Sirius found himself regretting his decision, as he stood in the freezing dark on Remus’ doorstep, waiting for him to answer the door. His heartbeat was a sick and heavy pulse in his throat. He wriggled his fingers, trying in vain to ward off the cold.
It was not the night air, however, but the blood in his veins that seemed to have turned to ice.
Staring at the frosted glass panel in Remus Lupin’s front door, he half-hoped Remus wouldn’t be home, or hadn’t heard him knock. Would he knock a second time? Just to make sure?
No. I can’t do this.
He turned, and stared across the street. The houses in the lane were all silent and dark. Only a solitary street lamp provided enough light to see by; moths fluttered around it, casting their spectral and distorted shadows upon the pavement. Sirius swallowed, and realised he should be crying, but he wasn’t. His best friend was dead, Lily was dead, and he didn’t – couldn’t – cry.
There was only a vast emptiness inside. He supposed it was shock.
The door gave a small click and Sirius sluggishly turned around, reluctant even to face Remus, but the sanctuary of the house beckoned. He wanted to curl up on Remus’ couch and sleep. More than anything he craved sleep, if only to make the horrible vacuum inside his stomach fade away.
Oh please let me fade away, he thought, and it was a childish voice he had never heard before, one he didn’t recognise. For a moment, it caught him off guard, and he stood there desperately staring at the door like a man lost in a sea of fog – vulnerable and utterly alone. But the door had opened a crack, and he realised it was too late to turn back.
Remus’ pale face peered around the edge of the door, a wary frown on his face, before he recognised Sirius. His expression immediately changed – though whether it was concern or suspicion, Sirius couldn’t tell. The door opened further, revealing Remus’ lean frame wrapped in a dark blue dressing gown that had been pulled awkwardly over his shoulders, leaving one half of his pyjama top exposed. His hair was sleep-ruffled, though his expression cleared somewhat when he recognised Sirius. Dazedly, he blinked.
“Sirius…” It wasn’t a question. There was a hint of alarm in the word, and Remus’ eyes crinkled as he studied the man on his doorstep. Sirius realised he probably looked bad.
Well, it had been a rough night.
Remus tiredly leaned against the doorframe, one hand still draped over the doorknob. “What are you doing here?” He asked, blinking again to clear his eyes.
Sirius felt the coldness deepen, though it wasn’t the night air making him cold. “Can I come in?” he said, surprised to find his voice was working, if a little weak, and made an unnecessary gesture in the direction of Remus’ house. Not knowing what to do with his hand, he scratched the side of his head.
“Are you all right?” Remus asked. There was amusement on his face. He seemed to be trying to smile, as if to acknowledge some part of him which simply accepted Sirius’ sudden appearance on his doorstep in the middle of the night – as if it was nothing exceptional. But there was something in Sirius’ face that scared him deeply.
His eyes were emotionless, blank in a dead and chilling way. The feeling persisted when Sirius merely blinked at him, remaining silent. Finally Remus swallowed his irrational fear and opened the door all the way.
Wordlessly, Sirius stepped across the threshold and waited in the muted light of the corridor while Remus closed the door. Only when the other man made his way into the shadowy lounge and began switching on lights did Sirius follow.
Remus’ lounge was familiar, and its cluttered neatness provided him a small sense of nostalgic affection. There were books everywhere, and the couch which faced a tiny television seemed too big for the room, but gloriously welcoming. Again, he felt a desperate urge to cross the room and fall onto it. To sink into the soft oblivion provided by unconsciousness.
I kissed Moony on that couch once.
The thought did nothing but sharpen his already palpable sense of loss. With it, unbidden, came the realisation that the last time he had stood in this room it had been with four of his friends – they had been happy despite the war, despite their own uncountable problems. The memory left him inebriated with grief, and scanning the room with desperate eyes, as if for a vision of James, a fragment.
Now he was just that. No more than a vision; no more substantial than a memory.
Gone.
Remus was looking at him, waiting for an explanation. He was standing beside a table lamp, and it had bathed him in gold, deepening the colours of his dressing robe to a rich royal blue; he had pulled it tighter around himself and crossed his arms, and was looking at Sirius with a mixture of fear and reluctance.
The reluctance, Sirius had seen before, but not the fear… that was something new. He realised he had not spoken for a long time, neither of them had, and he had to say something.
Can’t, he thought again. And he couldn’t do it. Not to this man. Almost imperceptibly, his lip trembled, and he balled his hands into fists until his nails pinched painfully into his skin.
“Sirius,” Remus said again, in a low voice that almost shook. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Uhm,” Sirius raised his head to look at an innocuous point in the corner of Moony’s ceiling, and dragged his hand across his mouth. The room was cold. Everything was cold. He felt weak and sick, and hated himself for it. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he finished dumbly. “I thought I should tell someone…”
Remus’ eyes had narrowed, as had his renewed concern, made more obvious by the small and tentative step he took toward Sirius. In spite of it, he seemed almost reluctant to approach. “Tell someone what?”
Sirius’ stomach twisted, and he clenched his teeth to ignore it as he reached into the pocket of his leather jacket. His fingers slid over the warm leather and searched, then wrapped themselves over something cold and hard. Lovingly, he caressed its thin and brittle lines, before slowly dragging it from his pocket and into the air.
Remus looked at the thing. His eyes sharpened when he saw it, and then his forehead crinkled, as Sirius had known it would. His confusion was almost too hard to bear, knowing what Sirius would have to say, and he couldn’t – for the life of him – think of a decent way to say it.
Remus… James and Lily are dead.
Sirius held the object out in front of him, pinched and dangling from his forefinger and thumb. The spectacles swung lazily, their shattered lenses catching the light from the table lamp, and glinting as if with the memory of sunlight and the man who once wore them.
Before he knew it, Sirius’ words tumbled from his mouth in a cracked stream, and it was almost with relief that he finally shared the horror of what had happened that night. “Dumbledore contacted me. There was a confrontation at Godric’s Hollow… looks like it was Voldemort. Lily and James were killed. These were all I could find. I couldn’t… didn’t seem right to leave them.” Sirius, unable to meet his friend’s eyes, gazed blurrily at the carpet. “Uhm, Harry was – was the only one to escape. He’s all right. Hagrid’s taken him somewhere safe.”
The silence that fell when he finally stopped talking was indescribably worse than the words themselves. Remus’ eyes fled from the glasses to Sirius’ face, and back again, as the cataclysmic pause stretched out. Sirius’ heart was drumming steadily in his ears, louder than ever; he had a vague suspicion that he would throw up sometime in the next few minutes, but didn’t care. Still he avoided Remus’s eyes, while frozen motionless except for small swaying movements, to the space between a side table and an armchair. Once, he put his hand against the back of the chair to steady himself, his shaky legs threatening to crumple beneath him.
When the other man eventually spoke, it was in a flat and coldly humourless voice that took Sirius completely by surprise.
He said, “if this is a joke, Sirius, it isn’t funny.”
Sirius’ horrified silence and blank expression were answer enough, but after a few moments he felt a horrible urge to laugh – though in desperation. He thinks I’m making it up! His heart gave a wrench, and he thought then that he might cry instead of laughing – if ever there was a time, it would be now. But his eyes remained dry, only stinging helplessly with exhaustion. I guess somebody’s having a laugh though, aren’t they? The joke’s on both of us, Moony – James and Lily are dead, how do you like that – ha ha.
Didn’t see that one coming, did we? Oh, no.
Without success, he tried to smile. His voice emerged as a cracked half-whisper. “It’s not a joke, Moony. D’you think Jamie would’ve let me break his glasses?”
They dangled between his fingers, a gruesome reminder of the man to whom they belonged, lightly speckled with dirt.
Remus shook his head, wounded, unable to comprehend. In his blue dressing robe and slippers, with his sleep-tousled hair, he looked much younger than his twenty-one years. It only drove the nail deeper into Sirius’ heart.
“How did…” Remus started, his voice frail now, containing no trace of his earlier coldness. “I don’t…” the struggle for words played with the emotions on his face, and Sirius had to look away again.
“I’m sorry for coming here. Should’ve let you sleep.” Yes, he thought – One more night without knowing. I could have given him that much.
And whether it was Sirius’ softly-spoken words that broke him, or whether the gravity of Sirius’ earlier statement had finally sunk in, Remus’ too-young, too-vulnerable face suddenly twisted into a parody of a smile and at the same time, he gave a laugh that was half a sob, and his eyes were bright with tears.
He suppressed another desperate laugh even as they pooled in the corner of his eyes and covered his mouth with one hand. The other remained wrapped protectively around his chest.
Sirius’ fingers twitched with a half-hearted longing to go and wrap themselves around Remus’ shoulders, but at the same time, he again had to clamp his teeth over a rising sensation of nausea.
Without another glance at Remus, he staggered from the room into the darkened hallway and found his way by the dim light seeping from the lounge to Moony’s bathroom at the end of the hall.
In a sick daze he lurched across the tiny bathroom to the bath. His knees buckled and he collapsed beside it, threw a brief, speculative glance at the toilet and thought – no, too far away – then laced his hands over the cold rim of the bath and bent his head over it.
As if he could vomit up his grief, Sirius remained that way, retching into the bath, until he had nothing left inside.
When he was finished he sat back against the wall and let the coldness seep into his body until he felt entirely numb, and closed his stinging eyes. And he still couldn’t cry.
What a goddamn mess, he thought wretchedly.
With his last modicum of grace, Sirius raised an unsteady arm to wipe his mouth on the back of his wrist. It that only made him feel slighter cleaner. He wiped his wrist on his jeans. It was beyond comfort – the truth was he didn’t want Remus to see him like this.
He had had his eyes closed, and wasn’t aware that Remus was standing in the doorway until he opened them, blearily, and squinted at the harsh white glare of the bathroom. Remus had one hand weakly pressed against the doorframe, and his lower eyelids were reddened, still shining slightly with moisture. His lips were swollen.
Sirius rolled his head until he was looking up at Remus, and neither of them said a word for a long time – they were both lost. The grief was too immense for words. The silence that they shared seemed to be alive with thought and emotion – with words of comfort that neither could give voice to. The expression in both their faces was simply, I’m here. It’s all right.
Sirius tried to speak and was not surprised to find that his voice was gruesomely wet and cracked, wavery and weak, but the smile that accompanied it was perhaps the first genuine smile he had managed all night. “Sorry about the mess in your bath. I couldn’t make it to the loo in time.”
Remus didn’t return the smile, but a look of raw pain coursed across his face, and his fingers tightened on the doorframe.
Sirius realised that his breath was too loud and shaky in the small bathroom – and in the absence of any other sound it made him afraid. He was falling apart. If this was how easy it was to win a war – by killing two people – then Voldemort had all but won, even if he had destroyed himself in the process.
With no strength to keep them open, Sirius closed his eyes. Even as he did, the tears he had so long been denied – or consciously held back – sought their release and burned heavy, warm trails down his face.
He wasn’t aware that Remus had crossed the room and knelt beside him until he felt lean arms encircle his chest and back, and he was pulled into the other man’s warmth, his sobs muffled against his chest. Even through the fabric of Moony’s soft dressing gown, the anguish in Sirius’ voice could not be drowned out; when he reached up and gripped Remus’ arms, they only tightened around him.
At some point they raised themselves to their feet. Each leaning into one another like war-wounded soldiers, they left the brightness of the bathroom and the acidic smell of vomit for the fresh air of the comfortingly dark hallway, and the shadows swallowed them.
2.
“Sirius.”
“What?”
“Before… you called him ‘Jamie’.”
“Did I? Oh.”
“He used to hate that.”
“I know. I didn’t do it to tease him, though. It was just… I don’t really know. Don’t know why I did. It was stupid.”
“I talked to him only a few days ago. He was… was worried because Harry kept sneezing and he thought he was allergic…”
“Don’t. Don’t, Moony.”
“It’s stupid, though, isn’t it? Why am I remembering that now? Why does that even matter that his baby kept sneezing… why do I keep thinking about that?”
“I remembered that I kissed you on this couch once. It doesn’t mean anything. They’re just dumb thoughts.”
“I wish they’d stop.”
“I know.”
“Sirius. Can I sleep?”
“Of course you can.”
“I don’t think I can cry any more.”
“Then don’t. Just shift over a little bit. My leg’s falling asleep.”
“This is supposed to make us stronger.”
“What?”
“James. Our king. Our king is dead, so we’re supposed to rise up and fight like soldiers. Isn’t that what we are? Soldiers? We’re fighting this bloody war, aren’t we? We’re supposed to be the strong ones.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t feel strong.”
“Neither do I. Go to sleep now, Moony. We're all right. We're going to be all right."
3.
Sirius stared at nothing; his hollowed-out gaze directed at the unlit fireplace in Remus’ tiny living room but seemingly fixed on thin air. His legs were sprawled out messily before him, his frame slumped into the couch uncaringly, and the frail body which was draped over his lap lay just as equally graceless, all self control broken. Remus’ head rested on one of Sirius’ thighs, his cheek pressed into the other man’s jeans, and one of his shoulders was lodged painfully against Sirius’ hip. The tear-swollen eyes were closed, and an expression of almost reluctant serenity had softened his features, as if even in sleep he refused to relinquish the grief which had wrapped itself around his heart.
One of Sirius’ square and angular hands caressed Remus’ forehead and the soft brown hair near his temple with tired, but tender movements. The other was curled over Remus’ bony shoulder.
Sirius’ pain did not reveal itself on his face: The stiffness in his joints for sitting so long in one place unmoving, or the horrible empty cavern that seemed to have opened up inside his stomach. His face was pale and haunted, wearing a mask of emotionless, though the lines of grief were still etched into the skin around his eyes. Tears gleamed on his upper lip.
He moved not; spoke not, for a long time, but the fingers softly stroked at Remus’ hair, comforting and gentle. These small movements seemed to be his last effort to hold on to the other man’s grief, as if comforting him was his only duty left, or perhaps one last feeble strand of sanity.
So he sat in the dark and silence, and Remus slept. And the thought which came to him was, you son of a bitch, Peter.
He waited for the anger to come. It slowly crept into his blood, until his gentle hand movements became jerky; his hands too stiff, and he ceased the motion but paused to make sure that Remus didn’t wake. Slowly and carefully he extricated himself from beneath the other man’s slumped body. Remus was light enough, and his weight was easy enough to lift and then lower gently to the couch cushions, but Sirius’ heart stuttered for a moment when Remus stirred and made a small noise in the back of his throat.
Tenderly, Sirius slid off the couch and knelt beside it, pressing his fingers against Remus’ face.
Even as he did, the feeling of resolve and hatred hardened his features, flattening his mouth into a grim line, and forming a crease between his brows. A cold shiver worked its way up his arm – from his fingertips, where they touched Remus’ face – to his shoulder. He blinked once, the whiteness of his eyes still filmed with moisture, and reflecting the light of a window through which a flat and pale moon had cast its luminance.
“Joke’s on us, ‘ay mate?” he said dully, too low for the sleeping man to hear, and carefully bent and kissed Remus lightly and shakily on the cheek, lightly threading his fingers through the soft brown hair over Remus’ forehead, and rocked back on his heels with a deep and heavy exhalation of weariness. He reached into his pocket and once more drew out the glasses – now crushed and with their frame bent all askew – and placed them on the couch cushion beside one of Remus’ limp, pale hands.
Sirius raised himself to his feet on knees that cracked loudly in protest, and stood by the couch for a few more moments with his head hanging down, dark hair sheathing his face, a man-shaped shadow studying the sleeping form on the couch. Without another word he crossed the lounge and stepped out into the hall.
Let me be a shadow now, he thought with chilling solemnity, as he placed his hand on the cold doorknob. His heart thudded rhythmically in his chest, a rataplan of sympathy and love for the man he had lost – and for the ones left behind, those forced to live on in a world that seemed to have suddenly turned grey and lifeless. They were all shadows, all of them – no more. Just shadows of fallen kings.
Let me find the bastard who did this.
I’ll find him and then we’ll fade away together, Moony.
He closed the front door quietly behind him as he stepped out onto the street. Illogically, his tears had returned, though he had thought them finally gone; his aching eyes had shed too many. An image crept into his mind of sunlight shifting over a sleeping man on a couch. Its early light caught the last remaining shards left in the frame of a pair of glasses which lay by one of his motionless hands. The sunlight speared off the glass and flared for a brief moment, beautiful but too bright to look at.
Sirius realised that his eyes own were closed when the chill wind caressed his eyelids and the tears shivered on his lashes, and opened them, dispelling the vision. He found himself not in the sun-lit lounge but on his friend’s front porch, dark and still in the limpid air.
Sirius turned his face into the numbing wind, and Apparated. The crack of the spell hung in the air, echoing in the street like a pistol shot for a few brief moments before fading, and silence once again settled, in folds, like a cloak over the darkness.
4.
When Remus woke at half past eleven the room was full of sunlight.
“And I believe you'll find a way,
or will you keep on falling until you reach the ground?
Of your lonely mind will you ever find yourself again?
And will you keep on dying until you've finally found
a better place where you find you will not wake up again?”
-Missy Higgins, ‘Falling’
The end.
A/n: Written in response to a challenge that was given to me by Wickedwitch25.
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