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Thirty minutes after Remus leaves through the front door of their flat, Sirius is still standing in the middle of their living room as though he’s only just kissed his husband goodbye. He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at a knot that catches on his finger near the bottom, but hardly seeming to feel it. Still staring at the door, his eyes are glassy, unfocused, as though he doesn’t remember where he is, or that watching the door won’t make Remus come back any faster.
The two of them have been separated before, of course. There were those months after graduation when they somehow lived separately, in different flats across the city. Sirius still can’t quite figure out what got him through those sleepless nights and endless days, but it had driven him to crash into this flat in the middle of the night and confess a deep and abiding love it had taken him too long to realize he had. He wouldn’t trade that night for anything. And then there were the trips for the Order, the missions that came from an unexpected owl, a face appearing in their fireplace with a cryptic message before disappearing again, whisking one of them off to some far corner of England in defense of the greater wizarding world. They were fighting for a greater cause, Sirius knew that, but it didn’t make leaving any easier, let alone being left behind.
Finally pulling himself out of his reverie, Sirius retreats to the kitchen where he puts the kettle on, dropping a tea bag into an empty mug as he waits for the water to boil. This time isn’t any different than the others, he reminds himself as he leans against the counter, tucking his chin against his chest. A day, tops, Remus said as he kissed Sirius on the lips and then on the forehead. He’d be home before Sirius fell asleep tomorrow. The kettle whistles, and Sirius jumps, inadvertently knocking his prepared mug off the counter with his elbow. It shatters against the tiled floor, and Sirius decides he doesn’t really want the tea anyway. After picking up the shards of ceramic, he retreats to their bedroom and slips beneath the sheets. Acutely aware of the empty space beside him, the sheets that are much too cool to the touch of his fingertips, Sirius lets out a breath before curling up as Padfoot against Remus’s pillow, tucking his snout beneath his paws.
Twenty four hours after Remus leaves their flat through the front door, Sirius is sitting on the couch in the living room, trying to read one of the books Remus left open on the coffee table, but he’s been staring at the same sentence at the top of the page for the last forty-five minutes. There’s a little itch in his head, right behind his eyes, that won’t let him focus on anything other than the occasional sounds he hears from the hallway outside of other tenants coming and going. It doesn’t occur to him that he wouldn’t actually hear Remus’s footsteps if he does as they usually do and apparates to just outside their door. Sirius listens anyway. Not that Remus is late. Sirius hasn’t even had dinner yet, but he doesn’t think he would actually be able to keep anything down. His stomach flips every time he pictures Remus coming home, as though there’s something wrong about the image, and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing something, that there’s something different about this mission. That he should be worried.
The flat descends into darkness around him, and Sirius still stares at the same sentence until he can’t even make out the individual letters, and the black text merely bleeds into the blackness of the room. Loath to stray too far from the door, Sirius tosses the book into the armchair and transforms into Padfoot. Stomping in a couple of circles to work the lumps out of the couch cushion, he plops down, resting his chin on the armrest so he can still see the front door when he opens his eyes.
Forty eight hours after Remus leaves their flat through the front door, Sirius is pacing the length of their living room, both hands tangled in the hair on top of his head, his eyes flicking wildly over the entire contents of the room. He can’t find anything helpful, anything that might get him any closer to figuring out where Moony is. All he sees are books, there are so many books, they have too many damn books. Sirius swipes a stack off the coffee table on his way past, and the hardcovers go skittering across the floor. The binding of one rips as it slams into the wall, and Sirius gives it another kick for good measure.
He has spent the entire day getting in touch with every member of the Order whose name he can remember. Most of them, of course, don’t have any kind of clue what he’s talking about, and Sirius curses Moody’s distrusting nature. It may have kept them safe on countless missions, but none of that matters when it’s Moony who could be in danger. His owl to Dumbledore had been answered with a tiny piece of parchment, a single sentence in an elegant hand the only response: It’s out of your hands. Out of his hands? Sirius clenches his fists at his sides as he continues to pace, remembering the words, as though grasping at the very air in the room. Nothing would be out of his hands, if he had anything to say about it.
James was only moderately more helpful when they spoke through their two-way mirror that morning. He’d been originally called up, but plans had changed last minute, and the Order had sent Moony in his place.
“It was surveillance, Pads,” he said, his eyes glinting behind his glasses as Sirius tilted the mirror out of the glare of the sun. “They’re tracking some Death Eaters up in Norfolk. You know how these things go.”
But James held none of his previous assured composure when he came stumbling out of the flat’s fireplace and directly into Sirius’s path. They gripped at each other’s shoulders, just to keep James on his feet. When he looked up into Sirius’s face, a fiery worry danced in his brown eyes. “Padfoot,” he gasps, “they found Moony.” Suddenly Sirius feels like James is holding him up.
“What’s happened?” Sirius snaps, but James is already stepping into the fireplace.
“Just come!” he shouts out before disappearing.
Sirius swears under his breath but has just enough of his wits about him to snag his wand from the crease between the cushions on the couch before taking off after James, whirling through space in a tornado of green flame.
When he steps out into the Potters’ living room, Sirius doesn’t quite understand the scene before him. There are too many people, too many important people, and while some of them seem to be talking amongst themselves -- quietly, fervently, eyebrows lowered and creased -- they all still congregate around a figure lying on his back on the couch. Sirius catches a glimpse of Lily’s blazing hair bent over the man’s chest, and he can just see the soft brown curls over the arm of the couch, disheveled, blown out of place, almost… wet. Remus. And then he sees the blood.
Before he can even register his own movements, he’s pushing past the people standing in the space between him and the only place he ever really needs to be -- beside Remus. A moment later he’s on his knees beside Lily, who has her hands pressed against Remus’s stomach, just below his ribs. The cloth beneath her fingers is soaked through, and her fingernails are stained red.
“What’s happened?” Sirius asks for the second time that night, and when Lily looks up to meet his gaze, he feels like her eyes are the only thing keeping him anchored in this room. He found Remus’s hand, hanging limply off the edge of the cushions, the moment he crashed to the ground, and now as he holds it, he recognizes that sticky warmth between their palms. More blood. He doesn’t want to look. He knows he’ll have to, but for now he holds onto Lily’s eyes for dear life.
She shakes her head, swallowing before she dares open her mouth to speak. “I don’t know,” she says, and Sirius can just hear the sob that she holds back on the last word. “Arthur brought him in, mentioned some sort of curse. I’ve stopped most of the bleeding, but Sirius, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Sirius finally tears his eyes away to look down at his husband lying before him, and he realizes, with a sickening jolt through his chest, that he’s never seen anything like it, either. Remus’s clothes could have been thrown through a woodchipper, they're so ripped and battered, and beneath every tear in the cloth, an ugly, gaping wound glares up at them. They cover his entire body, all the way from his ankles up to his cheeks. Some of them have stopped bleeding and merely yawn at Sirius like angry red mouths, as though their work here is done, but others still ooze, soaking into what remains of Remus’s shirt; his cloak has already been stripped off him.
“The only thing I know is it must have been silver, you can see the discoloring around the edges--” But Lily has lost her audience. Sirius is on his feet before she even gets close to finishing her sentence, turning on the person standing closest to him, who happens to be Arthur Weasley.
“What the bloody hell happened out there?” he shouts in Arthur’s face, gripping the front of his shirt in two fists. “You lot are supposed to protect each other, and you bring him back looking like this? I’m surprised you didn’t just leave him to bleed out in the street, goddammit, you don’t even have a scratch on you! What made you go back for him, eh? Was it the guilt?”
Sirius stumbles backward as a rough hand rips him away from a stunned Arthur, whose mouth is hanging open as if that’s as far as he got in trying to get a word in. He whirls around to meet the owner of the hand and comes face to face with Moody, who glares down his crooked nose at Sirius. “And you --” he starts.
“You listen, boy,” Moody cuts in. Still gripping Sirius’s shoulder, he digs his thumb into the soft space just beneath his collarbone, shocking Sirius back to attention. “You know damn well this isn’t Arthur’s fault, they were ambushed and Remus ended up in the line of fire. Weasley followed protocol.”
Sirius reels again, ripping his shoulder out of Moody’s grip, taking a couple of steps back to catch himself from falling over with the force it took. “Fuck your stupid protocol, Moody,” he growls, pointing an accusing finger at his chest. “Your protocol has my husband lying unconscious on his best friend’s couch, bleeding to death! He was supposed to come home last night, and your protocol kept him out there tailing people who wanted to kill him! Who tried to kill him! And everything’s just fine because we all followed protocol?”
“Lupin did what he had to do,” Moody says, matching Sirius’s low growl with his own. “He would’ve wanted--”
Sirius steps back into his space now and slams a flat palm against his chest. With the number of layers Moody’s wearing, some far off corner of Sirius’s brain wonders if he even feels it, but the notion is quickly forgotten. “Don’t you dare,” Sirius snarls, putting more pressure against the hand on Moody’s chest, “don’t you dare talk to me about anything Remus would have wanted, you hear me? Who the fuck are you to tell me what Remus wants?” He feels something gurgling in his chest, inching up his throat, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to stop it if he tried. Tossing his hair back over his shoulders, he looks up to meet Moody’s eyes, every muscle in his body tensed like he’s expecting the auror to tackle him.
“You know what he wants?” he barrels on. “Remus wants to work at a bookstore, and he wants me to shut up while he reads the paper in the morning. He wants lemon in his tea--” A soft voice from across the room cuts him off, and Sirius’s heart, which felt so tight it might explode, gasps for a relieved breath of air.
“This is war, Sirius.” All the weight of the world crashes down once again on Sirius’s chest.
Turning, once again, to a new sparring partner, Sirius rips his wand from the waistband of his jeans and points it across the room, aiming the tip as best he can at Dumbledore’s nose. The room has gone dangerously quiet, the only sound that of Lily rustling bandages and other supplies from her medical kit.
“This is war, is it?” Sirius says, his voice quiet and low as he takes a couple of slow steps across the carpet. “Sending twenty year old men out to do your bidding,” he gestures vaguely to the outside with a flick of his wand before pointing it once again at Dumbledore, who stands against the back wall with a serene, almost curious expression. “Sending them to their deaths and ripping them away from their friends and family,” Sirius continues. “Filling their heads with notions of a greater good, a righteous cause, letting them barrel through the world with reckless abandon. That’s war.”
“That’s a part of war, yes,” Dumbledore says, and Sirius wants to scream at the familiar twinkle that he sees return to the old headmaster’s eyes.
“All’s fair in love and war, and all that?” Sirius says. He hasn’t dropped his wand. Every other person in the room seems to be holding their breath.
“Some might say that. I might say one must simply do what has to be done.”
“Then why do you get to decide?!” Sirius bellows, and sparks fly from the tip of his wand. Although they dissipate before they land and ignite anything, he can see Arthur jump out of the corner of his eye, and he can hear James’s whispered swear from somewhere behind him. “Who put you in charge, old man? Who put everyone’s lives in your hands, and why do you feel like you can just move us around like pieces on a chess board? This isn’t a game, Dumbledore, it’s Remus’s life! It’s my life!”
“It’s all our lives,” Dumbledore says, and any hint of the customary pleasant twinkle in his eye has vanished. Instead, they pierce Sirius like two shards of ice blue crystal from behind his glasses. “This isn’t a game, Mr. Black, but we are all playing for our lives.” He stares at the young man for another moment before looking up past his shoulder. “Lily, please send word if you need any extra assistance or supplies, I will return in the morning to check on his status, or sooner if you need me.”
Sirius assumes Lily must have nodded her assent, because Dumbledore turns and leaves Sirius staring at a blank wall, his wand still raised in front of him as though he’s been frozen in the middle of a duel. He’s not even sure if he’s breathing until he feels a hand on his shoulder that tugs him back down to earth. Not a moment too soon, he reaches out to steady himself with a hand against the wall.
“C’mon, mate,” James says, and although he tries to sound sure of himself, Sirius doesn’t miss the underlying quaver. “Moony needs you.” Prongs guides his friend back toward the couch, and Sirius kneels once more beside Lily, who is no longer staunching wounds but threading needles with sutures.
He looks over his husband another time, taking an extra moment to watch his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. Thank God they had Lily, he thought to himself, reaching out and brushing Remus’s hair back from his forehead. Thank God they had Lily. Turning, then, to the superhero of the evening, he gently touches her shoulder to get her attention. “What can I do?” he asks.
Lily diligently shows Sirius how to disinfect the wounds, clean the surrounding skin, and treat for silver poisoning. Once they’ve fallen into their work, they move quickly, Sirius ahead of Lily as she follows his pattern, stitching up the sterile wounds. Gradually, the other aurors trickle out of the house, Arthur returning once or twice to bring something back from Molly at the Burrow. By the time they’ve finished and Remus resembles some poor Halloween costume of Frankenstein’s monster, James has fallen asleep splayed across an armchair and the early dawn light is beginning to break its way through the curtains.
Lily sits back on her heels and huffs out a breath, wiping her forehead with the back of one of her hands. She still clenches a stained rag in the other. “He’s going to be okay,” she whispers, and while Sirius can’t tell if she’s speaking to him or herself, it doesn’t matter. They both need to hear the words. It’s another moment before she turns to look at him, and even though every muscle in her body, even those in her face, must be screaming for sleep, she manages the smallest of smiles. “Let’s get you up to bed, shall we?” she says kindly.
Sirius shakes his head, unable to offer anything even close to a smile in response. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, tossing the supplies he’s still holding onto the coffee table and sitting down on the carpet beside Remus’s head. Every breath he hears lets his heart fulfill another beat.
“You have to sleep, Sirius,” she says. “It’s been a long night, I’m sure we all look like we’ve been to war.”
“We have been,” Sirius answers with a belligerent bitterness he knows Lily doesn’t deserve, and one he immediately regrets when he sees how quickly Lily drops her eyes from his. “Don’t worry,” he says, his voice softer now, leaning forward to gently touch her shoulder. “I’ll be fine right here.”
To underscore his point, he transforms into Padfoot. On his way past Lily to the foot of the couch, he sticks his snout directly in her face, licking her profusely over both cheeks. She groans and tries to push him away, but he only stops when he hears her let out the smallest of giggles. Jumping up onto the end of the couch, he’s careful not to jostle Remus’s legs and curls up as best he can in the miniscule space left by his feet. He still makes sure that some part of him is touching Remus at all times. When Remus wakes up, Padfoot wants him to know he’s right here.
Although Padfoot thinks he could never fall asleep after a night like last night, he drifts off into blissful unconsciousness nearly as soon as he closes his eyes.
He wakes when the sun has once again deserted them, and his ears prick at the sound of quiet groaning. Lifting his head, he watches as one of Remus’s hands twitch on the couch at his side and he rolls his head against the throw pillow. Without another moment’s hesitation, Padfoot jumps down and Sirius stands beside the couch again, looking over his rousing husband. He places a hand on the back of the couch to support himself as he leans forward, his hair falling like curtains on either side of his face.
Remus’s eyelids begin to twitch, and then they slowly blink open, and Sirius whispers, “Moony?”
Remus hums in response, and Sirius drops to his knees beside the couch once more. He’s beginning to think he’ll have bruises across his kneecaps in the morning, but it also occurs to him that he doesn’t think he’s felt an ounce of real pain since he stepped through the fireplace late the night before, nothing but the ache and sting of fear and anger in his chest. But now, here’s his Moony, looking back at him, and he starts to register the throbbing in his knees.
“You scared me half to death, you bastard,” Sirius whispers, finding one of Remus’s hands with both of his own and lifting the whole tangle of fingers and knuckles to his lips. “You bastard, I really thought I was going to lose you.”
Remus sighs, turning his head on the pillow to look at Sirius, wincing for only a moment as he accidentally tweaks one of his wounds. “I’m fine, Pads,” he murmurs, lifting his free hand to pat the grouping of their other three, a motion that is somehow both comforting and dismissive at the same time. “Really, I’m okay. What’s another couple dozen scars, eh?” When he catches the flash of alarm in Sirius’s eyes, he reaches out and brushes the long, thick hair back from his face. “These are nothing new.”
Sirius’s eyebrows drop into a deep furrow then, and he grips Remus’s hand even tighter. “Scars might not be, but these certainly are,” he says. “I’ve -- We’ve -- never seen anything like it, Moony. These don’t look… These don’t look like what you used to do to yourself. What the hell happened out there?”
Remus tries to shift on the couch and winces again, and Sirius’s eyes immediately flick over his body, trying to discern where it might hurt the most. “Just wasn’t quick enough,” Remus breathes, finally settling into another comfortable position. “They were ready for us, we weren’t ready for them. Seems like those we’d been tailing were also tailing us.” Glancing down at himself, he looks over all of the wounds, still open to the air since no one wanted to jostle him enough to dress him in a new pair of clothes. “Nasty bit of magic, isn’t it?”
“What was the spell?” Sirius asks, though he’s not sure if he actually wants to hear the answer.
“I don’t know, I didn’t hear it,” Remus says, finally looking up at Sirius again. “But it’s a hell of a spell to be up against. I’ll have to talk to Dumbledore--”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Sirius practically spits, and he lets go of Remus’s hand before he crushes it unintentionally. Remus raises his eyebrows slightly, a silent question, and Sirius shakes his head, reaching over and straightening the collar of Remus’s shredded shirt, as though that will do anything to sort out his appearance. “Just be glad, for at least one reason, that you were out cold last night.”
“Do I need to extend formal apologies?” Remus says, and Sirius can’t believe it but there’s just the smallest shadow of a smile threatening the edges of Remus’s mouth. “You didn’t hex anybody, I hope? Kill anyone?”
“I would’ve,” Sirius admits, dropping his gaze to Remus’s ravaged chest. “I would’ve, but I couldn’t think straight enough to come up with any spell. You were just lying here, and that was my only thought. Playing itself over and over, Moony’s hurt.”
With just a single index finger under Sirius’s chin, Remus gently turns his face upwards so they can look at each other. “What are you going to do at my funeral?” he asks, and there it is again, that ghost of a smile. “Curse all the guests?”
“I don’t want to talk about your funeral,” Sirius says quickly, his face drooping into a frown.
“Fine, fine, I’m still kicking, no reason to worry about it,” Remus says, his thumb now brushing over Sirius’s jutting, defiant chin. “I’ll just get to writing those apology letters tomorrow.”
It suddenly occurs to Sirius that he’s been selfish, keeping Remus awake like this, talking with him. He can’t imagine how exhausted his husband must be. As soon as the thought hits him, he pushes to his feet, forcing Remus’s arm to drop against the couch.
“I’ll go get Lily,” he says. “You should get some more rest, I’ll see if she can make something to help you sleep. Or maybe she’ll want to check on the stitches. Do you need something to eat? Or drink? I’ll get some water on my way back.” He turns to go, but finds himself anchored to the spot, one of Remus’s fingers hooked in his belt loop.
“Padfoot, I’m fine,” he whispers. “But I don’t think you are.”
Sirius feels every muscle in his body freeze, and it’s as if the skin is stretching tight across every inch of him and struggling to hold it all together. The tension, the fear, the adrenaline from last night still hasn’t drained out of his body, and he looks down at Remus with just the smallest shake of his head.
“Come here,” Remus says then, and when Sirius merely offers him a confused glance, he lifts his head off the throw pillow with a concerted effort. “Sit down.”
Quickly catching on to the suggested arrangement, Sirius slowly and gently maneuvers himself to take the place of the throw pillow, sitting in the corner of the couch and letting Remus’s head come to rest in his lap. His fingers immediately find their way into Remus’s hair, and he begins combing rhythmically and methodically through the tousled waves.
“I’m here, Pads,” Remus whispers, closing his eyes again. “I’m fine.”
Sirius bends forward and presses his lips to Remus’s forehead, just to show himself it must be true.