War time romances never had romance. Severus resigned himself to that the first time around, when he reached for Lucius only to find him at NarcissaÕs bed, when he knelt before the Dark Lord and was given crucio, when Sirius Black called him traitor, vile filth, bastard and fucked him against the walls, the dirt, the treesŅfor there was plenty of that, oh yes, more than enough time for fucking. More than enough time for grasping fingers and hard pants and scrabbling in the dewy grass, even when there wasnÕt time for anything else.

But never romance.

That he was the older now, that Potter was young and hoping despite himself to find life after war, if there could be such a thing, that changed nothing. Snape, of all people, knew how nothing ever changed. War time meant pain and hard tumbles and peace time meant little else, he imagined, if peace time could truly come. This, he wanted to say, was what happened when wizard killed wizard, but there was no one who would understand him who would not look at him in horror. Kill him? Without a doubt. Hate him, despise him, rage against his presence? Many would jump at the chance. Fuck him for the sake of fucking someone, of forgetting even for a little while what tomorrow held? Well, even Snape could find people willing to do that. But people who would hear artis arcani fax, who would hear auctor nefas, and know, and cringe as he had cringed, the first time he was ordered to strike down his own people... These days he did the unspeakable, as did his companions, and he tried never to look back. He failed, which was why he had fucked Potter, why he had allowed Potter, of all people, to touch him and kiss him and engage in the farce of love he had born witness to over and over, for nearly 40 years, but he tried not to hear his teacherÕs voice, in the back of his head, Ōwe, of all people, must cling to our own, for if we do not, they will be only to happy to tear us down.Ķ The first time he heard those words, he had asked why Azkaban existed, why people would be sentenced to a lifetime of Dementors, or worse, to the Kiss, when avada kedavra was clean and merciful.

Death was never merciful now. For them, perhaps, if it came to that, if they were not captured and dragged before the Aurors, if they were not tortured and mutilated and a thousand things that Snape had taken out of Harry PotterÕs hide come cover of darkness, but not for him. Not for those he fought with, who fell before the onslaught still screaming of right and good and Snape wanted to laugh at everyone, destroyers all, except the terrible thing was that somehow, he wanted to live.

He had felt the hush of crucio too many times to count, the agonizing pain that never ends and underneath it, the silent promise, break, set free, be peaceful, that too he felt as many times as there were pebbles on Brighton Beach, and he had never listened, never let the quiet seep into his ears and out of his mouth and take his consciousness with it. He had never seen everything around him tinged with the green of death, and he did not wish to, even now when he himself was an auctor nefas and the wizards of old would have turned their backs on him.

He wanted to survive, to grow old somewhere, to see again bubbling cauldrons and powders and bottles and jars of things waiting to be birthed into something new, to release with a word the power inside him and watch it shape his world, to sit in darkness and feel calm and even and right, to see a hundred years go by and still live on a hundred more, and know his world that changed a little day by day was still the world of Slytherin and Merlin and Titus Arcanus and back through the creeping reach of time, to know the world which Aristotle studied, and Hippocrates, was still the world of Severus Snape. He accepted pain because it meant life--the two were, in SnapeÕs experience, inescapably entwined. But it also meant a host of other things.

It meant certain things, axiomatic things, things that he had learnt through time and effort never changed:

War time romances never had time for romance.

Potter was his fatherÕs son.

Really, he should have welcomed it. He should have snorted, and curled it around him, one more layer of truth to lay claim to.

Snape peered into the darkness, eyes alert against the signs of danger, of intrusion, of a million niggling fears he wouldnÕt dignify with names.

One more reason to live.