Chapter Text
Sirius had been running for a long time.
He leaned around the edge of the building he had stopped to hide behind, gripping his sword tightly and trying not to breathe too heavily. A cold wind blew off the lakefront, making him shiver. Gods, he should’ve taken his bitch of a mother’s designer fur coat when he had the chance— he was freezing in his stupid Macy’s puffer jacket.
Across several lanes of traffic, a monster lumbered up and down the Lake Michigan shore, sniffing the air and growling every time the wind changed directions. The thing was giant, with patchy hair and one bloodshot eye right smack in the middle of his forehead. A Cyclops. The monster had been chasing him around downtown for the past few days, getting more and more vicious with every escape trick Sirius pulled.
But he wouldn’t be able to run forever. He was already exhausted, and the temperature had dropped even further last night. He wouldn’t be surprised if it started snowing— or if his toes started breaking off like icicles. Sirius gritted his teeth. No, he didn't leave that hell-hole just to raid department store dumpsters and huddle around trash-fires with crackheads, he was going to live his life— a good, proper life— without that she-devil over his shoulder, or cops chasing after him.
He just needed to survive one more night. Just one more night.
As if sensing his will to live, the monster turned suddenly, and began to run across Lake Shore Drive. He’d caught his scent.
Sirius muttered “Shit, shit, shit” under his breath and sprinted the other direction, knocking aside potted plants and startled dog walkers as he went. He cut straight through the condominiums, and veered left at the botanical gardens, zigzagging through buildings until he had to catch his breath in the back of a Chinese place. Sirius wheezed violently, pressing his hand to the stitch in his side. Dammit. His exhaustion was really catching up to him, normally he’d be able to run three times that.
In the distance, the Cyclops began screaming at him in his mother’s voice. “Sirius!” Walburga Black screeched. “You useless child, come here before I bring out the curling iron!”
Sirius flinched involuntarily. His body ached in all the places that damn curling iron had hit him— a lot of places. Including the whole side of his stomach, the long angry burn that had finally made him leave.
“I hate when they do that.”
Sirius whipped around, nearly taking the head off a scrappy, homeless-looking boy with a crooked grin. He was wearing a dirty navy blue jacket, several layers of sweaters and flannels, a red nylon backpack, jeans that might have once been blue but were now more ashy gray, and dirty shoes that might have once been white designer kicks. His bronze face was dirty and scraped up, and his wild black curls were so messy, they looked like they made brushes snap in two just by looking at them.
Sirius lowered his sword. “What?” The boy nodded behind them. “Cyclops. I hate when they do that. The other day me and Moony got cornered by one, and it started talking in my mom’s voice. Just about killed me, it did. If Moony hadn’t speared it, well.” The boy dragged his thumb against his throat and gagged comically.
Sirius laughed despite himself. “You’re a halfblood.” He said. The boy pushed up his rectangular glasses and grinned, showing off a blinding white smile. “James Potter, at your service.”
The monster roared again. It was getting closer.
“Sirius Black, though not for long.”
James nodded grimly. “Yeah, he sounds nasty. Don’t worry though, I’ve been doing this for a long time. Between the two of us, we can take it.”
“As much as I love your confidence, how long is a long time?”
“Two years.”
Sirius gaped. This boy didn’t look any older than he was, about twelve, maybe thirteen. He started to grin. “Alright then, James Potter, let’s kill a monster.”
They made a plan.
Sirius waited by the entrance of the Chinese place, trying to look appetizing for a monster. It wasn’t hard. Apparently, the things had shitty taste. Sirius had tried everything from dousing himself in perfume, to dousing himself in sewage water —never again— to jumping in the lake, but it didn’t matter. The monsters kept coming.
He shivered. It was November, and his cheap replacement jacket was thinner than he was used to— his Olympic-grade snowboarding jacket had gotten incinerated when a small dragon had attacked him— and with a Cyclops on his tail, he hadn’t had the time to steal himself a new one. Maybe he’d hit Michigan Avenue next, if he survived this one.
“Sirius, darling, won’t you come home to mommy?” Sirius gripped his sword. Lumbering down the street, grinning from ear to ear, the Cyclops approached. Somewhere along the way, he’d acquired a giant sledgehammer. Sirius inhaled.
“Hey ugly!” He shouted. “Mr. Male-Pattern-Baldness!”
The Cyclops roared and charged. Ah, the impending threat of death, his old friend. Sirius turned on his heel, raised his sword, and burst through the entrance of the Chinese place. It was late in the day, but there were still customers inside. They screamed as Sirius ran in between their tables, leaped over the teenaged cashier, and ran through the kitchen to the back door. He felt a little bad about trashing their restaurant—less when the cooks in the back started screaming and swinging at him with pans and knives— but if there was one lesson that life (and his mother, curse her) had beaten into his head, it was survival first, other people second. Always. Besides, most of the time, the monsters left other people alone. It’s not like he was leading death to their front doors.
The Cyclops ran in after him, shattering the entire front wall of the restaurant, and taking out a couple lights with the top of its head. (Okay, so maybe not death, but definitely property damage.) The people screamed louder and dove to the sides as it ran straight through tables and chairs, its beady eye fixed on Sirius.
Sirius ran out the back door. “JAMES!” He yelled. Behind him, the Cyclops broke through the wall, bricks and dust raining down over its shoulders.
“RAHHH!”
“DIE!”
James leaped from the top of the restaurant roof, bone-white sword stabbing straight down. The Cyclops roared and swung at him with its hammer, but James vanished before it could touch him, straight into the shadows. Sirius took his opportunity and slashed his sword, but the monster was quick, and it deflected his thrust. Sirius rolled to one side to dodge the next swing, and tried again, but the Monster blocked him again, and this time it slammed its sledgehammer at Sirius’s feet, making him stumble and fall from the small earthquake it caused. The monster grinned, triumphant, and readied his hammer for the final swing, but there was James, appearing out of nowhere and stabbing his sword straight into the monster’s arm. He dove to the ground and rolled, coming up kneeling besides Sirius. There was a crazy grin on his face.
The Cyclops roared in pain and let go of his sledgehammer, which flew into the wall of the other building, ten feet away, and stuck there, buried deep into the bricks.
Sirius laughed. “Nice one, James!” He jumped to his feet, and ran at the weaponless monster.
It was over quickly after that.
Sirius flicked his sword and it expanded, the bronze blade breaking into upside down crescent moon shaped sections, held together by a chain. He whipped it like the world’s deadliest lasso, and it wrapped around the Cyclops. The monster roared and tried to throw off the blade, but James grabbed a stray brick and threw it at its head. The Cyclops dodged it, and Sirius yanked on his sword while it was distracted. The blades tightened, cutting into flesh, and the monster broke into dust. James’s sword clattered to the ground.
Sirius collapsed, breathing heavily. It was over.
He began to laugh hysterically. “No way,” he wheezed. “James Potter, you crazy bastard, we actually did it!”
James plopped down next to him, his black eyes shining despite looking like he was about to fall over. “Told you. We make a pretty good team don't we?” Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. “The best team. We could take on the world, us two.” James laughed. “You bet. Hey, wanna steal some tacos while we’re on a restaurant terrorizing spree? That’s what I was coming here for anyway. Moony was tired of gas station sandwiches.”
“Moony?”
“Ah, he’s my travel buddy. It’s easier to explain the nickname once you meet him. Come on, I’m starving.”
One Mexican food raid later— James had snuck them in using a silvery invisibility cap, which had nearly given Sirius the heart attack of his life— the two of them were walking down Lake street towards the Chicago Theater.
“New York? I wouldn’t have ever guessed. You don’t have an accent. How’d you end up here?”
James shrugged. “Dunno, you take a wrong turn one too many times and you can end up anywhere. Me and Moony don't stay in one place for more than a few days, it makes it easier to shake the monsters. You’re from here though, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I'm from the Northside. I couldn’t take it there anymore, so I packed my stuff one day and just followed the lakeshore down. It’s been three months and I’ve almost died like two-hundred times, but I don’t regret anything. My mom’s a seriously crazy bitch, I don’t know how she got any man to stand her, let alone a god, but well, here I am.”
James laughed. “Here you are, indeed.” He swung an arm around his shoulders, despite Sirius being a little taller. “Son of the big guy in charge, huh? Nice. Did he give you that sword?”
“I think.”
James shook his head, grinning his crooked grin. He looked like the kind of kid that teachers would label as a mischief-maker, not like Sirius, who was always immediately labeled delinquent. “So cool.”
“What about you? Where’d you get that bone sword from?”
James grinned secretively. They were walking under the elevated train tracks now, every few moments the bridge above them rumbled like thunder. “I made it. I’ve got a knack for bones— just a few pieces, and I can make a whole armory. The trick is finding monsters that will leave them behind. My sword’s made from a piece of dragon horn. And, check this out.” James dug inside his sweater pockets and pulled out a small pile of bones. He closed his hands around them, scrunched up his face, and when he opened his hands again, there was a small bird in his palms, silvery gray and almost entirely transparent, so Sirius could see every delicate bone in its wings. It chirped and fluttered around them, before settling on James’ head— his hair probably looked exactly like its long-lost nest.
“Woah! You can bring things back to life?”
They turned the corner, and Sirius saw the wildly extravagant sign of the Chicago Theater, a long, brightly lit rectangle, with ‘CHICAGO’ written vertically in deep red letters illuminated by golden lights.
“Yeah. Not permanently, they're more like tangible ghosts, and they won’t last forever, but I can summon anything if I have enough of their bones. My dad’s the god of rebirth.”
“You’ve seen a ghost?”
“Many. They're kinda annoying. Oh, look, here we are.”
There was a subway entrance in front of the theater, and James led him down, muttering and waving his hands at things Sirius couldn’t see.
They got to the bottom, and instantly had to duck to avoid the spear point that whipped through the air where their faces had been.
The spear belonged to a boy who was kicking at a pile of dust on the ground and grumbling angrily. He was tall and lanky, with a threadbare knitted sweater under a thick brown jacket, patched up jeans, and dirty brown high tops. He was holding his long bronze spear in one hand like he’d forgotten it was there, and the tip kept waving around in the air like it was looking for a victim to stab.
“Another giant badger.” The boy said, still glaring at the fading dust. “Who’s your pal, James?”
James bounced on his toes, seemingly unsurprised that the boy knew he was there, and wasn’t alone, without even looking. “This is Sirius Black. We killed a cyclops together. He’s got the coolest sword.”
The boy looked up, and Sirius’s breath caught. The boy had pale skin, sandy brown hair, and a smattering of freckles over his nose. There were a few pale white scars criss-crossing his face—over his nose, through one of his eyebrows, on his cheeks, the corner of his lip— but what was really attention-grabbing were his eyes.
They were gray, and so pale, they almost blended in with the whites of his eyeballs. Even his pupils were a faded gray, like someone had sucked the color out of his eyes, and left them as pale as two twin moons.
Moony.
“Sirius?” The boy was looking somewhere over Sirius’s shoulder, his pale eyes unfocused. “Like the star?” If James had only the faintest, vauguest, New York accent, this boy had the mother of all accents. He sounded like New York incarnate.
Sirius felt his heart stutter a little. “Wha— yeah. Brightest star—“
“—in the sky.” The boy finished. He flipped his spear tip towards the ground and stuck out a hand.
“I’m Remus Lupin.” Sirius shook it. The boy’s hands were calloused and scarred, little white lines criss-crossing his fingers. “You’ve got soft hands.” The boy muttered. “Another rich boy. Fuckin’ great.” Sirius’ mouth dropped. “Excuse me?”
The boy wrinkled his nose. “You sound rich, ugh, with a name like Sirius? Bet you're attractive too. The Empusai are going to swarm us.”
Sirius raised his eyebrows. “You think I’m attractive?” He asked sweetly, batting his eyelashes. The boy didn’t even blink, but his cheeks flushed. “That’s not what I—“
“You said ‘attractive,’ I heard you loud and clear.”
“That’s not — I can’t even see you, you egomaniac.”
“Remus is blind.” James piped up.
Sirius gaped at him. “You’re blind?” He looked down, where the giant badger dust had been. “And you killed a monster all by yourself?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I can’t see. It’s not like I’m paraplegic.” Remus made a face. “And besides, I can see in other ways than with my eyes.”
“Oh that clears it up. Have super hearing, do you? Magic senses?”
Remus’ face blushed brighter. Sirius grinned. Pale skin like that always blushed easily— this was going to be so much fun.
“Nothing like that, but suffice to say, when it comes to monsters, Moony here knows everything. ” James said, looking between them and grinning. “Now can we eat yet? I’m hungry. And I brought chocolate.”
Moony’s head whipped around. “Dark chocolate?” He sniffed and then gasped. “You got tacos too?”
“Aha, magic senses I knew it—“
“Shut up, Star-boy.”
“Calling me a star, are you? Moony?”
“You—“
“Come on you two, home sweet home.”
James waved them (well, him) towards a small red tent pitched in the corner between the stairs and the wall of the subway. Moony, still red-faced, walked towards him, tapping his spear tip on the ground as he went, the way blind people tapped their walking sticks. He pushed past James, who held the tent flap open for him, grinning, before going in himself.
Sirius hung back for a moment. People walked past the tent like it wasn’t even there, their eyes sliding past it like it was just another dirty subway wall. Faint mist curled around the edges, and James’ skeletal bird swooped around the top, chirping sweetly. Inside, he could hear Remus shouting excitedly, the rustle of aluminum as the stolen tacos were unwrapped, and James’ joyful laughter, echoing around the dirty subway like the first days of sunshine after a long winter.
Sirius smiled. “Home, sweet home,” he repeated. Then he pushed aside the tent flap, and followed his new friends inside.