Restitution
Hasn't Come Quite Yet
By
Sally
---
Sometimes, she wakes up and sees the pieces of her life in stark relief. History and destiny all piled on top of each other. She once woke up, Remus breathing deeply and soft on the bare skin of her shoulder, and knew i knew /i that this i thing /i she was living was just some kind of horrible movie.
The planes of Remus' face were warm and dry under her fingers. His nose a mess of sharp planes and lines. And then he was something else and somewhere else and she could see the marks of life and fingers that were not her own all over him.
She cried then. Hard, hot tears that left her feeling empty and weak. He never woke up.
-
She's tired of pity. She's tired of being ignored.
-
She only remembers Sirius i before /i in bits and pieces. Misty visits to her mother and father and a few romps around the yard on his shoulders. More than anything, she remembers him laughing and daring her to change her hair into more and more colors.
When she meets him again, he doesn't laugh. Not really. Cackle, sure, but not the deep kind of laughter that touches others and makes them want to join in.
He was her age when he went into Azkaban, she realizes on a random Tuesday. Nearly her age exactly.
She spends her twenty-third birthday curled on a dusty, dark sofa playing a drinking game with two men ten plus years her senior.
Neither of them knows it, and it's par for the fucking course.
-
When she's six months pregnant with Teddy, Remus finally comes home. He shuffles in the door, eyes downcast and looking all-the-world like a dog with its tail between its legs.
She punches him, hard, across the face and stands over him as his ass hits the floor. Her knuckles ache in a pleasantly used way, and she congratulates herself for not kicking the shit out of him when he finally looks up at her.
"You left."
He nods, blood trickling down his chin from where she's split his lip. "I did."
She shakes her head, trying to clear the blistering rage from behind her eyes. It doesn't entirely work. "You left me."
"You're pregnant. I don't know how to deal with that."
Her eyes are cold when she smiles at him. "You left me."
And then she walks away.
-
Identity has always been something of a problem for her.
It usually is for everyone, but being someone who can, literally, turn into anyone else ever adds an extra dimension to that little existential crisis.
Most days she loves her talents. So much so that losing them for nearly a year was like cutting off one of her own limbs. But as much as it hurt to not change, that year taught her something very, very important. Everything she'd based herself around since she was six years old was stripped away, and she learned that she could live without it. That there was more to her than her ability to shift.
It was a stupid epiphany, and she can just hear her mother's exasperated "Of course there is, Nymphadora!" but there is more to it. It wasn't until those bleak, bitter months that she realized that under everything, she had no idea who she was. Not really.
Yes, she was Andromeda and Ted Tonks's daughter. She was an Auror. She was Sirus Black's cousin and Harry Potter's protector and Remus Lupin's something and scores of peoples' friend.
But she's more than what she is to other people. She doesn't know what that is, exactly, but that's not important. At least, not immediately.
She's something else.
The only thing she really knows is that she's stronger than this.
-
All during her pregnancy, there are tiny moments where she closes her eyes, puts her hands on her belly, and just feels her baby move. It's a deeply strange sensation. The only thing she can compare it to is that time Bammy Tamblyn dared her to eat three cans of beans in one sitting and the resulting gastrointestinal fireworks.
A friend of hers once compared it to living with a fish in your tummy. She'd laughed then, made cracks about the woman being a living, breathing aquarium with too much algae. But with her son twisting and turning inside of her, she can't come up with a better explanation.
She loves feeling her child move. Loves knowing that there's this little tiny person inside her that's eventually going to come out so she can teach it and love it and watch it grow.
She's scared out of her mind, twenty-five, in a tenuous marriage that may or may not be a complete mistake, in the middle of a war, and a million other terrifying things, but when she's got her eyes closed and her hands on her belly, all of that goes away. There's justher and this baby.
It's so much more than enough.
-
The first time she looks at her son she's exhausted and half-dead from the pain and the emptiness of birth. She's aware of very little after so long of her world being narrowed to the ebb and flow of contractions and focusing on getting her baby out of her safe and sound, the only things she's aware of when they finally put his tiny body in her arms are Remus's hands on her shoulders and in her hair and her mother's gentle voice.
Then she looks down and there he is. His fists grasping at the air and squalling like the world has offended him greatly. She's already crying, but the sobs start harder and then his little sprinkle of brown hair goes turquoise and the only thing she can do is laugh and cry and say "Oh."
She names him after her father because it's right.
-
She doesn't die crying. She dies screaming, anger cloaked around her like a shroud.
Her last thoughts are not of her husband, dead a few feet away, but of her son. Her tiny little boy, miles away in his crib and god fucking dammit, he will be safe.
-
The first time she kisses Remus Lupin, it's soft and warm like a spring breeze. When she pulls away, he looks like he's been hit with a shovel. It's a beginning she doesn't regret.
-fin-