Work Text:
Part one
Alone
--
Sirius was gone.
No.
Sirius was dead.
There was no point in trying to fool himself about it any longer.
As Remus traversed the halls of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, he felt devastatingly alone. The Order had been camped here for a while after the battle, but out of courtesy they left Remus alone for a few days. It wasn't time that they could necessarily spare, but it was clear that Remus was in no condition to attend meetings.
He had tried to throw himself into the movement full force, and had defended every rash suggestion he made with, "Sirius would have agreed!" but in reality everyone knew he was saying, "Sirius would have thought of this." Remus was trying to take on the other man's role, trying to keep him alive, and it just wasn't working. Remus wasn't working. So they let him alone for a few days to come to terms with the death, as if somehow that would help, or even be possible.
The moment that Sirius disappeared into that veil, Remus knew that he would never come to terms with this.
Not only was his best friend, his second half, his fucking soul-mate gone, so were James and Peter gone too. There was no other word for what Remus was but 'alone'. His friends were dead. Peter had died first, the moment he had decided to become a Death Eater; Remus chose to remember Peter, his Peter, as the slightly chubby, dusty haired boy that often sat with him in the library when James and Sirius couldn't be bothered to study. That Peter had died long before James ever did.
And James, oh, James. Knowing what he knew now, Remus wasn't sure how Sirius had ever survived Azkaban. Not only was his best friend dead, but he was blamed for the murder. There wasn't even a trial. Remus wouldn't have gone if there was one. He had blamed Sirius, too. He got caught up in the outrage and hurt and all doubts of Sirius' guilt had been pushed away. The moment Remus had found out what happened he sought out Peter, but alas the man was nowhere. And so Remus was alone then, too.
But it was different now. Then he at least could cling to the hope that Peter was alive, somewhere. That Peter was just in hiding too. That at least one of his friends still breathed. That wasn't true now.
Peter was dead. James was dead. Sirius was dead.
Everything inside of Remus screamed, "You should be dead, too!"
But then a very soft voice, very deep in the mix of pain and anger, very gently, very firmly said, "No, Remus."
It sounded like Sirius.
--
He walked up the steps now, hand trailing on the rail, thinking of the times Sirius had dragged him up here, how he had tried to grab onto the old polished wood of the rail so that neither of them tumbled down. Mouths smashed together, limbs became disjointed and confusing, as if the two men had been teenagers once more. And then the one time that they did fall, laughing and happy, sitting on the steps and unable to say a word for the lack of breath. They had tumbled together and Remus had tripped and brought the two of them down somewhat painfully, though the mood had been far from spoiled. It was almost impossible to spoil anything, once they had come back together.
But not entirely impossible. Like when Sirius walked up the steps in a haughty mood, not even glancing back down at Remus, whom trailed at the bottom looking regretful and tired. The Order had taken its toll on the both of them, from time to time, and some manner or another had upset Sirius then. Remus couldn't even remember what it was. It hardly seemed to matter. They had spent that night in one of the empty rooms, talking in quiet voices about why something was a good idea, or maybe a bad one, or what they should do next and how stupid everyone else was being. Sirius' words, not his.
Remus hadn't had the heart to say that he didn't agree with Sirius that night; enough people had voiced that opinion already. So he had stayed up and listened to Sirius re-hash out his plans, nodded when it was appropriate, and drop a hand to Sirius' shoulder and kiss his cheek when it was far past time to go to bed. Remus had slept alone that night. It had taken weeks to get Sirius to sleep at all after Azkaban, and he never said what thoughts chased through his mind. He wouldn't talk to anyone about being locked away, not even when Remus got him drunk on fire whiskey as a last-ditch attempt at getting Sirius to open up. Instead they'd shared a sloppy kiss and a soft promise that Sirius would never go back there. And that was enough; things got better. Sirius got better.
And now as Remus turned the corner he remembered Sirius gazing at him from down the hall with that sultry little smirk that said, quite clearly, "I'm up to something." He remembered seeing that smirk at Hogwarts, too, and how it had always lead to some form of trouble or another. All their boyish pranks. Their laughter and their troublemaking. The way that Sirius looked when a plan was lurking in the back of his mind, and the way that he lit up when it came forefront. He was always a master planner, knew just how to push the right buttons on someone to make them howl or scream or look so ridiculously angry that everyone laughed. It was cruel, now it was cruel, but at the time all those pranks had just been funny, had just been jokes. Most of them, at least.
As everything flooded back in these snapshots, Remus' heart grew heavy, his mind grew heavy, his body grew heavy. He felt his bones break with each creak of the floorboards, and once he was finally to Sirius' old room, he sat upon the bed and just stared. This was the first time he had had alone in quite some time. There hadn't been a chance to mourn Sirius, not properly, not until now. And maybe that had been a good thing. Maybe he shouldn't have been left alone to grieve. Maybe he shouldn't have survived that day at all. Maybe a part of him didn't.
Remus lay back upon Sirius' bed, the clean sheets still smelling of musk and Sirius and teen angst, if such a thing as teen angst could even have a smell. Remus pretended that it did. Remus pretended that he could still smell and hear and see and touch the teenage rebel that was Sirius Black.
So the man closed his eyes, and let himself pretend, and remember, and break.
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