Pairing: Severus/Lily

Prompt: ghost

It's a game of tug-of-war and you're right in the middle of it. Each side is pulling, pulling, pulling at you, and trying desperately to win. To your right is Lily; oh, lovely, lovely Lily with her beautiful heart and dazzling eyes. And to your left is the darkness, the evil that's lying dormant inside of you.

She doesn't even know that she's pulling you from that, saving you from the monster within. But she is. Every time that she smiles that breathtaking smile, you think that you'll never be like him. You'll never be the mean, bitter man that hates the world with such furious passion.

Then when she's gone, it consumes you. It slips into the darkest part of your mind and fuels you. And you can't stop it. All you can do is sit there and wait for your lovely, lovely Lily to come back to chase away the dark and bring light; to shine so brightly that everything is bathed in it, where there's no trace of the darkness that is still hiding within you.

But you push her away. You whisper the one word that would end this game of tug-of-war – Mudblood. You do it because no matter what, when she's gone, that evil extinguishes all possibilities of being good. And lovely, lovely Lily shouldn't be overshadowed by that. So, you let her go. You utter the one word that you vowed never to call her and you let her escape your downward spiral.

There's hurt in her dazzling eyes and that's enough to make you apologize. You lie, though. You tell her that you didn't mean to and you begged for her forgiveness. Even though you know you completely ruined any chance of that; but she doesn't need to know that you sacrificed her for her own good, that you love her enough to do that.

With her gone, you fall so much further than you've ever have. There's not an inch of you that isn't covered in evil. You become the one thing you never wanted to be; you become your father – the mean, bitter man that hates the world with such furious passion. And who you were when you were with lovely, lovely Lily is nothing more than a ghost of a memory.

But strangely, you're okay with that. Because you saved her from your darkness. In amongst of all the terrible things you've done and the even worse things you're sure to do in the future, you were selfless for her sake. And that's something to be proud of.

A/n – thanks so much to Budapest All Over Again who beta'd this for me, and gave me a few suggestions.