Stage Fright
For Rick Danko
All in some distant era, some bygone day.
Remus sits and swills his whiskey, as the record player deals him with note after beautiful note of the Last Waltz theme. How he should dearly have liked to attend that concert, muggle or no.
He puts his whiskey down. He doesn't even like the stuff!
The music seems as a drug. Even as he listens to the sounds and dreams, his heart breaks at the sharp painful edge that reminds him not only of what could have been, but also what he has lost, what he cannot replace, no matter how dear it had all been.
He would, he supposes, have danced with Sirius to that fine fanfare, despite any and all strange looks. He wouldn't have worried; Sirius could talk his way out of anything.
Almost anything.
"Good evening." The record says over muted applause. Remus sighs.
When Sirius had come back to his house after the escape, everything had changed, though it all seemed familiar. Of a morning Remus would rise and go to the kitchen, begin making tea, prepare himself for another day. Sirius would always arrive just when the kettle boiled and they would move about the kitchen, making a joint effort at breakfast. They never reached for the same thing at the same time; they never bumped into one another.
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one.
The upbeat music is a mockery of Remus as he picks up his drink once more. He can't turn if off, though. Even as his eyes tingle and his exhaled breath is more harsh than his inhaled. Every time he listens to even one part of this album, be thinks of how excited Sirius had been.
Oh, the shape I'm in, he thinks. But back then! How it had made him smile.
Sirius' eyes had lit up, such a light as he'd not seen in those deep, dark eyes since the escape. He had always thought it a horrid cliché: that someone's eyes should light up. What rubbish! But he was ever more inclined to believe in those clichés when he thought of Sirius, even though the thought of Sirius being a cliché was ludicrous. How those eyes had lit, though.
"Remus, this is excellent!"
That lovely voice. It had always made the sun seem to shine all the brighter. But the sun doesn't shine anymore.
He takes a deep breath, strengthening, fortifying. Such a breath as to make him relax, if just a little. All in all, though, that one little breath: it makes no difference. Outside a light rain begins to tap on the roof and Remus smiles.
The roof outside the Gryffindor Tower was always easily accessible, given a broomstick and a certain cloak. They used to sit out there for hours, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, sometimes James would be there instead of or with one of them. Peter came once or twice, but heights had always frightened him.
"I love someone, Remus! I haven't loved anyone since I was a child, and I don't even know if that was love."
"I'm sure it was love, Sirius. Everybody loves their family on some level, just a bit." Just the two of them that night, Quidditch Practice had run late into the night.
"It doesn't' matter, this is love. I actually love someone!" He was grinning.
Remus had grinned too. "Who do you love?"
Remus takes another deep breath and wipes another tear from his cheek. "Life is a carnival." He whispers to himself. The rides, the jugglers, even the fairy floss! And with all the unpredictability of a carnival. Remus laughs humourlessly. At this carnival, he had just been mugged on a ghost train and left in a ditch behind some dodgy stand. Not a good carnival.
Remus' neck muscles give up and his head collapses into his hands, which are waiting ready to take up the task of support. Such a night! Such a horrid dreadful night he had had! The weight seems to have shifted in some way. It wasn't gone, but replaced with a different one, seemingly heavier, but who could tell?
He had received a letter one morning. He had been travelling, significantly further from home, to find a job. The letter had been addressed 'Remus J. Lupin, Wandering Down South in New Orleans' and therefore it was from Dumbledore. He had done so much over the years, that man. Remus doubted he would ever stop, not even to die. Like Professor Binns, he had thought to himself as he read the letter. Simple request: Come home, your presence is required AD. Who could refuse?
Apparition is an amazing thing, once mastered. His living room, however, had never seemed to come into focus as all his senses, at that moment, had been focused on it's one dishevelled occupant. Somebody could have collapsed a burning house right beside him and Remus would not have noticed.
"If memory serves," Sirius had said with a sad smile, "you promised we were going to meet again."
Remus had smiled, too, amidst tears. "If you're memory serves you well, you'll remember that you're the one that called on me."
How happy he had been that night. So many years and they had all seemed to disappear. The recuperation, the reestablishment, none of it had mattered because they were together once more and all would be well.
How Remus wishes, as tears fall salty on his lips, that he could recapture that sense of optimism. He doesn't know, now, what will happen. Back then it had not mattered. He and Sirius had fought each day as a day, and the future had been irrelevant, guided as they were by Dumbledore's wisdom.
He is on a mystery train, now. The future seems suddenly relevant and yet matters not. The tracks shoot out before the train, but it's nighttime and he does not know where they are leading, where he is going, if he is going. Perhaps there are no tracks out beyond the next turn, and they just stop. Would it matter? Would he care?
Once, as a young boy, he had felt that same sense of purposelessness. The thing that had rescued him then… what a thing! He remembered walking down that quaint little street.
Caldonia Street. So pretty, he had thought to himself. But he hadn't really been concerned. After all, his life was ruined, they knew. His most beloved friends, and now they knew, so he had left, and he didn't care. How many days? He had wondered. He had escaped as fast and as far as he could. If only his house had a serviceable fireplace, or if only he could apparate! But it didn't, and he couldn't, and so he walked.
Caldonia Street was nice, with a fair number of trees and pretty little gardens. The streetlights were just starting up. The light three poles from him wasn't working. He had considered pulling out his wand, but it was a muggle street.
He remembered noticing, on that fair evening, a… well, mannish boy walking towards him. So pretty, he had thought.
Remus sighs, remembering the lack of thought in his head at that time. Several days with lots of walking and no sleep or food seemed to eliminate thought, he supposes.
Remus looks up from his drink when he hears the doorbell ring. He half considers getting up, but he has a stage fright of sorts. He cannot leave the house, it just wouldn't do.
He has stage fright. He cannot face the world because, for him, the world ended with Sirius. He sits in a living room with firewater rank on his breath, and tears drying paths down his face. He could listen to music and muse on Sirius for the rest of his days and it doesn't matter because his life, Sirius, has ended.
Looking back on it, though, with a small smile stunted by sobs, having reached the end, he wants to start all over again.
End.