Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

43. The Spaces We Fill

Sam was true to his word. He never asked her to choose between him and her other friends. He never asked her for more time. Never demanded her attention when others were around. He never demanded anything anymore. And maybe, Luna thought, that should have been relieving. But all it felt was hollow.

His requests, his refusal to stay silent when the living and solid were around had never been pleasant, per se, but they had been there. They had been reminders of his existence. Proof of his presence. Assertions of his reality. They had been space he had taken up in the world.

And now, that space was empty. And Luna had nothing to fill it with. She wasn't sure what belonged there, what fit there, what that space would look like in a normal girl's life.

So she ignored it. And she made sure that even as she did, she didn't ignore Sam, at least not completely. She made time. She stayed up late and slipped into the common room once her roommates were asleep. She made excuses for bathroom breaks. She caught Sam's eye in the middle of moments when they should have shared a joke. She tried. And she knew it was worth something, caught the lighting up in Sam's gaze every time she offered those little tidbits.

But she also saw the dark sliding in every time she looked away again. And she always looked away. Before it became suspicious. Before it looked strange. Before anyone could notice or ask. And Luna knew, somewhere deep down in place she didn't look, that it wasn't enough. That it would fall apart one day. Shatter one day. That one day, those crumbs would start looking like taunts, little trails meant to string him along. Someday, he would snap because he was starving and she had failed to offer him a place at her table when he knew he had earned one.

But that would be later. And now... Now, as the semester rolled on and drifted to a close, Luna was content. If she ignored the corners of herself where she knew dark things lurked, if she settled for a few sleep deprived nights, if she ignored the nightmares that had lingered for too long after those full moons in May and June, if she just focused on what was good, then... then it was good. Life was good. And she told herself it was enough. Told herself she didn't need more. Told herself Sam didn't need more. Told herself it would never break. Never fall apart. Never shatter along those hairline fractures she saw spreading sometimes in those moments when she looked away from Sam. When she went days without speaking to him. When too many eyes watched her too closely and she made her choices not out of love but out of fear. Out of memory. Out of history and the quiet, unspoken truth that however much Sam cracked, his falling apart would always be less dangerous than everyone else's.

Because Luna might have moved on, might have shared warm nights and laughing afternoons, might have almost managed something like forgiveness, but she hadn't forgotten what James had said. The way he'd looked at her. The way he'd said the word crazy the same way all the children growing up had. The way that did more than hurt. It sliced. It stung. It shattered. It was an echo that Luna was sick of hearing.

Which was why, when choices had to be made, she chose some facsimile of normal. It was why when Sam said something around others, Luna didn't answer. It was why, when madness or strangeness or wrongness were mentioned, Luna always made sure to smile. To laugh. To play along. To follow the rules.

And if she slipped, if her smiles didn't meet her eyes and her laughs were a few seconds too late, no one mentioned it - a choice Luna decided to call mercy rather than pity even as she hoped it was nothing more than ignorance.

It was an easy thing to pretend, really, because in so many ways, mercy and ignorance seemed to be the core of the strange little group Luna spent time around. Pandora and Kendra and Remus were all predisposed, it seemed, to mercies of the kind Luna had long ago resigned to fairytales and fiction.