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Who Callie

maggotbone and Snape

onewrongword
Where Snape's brownstone
When After this
Warning None that I can think of?
Summary Severus is back, and Callie's stopping by with food to catch up.
Format w/e

Callie didn't take too long picking up the Vietnamese take-out. She really didn't bother asking what Severus liked to eat, since it was a new kind of food he hasn't had before- she figured a mish mash of whatever she had and what she ordered for him would do just fine.

She made her way to Snape's place, and gave the door a knock, adjusting her hands to better grasp the bags of food.

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"Probably not bold but you don't consider yourself brave? It takes a particular kind of man to do what you do. I know plenty that would crush under the pressure."

She would have felt that her next question was too intrusive, had they not have gotten to know each other well enough. "...Why did you get yourself mixed up in all this in the first place?"

Consider himself brave? "Not, as you point out, in the traditional sense. I am no coward," and he'd vehemently fight anyone who tried to suggest he was, "but I am not certain I would take on 'brave'."

But no matter; it's a mote of Slytherin pride and he can't deny it. Instead, he just glances at his food and considers her second, far more personal question.

"Terrible life choices," he finally replies. "That lead to ruin. Not for me -- not for a long time, anyway -- but for others. While I have never seen the Dark Mark fly over any house that held someone I cared, I have-- seen worse."

And each failure thereafter was another life he had not been able to save.

Callie watched him a moment, brows knitting together. "...Maybe I'm not familiar with the lingo, but I'm not following." She had a feeling this was a sensitive subject. Clearly this life he chose wasn't something that he had planned. Something happened, and she wondered if he felt secure enough with her to tell her.

It was a weight, unshared with anyone but Albus. The gravity of his grief, the torment of that long-burning affection he had held for Lily Evans, even after she became Lily Potter. But he knows it makes him pathetic, weak-- exploitable. Still, he has never found a way to kill that feeling, and-- in his more honest moments, doesn't want to.

It's one of the few things that separate him from men like Riddle; the ability to love a person, no matter how poorly he might express it, elevated him from mad Death Eater zealot to flawed, foolish human being.

"You do not understand why a man who had power, influence, and could hold the life and death in his palm would -- surrender all that, do you?" he asks her, not answering her question with anything but another question. "Such choices are not easily made, nor easily shared."

Which was as polite a way to say I will never speak of it, don't ask as Severus Snape could manage. The fact that he didn't get immediately irate about the question was-- something. The City, perhaps, teaching him patience through his few scant friends, maybe.

She could read into what he was saying, and she could respect it. "Mm. Good. Sticking your ground. You don't disappoint." Callie smiled at him. "You don't need to explain. You have nothing to prove to me. I already adore you." And she shook her head at that, eating some noodles. "Which is saying something. I adore no one."

"You'd be the first that I have failed to disappoint, Callie," Snape drawled with some wry amusement, eyes dark eyes half-lidding at some private joke. "And I do not believe that even my mother ever used 'adore' in relations to me." So that made her as singular in his as he was in hers.

"Did you expect me to begin some weepy tale of woe and pain and throw myself at you?" He shook his head, eyes flickering away to some other point briefly, behind that curtain of lank hair. "Truly, Callie; I expect you know me better than that."

Callie had to laugh a little. "Why, do you feel that you want to?" She teased and turned towards him, grabbing her glass of water and taking a drink. "I expected to have dinner and a conversation, Severus. If I came here for sex, I would've already cleared the table with your body."

She looked amused for a moment. "For the record, nothing upsets me more than a man who can't keep his shit together. Pain and suffering has its place. If you don't let it rule you, that's much better than being a whiny bitch about it. Some pain is better to be kept in, and fighting with it yourself. You own it, and you overcome it. It's not my place to put a bandaid on it." Even if it would be a very curvy, hot, womanly bandaid.

"Hardly," he replies dryly. They knew each other better than that, though he snorted at her-- passionate description of just how she'd initiate things.

But he did at least nod his head once; this is why she was welcome in his home, and even to his bed -- Callie Maggotbone got it. There was no confess-is-good-for-the-soul, none of Albus's tut-tutting. It was delightfully refreshing-- even if it did come packaged with some... odd habits and strange thought processes.

Though he knew some would argue that he did let it rule and define him, he'd have denied it every step of the way. He had mastered it, made it a weapon, and helped saved the wizarding world with it. That was all that mattered.

"I think we understand each other well, then."

"I'd say so~" Callie smiled at him. It was a rarity. Even back home, she didn't have a lot of people who understood her- needless to say a man.

"I'm sorry you're in such a difficult situation. Know you have me as a resource. I'll help you any way I can."

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