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[ It's a little bit silly how he covets the privacy of the brand on his arm-- everyone who knows what it is already knows it's there, and no one else would understand it. But that part of him just isn't anyone else's business.

He sits still and lets her take his hand, flexing fingers open, pliable. ]

Am I cursed?

[ (Because he's actually cursed.) ]

[ Claire makes a face, sucks in a hiss of air between her teeth, and looks up at him very carefully. ]

It looks like it. [ It's always hard for her to get through a joke without first privately finding it hilarious and consequently ruining the whole thing, but she makes a hard try at it. ] See these two lines? [ The swoopy one under the fingers and the one directly below it. She presses her thumb between them. ] They state very clearly that at some point in your life you were destined to be harassed by a pushy blonde in a space jumpsuit.

[ God, Severus, it was so obvious. ]

[ As far as pushy blondes go, Claire is pretty mild-- compared to the Malfoys, she's probably a saint. Or maybe it's just that she's the perfect amount of pushy to deal with a paranoid asshole like Severus.

He thinks about saying that's not a curse, but can't figure out how to word it in a way he doesn't hate. ]

You're not going to cure me, are you? [ He curls his fingers inward, over hers. ]

That's not part of my ability, so. [ That's the first time in a while that she's addressed it with any real amount of levity that doesn't have some secondary condition of self-loathing. ] Probably not.

[ At least, that's the game plan. Not that there's a game or a plan. Everything so far has been very by the seat of her pants, just as it always is, and maybe he doesn't intend it but she can root her way through the underlying doubt or paranoia or whatever it is this time and manage to stay above water without having to tread too hard. ]

It's already happened, anyway. We're too late for a cure.

[ Severus doesn't say anything - what the hell can he say without sounding like a total idiot? Probably nothing. He laces their fingers together and puts his free hand over their joined ones, a silent Good obvious in those movements.

Somewhere nearby the dogs are still rolling around uselessly, but he's not paying attention to them. ]

[ Which leaves her to try to find something to fill the quiet with. It doesn't come right away, and that's fine. She's gotten very used to comfortable silences even if the urge to fill them with something more substantial presses right into her breastbone. Maybe that's due to the fact that something is always supposed to come next, traditionally speaking. Claire, for her part, constantly seems to be stuck in neutral.

The dogs do catch her attention, the sudden rustle of grass close by making her turn her head in their general direction, but Izzie has maintained order as the established matriarch and is capable of wrangling them into place, so Claire only spares them a brief glance and then is back to Severus. ]

You know, you've been coming down to my floor a lot. [ Said with the very clear implication that she understands how much he hates her floor. ] Maybe we could switch off once in a while.

[ The fifth floor and its menagerie of assholes is something that Severus thinks of fairly often; Claire could at any time decide to pull any number of stunts with her neighbors to humiliate him. It's a paranoia that exists constantly like a program running in the background of his head - he tells himself she doesn't even know enough about that old hate to do anything with it, but it still lurks there. ]

I don't know that my quarters are pet proof, [ he says, ] but you're welcome.

[ Just. Find a puppy sitter, first. Eugh. ]

You've been fine, there?

[ She has a list, at this point, of people who she knows would be willing to find themselves preoccupied with puppy slobber for any amount of time, and she is pretty sure that she is going to at least let one of those people adopt Tug - she's not getting rid of Diablo; his name is way better and he's less ornery despite that fact. Looking at him, her eyebrows raise skeptically. One of these days he will wake up to find that puppies are not so bad. ]

It's been very fine. Nothing out of the ordinary. [ Her tone says that it's not a lie. For the most part, living on the fifth floor is no different than the one she was on previously. Except maybe Kate and Darcy now have easier access to her door at all hours of the day. She hasn't even seen Sirius, however - ] I did meet Remus Lupin. Bumped into him on his way... somewhere. I can't remember. It was a while ago.

Mm. [ He doesn't quite go rigid, but it's clear he's not pleased to hear the werewolf's name. (Not that Claire knows he's a werewolf. Probably. Severus is still being good about that.

For now. ]

I'm sorry to hear that, [ he can't help but say, only slightly reeling in the unpleasant tone. ] He's of a particularly insidious passive aggressive nature. Thinks if he pretends he's above everything now that he's absolved of ever apologizing for it. He's still a complete prick, he just likes to smile nervously at people so it's less believable when it happens.

[ Claire, while privately finding the experience not altogether unpleasant - she's never going to like Sirius, no matter how many of his thirty-two teeth he shows off in a smile, and anyone who can claim to like him that much is always going to make her head turn - does understand the new tension in his grasp. She laughs, a little, not really a laugh in its nature but still easily classified as such. It's funny - well, it's not funny, but it's something - because she can see that being an accurate description.

She doesn't know about the werewolf thing. Just. For the record. ]

I don't think he had anything to be passive aggressive with me about, or be a prick about. Maybe because I just caught him on the way to the bathroom and he was distracted by having to pee. [ She shrugs, not wanting to make it into a bigger deal than it needs to be. They all live on the same floor. It's a consequence of reality that they're going to run into each other at some point. Technically she could use the boys' bathroom again, but in this situation she doesn't see how that's going to work. ] He was nice. I'm sure it could've been a lot worse.

[ So just move along from it. ]

How's your floor? Any fun neighbors?

He's not.

[ Also just for the record. It's not something he's going to compromise on; some people would (will, and do) find it childish that he's incapable of maintaining a friendship with anyone who'll put up with the Marauders, but that's the reality of it. This isn't about schoolyard bullying, it's about nonstop harassment that more often than not bordered on persecution and made frequent stops in flat-out assault. And it continues.

Lupin may be a lesser evil, but he's a cowardly evil who enables and supports it. He's just as bad as Black. ]

No. It's quiet.

[ Severus likes it that way. ]

I'll keep that in mind.

[ And she will, also just for the record. She's perfectly capable of forming her own opinions about people and maintaining them, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but she knows that his opinions aren't formless, they didn't just appear out of the ether. And she also knows what it means to see one kind of face and eventually find out the one beneath it is a distorted and inverted image of what you expect. Severus hasn't disappointed her in that regard, and if she's being honest, she doesn't expect him to. Claire knows without having to think about it where her loyalties lie.

She wants to drop it altogether, get the change in the atmosphere back to the way it was. Her fingers are still pressed carefully into his, so Claire leads with that, stretching them a bit and resettling. ]

I'm actually jealous. Not that I don't like living by Kate and Darcy, it's just kind of... a lot, sometimes. And everyone else. Sometimes it's a relief when everyone just shuts up for a little while.

[ He can't help but be on guard when shit like this is brought up; they're the people whose role in making his life a living hell was second only to his abusive father. It's possible he wouldn't have become a Death Eater if he hadn't been so driven to oppose the people who hurt him.

But. Anyway. He forces himself to let some of the tension uncoil from his spine. ]

It reminds me of a dormitory. I spent enough time in one. [ Mildly observed. ] Kate's been.. Kate's fine?

[ Er. ]

Well.

[ Is as far as she gets, with that. Maybe she's been a shitty friend, but her capacity for heightened interaction has been exceedingly less substantial than it's been in the past, which is saying something, considering how increasingly anti-social she's grown over the past couple of years. Dealing with Nathan and Peter being gone while trying to find her balance managing the weight of what they left behind means that she hasn't been able to deal with much else. The easiest way of admitting that means just not facing it at all. ]

As fine as can be expected, I guess. [ She pulls back a little, feeling guilty. Given the other girl's propensity to just Not Talk About It and Claire's distractedness, which will inevitably reach its breaking point, it's a wonder they've ever discussed anything at all. ] The same could probably be said about a lot of people.

[ After a small hesitation, ] She made that poll on the network about 'creepy' non-humans.

[ Severus considered telling her later, but Claire's reaction has made him change his mind. He doesn't want her to be hard on herself for not being here more for Kate; he doesn't think the muggle would let her. Might even resent her for it.

He half wants to ask She's not been rude to you?-- but he's conscious of what it might look like if he engages on that train of thought, given his past allegiances. ]

[ The stages of thought that Claire's brain travels through are probably written in heavy, black marker all over her face. Confusion is the first to bite, and her gaze goes distant as she tries to reorient herself to place and time, what she thought and how she felt, what she tried to interpret and what she ultimately came up with. Eventually there's frustration, anger, disbelief, even, until ultimately she allows herself a mix of disappointment and resignation.

Of course it was Kate. Of course it was. And not because she would expect that out of the other girl - Kate hasn't been rude to her, has done nothing to her save for maybe being less forthcoming than Claire would like when dealing with what she's been dealing with, but Claire can understand that - but because Claire must be cursed or something. His palm reading skills obviously need calibrated. For some reason, she is reminded instantly of West and the disappointment she felt with him and how much it felt like satisfaction, that for as upset as she was with his betrayal, it meant that things had proceeded exactly how she anticipated. This is why she is not friends with people. ]

Oh. [ She tries the weight of that one word out on her tongue for a while, working it around her teeth and down into the back of her throat. ] You're sure about that?

Yes. [ If it counts for anything, he does sound a little sorry about it. Severus never disliked Kate - even now, he approaches the situation understand that she's been through a serious ordeal. But despite what measure of respect he had (has?) for her, he never once trusted her. She's a muggle. He can't. ]

Someone traced it, and she didn't deny it. [ And apologized, but only to one person and under a lock; Severus doesn't believe it was sincere, given what she was saying so freely when she thought she was anonymous. ]

Kate and Darcy are both human.

[ It's a conversation that she knows she'll have to have with the other girl at some point. She owes Kate that much, as a friend, to get her version of things. But even then. She's been able to get past knowing worse about other people, her father for starters, but that doesn't mean that getting beyond it means you ever forget about it. It just lurks there like a cancer, waiting to spread spindly fingers out to other interactions where it can expand and eventually explode.

Darcy's abrupt inclusion in this catches her by surprise, and Claire sincerely hopes that she's not going to find some degree of culpability there, too. ]

So? [ She's human, too. She spent a long time struggling with that justification. ] I understand Kate given the context, but Darcy?

Darcy's human with or without context. [ His tone is subdued - far from hostile. He's not accusing the other young woman of anything, but he's just saying. Claire is on her own between them. When it comes down to it, no matter how kind anyone seems, people are always going to pick the side with their own people on it. ]

I'm just telling you. I'm not telling you to-- do or think anything about it.

[ She should know. That's all. ]

I'm human, too.

[ Somehow, she manages to keep her voice level, manages to convince herself not to get upset. It's an old wound, a phantom pain that twinges when she least expects it, but for the most part she's staunched the bleeding. ]

I get it. We're different. The second I figured out what I was, what I could do, I gave myself endless grief about whether or not I was actually a human being and not just some freak of nature. I tried - [ She's resolutely not going to talk about how she came up with various ways to severely injure herself. And video taped them. ] - that point of view is something that I struggled with for a long time. I can't believe that everyone who's not like me is out to get me, just like I can't believe that everyone who is like me is gonna try to kill me or someone else. I did that for years, and all it ever got me was alone, walls up.

[ She scratches her fingers through her hair and rolls her lips together, biting down on them, thinking about Gretchen without even having to try very hard. It isn't the first time that she's missed her since she's been here, but right now it's so acute she can nearly taste it. ]

I know what you're trying to tell me. I do. And I'm gonna think about it no matter what. Trust me, it's already something that's crossed my mind a hundred times, here and at home.

[ He listens. He really does.

But it's a kind of optimism he can't get behind. Severus fought a war. Nothing is better now. People are dead, and everything else is the same. ]

The opposite of human isn't a freak of nature. [ That's something they've put into her head; she only thought that because it's their mindset, the one she had before she knew she was different. Better. Above them.

They don't have to be out to get her to hate her. Muggles don't have to be actively trying to kill witches to ruin their lives. Mutant, posthuman, wizard - among baselines and muggles, they are already alone. ]

I'm not trying to do anything.

[ Claire would like to believe that it's optimism, but in reality it's much harsher than that. Deep down, she knows what he does, and she's seen it first hand, how terrible that people who aren't like her and people who are can be. Look what her father has done his entire life, what Nathan did to them, because they were different. No recognition of that can make her any less responsible for what she's done now.

So she has to be right. People have to be better than she innately believes them to be, because if they aren't and what he's experienced and what she desperately wants not to believe is the truth, then there's a good chance she has just fucked up the lives of countless people who didn't sign up for and didn't want the attention her actions are going to bring to them. And that isn't a responsibility that she can entertain without wanting to consistently and violently throw up. ]

I know that now. I didn't at sixteen. At sixteen all I cared about were SAT scores and stupid school dances. [ Saying that out loud makes her feel about a hundred miles away from that place, that time, in her life. None of it seems real anymore. ] And I know you aren't trying to do anything, either. It's just - something - I think about that kind of thing a lot. It's still a relatively new thing, for as much as I've been over it. You've been through a hell of a lot more than I have. I hope you don't think I don't value your opinion just because I want it to be wrong.

[ The reality of it is that she has probably very severely fucked up life for a lot of people. She hopes that she doesn't look a little green. ]

[ Severus shrugs.

To him, it's optimism.

Everyone is that bad. They will always be that bad. They're a disgusting plague upon the earth, a virus demolishing all sustainable resources, and they should all be killed. He's 'reformed' enough to have dialed down his hateful bloodlust, he's capable of accepting A Muggle, but he'll never accept muggles, and he'll never trust any of them.

But his own people hate him, too, so what the fuck is his insight really worth. She's wrong about it and he knows she is, but he doesn't have any fight left in him about it.

So he doesn't say anything. ]

[ Maybe it is optimism, misguided or otherwise. For her it's too mired in duty and denial, considering how fresh the wound is, and she's not resigned enough yet to believe with absolute certainty that there's no hope left. She isn't that girl yet, hard angles, sadistic streak, and her world isn't what his is. Maybe there's still a chance there.

But that's there. This is here. There is grass under her knees and a couple of dogs who have stopped rolling around and started chewing on each others' ears. She didn't come here to step carefully through a field of landmines, but she's not going to let trampling on a couple of them deter her too much. She does drag her hand back from between his, not an abrupt pull or marked by distaste. She does feel like she needs to reclaim a little of her own ground, all the same. ]

I've been thinking Tug's the one I'm gonna give to someone.

[ Is what she says probably after about two minutes. ]

[ Having a past full of terrorism and killing people: fine. Having no qualms about the fact that all muggles are shit: she pulls her hand away. Severus doesn't understand why now, but he's not surprised overall when she draws back. He's been waiting for it since the beginning, and he knows it won't be the last time she does it. He doesn't hold it against her.

Severus sits quietly and tries not to radiate standoffishness. Not for the first time he thinks about how much Claire's like Lily-- and at some point, he's going to be too much. Sometimes he wishes he could just stop, but these feelings are all he is, anymore. ]

He's a bit more of an arsehole.

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