Written for Hogwarts' Around the Word Event: Kiribati Dialogue: "Knowing it's real means you gotta make a decision. One, keep denying it. Or two… do something about it.", the Decorating the Christmas tree Event: (AU) VoldemortWins!AU, the Muggle Studies Assignment - Task 2: Write about someone making up a new tradition, the Writing Club - Showtime: Slipping - (word) Mercy, Count Your Buttons: (dialogue) "Close your eyes and make a wish.", (word) Sorry, Amber's Attic: The Star: Write about someone having hope for the future and Liza's Love: Write about two friends reuniting.
Also for Ned, who wanted Wolfstar, an AU with "Out of all the choices you could have made, you honestly thought this would be the best one?", (setting) Christmas Day. I took some liberties with that one…
I'm sorry, but you also mentioned angst and you know how much I loved writing angsty stuff.
Word count: 1868
don't stop until your heart goes numb
The room was cold and dirty, but Sirius knew he had finally found the right place when a raggedy man stepped out right in front of him, dirty brown hair matted to a face distorted by cold rage.
"Out of all the choices you could have made, you honestly thought this would be the best one?"
Remus' laugh was bitter and sharp, and nothing at all like the warm sound Sirius used to love. It tore at his heart to see his former lover so ruined yet Sirius didn't dare take one more step.
Not when Remus' wand, its tip shining an acid green he had never thought his friend would ever know how to summon, was pointed right at his chest. There was no mercy shining in the amber eyes he had used to worship.
"Why did you come back, Sirius? What good did you ever think could come from that?"
Sirius swallowed back the knives in his throat. "I just wanted to see you." The green light grew brighter, and for an instant Sirius wanted it to strike him. Surely death would be a kinder fate than to live in this joyless world.
But he couldn't do this to Remus — Remus' soul didn't deserve to be tarnished by such a meaningless crime.
"I didn't kill them," he confessed. "I didn't kill James and Lily." He felt mad laughter bubble up in his throat, like it had when the Aurors had tried to arrest him — back when there had still been Aurors to arrest people.
He couldn't even bring himself to add Harry's name to the list — somehow that wound hurt more than any other.
Remus' face didn't soften. "Of course you didn't," he scoffs. "Your Master did, right after you betrayed them."
"But I didn't — come on, Remus, you know me. You know I could never do anything to hurt James or Lily." Once again, Harry's name stuck in his throat and Sirius swallowed it back painfully.
Something flashed through Remus' eyes, there and gone in an instant. Remus growled, something animalistic that was reminiscent of the monster the moon turned him into. Still, Sirius stood his ground: after all, he had nothing else to lose. And besides, that something he had seen in Remus' eyes?
It looked an awful lot like hope.
Sirius took a step toward Remus, empty hands shaking at his side. "I didn't kill them," he repeated.
"If not you then who?" Remus asked. "You were their Secret Keeper — no one else could have told You-Know-Who where they were."
Sirius licked his lips nervously as he took another step forward. He looked straight into Remus' eyes and put his hand on Remus' wrist, pushing it down. "I wasn't," he said sadly. "I wasn't their Secret Keeper."
"Then who?" But even as he asked, Sirius could see that Remus understood, that he already knew. "Peter. I thought he was dead."
"He is," Sirius agreed, baring his teeth in a violent grin. "Now."
Remus flinched. "You killed him."
"He betrayed us," Sirius hissed. "It's his fault we lost — his fault You-Know-Who is sitting on a throne and all of our friends are rotting in the dirt. We're the only ones left, Moony, and it's all his fault. What did you expect me to do? Of course I killed him."
"Of course," Remus echoed bitterly, closing his eyes for an instant. "Of course you did. Well, what now? Say I believe you — what do you think we should do now?"
Sirius sighed. He was so tired. It felt like he had been trapped in a nightmare that wouldn't end ever since he had stumbled out of Godric's Hollow, leaving his friends' bodies behind — was it really so surprising that he wanted to cling to the one thing he knew was good?
"I don't know," he admitted.
Remus stared at him blankly, lips twisting into a humorless smile. "Why come back then?"
And he had asked this before, right when he had first seen Sirius, but the question felt different this time. His eyes searched Sirius' face desperately, and Sirius hoped just as recklessly that whatever it was, Remus would find it.
"I just needed to see you," Sirius finally replied when Remus didn't say anything else. His mouth was dry and he swallowed reflexively. He smiled, sad and desperate. "Being around you always made the world better."
"Sirius…" Remus frowned. He looked lost and Sirius' heart ached at the sight.
"I'm sorry, but it's true." He shrugged helplessly. "Always."
"Close your eyes and make a wish."
"Why?"
Sirius laughed. "Let's call it a new tradition, shall we? A new tradition for a new world."
"This is hardly a new world, Sirius," Remus replied with an eye roll. And yet, when Sirius pouted at him, fluttering his eyelashes, he complied. He closed his eyes and made a wish.
I wish this war would end, he prayed.
(Well, you know what they say - be careful what you wish for.)
"Done?" Sirius asked.
"I'm done," Remus said, laughing.
"Good," Sirius said, "because I have something else planned for our time together now… To celebrate on this auspicious day."
"Auspicious? It's just Christmas Eve, Sirius — hardly anything remarkable."
Sirius' grey eyes burrowed into his, a caged storm Remus wanted to lose himself into. "Any day with you is remarkable."
They were sitting around Remus' kitchen table. The poor thing looked like it had been half-eaten away by termites and was about two seconds away from falling apart, but Sirius knew better than to comment on it.
He smiled slightly as Remus poured them tea, curling his fingers around the mug to let the heat seep into his skin. Remus sat across from his stiffly.
"You still don't trust me, do you?"
Remus sighed, looking wistfully into his cup. "Can you blame me? I thought… Well, you know what I thought," he huffed with a wry chuckle.
Sirius couldn't pretend that it didn't hurt, but he also couldn't say that he wasn't to blame for their falling apart. He had been the one to suspect Remus — though how much of that had been Peter whispering lies in his ears he would never know — and the one to distance himself from the man he loved, unable to bear the doubt.
He had been the one too blind to see what was truly happening right in front of him — to see the true traitor in their midst.
Sirius clenched his fists, fingernails digging deep into his palms. "I'm sorry. I should have trusted you."
The words felt like barbed wire in his throat but Remus needed to hear them. In a way, Sirius needed to say them too.
"Yeah, well, I guess I shouldn't have been so quick to believe you were to blame for James and Lily either," Remus replied. He still wasn't looking at Sirius, now staring at some kind of pattern on his table instead, and Sirius' heart ached for him to look up.
He probably didn't deserve it though, no matter how much he wanted it — he had squandered Remus' love and affection away, and now he would take whatever scrap of attention Remus felt fit to give him because he couldn't ask for more.
"I didn't really give you any reason not to suspect me, though, did I?"
"Neither did I," Remus replied sadly. "Not really, anyway."
Sirius opened his mouth to protest but Remus shot him a quelling look that had him stop in his track — he knew that look too well not to know what'd follow if he tried to argue, and this touch of familiarity amidst the otherwise tense conversation eased his soul a little.
"You know that You-Know-Who took over, right? That that's the true reason the Prophet is now proclaiming that the war is over and crucifying Dumbledore."
"Of course I know that." Remus snarled. "But what could I do? Me, a lone werewolf? Nobody would have listened to me, and that's if there even was anyone willing to listen in the first place," he said bitterly.
"So you just gave up?"
"Oh, fuck you, Sirius — I didn't see you rushing out to fight either."
"I was tracking down Peter," Sirius retorted, and just like that their anger went out. Sirius forced himself to take another sip of his tea but it tasted sour in his mouth. He kept his hands still only through force of habit; they hadn't stopped shaking since he had killed Peter.
He hoped they would one day, though he didn't know what kind of man that made him.
"Look, it's simple — knowing it's real means you gotta make a decision. One, keep denying it. Or two… do something about it. I'm going to do something about this. What are you going to do?" Sirius asked suddenly, breaking the silence.
For an instant, he thought Remus would just bend and make him leave. But then he looked up, eyes fiery and determined. He looked nothing like the wreck he had been when Sirius had finally found him — instead he looked like the Remus of before, the one who had still thought the war could be fought.
The Remus that Sirius would have followed to the ends of the Earth and back.
"I'm going to fight. For James, and Lily, and for Harry. They deserved better. We all did," he whispered.
"For Harry," Sirius repeated, throat tight. He downed the last of his tea, now grown cold, and tried not to grimace as he realized that all the sugar had migrated there, leaving him with a too sweet syrupy mess to swallow.
As their conversation drew to an end, Sirius' eyes drifted to the window. Outside, snow was now slowly drifting down, and it suddenly hit him that it was Christmas.
"Hey, you remember that tradition of ours?"
Remus startled. "The wish thing?" he asked, smiling ruefully.
"Yeah," Sirius replied, a truer smile now playing on his lips. He felt a shadow of the boy he had been then settling over his bones, warm and soft like an old beloved duvet, and it didn't fit him half as badly as he had feared it would. "The wish thing."
"I remember it." Remus almost seemed surprised that he did — Sirius could understand: the last couple of months felt like years. Everything had just happened so fast…
"Well, what do you say? Do you have one more wish, for old time's sake?"
Remus' fingers drummed on the table for a long moment. "Actually… I do." He smiled, his eyes crinkling up as he looked at Sirius. "Though it's not really anything new — just an old wish, I guess, that could use some remembering."
"Well then, close your eyes-"
"-and make a wish. Yes, I remember." Remus closed his eyes. When he reopened them, they were glistening with unshed tears.
"A-are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Remus replied, wiping his eyes quickly.
He wasn't, clearly, but then again neither was Sirius.
But still, in that moment, sharing quiet, trembling smiles, it felt like maybe they could be.