Chapter Text
Severus hides a box in the ground. Its final resting place a shallow grave beneath the stone floor of his bedroom. It conceals the evidence of his guilt, or perhaps proof of his worth; of who he had been, as terrible and brief as it was.
All the remnants of his life before are in it. On days when he feels wrung out and stretched thin, on the very brink of madness, he allows himself to look inside. There is comfort there, despite the shame. He gently removes the folded robes, gauzy linen dyed black as the deepest ocean waters, black as the end of the world. In his mind it drips with the blood of every life they had so gleefully snuffed out.
Too young by decades for the rank he had been given, too beaten down and broken to know anything about morality, he'd been unleashed on the world and encouraged to do his worst; been praised even, for his viciousness. He'd been in love with the idea of sadism, the idea that he could rise up and take his pound of flesh as well. After all, he’d seen everyone else take pleasure from his pain. It stood to reason then, that it was his turn to take pleasure from their pain. Numb from apathy and drunk on power, only ever having known the cruel side of the world, Severus had thought it normal, absolute, that one would enjoy the suffering of others.
A part of him had been disappointed when he found he couldn't do it: couldn't revel unending in the horrors of the world. Couldn't stop his own pain with the pain of others. How much easier would it have been if he could?
Severus sets the bundled fabric aside,then reaches in for the mask, spider legged hands wrapping around the earth chilled porcelain, as opal smooth and bleach bone white as the day he received it. His thumb runs along the surface, rubbing around the empty eyes. He remembers the weight of it against his face. Remembers what it was like to feel a part of something greater, to believe he was doing something righteous, something special. That one day he would be exalted and forgiven for the things he had been outcast for. Their saccharine lies dripping so easily from pretty, privileged lips. Would any starving child be immune? How badly he had wanted to believe them. For the first time in his life he had felt accepted and, eventually, loved.
"These things were ours, Tommy," Severus’ words have no effect on his son. Tommy squirms on his lap like any two year old, fist in his mouth and black eyes wide in the dim light. He's not sure why he's showing him these things, laying them out reverently on the floor before him like relics on an altar waiting to be worshiped. Maybe it's to prove to him that his parents were great men. Maybe it's to prove that they were horrible men. Sometimes Severus himself doesn't know, the lines of morality too blurred by a life spent in misery. A life spent wanting.
Tommy's tiny fist wraps around the cloth of the robe, new and fragile fingers clutching at the fabric, trying to decide what it is and if it's worth his time. Uninterested, he reaches for the mask, putting it in his mouth and trying to chew on the edges. Gently Severus unwraps his son’s fist and pulls the mask from him. "No Tommy." He sets his garb to the side, out of reach from tiny hands, and pulls out the only other treasure the chest has to offer.
It's a photo album with only five pictures in it. He's not sure if Tommy should see these now when he's too young to understand, or see them when he's older and able to grasp the gravity of them. Have to grapple with the knowledge that his father was, truth be told, a monster. Severus’ own father had been a monster, but his experience was the opposite. Severus could hate his father outright with no hesitancy, but Tom had only ever loved his son. Had spoken to him with vivid happiness in his voice; his sure hands always gentle where their boy was concerned. And that’s what made it so hard. “Your father loved you so much. He killed so many people simply for the joy of it,” was too terrible a revelation for anyone, especially a child, to have to sort through.
But it seems unfair somehow to never show him at all. So he settles on now, when Tommy won’t have to be crushed by a moral quandary too terrible to bear.
He opens the album then, fine, nimble fingers pulling out a photo. This first one is of their wedding, but at a glance it looks more like a funeral. He hadn't been interested in a wedding, but Tom had insisted. Tradition was important to him, and solemn and somber were the sort of things Tom liked. In the middle of the frame they stood next to each other, not kissing, not smiling, not even touching, both clad only in black. Around them in a half circle were Tom's followers, faces hidden by their masks. He didn't think a picture existed where they weren't covered head to toe, their identities carefully obscured. They were proud of their atrocities, yet too afraid to show their real faces, too afraid to own the havoc they had wreaked. How foolish he had been, to ever think them anything but cowards. To have been so easily seduced by their empty promises of a better world.
He returns the picture to its resting place, movements practiced and smooth, before drawing out another. The next photo was of himself, heavily pregnant and stretched out in their bed, clad in his dressing gown. He was reading a book, eyes darting over the text before lazily turning the page. A lit cigarette dangled loosely between his fingers, a plume of blue smoke curling up and away into the dim light of their bedroom. Occasionally he would put it to his lips and inhale, the rim of paper around the ash lighting up sunset bright as it burned lower down the tube. He could still taste the musty smoke on his tongue sometimes, still feel the itch to hold something to his lips. Tom had made him quit, for their son, and Severus found he couldn't begrudge him that. He hadn't taken up the habit again after Tom was gone, though working at a boarding school probably had something to do with it as well.
In the wizarding world certain genetic combinations weren’t as uncommon as they were in the muggle world, especially in families with old blood. So, when he was born with a penis that was for urinating and not much else, as well as a completely female reproductive system (the opening for which was located where the testicles would normally be), it gave his bastard father another reason to hate him and his freak mother.
People were supposed to be one or the other. Never both. There was to be no intersection or in between. Day and night, and disregard the overlap of hazy dusk giving way to star studded darkness. Ignore the gradual, rosy kiss of dawn to morning, marrying the two as one entity. Male or female, and never the two should meet.
He was raised to be ashamed of himself and what he’d been told was a deformity. Had been terrified of someone finding out about what he thought was a disgraceful, vulgar condition. But when he'd murmured to Tom about it, his cheeks red and fingers trembling, lips swollen from hungry kisses, Tom had said it was a blessing. He'd gently wrapped his hands around Severus' face, warm thumbs stroking the ridge of his cheeks. "You must be proud of this. It means the pure blood within you is still strong, and can be made strong again." And for the first time in his life Severus had felt special. He'd felt lucky. He felt something other than hideous, crushing shame. How easy it was to fall in love with the kindness of others, especially when you’ve been given so little of it.
He tucks the photo back into the album, gently sliding the sharp corners into place, mindful not to let it bend or wrinkle.
The third photograph is of himself holding Tommy right after his birth. It was supposed to be difficult for someone with his condition to conceive; normally requiring the aid of strong and complicated fertility potions. As such, they hadn't thought to use contraceptives. He had been stunned, panicked even, when he discovered his pregnancy. Tom had been overjoyed in that solemn, contemplative way of his. He had said it was a miracle bestowed by the hand of fate. Had felt there could be no omen of prosperity greater than this conception. Severus, eighteen, newly wed, and completely out of his depth, had nodded along and endeavored to make Tom's opinion his own. Sometimes, he wondered if it would be easier now if Tom hadn't done right by him. Hadn't coddled and fussed over him both during and after his pregnancy. For all of his flaws (numerous and horrific as they were), he had been a loving man, in his own way. And that had a special fallout all its own, didn't it? Severus still ached and bled for that love, despite knowing that the source was poison. He had been dependent on it, fixated on it. Made it the very center of his world.
But a baby has a way of changing things. And now he Has to live with the knowledge of what he'd done to earn Tom’s love.
Tommy makes a fussy gurgle and squirms in his lap, growing impatient as the minutes tick by; his mother's action no longer holding his attention. Severus lets him stand and he watches, partly amused and partly irritated but mostly just tired, as he busies himself pulling books off of his shelf. But magic makes it easy to clean that up; a flick of his wrist and every tome will snap back into its proper place. At the moment there are still two photos left for him to gaze at with a guilty longing.
The second to last picture is of all of them, huddled under the flower laden arch of a trellis, the sky a dizzying blue. Severus was holding a squirming, six month old Tommy, a rare smiling face. Tom had his arm around Severus' waist, and in the tiny moving picture he would lean over to have a closer look at their son. Severus had been surprised at how quickly he abandoned his own misgivings about parenthood. How easily and naturally he loved Tommy. He had patience where it counted, and would gently guide his infant son.
If anything, he was the more stern of the two parents. Tom was much more indulgent in their son's whims. Every fuss and coo examined, doted upon. Tommy's curious, grabbing hands filled with whatever struck his fancy, be it confection or dark artifact. Tom's vicious, tyrannical want lavished heavily on his son. The childhood neither of them had given freely and with relish. When he was a year old he would set the boy on his lap and read him grimoires and texts of dark arts, voice as sweet and full as a honeycomb. "I must teach our boy proper values, my dear," he had said in his most pacifying voice, trying subtly to brush Severus’ concerns aside.
Tom knew he thought their son was much too young for such advanced dark magic, but he always seemed to take things just a step too far, as if swept up by a strange compulsion too powerful to ignore. "This is the spell that turns someone inside out," he had said, pointing to an illustration of bones and organs flying out of a man's mouth while his skin and hair went sucking in. Tommy's graphite eyes, his mother's own, watched it with a strange intensity. Severus remembered how Tom smiled when Tommy grabbed for the book. How large his mouth had seemed, so full of strong white teeth. "That's my boy," he had cooed, every vowel drawn out and resonating with pleasure.
The last picture he had of them was one he felt he ought to burn, as it was the most damning. But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He had so few mementos from their brief time together so he clung to every one. So little of his life had been happy. What frigid soul could deny him these small comforts, as tainted as they may be? He felt he should be allowed to keep then, to love as much as he regretted them.
In the picture they were in the hall Tom used to gather his followers, standing unmasked before them. Severus had enjoyed watching them bow and scrape before him, thin lips turned up into a cruel smile as they tried to garner his favor. For the first time (and perhaps the last) he had power, he had status and respect, he had a true family. And he had savored it like a starving man savored his gruel. Every drop a treasure, no matter how rotten or distasteful. He'd glutted himself sick on it all until he could no longer ignore the poison that had laced it.
Oh but this picture, Tommy held so lovingly at his father's hip, just one year old. Severus ran his thumb over the image of his husband's face, a heady longing thrumming in his fragile veins. Tom was proudly showing his son, his heir, to his apostles. Severus had been so relieved that Tommy was a lovely baby, that his own unfortunate ugliness had not touched his son. Severus knew Tommy would wear his father's handsome face someday, only his black eyes betraying him as other.
Soon, devotion to Tom took a back seat to making sure his son lived. So, for the first time in his life, he did the right thing. Severus sold out the only person who had ever well and truly loved him in exchange for clemency, that he may safely raise a madman’s son.