#The prime example is My Father but I can't remember any specifics. So for example on a DougDoug stream someone suggests sexy nurse outfits

[trans-leek-cookie]

The funniest people ever are autistics who generally aren't super humorous and take stuff fairly literally/at face value, and then when you say something just kinda Wrong they respond completely casually

[bookishfeylin]

Follow up about Tamlin and Rhysand's family. I apologize ahead of time if my nitpicking is bothersome.

I found the chapter where Rhysand tells the story and will try to relay only known facts, and then conclusions that Rhysand made based on them.

Rhys and Tamlin were friends. Their fathers were enemies, however they attended same events and did not prevent their children from interacting.

Rhysand told Tamlin that his mother and sister were traveling to a war camp to visit him. On the way there the two women were murdered, their heads cut off and send to the camp and their wings taken as souvenirs.

Rhysand and his father infiltrated Spring Court and killed the ruling family as retribution for the murder.

Rhysand says that it was Tamlin's father, brother and Tamlin himself who travelled to Illyria to kill his mother and sister. He doesn't offer explanation to how he knows. The only evidence of Spring Court's involvement that I remember of are wings that Tamlin confirms were present at the Manor at some point.

I haven't read ACOFAS, it's possible that Tamlin confirms the rest of the story there as well, in which case he is responsible for a murder of two women.

I am so invested in this specific episode because it's a prime example of what you always point out in SJM's writings: she confuses first person subjective and third person objective. It us clear that we are supposed to take Rhysands depiction of the events as objective and accurate, yet in other instances in the books he is subjective and mistaken.

I apologize again for ranting in your inbox and would love to hear more of your take on how SJM treats subjectivity and objectivity in her books.

You're fine anon! This is SUCH an excellent point that's certainly worthy of more discussion, because of how unmistakably prevalent this phenomenon is throughout the series.

We are, over and over, told a variety of subjective opinions that we are expected to take as truth despite the fact that they are objectively shown to be false.

We are told that Tamlin has always abused Lucien and his court and that's the "truth" Sarah wants us to take away from the text, but we're shown that's simply not textually true in ACOTAR 1

We are told that Feyre has rose-tinted goggles in book 1, but in reality she never makes a point of excusing anyone's actions, especially to the degree that she begins to excuse every atrocity of Rhysand's in ACOMAF.

We are told that Rhysand is the most powerful High Lord, but we are shown that he literally can't control any part of his court aside from managing the secret city that was already established before his reign.

We are told Rhysand gives women choices and empowers them. But over and over we see this to be false, with his very choices with Feyre being clearly coercion, letting Morrigan's abusers into Velaris--the city SHE manages and is supposedly "queen" of, mind you--without asking her first, using Feyre as bait without her consent, the entire baby plotline in ACOSF, etc.

Truly beginning in ACOMAF, there is no consistency between what we are told and what we are shown because the text is trying to push an agenda. And for most people who can't read critically, it succeeded.

[imaginejamesandsirius]

Could you do an Inception AU where James is Cobb, Lily is Ariadne, and Sirius is Mal? Specifically the scene where Cobb and Ariadne go into the world that Cobb and Mal created when they achieved inception. In there, Cobb has to fight Mal’s demand that he stays with her and doesn’t return to the real world. Thank you so much in advance!

((A/N: This fic probably only makes sense if you’ve watched Inception because I don’t explain a whole lot. Warnings for violence and suicide in keeping with the movie. Also an ambiguous ending...))

"I'm sorry, Remus," James said, jaw tight.

All he did was shake his head to dismiss it. He didn't say it was okay, because really, it wasn't.

James had brought a projection in, and not only had it prematurely ended the dream and possibly ruined their chances of getting the job done at all, but it had shot Remus. He'd brought a projection of Sirius into the dream without meaning to, and he'd shot Remus. He'd brought in a projection of Sirius, and he'd likely ruined the job. They had a backup dream in place in case the first time didn't work, but that didn't make this any more ideal to deal with.

He was fraying. Every possible edge that he had was unraveling. He was getting by thinking only about the next job. He couldn't afford to try and think about anything else.

Not even that his projections of Sirius kept ruining those jobs. 

This job turned out to be a complete failure. They didn't get the information they needed, and the target found out exactly what they were doing and who they were. Greyback had experience and training with dreamsharing, which meant that when he woke up, he would remember them.

*

"I love you," Sirius said, his smile soft and easy.

The sun was shining above them. Dreamsharing hadn't been made illegal yet. It was in the recreation phase during this memory. They spent days planning the next adventure they could take people along for.

"Aren't you going to say it back?" he asked, nudging James with an elbow.

"Of course I love you. You've always known it. I think you knew it before I had it figured out," James said with a laugh. He missed talking to Sirius like this.

"Don't be ridiculous, sweetheart. The minute you laid eyes on me, you decided that we were going to be together forever."

"I had that idea quite separated from what I thought love was."

Sirius laughed. "All right, I admit it, I might have known before you did. But it's not my fault you're so out of touch with your own feelings."

"Used to be," James corrected, raising a hand just so he could touch Sirius's face. Just to feel him, just to remind himself that they were together right now. He knew Sirius as well as he knew himself. Better, even. "Ever since I figured out that I loved you, I didn't need to discover it a second time."

"You're hopeless," Sirius said with a grin. He brought a hand up and curled his fingers around James's arm.

"I wish I could stay here forever," James breathed.

"Why don't you?"

*

"We're taking the job, right?" Remus asked.

He meant Greyback's offer. James could honestly say this was the first time a target turned around and wanted to hire them. Given how terribly things had gone when they were trying to extract information from Greyback, it was even more surprising. It hadn't exactly been a great example of their work. "I thought you said it was a bad idea."

"I said it was impossible," Remus corrected. "That's never stopped you from taking on jobs before."

Remus already knew that they were doing it, he just needed to hear James say it. "And it's not going to stop me now."

"We don't have an architect. I can call Peter for one level, but that still leaves us one short, since you can't do it."

"I've got an idea."

Remus paused, all too familiar with some of James's ideas. "Nothing that's going to get you arrested, right?"

James snorted. "Not this time." Sirius's father might blame him for Sirius's death, but Orion was in a prime position to find good dream architects, and for this job, James would need someone talented.

*

James went to a worse memory that night. Not because he wanted to see Sirius like that, but because he needed to remind himself of what had happened. Sometimes he got too accustomed to the way Sirius would appear as a projection, when he wasn't supposed to be there. Angry and violent, and so little like himself that James didn't know what to do. Every time he saw him like that, he was momentarily stunned. Despite all the times he'd seen him like that, it still surprised him when he showed up that way in someone else's dream.

He opened the door and saw a very familiar, wrecked hotel room. Their vacation. Their first anniversary that they'd had after waking up from limbo. It was supposed to be a celebration of them finally being back in the real world.

"Sirius?" he called, despite knowing where he'd find him.

"I'm over here, love," Sirius answered, like he always did, like he'd done when it happened. When it had actually happened, James had been worried that someone had broken into their room and hurt him. It's how Sirius had wanted for it to look. He'd had to call his name several times before he got a response, and he'd been panicked long before he caught sight of Sirius and figured out what he had planned.

James stepped carefully past the chair that was out of place, over the broken shards of a glass vase. He walked over to the window, swallowing thickly. The curtain moved lazily in the wind from the open air, and he held it out of the way so he could look across the street, where Sirius was sitting on a ledge. When it had happened in real life, James had immediately climbed out and held a hand out to him and asked him to come inside. This time, all he said was, "Why?"

"We're still in a dream, James. I know you don't believe me, but that's why I have to do this."

"You don't have to," James said, the words slipping out as helplessly as they had the first time he'd said them. "I made you think that the real world was fake. It was me, I did this to you, please don't. Just go back inside and I'll help you." When he visited this dream, this memory, he hoped that he could convince Sirius to listen to him. That maybe this time, it would work and they could work on getting better instead of steadily getting worse with every passing day.

"You didn't do anything to me, love," Sirius said, eyes wide and perfectly innocent. He had no idea.

Every time that James tried to tell him that he'd planted that idea, he hadn't believed it. Maybe it was how firmly the idea had taken hold, or maybe it was simply that Sirius couldn't imagine James doing something so horrible to him. He hadn't meant for it to be horrible. It was supposed to help him. After the initial novelty of discovering limbo, Sirius had been morose. Unhappy. He hadn't been able to deal with it. All James had wanted was to make him happy again. He'd wanted for Sirius to smile and mean it without trying to hide the sadness in his eyes. "I just wanted to help you," James whispered.

"We can be together again. Like this."

Like this.

Like this...

The words echoed in his head as he woke back up.

He never should've tested the chemist's sleep drug with that memory. He was awake now, but all he could see were Sirius's eyes and hear his voice like it was just over his shoulder. Every corner he turned was overlaid with the image of Sirius pushing himself off from the ledge, a faint smile on his face because he was so completely certain that he was right about reality being a dream.

He found the closest loo and splashed water on his face, but it did nothing to make him feel more awake. He fumbled in his pocket for Sirius's coin, but he was shaking so bad that he dropped it. All the same, it landed just right and spun, kept spinning, then- fell. James breathed out shakily. Real. This was real. He was fine; he was awake. He picked the coin back up and tightened his fist around it, feeling the edges bite into his skin, all of them just where they were supposed to be.

He missed his wedding ring.

*

At the end of the day, gathering a team wasn't very hard. Lily, their architect, was the only one that proved a challenge, and even she had been decently easy to recruit. Everyone else already had experience with dream sharing, but Lily had never thought about it before James talked to her. She didn't hesitate, and he liked that about her. There was no space for second thoughts on this job. The sooner she got comfortable with this, the better off she'd be-- the better off they would all be.

"Let's practice," James said.

"Practice? I thought you said that you don't dreamshare."

He had told her that, but he'd meant in the recreational sense. This was going to be instructive, and if it went badly, he was going to pass the duty onto Remus. "Not in my landscape." His landscape, the one he'd tailored for himself, to pull at both his happiest and his worst memories, wasn't something he invited other people to. He had more control over it, not calling in projections by accident, but that was because Sirius inhabited every floor of it anyways. There was no point in wishing for him to be there when he was already there. "This is different, I need to show you the ropes."

James showed her the machine, how to work it, and in they went. She probably wouldn't need to set it up herself, but there was no reason not to tell her at least once. He brought Lily to a real French street, which was always dangerous. The more of real life that he drew into his dreams, the more lost he'd get. Times like these, he'd worry the coin in his hands until it felt like his skin was rubbed raw. But he needed something familiar for Lily to work with so that she could focus on experimenting with it instead of exploring the specific world he made.

"So... what can I do?" Lily asked. She knew he was leading somewhere with this. "And who are all these people?"

"They're parts of my consciousness. Whoever is the architect will populate the world. They’re not anyone specific, just people I've seen on the street. While awake, I don't remember them. Even now, looking at them, I wouldn't recognize them. They're manifestations."

"Are those like projections?" Lily asked.

"How do you know about projections?"

"Remus mentioned them when I asked why you couldn't be one of the architects for the job, but he wouldn't tell me what they are."

James hated to tell people about it, because it meant thinking about it. He didn't want to think about it unless he was dreaming, and even then... even then, it wasn't every time that he dreamed. He wouldn't survive that. He was barely surviving it anyways. He flexed his left hand, able to feel the comforting weight of his wedding ring. "Manifestations are generally harmless. They're the background noise of your brain. Projections are things that dreamers can bring into the dream. It's why you're going to design that maze and not share it with any more of us than is absolutely necessary. If one of us brings in a projection that knows the map, it could ruin the whole mission." He jerked his chin towards the walkway. "C'mon. You're supposed to show me what you've got. It's no big deal since it's just me, but be careful of changing too much once you're already in the dream. It makes the manifestations notice you more, and if you're trying to go under the radar, the target would be able to find you."

"Is there any limit to it?" Lily asked, eyeing the pillars speculatively. "To what I can do?"

"I haven't found a limit yet," he said with a ghost of a smile.

*

Lily came awake with a shock. It had hurt to be stabbed. It had only lasted for a second, but for some reason, she hadn't expected it to hurt at all. James had told her that if someone died in a dream, it meant that they woke up. That was all the thought she'd given it. She hadn't thought about if it would matter how she died because it wasn't real, and she'd wake up instead of being dead so it was no big deal.

This had felt like a big deal. Nothing like getting stabbed in real life, of course, but still. She looked over at James, who had a pinched expression as he ripped out the tube from his arm.

"Sorry," he grit out.

"Was that a projection?"

For a minute, she thought he wouldn't answer, but then he said, "Yes."

"Why did he stab me?"

"Remus will finish teaching you what you need to know," was all he said, and he was up and gone before she'd even thought to disconnect herself.

Under usual circumstances, she'd give it time and then ask James about it again. After all, if there was a part of him that wanted her dead-- or at least gone, and out of his dreams-- then that was something the two of them should talk about and deal with. But they weren't exactly friends, and even though he was nice enough that she forgot, they only knew each other because they were planning on committing a crime together. Her usual approach wouldn't work here simply because they didn't have the time for it. If James didn't want to talk to her, then he wasn't going to talk to her, and he was the boss so she was supposed to listen to him.

Instead, she went to Remus for answers. After all, she'd been told 'Remus will finish teaching you what you need to know', and she considered that projection of James's stabbing her to be something she needed to know.

"Can I ask you something?"

"That's why I'm here," Remus replied, not looking up from his notes.

Notes about what, she had no idea. A quick glance had shown her that they were in code. She hadn't known that people did that in real life, but she supposed that with their line of work, it made sense. "It's a rather personal question."

"Mhm," he said, unconcerned.

"About James."

He paused. Then he looked up at her. "I'm listening."

"When he was showing me how to be in a dream, a projection showed up and stabbed me."

Remus didn't look the least bit surprised.

"That man... who was he?"

"His name's Sirius. James didn't mean to bring him in like that. He never does."

"It happens a lot, then?"

"It's why he can't be an architect for any of our jobs. If he knows the layout, then Sirius does too. The more unfamiliar he is with it, the better our odds are of getting out unscathed."

"Who is he? Sirius, I mean."

"James's husband."

Lily raised an eyebrow at that. "Don't you mean ex-husband?"

"No."

"What, they're still together?" she asked disbelievingly.

"No, he's dead."

She blinked. She hadn't really been expecting that as an answer, though maybe she should have. "Oh. Is that- I mean, is that why he doesn't like talking about it?"

"I'm sure that's part of the reason," Remus said. He leaned back in his chair, looking up at her like he was contemplating something.

"How did they ever get married when Sirius is so awful? I mean, I only saw him the once, but he wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine. He seemed so sodding angry. It's hard to imagine someone falling in love with a man like that."

"He wasn't like that. Not when he was alive. That's the projection version of him. James can't help when he appears, much less how he acts once he shows up."

Lily hummed. That made more sense than what she'd been thinking, but it was still hard to wrap her mind around. "Did you know him?"

"Yeah," Remus said, a faint smile crossing his face. "Not well. In passing, for the most part. James didn't have any reason to work with other people back then."

"What was he like? Sirius."

"Passionate. Thoughtful. I'd never seen two people so in love." For a moment, it looked like Remus was going to elaborate. Then the moment passed, and he turned back to his work. "Do me a favor, and don't ask James about it. He's doing as well as he can, and asking him about Sirius only makes it worse. You can't avoid his projections, so just focus on your job."

That sounded like a wretched way of living, but she wasn't James and they'd hired her for a job. She could focus on the job while caring about him. Even if she couldn't actually do anything to help him, like she wished she could. 

It was like... it was like he was scarred. One of those scars that looked like it had been carved into a person's soul, so deep that it had dulled the nerves in the surrounding area. Lily couldn't hope to help without knowing more about it, and there simply wasn't time for that sort of in depth conversation with James when he didn't want to tell her even the most basic details about the situation. She shouldn't be worrying about it, anyways. Not only was Remus correct in that this job would require her full attention, but she needed to stop trying to fix every single person she met. It was a hard lesson, and one that she was still having trouble with.

"Okay," she said, because she needed to form some sort of reply to Remus. "Thanks for telling me."

*

He didn't dream anymore. Not organically and not when he was sleeping on his own for the night. Too much time dream sharing did that. If he wanted a nice dream, he either had to imagine it while he was awake but still tired, or he had to go into a lucid dream and craft it for himself. But of course, if he did the first, it was just a fantasy, and if he did the second, it was the same. Building and crafting what he wanted instead of it coming to him naturally. Not that his natural dreams had made sense all the time. That's how normal dreams were supposed to be: fun and nonsensical.

He missed it.

He hadn't missed it until Sirius died. When Sirius was still alive, it was an adventure. They'd learned about dreamsharing, and they'd mastered it. They'd spent countless hours testing what they could, and in all his time, he'd never met anyone that understood it the way Sirius had. He'd been in his element in dream landscapes. The only person that came close to understanding what they could do there was Lily, but he didn't know if she was interested in delving into it the way Sirius had. Sirius had been- gods, he'd been so alive when they were sharing dreams.

They'd come up with the idea for putting a dream in another dream together. And then, later, a dream in a dream in a dream. Three levels, which their chemist had tried to tell James was impossible. As if he'd suggest it for a job this big if he wasn't sure. Two levels was old hat to him, even if he knew it wasn't to everyone else. Three levels was delicate, trying to stay under securely enough to not wake at every jolt, but it was doable. He was convinced that a fourth level was impossible. Or, if there was a fourth level, then it was just limbo and there was nothing else to find there.

James fell in love with Sirius every single day, and they'd had more days together than most. By far. Days on top of endless days together, and all James could do was regret that they hadn't had more.

Limbo had been free reign with no end in sight. It had been, in a word, paradise. Just him and Sirius, the world around them theirs to design as they wished. It was no simple dreamscape that they'd come up with. It was an entire world.

At least, that was how James had always thought of it. A world. In more realistic terms, it was a city. A very large city, but a city all the same. They'd built it to accomodate a population of two. The early days of planning hadn't been like that, at first. They'd had all the usual markers of city planning before realizing that they didn't have to worry about ease of travel or congestion. They made towering buildings, sculptures to match their art preferences, and roads to match the outline they'd done. They didn't have a car, so roads had been made as wide as they wanted for them to be. At times, there were roads large enough for four cars, and at other parts of their city, there was a wooden walkway wide enough for two people walking side by side. They hadn't been bound by realism, by maintenance, or by consideration for a population.

There was a beach. 

When James and Sirius had arrived for the first time, the sand had been dark brown, the water grey and unforgiving. They'd had the power to change that, so they had. They'd made crystal blue water and white sand, and nice, even waves that beat against it peacefully. They'd put dozens of buildings along the coast, knowing that there was no limit to what they could, no damage that they had to plan for. They'd put skyscrapers on an idyllic beach just because they could, and the entire time they'd been in limbo, there had been no wear and tear to those buildings.

Those buildings were the first things that James saw when he woke up to salt water beating against his face. He pushed himself up, momentarily thrown by the familiarity. He couldn't visit a memory from something that happened in limbo like he'd been able to do with real life. The next wave moved his body, and then he realised that Lily was coughing nearby. He moved to help her, and she stumbled to her feet as they got out of the water and onto the sand. Brown sand, like had been there before Sirius thought to try and change it.

"What is this place?" she asked. She bat impatiently at her hair, trying to get it out of her face. It had been her idea to come here, but he knew that with each dream level entered, it was harder to keep your memories from the one prior.

"Limbo." He glanced at the buildings. Once pristine, they were now crumbling, sloughing off into the grey, stormy water in large chunks. Every building that they had lovingly crafted was little more than trash, now.

"I thought limbo was a blank slate."

"Unless you go with someone that's been there before," he told her.

She blinked at him in surprise. "You built all this?"

"Me and Sirius did. Together."

She said something, but it was under her breath, and he couldn't make it out.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head.

Considering that every time she'd seen Sirius, he'd done something horrible, it made sense that she'd be thinking some not-nice things about him. He knew that. It was just so hard for him to imagine anyone not loving Sirius if they knew him. But then, that only applied to the real Sirius. The projection of Sirius that showed up uninvited was hateful and violent and nothing at all like how he'd been in life. The projection always tried to kill the people that weren't James. He tried to ruin whatever the goal of the dream was. James didn't know why that was his MO, but it's what he did every time, without fail.

"Let's go," he said, heading away from the beach. Even if the buildings weren't crumbling, this wasn't where Sirius would be. They weren't the buildings that were important to them, not the way some of the others were.

"Are you sure this is the right way?"

"Yes. Sirius has always been predictable." To me.

"And you're sure that he'll have the target?" Lily pressed.

"Yes. He knows that I need him, and he wants me here, to talk to him, so he's going to have him."

They walked in silence for several minutes. Their pace was quick, but it was difficult to make much progress; Sirius and James hadn't exactly built this city with the intent that it was quick to get from one end to the other. "You built all of this yourselves?" Lily asked, sounding awed. "Just from your imaginations?"

"Most of it. After a while we switched to memories," he said, turning a corner. "The house where I grew up. Our first flat together."

"You could remember all that?"

James shrugged. "We had plenty of time. Every little detail painstakingly rendered even though it didn’t matter. It's this one," he said, grabbing Lily's arm and pulling her with him when it looked like she was going to keep walking.

"What makes this skyscraper different from any of the other ones we passed?" she asked, confused.

"This is the one that Sirius and I decided was home. The others are just buildings, but this is the one we lived in." There'd been no restrictions on them, and they had taken full advantage of it. It was still in pristine condition, and James walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the highest floor. "Did I ever explain inception to you?"

"It's an idea that you plant in someone's head that they think they came up with," Lily answered. It's what Remus had told her.

"It's a little bit more than that. It's like a virus. It's resilient and spreads rapidly throughout someone's mind. It takes root and can't be eradicated."

"All of that from a simple idea?" Lily asked as the doors opened with a ding. She didn't get it. Of course she didn't. She couldn't imagine that James had done it to Sirius. Sirius hadn't been able to believe that James had done it to him. He'd trusted him implicitly, completely, and James had ruined him.

"All from a simple idea," Sirius confirmed. His back was to them. His silhouette was against the window, making him look dangerous even though the way he was sitting could only be described as lounging. "An idea such as 'your world is not real'." He tilted his head to the side to look at James. "Isn't that right, love? A simple idea that you gave to me." The way he said it was dismissive. This was the sort of thing that made James wonder if Sirius really was a projection, or if there was a version of him that had died in the real world, and a version of him that existed in dreams. Because if he was only a projection from James, then he'd know for a fact that James had done it, wouldn't he? He wouldn't still be doubting it.

"Wait here," James told Lily, then he walked forward. He went to Sirius and knelt on the floor next to him. When he put a hand on his knee, Sirius turned. There was a kitchen knife in his hand, and while it gleamed wickedly in the sparse lighting, all he did was press the flat of it against James's cheek. "Are you really going to use that?" he asked, unworried. Sirius had never hurt him, not even when he was vengeful and hurting other people in the dreams. He'd pointed a weapon at him a few times, but he'd never come close to acting on it.

Sirius's eyes darted over to Lily, and James moved his hand so it was on the arm holding the knife. "Why are you so sure that what you think is real is what's real?" he whispered.

"I know."

"What you think you know could easily be a dream. The world is populated by white noise in the form of people walking around, and you've convinced yourself that they're real."

"They're real."

"You don't have any doubts?" Sirius said, using his free hand to card his fingers through James's hair. "No moments when it seems that you've caught the edge of the world and had to turn around?"

"I know what's real," James said softly.

Sirius shook his head. The knife dropped to rest on James's shoulder, and Sirius turned the sharp edge towards James's neck. He didn't apply any pressure, so it didn't cut. An edge of danger, yes, but with no threat for more behind it. "You know what's real. I know what's real. We don't need to fight over what's real, anymore. You're here. Do what I did, and choose the reality you want."

"Sirius..."

"Choose the reality that has me in it. I chose the reality that would keep us together, forever, like we promised." His eyes darted over to Lily, and slowly, he moved the knife away from him and set it on the table. He leaned back to where he'd been and put both his hands on James's face, his fingers curled around the back of his neck, and his thumbs resting on his cheeks. "I don't care about anybody else. I only care about us. We can be together again; that's all I ever wanted. It's why I've done all of this to try and get you here. You think I liked it? Hurting people that made you feel the slightest bit better about living without me? I hated it. I hated every moment of it, but it was necessary. I can't live without you anymore than you can live without me."

"James," Lily said, sounding nervous.

"Where's the target?" James asked Sirius.

"On the balcony."

"Go find him," James said to Lily, but he didn't take his eyes off Sirius. His husband, his best friend, his everything.

Lily moved, and James was peripherally aware of it, but he couldn't stop looking at Sirius, and Sirius likewise couldn't stop looking at him. "It's him," she said. She glanced out at the sky, which was now crackling with bright bursts of lightning. It had to be the defibrillator, trying to revive the target in the previous dream world. "And it's time."

"Push him off the edge for the kick, then jump off yourself. You can't miss it."

"I can't leave you here," Lily said, a hint of desperation entering her voice.

"Don't worry about me."

"You can't really be planning on staying here, can you? It's not real. He's not real."

Any other time, Sirius would get furious and attack her. This time, he barely reacted at all. He only had eyes for James. "Stay," he begged.

"Lily, go. I'm not asking."

She pushed the target over the edge, but hesitated before going over herself. "If you stay down here and make me explain to Remus what happened, I'm going to kill you." Then she jumped.

"You're a projection," James whispered. He didn't want for it to be true, but it was.

"Let’s say that I am. I'm your projection. You made me. You know me better than anyone. If I'm a projection from your imagination, then I'm still as real as I was when I was alive. I have all the same memories. I'm the same. If you think I'm a projection, that's up to you, but that still makes me me." Sirius leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together, his eyes fluttering shut. "You know me. It doesn't matter if I'm real or if you're real because we are real. We can still have this. You know we can. You want it as much as I do. Stay. Be with me the way you want to."

James took a shuddering breath in and let it out slowly.

Sirius leaned back enough to grab James's left hand and press a kiss over his knuckles, his lips covering James's wedding ring. His ring that no longer existed in the real world but he always had in dreams. "We can be together like this."

Like this.

Like this...