Chapter Illustrations for Chapter 19 - Handwritten Letters from The Archive of a Full-Time Grocery Stocker // TAFTGS. Featuring some mail from the cutest most mischievous little guy around.
the chapter that killed me several times (and that I somehow ended up loving despite it)
Illustration for Ch. 15 — Cocktail Napkins from TAFTGS // ft. a scribbled upon gay cocktail lounge napkin <3
cannot even fathom that I've just surpassed 100,000 words written for this fic. It's been my whole heart and soul. every chapter posted now just reminds me it's eventually going to end!!!!!! what the hell!!!
Opening drafted snippet of Chapter 20 of TAFTGS, titled “Interlude”.
Sirius will never forget the first time he blacked out.
Well, he has, actually. Forgotten it. That's kind of the point of blacking out, isn't it? So. Yeah. He guesses he has forgotten, but the point is that he can recall everything that led up to the blacking out. Those are the pieces he will never fail to be able to call back at the snap of his fingers.
It had been after the birth of Harry. He'd been forced to leave the hospital; he hadn't been allowed to stay. Not married enough to Lily, not blood-related enough, either. Because those fucking doctors wouldn't know what a family was if it bit them in the ass. Because they didn't look at the three of them—Lily, lifeless, and James crowding over her body and heaving, Sirius with his too-still arms cradling Harry, staring on in horror—and know what they had been.
Two brothers and a sister, in a way. Or, perhaps, a brother, a sister-in-law, and a brother. Maybe more than that; something there's no name for in any language that Sirius knows. But ultimately, family (whether a piece of paper claimed them as such or not).
His memory is a little soberly fuzzy, but only the ride home of that night is like that. He thinks it's because his mind is good at compartmentalizing on its own (it does it without asking, it makes him forget on a whim).
He remembers slinking into the apartment, though. Viscerally. He can imagine it clearly as if it's happening now (while he lie naked in Remus' bed, with Remus asleep beside him).
It had been quiet. So fucking quiet. Part of it was perhaps that he knew, the moment he crossed the threshold, that he and James would have to return to it, Harry in tow, without Lily. Of course she wouldn't be with them. Because Lily Evans-Potter had died that evening.
Maybe the distinctness of the memory comes from it being the first time he'd ever had to force himself not to feel, (or making himself forget, or force himself not be inside his own body, or making himself be someone else, however one would like to put it). Or maybe it comes from that being the first moment he simply couldn't swallow it, either intentional or unintentional.
He'd tried to gulp it down with force, the feeling. But his chest began to pound. And on a whim, Sirius fumbled at a bottle on top of the fridge, for a drink.
And Sirius drank.
Silently, all the night, while James likely sat with his parents, curled over Lily in that hospital, and soothing Harry's cries, Sirius drank. While James began to grieve, Sirius began swallowing two fingers of whiskey every twenty minutes, staring at the wall. His dad used to do it, but had been vehement on one thing about drinking. You are not an alcoholic if you are drinking high-quality liquor. Extra points if it's out of a crystal tumbler.
Sirius knows his parents have always been wrong about everything, but he stretched that belief to extend understanding. Just that once.
(That's all it took. Just once.)
That night, eventually, Sirius’ memory faded into obscurity. His mind was blissfully empty.
(Or maybe it wasn't; Sirius isn't sure. He wasn't really there, was he?)
Waking up the morning after, no matter how hard it was to do so, was an experience bordering on religious (and Sirius hadn't been to church in years). It had been some blessed thing, and he'd scraped his fingers over his pounding scalp and thought he could manage through that part of it, if it meant he could wake up with his head so fucking empty.
So it really isn't that Sirius remembers what it was like to black out for the first time. What it really is, is that Sirius remembers the first time he'd found out how effectively not to feel a thing.
He started praising the bottle after that (only sometimes; after holding James in comfort until he dozed off, after cradling Harry during one of his more fitful nights, after anything that made him feel too deeply). And through this, Sirius Black found out how to time travel. He had found the ability to skip all of the hard parts. He had learned how not to feel to a degree that he previously thought hadn't been possible.
Later, Sirius would ponder, coming to the realization that the concept of time travel had been (and always would be) faulty:
You can travel to the future, but it will be at the detriment of everyone around you (you will not remember the lapse, but they will).
You cannot travel to the past, but if you could, no one would be there. It would just be you, in an empty, dark world. Eerie and taken back by the earth. Everyone you love is either alive now, or dead now. And going to the past will not change that.
Chapter Illustrations for Chapter 16 - Flower Petals from The Archive of a Full-Time Grocery Stocker // TAFTGS. Featuring baby's breath and hyacinth flowers.
the chapter whose last scene I have had semi-drafted since chapter three, finally here to make an appearance <3 :'-)
