Watch
He is tired of the fading parallel lines marking the place where his watch had resided only two days ago. He would much prefer to be able once again to glance at his wrist and know the time, instead of being forced to peer through the layers of dust on various wall clocks. He misses the familiar weight on his wrist and the coldness of the metal against his skin when he steps into the brisk summer evenings in the battered cloak with sleeves that ought to be three inches longer. But Remus Lupin is too much of a coward to go to a certain colorful flat and retrieve his watch.
A coward, because he knows that it is all his fault. Because he is the one who pulled away, who ran away like the fool he is. Because he is the one who let it go too far in the first place.
I am no longer a Gryffindor, he thinks. I am the Cowardly Lion.
And as much as he knows that he is to blame, he knows too that he could not let anything go further. He knows she is angry, and disappointed, and hurt, but she will see sense. And it is better to cut this off now, he thinks, than to wait. To expose her. To make her vulnerable. To hurt her more.
Granted, if his goal was to cut, he failed miserably. More accurately, he hacked and tore, tore as if with teeth and claws instead of with knife or wand, tore until there was nothing left. She had done nothing wrong, he knew. He had removed his watch to shower at her flat, left it on her counter by her pink toothbrush, and then when he was not quite dry yet she had seized her opportunity. And he had torn it from her, torn it jaggedly and sloppily but effectively, threw back on the same threadbare clothes that he had worn for years and left her with nothing.
Nothing but the watch.
The monster in him screams with rage, screams that he is an idiot for going so far and then leaving. Screams that he needs her. That he wants her. But the calm voice, the voice of the professor, tells him only that it wouldn't have been long before it was her pale skin he was tearing with teeth and claws, instead of mere opportunities.
He missed the opportunity to go back. If he had wanted to do that, he should have done it forty hours ago. Better to quit now, to cut it off, to make the scene that still plays fresh in his mind the final one and cut quickly to the closing credits. There is enough pain already for him to go back and make more. They both carry around too much pain to deal with this right now.
"You left your watch at my place," she ends up saying, dropping the cold metal band into his rough hands when they are forced together by a meeting at the Burrow. He wants to say more, and for a second she thinks he will, but then he stares down at his shoes and then she leaves to take her place at the table.
He tries to talk to her after the meeting, but she is gone, Disapparated before he even realizes she is missing. He checks the time on the watch that feels colder than usual returned to its typical place, thinking only how much better it would be if he was loosing track of time with her instead of keeping track of it without her.