Gabriella Elise

It seemed like a long walk to Sirius's house although he only lives four blocks away. He's brooding as he walked, brooding as he does on any other day except there was a hint of desperation to his madness, a hint of regret. He was cruel, so was she, and it never gets any easier, these outbursts that randomly come. She hates him. He's witnessed that for so long. Lily Evans hates James Potter once again. Worst of all, though, is that she blames him. She blames him for the death of their pampered darling, Gabriella Elise.

God, how the memories seem to be living today. He feels as if he wouldn't be surprised if she popped out from around a corner. If he saw her smiling mischievously making him realize it was all a prank. "I never died, Daddy." He hears in his mind as he allows his daughter's form to manifest before him. "Fooled you though, didn't I?" He does that a lot. He just forgets her death sometimes, forgets the fall she took, and feels as if she's alive. Sees her, hears her and then realizes with complete agony that she isn't real. He'll reach out to touch her, to hold her, never be able to feel her and he'll remember just like that. He'll feel as if he was hit by a train, some powerful dark curse, and suddenly the despair he felt at her funeral resurfaces. He makes her death impossible to move on from because he hopes for the impossible with every fiber of his being. He hopes that she's alive.

If she were alive right now she would be six years old. If she were alive right now his wife's smile would be bright. She would be Lily again. She would be sarcastic, witty, temperamental, passionate, and he wouldn't know what it feels like to miss someone who is standing right in front of him. He wouldn't know what it feels like to love someone and yet realize he's actually in love with the past, with a dream. She would love him and he would love her and this depression both have sunk into would be non-existent. He wouldn't have to relive Gabriella's funeral over and over again. He wouldn't have to hear Lily's words in his mind as she accuses him of ending their daughter's life.

A part of him blames himself as well. A part of him blames himself for going against Lily's wishes and allowing her to fly. A part of him blames himself for showing his daughter how it feels to be high in the sky. He has dreams of that day sometimes. Dreams consisting of the toy broom she loved to ride on and of the fall to the ground when she tried to go too high. He relives her death every day of his life, relives the agony he felt as he watched his daughter fall far to the ground.

It was an accident, he had said to Lily. It was an accident and no one's fault. He remembers her screaming at him a few days after, yelling taunting words like murderer, like killer. It was days before she could look at him again, days before she could lift her eyes onto the man she blames for their daughter's death. And when she looked, saw his hazel eyes and disheveled hair, she realized that all her feelings, all her love was gone. And from that day forth, she became numb to everything, to life itself and has been that way for three straight years.

They say that a child dying is the worst catastrophe a parent could ever face. They say it kills parents from within, at their souls. It's a loss many never recover from, a loss that tears apart happy homes. And as he reflects on it now, nearing Sirius's doorstep he knows it's the only fact that remains true. It wasn't just the fact that she blamed him, because he knows that somewhere in her heart she acknowledges his innocence, knows that he would never have wanted any harm to ever come to Gabriella. But it's the fact that she died on the inside. Her life was sucked out of her the day she realized she would no longer see her daughter again. It was worse for her than it was for him. He didn't loose his faith right away. He didn't lose he need to live until he realized that Lily Evans was gone and never coming back. Lily can no longer live, no longer breath, without wishing that somehow she was dead because the need to be with her daughter overwhelms her. It makes her forget everything she once loved about her life. She's consumed in her grief and that woman back there, that woman talking about divorce and how they're fooling themselves simply is not Lily. It isn't her.

That woman is dead. That woman lives and yet isn't alive. Looks and yet doesn't see. Listens and never hears. His wife is lost, lost within her memories and lost within her alcohol. And his one problem is that neither of them have learned how to let go. Neither can move on whether it's together or apart.

He arrives at Sirius's house and knocks loudly on the door. He waits impatiently for a few moments and knocks again with a bang of his fist. A shirtless Sirius comes to the door startled to see his friend at his flat. Startled by the dark look hovering inside his once bright eyes. He moves from the doorway and allows James to come inside.

He walks inside and slumps down on the black, leather couch. Sirius takes the seat next to him, waiting for his friend to speak. He breathes loudly, quick, swift breaths as he if just ran a marathon, swam across an ocean. Then he turns to his friend, his face darkened by the searing pain he feels on the inside.

"She wants to leave me." He says quietly staring at his friend.

"Lily?" Sirius questions dumbly out of complete surprise.

"She wants to leave. Says we're just fooling ourselves by staying together. That how we live isn't… isn't right." He says, his words getting more hopeless as he goes on.

"Lily would never leave you." Sirius says thinking, still, as he did back when they were teenagers. James goes on as if Sirius didn't utter a word.

"And you know what? Do you know what, Sirius?"

"What?"

"She's right. How we live isn't a marriage. Sirius we're like two strangers, now. We aren't… things will never again be how they used to be." James says defeat sounding in every word he speaks.

"Do you love her?" Sirius questions as his friend looks down.

"What?"

"Do you love her?"

He thinks for a second, thinks about the word he's wondered about every day of his life. Thinks about Lily, about the past.

"I…I don't know." He says very slowly after a moments. Sirius looks at him.

"You used to know. Back when I used to ask you it was an instant yes. An 'of course I do you sod.' You used to know." Sirius replies.

"Nothing, nothing, is how it used to be." James mutters darkly standing up from his spot. "Nothing will ever be that way again. So there's no point, no bloody point, in saying things like that. It's in the past Sirius. She loved me once. I loved her once as well. And now… now…" but he stops and sits on a chair facing the couch.

"And now?" Sirius asks knowing that the end to that sentence is the answer they all seek. But James shakes his head.

"I don't know. I just don't know." Sirius nods and gets up from his spot.

"Fire whiskey?" He asks, and James nods slightly.

"I can't believe I'm drinking at noon." James says as Sirius hands him a glass.

"Desperate times calls for desperate measures." Sirius says in the light hearted voice he can always seem to employ.

"She still blames me. I can see it in her eyes. She still blames me." James says as he takes a sip. Sirius looks up, James hasn't spoken to him of their daughter's death since the funeral. It's a topic both men like to avoid.

"You know she doesn't really. If she blames any one it should be me. I bought Gabriella that broomstick."

"She wanted to wait. Did I ever to tell that? She said to me 'James, let's wait until she's older.' And I laughed and told her that it was nonsense to wait. That it was her right as a witch to ride a broomstick." He said taking a big sip of the whiskey.

"You have to stop punishing yourself. She does too. It does neither of you any good."

"I just wonder sometimes about what it would be like if I didn't let her on that broom. I mean, I wonder what she would be like today if she were alive. What she would look like three years older than the last time I saw her."

"We all wonder sometimes. But you and Lily torture yourselves over this. Everyone who knew her loved Gabby. She was an amazing child and we all lost something when she died. But you two torment yourselves over something you could not have prevented."

"But it could have been. If I just listened to her. If I could just go back and…" He stops suddenly realizing how childish he was about to sound. He takes a long sip of fire whiskey and drowns in his grief.

"James, you would do exactly what you did. It's who you are and who I am and who Gabriella was. She got our mischief side, you know. She's like a girl version of us and she couldn't just let that broom sit in the closet without being used. She would have taken it out when you turned your head or something. She would never have liked to play on the safe side."

James shakes his head as he feels tears coming to his eyes and changes the conversation from his daughter back to his wife because Gabriella is still too difficult to speak about.

"Should I let her leave me? Should I tell her that the door is open for her to go and when she's ready I'll sign the divorce papers?" He asks as his heart aches with every word.

"Is it what you want?"

"I don't know." He says, again. It's a constant feeling, not knowing what he wants, because he's lost in a sea of desires, of emotions and he can't pick out which are his, which ones he wishes to have and to hold, until death do us part, right?

"James, you have to figure it out. You have to know. Don't think about what she wants. Think about you. Could you live without her?"

He's silent for a long while as a timeline of their relationship passes before his eyes, snapshots of moments. He sees himself, sixteen years old, nervous as he walks up to a girl he's been crushing on for years and asks her out. Witnesses the turn of her head, the small nod she makes and the eyes that glowed as she said yes. He sees himself at Graduation on the lawn after the ceremony. Sees himself standing with her by the lake, sees himself go down on one knee. It may have been her huge smile as she yelled yes, may have been the closeness of their bodies as he twirled her around, but that one memory seems to take the life out of him.

He sees other things, as well. Sees them moving into their house and that day when she painted their bedroom. He sees her at the wedding, sees her beautiful form in a white gown as she kisses him and they're declared wed. He sees her in the emergency room giving birth to their baby. Sees himself holding their little girl as Lily sheds the tears of a new mother. As he snaps out of his slight dream he hears her laughter all around him.

He looks at Sirius,

"No," he says "I couldn't live without her." Sirius nods.

"So don't let her go. Don't surrender this early in the game. Fight for her James. Fight for Lily because god knows, it's what you do best." He says referring to the disastrous fifth year courtship of Lily.

He smiles slightly, "It sounds nice in words. But don't you think I've tried. For months after the funeral I tried to show her, to tell her I loved her. But she ignored every gesture. And it's dead, Sirius, it's dead."

"How can it be dead? It isn't obligation that makes you stay with her. If anything it's love."

"Love, what is it anyhow?" James says in a far off voice.

"Only you can answer that." He says refilling their glasses. James takes another sip.

"It's been three years, three years since she last wanted me. I… I repel her Sirius and every day she becomes more pathetic. Everyday she repels me, as well."

"Bring her back." Sirius says strongly.

"Who's going to bring me back?" He retorts, knowing that he needs saving as much as she does.

All Sirius does is shake his head. "Go home James. Go home and fix what's left of your broken life because I don't want a roommate living here any time soon." He says with a slight smile on his face.

James shakes his head, downs the rest of the whiskey and starts to walk to the door. He turns when he gets there.

"How do I do it?"

"Do what?"

"Figure out how I feel? Make her want to stay with me?"

"I don't know." Sirius says as he opens the door and allows James to walk through. "But you'll know. When the time comes you'll know what to do.

He stops off in a bar before going home. He's the only person there beside the regular drunks who can't get through the day without some beer in their system. He sits there for hours, drinking whatever his little muggle money would buy for him and prolongs going home as much as he can because he can't see her. Not yet when the memory of their fight is so clear in his mind. Not yet when for the first time she expressed her need to get out of the life she's living, to get out of the past. A past that he's a part of.

It's around five in the afternoon when he arrives at home and the house is quiet. He puts his coat on the staircase banister and walks up the stairs slowly, hearing every creak as he makes his way up. He opens the door to their bedroom and sees her lying on the bed, her clothes from before still on, and one of their crystal glasses lying on the floor next to the bed. He walks over and picks up the fallen glass, puts it on her night stand, and smells the alcohol on her before he even reaches her face. Somehow, he knew she'd be here. Somehow, he felt that she would never leave. He sits on the floor in front of her, watching her breath, watching the shadows playing on her pale face. And as he watches her sleep all that he's thinks is, "You need to figure out how it is you feel." Figuring out how he feels will save this relationship because right now they're both defeated. Right now neither have anything to fight for.

A/N: These next few chapters are gonna be rewritten or expanded upon. I may also add a chapter or so but am still debating whether or not it will take away from the story. Hope you enjoy it so far and I know my spelling errors are a bitch. I try though.

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