Where You End and I Begin

Summary: And James was walking on air, floating through his own life. Everything was wonderful and spectacular and fantastic and Sirius was happy for him – really.

AN: So, I sat down to write something fluffy and cheerful… and came up with this. Which is neither. Also, it technically takes place in the same universe as my other story Epithet, but no knowledge of that one-shot is necessary for this one.

I'll take you in pieces
We can take it all apart
I've suffered shipwrecks right from the start
I've been underwater, breathing out and in
I think I'm losing where you end and I begin

- The XX, "Basic Space"

At some point, there stopped being a James without Lily.

It didn't bother Sirius, not really. James was his best mate, after all, and anything that made James happy couldn't be all that bad.

And Lily definitely made James happy.

But there were moments… moments when James would look at Lily, and Sirius felt as though the whole world was fading before his eyes. His world was James – James and Remus and Peter. His world was the Marauders. There was nothing outside of that, not anymore. There hadn't been for a long while, and though his leaving home made the split from his family irrevocably permanent, it didn't really change that much. They hadn't been his family in years.

It was just him and James and Remus and Peter.

And now Lily.

None of them had ever had a serious girlfriend before. Not like this. Not the kind of girlfriend that might someday – when they were much older, Sirius was sure, when they were real adults – become a wife. And Sirius had almost believed it would never happen, that the dynamic would always remain the same and they'd never have to navigate this particular pitfall of growing up. But then suddenly Lily and James were Lily and James and things just sort of… changed.

But James was happy, so Sirius was happy for him and everything was alright…

Until it wasn't.

In retrospect, though, it didn't happen all at once. There was no single day, no line that could divide their lives into a before and an after.

It happened in pieces.

There was the first crack that appeared when Lily finally said yes. But that was small – insignificant, really – because everyone, even James, assumed Lily would break up with him shortly after.

But she didn't.

And James was walking on air, floating through his own life. Everything was wonderful and spectacular and fantastic and Sirius was happy for him – really.

The second crack was bigger. The second one was inescapable, and for a few hours it threw everything on its head. The world turned upside-down and sideways, and Sirius felt as though he was desperately grasping at straws, attempting to hold onto something that kept slipping away.

James tried to be nice to Snape.

Snape hexed him, of course, because he was unable or unwilling to believe that this wasn't a trick, that James wasn't plotting another prank to embarrass him. And they fought, and Lily was upset and Remus was exasperated and McGonagall was furious, but none of that mattered to Sirius because James had tried to be nice to Snape.

For Lily.

Because of Lily.

"I think we should grow up," James said when Sirius called him on it. "It's not about Lily, but I think we just… we have to stop picking on Snape. No matter how obsessed he is with the Dark Arts." He looked so serious, so… adult, as he finished, "I want to grow up."

Only because Evans wants you too. Only because you're still head over heels for a girl who has hated you for years and would probably still hate if you hadn't changed for her.

Sirius didn't say the words, but it didn't stop him from thinking them.

But James was happy and so he was happy for James.

Really.

The third, fourth, and fifth cracks were so small, so incredibly inconsequential, that Sirius didn't even recognize them for what they were until it was far too late to do anything about it. It was just James sitting next to Lily in the Great Hall and James studying with Lily in the library and James laughing with Lily after Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was just the way James smiled with his arm draped so casually around Lily's shoulders or at her waist, as though it belonged there.

As though he belonged there.

And maybe he did.

And James still played games with them and helped arrange the more harmless pranks and spent every full moon in their company. And if he was a bit more mature, a bit more serious, a bit more adult…

Well, he was happy. Ecstatically so.

And so Sirius was happy for him - really.

Things changed when they left Hogwarts. The world was different – he was different. Everything had erupted into chaos and violence. The Death Eaters filled the newspaper headlines with stories of attacks and murders and disappearances, and Sirius knew his own family was involved.

The war was slowly seeping into everything.

Outside of Hogwarts, he was a Black. And the insanity that had spent years leaking into his inbred line of crazed pureblood ancestors couldn't be fought off with jokes and laughter because the world was going to war and he didn't know how to be good. He didn't know how to be on the right side. His life was defined by sharp lines – us and them. The rest of the family and him. The Marauders and everyone else.

Except Lily. Lily didn't fit into the categories delineated by those lines.

James' world was bright white and heavy black – good and evil. He didn't think in groups as much as he thought in ideas and ideals, and Sirius didn't have that. He'd never been good at knowing when a joke turned into actual harm.

Snape was proof enough of that.

Sirius joined the Order.

Another us to be separated out from all the them.

Them – the them that included Regulus.

The first time he had seen Regulus on the other side of war was during his sixth year at Hogwarts, during an attack on Hogsmeade that had utterly shattered their illusions about the safety of the school. Regulus had pulled a hood over his features and slipped into the fray but Sirius had seen enough to know – to understand.

His brother was only fifteen and he was already past redemption.

And now Sirius was in the Order, and there was no more pretending. There was no way to ignore the truth – to turn a blind eye to his little brother's plight.

"We all have to make our choices," Mad-Eye Moody said the first day they joined the Order. "Are you willing to stand with us until the end? Are you willing to stand with us even when you care about the people on the other side?"

Sirius hesitated.

James didn't.

Moody didn't trust him. Maybe it was the hesitation, maybe it was the family name. Or maybe it was just that Moody didn't trust anyone and Sirius was the only one paranoid enough to believe he was being singled out.

At the meetings, with Moody's eyes always on him and his own doubts and anger causing shivers to run along his spine, Sirius would glance at James and catch a smile, a wink. Something – anything. A reminder that they were in this together, fighting the same fight, facing the same enemy.

Us and them.

But even that was fading. The smile would only last for a single heartbeat and the wink even less. More and more often, Sirius found himself looking at James while James was looking at Lily.

"He's always going to be your best mate," Remus said, "and you're always going to be his."

Sirius hadn't confided in Remus, hadn't told the other Marauders of his own insecurities or fears. Hadn't ever mentioned just how terrified he was that James was replacing him with Lily.

He didn't have to say any of that – Remus already knew. Remus always knew that sort of thing.

And Sirius wondered if Remus felt it, too.

"He loves Lily, but she can't take your place," Remus said.

It was easy for James. He took missions eagerly, even the boring ones that he would have once scoffed at. And when Dumbledore commented on this, James said simply and with all the naïve honesty of someone who has never felt the darkness Sirius knew crept through his own bloodline, "Lily and I are going to start a family some day, and I want a better world for our children."

Lily had smiled when James said that, her fingers resting lightly on his arm, her eyes never leaving his face.

And James had smiled back.

Sirius knew that James was getting pressured by some of the other pureblood families to drop Lily in favor of a more acceptable witch. And sometimes, when Lily wasn't around, James would tell Sirius of the threats and the manipulations. He didn't want Lily to know, never wanted her to think that she wasn't everything to him. And Sirius would listen to James' words and try to offer whatever advice he could, but all the while he would wonder if maybe it would be better – easier – if James and Lily called it quits.

But then James would look at Lily as though he didn't have a care in the world. As though the war couldn't touch him, couldn't harm him, because he had Lily, and his love for her was strong enough to protect them both.

Sirius didn't want that kind of love for himself – he'd never wanted that. He wasn't ready to settle down and he certainly wasn't ready for love. But he wanted to know, even if only for a moment, what it felt like to have someone who made the world seem like a better place even as it went tumbling towards the darkness.

Then he thought of James and Remus and Peter and wondered if maybe he'd had that all along.

"We are your family," Peter said on the day that Sirius first told him about Regulus being a Death Eater. "We are your brothers. And we will always be on your side."

Lily didn't understand, and Sirius didn't bother trying to explain it to her. They'd reached a sort of harmony at Hogwarts – he'd given her the nickname Morgana and she'd dumped pumpkin juice on his head – and that had been all he felt he could really hope for. Anything else was pushing his luck.

She didn't understand that it wasn't about just her. It was about the war and the perpetual fear and doubt and mistrust that lingered over everything. It was about his own shortcomings and his own bloodline and the brother he could never quite forget. It was about trying to live in between the lines in a world that kept spilling over the boundaries.

He'd spent all his life breaking other people's rules, but trying to live within the confines of his own. Then his world had changed, had been shattered into a million little pieces, by her and Regulus and the war. The damage – and he tried not to think about it like that because James was happy and shouldn't that count for something? – had been done and there was no way to undo it now.

She tried to talk to him about it – once.

The conversation had started awkwardly and ended quickly.

"Don't you get it?" Sirius asked, and maybe Lily did get it but Sirius doubted that. "For James," he said, speaking the words that had haunted him for so long, "there are only three types of people in the world: those who practice the Dark Arts, those who fight the Dark Arts, and you."

And still, Lily wanted to help.

She had a kind of purity that burned with a blinding brilliance. It cleared away the darkness in their lives, but it left blistered skin and scorched pupils in its wake. Cleansing by fire. Being around her just hurt. She cared too much and tried too hard and Sirius couldn't help but stare at her in awe.

How did anyone carry that much emotion inside of them and not go crazy?

But maybe that was his own flaw. Maybe Lily could feel so strongly and still retain her sanity, but he felt his own slipping away with every passing day. People got hurt, people died… and slowly, he seemed to realize that he wasn't immortal. None of them were immortal, and this war was going to destroy them.

Lily saw a future filled with hope. She prayed for a future of happiness. She planned for a future of children and laughter and joy.

Sirius just wanted there to be a future.

The night he saw Regulus kill a member of the Order, he put his hand through the wall of James' new house.

It hurt.

"Damn it," he whispered, pulling his hand back and staring at the blood on his knuckles. The wall - stained red, broken, chipped paint, such a contrast to the perfect domesticity of James' home - didn't budge and it irrationally irritated him that he couldn't destroy the thing. He hit it again, feeling his skin split at the contact, feeling his bones smash against the plaster.

James stood in the doorway of the room giving him platitudes that didn't mean anything - it's going to be alright and we're here and we can help you. It wasn't going to be alright and no one could help him and Regulus had killed. Nothing James said was ever going to fix that.

Moody had told them to make their choice - pick a side.

Us and them.

The day he learned of Regulus' death, Sirius told the others that it didn't matter. Regulus wasn't his family - wasn't his brother. Regulus had chosen his side a long time ago.

Remus wanted to know how Sirius felt. James wanted to know if there was anything he could do to make it better. Peter wanted to know what Sirius wanted him to say.

Lily gave him a bottle of Firewhisky.

Then James told him that Lily was pregnant.

"What if I'm rubbish at this?"

The maternity ward at St. Mungo's was brightly lit and cheerful. Healers bustled by, grinning broadly at each other and the expectant families. The darkness didn't seem to make it past the walls of the ward, and the protection of those same walls offered a surreal break from the terror of the war. The death and destruction couldn't touch anyone here.

Somehow, though, James had managed to carry his own fears with him into this place of light and miracles.

"What if I mess it up?"

Sirius snorted. "You won't," he said, and meant it.

He'd been woken up in the middle of the night by a frantic stag patronus. Lily had gone into labor and James didn't know what to do and could Sirius please come to St. Mungo's right away?

Sirius hadn't even hesitated. And James had looked so relieved to see Sirius there. He'd practically bounded to his best friend, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Merlin, Sirius… I'm going to have a baby," James had breathed, shaking his head as though he hadn't really understood that before.

And now they were here.

The Healers wouldn't let James into the room where Lily was. Sirius vaguely wondered if that was normal, if all soon-to-be fathers were kept away from the soon-to-be mothers during labor. It seemed a stupid rule, and it was certainly giving James more reasons to be upset.

"I'm going to be ruin it," James said. "I'm going to be a horrible father. He's going to hate me."

Sirius gave a barking laugh. "You're going to be a great father, Prongs," he said.

James gave him a wide-eyed look. "How do you know?" he asked in a pathetically hopeful voice. As though he would be willing to believe that he could actually do this if Sirius would just offer him some proof.

"Because I know you," Sirius said simply.

James ran a hand through his hair. "I know me, too," he retorted. "Do you remember what I was like at school? I broke rules. I didn't have responsibility. Lily hated me."

"You've changed," Sirius said, and tried his best not to sound bitter about it. "You're different now, Prongs."

James closed his eyes. "We're all different now," he murmured, and his voice was filled with so much grief and pain. They'd buried too many friends in the past two years to believe that life could ever be the same as it was before. To believe that they could ever be the same as they were before.

Sometimes Sirius couldn't even remember what the before had been like.

"Are Moony and Wormtail coming?" Sirius asked finally.

James shook his head. "Remus is on that mission," he said thickly, eyes darting away from Sirius. He stared at the floor for a moment, his expression tense and grim. "I don't know when he'll get back. I don't know…" He stopped, the words cutting off abruptly.

Remus was changing. The missions Dumbledore sent him on had gotten under his skin in ways that no one had really anticipated. He'd been spending months with other werewolves, trying to recruit them to the Order before Voldemort could get them on his side. When he came back, he seemed just a little bit more wild and his words were filled with just a little bit more despair. There was something gloomy hanging over him, and something dark shifting beneath his skin.

Sometimes Sirius would stare at Remus and not recognize the person staring back.

"And Wormtail?" Sirius asked finally.

James shook his head. "He was working on something for Dumbledore, and I wanted you to be the first to meet Harry, anyway." He paused, shook his head again. "Harry James Potter," he whispered, his voice filled with wonder. "I'm going to have a baby, Padfoot."

"You will," Sirius agreed.

"Oh, Merlin," James muttered, and buried his head in his hands.

"You don't have anything to worry about," Sirius said confidently. "If you do anything wrong, I'm sure Morgana will fix it."

James looked up, a slight smile on his lips at the mention of Lily. Then he said seriously, "And you will, too."

"I will what?" Sirius asked.

"Help me fix things that I screw up," James replied. He said it simply, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Sirius couldn't help but gape at him in surprise.

Who in their right mind would ask him for child-rearing advice?

"I mean, you'll be the godfather, of course," James continued. He was looking at the door in front of them, the one that separated him from Lily, and didn't see the way Sirius started at that request.

"Huh?" Sirius managed ineloquently.

James looked at him then. "You'll be the godfather. Harry's godfather."

It took Sirius a moment to find his voice. Then he said flatly, "A godfather is responsible for a child's moral and religious upbringing. Are you sure I'm the right choice? Wouldn't Moony be better?"

James frowned. "What are you on about?" he demanded. "Why would we ask anyone else besides you?"

There were so many possible answers to that, Sirius didn't even know where to start. So instead of saying anything, he just gave a half-hearted shrug.

James stood up and started pacing. He was filled with pent-up energy that seemed to make him vibrate with its desire to escape. His footsteps were loud against the white-washed floors, and they reverberated through the hallway. Everything here was too clean and too sterile and it was clear that James just wanted to explode.

Then he spun around to face Sirius. "We could die," he said bluntly. "Lily and I… we could…" He stopped, biting off the words and looked away. It took him a moment to regain his composure, then he said softly, "We could die."

"You're not going to die," Sirius said with confidence and bravado that were so out of place in this world.

It was the first time he'd ever heard James talk like this. It was the first time he'd ever heard James honestly discuss the possibility that they might not survive this war.

"I love Harry," James said. "I love him more than anything. He's not even born yet and I… ever since that moment that I first felt him kicking in Lily's stomach, I just… I want everything for him. A perfect life, a perfect world. I want to give him that."

"You will give him that," Sirius said.

"Maybe," James said. He sat down again, falling ungracefully into the seat next to Sirius. "But this is war, Sirius."

Sirius rubbed his eyes. It was the middle of the night and he was tired. Too tired to have this conversation, too tired to let himself think about all the possibilities. If his mind went down that road, it might never come back, and he couldn't allow himself to spend the rest of his life thinking about the possibility of death.

They were in a maternity ward, and he needed to be thinking about life.

"I know you think I don't get it," James continued in a barely audible voice. "I know you think that I'm staring at the world with rose-colored glasses. That I'm overly optimistic – foolish, even. That I don't understand what this war is going to take from us." He hesitated, then added, "I know you think that's Lily's doing, that I'm only this way because of her."

Sirius didn't say anything. He couldn't deny it – James would see through any lie. He couldn't confirm it even if it was true – James didn't take kindly to people saying hurtful things about Lily, and Sirius wasn't sure whether or not this qualified as hurtful.

"You're probably right about that last one," James said. "It is because of Lily."

Sirius was surprised by the sentiment; or, rather, he was surprised that James was admitting to it. He'd spent years cataloguing all the ways that Lily had changed James, all the ways that James had changed for Lily. But he hadn't ever expected that James would acknowledge it. He hadn't really even been sure that James had noticed it.

"But I get war," James continued. "I know I'm not invincible. I know Lily and I… we could die. And I want – need – to know that Harry will be raised by someone who loves him. I need to know that Harry will be raised by someone who wants what is best for him." He stopped talking long enough to look Sirius straight in the eye before adding, "I need to know that he will be raised by someone I trust. And that's you, Padfoot. It's always been you. Above everyone else."

Sirius didn't know what to say. The words stuck painfully in his throat, and finally he forced himself to speak past the lump that had formed, "And Morgana is alright with this?" Even if he and Lily had reached an understanding of sorts, she still didn't view him as the most responsible of people, and Sirius couldn't really imagine her willingly entrusting her child to him.

Then again, he reasoned, she was so determined to see the best in everyone until given undeniable proof of their darkness that perhaps she still believed he could be reformed, altered into something that better fit her values.

Maybe she was going to try to change him the way she had changed James.

James laughed. "Of course Lily's alright with it," he said as though he couldn't quite believe the question. "She trusts you, too, you know." He leaned back against the wall and stared at the door behind which his wife was giving birth to his son. "When I told her that I wanted you to be the godfather, she said she'd already assumed that. She was actually kind of surprised that I hadn't talked to you about it yet."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "She thought you would ask me before talking about it with her?" he demanded, surprised.

During their last year at Hogwarts, Lily had always been going on about how James needed to get her opinion about things that impacted their relationship before discussing them with anyone else. It had been a perfectly reasonable request, and Sirius had to admit that much, but it had aggravated him at the time because James always talked about everything with him, and why did Lily have to go and change that?

James laughed again. "It was odd," he said, knowing exactly what Sirius was thinking. "After all the fuss she used to make about talking to her first…" He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up, then explained, "Apparently, she just took it as such a given that you would be the godfather that there wasn't even a point in discussing it."

Sirius blinked. And then he realized – there might no longer be a James without Lily, but there was also no longer a Lily without James.

Screaming. He heard it every day and...

Night.

He sat in the darkness of Azkaban, listening to the wind whistle past his small window and the constant drip of water running down the stone walls. It was all he could do, and it wasn't enough. The almost incoherent thoughts lingered, plaguing him, mocking him.

The dripping of water on the wall. Down the wall.

Down.

The screams - his? No. Not his. The other inmates? Maybe - no. Whose? Who was screaming?

Peter – a spy? The spy. How could they not have seen it? How could they not have noticed that he was pulling away, changing, turning into someone – something – else?

How could he have done this to them, and why? Why? Why would he turn his back on them when he was the one who had assured Sirius that they were brothers and they would always be on the same side? What had happened to the boy Sirius knew at Hogwarts? What had happened to the man who had fought beside them in those first years out of school?

And Remus… they had believed him capable of betrayal, and for what reason? Because he was a werewolf?

Hadn't they always told him that his lycanthropy didn't matter? But he had changed, too. Not like Peter, not like that. But he'd drifted away, and the Marauders had started to crumble, and where had Remus been during any of that? The lines between man and monster had blurred in Remus.

They'd certainly blurred in Peter.

Had they blurred in Sirius, too?

What was he now?

The howl of the wind, the cold, the feeling of despair.

Howling. Wind. Wolves. Remus and - suspicions. The wrong suspicions.

Peter.

The Dementors floated by, sucking the happiness out of the air and leaving him with nothing but his darkest memories and the knowledge that he was innocent. But what difference did that make? What difference did any of it make? What did his innocence matter when James and Lily were dead?

He had convinced them to use Peter. He had their blood on his hands just as assuredly as if he had given Voldemort their location himself. He had sent them to their deaths.

Screaming - their screaming. James and Lily. Prongs and Morgana. Black and red, hazel and green.

Lifeless.

When the droplets of water pooled along the edges of his cell, he would catch a glimpse of his reflection and not recognize the face looking back at him. Sometimes, when his groans and cries woke him from the constant nightmares, he would hear his voice reverberating against the stone walls and wonder who was speaking because he didn't sound like that.

There were moments when he would grasp onto his sanity, his lucidity, and think This isn't my life.

Except that it was.

Screaming. Always screaming, always crying, always...

Dead.

Always.

He sat in the darkness of Azkaban. Cold. Angry. Miserable.

Alone.

At some point, there had stopped being a James without Lily.

But Sirius was starting to think there had never been a Sirius without the Marauders.