Work Text:
The funny thing about the nouveau riche is that they aren’t that good at hanging onto their wealth. There’s always so much of it, you see. Wealth burns quickly if you don’t know how to handle it.
Enter Igor Karkaroff.
While most of his fortune had been made legitimately (oil industry), Igor had been known to dabble in more criminal enterprises from time to time. Like, for example, black market art.
If rumours are to be believed, he has some particularly popular stolen paintings in his collection, including a Magenta Comstock last seen in public almost 25 years ago.
Lily doesn’t fancy herself much of an art thief, at least in comparison to her other associates, but she hardly hesitated when it came to stealing from Karkaroff. Plus, there’s an attractive reward for returning the Comstock — and an even higher price for putting it back in the market.
The plan was simple. As it always is. Get Karkaroff’s attention, wheedle her way into his inner circle, get invited to his lakeside manor, disappear across the Finnish border with the painting. The details may have been fuzzy, but Lily was flexible and things often worked out in her favour.
Enter Antonin Dolohov.
A late arrival to the party, and apparently a beloved member of Karkaroff’s inner circle.
To her misfortune, Lily already met Dolohov years ago back in England, where she conned him out of a few million in gold. Well, not just her. She can’t take complete responsibility for that glory of a crime, as she was still working with Severus Snape then.
Dolohov didn’t really care about the blame though. Being grifted out of a small fortune leads one to remember the faces of those responsible.
So, to make a long story short, that’s how Lily ended up in prison.
It’s not the first time she’s ever been arrested. After a decade spent as a career criminal, it’s an occupational hazard. Closest she came to the clink was France, when she got involved in the underground truffle trade. While the French are notorious for their horrible prison conditions, Lily is notorious for disappearing before she can be processed.
Russian prisons are objectively worse than the ones in France, but their police stations could use some work. Especially this one. They just handcuffed her to a chair in an office with a single guard to keep an eye on her, while they took Dolohov’s statement in the other room and scrambled about to wake someone who can tell them what to do next.
That’s what she assumed the commotion was about, at least. When it comes to James Potter, Lily is used to being wrong.
Enter James Potter.
James comes bursting in through the door, holding up an ID quickly and introducing himself as MVD. The officer bursts out of his seat, flustered and confused. The ideal state to be in for one of James’s marks. The poor boy doesn’t get a chance to recover before James tears into him.
“Are you insane? Why isn’t she locked up?” James barks in angry Russian. His pronunciation could use work, but the outrage in his tone masks it well.
The officer stammers. “The holding cell is full of drunks and we—”
“Very noble,” he says irritably. “We’ve been chasing this woman for years! Five more minutes with you and she’d have walked out of here with your wallet and your keys, and we would still be chasing her.”
James has a lot of confidence in her abilities. Lily estimates a more pragmatic fifteen minutes to get the officer to unlock the handcuffs for her. Her dress may be short, but it’s not that short.
From his breast pocket, James produces a folder of official-looking documents. Peter’s handiwork, no doubt; Lily doesn’t know a better forger. He tosses the envelope on the desk and stares the officer down. “I have orders to take her to Moscow immediately. Give me the keys.”
The officer blinks a little before absorbing the command, fumbling to retrieve the keys from his pocket. He drops it a few times before finally handing it to James, who frees her from the chair without any unnecessary motion. Their eyes finally meet and she struggles not to smile, before James cuffs her hands again in front of her.
That’s fair.
With a jerk of her arm, he starts dragging her out of the station. All the while, he’s muttering under his breath about the incompetency of the police and how everyone in this station is going to lose their jobs once he makes it back to Moscow. He peppers in a few jabs about the late hour, just to mix it up.
James continues his rant until they make it to what Lily assumes to be his car, waiting in front of the station. He shoves her roughly into the backseat, just in case the cops are still watching. Lily lands on a couple of bags — including hers, which he most likely stole from evidence.
Quietly, he starts the car. It’s not so quiet in Lily’s mind, as her mind rushes with the blood in her ears. James pulls out into sparse, late-night traffic, without any indication that they are a pair of criminals on the run.
“Thank you,” Lily says as she climbs into the front seat. It’s not an easy feat with her hands still restrained in front of her, but she makes it with only a few elbows to James’s head.
Once she’s settled into the chair, he passes her the keys to the handcuffs without a word. He keeps his head trained on the road ahead and says nothing. James is often the chattier of the two of them, so this is tense and unbearable.
He breaks the silence after a few more minutes.
“We need a different car,” James says, finally sparing her a glance. “You need different clothes. And I need time to think.” He pushes his glasses back up his nose. “We’ve got quite a mess on our hands, Evans.”
“Seeing as you were just impersonating militsiya, we really are in quite a mess,” Lily replies. She tries not to be annoyed, but can’t hide it. “I had it under control in there.”
He narrows his eyes. “Did you? Conning Antonin Dolohov was you under control?”
“I already conned Dolohov, genius,” she corrects. “Years ago, Southend-on-Sea. To much success, I’ll have you know. My mark wasn’t even Dolohov. It was Karkaroff.”
James nods, condescending and slow. “And Karkaroff happens to be friends with Dolohov.”
Lily pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “News to me,” she mutters.
“I don’t know what you remember about Dolohov, but he’s not the kind of person you can have ‘under control’. He’s got some nasty connections and enough people on payroll to make your time in prison hell.”
She smiles drolly, “As opposed to the lovely stay I would have had otherwise.”
And perhaps it was wrong of her to tease him then. James’s voice rises and he snaps.
“This isn’t a joke, Evans!” His jaw clenches, fighting with himself to keep his eyes on the road when he just wants to look at her. His breathing is heavy and his grip on the steering wheel is knuckle-white.
“You wouldn’t have survived more than a few days in prison before you had some sort of accident.”
The anger is unexpected. Lily is familiar with anger, something she knows to be afraid of. But this is James. What she finds that she’s afraid of is that she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know what to say to reassure James or soften him.
It would be so much easier if he weren’t James.
His breathing is slow but heavy, and he is far from calm. It takes a while before Lily finds what to say.
“I can look after myself, Potter,” she tries. Her voice is light, skimming the tension between them. “I’ve done it for a long time. You know that, you always have. Why are you so concerned now?”
If she cannot ease the situation, she can at least learn from it.
“Because,” he replies and his voice trembles. “What if you weren’t able to get out, and I hadn’t shown up? What if Dolohov got his way and you died in a prison in Russia?”
Lily suppresses the urge to laugh, an instinct she’s developed to contend with the pains of her life. She laughs because she knows the answer to his question, and she doesn’t know if she likes it.
She’d thought about it before, a lot. What it would mean to die in a prison under a name that isn’t hers. She thought about it in those early days, when she’d just broken away from Severus. Being alone like that left you with a lot of time to think.
And so she’d think: Petunia could not be traced back to her. Petunia would not even care less. But Lily still took steps to make sure that her sister could never be implicated in any of her misadventures.
She’d be survived by Petunia, if no one else. But who would know to tell her? If Lily disappeared, completely and properly. She wasn’t against the drama of making a statement…
But Severus Snape is not the only person who would care.
She turns to look at James, but with the light reflecting against his glasses, there isn’t much to see. She reaches out to touch his arm and he matches the distance, grabbing her hand and lacing his fingers through hers.
“You’d disappear, Lily,” he says. “You’d disappear and I’d never know what happened. No one would. You’d just completely disappear from my life and, and I don’t think I can handle that.”
He takes a deep breath. “I can’t have you disappear on me, Lily Evans. I can’t have that. I can’t.”
Why, she wants to ask. Why? But she knows what his answer will be. He doesn’t say it, not then and not for years after, but it hangs between them in the silence. Whatever reason he has not to admit what they both know, she’s grateful.
The silence is heavy, and Lily knows she should say something if he won’t, but she’s caught struggling with the truth of his words.
James Potter is the most honest man she knows. She hates that about him. She feels a lot about him, but that hate is the easiest to name.
It’s not right. He’s too honest for a conman, too good for a criminal. His eyes tell her that he’s brilliant, and his face tells her that he’s charming. His touch tells her that he is kind and he is angry and scared and human.
She pulls their hands closer to her and presses a kiss over his knuckle. She feels his muscles relax beneath her touch. “I won’t disappear,” she murmurs over the back of his hand. “I promise.”
How easily James is affected by her, that the relief shows in his face. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from the road, but he squeezes her hand to let her know that he’s heard her. For a sentence less than six words long, it means a lot.
James finally lets go of her hand, which takes a while, and says, “I think our best bet, at this point, is to try to get to Finland. Remus is waiting for me in St. Petersburg, so the sooner we can contact him, the better. There is just one problem.”
“Oh, good, because the situation was certainly simple enough.” Usually, one of her comments would be enough to make him smile, but he’s still being deathly serious. “What is it?”
“Can you reach my bag?”
It takes some struggling and climbing around, a feat more difficult to manage because her dress isn’t designed for climbing over car seats. James keeps his eyes on the road as Lily wrestles the bag over to the front.
She notices the drawing tube immediately.
“Be careful,” James warns, but he doesn’t need to.
Despite her preference for jewels, Lily does know how to handle paintings out of their frames. She might even have more experience than most museum curators. She unrolls the canvas delicately, only halfway in the small space of the front passenger seat, but it’s enough for her to see the signature in the corner.
“James,” she says, her voice dropping an octave. “I thought we were past stealing jobs from each other.”
“We’ve never actually done that,” he argues. “Stolen from the same person, yes. Stolen the same thing, no. Of course, I’m not accounting for the times that we worked together to steal the same thing. But this is actually a first.”
“I hope I get a cut at least.”
He purses his lips and says nothing. Lily rolls the painting back into the drawing tube.
“James.”
“We’re returning it,” he explains. “I was supposed to steal it and bring it back to Remus in St. Petersburg. He’d handle the security and legalities of getting it back to the museum.”
Lily nods thoughtfully. After a beat, she says, “Well, since that plan is so clearly ruined…”
“There was never a plan to sell it, Evans.”
“Millions, James!” She can’t help but argue. “I know a really good forger, who’s shagging a really good fence. We can put this painting back in the market and return it to the museum. Everyone wins.”
He smiles fondly, finally. “Something tells me I’d only be getting twenty percent.”
“That’s still a lot.”
The conversation dies down as the drive goes on. The adrenaline weaning away as the sun starts rising in the sky. It wasn’t much for setting anyway, for a summer this far north. The hours of driving paint themselves beneath James’s glasses, visible now with morning light.
They make it through the border crossing almost too easily. Owing largely to the discomfort of the young guard, as Lily loudly berates the food, the hotel, and the service they pretend to have experienced on their weekend trip to Sortavala. The guard waves them through with a beleaguered sigh at James, but regardless, they are officially out of Russia.
From there, they decide to part ways at the nearest train station. She’d go deeper into Finland, probably leave on a boat out of Helsinki, while he would find a way to regroup with his crew back in Russia. Peter arranges their tickets.
The adventure had worn off by the time they make it to the train station, and Lily wants nothing more than a long hot shower and a nice hotel stay for the next week. She might be able to tempt James into joining her, if she had more time. Her train leaves almost immediately, so she barely can run into a restroom and change into reasonable travel clothes.
It isn’t until they make it to her platform that James grabs on to her hand, holds on to it painfully. “Let me know,” he says. “Where you end up next, let me know. I can’t have you disappear on me, Evans. I know I told you in the car, but it’s worth saying a second time.”
The wind picks up as the train comes in, and Lily raises her free hand to keep her hair out of her face. She doesn’t have anything to say to that, and she’s still above making promises she can’t make sure she will keep. She just looks at him, so he knows that he has her attention.
He holds on to her hand. People are starting to file into the train car, and he just holds on to her hand. When it becomes clear neither of them are going to move from this, Lily lets him go.
She holds his face between her hands, forcing him to look at her. “James, don’t ever worry about me disappearing from your life. I will always be where you need me. Okay?”
She kisses him briefly, and then gets on the train before he can react. Besides, it won’t take long for him to realize she took the Comstock with her.
—
In the end, it’s James who disappears.
She’s never struggled with finding him before. He had a habit of letting her know things. Where his next job would be, what he’s doing with his latest score. Even after how she’d left things with him in Venice, he still made the terse effort of keeping her in the know.
And now…
Well. It’s not exactly quiet.
When someone like James Potter disappears, when his whole crew goes silent, it’s the kind of thing that makes a lot of noise in their world.
Peter Pettigrew is unreachable, and no one knows where Sirius Black has gone. Lily doesn’t even bother trying to look for James. If he wanted to be found, she’d already know.
She finds Remus Lupin with a little of bit of finessing, and more than a little bit of favour-pulling.
He’s been running a modified Baltimore Stockbroker in bars all over England, scalping loan sharks and fools over a football live broadcast. It’s unambitious and unassuming, and that’s what made him so hard to find.
But find him she has.
“Remus Lupin,” she says, sitting down next to him.
Of course she notices him flinch. He’s turned away from her, posture stiff, and it only relaxes slightly when he finally sees her out of the corner of his eye.
“Lily Evans,” he greets, barely a smile on his face. He’s not unhappy to see her, per se, but he’s nervous. It radiates off of him, glinting in his eyes.
“It’s good to see you,” he lies. Kind, but deceptive nonetheless.
Lily chooses not to call him on it. She isn’t that familiar with Remus’s history, but she has no space to judge if it looks anything like her own. James used to hint that it might have been. She feels a flicker of guilt for tracking Remus down like this, knows how she would feel if it were her in his position. She saw the fear possess him when she called out his name. Lily has had years to reckon with that fear, to make friends with it. He did not want to be found and Lily just proved that he can be.
That thought sends a pinch to Lily’s heart, as she remembers why she went through all the trouble of finding Remus. She flags the bartender for two beers for the both of them, drumming her fingers on the side of the glass as soon as its placed before her.
“It’s good to see you too,” she tells him, because he’s still owed some semblance of small talk. At least until his nerves settle. She gestures to the room around them. “This certainly isn’t what I expected. You boys are too big for this kind of operation.”
Remus winces again. If anything, he seems more uncomfortable now. “Yeah, well, it’s just me. Solo job. By myself. The boys haven’t anything to do with it. So, I hope it makes more sense now.”
His nervous energy is affecting, and his phrasing is conspicuous. Remus is a very smart man; surely he’s already caught on to why Lily is here. He’s just waiting for her to say it. Lily finds herself desperate enough to be straightforward.
“Where’s James?” she asks.
Remus is not surprised. He just sighs, staring into his beer as he absorbs Lily’s question. When he looks up, he wears a slight and amused smile. “I told him you’d go looking, you know. He didn’t believe me.”
That makes Lily grimace. Why would James think that? Or maybe, why wouldn’t he? He already has his Marauders. He has other people in his life. He doesn’t need anyone else to look for him, and certainly not Lily.
Lily categorizes the feeling in her chest as jealousy, but at what? Is she jealous that she doesn’t matter more to James, or that she doesn’t have friends the way he does? The emotion weaves into her ribs, unable to be addressed.
When Lily wants something, she can always just steal it. But how does she take this?
Her spiral is interrupted by Remus’s unexpected laugh. He smiles fondly at Lily, but his gaze suggests that she isn’t the one on his mind. “You two, I swear.”
They move to a booth in the corner for privacy and Remus does his best to try and explain. He talks about the last job the Marauders did, and how it all went wrong. Lily does her best to listen, ordering stronger and stronger drinks to combat the mounting dread at the base of her skull.
She figured that it was bad, but she can’t quite wrap her head around it. In the years that she’s come to know the Marauders, they have always seemed so unbreakable. There was a loyalty about them that Lily hadn’t hoped in until she met them. She hadn’t believed in trust until the Marauders entered her orbit.
Now Sirius is in prison, James is in hiding, and Remus is on the run. Lily should have known better.
As Remus makes it to the end of his story, Lily finishes the rest of her drink. There’s not much else that she can say to him.
“Hey,” she tries instead. “Do you want to steal something?”