Work Text:
It happens in battle: Harry shoves his sword into the chest of a demon, as he has countless times, and on the withdrawal, the ever-present light in his chest fades to nothing. Harry would have dropped his sword in shock, but training takes over even as panic thrums through him in place of the Light Lord's presence. Only years of repetition keep his body moving through the ache that follows his god's demise.
There is no room for denial. As a paladin of the Light Lord, Harry is familiar with the presence of his god. It is constant, all-consuming, a relief from the smaller worries of day-to-day life. His god is righteous and driven in the face of the waves of darkness that threaten to pull apart the land, and Harry follows his path as one of his many loyal paladins.
And now he is gone.
By the time the demon forces are driven back, Harry is shivering, the shock spreading through his body when there used to be only light. By his side, his fellow paladins have dropped to their knees, yelling, weeping, searching for a god that no longer responds. Harry is in no better state. He picked up his sword in the name of the Light Lord at age fourteen, after his aunt and uncle determined their duty to him to be complete and left him to the streets, and a man with the Light Lord's symbol on his forehead offered him his hand. That was a decade ago.
Harry's only partially aware of what happens next. Fellow soldiers against the darkness, those who aren't affiliated with the Light Lord, gather him and his fellow paladins and return them to the closest temple of the Light Lord. Devotees of other gods step in to help them. No fires burn in the temple; none ever will again. Harry blinks and he's in bed, and he blinks and he's standing in the garden, and he blinks and someone is saying something to him and it's so far away.
There's an argument playing out in front of him, but it's beyond Harry to care. A priest of the Light Lord, still wearing the colors of a god who can't appreciate them, and Sirius, who Harry would know even in the throes of grief. He ignores the argument to embrace Sirius, who holds him tightly, and then the argument fades away.
The next time he pays any attention to the world, he's resting in quarters grander than the temple. He's rarely stayed the night here, despite Sirius designating this room of Grimmauld Place as Harry's. By the time Harry met Sirius, he was fifteen and a paladin of the Light Lord, and he had a shared room in the temple. It was too late to wonder how his life could have gone had Sirius not been wrongfully imprisoned for most of Harry's childhood.
Harry goes through the motions: dresses, makes his way to the kitchen, manages to start an omelet. Sirius doesn't keep any staff except Kreacher, an old servant of his mother's who has avoided forced retirement by keeping largely unseen in the house.
"I don't think I can talk about it," Harry says when he hears someone behind him. "Not yet."
"No talking, got it." Sirius takes over cooking from Harry.
Belatedly, Harry realizes the omelet is starting to burn. It's probably still edible. He continues to stand while Sirius puts together the remainder of breakfast, then steers Harry to the kitchen table. Harry takes a fork before Sirius can think to try to feed him. It wouldn't be funny, not now, not when he can only barely remember what a laugh feels like in his chest.
Despite his earlier words, there is no other topic that Harry can speak of. "How long has it been?"
"Thirteen days. I would have brought you here earlier, but I was out of the country."
"Visiting Remus," Harry remembers. "You didn't have to cut your trip short. I was fine at the temple."
"You were one of a hundred at the temple. No one was taking proper care of you, not with how many suffering paladins they were hosting. The priests were no better off. It would have all collapsed without the help of that neighboring temple."
"Right." Harry blinks, his vision swimming for a moment.
"I worried I wouldn't make it in time." Sirius' voice is careful.
In the tumultuous days after the Light Lord died, a few of his fellow paladins took the shorter path to joining their lost god. "I wouldn't have done it. They took away our weapons." At Sirius' breath, Harry adds, "I didn't want to do it, either. I wouldn't leave you and Ron and Hermione."
"You had a life before your service to the Light Lord. You'll have a life after it, too." Despite the care in Sirius' voice, each word lands like a blow.
"You never liked that I entered the temple."
"I thought you were too young to make the choice when you did. You're not a kid anymore. If you swear to the Resplendent Goddess tomorrow and put your helmet on again, I'll—"
"You'll hate it," Harry says before Sirius can declare that he'll stand by him.
It's a nice sentiment, but his godfather hasn't ever accepted what he considers to be the gods making humans do their dirty work. It was a god who released demons into the world many thousands of years ago, and as far as many are concerned, it should be the gods who fix it now. Maybe they're right. For all his years of battle, Harry can't say he's made much of a difference. All it's gotten him is too many scars and a knee that gives him hell some days.
"I'll hate it," Sirius agrees. "I'll upgrade your armor with the best protection spells I can find."
Harry looks up from his omelet to find that earnest determination in Sirius' expression that has never failed to make his heart ache. He likes all of Sirius' looks, playful and fond and joking, but it's this one that Sirius wore the day they met. Harry had thought he'd known what the world was about, back then. He'd taken his vows to his god — the only vows that he would ever be able to take when in his service, as the Light Lord was a jealous god — and he'd met all sorts of people in his service, no longer stranded in the Dursleys' home. And then he met Sirius and he's never met anyone like Sirius ever again.
"I don't want to join the Resplendent Goddess," Harry says before the conversation gets too astray.
"Thank fuck."
Harry huffs, taking another bite. "I don't have room in my chest for another god. I— It's not going away. I'm always going to feel his loss. I never imagined his death preceding mine."
"It's not been two weeks yet. Don't base forever on today, not yet."
Harry manages a nod. It's hard to think of a future that doesn't overwhelm him with grief. Grief for a god aches in a different way than his grief over his parents. Gone before he could form memories of them, his thoughts of his parents are wistful things. He's grieved fellow paladins and kindly neighbors, but he's never felt the all-consuming wave of grief that follows the death of a god. He's been drowning in it, only Sirius' grip drawing him back to the surface.
"I'll try," is all that Harry can promise.
"Good. Then I'll do the same."
"With...?"
"Finding out who killed him, obviously," Sirius says, as though that's the conversation they've been having. As though it's the most obvious thing in the world that he cares now about a god he's always disliked on Harry's behalf, for what Harry calls vows and Sirius called chains. "Your priests couldn't tell me anything, so we'll need to do our own research. Consult oracles, talk to priests of gods who were known to be close to him, see if there was a prophecy made about this. Someone has to know something. A god doesn't die out of nowhere, not one as old as that bastard. He has some explaining to do."
Sirius has never looked so much like a dog with a bone. Harry has never loved him so much. Never allowed himself to just give in and lean into Sirius like he does now, trusting that Sirius will hold both his weight and the weight of the Light Lord's death until Harry can do it himself unassisted.
"Thank you," Harry breathes out. It's not enough. It's never enough, this pull that he's felt ever since he met Sirius and thought that maybe, just maybe, there's important things in this world other than service to the Light Lord.
There's moisture at the corners of his eyes. Harry would rather Sirius not see it, even if Sirius has heard Harry sobbing in bed at night, so he hugs him about it, holding on tightly. It's been a day since the last time he hugged Sirius. He's making it a daily tradition. He hopes Sirius won't mind it.
It's easier to get up out of bed the next day when he has a new purpose in life. Solving his god's death keeps the grief from overwhelming him completely, though maybe a smarter man would say that it's just another form of wallowing in his grief. He retraces Sirius' steps first in case the priests at the Light Lord's temple had hesitated to tell Sirius the full truth. Each day, he returns to Grimmauld Place and reports to Sirius his findings for the first part of the meal. For the second part, Sirius makes him talk about things unrelated to the Light Lord, and Harry slowly starts to remember how to do so.
He visits Ron and Hermione, his oldest friends. He picks the newspaper up on occasion. He thinks about careers that don't involve doing the bidding of the gods. He looks to Sirius for answers sometimes; other times, he just looks. Sometimes he thinks that Sirius looks back.
It's wearisome and exhilarating at the same time: the idea that he can do as he pleases now. He could make vows. He could marry if he wishes. He could go up and live in the mountains as a hermit, which he wouldn't do, because Sirius is a city boy for life.
A year after his god's death, Harry calls a meeting of the Light Lord's former priests and paladins, and tells them of his findings. Solving the mystery hadn't made the grief easier, but time has. A year in and he can breathe now without the heaviness in his chest. When the group departs, it is to different paths. Some joined other gods' service, rarely the same one. Others returned to their families. One works as a perfumer's assistant, another joined the circus. A few of the priests went into government. They agree to meet again this day next year, and next, and next until the Light Lord is but a memory.
Harry is the last to leave, circling back to the fountain in the courtyard of the abandoned temple. The fountain's water no longer flows, but the rains have filled its basin. Harry takes a seat on the edge. After a while, Sirius takes a seat next to him.
First Harry tells him of the meeting, of the paths that his old friends took, and then he adds, "Seamus got married a month after the Light Lord's death."
Sirius' chuckle is loud in the empty courtyard. "Scandalous. Is he the one who had been thinking about giving up his vows?"
"He met Dean and couldn't recall why anyone would chase after demons instead of cute artists," Harry says, now only amused instead of the anger he'd once felt on behalf of his god. "I didn't understand him back then. I couldn't see how you could have room for love for a god and love for a person. Wouldn't a god's love eclipse everything else? But maybe I was just in denial. Maybe I couldn't split my focus because I didn't know who I'd choose, and that scared me. It's moot point, now."
"Harry," Sirius says, and there's no censure in his voice. No confusion. "You deserve to live the life you choose. To love who you choose."
Harry takes Sirius' hand in his, brings his knuckles to his lips. "I'm no good at loving with anything except my all. I know this about me. I was an excellent paladin. I think I'd make a good husband, if you're in search of one."
"I suppose I'll have to snatch you up before some god does," Sirius says, and then there's no space between them at all. Sirius says some more things, which Harry stores away in the place in his chest that used to only hold grief, and the one that shines the most is, "I love you. Senselessly, madly, and I'm never letting you go. It's the Light Lord's loss."
Harry would argue that the departed Light Lord could do without Sirius' grudge, but he'd rather just kiss him again, then again.