"Point of No Return" Susan/Seamus, 11/13

[thanfiction.livejournal.com]

Title: Point of No Return
Pairing: Susan/Seamus
Prompt: The game of compromise
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,600
Summary: Sometimes life does not go according to plan, but it is what we do in those moments that defines who we really are.
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

“Trev, you already ate yours.  That’s Peggy’s biscuit.  Leave it alone!” Neville knelt down, reaching out with both arms to scoop up his twins in a fairly impressive bit of parental juggling.  The wails of the two toddlers increased exponentially, now sharpened by their indignation over not being allowed to murder one another for the bit of chocolate biscuit still clutched in the little girl’s chubby fist, but they were clutched securely under each arm now, and Neville shook his head as he stood.  “Sorry about this, they’re just way overtired…n-a-p-s should have been hours ago.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Susan laughed gently, reaching towards Trevor in an offer to take the uselessly struggling child.  “I’ll put them down in the guest room.”

“I’ve got it,” Neville winced slightly as Peggy managed to twist enough to land a good kick to his back, but he didn’t even need to shift his hold to keep them both secure as he headed for the stairs, his voice rising with mildly exasperated practice above the shrieks.  “Really…it’s kind of an art, and it’ll be a lot easier for everyone if they just finish the n-a-p and I’m already g-o-n-e.  Thanks again for doing this for us.”

Seamus followed him up the stairs, Susan close behind, and he was careful to stay mostly out of range of flailing little fists and feet, stopping only a moment to pick up a shoe that Trevor had kicked off.  “Your Gran and Mr. Abbott should be there; ain’t no problem for us t’watch the little buggers for a while.”

“It might be two or three days,” Neville warned.  “She’s been having contractions for almost a whole day now, and if she doesn’t start moving along, they’re going to induce this evening, and then we don’t know.” He sighed, but there was a faintly panicky look in his eyes that made Seamus have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning.  “The twins were just completely different than this from the beginning.”

“We’ll keep them long’s ya need.” He patted his friend on the shoulder as Susan opened the door of the guest room, but Neville paused there, looking back down the hallway towards the stairs. 

“They’ve got –“

“They’ve got ‘nuff stuff for a year, Fearless Leader,” Seamus assured him, unable to wholly suppress the chuckle this time.  “You’d think Hermione’d packed ya.”

For a moment, Neville looked rather offended, then he blushed, biting his lip as he shifted the finally-quieting children to be held against his shoulders rather than tucked under each arm, and in those few seconds, the sheepish smile seemed so much like the boy Seamus had shared his adolescence with that it was rather shocking against the scarred and hardened face.  “She was involved, yes.”

“No kidding,” Susan said dryly, then leaned up to kiss Neville on the cheek, shooing him on through the door into the guest room.  “You get going, though, and give our love to Hannah and the baby…go ahead and Apparate as soon as they’re down; under the circumstances, we’re hardly going to consider it rude.  You’ll send a Patronus the moment –“

“Absolutely,” Neville nodded quickly.  “And an owl right behind that with pictures.  Thanks again.”

They closed the door behind him, lingering a few moments to insure that their help wouldn’t be needed further for the time being, then Seamus turned back to the stairs, shaking his head fondly as a loud cry of protest proved that at least one of the twins had figured out what their father had in store for them.  “Don’t know how he does it.  Love her to death, I do, but still glad I missed the part o’ her life where me Banphrionsa were a bit more o’ a Banshee.  Ain’t ‘fraid t’say that babies scare the hell out o’ me.  Don’t like them much.”

Susan stopped at the bottom of the stairs, regarding him with an expression that looked more suited to a confession that he had always secretly wanted to be a Death Eater.  “Honest?”

“Never known what you’re ‘sposed to do with them.” He gave a good-natured but helpless shrug.  “They just lay there and wail atcha.”

Her eyes widened, and she actually took a step back.  “You really don’t like babies?”

“Don’t mean I….” Seamus stopped, frowning.  He knew that women had certain assumptions about men who liked young children or fluffy little animals, but her reaction was more than that kind of disappointment, and certainly more than made sense for someone whose daughter he had helped raise from the age of four.  “Ya got a look on your face, Sue.  Worryin’ me.  Ya ain’t gettin’ all itchy for ‘nother one yourself just ‘cause Fearless Leader can’t keep his hands off his wife no two minutes, are ya?”

“Not exactly…oh, hell.”  She turned away, rubbing at her forehead, her voice so quiet that he didn’t even know if she meant to be talking only to herself.  “I wanted to talk to Hannah first, but I know what she’d say, and she’s right, or she’d be right, anyway.”

“Sue?”

“Seamus….” She took a deep breath, slowly coming around to face him again, and the look in her eyes was a kind of gravity he had never seen before, and which made him far more nervous than he had expected, sending a cool, fluttering sensation to the pit of his stomach.  “We need to talk.”

“What’re we doin’ now, then?”  The attempt at levity failed miserably, and he knew it even before her frown deepened and she sat down on the bottom step, motioning him to sit beside her.    

“I mean seriously talk.  Because there’s a problem, and I don’t really have the right to just make the decisions about it alone.”  He was confused at first by the laden tone to her words, as if he were supposed to already know what the problem was, but then he saw the hand she had placed so deliberately over her lower belly, and it felt abruptly like the entire farm had run out of air. 

“Ya are not pregnant.”  She nodded wordlessly, and he heard himself let out a low moan, his elbows bracing on his knees as he dropped his head forward into his hands.  “Oh, shite.  That ain’t possible! We’ve been so careful, we –“

“Yes,” Susan interrupted firmly, “But we were idiots in the barn, and the second time, too.”

“How sure are ya?”

“Two positive spells.  And I’m like clockwork.” Her lips curved into a weak smile.  “The last time I was late more than a day was almost nine years ago, and her name is Cecily.”

“Feck.”

“That’s the gist of how we got here, yes.”

He drew a deep breath, forcing himself to sit up straight, shoulders pulled back as he met her eyes with all the matter-of-fact calm he could pull over the something that had started screaming in the back of his head.  “So I don’t see where there’s a choice to be makin’ at this point, I don’t.  We got ourselves a baby.”

There was no question in her eyes that she could see right through his front, and how strange was it that even at a time like this, it made him want somehow to kiss her as she took his hand in both of hers.  “Seamus, I love you, but while it’s one thing to be in a relationship with you, it would be the death of the Fund and all it’s doing for our friends to have what too many stuffy old witches and wizards would see as nothing but a bastard.”

The cold practicality of her statement stung, but he ignored it, wrapping his other hand to clasp theirs tightly.  “Then we get married, we do, and even those sorts don’t make such a big deal ‘bout countin’ months too precise if nobody’s too young.  ” 

“That’s very chivalrous, but I’m not going to ask you to get married just because we got carried away.” Her head was held high, and there was a fragile defiance to every aching word that made him feel like he had failed her completely by letting himself fall into a few weeks of such careless happiness.  “I am a witch, I do have options to take care of things while it’s still early.”

Seamus’ jaw set, and he shook his head, pulling his hands away to cross his arms tightly over his chest.  He’d half expected it from what she had already said, but while he didn’t think it was perhaps always murder like some he knew, having an abortion to spare an awkward situation was something he found beyond wrong.  “If I’ve any say in it ‘tall, I ain’t gonna have no more blood on me hands, and that’s what it’d be to me if’s I told ya to end it just ‘cause I’ve been too ‘fraid to even think o’ ever proposin’ to ya.”

“What about Cecily?” She replied hotly.  “I don’t want her to see us forced into marriage.”

“I didn’t say none o’ that!” There was an edge of anger to his voice that surprised him.  “I said I been ‘fraid to say anythin’, ‘cause I’ve never thought could be.  Havin’ ya in me arms and in me bed now and again’s near enough hard to believe.  But marriage is for folk like Fearless Leader.  I ain’t got no right ask ya to make the likes o’ me anythin’ more than your lover.”

To his surprise, she did not become defensive, nor even argue him.  Instead, her face softened into a sad, loving smile, and she brushed her hand over his cheek in what at any other time he would have thought to be the prelude to a kiss. “Will you ever stop that, Seamus?”

“What?”

“Talking about yourself as if you’re worthless.  If nothing else, what are you saying about me?  That I have no taste in men?  That I’m slumming?  That I couldn’t get ‘better’?”  There was a coolly accusatory tone to the last, and he looked away, honestly never having considered it like that before and a bit nonplussed. 

“’Course not!”

“Then why would you think you couldn’t say anything?” she asked gently. 

He hesitated a long time before replying, trying to wrap words that would make any kind of sense around the confusion that had swirled down onto their simple love affair as he twisted the end of his ponytail between his fingers.  “Fine, ‘tis, that ya think so much o’ me.  I sometimes even think I can almost see it meself, when ya believe it so much, and heaven knows I try to be half the man ya swear I am, but there’s more to it.   What about Cecily’s inheritance?  The Fund?  That’s Ernie’s money, ‘tis, and only yours for bein’ his widow.  Would the Macmillans still be wantin’ us livin’ here?  What o’ the rest o’ me time?  I’ve still more than eleven years, and then what?  No offense, and I don’t know what I do be wantin’ do with meself, but I ain’t gonna be growin’ old as no shepherd, I ain’t.  Isn’t me.” 

He didn’t look up when he finished, and her voice held no clue what he would see if he did.  “We’re going to have to have a long talk with the Macmillans, obviously, and this isn’t going to be easy or simple, no matter what we do.” 

“Well, endin’ it ain’t no choice for me,” he spread his hands, then let them drop heavily onto his thighs with a dark chuckle.  “Though I can’t be stoppin’ ya.”

“Then it’s just whether we get married, or whether we play the game of compromise and hide it as long as we can, then find an excuse to keep me on the farm and out of sight when I get too big.”

Now he did look up, raising one eyebrow skeptically at her.  “And the baby?  Are we ‘sposed to have found it floatin’ in the Loch?”

Her cheeks were pale, but her eyes had that steely distance he hadn’t seen directed at him in longer than he’d realized; the businesswoman’s necessarily heartlessly practical shell.  “I would abruptly be able to find someone willing to let Sinead adopt that baby she’s been trying to get for so long.”

Seamus actually considered the idea for a few seconds, then jerked his hand up the stairs and towards Cecily’s room.  “Little girls got big mouths.”

“It’s a risk we’d have to take,” she admitted.

It was ridiculous to feel like he had been rejected for something he had never intended to ask, but he couldn’t entirely hide the disappointment he suddenly felt.  “Then ya don’t want to marry me.”

“I didn’t say that.”  Susan stopped, her eyes closing as her head slumped, and er voice was nearly girlish, though she looked somehow far older than her twenty-six years.  I just…I don’t want to get my hopes up, Seamus.  We can’t put ourselves before almost thirty people who rely on me for so much.” 

“Could ya forgive me if I said my hopes were already up?” He confessed hesitantly, cupping her chin to turn her face to his so she could see the sincerity there.  “And if I’ll be prayin’ we can find a way to make it work with Duncan and Fiona?”

It was no surprise that there were tears in her eyes, but he was still startled when she lunged forward, kissing him with a hard, desperate passion before she finally drew back, her voice barely a whisper but an iron demand nonetheless. “You swear!”

“Huh?”

“Look me in the eyes, Seamus Finnigan, and you swear to me, swear on whatever it was that you held deep enough to tear apart time and death!” She was trembling, the tears thick on her cheeks over the words that never wavered.  “Swear that it’s me you want, not just doing the right thing, not because you feel trapped here or trapped with this pregnancy or trapped with me, because so help me, the only thing worse than losing another husband would be killing one, and I know what a cage does to you!” 

There was no delay to his answer, there didn’t need to be, and he wrapped her hands in his in a hold so tight that she should have flinched but didn’t, his eyes locked hard on hers.  “I swear to ya, Susan.  No matter what happens, ya ain’t never been me cage, and ya couldn’t be.”

For all that people had told him he was brave, he had never felt it as much as he did now, but he let himself continue, knowing that he was taking an irrevocable step into a life he had never planned, but knowing all the same that it was right, knowing with a certainty that made his heart beat with more terror than the choice itself.  “You’re the sunshine ‘tween the bars, and maybe I’m scared t’death for a thousand reasons, but ain’t none o’ them’s the thought o’ havin’ ya mine for the rest o’ me life.”  He paused, and she frowned to see the mischievous smile that had come over his mouth.  “But I swear’t only on one condition, I do.”

“What’s that?”

“Ya name it Severus, Alecto, or Amycus, and I’m walkin’; parole or no.”

He had said it with the utmost gravity, but it was beautiful to hear her laugh, to see her wipe at her cheek with her sleeve and smile at him in what was love even as much as hope or relief.  “I promise.”

“Then I’m yours.”  Seamus kissed her; slowly and deeply, allowing his hand to slip down the line of her body and rest determinedly against her flat stomach as he whispered the oath against the softness of her lips.  “Yours, and both o’ your children’s.  Forever.  I swear.”

THE END