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*****
There is Just One Thing I Need (Hold Me)
*****
In three words, Sirius Black could describe what he knew about life:
It will end.
*****
The First Christmas of Denial…
The first Christmas after Stephen Strange died was so bittersweet that Sirius Black could feel it with all of his senses.
Stephen had been gone ten months and Sirius still woke up in the mornings with a brief belief – for one perfect moment – that he was still there. Sirius would roll out of bed and find a note from Stephen, saying he left to either go fight evil in other dimensions or to take his turn in Scrabble with Wong. When Stephen returned, they would argue over the paper, bicker about each other’s taste in breakfast drinks, and it would be a normal day.
What Sirius experienced instead was the next five seconds of his day, when everything would hit him and leave him paralyzed in a state of disbelief…
Was Stephen really gone? Was there no way to bring him back? Could Sirius do it if he were clever enough? Would Stephen still be there if Sirius had sacrificed himself first, beaten him to the edge of the cliff in Vormir?
Some days Sirius couldn’t breathe beneath the weight of all the ‘what if’s’. Some days Sirius wished he wasn’t breathing anymore, wasn’t carrying the pain. Mostly, Sirius wondered if Stephen could have survived the fall, found a way out of the requirements he fulfilled for the soul stone…
On that first Christmas morning, Sirius laid in his bed – a bed in a room that Stephen never got to see – until the phone calls from his godson began. All Sirius wanted to do was stay in bed, get positively pissed on alcohol, and think about last Christmas and how different it had been.
Stephen had been there, for one. Though Sirius’s newest godson, the little boy who was named after Sirius and Stephen both, had not been.
It was only for Vince’s sake that Sirius forced himself from bed so that he could answer Harry’s call. Vince was only a month old, but Harry and Tony had been planning his first Christmas since before he was born. Sirius didn’t want to be the cause of a ruined holiday, not again, and so he dressed to join the Stark family.
Sirius played his part as convincingly as he could. He handed out presents, he smiled for the endless photographs that Harry took, and he stayed all through dinner with Tony and Pepper’s friends and family. It was agony being there, seeing so many people who had celebrated Christmas with Sirius and Stephen just a year ago, and knowing that none of them were still hurting as keenly as Sirius was.
Even seeing the glimmer of gold around Harry’s neck, knowing what he wore and kept out of Sirius’s direct line of sight, felt like a blow directly to the face.
The Eye of Agamotto, passed from Sorcerer Supreme to Sorcerer Supreme.
Stephen slipped it around Sirius’s neck just a breath after Sirius slipped his ring in Stephen’s pocket. Sirius hadn’t understood until he’d been forcibly portaled home after watching Stephen fall, but the letters Stephen left told him it was meant for Harry.
As far as Sirius knew, Harry never took it off.
While that may have been a comfort to Stephen, Stephen wasn’t there to see it, only Sirius. And the sight of it made Sirius’s stomach clench, his chest to ache, and had him craving fresh air.
Sirius passed little baby Vince – Vince who looked so much like Harry with Pepper’s teal eyes and Tony’s dark hair - over to Thor while he muttered an excuse about needing air. Everyone’s eyes followed Sirius’s back as he made his escape from dinner, the weight of their pity only adding to the grief.
It was a nice night and Sirius didn’t mind sitting outside alone. He preferred it, really. When Sirius could hear Harry coming after him, the distinct clank of his leg giving him away, Sirius shifted to become Padfoot. Harry sighed and scratched Padfoot’s ears for a long time before Padfoot nosed him back toward the house.
“Love you, Siri,” Harry said, looking so much like a man at sixteen that it only added to Sirius’s pain. Sirius lost his lover, but Harry lost a mentor and Sirius’s pain had to be hurting Harry… they’d always been almost too empathetic to each other’s suffering. Padfoot howled – Sirius loved Harry more than anything – and Harry gave him a sad smile before going back inside to his family, leaving Padfoot alone just as he wanted.
Padfoot didn’t have to talk about how he was so happy for everyone else and so sad for himself. Padfoot wasn’t a selfish bastard who watched the man he loved take a nosedive to save his godson. Padfoot was a dog, a dog who could curl up beneath the tree in the lawn between Sirius’s house and Tony’s and stare up at the stars.
Could Stephen see the stars? Wherever he was? Did he know that Sirius was staring at the stars, missing him more than ever?
“In Valhalla, the stars mix with the souls, allowing for eternal gazing.”
Padfoot – Sirius – it became difficult to distinguish between the man and the beast when Sirius spent prolonged periods as Padfoot – turned at the sound of the new voice joining him. It wasn’t surprising that Sirius hadn’t heard or smelled a new arrival out in the middle of the yard, not when he saw who it was.
Thor’s younger brother Loki, who had probably decided to dinner crash as Harry said he enjoyed doing on occasion, leaned against the tree that Sirius was curled up between. He had his head tipped back, black hair curling at the collar of his black dress shirt, and he stared serenely at the stars.
Can you read my mind? Sirius wondered. Loki’s words had been eerie, as Sirius had been wondering about Stephen seeing the stars just before Loki mentioned Valhalla, the afterlife for warriors.
Valhalla was fitting for Stephen… he had been – had been…
Padfoot made a whimpering sound of pain. It was had, in the past. Stephen had been a warrior and he was gone.
“Valhalla is beautiful,” Loki said. His voice was soft, but rich, and Sirius let it wash over him in the night. “If your Stephen longs for battle, he will find one. Food, wine, pleasures… they’re all there and gifted in abundance to those who arrive.
“There are those who believe that Odin knows which will enter Valhalla when he hands down his hardest battles to the toughest souls. It’s a lie, you know. Or a misunderstanding of order. Odin doesn’t give battles to those destined for Valhalla, it is those destined for Valhalla that make themselves warriors in the toughest battles.”
Padfoot snuffled and still when one of Loki’s hands dropped down to lay on his head, absently stroking his fur while he continued to study the stars.
“It is a paradise offered to few… but those who are gifted to enter the halls? It is glorious, more glorious than the star that you were named for. As only the moon could outshine your star, only Náströnd could outshine Valhalla. Horror always attracts an eye much more than beauty, but I assure you that Valhalla is a beautiful place where you will find your sorcerer again.”
Sirius sent one last look of longing up to the stars and then closed his eyes while Loki told him tales of warriors, of reunions between souls.
Until Valhalla, Stephen.
The Second Christmas of Anger…
“You’re being stupid, Black.”
“SO LET ME!” Sirius screamed. He grabbed the bottle off his dressed and threw it at Natasha, a part of his mind knowing that she would dodge it. She did, even drunk Sirius recognized the crash that meant that bottle hit the doorframe instead of Natasha’s face.
“Sirius.” Pietro stood beside Natasha, momentarily still, and Sirius couldn’t even look at him. “Please?”
“Just go!” Sirius yelled, already summoning another bottle of liquor from Merlin knew where in his house. There used to be more booze, Sirius had stocked up, but in the past month he had gone through more than a fair share of it.
It started in November, when Sirius’s cousin wrote to him to invite him to her wedding. Sirius had stared at the ridiculous invitation for a long time, his gaze blurring with anger the longer he stared at the words:
‘Remus and I are getting married! I’d love for you to come! Please let me know?’
It was infuriating and nobody seemed to understand that Sirius didn’t give a damn if it was Christmas or not. Sirius had been simmering in rage for a month and he just kept finding more and more reasons to hate the world.
Merry Christmas? Sirius had never felt less merry.
Sirius’s cousin would be marrying his first love that day. A Christmas wedding. If Stephen were there, they would be laughing about the cliché tackiness of it. But Stephen wasn’t there to laugh at something that still managed to hurt Sirius because he left him.
Like Remus, Stephen had a choice.
James had a choice.
Regulus had a choice.
Stephen had a choice.
And they all chose to leave Sirius alone in a world so dark that he would carve his heart from his chest if it weren’t for…
“Siri?”
Sirius clenched his hands in fists at his side and scowled fiercely at the floor of his living room. It had to have been Natasha, Pietro wouldn’t have gone and fetched Harry when Sirius wasn’t himself. Pietro was a good friend, most days, better than Sirius deserved.
He would probably sacrifice himself to a great and noble cause soon enough, leaving Sirius behind to mourn another loved one.
“Siri?” Harry’s distinct footsteps approached Sirius and Sirius twitched when Harry’s hand touched his shoulder. “Will you… will you talk to me?”
“Please go,” Sirius said. His voice was hoarse as he tried to repress the anger that he couldn’t shake. Sirius wouldn’t yell at Harry, he couldn’t. But if Harry didn’t go then Sirius was going to have to or he would break and it would break Harry.
Sirius couldn’t keep hurting people who loved him, not because people that Sirius loved hurt him.
“You don’t want me here?” Harry asked. Even if his voice was sad – pitying, probably – his hand was firm on Sirius’s shoulder.
If Sirius closed his eyes, Harry could be James, Sirius’s best friend. It could be seventeen years ago, when Harry was a little younger than Vince was. Sirius and Remus were at the Potter Cottage, they were all cooing over baby Harry’s first Christmas. James was there, happy and alive. Harry had been whole, healthy, never knew what pain was.
Sirius had been stressed, but comforted by the love of his friends, of his godson, and his Remus. That Sirius had never known of his brother’s bravery, never fell in love with a man who knew their story would end in heartbreak.
Merlin, that Sirius had no idea how much life would just kick him over and over and over and over and over.
“I want you to go with your family, Harry,” Sirius told Harry thickly. “I – I can’t go up there, not tonight. I’d ruin it. I – I – I can’t ruin this.”
Not for Harry.
“Siri, you don’t…”
Whatever wise words of encouragement that Sirius was sure Harry would have were lost to him when his chest burned – did Sirius ruin everything or did the everything ruin Sirius? – and Sirius had to escape. It was easier when he was emotional, shifting down to four legs and running.
It was as easy as falling asleep… for those who did that easily.
Sirius ran through the yard, escaping down to where the water met the property. With the snow on the ground, the ice covering the top layer of water, and the frigid temperatures, Sirius would be sure of privacy there.
Relative privacy, anyway.
It gave Sirius enough privacy that he could return to two legs and slash his wand like a knife, carving gashes in the icy water until the bank was soaked, Sirius’s feet were frozen, and the heat in his chest had cooled.
Then Sirius sank down to sit in the snow and stare blankly at the damage he wrought on the snow covered ice. It had been perfect, unblemished. Then it met Sirius Black and it was destroyed.
“I hate you,” Sirius breathed, the words becoming visible in the air before him. Sirius said it again, “I hate you.”
Was he talking to James? To Regulus? To Stephen?
To himself?
Sirius’s lower lip wobbled and he shifted to become a beast, Padfoot. Padfoot could give rides to little Vince and could chase Harry’s dog Joey when the sun was up. But Padfoot couldn’t cry, not really. And Sirius was so bloody sick of crying, he would rather be enraged.
It began to get dark, the sun sinking down beneath the horizon and casting it’s last lights over the water to glint back in Sirius’s eyes. What would it feel like? To be as emotionless as the frozen ice or the sun’s beams? It had to be better than being human… anything would…
“I met a demon once.”
Sirius didn’t lift his head when he heard the smooth and silky voice of Loki just to his left. Loki came around a little more often, showing up for Harry’s birthday over the summer and Vince’s birthday in November. Even on Easter, Loki had been there. Thor hadn’t even shown up to watch Vince crawl around for colored eggs, Harry and his boyfriend snapping photos of every movement and every second, but Loki had been there.
Sirius didn’t know why, but Harry liked Loki and Loki seemed to like Harry, so he left well-enough alone.
Loki wasn’t bothering Sirius then either, he rarely did. Just as he had the year before, Loki only took a spot beside Padfoot – beside Sirius – and talked in a voice that was nearly hypnotic as intently as Sirius drank in his words.
“My mother’s sister, Óðr, created a being of her own,” Loki said, his cool hand on Padfoot’s neck and his words the only sound between them. “She called it Draugr.”
And Sirius’s mother’s sister created a being of her own, she named her Nymphadora and Nymphadora was, in that moment, becoming a Lupin.
“The Draugr are not unlike what your people call inferi,” Loki went on, getting a pained whimper from Padfoot. “They are not ghost, nor spirit, but the reanimated corpse of a human. Óðr said she didn’t know why she made them, only that it satisfied the ǫngr that filled her after the death of her God.”
Sirius wondered if it worked. If creating something perverse and twisted made her feel better. Sirius wanted to ask if she ever thought she might hate her God for leaving her.
If Sirius could speak without screaming, he would ask Loki if the Draugr that Óðr created were the same things that took Regulus down, dragged him beneath the depths of dark waters, and sent him to Valhalla.
Sirius couldn’t ask that though because then he would scream at the skies, dare Óðr to show their face before Sirius. Any relative of Loki’s was a God or Goddess of immense power and strength, but Sirius still thought that he would rip Óðr down from the skies and slay them like a knight on a horse.
It wouldn’t bring Regulus back, it wouldn’t bring anyone back, but it might have leeched some of the poison that was filling Sirius and rotting him from the inside out.
Padfoot spent a few hours outside with Loki before Sirius returned to his house, only to find Harry waiting for him in the living room.
“Mum sent food,” Harry said. He wore one of the sweaters that Molly sent him, a red and blue one that Sirius was sure Peter Parker would have the match to, and he sat on the edge of Sirius’s sofa. His eyes were solemn, sad, when they lingered on where Sirius shivered, soaked to his very soul with cold.
“Tell her thanks,” Sirius croaked. Pepper was a good woman, on the days that Sirius wasn’t bitter and jaded- he knew that Lily would be crying wherever she was in happiness to know that Harry was loved so fiercely by his father’s wife.
Harry hummed and he looked at where his hands were clasped between his knees for a second. When he looked back up, Sirius thought he had never looked more like a young Sirius before with the glimmer of laughter in his eyes. It came on quickly, Sirius wasn’t sure what was funny, but Harry didn’t make him wonder long.
“I forgot, about Tonks and Lupin getting married,” Harry said, pinning Sirius in place with his eyes and the words that they did not need to discuss. “Dad reminded me earlier, when he told Mum how glad he was that they didn’t have a gaudy Christmas wedding.”
Sirius smiled faintly, more of a reaction than anything intentional.
“I’m glad you and Lupin didn’t work out,” Harry went on, never looking away from Sirius. “If you did, just imagine, Siri, a Christmas wedding. Red and green colors, I’m sure.”
“Slytherin and Gryffindor,” Sirius said, nodding. His legs were stiff as he moved to grab the stack of Styrofoam containers that were stacked on the coffee table, replacing the liquor Sirius left there before running off earlier. Sirius wasn’t particularly hungry, but he was cold and hot food would do as nicely to warm him as a shower or drink would.
If Harry wasn’t planning on leaving though, Sirius wasn’t going to get a shower or drink anytime soon.
“Red and green and blue…” Harry said, shifting over so Sirius could sit beside him. Sirius didn’t understand the addition of blue and his eyebrows twitched in confusion.
“There was a thunderstorm in Meghalaya today.”
Apparently Harry was off his meds, switching topics mid-conversation.
“Ah,” Sirius said, shrugging. He grabbed the dinner roll out of the first box he opened and took a huge bite.
And Harry, little shit that he was, waited until Sirius went to swallow to show that he hadn’t been changing the topic, Sirius just didn’t get the punchline until Harry shared it.
“I moved the thunderstorm to Glencoe. I doubt they planned for it… sure hope it didn’t ruin the wedding.”
Sirius made a sound that wasn’t altogether human and turned to see that Harry was entirely serious, gazing calmly back at Sirius with only the twitch of his lip to betray the amusement he withheld. After Sirius swallowed, with great difficulty, Sirius imagined Harry relocating a thunderstorm to appease Sirius’s hurt feelings and he chuckled.
Sirius chuckled.
The Third Christmas of Bargaining…
Sirius wore Stephen’s cape on the third Christmas without him. It made Harry and Tony shoot him panicked glances – identical ones, Sirius should note – when they saw him arrive for Christmas lunch with the cape around his neck. Sirius felt better with it though; Stephen had loved his oddly animated cape and it made Sirius feel better to have it wrapped around him like an embrace.
The cape, for its part, seemed more perky than usual as well. It fluttered playfully when Vince ran on his confident toddler legs to “Siwi!” for a hug. Sirius swept him up in his arms and the cape bounced around, causing Vince to giggle.
Pepper, half-way through her second pregnancy, didn’t act as if Sirius showing up for a holiday – a family event that he was more apt to skip – were a shock. She only smiled kindly at him and leaned around the cheeky cape and her giggling son to kiss him chastely on the cheek.
“Grandpa Loki said you would be here, but we weren’t sure,” she said, smiling warmly as if Sirius were her brother instead of… her sons’ godfather that lived on her property and was erratic on a good day and belligerent on a bad.
Sirius tried some days, he did. Merlin knew that Sirius put an effort out for the family he had left in Harry, his father, his step-mum, and his little brother. Sirius tried to run his team of Avengers, he showed up when they were called for help.
It had just all felt so meaningless, so hollow, that Sirius often thought he shouldn’t bother.
But when Harry texted, when Tony asked for help, when the alert went off for the Avengers… Sirius was there.
“There’s a place at the table, come and eat,” Pepper said. She smoothed Vince’s hair off his forehead and smiled. “Vince’ll be happy to tell Uncle Siri all about what Santa brought him.”
Sirius carried Vince in the dining room of the Stark house, nodding to his teammates and friends, and let the cape drag him to an open seat between Loki and Thor, just across from Harry. Vince babbled quietly, he was such a shy boy, about toys he got and candies his ‘bubby’ snuck him. A lot of it was baby talk, hard for Sirius to decipher, but he nodded and made all the right sounds anyway.
It made Sirius feel good, to be able to make his second godson so happy. Vince acted as if Sirius’s presence and attention was as much of a present as anything else. It made Sirius feel badly – he was missing chunks of Vince’s life as he regret doing Harry’s – and he made himself a promise to do better.
Sirius could do better, he could. If the nightmares, more frozen grief than flights of adrenaline, ended then Sirius wouldn’t need to drink. If Sirius quit drinking, the time wouldn’t pass by him so quickly. If time slowed down, Sirius would be able to drag himself from his house even on the cold and bleak days.
Sirius would be a better godfather to baby Vince, and to Harry who had started muggle university after what Sirius remembered had been a fight between Harry and Pepper (Harry had shown up at Sirius’s house, always using the door and never a portal around Sirius, with a bag of clothes and a request to stay with Sirius as ‘his mum was being a nightmare’).
It wasn’t impossible, even if it was difficult.
Sirius stayed through dinner, smiling when someone made a joke, quietly raising his glass of whatever non-alcoholic punch Pepper gave him when toasts were made. Sirius ate, he let Vince graze the food from his plate, and he didn’t feel like so much of a failure when he eventually made his goodbyes.
Thor offered to share a drink, but the promises Sirius made to himself were already fading and he wanted to escape to his home before anyone else saw that Sirius was still broken, still wrong.
Loki followed Sirius out the front door and it wasn’t uncomfortable when they stood beside the tree in the yard, the one with the tire swing that Peter added over the summer for Vince. They both stood silently, looking out at the sky and taking in measured breaths. The cape stilled, wrapped around Sirius warmly, and it was almost bearable.
The weight Sirius carried, the weight of remembering, that was almost bearable.
“On this day, more than any other, Baldr receives the most prayers,” Loki murmured. Often, when the two of them were alone and Loki spoke, Sirius thought he was speaking to himself but in a language that resonated with Sirius’s soul. “Christianity has turned the story of Jesus Christ to become one of rebirth, of returning due to a powerful force of love. It’s a lie, you know. Love can never bring back the loss, not even when bargained for with Baldr himself.
“Odin says that Baldr will outlive us all, the Well of Knowledge told him so. But will he live eternally, cursed with a longevity of hearing these pleas and these bargains, or will he bring himself back as a punishment for deeds that only he remembers?”
Sirius didn’t mind listening to Loki talk. Sometimes he even liked it. Loki spoke about the Gods of Mythology as Sirius might talk about his cousins. Sirius asked Harry, at Harry’s eighteenth birthday over the summer, if Harry and Loki talked much. Harry gave him a peculiar look when he said that they did, mostly about magic and sorcery and the grey areas between them.
If Loki wanted to tell Sirius tales about his family, the deities in another realm who managed magic, souls, love, death, and their cycles… then Sirius didn’t mind to listen.
Even if his heart ached to think of all his own pleas and offers sent up to a God that Loki said would never grant them.
The Fourth Christmas of Depression…
On Morgan Alicia Stark’s first Christmas, Sirius was at the Stark House at the crack of dawn.
Sirius had woken up early and transfigured himself so that his neat-shaven black beard was grown out to a long and white one, not unlike Albus’s. Sirius tweaked an old pair of wizarding robes that he never wore anymore so that they were red with white furry cuffs. Sirius even added plenty of weight to himself until he was round, jolly, and only recognizable in a mirror with his grey eyes.
Harry told him it was ‘overkill’ to deliver presents to Morgan and Vince while dressed up as Santa Clause, but Sirius had always wished he had done it for Harry. Sirius couldn’t go back in time and create more memories with Harry, but he didn’t have to miss the chances he had to make them with his other two godchildren.
Morgan, at only eight months old, was awake and didn’t care about Sirius’s silly plan, but Vince had been a squealing and jumping little bundle of happiness. Harry took plenty of photos, with the camera he always had at any holiday or family get-together, so Sirius assumed that someone would be able to show Morgan when she was older that Sirius had tried. Sirius tried so hard and he had done all the work… Sirius did it all and he was done.
Before the fifth anniversary of Stephen’s death in February, Sirius would join him.
Sirius was done with living, done with breathing. Sirius loved his godchildren more than anything, but he was doing them no good. Even when Sirius put in the effort to smile and be happy, moving on as everyone else had, Sirius could feel everyone’s eyes and their disbelief.
If Sirius wasn’t fooling anyone, then why bother trying? If all Sirius was accomplishing was dragging down happy people – Harry, Tony, Vincent, Morgan, Pepper, Pietro, Natasha, Clint… - then that was no accomplishment at all.
It wasn’t dramatic, it was a cold analysis of the facts of the situation with one clear eventual outcome:
When Sirius died, it would hurt some people. Those eight people, maybe even nine if Sirius counted the newest full-time Avenger, Harry’s fiancé Peter, would mourn his death. It made Sirius a cad and a monster for pushing his grief on the others, but they had proven an ability to move on that Sirius didn’t have.
There were others that might be happy to see Sirius, if he could earn their forgiveness fast enough.
James would be there, his smile wide and his face still youthful. James might tease Sirius about the fine lines he recently began to notice around his eyes, he would certainly have something to say about Sirius being old enough to be his father. Lily would hug Sirius, he hoped. Lily would know that Sirius tried to take care of Harry, tried to protect him when he sent him to Tony, did his best for her baby.
Regulus would be there too, but Sirius knew that he would make Sirius prostrate himself at his feet and beg for forgiveness for the nastiness that had been between them for so much of Regulus’s life. Eventually, with enough theatrics that Regulus would appreciate, Regulus would forgive him and they would be brothers once more.
And Stephen… Stephen would be there. Stephen would click his tongue, roll his eyes. Sirius would get a dry question about his intelligence just before receiving a heated kiss. Sirius would thank him, for what he did, even if it wasn’t something Sirius always appreciated. Stephen gave Sirius a chance to meet Harry’s siblings though, and that was enough to thank him for.
Then they’d probably have sex. Really excellent afterlife sex where there was no interruptions for as long as they wanted to be alone.
That thought was almost enough to make Sirius’s forced smile become real.
Sirius made sure to laugh the loudest that day, singing the clearest when Christmas carols played. Sirius threw himself on the floor and moved racecars around with Vince and he tickled every one of Morgan’s tiny toes. Sirius spent a moment with each of his teammates, his friends, and he thanked Tony and Pepper for the evening.
Sirius spent a long time with Harry, who clung to Sirius as if he knew it was their last day together. They talked about Harry’s classes, his friends. When Harry started to tell a story about a battle he recently fought with Wong, who had been Stephen’s friend before his, Sirius encouraged him to go on even when Harry clamped his mouth shut.
It didn’t hurt as much, hearing about Harry fulfilling Stephen’s words that he would become the greatest Sorcerer Supreme of his time, not when Sirius knew all the pain would be over soon.
Loki was conspicuously absent, but Peter made the joke that he was out creating chaos for the Avengers to clean up later, and Sirius brushed the one absence away. Hey, maybe Sirius would see him too, in whatever afterlife awaited him.
Sirius whistled an old song, Ashes to Ashes, while he walked across the property from Tony’s house to his that night. It didn’t feel as cold as New York typically was on Christmas nights, but maybe Sirius’s soul was already leaving his body, leaving him immune to the elements.
It was a beautiful night. Sirius wasn’t in a rush, he could pause outside his house and stargaze for a few minutes.
There wasn’t any rush, only a slow walk to an inevitable ending.
Sirius even summoned his cigar case, thinking he might have one more smoke before his story reached the final words. Sirius hadn’t been thinking about it when he summoned the box though, his eyes had been searching out familiar constellations, and as soon as the box touched Sirius’s hands he knew it was the wrong one.
It wasn’t the polished black cigar box, the one that Clint gave Sirius a few birthdays ago after they bonded over Gurkha Cigars. It was an old ash wooden one, the one that had four sets of initials carved on each corner of the lid. It wasn’t even a cigar case, Sirius must have been exceedingly distracted to have summoned the one he held from where he kept it buried in his closet.
Sirius looked down at it and clenched his jaw while he looked from the ‘R.J.L’ in the top right corner to the ‘J.F.P’ below it. To the left of James’s initials, diagonal down from Remus’s, were the initials carved by an eleven year old Sirius Black, ‘S.O.B’. Above Sirius’s were Peter’s, wobbly as he had been giggling over Sirius’s initials while he carved his own: ‘P.O.P’.
- Peter was dead, Sirius held his head in his hands after it had been cut off by Barnes. James was dead, died to try and buy his wife just a few more seconds of life. Remus was alive… their friendship so irreparably damaged that they might as well have been dead to each other. -
As if ‘pop’ was any better than ‘son of a bitch’. At least Sirius’s had been accurate, that was what he said the night they decorated the ‘trunk of the Marauders’. No bigger than a shoebox, it used to hold stinkbombs and joints, little flasks of firewhiskey. When they got older, it held the first attempts at their map, the thong of the first witch that Remus shagged.
Lily’s bra had been in there in their seventh year, until she found out and threatened to curse them all with eternal erectile dysfunction. That was when James told Sirius maybe he should take the trunk, keep it away from Lily.
Sirius kept it, even after Peter’s betrayal of James and Remus’s betrayal of Sirius. It had reminded him of better days and then… after Stephen… it held memories too difficult to face.
Sirius sank down to sit on the steps of his porch and he stared for a long time at the lid of the box. It wasn’t until a drop of grief – unchecked and unnoticed – fell from Sirius’s cheek to land on the lid, a dark blotch on the light wood, that Sirius was able to open it.
There were very few things inside the box. A few photographs, aged and worn from the many times Sirius touched them. There was a letter from James, the first note they passed in their first detention together. And, Sirius’s fingers were shaking and he had to lift his chin to be sure to not ruin the paper with the tears he wasn’t familiar with anymore, the letter from Stephen.
It was brief, it had broken Sirius the first time he read it, only moments after seeing Stephen fall while Sirius had been helpless to save him…
The last line was like a crucio to his every nerve.
I’ll keep your ring, you keep my heart.
Sirius loved him, he did love him. He loved him still, he always would.
Sirius didn’t know how much time passed, he lost all sense of where he was, who he was, what happened. All Sirius knew was that the grief he had carried for so long – since Regulus died, almost twenty years ago – crashed down on him at once.
When there was a warm body beside him, a long and graceful arm to pull Sirius to their shoulder, Sirius accepted it as if a gift he didn’t expect.
Sirius cried for the first time in years, maybe the first true cry of his life. It was so much, so much pain, so many memories. There were so many people he loved that were gone, so many things Sirius wished he could say to them. Sirius had so many regrets, so many things he didn’t do right.
It felt bottomless, that grief.
“’I love not the mountains, I dwelt not long in them. Nine nights only; sweeter is to me the song of the swan than the wild wolf’s howl.’”
Sirius hadn’t known whose shoulder was being leant to him, he didn’t immediately know who held him together when he could no longer do it himself, but when the tears slowed and the voice picked up, Sirius wasn’t surprised.
If Sirius thought about it, he would have expected it.
Loki had sat silently beside Sirius, allowing him to sob until his body was weak and all the pain and poison he carried so long left him. And then when Sirius’s mind wasn’t clouded, Loki gave him another gift… in the form of poetry, it seemed.
“Skadi replied to Njord. ‘My sleep was troubled on the shore of the sea by the screaming of sea-birds. Every morning the sea-mew wakes me, returning from the deep’.”
Sirius thought perhaps Loki had been telling a story before Sirius started listening, as he didn’t understand the context, only liking the words. Loki watched with his clever green eyes, the ones that filled with warmth when Harry or his brother or sister were around, as Sirius replaced Stephen’s letter in the box. Sirius placed it with care, never wanting so much as a crease to damage a corner, and that was when he noticed the photograph that he absolutely didn’t put there.
It was taken the day Morgan was born. Sirius had been called to the hospital right after a mission involving a lot of fiery aliens. Sirius, Natasha, Pietro, and Clint all showed up, sooty and bruised and bloody. Tony didn’t care, he only held up his youngest child like the proud papa he was and asked Sirius if he was ready for another ‘GodStark’.
Sirius had hastily cleaned himself, Harry made everyone gather around, and a nurse took the photo of Sirius with his goddaughter, his two godsons, his friends… it was Sirius’s family.
“I was planning on killing myself tonight,” Sirius whispered, choking on the word, to the only person he knew that wouldn’t react badly to the admission. Loki didn’t so much as twitch and it was the only opening Sirius needed.
“Everything aches,” he said, looking at the photo and wondering how he had managed to fake his cheer, his happiness, his acceptance for so long. “I don’t know – I don’t know that I can keep going on like this.”
“You won’t,” Loki said simply. Sirius looked from his family to Loki and saw a well of understanding in his eyes. Loki smiled, a soft smile, a bittersweet one. It was a little wry and bitter. It fit well; the situation, the moment.
“When you put down all the pain you hold, you will have room to carry peace.”
“How do I put it down?” Sirius asked, desperate in a way. Loki was a God, Loki was a man. If there was anyone who could tell Sirius how to end the pain and misery without casting it on his family, it would be Loki.
Loki reached over to lift up the box that Sirius had placed on the wooden porch and he put it on his own knee, right beside Sirius’s.
“You put it down by talking about it,” Loki said, as if it were the most profound statement to ever be said.
In a way, it was.
Loki touched James’s initials and it didn’t bother Sirius. Loki was someone who could trace the initials James Potter left in a box over twenty-eight years ago and Sirius didn’t feel an urge to smack his hand away.
“Start with your James,” Loki said, watching Sirius subtly while Sirius watched his index finger curve down the loopy ‘J’. “Tell me about him.”
Loki couldn’t have asked for a better person for Sirius to start with. If there was anyone that Sirius could talk for hours about, it was James Potter.
Talking about James led to Peter, to Remus, to Lily. That led to the war, the other friends that died – Mary and Marlene, Dorcas and the Prewett Twins. Sirius shivered through a recount of Azkaban and how the world changed and he felt frozen when he left.
And, when the sun began to rise and Sirius and Loki were still on the steps of Sirius’s home, Sirius talked about Stephen Vincent Strange.
The Fifth Christmas of Acceptance
It was the lingering Gryffindor in him that had Sirius thinking he could pull one over on the God of Mischief. Sirius sort of thought he had an edge, with the Sorcerer Supreme and best man he knew helping him, but even Sirius and Harry weren’t a match for Loki.
Sirius had opted to spend Christmas Eve with his family, leaving Christmas Day to be a day with no obligations, nothing that Sirius would need to force himself to do if he woke up in a grey mood. Nobody minded when Sirius had tentatively made the request, leaving him to wonder why he hadn’t done it years ago.
It was still a Christmas celebration with his family, but there was a lightness to it that Sirius didn’t expect. Sirius didn’t feel weighed down when he bounced baby Morgan in his arms, singing silly carols and dancing with her. The laughs he barked out when Harry got tipsy and started making dirty jokes were genuine, nobody could make Sirius laugh like Harry could. Even Vince had managed to bring a happy tear – a happy tear – to Sirius’s eye when he gave him a homemade Christmas card with his little handprint on the inside and a ‘I luve you’ written in gold glitter.
“You’ve got the best family,” Sirius told Tony at the end of the night when all their friends left and it was only Sirius and the Starks.
Tony tossed his arm around Sirius’s shoulder and embraced him like a brother.
“We have the best family,” Tony corrected him with the bloody perpetual cheer had for years and Sirius hadn’t appreciated much recently. “And, while I definitely did the bulk of the work – don’t tell Pepper I said that – none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”
That felt nice.
Not nice but… it was nice except…
It was just nice.
Sirius waited outside on Christmas Eve night, hiding beneath Harry’s cloak. If Sirius’s gut was right, and it usually was even when he didn’t want it to be, he wouldn’t have to wait long to see if his and Harry’s efforts would pay off or not.
It was silly, it was meant as a ‘thank you’. If someone were to thank Sirius for getting them through the darkest time in their life, Sirius would want it to be done with a prank. For the God of Mischief? The Trickster God? Sirius just assumed that he would feel the same way.
Loki arrived right at midnight, simply appearing at the tree that sat directly between where Sirius’s house sat and where Tony’s much larger house sat on the property. When Loki looked down, Sirius bit his lip to keep from laughing.
In the place where Sirius usually laid as Padfoot when he needed a nap in the sun or a break to soothe his nerves, there was a great black dog. It was an excellent mimic of Sirius’s animagus form, even the eyes were the precise shade of grey.
The plan was simple, if a little juvenile for a man of forty (and Sirius reminded himself that wizards often lived to be nearly 140, which made Sirius a child in some ways… right?). Sirius assumed that Loki would begin talking to the dog, as he did every time he arrived to celebrate a birthday, holiday, or milestone and found Sirius hiding himself as Padfoot. Then, just to embarrass him a bit, Sirius would stroll out from beneath Harry’s cloak – using the Cloak of Levitation to add some theatrics – and ask Loki if he thought the dog could understand him while Sirius looked very brilliant.
It didn’t start how Sirius planned and it certainly didn’t end how Sirius planned.
“You do understand the concept of a God, do you not, elsker?”
Sirius huffed when Loki looked over his shoulder with a smirk, his clever eyes looking directly at where Sirius had been waiting.
“You thought you could fool me to believe this dog was you?” Loki laughed, his laugh as smooth as his voice was, when Sirius tore off the Invisibility Cloak in defeat. “You must mistake my brother’s intelligence as my own.”
“We have the same color eyes!” Sirius cried. He couldn’t help but grin a tad while he let Stephen’s Cloak (it would always be Stephen’s, even if it would always be Sirius’s as well) carry him to Loki. If Sirius couldn’t pull off the prank, he’d at least be a little dramatic, thank you very much.
“Same eyes, different souls,” Loki drawled. He looked up at the sky when Sirius stopped beside him and the cloak dropped him on his own two feet. “Look.”
Loki pointed up at the sky to one of the first stars Sirius knew by memory. It was the brightest one, the Dog Star.
Sirius.
“That is how brightly your soul shines for me,” Loki murmured. When he dropped his hand, it brushed Sirius’s and Sirius didn’t pull away. “In any realm, any universe, I would recognize the sál of the elsker I have waited an eternity for.”
Sirius swallowed when Stephen’s cape hugged him before flying away, carrying Harry’s cape with it toward Sirius’s house.
Sirius thought he knew what Loki meant, but he asked just in case.
“Elsker?” Sirius repeated, allowing the word to just sit there in his mind, tasting it on his tongue.
“Yes.” Loki’s fingers sought out Sirius’s and they entwined in a way that should have shaken the very Earth Sirius stood on and instead felt natural. “As I said, I have waited quite a time for you.”
They stood outside for a while longer – Loki gave Sirius time to think, Sirius whispered final goodbyes in his mind to each star he assigned someone he once loved and lost.
And then, only when Sirius was ready, Sirius invited Loki inside his home.
Clearly, they had plenty to talk about.
*****
In three words, Sirius Black could describe what he knew about life:
It goes on.