Fan Fiction ❯ Starfall, Moonset ❯ Some Way Back ( Chapter 7 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

By: Irish

Starfall, Moonset

Chapter Seven:

Some Way Back

By: Irish

Sirius watched him, watched him fade from this world, watched him almost disappear from reality, so lost was Remus in his own head. A daydreamer, or so McGonagall had said, but it wasn't cheerful fantasy or pleasant reverie that he slipped into so deeply that he almost ceased to exist. It wasn't daydreams… it was more like Remus crawled inside his own head and hid for a while.

He had been prone to this even before the deaths of the Potters, but then, in those days, when he crawled into his head, most often that small Mona Lisa smile would come to his lips, and Sirius knew that whatever insulation he had found there brought him cheer. But over this month, and maybe over the last thirteen years, when he sidestepped into his mind, he projected a deep melancholy. He was a survivor, The Survivor, really. He carried not only the world, but Atlas as well.

“Remus?”

Remus turned to him slowly, blinking as if just waking. “Sirius, what are you doing up?”

“Uh, watching you get soaked, it would seem.” Sirius replied, moving over to where Remus was carefully arranged, putting his hands on Remus's hips and half lifting him off the rail onto the solid ground. “Your arm and shoulder are all wet.” Sirius tried to remember he had last done something like that. He had many memories similar, lifting Remus carefully down off of some perch, the window in their room at Hogwarts, the tree in front yard of the pleasant little brownstone they had shared with Lily and James…yes… that was the last time. Just before the Potters' had died.

“Remi, love, what are you doing up there?” Sirius's tone was exasperated, yet indulgent, as he looked up at where his lover sat, leaning back against the trunk of a tree, legs stretched out along the branch, crossed at the ankles, a book in his lap.

“Reading.” He replied in a nonchalant way, apparently werewolves reading in trees were normal occurrences for him. Then again; he was a werewolf reading in a tree.

“Lily says dinner is ready, and that if you don't get your nose out of that book, she's going to transfigure it into a newt.”

Remus looked up, his lips an even line, but his eyes dancing. “My nose, or the book?”

“Well you know love, she didn't really specify, but do you really want to find out?”

“I suppose not.” Remus sighed with a faux world-weariness, closing his book. Sirius stepped closer and reached up, Remus really wasn't very high off the ground, and grasped his hips. Remus slid off the branch of his own volition, but readily trusted Sirius's hands to guide him to the ground. He landed easily on his feet, and in Sirius's arms….

Remus watched as Sirius's brow wrinkled, and his eyes lost focus, then watching as a moment later they slipped back into focus.

“The last time I touched you like that, lifted you down, was at our house, the brownstone, that little willow in the front. You had been reading.” Sirius said, his voice slightly dreamy with the remembrance.

“I made a bad joke about an indefinite reference, and then we made out.” Remus smiled slightly. “Yes, that was the last time.”

Sirius let his eyes scan Remus's face. “Remi…” He cupped Remus's face in both his hands. “Remi, you look…”

“Old.” Remus supplied.

“Like… like you carry the burdens of all of us.” Sirius really saw Remus for the first time since he had arrived. A flash of lightening etched and highlighted the creases in his face, around his mouth, between his eyebrows, at the corners of his eyes. In the dim light his hair looked completely gray, not the tawny-going-gray that he really was. And his eyes… Merlin… his eyes… Sirius thought, in that moment, they may look more haunted then his own. Remus shrugged slightly.

“That's because I do, or did. You have part of that now.”

“Remus,” Sirius's thumbs caressed his cheeks. “I-- I remember so little, so few of the good things we had. I don't remember the love, only the betrayal… and suspicion, mostly on my part. I want to remember. I want…”

“We are broken men with broken lives.” Remus's voice was soft and hollow, and Sirius hated it, but it was truth.

“So, can't we cobble a life together out of what's left? We both have nothing, at least maybe with each other, we would have something, some reason to just keep… being. Help me remember.”

Remus's eyes closed under the caress of Sirius's hands, if he tilted his head back, just a little, they would support the weight of his head, and maybe ease the knot of tension that had resided at the base of his skull for a decade. “It's raining.” Remus observed, as though he wasn't standing their, wet from the waist up on one side. “We can't work the fields until it clears.”

“It won't clear today.” Sirius said, his breath starting to catch in his chest, he felt Remus shift his head, slightly, and felt the full weight of it in his palms. “Headache?”

“Only for the last few years.”

“Come inside with me?”

“Okay.”

And like that, some agreement had been reached, some line tossed out by one, and caught by the other. Sirius gently set Remus's head straight, and let go. Instead he took both of Remus's hands in his own and brought them too his lips, kissing his knuckles softly, before walking backwards slowly, leading Remus into the cabin.

They said nothing at first, as they moved into Remus's bedroom, their hands loosely clasped. Remus lay down on his back, and for a while, Sirius just sat, cradling his head in his hands, lifting and straightening in such away that he knew would relieve the tension in Remus's skull. He remembered, vaguely, like light through a dirty window, sitting like this other times, at Hogwarts, at the Auror Academy, at their small apartment over Flourish and Blots, and the house they had shared with the Potters, just sitting like this, trying to relieve one of Remi's tension headaches, that sometimes became migraines.

It was only now that they were beginning to talk, now that they both lay on their sides, knee's pulled up a little, looking like mirror image twins, brother light, brother dark. Remus had slipped his hand into Sirius's where it lay on the quilt, and Sirius had taken it loosely. There was plenty of space between their bodies, not even their knees touched, just their hands. The curtains were open, but the glass nearly opaque with water, the room had a gray-green tinge to it from the storm outside.

“When, when they took me away, I knew, I knew I was going to Azkaban. I was laughing because… because otherwise I would have been screaming, and as James always said-“

“Never let them see you leak.” Remus finished. They were watching each other with a quiet attentiveness, their eyes meeting and dancing away, meeting and dancing away.

“Right. Peter-- I couldn't believe Peter had been so clever, so devious. Had we always underestimated him? I don't know. I didn't even try and defend myself, what was the point, I mean; no one would believe me, and all they had was my word to it. I pleaded innocent, and was, of course shot down faster then a one winged Pegasus. I… Remus… I wanted to see you… so badly, to explain, I thought, maybe, if I was able to talk to you, before anyone else, that maybe you would believe me.”

“I would have hunted Peter with you. Why didn't you take me with you.” Remus whispered the question that had been so plaguing him since he had learned of Sirius's innocents.

“No reason, no real one anyway. Anger, poor judgment, stupidity, a desire to protect you. Nothing worth a bowl of beans. So anyway… they locked me up and threw away the key. This part, it gets a little harder.” Sirius sighed, his gray eyes meeting Remus's hazel ones. Remus reached out with his other hand, and touched Sirius's face.

“Then let me tell it first.” Remus's voice was soft, the same rolling whisper that they had been both been speaking in since they had lain down, but Sirius thought he could here the deeply buried Belfast turn to his words.

“Do… you know it?” Sirius murmured back, his eyes drifting away again.

“I know the general idea. I'll tell it. Then you'll tell all of it.” Remus waited, watching Sirius's dark head, waiting until he saw it nod. Remus shifted a little closed, their knees brushing lightly. “You were alone… you were cold.” Remus paused closing his own eyes. He knew the story, more then he wanted to, and yet there was more to know. He knew, part by simple logic, part by hearing what Sirius screamed in his dreams and part-- part because a small part of him had been there too. “You cried at first, you cried a lot, and screamed. Then lost hope, slowly as each day passed like dust through your fingers. They waited to start the worst of it, because if you still had hope you might fight it, cause trouble.” Remus paused and swallowed. Sirius's form was hunching over more, drawing in to itself. Remus took a moment to shift position, so Sirius's head rested in the curve of his body and they would have made a T if they straightened out. He

used his fingertips to smooth back sable locks.

“When the Dementors really started to effect you, when not only was your joy gone, but the goodness and happiness that you had had… we had had… was evaporating, leaving you with the worst of it all. Then they let in the death eaters, the ones who tattled, the ones who they wanted to reward, and.” Remus paused here, very conscious of his wording, how should he phrase it?

“They…” Sirius cleared he throat. “They used me-- hurt me--” Sirius couldn't bring himself to say the word, to own what had happened to him.

“They raped you.” Always Remus, always clinical.

“Yes.” It was horse like wind over sand. Sirius cleared his throat again. “They raped me… for…years… most of my time there. I don't know how long or how often. Long enough between to let me heal.” Sirius felt the first tears start to fall. He wasn't crying really, just leaking, like blood from a wound. “Sometimes it was the dementors themselves.” Remus had begun the tail, but Sirius knew he was the only one who could finish it. “They were worse. I don't think… they have the equipment to do it the normal way.” A bitter bark of laughter. “If there is such a thing. I never was physically wounded, I never bled after them, never got sick with fever, but I felt them, like being fucked with and icicle.”

Sirius took a deep breath; trying to keep this on an intellectual level, negate it by giving it words. “The Kiss… its this abyss that can take from you, suck you dry, and leave you with nothing, while empowering itself. When they... it was the opposite of that, but just as bad. It was like they took all that… evilness and emptiness and turned it into something, made it phallic and made me their fuck. I have no idea if they got any pleasure on it… or just fed on what it made me feel.”

Sirius took a deep breath. The words were coming, fountaining from inside him, and he wasn't sure he could stop them, but gods it hurt. He didn't want to do this, but he needed too. It was like and emotional artery had been severed.

“Remus, this fucking sucks.”

“I know. Its okay… just say what you need to.” Remus's fingers slid through the long, thin hair of the man he was curled around, letting the slight natural curl of it wrap around his fingers, and slide free, not offering more comfort then Sirius wanted, nor denying it to him.

“I don't even remember parts of it. I think there were times that I lost it completely. I think there are years that are missing, just…gone. That's okay. Disconcerting, but okay. I managed to keep my sanity. You know this part too, because I was innocent. That was truth. And it wasn't pretty. I'm sure there is more I can tell you but its just…individual incidents, not the story itself. It's like splinters, there is always still something left, even after the worst is gone. I got out, you know that too-- and the rest-- and now…” Sirius trailed off as he felt the first sob start to tighten his chest. “And now…” He couldn't finish; the pain had formed a tight knot and lodged itself in his throat. He shook his head.

“And now, for the first time in thirteen years, your not just trying to stay alive. And for the first time in thirteen years you have to confront the deaths of Lily and James, the idea that you have been tortured for thirteen years, for a crime you didn't commit, and deal with the torture itself. And you don't know how. And I haven't been any help.”

Sirius nodded, then shook his head, then turned his face against the quilt, a hand fumbling up for Remus's as wail, half howl, loosed from his chest, and the tears started to flow in earnest. Remus took his hand and folded it in his own, brought the frail thing to his lips, and held it there lightly, as he caressed Sirius's head, murmuring softly, sounds and words that had no meaning, just emotion.

Sirius didn't want to be held, because there was no comfort, none, that could even touch this. It was like the few times he had been seriously injured as a child. Someone could hold your hand, and help give you the strength to make it through, but they couldn't stop the pain, couldn't ease it. You could only suffer on your own, and try and stay grounded. He could feel the hot wetness that trickled over the hand that was held to Remus's face, felt that he too was crying. Remus, he recalled, again in that vague half absent way, had always been empathetic like that. If someone cried, Remus cried with them. Or was so often the case, when Sirius could not cry himself, Remus cried for him.

The tears fell like the rain for a time, hard and drenching. But as a calm came to the storm, so too it fell over Sirius. His sobs, which had been mostly silent, but violent, trailed into ragged panting and sniffling. The quilt under his head was soaked in an area the size of a tea saucer, and his shirt stuck to him with sweat. Over him and around him was Remus, who despite his own tears, had not made any indication of crying, and held his same position, curled around Sirius's head, one hand caressing his hair, the other holding Sirius's, with out moving.

A deep shaking breath rattled through his chest and Sirius tilted his head back so he could look at Remus.

“Sorry, got your quilt all wet and snotty.” Sirius managed to turn his lips upwards in a warbling smile.

“Its okay, it'll wash. Do you want to be hugged?”

Sirius watched him a moment, watched his face and the subtle nuances of lines and twitching muscles. He wasn't sure what he was trying to read there, what he was searching for, but whatever it was he must have found it, because he nodded.

Remus sat up slowly, his body creaking in protest at having lain so still so long and so tensely. He slipped an arm under Sirius, helping him to find a sitting position, before he reached out and drew him into his arms, holding Sirius close against his chest, hugging him tightly. Sirius's stick like arms came around Remus and hugged him back. They sat like that a long moment, before parting slowly. They caught each other's eyes briefly, before finding something else to occupy their attention. The silence stretched ant then Sirius laughed hoarsely, tensely.

“Well then…” He felt Remus's hand rest over the top of his, not letting that tentative connection drift away again.

“How do you feel, do you need something to drink?”

Sirius turned his hand under Remus's, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. “Sure, that would be good. Thank you.” Sirius managed another weak smiled, looking into Remus's eyes again. He had meant for it to be a brief contact, just a moment, a brush of souls, to comfort him. But when amber met sapphire, they locked.

Remus leaned, then hesitated, stopping inches from Sirius's mouth. He paused there, eyes searching over Sirius's. He leaned in again, and closed those last inches.

It wasn't a chaste kiss, even if it was brief, a kiss no matter how innocent can ever be chaste between lovers, even if it bridged years. It was gentle though, and tender, and when Remus sat back again, Sirius felt his hand rise to his mouth and touch his lips lightly in an unbelieving fashion.

“I love you, Siri.” Remus's hand touched the side of his face lightly, fingertips against his slightly stubbled cheek.

“I love you too, Remi.” He didn't feel it, not entirely, not deeply and truly, the way he thought he used to, there were still huge hollow spaces in his soul that had been left when he forgot what it was like to love and be loved, but… he knew that he could love again.

Remus smiled and pulled away further, trailing his fingers along Sirius's cheek until he had pulled away entirely and was standing beside the bed. “Be right back.”

Remus retrieved some water for both of them, and some crackers to fill empty stomachs, even though neither of them were hungry. Sirius used the loo, and stretched out a little, his own narrow frame protesting at the lack of movement over the last hour or more, washing his face with cold water. They met again in the dim light from the storm outside, picnicking on the bed of their water and crackers. It was a silent meal, as they both tried to put themselves back together, feel their way along the twisting, dark tunnels of their emotions to some semblance of logic.

It was Remus's turn now. He sat at the head of the bed, leaning back against the headboard, his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. “Sirius, understand, I am not trying to belittle what you've been through…”

“Remus, would you stop bloody fretting so much. Just tell the story. It's your tale, that's what matters. I am listening because it's been twelve years, and… well… I have no clue what that's entailed for you. And I should.”

“All right… I guess… I should start at the beginning…”

Arthur's Note: I have no idea why I haven't posted it sooner, its been done forever. I am hoping to write some more on this piece and work on some other ones in the Harry Potter genre, thanks for sticking with me!