Fic: PG-13 - To Feel or Not to Feel? - Sirius/Kingsley

[red-day-dawning.livejournal.com]

Title: To Feel, or Not to Feel?
Author: red_day_dawning
Characters: Sirius Black/Kingsley Shacklebolt; Remus Lupin;
Prompt: “To feel, or not to feel?”
Word count: ~420
Rating: PG-13
Warning/s: angst; character death
Disclaimer: JKR owns the copyrighted HP characters & settings
Author’s notes: Continues on from Because My Heart Knows
Link to prompt table: http://red-day-dawning.livejournal.com/18707.html

The call had gone out among the Order members – Potter had gone to the Ministry seeking Sirius – into a trap laid by Voldemort, using the boy’s love for his godfather, and relying on his impetuosity. Kingsley cursed the boy’s reckless impetuous nature, and cursed the equally reckless and impetuous nature, that dragged Sirius away from Grimmauld Place and to the Ministry.

Fools, he cursed.

And yet that was part of why Kingsley loved Sirius so – that capacity for bright, blazing joy, that fierceness in loving, that courage that propelled Sirius into situations where any person of sense would surely be wary. That passion that allowed and compelled Sirius to surrender to Kingsley, giving himself over completely, despite Remus’s concerns and Kingsley’s own qualms.

Sirius was a moth hurling himself joyfully into the heart of the flame, no holding back, no safe distances – and Kingsley, after all, was no different, he too was a moth hurling into the heat, the ferocity of loving Sirius, despite all his internal voices that pleaded for caution, and restraint, and common sense.

To feel, or not to feel? – it seemed Kingsley had made his choices, just like Sirius – and he felt and he loved. And right now, when he ought to be focusing on Potter’s danger in the Ministry… Wrenching his mind away from Sirius, Kingsley forced himself to concentrate on the most immediate and pressing concerns – to focus on the greatest priority: to get Potter and his fool-companions safely away from the Ministry.

~*~

Incapacitated by pain, Kingsley reeled to the ground, aware of nothing beyond the pain of Bellatrix LeStrange’s curse. And so, at the moment Sirius fell through the Veil, Kingsley was not aware of what was going on around him – was not aware that Sirius was now in his own battle with the LeStrange-bitch. And yet, of course, he was aware. He knows what has happened, surveying the scene with pain-distorted, bleary eyes; he knows looking at Harry and Remus; he knows hearing the tones of grief and desperation in their voices. He knows. Sirius is gone.

~*~

To feel, or not to feel? He longs for numbness, he wishes he could stop feeling. And finally, he prays to unknown gods that all such feeling be exorcised. But the gods he prays to are, it seems, both deaf and uncaring, and the pain never really goes away – not after a month, a year, a decade.

He sometimes forgets for a second, a minute, half a day, and then some sudden recollection – a shaft of brilliant sunlight, a starry night-sky, the sound of barking laughter, the heat and light at the heart of a candle-flame, a memory of the joy of being inside Sirius, buried deep – will ambush him, impale him anew with loss and grief and memory.

To feel, or not to feel? It seems there never really was a choice.

~*~