BROKEN WINGS

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"If you don't love me, it does not matter anyway; I can love enough for both of us."

--Stendahl

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

James was kissing her with a wild abandon, the trees around him blurring, the sky an endless canvas of swirling colours, the grass a slippery green sea of weeds. He was falling, falling headlong into a whirlpool at the foot of a cliff…. And meanwhile, her lips seemed the only spell that spared him from oblivion.

Suddenly, something wet had rolled down his cheek, burning him…. Once again, he sprang apart from her with incredible alacrity, horrified that he had lost control over himself for the third time that month. Every atom of his blood was singeing with shame, remorse, guilt. Why did he lose himself in her eyes like that? When had he become so bestial? Where had he lost the genteel within him?

She had collapsed against the tree, shaking with tears. Tears of rage and despair that quaked her lovely honest soul, and left him demolished with each new sob. Her large doe-like eyes held such reproach and disappointment in their green depths, that he knew they would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Was his love for her so disgraceful that it had reduced her to tears?

"Lily," he reached out his arm to her in supplication, but she only retreated further away from him.

"Don't touch me!" she lashed out, and every word from her mouth fell like a gash across his heart. "Don't touch me, you hear that? You lying, scheming…. You SAID you'd take the Renascence Potion, but you lied! I'm not falling for your empty promises again! I don't care what potion or poison you drink, Potter, I don't give a damn whether you…Oh! I hate—"

"NO!" he cried out vehemently. "Not that, Lily. Anything, but that. You will kill me, if you say that…I'll kill myself, if you say that. Have you not got a smidgeon of compassion for me? Can't you see how much I love you? To the point of self-annihilation! Can't you see it?"

She looked so scared, clutching at the tree, weeping, and trembling like a leaf in a gale.

"You're cruel, so cruel," he said, his voice harsh and resonating in the silence around them. "You look at me with such fear, as if you couldn't trust me, and it is tearing me apart! You don't know how you sully my existence, when you say that my love for you is because of that—that potion! I don't need a paltry potion to love you, Lily! You are already a part of me. You have no inkling about what sort of boy I am, and what sort of love I'm capable of—"

"Stop it, James!" she cried, and he stopped, for either his breath was too heavy, or the sound of his name from her lips was too oppressive. "Its that potion still talking within you…. You will go mad like this! You need serious help! We must talk to--"

"Its not the bloody potion!" he yelled, taking hold of her shoulders, and shaking her. "I love you! I love you! I love you! I don't need a potion for it, dammit!"

Lily pushed him away, her eyes flashing with fear and anger. "You love me? So, you love me? Is that right, James Potter?"

"Yes," he said, defiantly, proudly, desperately.

"Then do something for me, " she said. "If you love me, stay away from me! Look at me! My parents have been murdered, my sister hates me…. How can you talk to me about love at a time like this! My life is already in ruins; I'm already an emotional wreck. I can't sustain love on my plate, too! I don't need a broken heart; I don't bloody need this fiasco! So…. If you really love me, then stop attacking me, and leave me alone. Leave me in peace for the rest of eternity! Did you hear me?"

He merely stood looking at her, like a lifeless ragdoll.

Something in his face touched her, perhaps, because the very next moment, her anger had been replaced with a different emotion. Merlin, let it not be pity! He couldn't take her pity.

"James," she moaned in agony. "I cannot take this…this intensity…this degree of your feelings for me…I need my space! I cannot cope with it; it's suffocating me. You are suffocating me."

Suffocating her? Suffocating her, when she was the one who refused to give him an iota of peace day and night? When she was the one who reigned his every ambition, his every action? When she was the one who refused to relinquish her hold on his dreams, on his will to live? And he was suffocating her?

A bitter jagged laugh spewed forth from his lips; James Potter was suffocating Lily Evans! The irony of it all!

He wanted to shake her, slap her, again and again. He wanted to clench her throat, perhaps nuzzling it as he did so…He looked away in sheer frustration.

"Fine," he said finally, his voice breaking, and every hope in his mind fleeing with the setting sun, every wound in his heart crying in mute agony. "You won't be pestered by me again. You won't hear my proclamations of love anymore. I'll never suffocate you again with my intensity. That's what you want, isn't it? Fine. You'll get that. And each time you pass by me in the classes or in the corridors, you don't have to recognize me either. You can pretend I'm a wall, as if I don't exist…As if you've never known me…Will that suffice? Or would you like to rip out my heart as well?"

A fresh surge of tears streamed down her cheeks. "Don't get me wrong, but I'm not worthy of your love, James. Don't waste it on me. Once that potion loses its effect--"

He turned to her with the sharp gaze of a wounded lion. "I'm sorry, Lily, but its too late now. And I know you won't like to hear it, but there's no force under the sun that can make me stop loving you. It's just not possible. You may be angry with me, and you may fear my love, but even your hatred will be enough for me to survive. You cannot ask me not to love you, Lily. I cannot give you that promise."

She looked at him with something akin to compunction, her mouth contorted to fight back the howling within her. He only thought of his promise, and how helpless his love was.

And then he saw her running away, with each stride, his life spiraling into meaninglessness.

He thought his heart would shatter, would shatter into a million pieces, and wouldn't even bleed. He recalled her look of pain and mortification, again and again. And he felt the dirt between his teeth, instead of the Heaven he had been striving for.

He hated her for not believing him, for not giving him a chance. He hated her for being so beautiful. He hated her for being so selfish, and only heeding her own pain. He hated her for mocking his love, and he hated her for asking him not to love her.

He hated her.

He loved her.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

A shadow stood silent, lurking behind the bushes and watching the scene unfurl before him with hooded eyes.

The shadow that was Severus Snape.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

FOOTNOTES:

God, I'm so disgusted with this story, I seriously want to haul over and PUKE. I had no idea I would be putting so much emotional melodrama in this fic, but in trying to make it angsty, I've made it into a mound of my shame. I've also realized that I italicize too many times for comfort. (Hangs head in shame. ) I'll understand if you want to flame me.