Chapter 16
Somewhen during the war, between loosing his lover and watching his friends disappear one by one, the place that had been made of light and colours inside James, died.
It was something he'd poured onto pages, not with magic but with his pencils. When he thought back to it, he remembered seeing the world through different eyes than the ones he wore now. Every single moment was light and colour and movement and it was his greatest mission to fixate them in time, to capture what had made them special.
But then he grew up and it all started blending together. It wasn't like there was nothing good anymore, some of his happiest memories were from out of school. He had friends and family and joy ...
But. But if he tried to take any of this to paper he failed. Tragically. Comically really.
If he tried to draw his friends like he used to, they turned out like caricatures, with too large smiles and too bright eyes.
If he tried to draw the horrors of the war they looked bland. Cold and detached and they scared him. Was that who he was now? An indifferent spectator of obscenity, with no kindness or compassion?
He always burned those drawings. The haunted eyes of the people in them, the bloodied smears of the bodies around them. He burned them all.
Some artist could cope with the war through their art. Some could invite you to see its horrors with your own eyes. But clearly, James wasn't one of them. He had started to question whether he was an artist at all.
And yet ... that evening he walked home and his hands tingled in a way he hadn't felt in years.
He didn't even have a sketchbook anymore. Just some pencils and paper. He tried to draw Regulus and ... failed.
But. But the tingling stayed. The itch to reach for a pen and create, stayed. And so he did.
He decided to take a bit of a break from disfiguring his friends on paper, no portraits for the moment. No studies of the way Remus smiles up at Sirius, or of Sirius's bedhead on a Sunday, and definitely absolutely none of Regulus's slender fingers or his soft hair or his tentative expressions. Absolutely none.
Instead he drew animals. Which had never been his favourite. Which mostly turned out more or less cartoon-ish, but without the twist of homeliness. But he was drawing again.
He started using colours again, figured out which animals he liked to draw, wales and butterflies and most birds, and which he didn't. Every day he used a little more colour, until he had to drive to his parents house and pick up all of his paint, pens and brushes.
It felt like shedding skin. Like blinking awake from an infinite nap. Like coming home. Holding a pen became second nature again, tucking a sketchbook into his cloak was instinct. Drawing whenever the opportunity arose only logical.
"What?" He asked lightly and without looking up from his desperate try to let a gibbons arm look natural.
Sirius shrugged. "It's nice seeing you draw again is all."
James hummed and started stretching out his legs from their tucked up position. He really wasn't built for sitting folded up like this.
"You um, back to drawing anything specific?" Sirius asked and James could hear his effort to sound casual.
"Nothing ... specific. Just, animals. Nature and stuff you know? It's," he sighed and closed the notebook in his lap, turning fully to his friend. "It's easier somehow. Everything human is like, all bundled up in bad things. Like I can't draw eyes that aren't haunted anymore."
Sirius nodded slowly. "I know what you mean. So much that used to be joy is now pain. Like everything reminds you of the fact that everybody you love can just be gone the next moment." Sirius took a deep breath. Then he glanced at the notebook in James's hands. "Can I see?"
James wordlessly handed it over. He watched as Sirius traced his eyes over the pages. Sometimes he looked impressed, then amused and then ... "How did you know?" Sirius asked.
"Know what?" James stretched his neck in hopes of seeing what Sirius was referring to. Sirius turned the book towards him.
James smiled. "Oh that. Morpho rhetenor. A butterfly that can have a wingspan of up to 17 centimetres. Usually has a blue undercoating and the females often grow larger than the males," he grinned, "I do my homework you know."
"James. That's Reggie's patronus."
James should've probably tried to be more casual about this, but he had already shot forward, snatching the sketchbook. "It is?"
"Yeah. I thought you didn't see it that night?"
"I didn't." He said and stared at the drawing. "I just ... dreamed of this. Of the wings and the colour ..."
He had always had the urge to make these specific drawings a bit iridescent. Show the translucency of the soft blue wings. Work in the fine white details on the edges. Let the colour fan out and blur into the page.
He held up the book to Sirius again. "You're sure?"
Sirius was looking at him with a peculiar expression. He didn't even look at the drawing again before he nodded. "Down to the colours. Jamie ..."
"What?" James asked, distracted by the picture. When he looked up, confused by Sirius's unusual hesitancy, his friends was still regaining him.
"You want a drink?"
"Um," Sirius had already gotten up and poured them beer. When he brought it over to the table he sat closer than before.
"I just ... I've been thinking Jamie. There's something you need to know."
James put down his glas, a knot in his stomach. "Okay?"
Sirius's face was so ernest James felt reminded of when they were nineteen and in a war and terribly, terribly afraid.
"We all know how fucked up life is right? Like we've seen it all and lost so much and," he swallowed, "sometimes we still forget. Sometimes we still think we have time when we don't."
"I-"
"No just listen Prongs, you need to promise me not to wait. For anything. Don't think you have time, don't think you'll do it tomorrow. Please just, don't."
~~~
That evening, when James got home into his emtpy, always a bit too cold apartment, he took out a canvas. And then he sketched. And drew. And painted.
At the end he stared at the desperate face of a young man. His eyes dull and without hope, blood caking his face, the hands on his wand looking frail. But from the tip of the wand burst a light, a butterfly, illuminating the painting from the middle, dousing the face in pale light.
It wasn't perfect. He hadn't accounted for the light of the inside of the wings so there was a shadow on Regulus's hand where there shouldn't be. He also hadn't managed to capture the exact shade of his eyes. But the emotion swimming in them ... that was real.
James stepped back. Took in how Regulus was reaching for hope, for him maybe.
Merlin he missed him. He hadn't ever really stopped missing him.
Before, when they were still at Hogwarts, their situation had seemed so impossible he hadn't dared think into the future. Everything was falling apart and Regulus had felt like one of the few good things he'd manage to keep. He had always known of their eventual doom. Of the collision of worlds they were.
But now things were different. Or at least James hoped they were.