"Irreplacable" Susan/Seamus, 5/13

[thanfiction.livejournal.com]

Title: Irreplacable
Pairing: Susan/Seamus
Prompt: These Young Men
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: Love is more than the sum of its parts.
Author's Notes: Set in the DAYDverse, uses the canon of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness and the sequel novel, Sluagh. Will not make sense without them. Both stories, as well as the rest of the 'verse, can be found here
Link to Prompt Table: On my LJ, here

OOO

 

As long as he could remember, Seamus’ life had been volatile.  It had always been a struggle, a tempestuous and uncertain battle against something to see the end of each day, and never the ability to more than vaguely predict what the next would bring.  He had thrived on the chaos, in his own way, sinking his teeth into the challenge and drawing his strength from what tore him apart little by little, able to tolerate steadiness only when it was the nothing blur of drunken oblivion that wasn’t life at all.

When he had first been imprisoned, it had been the rote sameness that had driven him into the uncushioned depression, and only the offer of another fight in attaining Susan’s friendship had begun to draw him out at all.  He didn’t know if it had been Anthony’s true intention, a kindly underhanded trick of sorts, but the friendship had long since become something real, and in the necessary emergence it had taken, he had changed in ways he had never expected of himself. 

Azkaban would have killed him, that much he knew for certain now.  Whether he had merely given up and let the weakness of his wounds slide into an irreversible decline, or if he’d simply drifted into the path of an old enemy without resistance, he’d never have made six months, but here he was at almost a full year gone, and he wasn’t merely still alive.  There was always something to do at the Loch, more than challenge enough in nature herself to keep him on his toes, and the Fund to help with besides if it all became too grindingly manual, but there was still rhythm, still routine to the ebb and flow of the flocks and seasons, his evenings with Susan and Cecily, the visits of friends he’d once written off. 

His mother had even come for Christmas, and it was that which had first made it real that something was different, the praise of Fearless Leader and the other DA too easy to write off as platitudes.  Mam had never been given to those, the bluntness he was notorious for having been inherited directly from her, and she had still burst into tears when he had greeted her at the door.  It had frightened him, the frantic way she ran her hands over him, pulled open his shirt to unceremoniously examine the scar on his chest, but it was faded to pale pink against a body that was sturdy and strong, and she had taken his face in her hands, fingertips skimming high on his cheeks and a gasping smile on her lips as she’d stared deep into his eyes.  “There ya are,” she’d whispered, “there’s the man I’ve been prayin’ to see since ya were a boy.”

He still didn’t know for sure what she’d seen or not seen there, but he knew that he felt different; calmer, his temper under easier control, less driven, though no less alive.  That new control was something that he was having put to the test now, because the lambing and pupping season had arrived, and the surge of extra help brought in from surrounding counties meant more than just unfamiliar faces.

To them, he was a sideshow curiosity and a figure of scorn; small and long-haired, tattooed and foreign among the tight-knit families of Scotsmen who all looked as if they could be – and likely were – in some way relations of Ernie’s.  War hero turned serial killer, there only by the incomprehensible charity of their friend’s English widow, they shared the rumors about him as if he weren’t even standing there, as if he hadn’t come to be familiar with the Highland slang, but what infuriated him most was how they talked about Susan. 

Rich and beautiful, almost six years widowed, they all assumed that she would not only remarry eventually, but that it was only a question of which of them would ‘win’ her.  Were they not all just as pure-blooded, just as Scots, just as broadly built, just as good with the land and the farm as Ernie had been?  And she was still more than young enough to have many more children, the girl that Seamus had come to feel as protective of as if she were his own family barely mentioned in their plans. 

It all became too much one day when her visit to the barn to fetch a runt pup for hand-rearing had resulted in the ‘casual’ loss of a half-dozen shirts, and he had lurked in the shadows outside the door to grab her arm as she left, wincing guiltily as he saw her flinch under the grip that anger had made tighter than he intended.  “I’d have a word with ya!” 

She frowned, the little pup squirming in his blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms as she glanced first into the barn, then back to his flushed and blazing face before stepping aside to join him, her own voice lowered to match his surreptitious hiss.  “What’s going on, Seamus?  You look like you’re going to strangle someone.” 

“Lucky they’ll be if that’s all I do.”  He glowered towards the half-open door, tapping the handle of the utility knife at his belt.  “Want ya keep Cecily away from us lads next few days.  Like’s not there’ll be a donny down, and I don’t want her hearin’ the sort o’ thing I intend to say, nor seein’ if I show them a bit o’ what they fancy me famous for.” 

Her mouth dropped open, and she looked as if only her arms being full prevented him from receiving a swift swat upside the head as she leaned in close, eyes sparking furiously.  “Are you out of your mind?!”

“Not so much any more,” he replied, the smooth steadiness to his voice making it quite clear that the matter was no joke or rash outburst as he continued darkly.  “But that’s thanks to ya and Cecily, and I ain’t seein’ those bastards talk o’ claimin’ and breedin’ ya like a prize bloody ewe!  Think they can just flex at ya and you’ll fall swoonin’ at their feet!”

Susan’s reaction was not at all what he’d expected.  Rather than horror, disgust, even innocent surprise, her dark head tilted, one brow raising in what looked like bemused fascination as she actually smirked at him.  He had never seen that look on her face before, and he wasn’t sure what it meant, or why he found it almost as endearing as Cecily’s sunniest smiles.  “Why, Seamus Finnigan, are you jealous?”

“Not half!”  Seamus made a harsh, scornful noise, waving his hand at the barn again.  “If ya were wantin’ one o’ them, that’s your business, and I’m far from bein’ the type o’ man be good for ya anyways – I’m more o’ the ‘what were his name again’ the mornin’ after than ‘better or worse,’ I am – but I ain’t seein’ ya hurt again, and I ain’t so far from the shadows I couldn’t step right back if need.” 

The smirk vanished, and now her expression was solemnly tender as she shifted the pup in her hold, reaching out to cup his chin in her softly gloved palm.  “That means a lot to me, it really does, but I’m not going to get hurt again.”

“Those – “

“Despite what they think - despite what Fiona thinks, and she’s tried to set me up with most of these young men already – they’ve got it all wrong.”

Seamus frowned, not sure whether he was more surprised to find those were the source of Susan’s complaints about her mother-in-law’s matchmaking tendencies, or by the strange quality to the relief he felt in her determined rejection.  “I don’t reckon ya.”

 “Ernie and I may only have been together a little while,” she smiled sadly, “but I fell in love with him when I was twelve years old and he helped me save a rabbit that had been attacked by Mrs. Norris.  I fell in love with his heart; with the part of him that held those doors, that walked the common room for hours cradling second-years in his arms and rocking them like toddlers after they’d had their first Cruciatus, that loved deeply enough to call on the raw roots of magic to cheat death itself.  That was my husband, not his biceps, not his burr, not a few acres of real estate in the Highlands.  And that can’t be replaced.” 

He nodded quietly in too much understanding of the loss still fresh in her words, wrapping an arm around her slim shoulders with a gentle squeeze.  “No, that it can’t.  One o’ the best men I’ve ever known, he were, and I ain’t just sayin’ that, neither.”

“I know you aren’t.”  She paused, and the smile deepened as her dark eyes came up to meet his.  “And I know you won’t believe me when I say that he respected you just as much.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, “that were then.” 

For a moment, she looked about to argue him, then she just shook her head almost imperceptibly, and her face became completely somber again.  “Just promise me that if it starts getting to you, you’ll step aside before you do anything stupid?  I don’t want you going to Azkaban.” 

“Nah;” He cast her a wink and a smirk of his own.  “Knowin’ ‘zactly how much they’re pissin’ in the wind just makes it funny now, it do.  I’ll be fine.”

“I meant it, there’s nothing for you to worry about,” She pressed, raising her hand between them to display the rings she still wore.  “I’m still very much a married woman.”

Seamus nodded again, and she stepped away now, turning towards the farmhouse and starting to leave again before she stopped, looking back curiously.  “Oh, one more thing…Seamus?”

“Aye?”

“I wanted to ask…” She hesitated, and her expression was something rather like embarrassment tinted heavily over amusement.  “Have you been working with Cecily on her reading?”

“’Course I have,” he replied immediately.

“Teaching her what letters make what sounds?”

Seamus frowned.  “How else’d ya go about it?”

“I thought so.”  The odd little smile was wider now, the amusement sparkling more vividly on her pretty mouth, and he crossed his arms in growing suspicion at the unusual sight of Susan Macmillan looking what he would swear was mischievous. 

“Somethin’ wrong?”

“Not at all, she’s coming along wonderfully…” She chuckled, crossing the few steps back to him to tap him lightly on the chest with one finger.  “But I couldn’t help but notice that when she decided to read me ‘Little Dragon’s Big Day’ this morning, my Anglo-Scots daughter became rather abruptly Irish.” 

He blinked, startled.  “I -”

“No, it’s sweet,” she laughed.  “You know, I’d never realized how thick your accent actually is.  It didn’t seem that broad at Hogwarts.”

“I were spendin’ all me time with Dean, I were,” he shrugged.  “And there weren’t a dozen o’ us Paddys in t’whole school.  Put me five years deep in Erin’s belly, though, and another ten where I never spoke but the pure Gaelic…ah, but what’dya do?”         

The teasingly reproachful finger became a hand pressed firm and flat against his heart, and her voice had softened, the friendship that still sometimes caught him off guard in its simple, priceless affection rich in her eyes.  “You keep being so good to Cecily, and however deep its brogue, you watch that sharp Irish tongue around the hired help.  I don’t want trouble.”

He took her hand, bowing to kiss it in a deliberately overdone gesture of chivalry.  “I can take care o’ meself.”

Her brows lifted, and she looked at him archly, and again there was that trace of a smirk that didn’t look as out of place as it should on the witch who seemed to always carry such a veil of sober responsibility, even in her joys.  “I didn’t mean you.  We need the workmen.”

THE END