, or sirius, that i have been in contact with you. it has become evident over the past few weeks that someone close to me has been passing information to voldemort, and it has become necessary that i go, no matter how reluctantly, into hiding.

there are some things for which i owe you an explanation before i disappear. first and foremost, the entire basis of our relationship was a lie, a lie i have had to live with for every day of my life since. i tricked you all those years ago with the tossing of that coin, and i cannot apologise to you, or remus, enough. i often wonder how differently things may have turned out had i played more fairly; winning doesn't feel quite so good any more.

secondly, i know i've failed you, so many times, and that day in the woods was the biggest, most beautiful let down of them all. i promised you i'd save the world for you. i didn't, i couldn't, but you always had the better chance. i'm as blind as anyone else, but i would have followed you anywhere. you have a gift. use it. you said you'd save them, lily, and you will. one by one. you'll do it. i know you will.

last of all, i want to thank you.

you saved me.

all my love,

-- j

e.

like fallen soldiers we will learn, that once forgotten twice removed, love will be the death of you

By day she loves him as all good wives do; darns his socks and cooks his tea and kisses the corner of his mouth, worries for him when he's gone and cries for him when he disappears inside himself. She tends his scratches and caresses his brow, and allows a little piece of her heart to break every time the moon grows full and hangs, a swollen sac of silver, in the velvet sky.

By night she loves him still – because he always comes home, and she knows he always will - but sometimes, when her bare feet tread the earthen carpet of regret that stretches out before her; when the tips of her fingers brush the bleeding petals of the roses of victims who never had a hero, and when her dress is the softest silk of fading dreams; it is so easy to mistake his hair for darker in the shadows, and to pretend his eyes are more hazel than brown. Kiss melts into kiss; and by this and this alone can she tell the two apart.

Some days she can hold onto the feel of his touch; others, all she knows is fantasy.

- fin –

A/N: You'll have to excuse the messed up format, likes to eat things.