ten - jagged

James stirs in his sleep, his arm sliding from her ribs to the curve of her waist and resting comfortably there, but Lily rolls away from him. The sheets that haven't yet been lain on are cold beneath her and she relishes the chill.

She realises, as she closes her eyes and listens to the silence of the night, that she has no right to be where she is. She has no right to be comfortably nestled in bed with her husband. She has no right to love and be loved, because she has taken that right from somebody else with a flick of her wand and a curse, the jagged words spilling from her lips. And they're words marked in the ink of blood, too, not her Muggle crayons, and she can't rub them out or siphon them away with a tergeo.

She has become a killer, and she has let herself become as bad as them.

It makes her sick.

Lily presses her fingers into her eyelids, digging them in as far as she can until iridescent colours float in front of her eyes - bright turquoise, day-glo purple, neon yellow, and battlefield red with a hint of Killing Curse green.

She shifts again on the mattress to find another cold spot and lies precariously close to the edge of the bed. Lily's dangling her arm over the edge of the bed with fingertips brushing the coarse strands of the carpet when James reaches over to her and tugs her into him.

"What're you doin' all th'way over there?" he asks, words slurred with sleep.

"Thinking," she replies, and almost mouths his retort along with him: Don't wanna be doing that.

James yawns hugely and stretches, the mattress bending with his movement. He rumples his hair and she burrows into the pillow with her face turned away. James nudges her until she looks at him, and when she does he's fixated on her shoulder. Gently he reaches out and his fingers brush the line on her back.

"Where'd'you get this?" he says softly, still tracing the raw red mark along her back.

Lily shrugs and his fingers slip with the movement. He brings them around and touches her cheek.

"Lily?"

She brushes him away and says, "Dunno. Tonight, I suppose."

He frowns slightly. "Lily, if you were injured you should have said something."

"It's just a cut, James," she says harshly. "It'll heal, I've had worse. It's not like I'm dead." Then she reaches out to him and kisses him, running her hands through his hair. He pulls back, extremely confused.

"What? What're you - talking -about?"

She stops him numerous times with kisses, biting and sucking on his bottom lip to prevent him from talking. Finally James scoots back a little and rests his hand on her, and when his thumb hits the cut at the junction of her back and shoulder she winces.

"Lily. Tell me what's going on." His voice is barely audible when he speaks. "Please."

She stares at him for a long while and the silence is disturbed only by the wind rustling through the leaves of the trees. It's a summer night and it's swelteringly hot, but Lily can only feel a chill running through her veins and she tells him so.

"I killed someone, James. I killed someone. That's what's going on."

He lets out a breath and his shoulders slump. "Lily, Lily -" he gathers her in his arms, "- I know, love. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But it was self-def -"

"Don't say that," Lily pleads, and her voice breaks. "I don't care. I don't care that it was self-defence and it was him or me and he was going to..." she trails off. "James, I killed someone."

She seems so broken and lost and defeated and he doesn't know what to do.

All he can do offer is sympathy - he's never had to utter the words, after all - and he knows he can't understand how she's feeling. So James hugs her tighter and allows her tears to soak into his thin shirt, and holds Lily until she's fallen asleep.

(He holds her long after that.)