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lesyeuxverts) wrote2007-10-23 02:17 pm
lesyeuxverts) wrote2007-10-23 02:17 pm
August nest of spiders: James/Lily ficlets
Title: Unspoken Comforts
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Alice/Frank, Lily/James
Prompt: #2, "There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other."
Warnings: No DH spoilers.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Alice licks the sweat from her upper lip, watching Lily. Red-gold hair worked up into a rough knot, her skin gleaming – she bears the heat with grace.
Pushing limp hair from her face, Alice turns back to the window. Frank and James left in the mid-afternoon, and now the night has turned its cover over the world.
With one hand on her belly, Alice waits.
Lily crosses the room to kneel by the window. Her hair falls over her face, and she's untouched by the waves of heat roiling through the night.
The cottage echoes with the sigh of her breathing, the click-click-click as she fidgets with her bead necklace.
The summer heat presses on Alice, and her forehead leaves sweaty marks on the windowpane. She closes her eyes, closing her ears to Lily's noises.
Lily reaches up, taking Alice's hand. "They'll be back soon."
The day has stretched out into endless minutes, Lily's repeated soon swallowed up by the rap of her fingers on the window-seat. Alice draws her knees up and slumps back against the wall.
Lily fills the room with noises, humming as she bustles around to make a pot of tea. She presses a cup into Alice's fingers, slopping amber liquid onto her dress.
"It's no matter," Alice says. Frank has not returned.
Lily puts a hand on her shoulder, dropping white cubes of sugar into her tea. They fall with loud splashes that echo through the room, and Alice puts the cup aside.
Stillness blossoms when Lily sits on her heels, waiting by the window. She sighs when Alice puts an arm around her.
"Will you wait with me tomorrow?"
Alice hesitates. "Yes, of course." With silence between them, unspoken comforts – she doesn't protest.
Forehead pressed against the window, Alice sees the approaching torches first.
-----
Title: Graceful Lines, Broken Lines
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Lily/James, hint of Lily/Severus
Prompt: #3
Warnings: DH Spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Skeletons, with their brittle, yellowed bones – Lily squeezes her eyes shut, sitting up straight. Her spine will be straight, her bones will be laid out in graceful lines.
Lily presses her fingers to her cheekbones, feeling the bone beneath the skin – covering her face, she feels the flutter of her eyelashes.
Covering her eyes does nothing to block the future. Biting her lip, Lily looks down and picks up her quill.
Black and white, her father's picture doesn't blink, doesn't move – he's captured there and frozen forever, dark and light next to the green plant.
He's captured forever, his bones laid out in a long box, covered with green grass and the shifting shade of a tree.
Lily reaches up to the shelf, flipping on the wireless and filling the house with sound. It's the static of an old broadcast, star-crossed lovers and useful recipes, with any hint of curses and darkness suppressed.
The ink has dried on her quill and she sets it down, setting the blank parchment aside. Nothing is new in this crumbling house, the parchment least of all. Brittle, it cracks under her fingers and leaves a trail across her desk.
She has nothing to write – she turns her attention to what has been written.
In the end, there are very few letters. There's the last message from her parents, Petunia's rejection, the love notes that James sent her. Remus's deft scrawl covers Sirius's crude drawings, and Alice's note still smells of her perfume.
There's a note from Severus, the ink stark against the pale parchment. He had a strong hand, always writing in a broken trail across her life.
The time for letters is past. Lily folds his last letter and sets it with the others, binding them up with twine and setting them aside.
-----
Title: Echoes of the Story
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 600
Rating: PG
Pairing: Lily/James
Prompt: #7, "... the bloody trail of the Elder Wand is splattered across the pages of wizarding history ..." -- Deathly Hallows, pg. 350
Warnings: DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily leaned close to James, resting her chin on his shoulder and trusting her weight to him. Rubbing the aches from her back, he smiled at her. "Better?" he asked, and she nodded.
Sirius flourished his wand, lopping a branch off one of the ancient trees, and floated it down across the river. It wobbled, squelching in the mud, and Peter stepped up to it.
"Your wand, monsieur," Sirius said. He took it from Peter with an exaggerated bow, tucking it into a pocket.
With a look back at James, Peter stuck out his chin, stepping onto the wood.
Hands flailing at his sides, he fell with a splash. Sirius pulled him out of the dark water and spelled him dry before he could splutter, but Peter treated them all to a round of glares.
He threw a log onto the fire, sending sparks up into the night, and turned to Lily. "Your turn, Evans. Truth or Dare?"
"Dare." They whistled, James kissing her temple and squeezing her hand, none of them believing in her courage. Lily sat up straighter.
Remus pulled Peter down to sit on the log, whispering in his ear.
"All right," Peter said. "You have to listen to a ghost story. No clinging to James, no cheering charms, no Dreamless Sleep tonight."
Lily nodded and Remus began, sitting on the other side of the fire. He was cast in fiery silhouette, and Lily scooted down the log, moving away from James. She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them, and shuddered at the sudden cold.
"The Deathly Hallows have always led to death," Remus said, his mild voice fraught with hollows and cracks, "but the most terrible of them all is the Elder Wand. It is the Deathstick, the wand that killed Agrippa. It is the Wand of Destiny, and it changed the course of history."
Remus leaned closer to the fire, his outstretched fingers casting eerie shadows onto Lily's face. She took a deep, smoke-filled breath and blinked the sting from her eyes, refusing to yield.
"It is the wand that Merlin used when he furthered the conquest and tyranny of Uther, that he used when Arthur condemned the newborn babes to the sea. All of them were slaughtered, left to die in the sun and salt air, and only Mordred spared, fate bringing destruction back to the destroyers.
"The babies died," Remus said, his voice so quiet that Lily leaned forward to hear him. "They were put out to sea in tiny boats, left to float or drown. They were left at the mercy of the elements, dehydration and hunger plaguing their last hours. Their cries rose above the ocean, and went unanswered – no mother to soothe them in their final hours, no kind hand to succor them."
Remus came around the fire, the shadows turning him into a spider, eight-legged and awkward. He knelt next to Lily, leaning in until their faces were a breath apart, and laid a hand on her rounded belly.
She refused to flinch. The fire was dying, none of the heat reaching her.
Remus leaned closer. "The Peverell brothers learned," he said. "Death comes for us all, fool ourselves as we will. But we have not learned – the Elder Wand is still in this world, still powerful enough to slaughter innocent children, unborn children ..."
"Remus, that's enough." James rose, coming to sit next to her. Lily wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against him. With James's arms around her, the night chill was lessened, and the echoes of the story faded in her bones.
-----
Title: Always
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Lily/James, Lily/Severus
Prompt: 10
Warnings: Infidelity, DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily's tights snagged on the bricks, and she reached down to free the torn nylon. She rubbed it between her fingers, sealing the hole with a whisper of magic.
Shadows passed over the moon, too brief and broken to be clouds. Dementors in their dark flight, shrouding the sky – Lily shuddered. Her locket was warm against her neck, and it was time.
She released the sill, falling to the ground and catching her weight with bent knees. The bushes broke beneath her feet, bruised leaves giving their scent up into the night.
Lily straightened up and moved away from the window without looking back. Whether James was there, waking in his cold bed and looking for her – she didn't want to know.
Familiar paths in the night, her feet silent on the ground – with home and hearth behind her, there was no warmth in the night. There was nothing in the darkness but moon-mist and the cold, passing shadows in their old haunts. He had not come.
Lily's hand went to her breast, measuring the echo of her heartbeat – twinned in the darkness, a shadow of reassurance beating through her veins. The acid burn of Severus's Mark was a slow fire on her forearm, and the charm that linked them was warm on its chain at her neck.
A heart-shaped locket, a golden fire, promises to fill forever – Severus's voice was rough in the darkness, his hands on her elbows and his lips at her throat. He kissed the locket, pressing it against her skin. "You waited."
"For you?" she asked, laying her hand on his forearm. Through the layers of cloth, his warmth steadied her, stabilizing the charm that linked them. Magic through her veins, magic through her heart, Severus in her arms – Lily took a deep breath. "Always."
-----
Title: Sliced Bare
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: James/Lily
Prompt: #23, "War is not a life: it is a situation,
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted." --T.S. Eliot
Warnings: None, no DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily's hand is sliced bare, the bone white against her flesh. The jagged cut runs the length of her palm, and the loose skin flaps with every movement.
She reaches up to push her hair back from her face smearing blood across her forehead – James kneels, catching her wrist.
He presses kisses along her veins, making his way down her forearm to her wrist. Her blood pumps beneath his lips, and he reaches the place where it comes to the surface, red in the air.
"Lily," he says, and her name is a prayer, blessing his lips. James presses a kiss to her mangled palm and cradles it close.
This is shock, the pallor of her face, the thready heartbeat – she leans into his caress and doesn't push him away. "Lily," James says.
He presses her hand to the cheek, the warmth of her bone and her blood staining his skin. "Marry me?"
It's enough to snap her out of shock, and she pulls away from him. "Not if you were the last man on earth, James Potter."
Madam Pomfrey bustles over with a tray of potions and a roll of white bandages. "You're pestering my patient."
"If only for an excuse to be in your shining presence, Madam," James says. He forces a smile, and presses Lily's hand closer to his cheek.
"Stop that at once," Pomfrey says. "You're not doing that hand any good – get out of here, go."
James turns back to look at Lily, pale and swaying as she sits, and the sight slices his heart bare. Magic can mend flesh and blood and bone, but not the cause of her wounds.
"Lily – no matter what happens in this war, I'll be here for you." James makes the promise a solemn vow, blowing her a kiss.
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Alice/Frank, Lily/James
Prompt: #2, "There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other."
Warnings: No DH spoilers.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Alice licks the sweat from her upper lip, watching Lily. Red-gold hair worked up into a rough knot, her skin gleaming – she bears the heat with grace.
Pushing limp hair from her face, Alice turns back to the window. Frank and James left in the mid-afternoon, and now the night has turned its cover over the world.
With one hand on her belly, Alice waits.
Lily crosses the room to kneel by the window. Her hair falls over her face, and she's untouched by the waves of heat roiling through the night.
The cottage echoes with the sigh of her breathing, the click-click-click as she fidgets with her bead necklace.
The summer heat presses on Alice, and her forehead leaves sweaty marks on the windowpane. She closes her eyes, closing her ears to Lily's noises.
Lily reaches up, taking Alice's hand. "They'll be back soon."
The day has stretched out into endless minutes, Lily's repeated soon swallowed up by the rap of her fingers on the window-seat. Alice draws her knees up and slumps back against the wall.
Lily fills the room with noises, humming as she bustles around to make a pot of tea. She presses a cup into Alice's fingers, slopping amber liquid onto her dress.
"It's no matter," Alice says. Frank has not returned.
Lily puts a hand on her shoulder, dropping white cubes of sugar into her tea. They fall with loud splashes that echo through the room, and Alice puts the cup aside.
Stillness blossoms when Lily sits on her heels, waiting by the window. She sighs when Alice puts an arm around her.
"Will you wait with me tomorrow?"
Alice hesitates. "Yes, of course." With silence between them, unspoken comforts – she doesn't protest.
Forehead pressed against the window, Alice sees the approaching torches first.
-----
Title: Graceful Lines, Broken Lines
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Lily/James, hint of Lily/Severus
Prompt: #3
Warnings: DH Spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Skeletons, with their brittle, yellowed bones – Lily squeezes her eyes shut, sitting up straight. Her spine will be straight, her bones will be laid out in graceful lines.
Lily presses her fingers to her cheekbones, feeling the bone beneath the skin – covering her face, she feels the flutter of her eyelashes.
Covering her eyes does nothing to block the future. Biting her lip, Lily looks down and picks up her quill.
Black and white, her father's picture doesn't blink, doesn't move – he's captured there and frozen forever, dark and light next to the green plant.
He's captured forever, his bones laid out in a long box, covered with green grass and the shifting shade of a tree.
Lily reaches up to the shelf, flipping on the wireless and filling the house with sound. It's the static of an old broadcast, star-crossed lovers and useful recipes, with any hint of curses and darkness suppressed.
The ink has dried on her quill and she sets it down, setting the blank parchment aside. Nothing is new in this crumbling house, the parchment least of all. Brittle, it cracks under her fingers and leaves a trail across her desk.
She has nothing to write – she turns her attention to what has been written.
In the end, there are very few letters. There's the last message from her parents, Petunia's rejection, the love notes that James sent her. Remus's deft scrawl covers Sirius's crude drawings, and Alice's note still smells of her perfume.
There's a note from Severus, the ink stark against the pale parchment. He had a strong hand, always writing in a broken trail across her life.
The time for letters is past. Lily folds his last letter and sets it with the others, binding them up with twine and setting them aside.
-----
Title: Echoes of the Story
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 600
Rating: PG
Pairing: Lily/James
Prompt: #7, "... the bloody trail of the Elder Wand is splattered across the pages of wizarding history ..." -- Deathly Hallows, pg. 350
Warnings: DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily leaned close to James, resting her chin on his shoulder and trusting her weight to him. Rubbing the aches from her back, he smiled at her. "Better?" he asked, and she nodded.
Sirius flourished his wand, lopping a branch off one of the ancient trees, and floated it down across the river. It wobbled, squelching in the mud, and Peter stepped up to it.
"Your wand, monsieur," Sirius said. He took it from Peter with an exaggerated bow, tucking it into a pocket.
With a look back at James, Peter stuck out his chin, stepping onto the wood.
Hands flailing at his sides, he fell with a splash. Sirius pulled him out of the dark water and spelled him dry before he could splutter, but Peter treated them all to a round of glares.
He threw a log onto the fire, sending sparks up into the night, and turned to Lily. "Your turn, Evans. Truth or Dare?"
"Dare." They whistled, James kissing her temple and squeezing her hand, none of them believing in her courage. Lily sat up straighter.
Remus pulled Peter down to sit on the log, whispering in his ear.
"All right," Peter said. "You have to listen to a ghost story. No clinging to James, no cheering charms, no Dreamless Sleep tonight."
Lily nodded and Remus began, sitting on the other side of the fire. He was cast in fiery silhouette, and Lily scooted down the log, moving away from James. She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them, and shuddered at the sudden cold.
"The Deathly Hallows have always led to death," Remus said, his mild voice fraught with hollows and cracks, "but the most terrible of them all is the Elder Wand. It is the Deathstick, the wand that killed Agrippa. It is the Wand of Destiny, and it changed the course of history."
Remus leaned closer to the fire, his outstretched fingers casting eerie shadows onto Lily's face. She took a deep, smoke-filled breath and blinked the sting from her eyes, refusing to yield.
"It is the wand that Merlin used when he furthered the conquest and tyranny of Uther, that he used when Arthur condemned the newborn babes to the sea. All of them were slaughtered, left to die in the sun and salt air, and only Mordred spared, fate bringing destruction back to the destroyers.
"The babies died," Remus said, his voice so quiet that Lily leaned forward to hear him. "They were put out to sea in tiny boats, left to float or drown. They were left at the mercy of the elements, dehydration and hunger plaguing their last hours. Their cries rose above the ocean, and went unanswered – no mother to soothe them in their final hours, no kind hand to succor them."
Remus came around the fire, the shadows turning him into a spider, eight-legged and awkward. He knelt next to Lily, leaning in until their faces were a breath apart, and laid a hand on her rounded belly.
She refused to flinch. The fire was dying, none of the heat reaching her.
Remus leaned closer. "The Peverell brothers learned," he said. "Death comes for us all, fool ourselves as we will. But we have not learned – the Elder Wand is still in this world, still powerful enough to slaughter innocent children, unborn children ..."
"Remus, that's enough." James rose, coming to sit next to her. Lily wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against him. With James's arms around her, the night chill was lessened, and the echoes of the story faded in her bones.
-----
Title: Always
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Lily/James, Lily/Severus
Prompt: 10
Warnings: Infidelity, DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily's tights snagged on the bricks, and she reached down to free the torn nylon. She rubbed it between her fingers, sealing the hole with a whisper of magic.
Shadows passed over the moon, too brief and broken to be clouds. Dementors in their dark flight, shrouding the sky – Lily shuddered. Her locket was warm against her neck, and it was time.
She released the sill, falling to the ground and catching her weight with bent knees. The bushes broke beneath her feet, bruised leaves giving their scent up into the night.
Lily straightened up and moved away from the window without looking back. Whether James was there, waking in his cold bed and looking for her – she didn't want to know.
Familiar paths in the night, her feet silent on the ground – with home and hearth behind her, there was no warmth in the night. There was nothing in the darkness but moon-mist and the cold, passing shadows in their old haunts. He had not come.
Lily's hand went to her breast, measuring the echo of her heartbeat – twinned in the darkness, a shadow of reassurance beating through her veins. The acid burn of Severus's Mark was a slow fire on her forearm, and the charm that linked them was warm on its chain at her neck.
A heart-shaped locket, a golden fire, promises to fill forever – Severus's voice was rough in the darkness, his hands on her elbows and his lips at her throat. He kissed the locket, pressing it against her skin. "You waited."
"For you?" she asked, laying her hand on his forearm. Through the layers of cloth, his warmth steadied her, stabilizing the charm that linked them. Magic through her veins, magic through her heart, Severus in her arms – Lily took a deep breath. "Always."
-----
Title: Sliced Bare
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: James/Lily
Prompt: #23, "War is not a life: it is a situation,
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted." --T.S. Eliot
Warnings: None, no DH spoilers
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Lily's hand is sliced bare, the bone white against her flesh. The jagged cut runs the length of her palm, and the loose skin flaps with every movement.
She reaches up to push her hair back from her face smearing blood across her forehead – James kneels, catching her wrist.
He presses kisses along her veins, making his way down her forearm to her wrist. Her blood pumps beneath his lips, and he reaches the place where it comes to the surface, red in the air.
"Lily," he says, and her name is a prayer, blessing his lips. James presses a kiss to her mangled palm and cradles it close.
This is shock, the pallor of her face, the thready heartbeat – she leans into his caress and doesn't push him away. "Lily," James says.
He presses her hand to the cheek, the warmth of her bone and her blood staining his skin. "Marry me?"
It's enough to snap her out of shock, and she pulls away from him. "Not if you were the last man on earth, James Potter."
Madam Pomfrey bustles over with a tray of potions and a roll of white bandages. "You're pestering my patient."
"If only for an excuse to be in your shining presence, Madam," James says. He forces a smile, and presses Lily's hand closer to his cheek.
"Stop that at once," Pomfrey says. "You're not doing that hand any good – get out of here, go."
James turns back to look at Lily, pale and swaying as she sits, and the sight slices his heart bare. Magic can mend flesh and blood and bone, but not the cause of her wounds.
"Lily – no matter what happens in this war, I'll be here for you." James makes the promise a solemn vow, blowing her a kiss.
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That ghost story one got to me! Wonderful job on all of them.
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