AN: Little drabbly thing I wrote up because it's been a long time since I've written anything. 765 words, probably pretty boring.
Friendship fic, possibly Remus/Sirius light slash if you look hard, because that's what I meant it to be, really.
Warnings: Lil' bit o' angst
Disclaimer: They belong to Ms. Rowling, but you knew that.
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It had taken Remus a very long time to build up a trust large enough, and strong enough, to break down a very large and very strong wall. A wall that had taken him so many very long years to build with so much care. Care that a child should not know about, much less know how to wield. And yet, Remus was the master mason. With the delicacy of a surgeon and the strength of giant, he built a wall so high that he was sure no one would ever scale it. It reached from the very pit of his stomach up to the top of his very head, and he could see out but no one could see in.
Then one day, it broke. It crumbled, stale bread in the fist of an angry man. The remnants fell. They fell, fell, fell down deep, deeper than even Remus had ever reached. So deep he was sure he would never reach them again. He was so sure he would never need to. The bricks and mortar that surrounded him fell to crumbly little pieces into the cracks of his very being and he never thought he would ever need to pick them up. Sirius Black had scaled a wall higher than Everest, wider than the world. He climbed. He saw. He conquered what Remus never believed conquerable. He destroyed what Remus had painstakingly constructed, yet Remus was glad to see it go. And then he betrayed.
The innocence of a child, the knowledge of a man, the naivety of someone wild and free who has never thought of consequence. Never because consequence meant growing up. Consequence meant taking responsibility. Consequence meant vulnerability, imperfection, mortality that a child does not see, hear or feel. Sirius Black learned consequence when he broke the barrier and then broke what was beneath. Sirius felt consequence for the very first time the night he broke his friend. He felt consequence. He felt responsibility. He grew up. It was too late.
The first wall had taken over a decade. The second took little over a night. A night of pain, wondering, needing to know and the feeling of betrayal that bubbled deep down where the pieces of his once-wall lay. Betrayal that he could smell and taste but did not know where it came from. Betrayal that stank so strongly of something he had not encountered for so many years that the bubbling feelings brought back to the surface that broken wall. The ruins of red, hot stone melded together so fast Remus barely realized what was happening. He was 16 and yet he was 6 again all at once. He was regressing and proceeding so fast that it confused him, so he slept. And when he awoke his friends told him the story. The story of betrayal. His conqueror had broken the prize before any other had touched it.
Apologies were exchanged and fake forgiveness danced off his tongue, slippery words that eased anxious eyes. Eyes of a man, boy, who needed reassurance so he could un-grow up. The wall stood firm.
The wall stood firm when a boy was taken to the most fearsome place known to living beings. The wall stood firm when innocence was finally and truly broken, when madness overcame childhood and adulthood slithered off into the distance, away to a field where it would never be found. Where a boy went to prison, a half-man returned in his stead. Tall, lanky, bony and new to the world that hated him.
And Remus's wall broke once more. As it had been erected years and years ago in a night of pain, it fell once more in the blink of an eye. A glance at a map, a dirty, grimy, welcome touch that reminded him of days long, long ago when a wall was broken in innocence and childhood was happiness, not pain. The wall fell and fell and fell right to the very ground of a shack that had seen better days, though not many, where it was forgotten and left in child-like abandonment of common sense.
And then Sirius fell. He fell and he fell like a piece of the wall that Remus had let fall not so long ago and such a very long time ago. He fell forever in an instant as quick as Remus had let himself drop that second time. He fell, and so did Remus, because he did not have a wall to save him from such a very large height. He looked over and down and into a dark pit that had no end. Through a curtained door that had nothing behind it and darkness inside it. He looked, and he fell as well.