A Marauder's World

Part 6

A fire burned in Sirius as the man took off with his daughter and Sirius longed to go after him, bash his skull in and take the child in as their own for leaving his family to die, but James still held slow, but steady breaths beneath him. It would have to wait.

"Pete," Sirius barked as Peter wavered, torn between bending down to pick up his gun or help, but looking back towards James for some kind of direction Sirius happily gave. "Go get the medical supplies, now!"

Wormtail swallowed, gave one last look of disgust at where the man vanished into the treeline, before doing as told as Sirius finally sat up and tipped Prongs's head gently into a more stable position to see how bad the damage was. He took off his leather jacket and balled it up to the gushing blood without hesitation. His brains weren't leaking out of his skull at least, and his breathing steadied just a bit more at the new angle.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Remus trying to assess Lily, who was still hunched over, her ragged breathing loudest of all in the sudden silence as the ringing noise of gunfire finally began to fade and silence descended their little village once more. "Lils, talk to me," Sirius encouraged as he looked anxiously towards the diner.

"Piss, off," she gasped, trembling fingers trying to hold all the blood in, and failing at it as Remus couldn't get her hands to move.

"That'a girl," he grinned, his stomach rolling at how much blood was on the pavement. The air already smelled of rustic death. "Moony?"

"Through and through," he confirmed grimly, taking his sweater off to press on the exit, "God, what happened?!"

Loud, everything had been so loud, and moved too fast. The whole thing played back in such a confection of shouting and bullets Sirius wasn't sure himself as he tried to tear it all apart. The stranger had shouted, and James went down. Lily had screamed as the man took off, all he could think in that moment was he would die before letting this waste of a human finish the job on his brother.

"Prongs, you idiot," was all Sirius could think to answer Remus as Peter came fleeing back, ripping plastic bags still sealed with gauze with his teeth. There was a scratch on his hand, the arrow that had done it lodged in a long since useless telephone line, he was getting a smear of blood on their supplies as he tried to dump everything in Sirius's lap before he barked at him to give the rest to Remus.

Sirius's hand was steady with practice as he wiped up the mess and dribbled water and a bottle of vodka onto James's forehead, sighing with the first hint of relief it wasn't too deep, but long, he'd need stitches. Almost in the exact same place as his idiot brother had rescued that man.

Smoothing down the tape and relieved he'd be fine, he turned his attention to Lily as well, Remus and Peter were having issues keeping her still as she kept flinching away and cursing them blue with spurts of whimpering and muffled screams only chocked off my sobs.

"Talk to me Lily," Sirius encouraged, he'd always been best at focusing her disquiet onto him. "Ask me real nice and I might tell you what Prongs found for your anniversary next month."

She groaned in response, but finally articulated something normal, "James, is he-"

"Fine," Sirius assured at once, moving to squat in front of her, still checking over his shoulder at him, then the tree line. "He might even be quiet for five minutes, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Let's get you patched up and back home, you two can share the same bed and have us wait on you hand and foot."

"God forbid, we'll be dead in a week," she said weekly, tears falling fast down her cheeks now, but her hands finally going slack as Remus began pressing gauze down instead. Blood was still dripping from her fingers that trembled with every splatter on the ground. "Harry will, will be wearing dresses in days, you'd eat grass before you figured out-" she stopped with a moan and a hiss of pain as Moony switched to behind her.