Between Love and War

At first, Sirius had been fine with Vivian getting back together with Rosier, especially after the first week, when it became apparent that her hatred of him had returned in full force. After all, he told himself, better the devil you know than the devil you don't. This was definitely preferable to her whoring around Death Eater functions looking to exchange sex for information. Besides, Sirius had never really felt threatened by Rosier anyway.

Now, though, Vivian was standing in his living room telling him that Rosier had asked her to move in with him. Sirius just wasn't sure how fine he could be with that.

Something had changed Vivian that night in December. She never told him what happened, or even that anything had happened, but she was more focused than ever before. There were times when she was single minded in her pursuit of the Dark Lord's downfall. The quality of her information hadn't improved any, but the details had become frighteningly more explicit. She now spoke of death and gore with a certain fervor in her eye, and, to be honest, it scared him a bit sometimes.

His fears had done a complete 180. No longer was Sirius afraid of losing Vivian to her fake emotions for Evan Rosier. Now he feared he would lose her to her devotion to the cause. He was afraid, in short, that if he gave her an ultimatum now, Vivian would waste no time in leaving him. If she was willing to move in with Rosier, then who knew how far she'd be willing to go to bring down He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Where would Sirius draw the line?

He looked at those big brown eyes pleading for permission and knew it was a farce. She didn't need permission. She had probably already said yes to Rosier. This was just the way she had chosen to tell him that she was moving in with Rosier. Finally James had been proven right. Finally he realized that he would never be able to tell if she was playing him.

And what hurt the most was, as she looked him in the eye and lied to him, he realized for the first time that it was truly possible that she didn't love him as much as he loved her.

~*~*~*~*~

"I won't move in with him if you tell me not to. It's up to you, Sirius."

Vivian had made a lot of mistakes in the past few months. She knew that Sirius was concerned about her new perspective. She knew that she had been shutting him out and she was trying to rectify that. She was reaching out to Sirius, telling him honestly that she would respect his decision, that she would not do this without his permission. She was doing and saying everything she could think of, and Sirius would not say a word.

It was over. By the time she finally realized how close she was to losing him, it was already too late. He would have said something by now, if there was anything left between them. Vivian felt tears well up in her eyes and she was on the verge of begging him to speak.

"I think you should do it."

Vivian started to laugh and cry at the same time. "What does that mean?"

"It means I think you should move in with Rosier. I think it would be best for everyone involved."

"Right, but... are you breaking up with me?"

"What? No, I don't want to break up. I... I love you."

There it was. It was the first time Sirius had said it. Vivian had been so worried about losing him that she forgot the flip side was just as scary. "I..." She couldn't do it; she could not lie to him. Vivian threw herself into Sirius' arms. "I was so afraid of losing you. But it's going to be okay. We'll make this work."

Vivian had her head buried in his chest, but if she had looked up at his face, it would have been very clear that he noticed she had not returned the sentiment.

~*~*~*~*~

Months ago, Vivian had entered into a new relationship with Evan. She told him that she could be okay with his cheating. So to walk in on him with some half-dressed woman now should not have been such a shock for her.

They were busy on the couch and did not seem to notice when she entered, so Vivian slammed the front door closed behind her. Evan just sat up with a guilty look on his face, but the woman scurried about gathering clothes. Vivian stepped aside to allow her to exit.

"Vivian, I..."

She shook her head to stop him. "Save it. I don't care. I just needed to talk to you."

"How can you not care? If I'd walked in on you with another man, I would have torn him apart."

Vivian walked toward him slowly. "Well, then I guess it's a good thing the situation wasn't reversed."

Evan shifted into a slightly more defensive position, and Vivian knew that he thought this was the calm before the storm. "The last time you caught me cheating, you threw a wine bottle at me."

She sat next to him. "To be accurate, I didn't throw it at you. We've discussed this, Evan. I know that you're shagging other women. Although that is one thing I want to discuss with you."

This seemed to set him off. "See, I knew it! You said you could be okay with it, but you're not. Why do we have to go over this again? I love you, Vivian."

Vivian took his face in her hands. "Calm down, love. It's all right." She kissed him quickly as evidence. "We don't have to go over any of that again. I've been thinking a lot about you asking me to move in with you. It occurs to me now that I don't want to be walking in on many more scenes like this. So I think you should either reconsider that invitation or think of a solution to this problem."

"And I suppose the solution you have in mind--"

Vivian smiled. "No. I don't know what the solution might be. Maybe it's that we don't move in together."

She was supposed to say yes. She had Sirius's blessing and with that she was supposed to move in with Evan. Unlimited access to Evan's flat would be so good for the cause, but so bad for her. Vivian liked having her own space, and more than that, she liked having a place she could go to escape all this craziness. For the last few months, she had given everything for the cause; she was finally ready to draw a line.

"I don't think we should move in together," she said, feeling a weight lift off her. It felt good to say those words. "I don't know why you asked me, but I don't think we have that kind of relationship."

"What kind of relationship is that? The kind where I want you to be the last thing I see every night and the first thing I see in the morning? We don't have that kind of relationship?"

Vivian smiled warmly, but her thoughts were anything but. She was so tired of his clichés. When he tried to tell her how he loves her, everything out of his mouth could have been taken from a trashy romance novel or one of those soap operas on the wireless. If Vivian had been in a position to care whether his love was real or not, the cheating wouldn't have been what convinced her it wasn't. She didn't want to move in with him, but how could she tell him that she did not feel that same way he did? How could she say no now? "Then we'll find a way to make it work."

~*~*~*~*~

Everything was settled. Vivian and Evan had decided that she would move her things into his flat that coming weekend. Given their differing financial situations, there was no question that Vivian would not need to contribute to the rent. Considering this, Vivian intended to continue paying for her current flat, although she hadn't told this to Evan. Vivian wasn't sure how long this farce with Evan would last, but she wanted to make sure she still had a place to live when it all ended.

That Thursday evening, Vivian went to Sirius's house after work. She did not know how easy it would be for them to see each other after she moved in with Evan.

They spent the night together and Vivian told him of her plans, but she did not tell Sirius about the moment of hesitation she'd had before agreeing to move in with Evan. Maybe it would have helped him to know that she was not sure about everything, that she still had doubts, but Vivian viewed it as a weakness, and she was not one to advertise those. On some level, she realized that she was still shutting him out.

Earlier in their relationship, Vivian would not have hesitated to tell him anything she was feeling. Despite the way she had tried to hide herself from him in the beginning, since they had gotten involved, she had always been very open with Sirius. Until December. She knew that something had changed her that night, and she could almost believe that it was a good thing. To be honest, if not for Sirius, she would be able to close off all emotion and give herself fully to the task at hand. She had been a spy for the Order of the Phoenix for almost three years now, and she finally had found the focus to do that job correctly. Being a spy, being involved in the war on any level, required sacrifice. She knew that, and she had started to make those sacrifices in her personal life. She was now cutting corners in her relationship with Sirius.

It was not enough though. If she wanted to do the best thing for the Order, she would have to sacrifice her relationship with Sirius completely. In a lot of ways, that option appealed to her. All through school she had worked to shut herself down emotionally. From the moment she met Sirius, she had cared more than she ever wanted to. Even now, as much as she did not want to lose him, her feelings for him scared her. She knew, when she really thought about it, that it was not good to be detached and unemotional. She knew that, even though it was in reach again, it was wrong to want to go back to that. And she knew, even though it hurt to watch him slip away from her, that the pain let her know that she was alive. She just found it hard to care about any of that. What she did care about was that, despite the slow torture of losing Sirius and the appeal of feeling nothing, she was not willing to give up a single second that she could have with him.

~*~*~*~*~

After her first night living at Evan's flat, Vivian was glad to go into work. The idea that that was her home and that she would share her bed with Evan every night for the foreseeable future was suffocating. He had not even been there for the entire night. The scar on his arm had burned around eight and he had been gone until late in the night. Vivian did not know if that made the transition easier or harder for her.

When she sat at the table to eat her breakfast, she could feel his eyes on her. Her first breakfast in his flat, their flat, and she was already having regrets. Vivian kept her eyes from him, not wanting to see him across the table reading the Prophet and drinking his tea. She finished her eggs quickly and hurried off to work.

When she got to the hospital she could tell that something was wrong. The mood was somber, but she did not think there had been any major attacks. This was a different feeling than the one of mass casualty. When that happened there was more of a frenzy in the air and normally a large number of family members in the lobby. Mass casualties were hard to miss, but this was more subtle. There must have been a death in the staff, she realized. She continued, not bothering to ask anyone. Benjy would know.

However, when she got to the potions room, Benjy was not there. Carl was crying. That was the moment she knew who on the staff had died.

"What happened to him?" she asked Carl.

He answered to the best of his ability, but Vivian could not make out any words between the sobs. It did not matter though, because as he was speaking, she saw the Daily Prophet laying on the counter. She went over to it and rifled through the pages to find the story.

Beloved Healer Killed in Attack

It was a gruesome scene when the investigators got there. Tipped off by an anonymous source, members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement arrived at an alley in the heart of London and found only blood and body parts. The remains have been identified as that of Benjamin Fenwick, 74, of Birmingham. Fenwick, Benjy to his friends, had been a potions healer at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for over fifty years.

Fenwick was attacked at approximately nine p.m. last night. It is believed that the attack was perpetrated by supporters of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, as there was a Dark Mark lingering in the sky above the alley. At this time, it is unknown why Fenwick would be a target of these so called "Death Eaters." When asked for comment, Auror Amelia Bones had this to say: "All we know at this juncture is that the victim was in fact Benjamin Fenwick, and that the attack was particularly violent. We are fairly certain that there was more than one attacker and that these individuals had a grudge against Mr. Fenwick. So far we have only found bits of the body. These individuals did not just kill Mr. Fenwick, they obliterated him." (Story continued on pg. 4)

Vivian read that last sentence several times before turning the page.

Vivian went through the motions for the rest of the day, but it was not the same. Carl, once he finally stopped crying, shot her looks of disgust from time to time. He also muttered through the rest of the day, but if he was trying to make her feel bad, he was doing a poor job because she still could not make out a single word. Besides, she felt terrible as it was, for reasons that Carl would never understand.

When it was finally time to go home, Vivian hurried to gather her things. As much as she did not want to face Evan, she needed to hear from him whether or not he had been involved.

Evan was not at the flat when she got there, and Vivian felt at a loss for what to do. She sat on the couch, and for the first time that day she allowed herself to cry for Benjy. She was not close to a lot of people in the Order. In fact, she barely knew any of them, but Benjy had always been there for her. She heard the racking sobs and could scarcely believe they were coming from her. Vivian could remember incidents where she had cried in the last few years, but the fake tears she had shed for Lucius and Evan hardly mattered. She had cried when she learned of Narcissa's miscarriage, but it was nothing like this. Vivian had not cried like this since she was a child. It was one of the things that she had sworn not to ever do again when she was at Hogwarts. It was horrible. Her entire head hurt, especially her sinuses, and she had to gasp to breathe, but she found that she could not stop crying.

She had no sense of how long she sat there. By the time the tears finally stopped, Evan was still not home. Vivian went into the bathroom to clean herself up and saw that she was a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy and her face was splotchy. Considering that Evan had never seen her like this, he would probably find this reaction disproportionate. She needed to fix all that, but she did not know how. Closing her eyes and wishing it away did nothing. Taking deep, calming breaths only helped a little. When she heard the sounds of a returning Evan, Vivian looked better, but it was clear that she had been crying. Still, she stepped out into the living room to see her murdering boyfriend.

"Vivian, what's wrong?" The concern in his voice was so genuine that Vivian felt a tightness return to her chest. How dare he be compassionate when he was one of the ones who killed Benjy.

She walked to the coffee table and picked up the Daily Prophet. "Were you involved in this?"

Evan looked closely at the paper and shrugged. "Yeah."

She stared at him in disbelief. "He was my mentor."

"He was working with Dumbledore."

"He was my mentor! He was like a family member to me. I loved him, more than most of my family." Vivian felt the tears well up again. That was the first time she had said "love" and meant it in a long time. She had not realized it before, but Benjy was the strongest father figure she had known in her life.

Evan grabbed her by the shoulders. "Vivian, he was working with Dumbledore. He couldn't have been the person you thought he was." He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly.

Vivian could not tell him that it sickened her to have him touched her right now. She could not explain that she needed time away from him. Benjy was dead because he was passing along information she had given him. She did not need to hear justifications from Evan; the only thing she needed to hear was that it was not her fault from someone who could make her believe that.

She pulled away from Evan. "I want to believe you. I'm sure that you had really good reasons for thinking that he was working with Dumbledore. It's just that... I spent every day working along side him. We never talked about politics or the war, and so I want to believe that you're right. But I need time. I need to be alone with my thoughts right now."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No, you just got home. Besides, I can't think here. I'm just going to take a walk or something."

Evan blocked her path to the door. "Vivian, I'm not sure that it's safe for you to go walking around at night."

She pushed him out of the way. "I should be perfectly safe. Dumbledore's people don't kill innocents."

Evan started to speak, but she was out the door before he could complete a sentence. The real reason she would be perfectly safe was that she was not going to be walking alone at night. She was going to see Sirius.

Ever since the time she had burst in on him with James, Vivian tried to be more careful about arriving unannounced. She now Apparated into the area and stalked around in the bushes or watched from afar until she was sure he was alone. It did not take her long to ascertain that he was alone this time. He was in his bedroom reading a book, a novel by the look of it. She Apparated into the living room then knocked on his bedroom door.

Sirius took one look at her and said, "I was really sorry to hear about Benjy."

Vivian found herself locked in another embrace and this time she felt comforted by it. It was a long time before she pulled away. "Why did they do it?"

Sirius shook his head. "Wouldn't it be better to ask--Er, I don't know if--"

Vivian sighed. She appreciated that Sirius was trying to protect her. "I know that Evan was there. He probably was heavily involved, but I don't want to hear what he has to say. I just want to know if it was my fault."

"Why would it be your fault?"

"For a hundred different reasons. Could they have found out about him because of information I passed on?"

"Vivian." Sirius led her to the couch. He seemed to choose his words carefully. "Benjy was involved with the Order before you came along and he would have been involved even if he never met you. Now, I don't know what precipitated his attack, but he was always in danger. We all are, and we have to acknowledge that risk when we join."

Vivian laid her head in Sirius' lap. She was silent, trying to gather the courage to voice what had really been weighing on her mind. "When he left last night, Evan, I mean, I didn't say anything."

"What, like 'Don't kill Benjy?'"

Vivian blinked back the tears. "Not to him. I mean that I didn't tell anyone. I didn't... I didn't alert anyone."

"Did you know where he was going?" Sirius asked.

"No, but--"

"Did you know what he was planning to do?"

"No."

"Did you have any actual information to pass on other than that he was leaving the flat?"

Vivian took a deep breath. "No, but that doesn't make me feel..." The words were not coming to her.

"There was nothing you could have done to prevent his death. Sometimes people just die and we can't stop it."

Vivian looked up at him. "Are you thinking about Dorcas?"

"Some, but she's not the only person I've lost. She's just the one that meant the most to me."

Vivian remembered when Sirius had come to her after Dorcas' death. She remembered how later she had teased him for how stoic he had been. She remembered that she had not seen him shed a tear when his father died. Then she remembered that she had gone through the entire work day without showing any emotion. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"It's been a while. I'm okay. I've moved on. Right now, it's your time to grieve."

"I meant that I'm sorry for not being more sensitive when it happened. You loved her."

"What are you talking about? You were great." Sirius stroked her hair and seemed distracted. "As for Dorcas, she... Her death was..." He never finished those thoughts.

Vivian was not sure if she was actually getting jealous of a dead woman and she did not want to find out. She decided to change the subject even though she had been the one to bring Dorcas up. "What am I going to do without him?"

Sirius snapped out of his daze. "What?"

"Without Benjy, what do I do?"

"You don't need to worry about that right now. We'll work it out when the time is right."

~*~*~*~*~

When Vivian returned to Evan's flat, which she still did not think of as home, he rushed up to her and hugged her as though he had been worried sick. She had been gone for nearly two hours, and she supposed that would be long enough to cause concern in these troubled times.

"Where have you been?"

Vivian shrugged to break his embrace. "I went to see a friend." She threw her purse on the couch and walked away from him. It took her seven steps to realize there was no where to go. She stopped a few inches from the wall.

"Who? Narcissa said that she hadn't heard from you."

Vivian wanted to tell him that she had other friends than just Narcissa, but she could not think of any. "I visited the grave of a friend from school. Her name was Adeline. You didn't know her."

"I went to school with you, Vivian. I knew your friends. I don't remember any Adeline."

"You didn't know her," Vivian repeated in a very controlled voice, her back still to him. "If you really think about it, though, I'm sure you'd remember her. She was killed by Wilkes about a year ago, and, no, we weren't really good friends, but we had Herbology together. She was just the only other person I'd known who had been killed. So I went to her grave, and I guess I was there for a long time, but I was just thinking."

"You went to a graveyard at night? That doesn't sound very smart." He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

Vivian touched her head against the wall. "I happen to like graveyards. They're quiet, and no one really bothers you."

"And what did you decide while you took time to think by the quiet grave of your friend?"

Vivian closed her eyes. She was glad that Evan could not see her face because it was going to devastate her to grant absolution to one of the men who killed Benjy. She really wanted to bang her head against the wall, but Evan wouldn't understand, especially considering what she was about to say. "I thought about it a lot. And you're right. It makes sense that he would be working with Dumbledore. It--It was probably right to... put him out of commission. He was still my mentor, though, so I don't want to know how involved you were. I don't want to know who did what. I don't want to hear any of that. I do want you to tell me next time."

"Vivian..."

She spun around. "Not every time. I certainly wouldn't want to hear that, but you knew that I worked closely with Benjy. I had to find out he was dead from the newspaper. You could have spared me that. You could have broken it more gently. It would have been easier to hear it from you. And I didn't mean that you have to necessarily tell me beforehand. But if you did, I promise, Evan, I won't judge you and I won't ask you not to do it. I trust you. I just want to know when someone that I care about is going to be killed or has been killed or what have you."

Evan licked his lips. "I don't know if I can do that."

"This isn't easy for me. I want you to know that. You leave and I don't ask any questions, but it's terrifying. I need you to communicate with me. You can do that however you see fit, but... I guess I expected things to change when I moved in here."

Evan laughed. "You expected me to tell you where I was going, what I was doing?

Vivian tried to look hurt. It was a ridiculous thing to say, and she had not expected that at all. "I'm sorry, do I not have a right to want to know those things? What kind of a relationship is this? It's not based on sex; I know that much. I thought it was based on mutual respect and a deeper understanding of each other."

"I can't just tell you..." Evan sighed. "I'll try to work on my communication, but I can't tell you everything."

Vivian shook her head as if something had just occurred to her. "I understand that. It's just Benjy's death took me by surprise and it's making me... I do get scared when you leave, and I would rather hear about the death of a friend from you, but this isn't your fault." She put her arms around his neck. "I just want the pain to go away."