Nox (The Marauders, Wolfstar, Jily)

15: shit getssssssssssssssssss r e a l

There was something in the back of Sirius' mind that almost hadn't quite expected him to wake up again. Perhaps that could serve to explain the surprise that outweighed his confusion as his eyes finally faded back from black, and the warm, more homely than clinical, interior of the hospital wing came into focus.

It was early. He could tell that at least, yet only from the golds and pinks that streaked across the sky from the window across the room. The clock face to his right, however, still remained as little more than a garbled mess, as if not only had his vision faded greatly, he'd managed to completely forget how to read or tell the time too.

But it was early; he clung to what he knew. He clung to the world slowly fading back into focus around him. He clung to what he had, and everything within reach, for he so desperately feared that it might all fade back out around him again. He was yet to make sense of the night before, of his current situation, what had brought him to lay in a bed in the hospital wing, but despite that he definitely couldn't escape the feeling of dread hanging over his heart like a warrant for his death. Even in his current state, he could perfectly understand what that meant, and it was that understanding which scared him most of all.

He resorted to watching the world for a while, watching the morning grow and the skies become blue, for moving, even slightly, seemed like such a toll and an effort that he shouldn't even attempt to bother with. He wasn't sure if it was just his heart or his body that felt heavy too, and that he had faded out into nothing but a whisper of a memory, a fading spirit trapped inside his bones, waiting for dawn to become dusk, for old to become new, waiting for the whole world to pass him by.

That was the thing, even as he only lay there, with his head comfortably against the pillow, watching the sunrise, he felt so trapped, so lost inside himself, and so unreasonably scared, even bordering on terrified, perhaps. It was only worsened by the fact that try as he might, he just couldn't put it all into words, he just couldn't explain to himself, rationale was out of reach, and he was drifting away, like a persistent tide, forever just out of your grasp, and then suddenly in chasing the ocean, you were in there waist deep, and all knowledge of how to swim was quick to escape you.

Sirius just didn't feel like his body anymore. There was a confusion, a separation, a surprise, and he did indeed feel so much more at home with the darkness that came when he closed his eyes. It was however in recognising that he felt a horrible feeling of dread overcome him, seeping up from his gut, and he came to fix his eyes on the sunrise instead, sometimes even going for minutes at a time without blinking.

He was scared. It was all so odd. He was so scared. And it was not just that he didn't see the end, it was that he'd found himself completely unable to recall just what an end was, or what form it might take, allowing it to completely pass him by forever. Despite his gut feeling, all he wanted in the world was just to close his eyes and let the world sink in around him, let him fall through the water inside his head, soon to drown somewhere at the bottom, because it wasn't that he no longer needed to breathe air, it was as if he'd forgotten how.

In the end, he did. The waves lapped over him like a gentle breeze, and the sudden emptiness was not overwhelming, but comforting somewhat. Weirdly so.

-

The next time he woke up, he found that he had much more come to expect it. The walls of the hospital wing came back with familiarity, and he came to properly recall this as a place in which he had spent a decent portion of his time in over the past few years. Before it had seemed much more like a distant shadow: a place he might had one day seen in a dream many years ago, or on a page of a storybook when he was a child, but in Sirius' life there had been few dreams and fewer storybooks, and reality always tasted just as cold and just as bitter. He struggled however to find a proper kind of comfort within it.