Chapter Text
After it happened, all Remus wanted to do was forget.
A deep pain lived inside those memories, wound even through the joy and the good. Many nights he would lie awake, staring at the ceiling, reliving one of the happier moments. But it would always twist into the last day-- the last days-- when everything became muddled and deformed. The glass of water on his bedside table was never able to rinse out the lingering taste of ash in his mouth, but the phone next to it taunted him with the promise that it could. He resisted its pull, and always grabbed a random book instead.
All Remus wanted to do was forget.
He got his wish.
***
Remus woke up. His senses slowly filtered in the sound of a beeping machine and bright fluorescent lights. He was in a hospital room, alone. Something in his mind told him it would hurt to sit up, so he laid still. After a moment, he realized the beeping sound was synchronized to his heartbeat. He spent a few moments holding his breath and listening as the beeps slowed, before exhaling and letting it return to a more regular pace.
His left wrist was wrapped in something white, but his right was bare. He looked pale, but the contrast was still sharp between his evenly brown skin and the hospital’s dull whiteness. Something about that was amusing, but he couldn’t remember why. Remus closed his eyes, and allowed the evenly-spaced beeps to lull him back under the grips of sleep.
When he woke again, the room was filled with people. Some of them were dressed as doctors or nurses, but most of them weren’t. None of them looked familiar. The two people closest to his bed were both incredibly good-looking, the man tall and thin, the woman short and fat. When the red-haired woman saw him looking at them, she jumped.
“He’s awake!” She said. “Remus, you’re going to be fine, just don’t move too much right now, and the doctors said you should get your memory back soon.”
Remus looked at her in surprise. Moving around didn’t seem like a good idea anyway, so he was happy to agree with her there. But what did she mean about getting his memory back? What was he forgetting?
“Who are you?” Remus ventured cautiously.
The woman smiled sadly and reached out a hand to gently squeeze his forearm. “I’m Lily,” she said. She began pointing to others in the room. “This is James, Marlene, Dorcas, Peter is one of your nurses but we’re adopting him into the friend group after you get better, that doctor over there is- well she’s leaving now apparently, but her name is McGonagall and she is very good. You’re in good hands.”
Remus looked at each person in the room intensely, trying to make meaning of their appearances and clothing. James looked like he was possibly Desi, Dorcas was Black, Marlene and Lily were white. Peter looked like a mouse. But if he wasn’t a part of their friend group yet then it was okay if he didn’t look familiar. Remus looked at the other four again. Nothing.
“What happened?” Remus asked.
“You were in an accident,” Lily answered calmly. Remus didn’t miss the concerned look Marlene shot Dorcas, and he wondered if he had said something wrong. “Don’t worry Remus, just get some more rest. Also, Sirius is on his way, he’ll be here soon.”
“Sirius,” Remus repeated, head already sinking back into his pillow. The name sounded familiar, and he liked the way it felt in his mouth, slowly enunciating the three syllables.
“Lily?” Remus suddenly asked.
“Yes?” She answered eagerly, crouching down with a huge smile. The others in the room looked optimistic about something.
“What happened?” Remus asked.
Her face immediately fell, and he suddenly wondered if he said the wrong thing. “It’s going to be okay, Remus, just get some rest.”
***
Remus woke up. He felt groggy, and he tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move his left hand enough to get it underneath him. He looked at it and was confused to see it wrapped in white bandages littered with black sharpie doodles and words. “James Potter” was written at least a dozen times, next to little hopeful messages from three other styles of handwriting: signed Dorcas, Marls, or Lily. He didn’t remember anyone with those names, but something felt familiar. Suddenly, he realized that he had met them earlier, in this room, but the memory felt fuzzy somehow.
“James got a little carried away there, sorry I wasn’t here to stop him.”
Remus turned his head to the side to see that his otherwise empty hospital room had one other man inside. A very striking looking man, with short black hair and multiple silver rings on his fingers. His eyes were different colors.
“Sirius,” Remus whispered.
“You remember me?” Sirius asked incredulously.
“No,” Remus said. Sirius nodded, as if he expected the response. But he also looked slightly relieved, Remus thought.
“Hey, I brought you this notepad. I thought you might want to jot down notes about important things before you get all of your memories back.” Sirius handed over a lined yellow legal pad, and a ballpoint pen.
Remus accepted the offering with his good hand and used his teeth to uncap the pen, but was suddenly stuck. “I don’t remember anything that I should write,” he confessed. “What’s important?”
Sirius smiled warmly. “Well, for one, I’m your best friend. You could start with that.”
Remus suddenly felt very sleepy, and stifled a yawn with the notepad. Sirius- best friend , he wrote, before beginning to drift off. He felt Sirius take the pad and pen out of his hand, and slender fingers combed through the curls on his forehead one time before he fell asleep again.
***
Remus woke up. He didn’t know where he was, and he looked around with wide eyes. “¿Dondé estoy?” He asked in mild panic.
A handsome man shook his head with a smile. “Nope, no hablo español. You speak English too.” His Spanish accent was horrible.
“Oh,” Remus frowned. “You’re Sirius.”
Sirius smiled. “Yep, your best friend, remember?” He pointed to the notepad that was now lying open on the side of Remus’s hospital bed.
Sirius- best friend, gringo. Underneath, in a handwriting that was not his own: Remus- bilingual, Latino, snarky. Remus read it and laughed. A couple of memories came back to him, sporadic clips from the past few hours.
“That wasn’t the first time I woke up and spoke to you in Spanish, was it?”
“Nope, but I’m glad you can remember the other times, even if just a little bit.”
Remus frowned. “What’s wrong with my memory? Have I asked that before? Why haven’t I written it down?”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Sirius soothed. “Don’t worry, the doctor said it would be the worst at first, but you’ll get better at remembering recent stuff soon, and eventually it should all come back.”
“After how long?” Remus asked, worried to hear the answer.
“They don’t know,” Sirius replied with a sad smile.
“I guess that’s why I haven’t written it down then,” Remus said wryly.
Sirius exhaled a puff of air in amusement. “I’m glad your unique sense of humor is still intact. Here, while you’re awake, write this down: your left wrist is broken, but will heal fine if you keep the cast on for the next five or six weeks. You have a bad concussion, which is why you’re so tired, but they did scans and it’ll be fine in a while.”
Remus jotted down the notes. “And what happened in the first place? How did I get hurt?”
Sirius looked apprehensive. “You kind of, got hit by a car.”
Remus grimaced. “That’s embarrassing. I’m not writing that down.” He started to feel drowsy again, but suddenly had another question. “How old am I?”
“You are twenty-three,” Sirius stated. “So am I.”
***
Remus woke up to whispered chatter. One hushed voice spoke excitedly above the others, “he’s awake!” Remus looked around the hospital room to see an attractive man-- Sirius, he remembered-- a tall and short couple, whom he had met before but needed to get Sirius’s help in writing their names down, and two women who he was pretty sure he knew. “Okay, 1, 2, 3,” the redhead prompted.
Bizarrely, the five people began singing “Happy Birthday” to him, as one of them produced assorted cupcakes and plenty of packaged appetizer foods including cheese, salami, crackers, and dried mango.
“Oh my god, is it my birthday?” Remus asked, horrified.
Sirius grinned. “Nope, but the charge nurse told us we couldn’t bring all of the food in here so we whined and said you were going to celebrate your birthday alone in the hospital without any cake until he let us go.”
The Desi man jumped in with a quip. “I think he was just sick of you harassing him.”
Sirius waved him off, and then turned to Remus to quickly remind him of everyone’s names. James, Lily, Marlene, Dorcas. He would remember this time, so he didn’t write them down. It would be rude to do so in front of them anyway, he reasoned.
Soon enough, snacks were being passed around. Sirius got up to hand Remus a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing, without asking him which one he preferred. Remus frowned at the slightly inconsiderate gesture, but decided to not say anything. He didn’t want to appear ungrateful, since clearly these people were already doing a lot for him, including lying to hospital staff to sneak in food just to be nice.
Apparently, he didn’t do a good job of hiding his discontent. “What, you don’t like that one?” Sirius asked, brow knitted.
“Oh, um, no it’s great, thanks for handing it to me,” Remus attempted to circumnavigate the issue. He stole another glance at the other cupcakes though. There were a few vanilla ones, and ones with what he guessed to be either peanut butter or coffee flavored icing.
Sirius scoffed and presented the vanilla cupcake he had just taken a bite out of in front of Remus’s face. “You hate vanilla cake, here, let me remind you.”
Remus almost laughed at the familiarity of the gesture. He hardly knew this man, and here he was, assuming that they would both be okay sharing germs through food. Mentally shrugging, he took a bite out of the white cupcake.
The five people watched as he chewed and then grimaced. “It’s just, bland,” he complained.
“See?” Sirius cried.
“You are a literal chocolic,” either Dorcas or Marlene said; he wasn’t sure who was who.
“A danger to dogs everywhere,” the other woman chimed in.
The group fell into comfortable conversation as they ate, and Remus mostly listened. It seemed like he had a pretty cool group of friends if today’s conversations were anything to judge by. When James passed him the paper plate with cheese and salami, he grabbed one of each.
“Wait, stop!” Lily suddenly cried out. “You’re a pescetarian!” Remus froze with the piece of salami midway to his mouth. Marlene and Dorcas broke into a loud laughter, and James turned into one of those silent laughers who stayed mostly still but got progressively more red in the face and began crying when they were truly amused.
Lily had said the words with such conviction, that, while Remus truly felt that he could have been eating a turkey leg and not maintained any personal qualms about it, he lowered the salami and quickly wrote I am a pescetarian on his notepad.
“Good catch Lils,” Sirius said, eyes on Remus. “He hasn’t eaten meat in so long that I doubt his gut bacteria would be able to break it down right now. He probably would’ve gotten sick.”
“Thank you for the report Mr. Bio major,” Lily said, frowning at the piece of salami in her own hand. “Now I don’t want to eat this.”
“Marine bio,” Sirius corrected, “and you’re welcome.”
Remus had a good time with his friends, and was touched that they all wanted to spend time with him even while he was stuck in the hospital. But after yawning a few times, Sirius ushered everyone out of the room, much to his nurse’s gratification. Remus took a few moments to jot down notes on his notepad before falling asleep again.
***
“You have different colored eyes,” Remus stated, pen in hand, determined to learn and remember Sirius’s answer. “Why?”
“Microphthalmia,” Sirius enunciated, “is a disease that results in one or both eyes being smaller than it should be at birth. I’m lucky, I lost my right eye but still have vision in my left. So the right one is a prosthetic. My real eye is blue, the prosthetic is brown.”
Remus nodded, confident he had misspelled the condition name but listened to Sirius’s personal experience with the disease attentively. “And you chose to get a different color for the prosthetic?”
Sirius smiled almost sheepishly. “I thought it would look cool. Also, it kind of highlights the fact that I’m not trying to blend in, you know? One of my eyes is fake, who cares, I’m not trying to fool anybody.”
Remus smiled. “It does look cool,” he affirmed. As Sirius reached a hand towards the brown eye, Remus suddenly paled. “Wait, no, not necessary-” but Sirius had already popped the eye out of the socket.
“It’s actually plastic, even though most people think they’re glass. And look, a half circle, not a sphere.” Sirius held the eye in front of Remus’s face, and Remus nodded silently.
“Very nice,” he said curtly.
***
When he was finally ready to leave the hospital, Sirius stood by as he swung his legs out from the bed covers. He gasped when he saw his feet. Or, rather, foot.
“You didn’t tell me I lost my left foot!” He accused, looking at Sirius.
Sirius laughed, gesturing to the prosthetic at the base of the bed that looked vaguely familiar. “I didn’t think I needed to. You were born without it.”
“Oh, that does sound familiar,” Remus acquiesced, but remained seated on the bed. “Weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Sirius said decisively. “You’re completely able to walk and do everything else with your prosthetic, just don’t worry about it,” Sirius reassured. Remus followed his advice, and found that he was right.
As they left the hospital, Sirius was given many items and instructions. Remus felt mildly offended that the doctors weren’t talking directly to him, the patient, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. For all he knew, they had already explained these things to him twice.
Eventually, Sirius had been given all the instructions necessary, and he guided Remus into the outside world. After a moment of walking on the sidewalk, Sirius stopped and switched places with him, so that Remus was to his left.
“You were in my blindspot,” he explained.
Remus furrowed his brow, trying to understand his meaning. When Sirius began to reach for his right eye, however, Remus suddenly remembered. “Wait no, don’t take it out, I remember, I remember.” Sirius laughed, and thankfully left the brown eye in place.
“Oh!” Sirius said suddenly. “Here’s this, they took it off of you when you first came in, I’ve kept it safe ever since.” Sirius held out a silver crucifix necklace.
Remus didn’t grab it. “That’s not mine.”
“Yeah it is,” Sirius argued, “and it’s very important to you, because your mom gave it to you right before you moved out to go to college.”
“Am I Catholic?” Remus said, feeling stupid.
Sirius grinned. “Two months ago you would have been very offended to hear yourself say that.”
Remus rolled his eyes. “I mean, fine, give me the necklace. But for all I care it could be a Star of David.”
Sirius laughed heartily. “I’m so glad your sense of humor is still intact.”
Remus slipped the necklace over his neck, and tucked it under his collar reflexively. Maybe he had worn it before, he realized. As they walked down the block, he suddenly realized he didn’t know where they were going. “Where do I live?” he asked.
“Where do we live,” Sirius corrected. “We’re roommates, and our apartment is a very charming little shoebox three blocks away. Expensive and small, but nice. Being there may jog your memory.”
“Oh god,” Remus said. “How expensive are my medical bills?”
Sirius shook his head fondly. “Looks like your humor and your thriftiness survived the accident. Don’t worry, everything is taken care of. Insurance paid for everything so far, and James’s parents already filed a lawsuit that will cover any future physical therapy and medications.”
Remus nodded. He was beginning to understand the fact that he didn’t really know who he was. He didn’t know his relationship to the friends who were there for him in the hospital, and he didn’t know much about himself. The notes he had been taking were helpful in reminding him of certain things, like what happened to his wrist, what he doesn’t eat, and how old he is. But did that really add up to a person? There was still so much he didn’t know.
When all of his friends were in the hospital room, who was he closest to? He would guess it was Sirius, based on context, but he didn’t really have anything to support that claim. What conversations had they had, what was he supposed to already know? Why was he friends with these people? What did he like about them, beyond their obvious support of him and the fact that they all lied to the hospital staff in order to bring him cupcakes. What did they like about him? What if he was an asshole?
“You’re overthinking something,” Sirius interrupted his thoughts. “Just don’t worry right now, we’ll get you inside and then you can go straight to bed.”
“Okay,” Remus said, following Sirius up a staircase. “Thanks,” he added as an afterthought. If he used to be an asshole, then he was going to start being very polite from here on out.
Getting ready for bed was easy. His body was able to flow through a routine without his mind needing to think about it, and Sirius apparently knew all of his steps well enough to assist him when he got stuck.
“All right, which pills am I supposed to take at night?” Remus asked.
Sirius pointed to the empty water glass on his nightstand. “You just took them. Here, let’s do a sticky note system for meds. The notepad can stay personal.” He guided Remus into writing a note, and then adjusted the covers back on top of him.
“Wait, I want to call my mom,” Remus said. “But I don’t know her number. Will you help me?” Sirius’s face was blank but slightly concerned. He looked to be mulling something over in his mind, but Remus didn’t know why. “Please?” He added out loud, and why aren’t you helping me? in his head.
“Remus,” Sirius said delicately. “We could call your mom, but it would be the fourth time we’ve called her. And I’m just worried that we would start to scare her.”
Remus felt his eyes begin to burn, and he looked away from Sirius. He tried to focus on breathing, and not on the possibility of crying in front of someone he didn’t know well enough to feel comfortable crying in front of, but was supposed to.
“Her English isn’t bad,” Sirius continued, “but usually when I talk to her you would translate, and I don’t think I’ve done a good job of explaining what happened, aside from the fact that you’re going to be okay.”
“Okay,” Remus said. “I think I’m just going to go to sleep. Thank you, for everything.”
“Hey, you don’t need to thank me. We’re just going to go one day at a time.” Sirius patted Remus’s shoulder softly. “Goodnight Remus.”
“Goodnight Sirius.”