Chapter Text
Remus lived at the bottom of the mountain.
Remus lived with the tall grass and the dirt paths and the holes in roofs and lazy river bends. Everything was easy on the eyes—by which I don't mean it was pretty, but that nothing was too bright, nothing so complex or beautiful it made your head hurt. Everything was simply soft and mundane and easy . Remus wouldn't quite call it lovely, but he did sort of love it. This is where Remus had lived for as long as he could remember.
He'd been told that he didn't, once, when he was very very young. His father used to work for the queen, at the top of Mount Stellae, but when the accident happened, they had to move to the bottom, to better raise the wolf-bitten child. There are bigger woods at the bottom of the mountain, better for transformations.
Or perhaps the good Mr. Lupin was just too ashamed to continue on with his life after the accident. Sometimes, to Remus, it seemed so.
But he tried not to think of such things. As his mother always said, he was young, and thinking was no better for the young than drinking after the pigs.
So he kept himself busy with things his mother would consider healthy for a young man. Afternoons with friends, for example. Sure, he really only had one friend, but a mother can only expect so much.
“We've got to get up there,” Lily said, stretched out on the grass beside the river Terram. The 'there’ she spoke of was the mountain. Up. How far? As far as they could get. This was a common conversation.
“No woods up there,” said Remus, from his patch of grass beside her. “No rivers.”
“What do you need rivers for? They have wells and things, you know.”
“There's no space for farmland, how are we supposed to make money?”
“You're smart, you've read more books than the whole village could carry. You know more than Old Woman Rani. You could teach one of their schoolhouses.” Lily had taken her eyes off the mountain peak and was searing them into Remus, like she knew how sharp her gaze was.
The most important part of Lily is her eyes. Anyone in town could tell you this. The eyes of Lily Evans are important for three reasons:
One, they are bright green, unheard of in the tiny low town of Terram. They are, in fact, so bright that they felt like a spotlight, like her very gaze was a knife to your throat, and every move was important. Some people liked the adrenaline of it. This, combined with her bright red hair and smattering of freckles, made her quite the sight. There wasn't a boy or girl in town who hadn't asked her to dance at one festival or another. And although she'd never been one to go steady, she'd danced with them all.
This was because of point two: those eyes saw the good in everyone. Even mean little boys like Severus Snape, and her own horrid sister Petunia. This is why she thought so highly of Remus—she thought highly of everyone. If she thought he could be a school teacher, surely she thought Gideon Prewett could capture the moon.
But the third and most important thing about Lily Evan's eyes was that they were far too big for her stomach. Not in the traditional sense of the phrase (there was no money for gluttony at the bottom of the mountain,) but that she wanted great things, grand adventures and emotions, and her only means were a small low town midwife's pay and little garden by her front door.
Lily had never dated any of the town boys or girls because she was sure as winter's come that someday she'd fall madly in love. She never spent more than 5 coins on a dress because none of them made her feel like Cinderella, that old children's tale. And she never called her little cottage a home because she swore one day she'd make it up the mountain.
“I hear,” she'd say each time, her voice building, “that at the very top, if you just look up, you can see God.”
Remus always laughed at that. “If we could see God, why would we need a queen?”
Lily would just ignore him and keep talking of the many various rumours about the top of Mount Stellae. They both knew that it wasn't about seeing God; it was about seeing something.
Nothing ever came of it until Remus’ mom died. It seemed her minor cold turned deadly quicker than a hound in an open field. Nearly the moment she passed, Remus realized she had been the only thing worth staying for. His father hadn't looked him in the eyes in years. Not that he’d ever been much of a father anyhow.
The morning after her burial, Remus showed up at Lily's door with his things in a sack. She just smiled and turned to pack.
They were lucky the traders were in town that day, and that they were in a good enough mood to let them climb into the back of one of their wagons for only few coins each. Lily had been saving her whole life for this, and Remus—well, he'd never had much to spend money on, had he? No sweetheart to buy gifts and ribbons for on holidays, and he certainly wasn't the sort to spend money on himself. Between the two of them, they had just enough coins. The traders said they could ride until there wasn't room for them or until the horses got tired.
They huddled up under a blanket in the late September air, making themselves as small as they possibly could.
Lily whispered in his ear, “I can't believe we're finally doing it.” Her voice shook a bit, like the back of a wagon full of honey was the most terrifying place she'd ever been. Perhaps it was.
Remus allowed himself to get caught up in the excitement, laughing softly. “Look out Stellae, here come two nerds in a blanket.”
There was a boy under his own blanket in the corner, curled up on his side, sleeping until they went over a large rock that woke him up. His eyes opened with a start, and it seemed to take a few moments for him to remember where he was. His eyes darted wildly around before stopping on Remus and Lily, huddled under their own blanket.
Remus watched him wipe the sleep from his eyes and slowly sit up and stretch. The boy was burned as if his skin wasn't used to sun. At first the thought seemed ridiculous to Remus; everyone and their nephew down in Terram worked in the fields. Remus himself had more freckles than a Weasley had cousins. But then he realized—these traders went as far as halfway up the mountain, sometimes further. There was no telling where this boy was from.
“Where are you from?” The other boy was the one to ask, not Remus, and he seemed a bit offended. Perhaps at having to share his wagon space, perhaps at the way he was very obviously being stared at.
Lily seemed very eager to start off her adventure up the mountain with a conversation, and there was a partner no better than a strange traveling companion. “We're from Terram. I'm Lily, and this is Remus. Where are you from?”
“Oh, um. The same.”
Lily squinted her eyes into little green daggers. “You can't be from Terram, it's smaller than a babe’s toenail. We'd know you, for sure.”
The boy turned even redder than before, but in a different sort of way. “Well see that's just the joke. It's very funny. Normally you'd be laughing by now.”
“Okay sure, my apologies, but where are you from though?”
The boy looked around the wagon blinking, pretending to be surprised by the question. “Well this wagon, I suppose.”
Lily stared back, incredulous. “Well surely you can at least tell us your name.”
The boy smiled something crooked and light and lovely and dark. It was arrogant in a way Remus had never been witness to, and he couldn’t decide if he liked it or not. “It's Sirius.”
“Sirius? Sirius What?”
“Just Sirius.”
Lily muttered some swears under her breath and burrowed herself into their blanket. Remus was trying to hold back a laugh. When Sirius saw his smile, and the way he was biting his lips and his shoulders were shaking, he beamed, clearly very proud of himself.
Sirius was a rather aristocratic name, Remus knew. Most commonly used by mayor’s sons and dukes and duchesses. If he remembered right, even the eldest prince bore the name. But Remus opted not to tell Lily this; it would only get her all too excited and she'd never leave the poor boy alone.
He was about their age, but looked strikingly different. His eyes were grey, in a sharp sort of way that reminded Remus of Lily's infamous gaze. His hair was long for a man, slipping past his shoulders, and black as coal. There was not a freckle or blemish of any sort on his face, save for the aforementioned sunburn and a tiny scar just by his jawline, a perpendicular line to his upturned nose.
“So, Remus,” Sirius continued, looking at Remus like they were in on some sort of secret together, grin too wide to be polite, “why’d you finally leave toenail town?”
Remus shrugged, silently urging himself not to be awkward like he had always been with the village boys. This was a fresh start, he'd be wasteful not to at least try for some confidence. “I'm off to overthrow the queen.”
Sirius laughed longer than Remus had expected, clutching his sides by the end of it. “Well if you need an army, sign me up.”
Remus knew, he knew this was a joke, but something in the way he said it rang true and it startled Remus. Nobody really had any political opinions in Terram; there wasn't much use to it. To hear someone speak against the queen - well, it was a first.
Sirius didn't seem to notice his discomfort. “Really though, why'd you leave?”
Remus paused for a moment, wondering if it was better to tell him or to make another joke. In the end he averted his eyes and said to the sky, “My ma died.”
Sirius went quiet, his grin slipping off his face. “I'm sorry. I imagine you were close.”
Lily still had her head buried in the blanket, but there was no way she couldn't hear them. Apparently this was one of the few conversations she didn't want to interrupt.
Remus just nodded, looking up and pretending they were discussing lunch preferences. “Yeah. What about you? Why aren't you back home?”
Sirius, too, seemed to have to consider his answer. “I got kicked out,” he said finally. “There wasn't much choice to it.”
Remus understood the basic concept of being kicked out—he'd read books, heard stories—but he couldn't imagine it in practice. Sure, his father had all but ignored his presence for the majority of his life post-accident, but there was no universe in which Remus’ pa would have stopped providing for him.
But that was Sirius’ universe.
At this point, Lily could no longer stand to be silent, so she unborrowed herself and told Sirius how sorry she was, and how much his parents must suck. After that, the three of them couldn’t stop talking. Sirius heard all about the two of them and their tiny town of Terram and their grand plan to get as high up the mountain as they could. Remus and Lily heard all about Sirius being kicked out of his home (a home which he refused to talk about) by his god-awful mother and how he'd only made it by picking up work with the traveling merchants, hauling things on and off carts. He wasn't very strong, but two hands always did more good than harm.
“It's lonely though,” he said. “You'd think it wouldn't be—there's at least a dozen men around my age traveling with us, but they've all grown up together. The things they joke about, the stories they tell, it might as well be another language to me.”
“Well, you're welcome to learn ours,” said Lily, and then she braided Sirius’ hair and he braided hers and from that moment on they were friends.
It was a bit harder with Remus and Sirius. It seemed the moment Lily left, whether she'd fallen asleep in the wagon or they were at a stop and she'd stepped away, the air disappeared.
The first time the wagons stopped, it was in another low village named Petram. Lily was immediately whisked off by the village girls, who wanted to show her everything and hear her stories, leaving Sirius and Remus to themselves.
“So what would you like to do?” Sirius asked, with his hands shoved in his pockets, speaking more to the skyline than Remus’ face.
“It's up to you. You know more about new villages.”
“It's your first time somewhere new.”
“I want to see whatever you want to see.”
“Well, I want to see what you want to see what you want to see so what do you want to see?”
Finally, Remus exhaled a laugh, “Why don't we just walk and see what we find?”
So they walked. It was cold, newly October, and their breath made fog like they were dragons.
Sirius gathered up leaves from the side of the dirt paths and sprinkled them in Remus’ hair. Remus grabbed some and shoved them down his shirt. Sirius laughed without real sound, and smiled in a way that looked like it hurt. Remus focused so intently on trying to come off confident, like he knew what he was doing, making sure Sirius liked him, the whole thing giving him a headache. Words were too big a risk, too easy to say the wrong ones. He couldn't even figure the reason why this was so important, but he was consumed by it.
Sirius, for his part, also seemed to be trying all too hard not to be awkward. It came easy to him with Lily, who he was growing to know more and more, and knew he could always say the wrong thing with the faith that she'd forgive and forget by next sundown. But Remus was a mystery, and one that felt too precious to make a wrong move around.
They were lucky to find a hayfield on the edge of town. There were no owners in sight and it felt only natural to climb up the bales of hay and watch the sun begin to set. Sirius laid on one hay bale, his back arching like the edge of the sun. Remus laid his head on Sirius’ stomach, perpendicular to him, legs hanging off the edge of the hay bale. This, for some reason, was much easier than talking.
Remus didn't have much of a view of Sirius from where he was, which was a relief. The thought occurred to him that if he could see Sirius, he might forget to look at the sunset.
Sirius did not look at all like a sunset; more like a night sky, which was fitting to his name. His skin was barely a few shades darker than the color of the moon, and his high arching brows had the curve of it. His hair was the same inky black as the void, his eyes on you felt the exact same as the realization that you cannot count the stars in the sky, and his fingertips on your shoulder did the same thing to your stomach as finding your favorite constellation, the exact same comforting twist of excitement within familiarity.
Remus was so lost in thought, he'd nearly forgotten where he was until Sirius threaded his fingers into Remus’ hair. Remus felt his heart jump into his throat but swallowed it back down, begging himself to be calm. This was something Sirius and Lily did, a friendly sign of affection. There was no reason to make a thing of it.
Sirius hummed softly to himself, so quiet Remus felt it more than heard it. Then he lifted his hand, lazily, with his elbow still resting on the hay bale, and pointed at the horizon.
“That,” he said, “right there, where the gold and the orangish meet? That's my favorite color.”
Remus nodded his approval. It was a pretty color, and oddly fitting for Sirius in its boldness. It was the color of someone brave. Remus thought of what he'd give to have a heart that color.
He rolled over, repositions himself so that he's on top of Sirius, face to face.
“That,” he said to Sirius’ startled face. “The exact grey of your eyes. That's mine.”
Sirius breathed in, and he swallowed, and his eyes moved frantically across Remus’ face, nervous and not quite sure what was happening. His face was turning red again and his breathing was getting shallow. All at once, Remus realized how odd this was, and how it looked. He rolled off before Sirius could see his own cheeks turn red.
He tried to smile and not kick himself and pretend nothing was weird as he told Sirius they'd best be going, it wouldn't do to walk back in the dark.
As they walked, Remus got lost again in his thoughts, which mostly consisted of profanities directed inwards. He barely noticed the tall dark-skinned boy walking by, but he did, in fact, notice.
The tall boy smiled and winked, but whether it was at Remus or Sirius, he couldn't quite tell. Once he'd past and was decidedly out of earshot, Sirius leaned over and said, “Well he was cute, wasn't he?”
Remus supposed he was. He had been half hoping that wink had been for him, after all, even if nothing came of it. Remus had never been one to think much of romance, or who he liked. Not much use to to it, seeing as nobody would want to settle down with a werewolf. He'd always had a sneaking suspicion though, that if he'd had his choice of the crowd, he wasn't likely to land on a girl. Maybe this was Sirius’ way of saying he was okay with that. Or maybe even his way of saying he felt the same. It seemed unreal, but the possibility was there. He simply nodded and let the issue go.
Before they rounded the last turn to reach the center of town and the trading wagons again, Sirius let his hand brush against Remus’. Brush is an understatement, maybe. For the briefest of moments, their fingers tangled together and stayed that way.
Then they turned the corner and they fell apart as if nothing happened. Lily, who had been shown the town and brought back to the center for dancing, looked happy to see them and introduced them to all her new friends.
It was a lovely night, and with all the names and faces and dancing and general hubbub, plus the excitement of his first new town of a surely long list of places he'd visit, Remus almost forgot about the oddness of his evening with Sirius. At times, it felt like he had, but it was there, ever present in the back of his mind, like the sky in your peripheral.
By the time he crawled into the wagon and collapsed from the exhaustion of the day, he'd realized there was no sense to make of it and officially resigned himself to just pretending it didn't happen and moving on.
Technically, Remus and Lily were subject to chores for the traders. Inventory, loading and unloading, helping steer the mules, stuff like that. The traders much preferred to call on Sirius, though. Maybe it was the nature of his deal with them, or the fact that he'd been there longer, or maybe they just felt he could benefit from the manual labor. They weren't wrong. More and more, Sirius began to look less like a posh sort of doll and more like a real person, with muscles and scratches and tan lines.
On one of these days when Sirius was called out to steer the oxen, (a particularly rare occurrence, because he was very bad at this,) Remus and Lily enjoyed some time in the wagon to themselves, talking of old times and grand plans.
“I don't think this trading group goes much beyond Altiorem,” said Lily. “From there we might have to walk, unless we think it's worth staying in, but I think we should keep going as far as we can. When we do get off, we should ask Sirius if he'd like to come with us. I know he'll probably say he has no marketable skills but really—”
“What do you think of him?” Remus asked with a start.
Lily froze in her confusion. “Who?”
“Sirius.”
“You know him as well as I do.”
“Yes, but you have a better sense of people. You always have.”
“Well,” Lily said, “obviously he's my friend, so I like him.”
“Go on.”
“I think he's been very lonely for a long time, which is why it's surprising how funny and kind he is. He's definitely hiding something, but you knew that. I think he likes you more than he lets on. He also likes the work more than he lets on. He likes feeling capable and helpful. He's a sweet lad. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” said Remus, trying his best, as always when it came to Sirius, to sound casual. “I was having a hard time figuring him out.”
“People aren't puzzles for you to figure out, Remus.”
“Sirius is a puzzle of a man if I ever met one. Don't try to deny it, we don't even know his last name.”
“You should know better than anyone,” Lily smiled, “that there's more to you than what you came from. Who your parents are or what happened to you in the past. It's not as though you've told him everything about you, hm? He probably thinks you're quite the puzzle too.”
For some reason, this simply hadn't occurred to Remus, that he too kept secrets. It didn't stop his curiosity, but it did remind him that he wasn't entitled to answers. It was an odd thing, to live with half a picture and be okay with that. But, he supposed, we always did. At least with Sirius, he knew the picture was incomplete.
Stops became routine soon after that as they made their way slowly up the mountain and towns grew closer together. It seemed every other day they stopped and were thrown into a bustle of newness. The names started to blur together. Remus was acutely aware of his desensitivity to the adventure of it. Oddly enough, he welcomed the transition. He wasn't Lily, he hadn't wanted excitement at every turn. He wasn't quite sure what he did want, but he was growing to like this life, the movement, the honey tongues, the sharp eyes on bumpy nights.