The Heart's Progress

Love crosses its islands, from grief to grief,

it sets its roots, watered with tears,

and no one--no one--can escape the heart's progress

as it runs, silent and carnivorous.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's no escaping the inevitable. Call it fate, or fortune, or force of will, but there's no escaping it. Because Sirius fell in love with his best mate's girl, and, though he didn't mean for it to happen, she fell in love with him. So there's no escaping the swearing and shouting and throwing and perhaps even hitting.

Honestly, Sirius didn't mean for this to happen. He shut out the idea that this day would come, because he knew when it did, he wouldn't know what to do, how to deal with it, what the hell to say. And now the day is here, triggered by Lily's desperate letter.

Though July is nearly gone, summer is just getting wound up. He wipes sweat off on his sleeve. Maybe it's heat. Maybe it's just nerves.

The unfolded parchment, naked on table before him, reads:

Darling. It's no use. There isn't any other way. I'm coming tomorrow and I'm dragging you, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the Hollow. I am tired of the tension, the secrets, the unspoken longing. And after we talk (or yell or throw fits or whatever), I am leaving with you. I don't care if you're not practical, not the marrying kind, the reliable one. I can't even think about my marriage--all I can think about is you. No, I don't want to hear your arguments. Don't even reply to this owl.

I'm sorry, but there just isn't any other way.

A year and half ago, he watched her yield herself to his best friend. It nearly killed him. And now--now--she writes and says its no use.

Lily always did have a knack for terrible timing.

He reads it again. He wants to shake her. Shake some sense into her. He needs to tell her, but what about Harry? Harry needs his father. A boy needs his dad. Stay with James for Harry. And what about Sirius' friendship with James? Once James finds all the skeletons in Sirius and Lily's proverbial closet, there'll be no rescuing their friendship. He needs to say, stay with James for me.

Except, he's not sure he's able to say any of those things. He may be a right bastard with women, but he'd never. ever. steal his best friend's girl, much less wife. But now that she is taking matters in her own hands--or trying to--he's not sure he can turn her away.

He really is a selfish bastard.

James will be livid and wounded, but he will let Lily go. That is the noble thing to do. Sirius knows James, and, while James used to be a right bastard too, he's grown into an admirably selfless man.

But Lily doesn't want James, a sly voice whispers in his head.

And the hardest part to swallow is that he wonders, secretly, if he hadn't hoped there'd be no other way. Maybe, in the end, he wanted this to happen.

Bloody hell, he's such a bastard.

Sirius sighs. He finds a scrap of parchment in a drawer and scrawls:

L - Fine. but DON'T BRING HARRY!! It's dangerous enough for you to come alone. Or better yet, I'll come there. - S

This throws everything off kilter. Lily was planning on performing Fidelius soon, but if she's leaving James... Even if she stays for a while, will James still want Sirius as their Secret Keeper? He's the logical choice, but James has been known to hold a grudge till the cows come home.

He binds the note to Roderigo's leg (contrary to popular opinion, he's not illiterate), and sends the cranky chestnut owl winging into the glaring sunlight. Settling at the table, he presses his forehead to the wood and can't stop thinking, Bollocks.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

An hour and a half later, Roderigo returns with unkind pecks and another note.

Darling: OF COURSE I WOULDN'T BRING HARRY YOU MORON!!! What kind of mother do you think I am? But if you want to come here, that would be fine. Tonight, after dinner? - Yours.

He stares at her girlish print. Yours. No, it's no use. But he doesn't know what he'll say when James looks at him with those big, hazel eyes and asks how, how Sirius can betray him.

The hours tick by, and he does little but pace. The sun begins to melt into the horizon, leaving residual stains of gold and sapphire and shell pink across the sky. The clock strikes eight. It occurs to him Harry is probably asleep now. Maybe he won't hear the angry, muted tones of adults that profess to love him so much. As he Apparates to Godric's Hollow, Sirius can only hope so.

He considers just walking in the oak door as he always does. He's family. He doesn't knock. But today he doesn't come as family, so he knocks.

Lily opens it, stares solemnly at him, blinks twice. Her hair is tied back in a plain bun. Sirius has a momentary vision: a dark room, red locks pouring down her bare shoulders, his hands pressing the nape of her neck.

He mentally dampens the flush spreading over his body. This is not the time for that.

"Come in, Sirius." She doesn't even try to smile--this is necessary, not fun.

James is seated at the table, fists clenched in front of him, face like pale ash. He stares straight ahead, doesn't look at Sirius, and Sirius wonders if he's even breathing. Sirius sits across from him. He might be a right bastard, but whatever James metes out, he's going to take it like a man. He deserves it.

Lily sits as well, and he glances over at her. She won't look at Sirius or James. He hopes she's not regretting this.

"How long."

Sirius' gaze flickers over from her to the other man.

Again, smooth as marble, James says, "How long have you loved her."

Sirius desperately wants to crawl in a figurative hole. Even now he can't stop thinking, there must be some other way. But, in his peripheral vision, Lily's tremulous hands remind him that there isn't, that sometimes life just screws you over. Sometimes things aren't fair. He really, really hates it when things aren't fair.

He whispers, "Maybe since sixth or seventh year. Maybe forever."

"Why."

"I don't know why."

"I meant why didn't you tell me."

Sirius shifts. He's mostly a right brain thinker, an instinctual being. He doesn't analyze. He's not sure he consciously knows why, but he tries to answer anyway. He figures he owes James a whole lot more than that. "I guess because, because... do you remember our Sorting as first years? You sat next to me, and Lily sat about ten feet away, and you told me you didn't think girls had cooties. You told me you thought Lily was the prettiest girl in the school. You laid your claim to her right then and there."

Except, as terms and years had passed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it was Sirius, not James, that Lily had befriended. It was Sirius' haughtiness she had mocked, Sirius' composure she had rattled, Sirius' company she had wanted on trips to Hogsmeade, Sirius' mind and talent she had admired. And James had ever been on the outside, unnoticed and adoring.

"Have you guys been--been-- " James looks like he's about to vomit.

"No. Never."

"How do I know that's the truth?" The worst part is his eerie composure.

"You don't. I have no way of proving it, and... and we don't deserve your trust."

"Damn right you don't."

Fair enough, Sirius thinks.

"Are you going to marry her?"

This is the question he'd known was coming and had dreaded in the hollow of his stomach. He'd turned the idea over and over in his mind as one examines a precious coin or terrible shard of glass. To his right, Lily is perfectly still. She is not breathing.

"I want to. When the war is over. When we all come out of this okay."

The strata charged with false quiet and muted rage abruptly fractures with a spear of James' barking laugh. "Okay? We're going to be okay? Oh, Sirius Black, you thick, iron-skulled fool! What makes you think we're going to come out okay? Even if we survive, we still won't be okay. You fucking moron, we'll never be okay again."

He jumps from his chair, hurls it sideways. One leg of the heavy, wooden object drives an angry hole into the wall. Lily gasp and bites down on the flesh of her thumb. Eruptions of emotion are rare for James--that's more Sirius' expertise. James' temper has the undulation of frozen pond, which is why the two are such good friends. They balance one another.

Or were such good friends. And how that scores his heart. Sirius barely keeps from crying out: why her? Of all the women in the world, why must he love this one? All these questions, no real answers. Such a terrifying price he's paying for love.

"I've been deceived. I've been--I've been lied to by my wife and my best friend!!" James' fingers close around Lily's forearm like a terrible vice, hauling her upwards and towards his body. Sirius leaps up from his chair, but James stops him with a diamond-hard glare. He spits, "Sit down, you--you fucking bastard. I'm not going to hurt her! And you, my love, my wife, my--my life... how long have you lied to me? Slept next to me, bore my child, gave me your body? You--"

With one hard shove he sends her across the room, into Sirius' waiting arms.

"Just take her! Take her!!"

He spins and grabs the nearest fragile object--a slender wine glass still holding a swirl of merlot. The elegant crystal shatters against the far wall and rains a thousand tiny diamonds on the car below. Scarlet streams down the flesh-colored paint. They know the wall will ever be stained.

Stock still, James stares at the telling spot. He smothers his face in his hands and crumbles to the floor. He's limp on the floor like a dead body.

"Was there no other way? Have you really thought--have you really tried? Is there no other way?"

Sirius shuts his eyes. He can't bear to look at his best mate, dearest brother, most beloved friend--because he can't say if they really tried. Truth is, he doesn't know. He thought he knew. He thought he knew a lot of things before he walked through this door.

Yet, every time it rains he remembers that kiss on the eve of their wedding. And, in autumn he can't bear to burn the reddest of leaves.

James and Lily are immobile, heaving with the emotion that's culminated in the past hour. And Sirius can't move, can't kill the question swelling in the chambers of his stomach and heart.

As privately and truthfully as he can, he stills himself and plunges into the gulf of silence, and arrives--at the place where all things stop--where great, yawning hunger answers honestly--where Desire runs rampant on four legs, seizing what it can with white, obtrusive canines--where he finally stands and asks the void, howling landscape, Is there any other way?

And nearly retches when it echoes back, Yes.

But not for the heart. There's no escaping the heart's progress. And at the thought, Sirius nearly faints in relief.

It's Lily who finally speaks. "James... I'm twenty-two years old. I wouldn't make it through another fifty or sixty years in this marriage. And neither would you. You'll see. You're no happier than me."

"Do you really believe that, Lily?" Knuckles pressed to his eyes, James shudders. "Do you really? Our life isn't perfect. By no means perfect. Hell, a pasty, crazed, anorexic wizard who fancies himself a lord is trying to kill us. I work too much. Harry never sleeps through the night. But--but--I--" He drops to his knees. Claws at the white tiles, a surge of acid mounting in his throat.

The sight of James Potter mute and shattered, akin to orphaned child, a homeless soul, pierces Sirius to the bone, sears straight through to marrow and molten soul.

Lily looks away, but Sirius glimpses the guilt she'd rather him not see. She manages, "And Harry, Harry will be happy if his parents are happy. And you both love him so much. And I--I can't undo what I've done--to either of you--"

"You didn't do this to us, Lils. This was my doing."

"No, Sirius. This was our doing. And we can't undo any of it. We can't make these wounds heal or make it as if they never happened, but we can make sure they don't fester and rot. We can make sure the scars aren't worse than they must be."

James' head snaps up. "Promise me something."

"Yes, James," Sirius says, because James' eyes collide with his and not Lily's.

"Promise me you'll never keep me from my son."

"Never. Never."

Sirius recalls a day when James said nearly the same thing. Following the finale of their first Quidditch match in their sixth year--James was the star chaser, Sirius the keeper and alternate seeker--they'd thrown a rowdy victory bash in the common room. Vaguely drunk on Butterbeers and Jack Daniels, they stumbled around the school grounds, looking for the perfect spot to set off anti-Slytherin flares--with lots of nasty, inventive swears--with their wands.

Idly surveying the stars, James had tugged on Sirius' sleeve and said, "Promise me something, Padfoot. Promise me we'll never change. Promise me that when we're old - like sixty or seventy, I mean real crotchety old geezers who sit around and drink beer and puff on cigars and blather on about the good old days--promise me we'll still be best mates. Promise me things will still be like this, even when we grow up and everything changes."

Sirius had rolled his eyes and rumpled his friend's already chaotic hair. "Don't be dense. Of course we'll still be like this."

"But promise me."

"All right, all right, I promise. I think--no, I know--you've definitely had too much beer. That Jack Daniels bloke really worked you over. Poor Prongs--never could hold your liquor. Speaking of which, where did you get that stuff? What is it, muggle whiskey?"

Sirius realizes: he just broke that sacred promise. James doesn't deserve this. He deserves a better friend, a better brother, because James is such a extraordinary person. The model husband, doting father, diligent and ambitious employee. Loyal, constant brother.

For Sirius' twenty-first birthday, James threw him a wild party at the Three Broomsticks. Firewhiskey, pretty girls, karaoke, a live band; James even decorated Sirius' beloved Black Shadow with toilet paper. In the wee hours of the morning, James practically carried Sirius back to Remus' apartment, where the four marauders drank more cheap wine and eventually passed out. And James, still remarkably sober, floo'ed home to Lily, making one pit stop at a twenty-four hour store for a bouquet of daisies. The next morning he awoke his hungover friends with fresh bagels and steaming coffee.

Because that's who James is, Sirius thinks. The guy who gets good reviews at work, buys his wife flowers, and still manages to be there to carry his irresponsible, intoxicated friends home. Not that James hasn't had his drunken escapades.

But oh Merlin, that's his brother on that floor. The brother who taught him what it means to stick your neck out for another guy. The brother who's saved Sirius' neck again and again.

Love is cruel, he thinks. And sometimes he wants no part of it.

James' eyes are again fixed on the red spot on the wall. Sirius hates to break the other man's painful spell, but there's something that needs to be said.

"Prongs..." No response. Sirius amends, "James. We're going to give you some time, if you want it, that is, to... to think, or, or whatever."

James finally looks at him, but the their gazes clash in ugly dissonance. The breach between them is broad, deep, and dark as the hell. They still understand each other--they'll always understand each other--but they'll never again agree.

Sirius steers Lily out the door. He rests an arm around her shoulder, and when they reach the street, she crumbles in his embrace. Supporting her weight almost entirely, he Apparates them back to his flat. She remains in his arms even when he seats them on the sofa and turns on the lamp beside it.

"Are we going to be okay?"

"No, love. I don't think so."

"I hurt all over."

He rocks her to and fro: in part to ease her physical grief, in part to stem his own. "I hate myself," he whispers.

"Me too." She chokes, sniffs. "Did we make the right choice? Please tell me we made the right choice."

"I don't know, love. I don't suppose it matters much, because it's already been made."

She continues as if he never spoke. "I keep wondering when we'll get our happily ever after. I keep wondering when things are going to be good, and right."

His tight embrace is the only answer he's got to give.

She turns and stares up at him, wayward fingers straying to the keen, handsome hills of his face and jaw. "I keep wondering," she says, "when our love will stopping hurting people."

"Or when our love will stop hurting us."

He releases her and rises, moving towards the window. Clouds are rolling in, shrouding the sky. Visibility is very low. He cannot glimpse the green planes unfolding to the west and the ragged peaks beyond that. He imagines what it might be like to disappear in the coming mist. It must be quiet. Like sleep. Like never waking up. He bets there's no noise--none at all.

A creak disturbs his musing. On the couch, Lily shifts. Her eyes close languidly, and she sighs. Her hair splays out on the pillow like a flash of fire across a snow-swept hill.

He bets that if there's no noise in that mist, there's also no sight. Or nothing to see. Certainly nothing so beautiful as this.

In a box beside his bed, he digs out something dry and frail. It crackles in his fingers like old parchment. He holds it up the casement light: the slender, sloping profile of a maple leaf. It's the color of dried blood, but it once burned with life.

"Darling, what are you doing?" Lily looks at him, eyes half open and hazy.

"Nothing, love. Just thinking about you."

"You look like you're thinking about a dead leaf."

He chuckles. "Yeah, that too."

"So, what, I'm a dead leaf?"

"Hardly." He sits next to her and grasps her hand. "I think it's beautiful." She nods.

It's bound to wilt eventually, just like winter's bound to come, and the earth's bound to cool and die. That's the way of love and life. But he's glad he kept the leaf. Though it's crispy now, it's still breathtaking. Still dazzling in its remembrance.

With one last look at aged, wine-hued leaf, Sirius lets it flutter to ground and turns to the woman before him. He gathers her soft, profound body and plumbs the depths of her mouth, finding secrets and silence, grief and change. And, at last, when the clouds outside completely envelop the sky, when the quiet comes, when they become blind in the fog and there's no escape, he clings to her, and the howling landscape explodes with blood and breath and crimson light.

A cool evening draft sails by the windowpane, nudging the milky vapor back its place in the sky. Sirius listens to the stirring the trees, shifting the sleeping redhead in his arms. He wonders what Prongs--James--is doing.

Sirius wonders if James, too, cannot sleep. He shuts his eyes and whispers a prayer for James, for Lily, for himself--if, indeed, there is a God who hears.

Another glance at Lily. The way she clung to him when they moved together, how her eyes flew open when her body stilled, shuddered, and unraveled... They fit too perfectly. This was bound to happen, and he's glad it happened after their encounter with--with her husband.

Her husband. The phrase sits on his tongue like sour fruit. She's still married, and he feels like a rat. Maybe he always will.

Yet, he loves Lily. It might be selfish, wrong, unfair, relentless, even cruel. But it's still love. Yes, love is cruel. He has the wounds to prove it. Perhaps Lily was right. I'm sorry, but there just isn't any other way. He wishes there was--for James, certainly, but mostly for himself. But then, with this woman in her arms, he cannot find it in himself to wish her somewhere else.

And if that is his wound, he'll leave it to fester or heal. It's his, after all, as she is his, and it was made with love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and I searched for a wide valley, for another planet

where the salt wouldn't touch your hair,

where sorrows wouldn't grow because of anything I did,

where bread could live and not grow old.

but love was not like that: love was a lunatic city

with crowds of people blanching on their porches.

but no one--no, no one--can escape the heart's progress.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finis