"He is right you know." Marlene muttered.
"I know, how did it get like this Marls?" Sirius replied. "How did we let it get this bad?"
"We are both competitive, don't pretend we aren't." She reminded him.
"But this is more than a competition, and we both know that. This is literally tearing each other apart." Sirius remarked.
"Can we stop?"
"I want to."
"No, we both have for a while I think, I mean do we have the ability to be in a functioning relationship because I'm not sure we do." She said. "I've never seen Remus like that."
"Horrible isn't it?" Sirius agreed.
"It really is."
"Do they think we are going to be able to be normal suddenly Mckinnon? Because you are the strongest person I know, after Moony maybe, and I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I will ever get over this."
"What's this?" Marlene whispered, afraid of the answer.
"You, the baby, what we've done to each other."
"Well do you want to get over me?"
"God no." Sirius said.
"Then we can work this out."
"Do you really believe that?"
Marlene paused and looked into the fire, watching it flicker and listening to the crackle. She could feel the heat from where she was sat, and it reminded her of the common room in winter months, curled up next to one of the fireplaces on a Sunday afternoon chatting with friends was one of Marlene's favourite things to do. Her bedroom at home had a fireplace, but she hadn't been home since the previous summer now, her parents had begged her to stay over Christmas and at first Marlene had been offended but her mother soon explained that it was much safer at Hogwarts. Marlene didn't like feeling scared, or vulnerable but the War was disrupting her life more and more, her brothers fighting for the Order and constantly being away on missions. She hadn't spoken to her eldest brother Marcus in six months, god how she missed him. She thought about the time Sirius had been staying at James, the christmas before last and how he used to sneak out at night and across the fields to Marlene's, where they would sit by the fire till the early morning. Marlene remembered the muggle bonfires Lily had told her about, and compared Marlene to and she couldn't help but smile.
"I don't know."
"Why are you smiling then?"
"Because one thing I do know is, that I don't want to lose you." She said simply, more honest than she had ever been with Sirius before. "I don't want to imagine my life without you in it, and that's all I need to know. So as long as you want to make this work, I think we ought to try."
"And what if I'm not what you want?" Sirius said.
Marlene looked away from the fire and at Sirius. He looked young as he sat in front of her, more exposed than she had ever seen him, it reminded her of when he ran away from home, the previous Summer. His usual confident, assuring behaviour was absent and in it's place was an uncertain boy, who didn't have examples of love to follow, who didn't have anywhere to go once they left Hogwarts and for the first time Sirius truly looked like the sad sixteen year old run away that he had been labelled as. Marlene knew that they had a lot to work on, building trust would take a long time, and she knew that both of their fiery personalities needed putting out, not building up. She moved over towards Sirius and held his face in her hands.
"Sirius, I have no idea what I want, and to be truthful I don't know if this will work. But we need to try."
Sirius nodded. "If you're sure." And he pulled her into his arms and held her. The reckless blonde that had appeared in his life when he started at Hogwarts all those years ago and turned his World upside down. The strongest witch he knew, that could win against nearly anyone in a duel, or an argument for that matter. She was such a whirlwind of destruction that it was easy to get caught up in, and she drove him round the bend at times, and she had slapped him, and screamed at him and hurt him so many times he swore he wasn't going back there. But he did, every single time. To hold her in his arms like this, it felt different to Sirius, for one of the first times it felt real, and honest like she really needed him.
"We still need to talk though Mckinnon." They fell back onto the sofa and she rested her head on his chest.
"I know we do."
"Were you ever going to tell be about the baby?"
"I don't know." She said honestly.
"Why?"
"I didn't want to put you into a position where you felt pressured into being with me." She whispered.
Sirius sat and thought about what Marlene had said, would he have wanted to keep the child? They sure as hell weren't ready for that, but Sirius couldn't help but feel a deep longing for the child they had lost.
"They would have been trouble, that's for sure." Sirius replied and Marlene nodded.
"Little baby Mckinnon-Black, professor Mcgonagall would have had a nightmare."
Marlene went quiet after that, and after Sirius had been lost in thought he realized that she had fallen asleep, obviously still shattered from the past few weeks events. So he reached for a blanket off the side and covered her, and before long he too dozed off.