Fic: RS_Games - Life In The Grey [Remus/Sirius]

[llaeyro]

Here's my entry to the last ever *sniff* RS_Games. If you read my submission before reveals, it's worth taking another look as I've added bonus content (Chapter 2 on AO3) which is some content that I developed during the planning process that didn't make the final fic.

Team: Remus
Title: Life In The Grey
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: angst, mentions of past Remus/OMC, past depression, anxiety, prostitution, suicidal thoughts, memory loss
Genres: angst, reflection, poetry and prose, they live AU, confessions, HEA
Word Count: 6800
Summary: Remus shares his diary with Sirius, hoping to finally put the past to rest.
Notes: Thank you so much to Team Remus (#Team Aw) for all your support, idea-bouncing and general silliness and encouragement. This has been an amazing experience thanks to you guys *hearts; Cheers to C for the beta and the mods for their patience and hard work wrangling so many participants!
Prompt: #25 -
"I want you to know one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me."
- excerpt from the poem "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda

Read on AO3

Remus stood in the hallway of his and Sirius’s bungalow, looking down unseeingly at the tatty blue book clutched tightly in both hands. His thumb moved back and forth, gently worrying the corners of the pages which stuck out at precarious angles. The cover was battered, faded and stained to the extent that Remus could no longer remember how or why. He suspected that the only things holding the book together still were the spells cast by his father, thirty-six years previously. Those spells were the reason that the book would never run out of blank pages, and yet never appeared any thicker. It had been Remus’s mother’s idea; an outlet for Remus, somewhere to safely and secretly let the trauma of his transformations flow out. A place to release the secrets he would forever have to keep from the rest of the world. A vessel in which to contain his sins, his worries, so that he may move on free of the burden. It had been all that to him and more. Within those pages were detailed every moment of doubt, shame and envy. It detailed Remus, at his most raw and primal. Within its pages, he was vulnerable.

Today, his own magic worked upon the book, hiding the prose entries and leaving only the poetry. Each page titled with the date and finished with his name and age at the time of writing. He thought about simply leaving. He could just walk back to the school, lock the book into his desk drawer again and Sirius would never know. For months, possibly closer to a year, Remus had battled with himself over the idea. He had played through the scenario in his head on a near-daily basis and now that the need for something to bridge the lack of communication between them had become impossible to ignore, the time had come to put his plan into action.

He could hear Sirius in the conservatory, humming along to the wireless. He stepped quietly down the hallway towards the sound, ignoring the mandatory grumbles from Kreacher’s portrait. Sirius had given up taking it down because Remus always returned it to the wall, happier to drown out Kreacher’s now-familiar bile than deal again with Hermione’s wrath for not honouring his memory. Remus peeked through the doorway to the dim dining room, through which he could see into the conservatory. Bright sunlight streamed in through the glass ceiling, falling across Sirius as he laid on the sofa, head thrown back across the armrest. One arm was in the air, hand waving as if conducting the music. He looked content and carefree. Remus was loathe to disturb him.

Remus wasn’t sure if he’d made some sort of sound, or if Sirius sensed his presence, but he looked up then. He smiled, pulling himself up to sitting and preparing to make room for Remus.

“Alright, Moony?” Sirius asked as Remus rounded the dining room table.

“Alright,” Remus nodded, stopping short of stepping into the light of the conservatory. Sirius’s smile wavered, kicking his feet off the sofa and eyeing the book Remus still wrung between his hands.

“What have you got there, love?” Sirius must have had some idea what it was. He had caught Remus with it on numerous occasions over the years, always hurriedly closed and locked away somewhere.

“Is that —” Sirius began, cutting himself off when Remus’s arms unconsciously tightened around the book. Sirius’s gaze flickered from it to Remus’s face and back again. “Do you want to read, today?”

Their little reading sessions had started during Sirius’s recovery after the battle in the Department of Mysteries. Sirius would become incredibly irrational, with neither cause nor warning. It manifested in various ways, anything from screaming and cursing to lashing out, fleeing and hiding. Sometimes he would simply curl in upon himself and weep. The Healers had difficulty managing him and were more than agreeable to release him early into Remus’s care. Remus’s voice could soothe Sirius in a way that nothing else could, and so Remus began reading to him, every day. As Sirius’s mind healed, the necessity faded but they kept up the routine once a week; a comfort to which they had become accustomed.

Remus smiled, small and unconvincing. “Well, it is Sunday.”

“Yes, but we usually skip it on these weekends.”

“It has little bearing on my ability to read, Sirius,” Remus quipped, but he didn’t quite look at Sirius as he walked over to join him on the sofa. He didn’t need to, he knew the look he’d be getting. Remus drew in a breath and tried to lower himself without letting the pain distort his features. He didn’t get far before Sirius’s hand came up, almost automatically, to steady his elbow and help him to descend gently. Only one night had passed since the full moon, since Remus’s birthday. He should have been resting his body and mind, ready for classes the next day, but this was more important.

“Do you want a drink, before we get settled?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you.” Remus sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, fingers still curled tight around the edges of the book.

“Am I going to want something a little stronger than this?” Sirius asked, taking a sip of his lemonade and placing it back down on the end table.

“Perhaps,” Remus conceded, returning Sirius’s small smile.

“Oh well, cross that bridge when we come to it.” Sirius shifted, swinging his legs back up onto the sofa and laying them carefully across Remus’s lap. Remus shuffled back a little, not putting too much effort into getting comfortable as he knew it wasn’t really possible so soon after a transformation.

Remus’s fingers were poised, ready to open the book, but he didn’t move. He was overly aware of Sirius watching and waiting, of the birds singing in the garden, the wind worrying the willow’s branches so that they tap lightly against the glass, but still he didn’t move. He didn’t know how to start.

A hand softly covering his own startled him. Sirius was leaning forward, looking at him intently, kindly, full of concern.

“We don’t have to do this, Moony.”

Remus took a deep breath. “Yes, we do,” he said firmly, gently removing his hands and book from beneath Sirius’s comforting palm. “There is too much we don’t know, don’t understand about each other and it is high time that changed.” He busied himself with finding the right page while Sirius, after a little hesitation, settled back again.

“I write poems. I always have. Well, since I was nine. I haven’t ever shared them with anyone, they’re just in here.”

“And… that’s what you want to read to me?”

Remus nodded. “Well, probably not the ones I wrote when I was nine. They’re not particularly interesting, or good.”

“Damn sight better than anything I could come up with, I’m sure. Best I can manage is to recite a dirty limerick.” They both allowed themselves a quiet chuckle.

“I finished this one last week, and it’s… Well, you will see what it is.” Remus lifted the book, but paused again. “It is the only poem that I have ever written with the intention of sharing it.” Remus registered a small nod out of the corner of his eye and held up the diary, the page titled 7th March, 2001.

Remus cleared his throat, and began:

Talk to me about our friends,
Talk to me about their ends.
Talk about the time we met,
Or when I made you lose that bet.
Talk to me of our first kiss,
Or seeing James in wedded bliss.
Talk of Peter, as you must
Admit that he was one of us.
Don’t ask me of the time we missed,
Don’t ask about a single tryst,
I survived, but I’m not proud;
Don’t make me voice those things aloud.
We can’t erase the absent years.
It’s too late now to wipe the tears.
Remember, we were happy first?
Before we felt so lost and cursed?
I feel that mem’ry slip away
With each and every silent day.

So let us talk, without a fuss.
Let us, please, remember us.

A still and tense silence followed. Remus was unsure whether to wait, elaborate or move on. He opened his mouth, but Sirius spoke.

“Wow. Moony, that’s…” He drew in a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “That’s a lot to process at once, honestly.” He ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his hand to free a knot.

Remus began to worry that he had approached this whole venture incorrectly. Perhaps he should not have bared so much so soon. He’d just wanted to outline what, for him, had been causing this rift to build between them. Little things Sirius said and did exasperated and infuriated Remus because he couldn’t understand where they stemmed from. Such as last week, for example, when a harmless, playful remark from Remus had Sirius storming out on their dinner with Harry and Ginny, into the rain. Their guests had reluctantly finished their desserts and Apparated home by the time Sirius returned three hours later, wet and shivering but cheerful enough, as though nothing had happened. Remus was well aware, also, that he himself was far from perfect. He snapped at Sirius sometimes over the silliest little things, still not truly accustomed to sharing a living space with someone after so many years alone. Too used to doing things his own way.

“Can I see it?” Sirius asked, sitting up a little and reaching out for the book. Remus hesitated. “Just that one, promise.”

Remus handed over the book and watched as Sirius furrowed his brow, tilted his head and tried holding the book a little further away.

“Would you like me to hold it over here for you?” Remus deadpanned, indicating the far end of the sofa.

Sirius pulled an unimpressed face at him. “Ha, bloody ha. It’s your handwriting, Moony, it’s awful. Did you write this on the full moon?”

“Just put your glasses on."

“I don’t need glasses,” Sirius pouted, changing the angle of the book, as if the lighting were to blame.

“Where are they?” When Sirius failed to reply, Remus drew his wand and summoned them. There was a pause before the black framed, dirt covered glasses came flying in through the doggy door. “Oh, Sirius…” Remus sighed, trying to suppress the laughter that begged to escape him. It rather summed up how Sirius dealt with most unwelcome things — he buried them — although, not usually so literally.

“I don’t need them, Moony,” he grumbled, “We’re not that old, yet.”

Remus spelled the glasses clean and leant towards Sirius, reaching out to tuck his hair behind his ear before setting the spectacles in place. He smoothed out the greying hair at Sirius’s temple, so much more subtle and distinguished than the abundant flecks that had plagued Remus’s hair for years already.

“Well, I think they make you look rather sophisticated.” Remus tried not to blush as Sirius smirked at him knowingly, peering over the top of the frame. Remus had always been aware of Sirius sex appeal, yet it had surprised him just how alluring a bespectacled Sirius could be.

Sirius turned his attentions back to the page, brow knitted in concentration. Remus waited, anxiously.

“Okay,” Sirius hedged, handing the diary back to Remus and throwing his glasses carelessly onto the table behind him. “You’re right, there are issues, and not talking about them obviously isn’t helping anyone. We’ve been doing it for seven years, if it was going to go away on its own it would have by now. But that doesn’t make it easy.”

“I know.”

Sirius’s voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “I can’t talk about the traitor, Remus, I really can’t.”

Remus was ready to argue his case, yet again, but he didn’t need to.

“But, I can listen. Well, I think I can. I can try.”

Remus reached out, placing his hand over Sirius’s as it rested against his thigh. “I would really appreciate that.”

Sirius licked his lips, shuffled a little, as if preparing to say something Remus wasn’t going to like. Remus braced himself.

“But I need you to try, too. When I got — When I came back, and things were… different, I thought it was, y’know, the misunderstanding and the guilt and everything. Then when it carried on, I thought it was me. Just another way in which I was broken, but… Sometimes, the way you react to things, it’s like looking at someone else sometimes. Fucking hell, I wish I had your beautiful way with words. I just, I don’t understand you anymore. I don’t understand what changed you and how and if I just had some idea—” Sirius cut himself off as he looked up at Remus, awkwardly scooting forward to cup Remus’s face between his hands. “I’m sorry Moony, I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.”

Remus leaned forward into the touch, eyes closed, resting his forehead against Sirius’s. “My fault, I opened the floodgates.” He could feel Sirius’s breath against his lips. It was warm and comforting. Remus opened his eyes and drew back a little, enough to focus on Sirius. “I’ll try. There’s — It’s all in here. I’ll have a look. I’ll try.”

Sirius gave his hand a squeeze, bringing it up to his mouth, leaving a firm and lingering kiss on Remus’s palm before curling his fingers closed around it. Remus smiled at the comforting gesture, despite feeling less than calm. He had that fuzzy pressure at the back of his brain that made it hard to think. That dragging weight in the pit of his stomach that made it hard to breathe. Too much had happened in Remus’s life while Sirius wasn’t in it. Remus had had to make difficult decisions. He had behaved shamefully at times. The idea of sharing even half of those important, life-changing events with Sirius was terrifying. What Sirius’s reaction might be didn’t even bare thinking about.

“Got anything to lighten the mood a bit, love?” Sirius asked, settling back against the armrest once more. Remus drew his attention back to his diary, trying to concentrate. He flicked back through the pages, away from those dark years, towards the years he ached for and the memories he longed to relive.

“Well we could have a good laugh at my nine-year-old self’s spelling, or there’s a few soppy poems I wrote after school, around the time I moved into your place.”

“Our place.” Sirius corrected him, gently nudging his elbow with his foot. “Our first place. Let’s have those. Got any sonnets? I love a good sonnet.”

“Erm, let’s see…” Remus flicked through, stopping on the 18th July, 1978. “This one was supposed to be a sonnet. Then I discovered, that, well, my talent lies elsewhere. It doesn’t quite meet all of the requirements. This was just before we left school, actually.”

“When you’d finally relented to my irresistible charms?”

“After you’d ambushed me and snogged me in front of our entire year after the last exam, you mean? Yes.” Remus hadn’t known whether to be furious with Sirius or grab him and do it again. From what he remembered, he’d settled for dragging Sirius off angrily to kiss him some more in private.

“Well, you did said you’d date me after exams,” Sirius grinned.

“I said I’d think about it after exams!”

“Oh, come off it, like you really had anything to think about. I bet you’d been writing soppy poems about me for years.”

“Piss off, Pads,” Remus mumbled, cheeks heating as he tried to hide behind the tatty pages of his diary. His eyes skimmed the poem, nose wrinkling at the lazy rhymes and lack of conviction with which it was written. Usually his poems were written with a sense of purpose. He sat down with the intention to convey a time, a place, a feeling, but this had been different. He had simply wanted to try his hand at a sonnet. The finishing couplet was particularly bothersome: ‘He sucks the very darkness from my soul/So now, with him beside me, I feel whole.’

“Actually, that’s atrocious. I’m not reading that one to you.”

Remus much preferred to write in free verse, chasing rhythm rather than rhyme to seek out the desired ambience for the subject matter. Rhyme was too restrictive, forcing the narrative, which nearly always led to an unsatisfying conclusion. When Remus came to the realisation that there was, in fact, not a single word in the dictionary that rhymed with ‘wolf’, that had settled it. He had resigned himself to the fact that rhyming poetry wasn’t for him.

“Oh, come on, Moony,” Sirius protested. “What’s wrong with it?”

“The rhyming pattern is off, it’s a-b-c-b instead of a-b-a-b.”

“But has it got the right number of ba-dums?”

Remus had to think about that for a moment. “Do you mean the iambic pentameter?”

“Yeah, that too.”

“The iambs are fine, but — Look, you can have the sappy one about us moving in together instead.” Remus’s tone brooked no argument as he turned to the 27th October, 1978.

Let the birds sing out of tune,
Let the rain fall down in June.
Let the fish leap from the sea,
Put milk in first when making tea.
Wear your pants upon your head,
Paint the downstairs study red.
Leave muddy paw prints across the floor,
Do what you like, I care no more!
Because you’re mine, and that, you see —
Well, nothing could mean more to me.

Remus knew it was strange that he liked that poem, given how cliche it was, but it accurately portrayed how he felt at the time. That wonderful, frivolous certainty that the little things simply did not matter any more. What he wouldn’t give now for such naive optimism.

Sirius chuckled. “You were furious about that study.”

“Well, it wasn’t what I had in mind, but it did give a rather common-room vibe that was comforting and familiar. I had been more upset that you had proved me wrong.”

“Have you got any more nice ones about me or did they start to go south after that?”

“They do take on a more serious tone after that.”

Sirius nodded slowly. “Read on, then.”

“Well, we don’t have to — I can go back, read some happy ones from school —”

“Hold on to them, Moony,” Sirius interrupted, somberly. “We’ll probably need them later. Read the next one about me. Please.”

The next poem wasn’t about Sirius. It was one of many that explored Remus’s conflicting nature — the man, at odds with the beast. Some of the words caught Remus’s attention before he could turn the page. ‘Trapped.../Prisoner to my own nature.’ A glance to the bottom of the page showed that Remus had only been nineteen at the time of writing. It was remarkable how little some things could change. He moved on.

“This one is less literal. I’d started playing around with metaphors by this point in time. I wrote it at the beginning of nineteen eighty, February. There had been that spate of werewolf attacks in the papers and it had me questioning my humanity rather harshly.”

“Is that when things started going wrong for us?”

After so many years of not talking about it, Remus found the simple question rather overwhelming. How could they possibly define where their troubles started? Perhaps Sirius was at fault, for not simply asking Remus what was bothering him all those years ago. Perhaps it was Remus, for crawling into himself, cloaked by self-pity and breeding that distrust. It could easily have been the incident that led Snape to know Remus’s secret. It had showed Remus a vindictive and ignorant side to Sirius that had, quite frankly, scared him. Or perhaps they and James were all three at fault, for letting Peter into their lives in the first instance.

“I suppose so, in a small way. I think it was, perhaps, the start of me distancing myself. Although this poem doesn’t paint you in a negative light, quite the opposite, actually. But it’s more about me and my furry little problem.

Black.
Darkness is Black.
Eternity is Black.
Black is feared.
The colour of nightmares.

Or so I’m told.
Not mine.
My nightmares are never Black.
They are Grey.
With the briefest flash of blue.

That is where my fear lies,
In the Grey in between.
Black is certain.
Absolute.
Fear comes shrouded in shadow.

I live a Grey life,
Uncompromisingly drawn,
Pulled towards the dark.
But then I see him.
Black is my light.

Silence. Sirius was staring down at his clasped hands in his lap. Remus wondered if he hadn’t really understood the poem. It was rather figurative, after all.

“You see, the references to ‘Black’ are actually—”

“Me,” Sirius interrupted, looking up at Remus. “It’s about me and Greyback.”

“That’s right,” muttered Remus, feeling slightly abashed for underestimating him.

“Are all of your poems about your condition like that?”

“How do you mean?” Remus managed to force the words out of his dry throat.

“Making it sound as if you’re always stuck in the middle, in the grey. Like you’re never just Remus. Like you’re never… Well, never in the light."

Remus turned a few pages, just to look busy, to buy himself some time as he hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose they are.” Of course they were, because that was how Remus had always felt about his condition. It was an inescapable evil, constantly battling for dominance within him. Even back at school he had worked tirelessly to hide it whenever he could, to be the polite, quiet sidekick whenever the moon would allow him. Even after all those years, the thought of Sirius realising how entwined his own thoughts were with the wolf’s instincts terrified him, although he wasn’t really sure why. Sirius had seen him at his worst, yet still he was there.

“This one…” Remus began, scanning another poem. “This is when things were really wrong between us — between all of us. I wrote it at the beginning of October, nineteen eighty-one.” Twenty-six days before James and Lily’s deaths, Remus felt it really captured the essence of life at that time.

“Alright,” Sirius nodded, jaw tightening, seemingly bracing himself for what was to come.

The world has turned to grey.
Everything seems cast in shadow,
A misty veil settling over lives,
Over friends and lovers,
Feeding doubt, breeding paranoia.
It distorts, confuses, persuades.
It engulfs its victims,
Wrapping around them, unnoticed.
Slowly suffocating.
I know it is there,
Clinging to my skin so tightly
That I can no longer tell
Where it ends
And I begin.

Perhaps I end.
Perhaps we all do.

“That, yeah,” Sirius mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s beautiful and haunting, and horrible because that’s exactly how it felt.”

Remus found some comfort in that. To know that, in the moment where they were the most distant, the most distrustful of each other, they were actually feeling the same way was strangely reassuring. Remus liked the poem, despite the reminder of such a dark time. It suggested that they were among many victims of a pervasive distrust, something widespread and irrepressible against which they had stood no chance. It allowed him some freedom from the crushing guilt of his own inaction.

“Read me another one about your furry little problem?” Sirius asked but Remus stayed quiet, chewing on his bottom lip, his brow furrowed. “To me, you only get wolfy near the moon. I want to try and understand what it’s really like for you.”

Remus nodded. He knew which poem to turn to. He cleared his throat.

“Don’t look into that mirror—”

“Hang on,” Sirius interrupted, “Sorry, when did you write this?”

Remus couldn’t really see what difference it made, it could have been written anytime, really. It wasn’t a poem fixated around an event, but rather a moment when he finally managed to put into eloquent words some of the feelings that had plagued him for as long as he could remember. “It’s from the twenty-fifth of August, nineteen eighty-five.”

“So you were twenty-five.” It wasn’t a question, but Remus nodded. “Okay, I just wanted to know. Carry on.” Remus started again.

Don’t look into that mirror.
They think that it only comes
once a month.
It is a lie.
When you look, you can see it there.
It is in the bags under your eyes,
the scars across your face.
You can feel it there,
just below the surface,
that clawing need to run,
to howl.
To bite, to tear, to kill.
Don’t look into that mirror.
Do not face the truth.
Deny it
and carry on—
like always.

One of those strange moments followed — the ones in which the tense atmosphere is imperfect, sullied by the trill of the sparrow and the whisper of the wind through the burgeoning leaves. They should serve to lighten the spirit, but instead they are bothersome and unwelcome, intruding on the strained silence which has earnt significance.

“What happened to you, Moony?” Sirius’s voice was small and distant, their only point of contact, Sirius’s legs across Remus’s lap, seemed all at once too much and not enough. The air in the room felt thick and heavy, a burden to the lungs on every laboured inhale.

“You know what happened.” Too much death. Remus had still been fragile from the loss of his mother when he was led to believe that his lover had been responsible for the deaths of their three closest friends. He had already felt like a burden on his parents, but after those events he was an anxiety-riddled, paranoid, depressed liability with suicidal tendencies. He couldn’t put his father through all of that, and so he had been alone. That’s what had happened.

“No, but, I mean like — How did you cope?”

Wasn’t that the question.

“I didn’t.” It was the truth. Remus had been so preoccupied with being strong for Sirius through his post-curse recovery and then through the war once it commenced in earnest. He had wanted to be dependable and trustworthy, everything that Sirius needed, and that had meant burying the person he had become after Peter’s betrayal. That had been the intention, at least. Of course, Remus could not hide the imprints of those years, the ways in which those experiences fundamentally changed him. All that he seemed to have achieved was to create confusion and a distance between the two of them. It was time for change. He took a deep breath. “I think it’s time you knew just how far I fell in those years.”

Remus turned to the section he always avoided, his shame, the poems that he had not intended for Sirius to see. He scanned them quickly. ‘With wanting eyes he looks at me/With lingering hands he touches’ seemed too innocent. Sirius may miss the point, miss Remus’s confession. Others were too detailed, Sirius neither needed nor would want to know to that degree.

When he found the right balance, he stared at it for a long time. He felt a prologue of sorts was required.

“After… everything, I was very depressed. I managed to earn enough money for food and a room by going door to door, cleaning, pest management, just odd jobs. After the Ministry cracked down on that, and I couldn’t get a license as I had no fixed address, I nearly gave up. The only thing that stopped me at that time was the thought of someone having to find my body, and to live with that memory. That and my father being informed. My point is, I was at my lowest, and everything seemed hopeless. I refused to steal, and so I sold the only thing I had of value.”

Remus stared down at the page, his lips trying to form the words he could see on the page, but no sound was forthcoming. “Here,” he strangled out, holding the book out towards Sirius.

They read together, in silence.

13th September, 1984

Please, do not look at me.
I am lips to service you,
A tongue to please you,
Hands to worship you,
Legs to part for you,
A back to arch for you,
A hole to milk you
And a voice to praise your name.
Do not delve further,
Do not look me in the eyes,
They are empty.
As am I.
I am a shell, nothing more.
I am only that which I have to offer,
So take, pay and go.
Do not look for me.
I am departed.

Remus Lupin, age 24

“Oh, Remus—”

“Don’t, Sirius,” Remus snapped, hating the uncomfortable heat plaguing him, his cheeks, his ears. “Do not pity me. It was my choice. I chose that life, I chose those men and I took their money. I don’t regret it.” He did feel ashamed, that much was likely evident in his current posture, blush and refusal to meet Sirius’s eye. “I can’t regret it, because it was ultimately the road that led me away from hopeless depression.”

“What was his name?” It was asked softly, not unkindly. Curiously.

“I was a prostitute, Sirius,” Remus spat bitterly, “There were many, and for the most part I was entirely ignorant as to their names.”

“No, not them,” Sirius explained, still sounding too calm for the subject matter. “The one who saved you.” Remus felt as though his throat was closing up. “Was he — Did he work too? And you got out of it together?”

The moment they met, they recognised each other. Werewolves, hiding in plain sight. One serving drinks, the other serving men. He found Remus honest work, gave him a place to stay, and things developed as they are wont to do. Remus couldn’t imagine how Sirius would feel to learn that Remus had been with someone who truly understood what life was like for him, in a way that Sirius never could.

“It’s, it’s all in the past now. Can’t we just leave it in the past?”

“How long were you together?”

Three years. Three beautiful years within twelve years of darkness and depression. It was more than Sirius had had. More than Remus had deserved.

“I don’t see how it matters, we’re not together now.”

“Why did it end?”

Remus felt on the brink of snapping again. He didn’t want to talk about Nate. As happy as he was to have Sirius in his life, a part of him felt bad about Nathan. A part of him missed him and regretted the way things ended, which led to more guilt. He generally tried not to wonder what would have happened if, when Sirius returned, Nate had still been in the picture. Today was supposed to be about Sirius.

“Actually, there is a poem that will tell you just that.” Remus closed the book and opened it again, hoping that Sirius wouldn’t notice the timeline discrepancy. He in fact wrote the poem a couple of years after Sirius’s imprisonment, several years before meeting Nathan, but that same issue was the very reason that everything fell apart for them. He could still remember the last words Nate spoke to him, as he packed his things and Apparated away. ‘I’m done being second to a murderous traitor. Goodbye, Rem.’

Do what you will,
Nothing will change.
Always I tell it,
But it does not listen.

You cannot have him,
He is gone.
Nothing more than a memory,
Embittered by the poison of betrayal.
So climb up the walls,
Scratch at the windows,
Tear down the door,
Raise your muzzle to the sky
And howl, until your throat is dry.
He will not come.

But it will not listen.
It will not relent.
Still it will howl mournfully
At the laughing moon,
Ignorant of law,
Ignorant of betrayal
And of the irrevocability of our situation.
It knows it is no lone wolf.
And so it will wait.

“Moony waited for me?” There was a waver to his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“I think perhaps it knew — I knew, somehow, somewhere deep down, that things weren’t right. That we shouldn’t have been apart.” Nate had pushed and pushed for them to spend their transformations together, insisting that it would make things easier. It had been an absolute disaster. Neither of them could remember exactly what had happened, as they were unable to afford Wolfsbane, but the state of the pair of them in the morning attested to the fact that it had not gone well. Some time later, Remus mused that Moony likely grew impatient with the other wolf’s advances, while futilely trying to call his true mate.

“I appreciate that you’ve told me things that you intended to keep to yourself, so… I want to be honest with you, too.”

“I’m not doing this because I expect that—”

“I know, but I want to. Really.” The look in Sirius’s eyes was so sincere. Remus nodded for him to continue. “I’ve always told you, since I came back, that I don’t want to talk about school because of Peter. That’s not quite true. Please, don’t hate me for this.”

“I couldn’t, Pads. You know that.”

“I avoid the subject because I don’t remember anything. I remember bits and pieces, mostly when things went wrong, the arguments and that. The rest, all the good stuff, got sucked out of me.”

“So you don’t remember us, getting together?” Remus could feel a prickling behind his eyes that he was determined to ignore. It was heart-breaking, that Sirius had suffered all those years without any positive memories when Remus could have helped him.

“I have… feelings. The memories I have meant that I could put things together. Like, the argument after I told Snape about the passageway. I could remember from that how we felt about each other. I don’t really know how to explain it, I feel close to you, like I still know all that we’ve been through, like I still went through it, I just, I can’t see it anymore. I can’t recall the finer details. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think that I’d forgotten about us.”

“Come here, you idiot,” Remus muttered, pulling Sirius awkwardly to his chest. “Of course it upsets me that you don’t remember, but it isn’t your fault. Anyway, there’s a Pensieve up at the school, your Legilimency isn’t all that bad, we can look at ways to fix it.” He kissed Sirius’s crown and gently let him go, resuming a much more comfortable position.

“Tell me more about the wolf,” Sirius asked, sounding more eager this time. Remus was happy with the change of topic, they could deal with Sirius’s memories another time. Best not to press the subject just now, give it time to breathe. Remus retrieved his wand from its pocket and cast a find-me charm on the diary. He found it easily, and he read.

Dear child, please know
That the monster
Beneath your bed
Doesn’t want to be there.

He doesn’t mean to
Howl and moan
Outside your window.
Pretend it is the wind.

He doesn’t want to
Tap claw-like fingernails
Against the glass.
Blame the branches.

Do not blame him,
Dear child, but the Moon;
Whose perfect orb
Tears his humanity asunder.

Remain young and innocent.
Unspoiled.
Just lock the windows,
And sleep, and dream.

But do be sure
To lock them tight.
Beware those noises
In the night.

Sirius leant forwards, taking Remus's bony hands in his own strong ones. "You are not like him, Remus." Remus opened his mouth to disagree, but Sirius pressed on. "When he turned you, he changed what you are but not who you are. This poem proves it — you care, deeply and indiscriminately. What you are doesn't define your personality and you are so many things other than just a werewolf. You are a man, a teacher, a friend, a father figure, a lover and a partner. You are my world, Remus. You are nothing like him."

He leant forward to kiss Remus on the forehead but Remus broke free of Sirius’s grip, grabbing his shirt and pulling him forward, until lips met lips, into a searing kiss. He poured everything into it, love, gratitude, disbelief that this man, this wonderful man, could be exposed to the worst of Remus and still be sitting here comforting him. Reassuring and validating and forthright.

“There’s one more, I think, for today. It’s a more recent one.”

“Okay.” Sirius waited, but Remus just stayed close, hands still tangled in Sirius’s shirt. “Book’s there, Remus,” he nodded, with a small smile. Remus didn’t need it. This poem had been going around in his head for so long now, epitomising how he has felt since the end of the war. Even now that they were settled — well, as settled as they could be, with Remus living between Hogwarts and their Hogsmeade home and Sirius having overnight missions as an Auror — things didn’t quite feel as they should. He recited the poem from memory.

My life is a jigsaw,
But the pieces I now hold in my hand
No longer match the picture on the box.
I know they must fit together,
I just cannot see how.
I cannot imagine it.
There aren’t enough corners, enough edges.
I know I must start with the centre,
But all the pieces look the same.
I no longer know which way is up.

Remus wonders, for a moment, if he sees a glimmer of familiar recognition in those grey eyes. “Jigsaw, eh?”

“Yes, but I fear it’s unsolvable.”

“Nonsense, Moony. I can fix it, if you want me to.”

“What will you do, cut the pieces to make them fit?” He smiled wryly.

“No, that wouldn’t really solve anything. If you force it, it’ll be in an even worse state than when you started. Or you’d end up with a mosaic.”

“What do you suggest then?” Remus asked, unsure by this point whether they were still talking in metaphor. Sirius swung his legs off the sofa and onto the floor, taking Remus’s hand and entwining their fingers.

“We make new pieces, of course, and we decorate them to fit.” He stood, pulling Remus up, carefully.

“Sounds complicated,” Remus frowned, but despite his joints aching from being still for so long, he was unable to hide his smile. Sirius could always make him smile, no matter what.

“No,” Sirius replied seriously, winding his free hand around Remus’s waist and pulling him close. “It’s going to be great fun, Moony.” He craned his neck upwards, managing to kiss Remus’s chin. “You’ll see.” Remus leant down, kissing Sirius softly, squeezing the hand still clasped in his. “It’s time,” Sirius said mysteriously when they pulled away.

“Time for what?”

“It’s four o’clock!” And with that, they weren’t holding hands any more. Remus stood in the middle of their conservatory with a very excited and large black dog threatening to knock Sirius’s glasses and mug off the side table with his over-enthusiastic tail. Remus laughed.

“Merlin’s beard, Sirius, when did you get so hooked on routine?” The dog was practically vibrating with energy, padding on the spot from foot to foot. He barked, happy and eager.

“Alright, alright… but just in the fields, I can’t keep up with you, today.” If they went into town, he would need to have Padfoot on a lead, and he couldn’t handle all the pulling so soon after the full moon. They wouldn’t go far, Remus couldn’t, but Padfoot could. He could frolic and eat the grass and roll around in interesting smells. And Remus could watch and feel the wind and smell the new growth, the freshly tilled soil. He could see Sirius’s freedom and, for a little while, forget that things had ever been otherwise.

Remus summoned a well-chewed ball from the garden as they stepped outside and threw it into the next field. Padfoot ran.

Perhaps sharing his diary with Sirius wouldn’t change anything after all. Things certainly didn’t feel any different. Remus felt a little lighter, perhaps, without the burden of so many secrets. Maybe what they needed wasn’t the huge, Earth-shattering shake-up that Remus had feared. Perhaps it was something quieter, a suffusive understanding that could underpin their relationship. Something bright yet unspoken, distinct yet iridescent: less grey.

The weak, early-Spring sun filtered through the trees. Perhaps Remus could feel another poem coming on.

Fin

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