Love is so short and oblivion so long

[Fiona Dolohov]

Title: My Soul Is Lost

Rating: PG-13. YAY SMEX.

Word Count: 1,340-something

Disclaimer: I do not own Damian LeStrange, Sheliya LeStrange, Teddy Lupin, or anything to do with the Harry Potter canon. I do own Fiona, though.

Characters: Fiona Dolohov, Teddy Lupin, Damian LeStrange, Sheliya LeStrange, Angelica Dolohov

Summary: “She wants to run. She has no place to go. She still wants to, though.” A wedding fic.

Author’s Notes: A random plot bunny about Fiona on her wedding day, looking back on her time with Teddy while she is forced to marry Damian. Pretty angsty, written at three a.m. and unbeta’ed. Hope you all enjoy and I hope I didn’t screw up anyone else’s characters. Inspired by The Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda, posted at the end.

She’s not sure how she got here. Oh, sure, she remembers the walk down to the little church, the small room where she changes into the white, white dress, but she doesn’t know how she let it get this far, get this bad. Her mother whispers “You look beautiful” and she feels sick. The dress is classic and beautiful. She hates it. Wants to tear it off, burn it.

It’s not for her, anyway. She’s not a virgin, never pretended to be. It’s for him. He laughed when she told him that, and simply said that she would be one to him. That no one else mattered. When he laughs, his eyes are the same as they always are. Not cold just…blank. Like nothing in the world surprises him. Like nothing in the world matters.

In the mirror, her reflection doesn’t look like her. Same features, but a mask of impassiveness. Hands gripping the tulle of the skirt so hard her knuckles are white. She wants to run. She has no place to go. She still wants to, though. Run until the heels of the pretty white shoes break and she kicks them off and run until her feet are bleeding and her muscles aching and no one knows her.

They put the veil on her head. More pure white tulle against the darkness of her.


“Why’d you let me sneak in?” he asks, and his voice is rich and deep and amused. Her heart flutters at it, but she plays it off.

Behind her mask, her eyes are keenly trained on him, not the party, not the people around him. There is only him. “You’re interesting.”

He laughs. Asks her to dance. She accepts. His hand is big and warm and sure at her waist. At the unmasking, at midnight, they share their first kiss. It’s cliché, but that doesn’t much matter. They learned more about each other by hiding their identities, and names don’t matter much after that.


The familiar notes of the wedding march begin to play as soon as her feet touch the long red carpet up the aisle. It should’ve been Pachelbels Canon in D. She walks down the aisle anyway.

Most of the guests she knows only by face—they are important enough to make the list, and they all stare at her as if she is beauty personified. It means nothing; come Summer they will look at Shelli the same way, her best friend, her bridesmaid, her sister in law now. She moves past them and does not look at them again.

She reaches the altar, stops next to him. His hand is on the small of her back immediately. He likes to be in contact whenever he’s near her. She remembers a long time ago, the person who would derisively say that it was because he hit her, he needed the contact to convince her he could control her. She’s not so sure. Maybe he knows how hard and how fast and how far she would have run. He doesn’t have to worry about that now.

He took her freedom.


Teddy. The name is cute, seems like a child’s name, but somehow fits this boy (not a child, but maybe not a man either). She likes the way it feels to say it. She points out to him you can’t say it angry, the name just makes you smile. He looks at her in that way of his. Tilted smile and somewhere between ‘you’re so cute’ and ‘god, you’re nuts’. It summarizes them in a nutshell, she thinks.

They lay together in his dorm, in the blurred afterglow, legs wrapped together and fingers entwined. He told his friend to clear out, but there’s still a chance someone could walk in. At least she’s still wearing her skirt… if nothing else. And he managed to pull on a pair of boxers, she’s not sure when.

They laugh. There’s nothing funny happening, but they’re both strung out on feeling, shaking in the good way and too hot from exertion and too chilled from cooling sheen of sweat. Warm, worn laughs, and he buries his fingers in her long dark hair. He looks half asleep after all this, or maybe just so comfortable. He pulls her close, tucks her under his chin. She still has no shirt on, can feel the steady thump-thump of his heart.

“Someone could walk in,” she says against his shoulder. “Imagine what they’d think.” She can imagine all too clearly. She was there. She smiles.

He opens one eye, looks down at her, at himself, chest bare and warm sticky close. “Just tell ‘em we were comparing sizes. You won.” He closes his eye again.

She giggles, curls against him. She’s not entirely sure, but she thinks she’s in love with him.


The priest speaks of love. He quotes the bible. He blesses them. She tries to tune him out, but there’s nothing to think about. Nothing she’d want to think about but him; the man she loves, but not the man she’s marrying. She does not pray to God for forgiveness for not loving the man she marries, or for lying in this little church. There is no God—if there was, he would have helped her when she prayed.

I do. I do. It’s all she has to say and all she doesn’t want to. But the question has been posed to him and he’s agreed. It’s been posed to her, and she has no choice but to agree. If she doesn’t....

His hand on her back is burning, as though it scorches through the dress and into her bare skin, marking her as his. I do. Her only chance and she doesn’t take it. She knows he would have been horrified to hear her give in like this, if he still cared about where she ended up.

Then there’s the question. And if this was a B-rated romance flick, he would show up, having realized that love must conquer all, and claim that he had a reason why these two should not be wed. He would steal her away. He would love her.


He gets upset when he finds out, and avoids her. She’s certain it’s the marriage—maybe he views it as good as cheating? She never did. She never likes to think about the Spring. But he talks to her, and it’s not what she expects.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” No, that she expects, and it’s the usual reasons. Didn’t know how to, and wasn’t sure how you’d react. He paces, all long limbs and muscle and menace.

She whispers “I’m sorry” because she doesn’t know what else to say and apologizing seems like the best option.

Apparently it’s not, though, because he gets angrier. “Why are you apologizing? You don’t have anything to apologize for! I can’t believe he’s hurting you and you didn’t tell me!”

Oh. That’s what he’s angry about. She’d been sure it had been the arranged marriage. “Teddy,” she murmurs, and she says it slow and soft. “I didn’t… I thought I could handle it. I didn’t want you to get upset, or have him hurt you.”

He scoffs at the idea. The message is clear. As if he could be hurt. She wishes that his confidence had not been false. “You shouldn’t have to handle it,” he snaps and when she flinches, he stops pacing, lowers his voice. “I want you to tell me this sort of thing. I want you to trust me.” He pauses, reaches out for her. “I love you, Fiona.”

Her name never sounds as sweet as when he says it. She begs him to say it again, those words, and he does and she presses her face to his chest, murmuring the same. She cries, but the tears aren’t sad. They’re not happy, either. They’re just a release. He gives her freedom, and she dares to think it might last.

“Fiona.”


No one speaks. They are now pronounced man and wife. He may now kiss the bride.



I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

[charlus]

UGGGGH WHY DID WE HAVE TO DOOM THEM AGAIN. WHY.

I LOVED IT. Her heartbreak is written SO well. And the FiTeddy scenes were PERFECT.

...ily[/color]