[ At the outset, space cow jerky is never going to sound appetizing, maybe because it makes her think of Slim Jims picked up in gas stations. But coming to stand next to him and getting hit full in the face with the heat from the pot and the smell of actual meat is enough to make a rolling, lurching sound work its way out of her stomach. Claire acts as if that embarrassing little aside hadn't happened and plucks the utensil from his hand to stir herself, coaxing a little into the bowl of the spoon and bending forward with a hand cupped to try it out herself.
She doesn't bother with the pretense of blowing to cool it before swallowing and doesn't miss the burn sliding down her throat to coil in the pit of her empty stomach. ]
This is really good.
[ Claire says it with some manner of surprise. Not because she finds it hard to believe that he could actually craft something delicious but because jerky from a pirate colony in space sounds like it would be the last thing to taste this good regardless of whether or not they were existing on veggie bacon. ]
And I'm not just saying that because I feel like I could eat a small horse right now.
[ He can't help but be pleased by that reaction. Sure, there's not much competition, but he prides himself on being able to produce quality under the worst situations. It goes for cooking as well as anything else. Severus brushes one hand against the small of her back, specific and gentle in his casual affections. It'll never not be calculated, because he's just that way, but he wants her to know he's trying and that, you know. Appreciation and interest. Figuring out different methods of successfully expressing that.
Anyway. ]
I think the horse'd be annoyed. [ There's a horse. In the gardens. There might be more than one, he's not sure. Moving on, he's going to get bread out of the oven now - he did use magic to speed this effort along, because bread, but he thinks herb bread along with this is worth it. So there. ]
I didn't do other vegetables, seemed a bit overdone.
[ Claire doesn't argue the point of eating any of the horses in the gardens any further; although, yes they probably would be annoyed, but she would rather go full vegetarian than ever whisper to them that she was going to prepare them for dinner. Thinking about that longer than she needs to will only inevitably end up in her feeling bad for the space cow that had to sacrifice itself so she could have this moment, and she is too excited to be eating something that smells this good to let that get in the way.
And there's bread? Claire makes that pfft sound with her mouth and wonders why she hasn't gone investigating into making some on her own. However you make bread. She's sure she could figure it out, but that was one thing Sandra only ever did on occasion, and on those occasions Claire was usually too busy preparing something along the lines of dessert or pestering her grandparents to pay any attention. In this moment, she actually is surprised. ]
I think you're trying to one-up me, here.
[ There's no edge there at all, no sense of competitiveness creeping in around the corners of her voice. No one has ever done anything like this before for her, in this capacity. Coupled with how worn out she is from what didn't exactly amount to a dangerous mission but was still taxing, Claire is officially out of clever things to say. She waits until the bread has been set down before slipping over to wrap herself around him from behind like a tiny golden vine, holding on without pressure. ]
[ Unseen, Severus lets himself smile. Briefly; it's still easier when no one's looking at him. He lays one hand against Claire's arm where it sits, and summons plates and bowls with the other. ]
You're welcome. [ Quietly said as he plates dinner one-handed, aided easily by charms that move flatware for him. ] I'm glad to do it.
[ She's back with her head in one piece and recon went as sedately as anyone could hope. Seemed like the right time to burn rare resources and enjoy it. ]
[ She prefers the method of manually setting the table, maybe out of habit alone, despite her appreciation for the ability to do so otherwise. Maybe because it's a throwback to reality and a different sort of life that she had, with family dinner and everyone with their own task. Nuclear families are for the birds, though, and they're in space.
Claire moves and fills glasses with water on her own anyway, looking to contribute in some way. If there is a crumbly corner of that bread missing before either of them are actually sitting down... well, Claire can't be held accountable for that. She sits first, content to be off of her feet and in one motion. Even sitting still, she can still recall the faint trace of walking down a slope, but it's diminished substantially. ]
I couldn't believe how starving I was when we came out of there. It's so weird. How being down there makes you not realize that you're hungry. Or makes you not hungry. I'm not really sure. [ She has practically perched on the edge of her stool, one leg crossed over the other. ] Do you think there's anything that isn't water to drink in that fridge?
Time moves different there, but it shouldn't be surprising. [ Severus hasn't sat down yet, so he moves fridge-ward. ] I take it no wine.
[ The wine bottle hasn't moved from its station near the stove, anyway, three-quarters having been dumped into their dinner. ] Time moves differently everywhere here. It could be that things become more and more unraveled the closer we get to the core of whatever this is, or it could just be an anomaly. Something broken. Apple juice? .. I don't know what this is. [ Bottle of blue stuff? ]
[ She hasn't garnered a taste for wine, really. Sweet white stuff is what she's used to having at holidays and is easily substituted with just about anything else at the table. Claire can't get drunk anyway, so she doesn't see a point. She's interested in the bottle of blue stuff, but not enough to drink what might be some kind of cleaning product mistakenly filed as a beverage. ]
It kind of reminds me of this book that I read once. [ Well. That's not entirely factual. Claire gets up again to help him with napkins and silverware. ] Tried to read. I don't think I ever got through it completely. Skipped around a lot. It's called House of Leaves, and it's like this story within a story about this family whose house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. One day they come home from a trip, and they find this door in their living room that wasn't there before and behind the door is a hallway, I think. Eventually they go in it and the hallway leads to another hallway and then another and another, and it's just this maze that's constantly rearranging itself over and over. I remembered it when we were down there this last time, and we came to that huge room and the archways. And heard all those noises.
[ Her fingers play a little with the edge of one of the napkins and she furrows her brown trying to remember other details. ]
Being a book, I'm sure it's all just a metaphor for something, but I'm just saying. If there's a minotaur at the spot where all the halls meet, I'm not gonna be surprised.
[ Water glasses go on the table and Severus sits down, listening. It sounds a little but like Hogwarts. He wonders how surreal and dreamlike the castle feels for people who view it with less wonder. ]
I imagine this one would be worse than a minotaur. [ He sounds easy about it - after a while the horror of this place has evened out, if it ever was horror to begin with. A great thing about brains: they'll adjust to almost anything. ] Space existing like that, and changing, is something I'm used to. I understand the fundamentals of it, because we live with it every day with magic. I tried to contribute to research about it here but-- [ Severus shrugs instead of continuing. He keeps getting blown off and told he's not taking science seriously enough. ] I'll just do my own work.
You'll probably figure it out on your own before anyone else that way.
[ What she's capable of doing has been broken down on a fundamental level, has been dissected and manufactured in a certain sense, has been quantified and qualified by science. Claire still prefers René's theory on the subject, or at least that branch of philosophy, and she thinks it feels wrong not to recognize a marriage between the two. ]
After going down there more than once, after being brought here in the first place, it seems kind of stupid to discredit one line of thinking in favor of the other. Whatever's going on here is probably some sort of combination of the two anyway. Or some other, third variable we haven't thought of yet. [ She sits again herself, dragging her stool around so that she can sit next to him rather than across. ] Or it's something worse than a minotaur with a really massive amount of gravitational pull.
[ Privately, she puts her vote in for that one. At least that's something tangible you can fight against. ]
It could be a black hole. [ Hey, why not. Wizards know what those are, too. He shrugs. ] I've read papers written by numerologists and arithmancers about cosmic lay-lines and the potential for them to turn reality inside out like a pillowcase if manipulated the right way.
[ His tone says: Interesting, but probably bullshit. ]
Confined thinking, like linear time progression, doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere.
I guess it's just difficult to kind of suspend your definition of reality like that, whether you're used to thinking that way from a scientific point of view or not. [ Is probably the most complex sentence that has ever come out of her mouth. Claire isn't even entirely sure it means anything. She is very aware that he is a lot smarter than she is. ]
I know someone who can time travel, I've time traveled, so it's not, like... a completely impossible idea to me, but the one time that I did it, it was really weird and I'm still not sure I'll ever be used to thinking that way when my whole life it's just been - [ She puts her left hand at one end of the table, her right at the other. ] - this is time. Start to finish.
[ Of course, how logical that is for someone whose right hand needs to stop denoting a finishing point is up for debate. ]
I thought black holes were supposed to be bad. That they just suck you down until - [ She presses her palms together. ]
Someone with a power to timetravel? [ That is pretty cool. He tilts his head, fork poking at something in his bowl. ] .. Mutation?
[ 'Mutation' has always sounded odd to Severus, and like something negative - the slight uncertainty shows in his voice. He's not sure what to call it. ]
I don't think any construct of nature is good or bad. But I also don't think anyone will know for sure without seeing what's on the other side.
[ Unsure yet as to whether or not she finds the connotation in 'mutation' or 'mutant' distasteful, Claire wrinkles her nose a little all the same. It does just sound weird. She's never liked any of the terminology associated with people who are different other than... just different.
All the same, the reaction is gone as quickly as it came, and Claire distracts herself by taking a bite of food, which she can feel warming her from the inside out. Swallowing, she nods. ]
Teleportation, mostly, but it definitely meant he could bounce around through time as well as space. [ She gestures with her fork. ] That sword I have is actually his. Sort of. I think. Maybe.
[ Time travel. She's not going to mention the time that she met herself as an infant. Things were weird enough that season. ]
Our study of time travel has left us with the notion that going back or forward more than five minutes is catastrophic. People unbirthing themselves, and all other such nonsense. [ .. Yep. He eats more food in the quiet spaces between conversation, strangely content to just be silent with her, too. ] Honestly, I'm fascinated by what you can do, in how focused it is. You, and Charles, and Erik. It's one thing but taken with this incredible intensity, instead of what magic is, all spread out. It's really beautiful.
Go back in time, step on a butterfly, destroy the entire world. Sounds about right.
[ Par for the course where she comes from, apparently. Thinking about it too much gives her a headache, which is saying something. Claire also doesn't address that last bit of what he's said instantly, content to let it slide by and underneath the silence that follows her butterfly comment. Their silence is not uncomfortable, which is remarkable in its own right. She just finds herself at a loss as to what she wants to say or how she feels about any of it altogether. All in all, though, she's too tired to argue with herself. ]
It used to scare the hell out of me. I hated it. I definitely didn't think that it was beautiful. [ Admitted like every word has its own brand of agony attached to it, scraping up the back of her throat with every syllable. ] Not even because of what it was just... it still scares me. A lot of the terms and conditions attached to it, what it means for other people. What they want to do with it. You can't bottle time travel or telepathy. You can't live forever off of being able to fly. Here, most people are pretty public about what they can do, but I'm constantly just wondering if it's a good idea to be open about it at all. It's beautiful, but it's hideous, the way you think about it. The way I think about it.
[ Can she even trust people like Charles and Erik, who are so like her in that capacity but who have done shitty things to people like Rogue? She wants to help - people, with the mysteries, with everything - but the idea of at what cost has been so beaten into her since day one that secrecy and paranoia and distrust become hard habits to break. ]
[ Severus is quiet for a while. Not because he wants to argue with her, but because he understands-- in a way maybe he shouldn't say.
But ultimately, ]
I think I might hate it. I should be dead already and I wanted to be. [ Wanted, he wanted to die when Lily did, and he was still spending plenty of nights in his office at Hogwarts staring into the blackness of his bedroom ceiling and wishing to never wake up. Knowing that his end is coming is a relief - not because he wants to escape work. He just knows he has no place in the world. ] The knowledge that I would have to seek out even the potential would be a great weight.
[ But fortunately (??) everyone wants Severus dead. So there's that. The longevity of wizardkind will never apply to him, and he'll be dead before he's 40. ]
[ Saying that it doesn't open up some deep ache in her to hear that would be an astronomical lie. Claire has never wanted to actually not be alive anymore - maybe when Sylar had her head cut open on the table; even paralyzed the overwhelming sense of violation and guilt and shucked responsibility had at one point made her just want to say fuck it - and hearing anyone say that is going to be heavy, let alone someone she actually cares about. ]
I'm glad you're not.
[ So there.
Her voice is clear and present, no expression or overabundance of necessary or unnecessary emotion. Just something that is, without pretense. Because she thinks maybe he needs to hear it. Maybe everyone does sometimes. ]
[ For a while Severus just looks at her. Maybe he does need to hear it.
Death is-- seductive and plain and final, and Severus wants everything to be over, and he knows he has no future or potential for a life outside the role he's been given. That leaves one exit and one exit only, his reward for doing his time; it's only fitting that the reward for someone horrible is something horrible. Severus won't hide from his duties and he'll complete everything if he has to claw his way there. But Merlin, sometimes he craves it.
He thinks about the skull on his arm. And for a moment, of Lucius's boy.
Severus reaches out and touches Claire's hand. ]
It hasn't been so bad. [ Ha, ha. But really. He has shit to do. He has.. this. Whatever it is, even if they'll never remember it. ] I still think what you are is beautiful. Your ferocity about applying what you can do, and your kindness.
[ Severus has never seen Claire heal anyone else, but he's seen her rip her arm out of a monster's jaws and beat its face in as punishment. He's watch her journey into the depths of hell on this ship without hesitating. ]
[ Bad enough to say you wanted to be dead, Claire thinks, but she's not really prepared to have that kind of a conversation following where she's just been and with how much she just wants to be here, with him, without having to get into the heavy details. That's all she does, though, is skirt around heavy details. The same way that she skirts around feeling as ashamed as she does complimented to be praised in that kind of way.
Claire knows that she's kind, and loyal, and apparently ferocious, but she's also secretive, and selfish, and manipulative, and although the worst of those things she has been trying to put behind her for years, they're still there. Kind is such a simple word but more than anything she gets stuck on it, especially around him, knowing the way that people treated him growing up, knowing some of what he's been through and what he'll go through. That knowledge doesn't persuade her to treat him any differently than she would if she didn't know, but maybe it makes her think that he deserves it more. Especially more than he allows himself. ]
I still don't know about beautiful. [ Bullets and broken glass and split bones and knitting skin, that copper tang that she has swallowed a hundred times. She lets the pad of her thumb catch across one of his knuckles and thinks that one day she might possibly see it his way, but - ] I'll take ferocious, though.
[ Severus doesn't give compliments often, so he doesn't know how to deal with people taking them poorly. At least that means he isn't properly bothered, just a little worried he's said something stupid. It doesn't show outwardly. He has no idea how to explain that her rough edges (occasionally serrated edges) and bouts of temper are why he's able to like her. He's aware that to anyone who knows, it looks like he put Lily on some unreal pedestal, but it's only the unreal part that's not true. It takes so little for him to be overwhelmed with kindness, and he can't accept it without the grit and grain of salt that makes it human - that fairytale sweetness is what's unreal to him.
Maybe someday he'll learn how to articulate it. Or maybe next jump one of them will vanish, and nothing will matter. ]
I think you could probably take whatever the hell you want. [ Demurely. Shy smile? For a moment. ]
[ She looks at him once and then looks away to grin down at her food, only to look back up almost immediately after while her face is still trying to twist to hide the expression. Not that she wants to hide it from him, only that she feels kind of embarrassed but in the best kind of way. More than anything, she knows that anything Severus offers her by way of a compliment is going to be an honest truth in his eyes, and even if she's not great at taking it at face value, she can very much appreciate the sincerity behind giving it at all. ]
Stop it. [ Playfully, her tone matches her knee nudging him in the side of his leg, and green eyes widen momentarily to stress the point. ] I'm gonna get a big head.
Mm. I suppose we can't have that. [ For. Whatever reason. Severus smiles a bit and brushes his fingers over hers a last time and pulls his hand back so he can carry on finishing dinner. It must be good because it's steadily disappearing, even with their typical rollercoaster conversation. ]
Fuck. [ Lazily. He rubs a hand over his eyes for a moment. ] I think I'm going to end up falling asleep after this, too.
[ Did he really stay awake for an entire week? ... Sort of. ]
[ Claire glances back down at her dish, which is emptier than she remembers it being. Suspecting witchcraft, she's decidedly less ravenous than she was before they sat down and retroactively wipes her mouth with the napkin, although there's nothing there to actually wipe away. With a little less than half of what she started with, she tucks in to make the rest of it disappear, snatching a piece of bread and dissecting it into warm, delicious pieces. ]
Did you stay awake the whole time we were down there?
[ Not as incredulous as one might except. She knows that he doesn't power down until he makes himself. Rather, her voice is a little flat, as if this is totally the sort of thing she anticipated him doing. ]
Not the whole time. There were times both teams fell quiet for hours. [ And that's about it. Once communications failed, he found himself unable to relax enough to sneak any sleep at all. ] I've definitely worked under more irritating conditions, it wasn't the most trying experience.
[ Though he could still use some real sleep. ] I think if the lot of you go out again, I can tolerate having someone else split shifts with it. I needed to understand the full operation without distraction.
I think that's a good idea, if there's a next time. [ Her tone is gently insistent, as if trying encourage the notion that this has been a good plan all along and that he probably should have entertained it, at least, this time around. But Claire gets it, too. If she had been in his position, she sincerely doubts she would have so much as blinked without feeling responsible. ] Honestly, for most of the quite times, all you missed was Erik playing a bunch of Queen and David Bowie. You definitely could have worked in a nap there.
[ You know, around the grinding noises, murals, archways and impossible rooms that they found. Otherwise it was all Bowie all the time. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
She doesn't bother with the pretense of blowing to cool it before swallowing and doesn't miss the burn sliding down her throat to coil in the pit of her empty stomach. ]
This is really good.
[ Claire says it with some manner of surprise. Not because she finds it hard to believe that he could actually craft something delicious but because jerky from a pirate colony in space sounds like it would be the last thing to taste this good regardless of whether or not they were existing on veggie bacon. ]
And I'm not just saying that because I feel like I could eat a small horse right now.
no subject
Anyway. ]
I think the horse'd be annoyed. [ There's a horse. In the gardens. There might be more than one, he's not sure. Moving on, he's going to get bread out of the oven now - he did use magic to speed this effort along, because bread, but he thinks herb bread along with this is worth it. So there. ]
I didn't do other vegetables, seemed a bit overdone.
no subject
And there's bread? Claire makes that pfft sound with her mouth and wonders why she hasn't gone investigating into making some on her own. However you make bread. She's sure she could figure it out, but that was one thing Sandra only ever did on occasion, and on those occasions Claire was usually too busy preparing something along the lines of dessert or pestering her grandparents to pay any attention. In this moment, she actually is surprised. ]
I think you're trying to one-up me, here.
[ There's no edge there at all, no sense of competitiveness creeping in around the corners of her voice. No one has ever done anything like this before for her, in this capacity. Coupled with how worn out she is from what didn't exactly amount to a dangerous mission but was still taxing, Claire is officially out of clever things to say. She waits until the bread has been set down before slipping over to wrap herself around him from behind like a tiny golden vine, holding on without pressure. ]
This is really great. Thank you.
no subject
You're welcome. [ Quietly said as he plates dinner one-handed, aided easily by charms that move flatware for him. ] I'm glad to do it.
[ She's back with her head in one piece and recon went as sedately as anyone could hope. Seemed like the right time to burn rare resources and enjoy it. ]
no subject
Claire moves and fills glasses with water on her own anyway, looking to contribute in some way. If there is a crumbly corner of that bread missing before either of them are actually sitting down... well, Claire can't be held accountable for that. She sits first, content to be off of her feet and in one motion. Even sitting still, she can still recall the faint trace of walking down a slope, but it's diminished substantially. ]
I couldn't believe how starving I was when we came out of there. It's so weird. How being down there makes you not realize that you're hungry. Or makes you not hungry. I'm not really sure. [ She has practically perched on the edge of her stool, one leg crossed over the other. ] Do you think there's anything that isn't water to drink in that fridge?
[ She isn't getting up otherwise. ]
no subject
[ The wine bottle hasn't moved from its station near the stove, anyway, three-quarters having been dumped into their dinner. ] Time moves differently everywhere here. It could be that things become more and more unraveled the closer we get to the core of whatever this is, or it could just be an anomaly. Something broken. Apple juice? .. I don't know what this is. [ Bottle of blue stuff? ]
no subject
[ She hasn't garnered a taste for wine, really. Sweet white stuff is what she's used to having at holidays and is easily substituted with just about anything else at the table. Claire can't get drunk anyway, so she doesn't see a point. She's interested in the bottle of blue stuff, but not enough to drink what might be some kind of cleaning product mistakenly filed as a beverage. ]
It kind of reminds me of this book that I read once. [ Well. That's not entirely factual. Claire gets up again to help him with napkins and silverware. ] Tried to read. I don't think I ever got through it completely. Skipped around a lot. It's called House of Leaves, and it's like this story within a story about this family whose house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. One day they come home from a trip, and they find this door in their living room that wasn't there before and behind the door is a hallway, I think. Eventually they go in it and the hallway leads to another hallway and then another and another, and it's just this maze that's constantly rearranging itself over and over. I remembered it when we were down there this last time, and we came to that huge room and the archways. And heard all those noises.
[ Her fingers play a little with the edge of one of the napkins and she furrows her brown trying to remember other details. ]
Being a book, I'm sure it's all just a metaphor for something, but I'm just saying. If there's a minotaur at the spot where all the halls meet, I'm not gonna be surprised.
no subject
I imagine this one would be worse than a minotaur. [ He sounds easy about it - after a while the horror of this place has evened out, if it ever was horror to begin with. A great thing about brains: they'll adjust to almost anything. ] Space existing like that, and changing, is something I'm used to. I understand the fundamentals of it, because we live with it every day with magic. I tried to contribute to research about it here but-- [ Severus shrugs instead of continuing. He keeps getting blown off and told he's not taking science seriously enough. ] I'll just do my own work.
no subject
You'll probably figure it out on your own before anyone else that way.
[ What she's capable of doing has been broken down on a fundamental level, has been dissected and manufactured in a certain sense, has been quantified and qualified by science. Claire still prefers René's theory on the subject, or at least that branch of philosophy, and she thinks it feels wrong not to recognize a marriage between the two. ]
After going down there more than once, after being brought here in the first place, it seems kind of stupid to discredit one line of thinking in favor of the other. Whatever's going on here is probably some sort of combination of the two anyway. Or some other, third variable we haven't thought of yet. [ She sits again herself, dragging her stool around so that she can sit next to him rather than across. ] Or it's something worse than a minotaur with a really massive amount of gravitational pull.
[ Privately, she puts her vote in for that one. At least that's something tangible you can fight against. ]
no subject
[ His tone says: Interesting, but probably bullshit. ]
Confined thinking, like linear time progression, doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere.
no subject
I know someone who can time travel, I've time traveled, so it's not, like... a completely impossible idea to me, but the one time that I did it, it was really weird and I'm still not sure I'll ever be used to thinking that way when my whole life it's just been - [ She puts her left hand at one end of the table, her right at the other. ] - this is time. Start to finish.
[ Of course, how logical that is for someone whose right hand needs to stop denoting a finishing point is up for debate. ]
I thought black holes were supposed to be bad. That they just suck you down until - [ She presses her palms together. ]
no subject
[ 'Mutation' has always sounded odd to Severus, and like something negative - the slight uncertainty shows in his voice. He's not sure what to call it. ]
I don't think any construct of nature is good or bad. But I also don't think anyone will know for sure without seeing what's on the other side.
no subject
All the same, the reaction is gone as quickly as it came, and Claire distracts herself by taking a bite of food, which she can feel warming her from the inside out. Swallowing, she nods. ]
Teleportation, mostly, but it definitely meant he could bounce around through time as well as space. [ She gestures with her fork. ] That sword I have is actually his. Sort of. I think. Maybe.
[ Time travel. She's not going to mention the time that she met herself as an infant. Things were weird enough that season. ]
no subject
no subject
[ Par for the course where she comes from, apparently. Thinking about it too much gives her a headache, which is saying something. Claire also doesn't address that last bit of what he's said instantly, content to let it slide by and underneath the silence that follows her butterfly comment. Their silence is not uncomfortable, which is remarkable in its own right. She just finds herself at a loss as to what she wants to say or how she feels about any of it altogether. All in all, though, she's too tired to argue with herself. ]
It used to scare the hell out of me. I hated it. I definitely didn't think that it was beautiful. [ Admitted like every word has its own brand of agony attached to it, scraping up the back of her throat with every syllable. ] Not even because of what it was just... it still scares me. A lot of the terms and conditions attached to it, what it means for other people. What they want to do with it. You can't bottle time travel or telepathy. You can't live forever off of being able to fly. Here, most people are pretty public about what they can do, but I'm constantly just wondering if it's a good idea to be open about it at all. It's beautiful, but it's hideous, the way you think about it. The way I think about it.
[ Can she even trust people like Charles and Erik, who are so like her in that capacity but who have done shitty things to people like Rogue? She wants to help - people, with the mysteries, with everything - but the idea of at what cost has been so beaten into her since day one that secrecy and paranoia and distrust become hard habits to break. ]
no subject
But ultimately, ]
I think I might hate it. I should be dead already and I wanted to be. [ Wanted, he wanted to die when Lily did, and he was still spending plenty of nights in his office at Hogwarts staring into the blackness of his bedroom ceiling and wishing to never wake up. Knowing that his end is coming is a relief - not because he wants to escape work. He just knows he has no place in the world. ] The knowledge that I would have to seek out even the potential would be a great weight.
[ But fortunately (??) everyone wants Severus dead. So there's that. The longevity of wizardkind will never apply to him, and he'll be dead before he's 40. ]
no subject
I'm glad you're not.
[ So there.
Her voice is clear and present, no expression or overabundance of necessary or unnecessary emotion. Just something that is, without pretense. Because she thinks maybe he needs to hear it. Maybe everyone does sometimes. ]
no subject
Death is-- seductive and plain and final, and Severus wants everything to be over, and he knows he has no future or potential for a life outside the role he's been given. That leaves one exit and one exit only, his reward for doing his time; it's only fitting that the reward for someone horrible is something horrible. Severus won't hide from his duties and he'll complete everything if he has to claw his way there. But Merlin, sometimes he craves it.
He thinks about the skull on his arm. And for a moment, of Lucius's boy.
Severus reaches out and touches Claire's hand. ]
It hasn't been so bad. [ Ha, ha. But really. He has shit to do. He has.. this. Whatever it is, even if they'll never remember it. ] I still think what you are is beautiful. Your ferocity about applying what you can do, and your kindness.
[ Severus has never seen Claire heal anyone else, but he's seen her rip her arm out of a monster's jaws and beat its face in as punishment. He's watch her journey into the depths of hell on this ship without hesitating. ]
no subject
Claire knows that she's kind, and loyal, and apparently ferocious, but she's also secretive, and selfish, and manipulative, and although the worst of those things she has been trying to put behind her for years, they're still there. Kind is such a simple word but more than anything she gets stuck on it, especially around him, knowing the way that people treated him growing up, knowing some of what he's been through and what he'll go through. That knowledge doesn't persuade her to treat him any differently than she would if she didn't know, but maybe it makes her think that he deserves it more. Especially more than he allows himself. ]
I still don't know about beautiful. [ Bullets and broken glass and split bones and knitting skin, that copper tang that she has swallowed a hundred times. She lets the pad of her thumb catch across one of his knuckles and thinks that one day she might possibly see it his way, but - ] I'll take ferocious, though.
no subject
Maybe someday he'll learn how to articulate it. Or maybe next jump one of them will vanish, and nothing will matter. ]
I think you could probably take whatever the hell you want. [ Demurely. Shy smile? For a moment. ]
no subject
Stop it. [ Playfully, her tone matches her knee nudging him in the side of his leg, and green eyes widen momentarily to stress the point. ] I'm gonna get a big head.
no subject
Fuck. [ Lazily. He rubs a hand over his eyes for a moment. ] I think I'm going to end up falling asleep after this, too.
[ Did he really stay awake for an entire week? ... Sort of. ]
no subject
Did you stay awake the whole time we were down there?
[ Not as incredulous as one might except. She knows that he doesn't power down until he makes himself. Rather, her voice is a little flat, as if this is totally the sort of thing she anticipated him doing. ]
no subject
[ Though he could still use some real sleep. ] I think if the lot of you go out again, I can tolerate having someone else split shifts with it. I needed to understand the full operation without distraction.
no subject
[ You know, around the grinding noises, murals, archways and impossible rooms that they found. Otherwise it was all Bowie all the time. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
i'm sorry these are all so short i feel like a tool
damn it claire you're a terrible person
noooooooooooooo
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)