The Journey Cycle: pt 3: Australia *pt 3 complete*

8

Harry’s eyes opened slightly and all that filled his vision, blurred though it may be, was an expanse of warm skin into which his nose was pressed, Severus’ hip. His husband was sitting up reading, his specs perched on the end of his nose. One hand held his book while the other stroked Harry’s back absentmindedly. Harry gently bit the flesh against his face causing Severus to look down at him.

“Ah, you’re awake at long last”, the older man bent and kissed his younger lover’s temple. Harry tipped his head up simultaneously winding a sleepy hand into thick black hair and kissed his husband properly. “Mmmm, nice”, he mumbled, “What ya reading?” Severus smiled and sat up again, removing his glasses and closing the book with a marker in his place, “One of the books that Ginny gave us yesterday. There are a few things we need to read together, love. It’s very interesting as far as it goes but I must confess I have yet to experience some of the things that this thing reckons are part of the soul-bonded state. Telepathy amongst other things”.

This woke Harry up fully and he sat up reaching for his specs. Severus admired the view for a moment before re-opening the tome at his marked page. Harry stretched and yawned before settling his chin on Severus’ shoulder to read with him but the words were too small for his half-asleep eyes and he gave up for now. “Read it to me”, he mumbled, laying back against the headboard, removing his glasses again. He closed his eyes and settled in to listen.

“Hmm”, Severus’ tone pondered, “You know, I don’t really think that we should embark on this while we’re still here”. Harry, eyes still shut, grunted, “Why?” Severus leaned over to kiss him, “Because this book lays it out like a course of teaching and it calls for the minimum of distractions. The introduction clearly states that for the bondees this should take about a month or so depending on the different stages, the first of which is determining whether or not we actually have a bond. Listen to this a moment and see what you think”. He cleared his throat and took a breath.

“The bond may seem strong, especially to the bondees but to the recently affianced or wed this is easily mistaken for the skeins of true love that weave themselves in us close after our marriage. Well, that much is fairly obvious, the feeling we had came a mere two weeks into our marriage. I can quite understand this, particularly as we have not automatically encountered any of the other phenomena usually associated with this type of bond. We could have just mistaken the awakening of our souls to the true married state as some sort of bond”

Harry frowned, “Yeeess”, he drew out slowly, “But that doesn’t take away from the shakes and the sheer certainty that we both felt that day”. Severus opened his arms and Harry slid into them, “Harry, my love, we were still getting over the traumas of our pasts. You said yourself that you felt like you had finally moved on from Draco and for myself, I felt the final unravelling of my reserve even though Remus has been gone for years now”. Harry turned in his arms until they were face to face, “Are you sure all your reserve has finally dropped away? Only I still sense it in you from time to time. Admittedly, you have been freer in yourself recently but I sense....I don’t know....maybe a reluctance to admit that we could have a bond at all. After all, you have always been intensely private and acknowledging that we have a bond would violate that to a certain extent”. Severus broke eye contact and sighed, “I suppose you’re right. It could be me resisting it like I did that day, the feeling of being swallowed whole by another is not....comfortable...to one such as myself”.

Harry smiled, “I always was under the impression that bonds were somehow involuntary, that they just ‘happened’ to people but perhaps this isn’t the case. That day, I felt a definite capitulation on your part, albeit a tad unwillingly. What does it all mean? I, too, felt a ‘giving up’ or ‘giving in’ but it didn’t last. Are we both too stubborn to admit to it? And how much of ourselves is subsumed under such a bond? Do two really become one? Or do we retain our individuality? Is telepathy another term for Legilimency but uncast, automatic? Or does this mean we can have conversations with each other in our minds? Are our deeper thoughts hidden from each other?”.

Severus held Harry tighter, “I really don’t know. I’m not even sure if I’m that keen on finding out, to be honest. I love you with all that is in me but I want that love to be....voluntary....not forced through some sort of bond, if you will”. Harry sighed and slumped in his lover’s arms, “Does that mean you still want a back door out of this relationship, a get-out clause? Let’s face it, if we parted now, for instance, then, yes, it would hurt like hell but we would get over it in the main, though sometimes I think I’m in so deep that it would kill me if you left me now. I feel none of that from you. If we split up then I sense that you could easily go back to your lonely sequestered life, hating it, maybe, but with all your defences still in place. I think the purpose of a bond is to destroy or at least dismantle those defences somewhat and nothing to be undertaken lightly”.

Sinking his face into Harry’s hair, Severus was deep in thought. “Harry, I love you more than life itself”, he started uncertainly but his voice faded. Harry struggled out of his arms and lifted Severus’ face to his, “But?” The single word cut through Severus like a knife. He shook his head unable to continue.

Harry huffed out a breath, “I think it has to do with trust and neither of us is good with that”. Severus blinked hard a couple of times, rolling his lips inwards and gripping them with his teeth. When he spoke, it was with a whisper, “I want to trust, Harry, but my trust has been worn down over the years and the latest news about Remus didn’t help at all. My trust has been eroded almost to nothing and only in you is it being revived again. Your willingness to marry me, your willingness to not leave us an escape route. I do trust you, Harry, as much as I am able but I was so hurt, not just by Remus, but by life in general. I was almost shut down completely before that damned wolf came into my life and nudged it painfully awake with his damned damp nose and now look, he betrayed me too”.

Harry was less than pleased, “Oh, and no-one ever betrayed me, I suppose? Life never dealt me a raw hand? Yet, somehow through it all I still could trust, and, lest we forget, it could still have been Draco that betrayed me not Remus, you. Stop being a bloody martyr, Sev, and open your eyes. Is it because you’ve never let anyone truly in that causes those who have loved you to turn on you? To run away eventually? Well get over it ‘cos I’m here to stay. Don’t push me away too ‘cos I’ll push right back. I’m no Lucius or any of your past rotten amours. I’m not Remus either and neither are you. You are mine and I am yours. That has to mean something”. Harry could feel panic and hysteria rise in his voice and fought hard to control his anger and hurt.

There was a tense silence for a while, both men at a stand-off, their own stubbornnesses at war with each other. They glared heatedly into each other’s eyes. Harry stumbled from their bed and hastily scrambled into clothes deliberately not looking at Severus who he knew wore the most bereft look on his face, “I’m not the only one who has to change here, Sev”, Harry snarled, “There has to be give and take and, so help me, I’m the one doing a lot of the giving here, okay? When, or if you change your mind, I’ll be at the pool, I’m going for a swim or a think or something”, and with that he toed on his trainers and stormed off through the window vanishing quickly amongst the dark trees.

****

Severus let his head bang back against the wooden headboard, his breath releasing slowly and tears starting in his eyes. Harry had no real idea what it was like to be him with his less than stellar past and all the indignity and mental injury that had been foisted on him unwillingly. He glowered at the insides of his eyelids and his mouth set in a stubborn line as he brooded on the wrongs in his life.

****

Out at the pool, Harry sat in a dejected heap, letting the tears fall. He had protected his beloved from most of the travails of travel, he had forgiven him his dubious past, what more did Severus want? Blood? He had married him for pity’s sake. Was that not an indication of his intent? That they have a life free from suspicion at least of each other and their motivations. Damn, but Severus was intractable. What did the man want from him? Something to hide behind? Love? Did Severus know really what true love meant? Damn him, damn him to hell and back. Harry rocked in his distress, his arms locked tensely around his knees, his face buried in them and howled his remorse. Maybe they should have had this discussion years ago, when they first got together as a couple. Could any of their relationship be salvaged?

Harry had never felt so alone as he did right then. Even when he faced Voldemort, he did so from a position of unassailable trust in the people at his back. Maybe this was part of the problem, that he expected Severus to be as trusting as he, Harry, had always been. In spite of evidence to the contrary, Harry had always been able to see the good in others and he shouldn’t always presume that others saw the world in the same way. Despite everything, Harry still had a core of people around him that he’d trust with his life, who would be there for him at the drop of a hat and Remus and Severus had been a part of that. Did he expect too much from people?

****

Severus felt his heart turn to lead in his chest. A familiar feeling that at one time would have been almost comforting, but not now. Things were different now. He couldn’t run from this one. This really was the real thing for him in a way that even Remus never had been and therein lay the rub. This hurt. Harry had the power to hurt him and he had given it away freely or so he thought. Could he do this for Harry? Really trust in a way he never had before? He felt as if he was drowning. He was more afraid now than he ever had been of Voldemort. Could he be enough for his Harry? More to the point, did he want to be?

His eyes were dry again and he felt as if he had sandpaper behind them. He could swear he could feel his heart breaking. Harry was right, he had done most of the giving so far and Severus was nothing if not a taker. He felt the shame wash over him at this simple truth. It was time to shit or get off the pot. Time to give back. Time for an emotional honesty he wasn’t sure he had in him. Ah who was he kidding? It was time to come fully out of the safe little burrow that he’d dug himself in his heart all those years ago.

He had responded readily to the love that Harry poured over him like warm honey. Maybe his much-vaunted privacy was an excuse for keeping his feelings hidden, to give him that back door through which he might run when the ordure hit the a/c. He needed a good kick up the arse and he had a notion that Harry was in the process of delivering it. He had always ducked behind his general uselessness at things emotional with a ‘Bah, humbug’ and a sneer. Well, that wasn’t good enough any more.

He wasn’t a child any more. He may be older than his husband but Harry, despite the horrors that he had been through, still had his humanity intact, bruised but still there. Severus in his turn had allowed himself to die emotionally and had blamed it on external circumstances doing the job. It was what had allowed him to become a Death-Eater in the first place for fuck’s sake, how he had managed to be such a capable spy. He had always been proud of this ability and now he saw it for what it was: cowardice of a high order. That’s what he was, a coward.

And, for all his stubbornness and childish ways, Harry had never been that. Ever. Neither physical nor emotional. Severus choked on his own tears as he thought, he didn’t even have a friend to call his own, for god’s sake, he had to rely on Harry’s. Granted, they had all taken to him one way or another and he had good relationships with them all, even Neville, poor sap. But somewhere in his heart, Severus Snape still thought of himself as an island, had been proud of that fact, but no more.

There was more at stake now. He grabbed Harry’s pillow to him and hugged it hard, sinking his face into it, letting the tears come at last, hot, wrenching and heartfelt. He gave himself up to his grief hoping beyond hope that he hadn’t fucked things up too badly. He recalled his distrust over Harry going to the Mason’s meeting and other sundry incidents. He wasn’t Harry’s protector any more, an easy enough role to play, well, easier than this anyway. Harry wasn’t a stubborn kid now, but a fully realised wizard and Severus howled afresh. They were in this together. Partners. True equals. And he was sorry, so damned sorry. Harry had given him every chance to redeem himself and had trusted him implicitly, now it was time to pay this back.

He went to the bathroom and washed his face gazing in the mirror above the sink. He had never liked himself that much and had often wondered what Harry saw in him, but realised that this was also evasion. For good or ill, Harry loved him totally and the thought of being without that love cut him to the core. He dried himself off and set his shoulders. This was no time for self-bloody-pity, so he’d better get out there and find the love of his life and make this right somehow. Maybe he needed help but wasn’t that what relationships were all about? He recalled Harry saying that this was one of his strengths and Severus had to agree with his love.

If Severus wanted Harry, and he did, make no mistake about that, then he had better start exhibiting some of that strength in return. He could do no more than ask for help in overcoming his weaknesses, no, his fucking cowardice and there was no time like the present. Thus fortified, though secretly, he felt as weak as a kitten, he dressed quickly and went in search of his beloved. Harry was worth more to him than that. It was time to come out of hiding, to meet his beloved half-way.

****

Harry tensed at the sound of feet approaching him through the grass but resisted the urge to turn. He knew who it was, he could read the magic and the distress from a mile away. He knew it was Severus.

Severus stopped when he caught sight of the tightly wound bundle of Harry rocking gently in his own arms. He tried to resist the urge to run to him and fling his arms around him then thought, “I am not an island. I need help with this and I need to ask for it”, so he gave in, trotting the rest of the way before flinging himself down on his knees and taking Harry in his arms. There was an initial resistance and a tensing of his shoulders but then the tension eased a little allowing Severus to bury his face in Harry’s neck.

“I am so sorry Harry, I love you beyond reason and I don’t want to hurt you, ever, but I think I need help here. I’m a coward and I know it now. I don’t want to lose you. I couldn’t bear it, love, please forgive me. I want to trust, no, I need to trust but I’m not sure how. You have shown me love and right and trust beyond measure and how do I repay you? By locking my heart away in my ivory tower. I’ll do anything to be worthy of you. I’ll do therapy if that’s what’s needed to thaw the frozen parts of my heart. I really will, Harry, please believe me. My life means nothing without you in it and I cannot, nor do I wish to, be that person again, not after you have taught me so much and showed me so much. I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry”, he choked out before crumbling completely.

Harry turned in his lover’s arms sensing the genuine regret in the man’s voice. He lifted Severus’ face with his palms placed either side until they looked deep into each other’s eyes, “I, too, feel like an emotional cripple at times, Sev. We’ve both suffered but this isn’t the time to play more-abused-than-thou. Know this. I love you. I want you. You’re mine, goddamn your stubborn hide, and I’m yours, but I won’t let you escape from me, you old git, and I won’t ever run from you either, well, not far anyway”, he smiled waterily.

The hug he got for that was heartfelt, “I know, my Harry. I am yours and yours alone. I do trust you but I think I really do need help to chip away all of my defences. I’ve never loved like this before and it’s hard, so hard. I’ll try though, I really will”. Harry separated them slightly until his green eyes met obsidian, “That’s all I can ask, my love and in return, I think we need to get away again. I need to stop with my rescuing-people thing or my taking-on-strays thing and need to concentrate more of my energies on us. I sometimes think that this is my strategy for hiding. When something hurts or gets too close, then I rush off and try and save someone or something. We’ve got just over a month until we meet the girlies for a holiday so I suggest that you and I go off on our own. Have you ever read the Bible?”

Severus reared away slightly, “Er, no”. Harry grinned, “I’ve not got religion all of a sudden, but that’s what we need, our forty days and forty nights in the desert. Us time again. Just you and I. This course thingy, takes a month you say?” Severus nodded, “Well, let’s do it. Bugger off into the wilds in Bessie and do this properly, like a vision quest or something. The natives of this land go walkabout in the interior and we shall do the same only in our way. I’ll switch off the phone, we won’t be anywhere near the Internet and no-one’ll know where we are. I’m as much at fault here as anyone, keeping tabs on doings back in England and helping people again as if people somehow can’t manage without me. Let’s, love”.

Severus thought about it a moment and Harry was right, they needed a proper honeymoon, ‘them’ time. Time to find out what they really were to each other and what it all meant, the meaning of marriage, commitment, sharing, loving wholly and absolutely. He returned Harry’s smile and kissed him. “Sounds like a plan, Harry. Yes, let’s do this, just you and I. Bugger everyone else. The wizarding world can do without us for a while. Let your friends sort out their own affairs, they’ll still be there when we re-emerge. This country is ideal in a way, so vast, so empty. We can truly disappear here and perhaps we should. Build campfires, make love under the stars again, remember why we did this in the first place. Get lost so we can find ourselves”.

They kissed then full of forgiveness and passion and shed a few tears in each other’s arms, a new resolve in their hearts then hung on tight to each other, “I really love you Mrs S”, Severus whispered. Harry grinned, his nose buried in his husband’s thick hair, “Love you too, Mrs P”, Harry replied, his voice equally soft, “And I always will. We’ll work this out. I promise. We’re worth it. I can’t remember who said, “That, that does not kill you makes you stronger”, but in our case it’s true not just a platitude. We’ve both seen and done abhorrent things. I was appalled at Julia’s face in Melbourne to see her seeing us in that light; as killers, even if it was for a good cause. Maybe that’s the root of my do-gooder thing, constantly trying to redress the balance of the killing I’ve done. Anyway, I think we both need to get past our pasts and find out who we are both as individuals, as wizards and as lovers, life-partners and, yes, soul-mates”.

Fortified by this resolve, they kissed again, letting it become heated and passionate until they drew apart slightly. Harry used the hem of his t-shirt to wipe the tears from Severus’ cheeks and Severus returned the favour with the cuff of his old rugby shirt, “We’re a pair of old sillies aren’t we?” They kissed again and Harry smiled, “Yep, a pair of old sillies. Come on, let’s go indoors and drink some tea or something. I’m parched”.

They helped each other up and with arms wrapped around each other, they slowly wended their way to the house. They had a less than chaste shower and dressed, ready to face the day but quite unable to part from each other, so they didn’t, walking into the kitchen hand-in-hand. Their hosts were there making breakfast. Julia was all concern, “Are you two all right, only Jon and I spotted you out at the pool. We didn’t mean to spy or anything, but we’ve just been exercising the horses and sorting out a nesting box for Squittle, that’s the owl by the way, and we saw you both. Have you been rowing?”

Severus nodded, “Yes, in any marriage there are things to be worked out and that’s what we were doing. Thank you for asking, but we’re quite all right now”. Harry chimed in, “Yes, it’s been great to be here, but I think we need to move on soon. We think we need some us time now, away from everyone and everything, you know? Turn off the dratted phone and just get away from it all, go native for a bit”. Jon grinned, “Just like the Abo’s do. Yeah, you’re in the right place all right, just be careful, it’s a strange ol’ country out there”.

****

They fixed their going away for three days hence and there was a whirl of activity around them both as they made ready. They accepted a dinner invite from George and his wife, Eunice, meeting their three kids and having a thoroughly pleasant evening with them. Severus had a word with his old ‘colleague’. “George, do this one thing for me and I will consider the life-debt paid in full. Keep in touch with Julia, train her as much as you can and no dark stuff, all right?” George nodded sombrely, “Absolutely, mate. No worries. A witch like that needs her trainin’. I’ll do it and it’ll go some way towards making reparation for some of my misdeeds in the past. Consider it done”.

The following night, their hosts took them out for a slap-up meal in town as thanks for the great time they had had with them, in the wizarding districts and with Harry filling in for the band. Jon said, “You will get a credit on that song, Harry, I promise. I e-mailed our manager and he loves it. As I suspected, it’ll probably be the next single and I’ve done you a recording of it as well for your hard drive on Bessie”. Harry blushed a fetching puce. To Severus, Julia gave a book on the flora and fauna of the continent plus another on ‘bush tucker’ and other survival skills in the wild.

Josh turned up with a present for Bessie and fitted it for them on site. A bigger cooler that fitted into one of the side boots and a spare battery and the means to piggy back the two so that Harry didn’t need to run her every other day. “That way, you’ve always got one fully charged even if the other one runs out on you”. They both hugged him for this. Harry murmured, “Stay true to yourself, Josh, and it was a pleasure meeting you, mate. When you find that significant other, make sure he’s a sailor and when the time comes, bugger off on Miranda, sail the world”. Josh was gulping back tears as they parted.

Nettie had done them a drawing, rather beautiful, of the two of them together, from memory, “Hang it over your bed, remember the good times”, she embraced them both, “For two old guys, you’re pretty cool”. They rolled their eyes and thanked her. Severus took a deep breath as they made ready on the final morning, he did have friends after all and he was a fool if he thought otherwise.

Jon and Julia stayed up to see them off. Jon snuck a crate of cold bottles into their new cooler and Julia presented them with a basket of fresh food to see them on their way. They had a wet-eyed farewell and Bessie pulled off the compound with a full water-tank aboard and kindling and firewood aplenty that their hosts had collected for them specially. Security opened the gates for them and they turned inland as they left.

They were on their way again.

They had no guidebooks, just their maps, and by nightfall they were miles away from civilisation with nothing before them but the vastness of the red desert. That night, they did as promised, cooked over a simple fire and made love under the friendly sky lit by nothing but the flickering red glow and the canopy of stars above them.

There we go! Now they are off into 'the interior'.

See you next week.

Remember, stars and reviews are all good.

Enjoy!

The Squig xxxx