He stared at her. He stared at her a long while. Her eyes, pleading and unblinking, stared back without her permission. The way he watched her, searching, for once as honest, and unguarded, and desperate as she was, made her stomach clench. Most times, when he stared her down, she wanted to slap him. Now, she wanted to look away.

"Avec ma main brûlée j'écris sur la nature du feu."

This, as may be expected, was followed swiftly by a resounding "What?"

"With my burnt hand I write on the nature of fire," he said, and he wasn't looking at her any more. It seemed to be some sort of revelation. It seemed to be a sort of resignation. It seemed wholly inappropriate.

After all that. Honestly.

He held his hands up into the guttering yellow light, palms facing the sky as if in supplication. She didn't know to whom, though it was not, she thought, to her. This wasn't about her. She could tell that from the faraway look in his eyes. A long, proud string of words not fit for ladies whistled through her mind, not quite reaching her tongue. It was always about him. He made as if it were to save her. Hah. Save her from the thing she wanted most? It was never about her.

"With my burnt hand," he whispered, hoarseness stealing his voice. He was studying his palms as if they held some divine answer. Of course, according to some, they might, but Remus – he'd never gone in for that. He wrinkled his nose at anything that bore the scent of divination.

She frowned, bringing her hands up beneath his. The dampness of her palms stuck to his parchment-dry skin as she tilted his hands down to see them for herself.

There were bite marks on his palms, from his own teeth, she was sure. She trailed her thumbs over the pale pink marks. He let her. Her thumbs continued down.

He had no fingerprints.

Tonks repressed a shudder. She'd never even noticed before, but now that she had – it was strangely inhuman, that dead-white, glassy scar tissue masking the pads of his fingers. They must have been worn bloody a hundred times, pawing at cages, trying to escape. Always trying to escape.

She grasped his hands in hers, folding his fingers into her own and holding on, hard. They didn't speak for a long while, just stood, and neither pulled away. She could feel his eyes on her.

Finally, the grip relaxed, and Tonks withdrew one of her hands, bringing it up to cup the other. She pried his fingers open, slowly, and brought the hand to her lips, kissing the pale pink bite marks on his palm, the smooth white scars on his thumb and his fingers, one by one.

He let her.

She drew the other hand up, letting her lips know his scars, one by one, all the while quivering. Then she looked up, meeting the eyes that were now, inexplicably, so honest, barely daring to breathe.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Well, I've only told you so a million – "

"Are you sure?" And suddenly Tonks realized that he was trembling harder than she was.

"Yes," she said, and meant it.

He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and his hand crept up, hesitantly, to her face, his scarred thumb running over her cheek.

"What is the nature of fire, Nymphadora?"

She didn't correct him. Her hand felt its way up his chest, so solid, wrapping around his neck.

"Warmth, I suppose," she replied, "And light."

And Remus smiled.


A/N: "Avec ma main brûlée j'écris sur la nature du feu" is the opening to an Anne Carson poem, I think quoted from a writer named Bachmann, and taken here totally out of context. At any rate, I doubt a HP-verse wizard would have come across it, but it doesn't much matter where he gets the line (and hey, it's Lupin, you never know). It was just one of those "Out damned plot!" moments. Yes. Shutting up now.