Aligning With Violent Men Shouldn’t Lend To Such Surprise || Severus/Mary
Severus Snape was a walking, spell-casting contradiction. He was wholesomely confused and hardly understood where he fit in in the world. This pattern evolved from his childhood as a young boy, and since that time, it had been in his best effort to suppress it. Severus wanted to consider himself a black-and-white individual, to shed his ambiguity to others, because those who did not delve too deeply into his past, he was nothing but a venomous Potions practitioner. There was nothing to question, nothing to hide. No tricks up his robe’s sleeve. However, in reality, he felt terrible conflict bubbling in his soul. He sought to hold great power, great responsibility! To finally be respected after being kicked to the ground and rendered insignificant for so many years! To be /someone/! To be worth /something/! But then there was Lily. A childhood platonic love that blossomed into one-sided romance which he knew that he could cultivate to be mutual if only he abandoned his greedy obsession for recognition. Severus found himself at a crossroads, and neither side could be chosen without consequences from the other.
The pair continued to walk swiftly. Severus could not afford to postpone his movements to answer Mary. He would have to multitask. However, the black hues did flicker to hers as he had not expected such a bold inquiry to leave her lips. The knowledge that Mary could be forthright pleased him though; maybe the character prior to Julius’ arrival still existed as he hoped. “Why do I care?” He repeated. Severus needed a believable answer. Something honest but not overly-revealing. He pondered this deeply. “I care about you, Mary,” he said gently. “We have similar goals.”
Mary stared at him blankly for a few moments as she hurried along in his wake. Similar goals? That made no sense. She bit her lip, trying to hold in the question, before deciding that if he was going to get angry at her for questioning him, he probably would have done so already. “What do you mean we have similar goals? I don’t… I don’t even have goals, not really. Not that are mine, anyway.” She was rather good at mirroring back what people expected from her. Agreeing with everyone was how she survived from time to time. But that didn’t make their goals hers. She was suddenly very intrigued by what someone like Severus thought she stood for, thought that she was, beneath all the acquiescing and the docility.
She couldn’t see how he thought they aligned with his own. He was, after all, a part of an organization that thought very little of people like her- she had a sinking feeling that were it not for her connection with Julius, quite a few of them would kill her without a second thought. But then… his soulmate was a muggleborn, too. And he loved her, she could see that. He wasn’t faking that. Well… he might be. She knew that it was possible. But in her heart, she didn’t believe it. He cared about her. His entire demeanor shifted when he was looking at her. And now he was saying that he cared about Mary, as well. Because they had similar goals. “What…” she hesitated for a moment. “What goals do you mean?”
"You mention that your goals are not your own," Severus emphasized specifically, wondering if Mary could draw the conclusion on her own concerning what he was implicating. He would not be surprised if her mind had not been cultured to draw such abstract conclusions, but a small, repressed part of the man aspired that she might. Severus himself did not his true loyalties, but the majority of his actions and goals were not his own. Being involved with a dark organization lent its own sense of conformity. Severus did not want to actively seek out muggle-borns and blood traders and to kill them for the sins that he did not even fathom to be sinful. Merlin, Severus did not entirely /discriminate/ against such groups, especially not after loving Lily to the extent in which he does. "Do you truly believe that I value people based on their blood?" Severus inquired, casting his dark set of eyes on her light ones.
Those critical words were enough. They did not require further explanation and Severus silenced himself. The panic might outweigh the relief of speaking them later, but for now, the dark-haired man remained complacent. He was worrisome though. If Mary's mate heard of his cognitive infidelity to the group, then Severus could find himself in some deep-rooted trouble. He felt untroubled by this.. Until he remembered Lily. Severus almost froze in his physical steps. Mary was subservient, and reporting to her soulmate was second nature at this point; would she be willing to rat him out? To endanger Lily and Harry? An aura of protectiveness fell over Severus and he gulped before masking the look with hard indifference. He looked at Mary, and waited for her to respond, as well as to see the look on her face, to decide how he might redirect the conversation, or how to proceed in general after the ground-breaking statement.
