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The sky was dark, and he wasn’t quite sure where he was. The long grass was blowing eerily in the wind. The blades making their own music as they brushed against each other in the night. Remus limped through it all in a haze trying to remember where he was going or how he ended up here. The owl. Yes, Remus was supposed to be following the owl but he lost it miles back. Hopefully, Sirius had found it by now and was making his way towards him. Or at least, that’s was who Remus had sent the owl too, right?
His last few weeks had been spent holed up in a dungeon somewhere living off scraps of food and just enough water to keep him from dying. The death eaters had tortured and interrogated him in hopes for information. The small pudgy one had taken pity on him for some reason and helped him escape when it was becoming very clear to Remus that dying in that cell was only a matter of time. There had been something familiar about that death eater, Remus wondered as his mind wandered away from him.
He stopped. Where was he? A field. The grass swishing lightly together sounded so soothing. Maybe he should just lie down. Where was his bed? If he could just find it he could take a nice nap. Maybe his mother would make him breakfast when he woke up.
“REMUS!”
Remus turned slowly towards the sound of the voice. Who else was here? He was on another planet, who else had a spaceship to find him? The moon looks so pretty from out here.
“REMUS!”
Closer now. Remus squints off into the distance and manages to make out a shape running towards him. “Sirius?” The grass turns into a desert and he is trapped in a mirage.
The figure barrels into him wrapping his arms tightly around the middle and Remus flinches as it puts too much pressure on his broken wrist and fingers. How does he know his wrist is broken? When did that happen? A flicker of a memory. The sound of a crunch.
Sirius pulls back. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Show me.”
Remus’ vision blurs before refocusing. That face looks so familiar. “Sirius?” He reaches out to cup his face in his hands. He’s done this a million times before but Sirius can feel by the off kilter grasp of Remus’ right hand that there is something severely wrong with it.
“Remus, baby, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
Remus doesn’t hear him. The night is screaming too loudly. He runs his hand along Sirius’ face. It doesn’t slide smoothly. There’s something wrong with it but he doesn’t know what.
“Remus?”
“Are you really here? Is this real?”
Sirius reaches up to his face and place’s his hands over Remus’ squeezing lightly. “It’s real. I’m right here.”
Remus smiles as his eyes drift skyward. “The stars are really beautiful tonight,” he says and then he collapses.
* * *
“Remus?”
A voice calling to him through the dark.
“Remus, sweetheart, I need you to wake up.”
Remus forces his eyes open and everything swims. He closes them again.
“No, Moons. I’m sorry but I can’t let you go back to sleep. You need to eat.”
Eat. He drags himself to sitting, fighting against fatigue.
“Good. Good. Lily spelled you earlier to help get some fluids into your systems. Something she came up with based off muggle intravenous injections or something like that. It should help, but I imagine you haven’t eaten much.”
Remus eye’s close and he leans against the headboard as something drifts back to him. “Scraps.” His voice comes out scratchy and he coughs. “They made me lick the scraps off their plates like a dog.”
Silence. Remus peels his eyes back open to see Sirius looking at the floor, struggling to gain control of his own emotions. This place seems familiar to Remus.
“Sirius,” Remus says, snapping him out of his trance.
“Yes, Moony?”
“You’re Sirius.”
He looks concerned for a moment before he seems to get himself under control again. “Here, this is some chicken stock. You can drink it through the straw if you’d like. Thought it might be easier.”
Remus lifts his hand to take it only to see his wrist is broken. A crack. A field of music. Stars that seemed so bright. Someone is putting a straw into his mouth and warm liquid is sliding down his throat. It feels good. He feels tired.
“Sirius?” Remus asks again, fighting against sleep.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing here? They’ll hurt you if they find you here.”
A beat. Remus thinks he imagined him. Then, “Go to sleep, darling. You need to get your strength up.”
Remus nods somberly. “Right, there’ll be another round tomorrow.” And then falls asleep.
* * *
It’s a few days later and Remus comes to with some spooning stew into his mouth.
“Sirius?”
He gets a smile for that.
“How long have I been up?”
Sirius glances at the clock. “About an hour.”
Remus glances around the room. His bedroom. No – their bedroom, in the apartment they share. Sirius holds out another spoonful to Remus and he goes to take it from him.
“Careful,” Sirius says, “you broke your hand.”
Remus lifts the trembling spoon to his lips, every muscle in his hand rioting until Sirius takes it from him again. Everything hurts. Remus glances down at his arms and see the word half-blood carved onto one and the word werewolf on the other. He knows they mean werewolf as a traitor to his kind, as someone who doesn’t relish in the violence it allows.
“Do you think they’ll scar?”
Sirius looks up to see what Remus is staring at as he fills the spoon with stew again. He doesn’t answer.
“I’m worried they cursed them or something. The other scars I can live with but those ones...” He closes his eyes.
“Open,” Sirius says and he obliges then closes his mouth again around the warm food. “All your bones were out of alignment when we found you. Felt like we had to reset your skeleton from the ground up. It took a while but I’m sure those wounds will heal too.” He doesn’t tell Remus he’s worried the same thing, that there has to be a reason every healing charm they’ve tried has bounced off.
“Cruciatus curse,” Remus says, suddenly regretting his newfound consciousness. It had felt like every bone in his body was trying to break and remake itself. Remus was used to the painful sensation but usually it only lasted a split second before the wolf took over. This, this felt like being trapped mid-transformation forever.
Sirius feels a tightening in his chest and gets up before he can cry in front of Remus. It was one thing to be trapped in blinding terror for the last few weeks about where Remus could be and what was happening to him. It was another to have him back in his arms but confirming his worst suspicions.
“I’m going to get some more stew,” Sirius says, turning to leave, but before he can do so Remus’ arm flies out to grab him. Sirius turns to face him and sees the fear written so plainly across Remus’ face. Loneliness in the dark dungeon was suffocating. He knew they did it intentionally, gave him time to worry and dream up the worst scenarios of what they could do next. The pain he could handle. It was the waiting that almost killed him.
“Please,” Remus says. “Please, don’t go.”
“Okay,” Sirius says, setting the empty stew bowl on the nightstand as he moves to sit on the bed next to Remus.
Remus shimmies over and lies down, curling on his side. Sirius follows suit wrapping his arms around Remus and there, finally back in Sirius’ grasp, Remus begins to cry. As he does so, something else comes back to him. A memory. Trapped in that dungeon, lying bloody on the cold floor. A mocking voice above him, “The stars are really beautiful tonight.”