AN: Hey so long time no see. This is not a promise to start posting here any more frequently than I have been tbh. I rarely write anymore, unfortunately. This has been on my tumblr for a while, but I figured it's about time I uploaded it here.

Very very mild slash. Mostly angst and Remus Lupin character study. Unbetaed, barely proof-read, written in like twenty minutes - but I am kind of really proud of this fic sorry not sorry ;A;

Enjoy.

-Katie

There can be no slipups in a life like his. The first cracks he learned to disguise were the literal ones on his skin, the ones that were a product of animalistic rage and sharp claws. He cannot recall the last time he wore a t-shirt or a pair of shorts or even rolled up the sleeves of his shirt in any place that wasn't the comfort of his own personal quarters. Limps became a sign of his weakness almost before he could properly walk, complaints and winces were things he trained himself not to display, at first for his parents' states of mind, and then for the sake of his secret.

His secret depends on his ability to pretend like nothing is wrong. He must pretend that he doesn't feel the ache and stretch of his transformation for days before and after it occurs. He must pretend he doesn't sometimes confuse his own instincts with that of the wolf, and must never acknowledge that sometimes he can't even identify where he ends and the wolf begins.

As of late, however, his wolf is not the biggest secret he is hiding from the world. Most people he associates with wouldn't know what to look for, anyway. But his act does not change, for the simple sake of hiding something else: he cannot show them how broken he is.

Some mornings are easy. Sometimes, when the light peeks through the holes in his tatty curtains to metaphysically prod at his eyes, it is as simple as standing, taking a deep breath, and letting yesterday's calm settle back down over him. He seems to do everything in an emotional muddle, those days, nothing quite sharp enough to make him feel, but everything in the world sharp enough to make him think, to make him act, to make him forget.

Other mornings, it is a chore. Some mornings he wakes up and he feels so broken that when he stands in front of the mirror it takes him ages simply to identify his pieces and even begin to put them in the right places. Those days are harder, everything too sharp for his tastes, the emotions hovering right on the edge of his awareness so that sometimes the sound of a teacup being sat down on its matching china will make him flinch. There is no fog on those days, but rather, a blur, of colours and of information, and of too much tea as he tries to sharpen the edges of his vision and dull the edges of his pain.

He can't have both, he's discovered. He can't have emotion and logic at the same time.

Given the circumstances, he chooses logic as often as he can. And as the days go by, as they are wont to do despite the things that occur within them, he finds that there are more and more days when he can see, and talk, and act like a normal, logical human being. He has lost everything, but he can feel a modicum of self returning to him; he'll never get it all back, they were too much of him for him to exist fully without them, but he's healing. He's moving on.

So when he arrives at Hogwarts to respond to a summons for tea from the Headmaster himself, it's one of the first bad days he's had in a while, but still not as bad as some he's had. It feels like a migraine and it's wearing him thin, trying to push away images from the edges of his mind in favour of what's right in front of him. To see the actual stone of the castle as it is as opposed to what once occurred there.

He's headed to the Headmaster's Office, the path familiar to him – there, right there, they got caught there one night by Lily Evans of all people, lips swollen and robes in disarray and over there, that's the closet they trapped Snape in first year, their first prank as a group and he needs to stop that train of thought right now. He speeds up his steps and grips his fists tighter by his side, taking deep breaths to pack grout back into the cracks.

Dumbledore's not there when Remus gets there, muttering the password that had been in his letter and climbing the familiar revolving staircase. The office door swings open to admit him, so he assumes he's meant to wait there for his new employer, and takes a step in the door.

It looks much the same as it ever has, with many of the same silver instruments on their three-legged tables, the same portraits of the dozing headmasters on the wall. There is, however, one noticeable addition. Remus is fairly certain that there had been no large, gilt-framed mirror standing on one side of Dumbledore's desk, imposing and magical-looking, the last time he had been there. Remus tries to ignore this strange new piece of décor, and sits quietly in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk.

Remus starts his wait by simply staring inattentively at the wall behind Dumbledore's desk, taking the moment to concentrate on pushing the memories and the pain away from his conscious mind. However, a flash of movement catches his attention almost immediately. His eyes dart to old Professor Dippet's portrait, but he seems to be as unconscious as ever, mouth lolling open and a bit of drool collecting at the corner. Remus shrugs and rubs his eyes. Probably a trick of the light.

When he opens them, however, it is only a matter of seconds before the movement occurs again. This time he darts his head around and his gaze falls on the image in the mirror. What he sees makes him immediately thankful that he is seated, because he is sure that if he had been standing, his legs would have gone out from under him.

It's not his reflection staring at him, as one tends to assume when given the opportunity to look in a mirror, but the face is no less familiar to him than his own. He is winking and smiling, the man in the mirror, no evidence at all that any time has passed in the features of his face.

"Sirius," he chokes the name out, hushed and shocked, like an expletive; it's a word he's trained himself to avoid these long twelve years, and the face is one he forbade himself to think of. Suddenly, memories are rushing back to him, the first time they saw one another, Sirius so aloof and detached but clearly panicking about his Sorting; their first group prank, and the way Sirius's face had lit up; the night they'd found out and Sirius told him they weren't going anywhere, face set; the first night they transformed and it really hit Remus that they weren't going anywhere; kisses, so many kisses, and the wet slide of skin in the intimacy of their own apartment; and more than anything, the warmth, of heart, of words, of body, that Sirius displayed so easily – it's all Remus can do to climb to his feet and approach the mirror, trying to convince himself that it's a trick of the light, that his best friend, his lover, the man who destroyed his life, will disappear and exactly the correct angle.

He doesn't; the face of Sirius Black remains inches from his own, smiling at Remus and running his hand through his hair sheepishly. Remus's eyes rake over the familiar features like a blind man seeing the sun, drinking it in even as he hates himself for doing it; when blue eyes ringed with yellow meet silver ones, Remus's knees really do give out, leaving him on the floor, inches from the mirror. Sirius has the audacity to laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles, and then crosses his legs and sits down so that they're at eye level. He cocks his head and waves his arm in greeting.

Remus doesn't know what to do. This is clearly some trick of the mirror's; this is not the face of a man who has suffered years at the hands of Dementors, but the face he remembers of the impulsive, fiercely loyal man he loved, once upon a time. This is the face of the Sirius Black that he had trusted implicitly, not one line on his face betraying him as the traitor Remus now knew him to be. He should leave. He should get up and return to his place across from Dumbledore's desk, wait for the man, finish the business they had together and then leave. He should pretend this never happened.

Sirius, whose mouth has flattened into an impatient line, is now leaning close to the mirror and opening his mouth. Remus eyes him warily, but Sirius does nothing but breathe condensation into the glass and then use his finger to write the words 'hello, Moony' backwards in the steam. Remus's eyes get wide. He licks his lips.

"Ca-can you hear me?" he rasps, feeling silly talking to an image in a mirror, but Sirius nods in affirmation.

Over the years since the evidence of Sirius's true colours stared up at him in the form of Lily and James's dead faces, Remus had had many conversations with the man in his head, sometimes in dreams, other times in his waking moments. He had imagined that he would have much to say to the traitor when he saw him again, mostly shouts about how he had been a fool to trust him, but all of the words he had so carefully rehearsed went up in smoke as he came to the realization that, apparition or not, here was a Sirius Black with whom he could communicate. Sirius seemed to be waiting for Remus to say something, but had grown impatient; he was rubbing out his previous message and breathing heavily on the glass to write a new one.

I miss you, Remus.

Something cracks inside of him, and all that comes out is one word:

"Why?"

And it's raspy and embarrassing and Remus hasn't been this out of control in years, not since the message had first arrived that Harry was an orphan and Sirius was in Azkaban. Sirius's eyebrows draw together in the mirror as he leans forward to fog up the glass once again.

I didn't do it. It was Peter.

And then it's the whole dam in his chest crumbling to pieces:

"You liar!" and he's standing up quickly, his fury fuelling his limbs, wishing so badly that there was a bodily representation of the man here simply so that he could hit him. "We trusted you! We all trusted you! How could you – "

He heaves a deep breath, pulls the parts of himself together again, and casts his eyes skyward as he tries to reconstruct his façade. He sees, out of the corner of his eye, an inscription on the top of the mirror's frame; it doesn't take Remus long to figure out it's meant to be read backwards:

I show not your face but your heart's desire.

Upon deciphering the message, a fury rises up in Remus such as he had never known, and he swings around with all the force he can muster and slams his fist into the glass of the mirror.

Never in his life has he wanted to see something break so badly, to see cracks marring the perfect face, to shatter it, but the mirror seems impervious to force and all Remus succeeds in doing is bruising his hand. He spins on his heel and sweeps out of the room; he'll send Dumbledore an apology later because he's done caring now, can't care anymore.

It is a hatred for himself that fuels his footsteps, a hatred of the understanding that, according to a powerful magical artefact, what Remus's heart desires most of all is not the lives of his best friends back, but a simple chance to see Sirius Black again.