Work Text:
Part Two - 2
Acceptance
--
"It wasn't a joke."
"What are you talking about, Moony?"
"What happened with Snape. I know it wasn't a joke, Sirius."
Sirius just stared out of the dingy, broken window of the shack, his arms crossed, shoulder against the sill. There was no smirk about his mouth, there was no fire in his eyes, and Remus hadn't any idea what was possibly going through Sirius' head. It would have made a beautiful picture: Sirius quiet this way. Nearly pensive, nearly sad, nearly a lot of things but not quite any of them at all as far as Remus could tell.
But Remus didn't have his camera, and he felt ill, and tired, and as if he had been beaten by the moon. Quite honestly, he had been. It had been a very long month and a difficult night, for Remus especially. He'd requested to be alone over the full moon, but Sirius had shown up in the morning; before the sun had quite risen, but as the moon waned enough to find Remus as a naked and injured boy on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. Sirius hadn't even said a word the entire time, picking Remus up, helping him up the steps to the broken bed where he now sat. Remus had pulled on his clothes, but the blood soaked through the white shirt here and there. It wasn't the worst condition he'd ever been in, but it was the worst in a while.
Sirius had, clearly, had a rough night himself. He didn't look as if he had slept at all. His hair was more disheveled than usual, his clothes rumpled as if he'd gotten into it with the Whomping Willow. Hell, he probably had, what without Peter there to freeze the whiplash-inducing tree. Regardless of what shape Sirius was in, or what he did or did not get into, there were things to be said that couldn't be brushed off and swept up in silence anymore.
"Did you hear me?" Remus didn't raise his voice, but he couldn't stand the whole We're Not Talking Because We Are In A Fight - thing any longer. They'd had silence for a month and it was becoming unbearable. Around James and Peter they acted much the same, as if all was over and forgiven and everything was just fine. But it wasn't. It wasn't fine and nothing was forgiven, and they both knew it because the silence between them wouldn't stop shouting about it.
"I did," Sirius finally answered, finally looked at Remus, finally let sadness betray his stoic face, "And it wasn't a joke."
They stared at each other, and the silence was back. Remus had guessed that it wouldn't have been an accident. He had guessed that there was more than just a mischievous temperament brewing up for a bit of fun. He had guessed and he had ventured the thought aloud and now there was confirmation.
It wasn't a joke.
It wasn't a prank.
It wasn't an accident.
It was calculated and cruel and dark and wrong and something in Remus knew that more things lurked in the back of Sirius' head that were just like this. Guessing at what else Sirius was capable of was a frightening, and Remus did his best to quell his racing mind. But, what else could Sirius do? What other dark things lurked behind boyish mannerisms and charming affectations? Could Sirius honestly kill someone? Could he honestly get so angry, or afraid, or whatever the fuck it was that bade him to do this, that he committed to the act himself?
Remus didn't know.
That didn't stop him from standing, from somewhat painfully making his way from the bed to the window, from reaching up and touching Sirius' cheek with the back of his curled fingers. He could see now, up close, the start of a bruise that surely meant the tree had gotten him. And yet Sirius had still shown up.
Remus looked over Sirius with a furrowed brow and hurt eyes and lips that curled, not in concern but in a sad acknowledgement of what it meant for Sirius to not have been joking. Remus was not sad for himself at all now; he was sad that Sirius had gone through things horrible enough to darken a very deep and hidden part of him to the point that he was willing to get a boy murdered because... Again, Remus didn't know.
There could have been a million reasons. Snape was annoying. Snape was full of himself. Snape was a Slytherin. Snape was easy to pick on. Snape was just severely unlucky. Snape hated Sirius as much as Sirius hated him. Millions of other reasons buzzed through Remus' mind, but in the end it boiled down to 'because Severus was going to find out what you are'. And Remus' eyes lit, and he felt a pressure on his chest so alien and uncomfortable that his hand fell from Sirius' unwelcoming cheek.
"Remus," Sirius uncrossed his arms, stood straight at the bloodied, beaten boy in front of him, "I never meant it to hurt you." There was anger now, self-hatred and doubt, in Sirius' face. Remus realized then that Sirius would never forgive himself for this, either. That all the silence between them wasn't because he was angry at Sirius, but because Sirius was angry at himself. Angry at himself for letting Snape get close enough to find out what they all kept secret, angry at himself for not thinking things through, angry at himself for being willing to do something so horrid as having a boy killed by the big bad wolf. The big bad wolf that Sirius loved, no less.
"But you did. I trusted you, Sirius, and you..." God, he sounded like such a girl. He felt like a girl. Like some delicate flower that got stepped on and now the petals were all mushed and wrinkled and nobody would ever put him in a pretty vase on their mantle.
But if Remus was a flower, then Sirius had become the weed strangling his roots, twining together and choking the life out of him, all while holding up his stem so that his crushed petals might still reach the sun.
Remus was never very good at analogies.
"I don't know what else you want me to say, Remus," Sirius looked heartbroken, and Remus felt heavy, as if it were his own broken heart.
And he realized in that moment that it was. His heart had always been Sirius' heart. In the dark nights in abandoned towers, under the quidditch stadium, in the quiet of the library, and the noise of a forest alive as they ran together, hound and wolf. They shared some bond that Remus couldn't identify, couldn't understand, and was very sick over. Later in years, when he'd outgrown teenage hormones and confusion, Remus would know the feeling was that of being in love. But for now he just felt ill and unsettled by whatever it was between them that kept them the both of them hurting this way, long past what was reasonable for teenage boys.
Regardless, Remus' heart had always been Sirius', one and the same.
"We're both broken," Remus murmured, shaking his head with a smile that wasn't at all joyful, "We're both broken and mushed and weedy and no one will ever want us on their mantle."
"What?" Sirius nearly laughed at Remus' sudden, very confusing, remark, "What are you talking about? Mushed and weedy?" But before Remus could think up a suitable explanation of what he was talking about (there was a long awkward moment of Remus standing with his mouth open, fidgeting with his hands, unable to voice much of anything), Sirius just took up Remus' hands and shook his head, "It doesn't matter, Remus. I want you on my mantle."
A pause. A beat.
A flinch of pain as his roots grew more strangled and his petals stood just a little higher towards the sun.
"I want you on mine, too."
They came together and their mouths pressed hard to each other and hands held tight and eyes didn't dare close; for in that moment looking away would have meant something horrible and wrong and been another betrayal in and of itself. This hardly the first kiss they had shared, though it was the first kiss that held so much hurt it boiled over to anger. There in the breaking dawn they tore at each other and clawed at each other and bit at each other and ached and wept for the first and last time with each other.
There in the breaking dawn, there in the Shrieking Shack where it had all started, there where they had put their broken hearts together to form a whole one that beat for the both of them and hurt for the both of them and loved more than two separate hearts ever could.
There they found Acceptance for the first time.
--
And where would Remus find acceptance now? His friends were dead. The people he loved and cared for most were all dead. What a horrifying realization of it all. Remus had been outcast a lot of his life for being a werewolf, and if it weren't for The Marauders, he had no idea what would have become of him.
Hell, he almost hadn't even been a Marauder. Now those were memories, those first ones, that Remus could replay unto the end of his days.