Title: Fire of Ashes
Author: ReticentSurprise
Rating: PG -- because I can't bring myself to rate it G. No language, no drug references -- wait! PG due to reference of slash! Hah!
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Disclaimer: Is my name J.K. Rowling or Rufus Wainwright? Not the last time I checked. Hence, the songs and the characters are not mine.
A/N: Last Lent, Nadia gave up reading Remus/Sirius. She made it, all 40 days (and Sundays), and this was my Easter gift to her. She cooed over it, which was her mistake. This was the first fanfiction I had EVER written, and she liked it so much that I started writing more. Rough beta'd by Nad, heavily ripped apart my myself a good 6 months after I wrote it.
Dedication: To Nadia, of course. May she still like it.
----
I'm no Rasputin, you ain't no Rapunzel
I have willingly fallen, and you have cut your own hair
Thought we needed motion, at least until the war kicks in
I go out in the world with you the last night of the burning flare
Trains will follow trains under the dun, under the moon
And I do believe that all that I can do is croon
And I do believe that there was a morning that I saw your true love
burning
next to me
But now there's ashes, from exquisite eyelashes
So far away, past the border, past the turnstyle
And even I know, and I do believe, and I do believe that there was a morning
I saw your true love burning next to me
But now there's ashes, from exquisite eyelashes
So far away, past the border, past the turnstyle
Sometimes I wonder if it is true humility
For this humiliation
Walking in the twilight, walking in the crows of day
From this station of passion, I go
----
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday dear Siri,
Happy Birthday to you.
Remus Lupin lights the candle on a small chocolate cupcake. It is a special candle, one he got from the orthodox church down the road.
He likes going into the church, when there is a service and when there isn't. It's small, but beautiful. He's seen pictures of other churches where the entire ceiling tells a story and each windows houses a saint. This church -- his church, he thinks -- has only a small fresco on the ceiling and is far too poor to afford more than one stained window saint, but Remus believes it one of the most beautiful places he's ever seen. The sparse ikons, the wooden benches, the whole building has absorbed the scent of the sandalwood incense that is burned in every service, and it sticks to his clothes for hours after leaving.
He catches a whiff of it as he leaves the cupcake candle flickering and goes into the next room, his study. His journal lies open to a blank page, ready for the day's melancholy thoughts. At one point he had decided to leave it to Harry when he dies, but now he thinks he'll just burn it before that happens. Burn it and all of its brothers, troops of leather-bound memories that only he cares about.
Or maybe he'll just leave them all, and the few remaining friends who come to box up his life after he's dead can decide what to do with them.
It takes a moment before Remus realizes that he wrote all of that down, didn't just think it. He shakes his head: he's getting old.
"Old and forgetful," he complains to the empty house.
Well.
He thought it was empty.
"You're younger than I am, love."
Remus keeps his eyes on his journal but writes nothing more. "Go away, please."
"Well since you said please." Instead of leaving, the other one throws himself down in the chair by the fireplace. "Ahh, the fireplace. Fond memories of fireplaces, I have. You do too."
"We've been through this before." Remus says steadily. "You're dead."
"I know." The shadow in the corner of his eye stretches out.
"Then why won't you die?!" Remus is on his feet, trembling, shouting at an empty chair.
Sirius is gone.
"It's my 47th birthday today." The voice comes from the bookshelf to his left, and Remus forces himself not to look, not to give in, not to make it real. But he can see flickering, dancing, from the corner of his eye as the dead man waltzes around his study.
"I know. I got you a cupcake. It's in the kitchen."
"Why the taper candle, Re? Why not a trick candle that won't go out, no matter how hard you try to force it?" Sirius dances purposefully into his line of sight. "It'd be more fitting, don't you think?"
"It's a prayer candle. Instead of making a wish when it goes out, a prayer is said when it's lit." Remus looks at Sirius for a moment, then looks away again. "Prayers are more reliable than wishes."
"Prayers are nothing more than wishes." Sirius scoffs, goes back to the fire.
"You know, James didn't visit me when I celebrated his birthday last month. Why are you here?" Remus asks as rudely as he can.
Sirius looks up at him, and he sees a deep hurt in those puppy-dark eyes. "You know why me."
Remus knows, logically, that he's standing alone in his study. He knows, logically, that the man he sees sitting there is dead. He knows, logically, that he is only talking to himself. He knows, logically, that it should worry him.
He knows, secretly, he's always hated logic.
"I know why. It's always been you." Remus walks around his desk and sits on the floor beside the empty chair with the dead man in it. "The real question is why me?"
Sirius begins to run his fingers though the aging werewolf's hair. "You're only 46, Moony, and look at this hair. Grey and white on grey and white, like ashes, ashes, we all fall down."
"Why me, Siri? Why am I the last one alive? Why did I have to bury all of you? Who's going to bury me?" He feels uncomfortably warm in front of the fire but doesn't want to move, so he takes his sweater off.
"You thought you'd be the first to go?" A question, but not a question. Once, when too much Firewhiskey had flowed, Remus had told Sirius how he'd never expected to live past 25, how he always thought he'd die young. "It's one of life's little ironies that not only are you the last to die, but you're the last for the second time."
"Tonks did it, Paddy." Remus says quietly. "It hit the stores at midnight. Children all over the world right now are devouring the final year of Harry's life at Hogwarts, and they think it's a fantasy. They don't know that it's all the truth. They have no idea that the now-famous J.K. Rowling is the same Nymphadora Tonks they read about. Most of them couldn't believe it if they were told."
"It doesn't matter that they believe. It matters that they were told." Sirius slips to the floor and faces the other man. "What else do you want to say to me?"
"Why me? I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you. But why me? Why not one of your beautiful girls or pretty boys, why someone who is grey and old years before he should be?" Remus can feel the tears slipping out. "How in the world could I ever have been good enough for you?"
"Oh, Reme." He feels arms comforting him and his breath is gone. "You're so beautiful and you refuse to acknowledge it. Those others I used to date had nothing on you, and you know it. You always looked so cute, then handsome when the grey started to come in, and you have this incredible intelligence on top of it all. Not many other pretty boys can carry on a conversation about anything other than hair gel. And I love you. We don't choose who we fall in love with, but if I could have had a choice, I wouldn't have chosen any differently."
"Siri?" Remus still feels as though he can't breathe. He coughs, and it gets a little better. "This isn't the first time you've visited me at this house."
"No love, it isn't." Sirius rubs his back a little.
"But this time I can feel you. You're touching me, and I feel it." Remus begins to feel worried by what this might imply. "Why is that? Are you really here?"
"Remus." He turns his head to see a dark-haired man with glasses crouched beside him.
"And this is the first time James has come, too." Remus adds helplessly.
"Moony, can you do something for me?" James asks, and Remus hates the pity in his eyes. Then he wonders why James should pity him.
"What do you want me to do, Prongs?" It's somehow reassuring to use the old familiar nickname.
"Think back to everything you did since you came home."
"It's okay," Remus smiles humorlessly. "I know."
The dark haired men who aren't there stand as Remus sits complacently in front of a fireplace he doesn't have. The fire he closes his eyes to was started in the kitchen when he lit a candle but forgot to put it in a cupcake. It set a napkin on fire, and the napkin's fire caught a table cloth and a table, and it continued to spread throughout the small house until it reached all the rooms.
When a fire department gets there, it is useless to do anything but try to prevent the blaze from spreading and wait for it to burn itself out.
They get there only shortly before a group of horrified people, most of whom are wearing quite unusual clothes. A young man with glasses begins to cry as the remains of the house turn black like Sirius's hair and grey and white like Remus's.
No one notices three young men laughing and joking as they walk away behind the house.
----
What needs fixing? Drop a line. Thanks for reading!