She wakes, heavy, and is not surprised to find herself alone.
The bed in their house is wide, white, and cold on one side. It is not traditional; she likes it, mostly, because of this. It is not something her mother would have chosen, or something her father would pick out. It is wide, and square, and flat. At the moment, it is also empty.
Tonks pulls herself up in the bed and sits with her knees as close to her as they will go, legs wide because she can no longer put them together, what with the baby hanging heavily in her belly between them. She doesn't have to look in the mirror to know her hair is salt-and-pepper white-grey, her eyes dark brown, her skin the consistency and colour of old corduroy. She smiles ruefully when the baby kicks, unaware. This is not the first time Remus has left in the night. It will not be the last.
She does not pull herself out of bed; the sun is only beginning to rise, just, and getting out of bed has lately become a secondary concern. To amuse herself as a child, Tonks thought constantly of 'how would I react, if…?' – lately, these thoughts have centred around 'how would I react if they found me? If they killed us?'. She decides, this morning, if they found her she would lie still, coiled, and wait. The thought barely even makes her guilty, anymore.
Remus thinks she doesn't know he leaves in the early hours of the morning. When he first did it she lay completely still all night, convincing herself it was a dream. Now, it has happened so many times that she rolls over, gets herself a sandwich, tries to stay far from the front door, tries not to wait. The second, third, fourth time he did it, she convinced herself it was a phase; that for all the loss in Remus' life, she was lucky he stayed more nights than he left. After all, the baby remains their warm centre, the light in Remus' eyes; he touches her stomach and is lost, forgets her presence, eyes wide in wonder, lips twisted to smile gently when the baby moves. It is not romantic, but it is companionable, and it will do. It is a sort of love.
Tonks is not interested in competing, in being petty, in treating this like a game. She is alive. She is not interested in acting like she isn't. Waking alone like this is just another feature of her life, just as grief is a feature of Remus'. They get by.
He said Sirius' name only once.
Not intimately - not when they were in bed- like she had prepared herself for him to. In a way, it had hurt more to hear it when she padded softly into his room, (hair bright pink, short, all pixie-angles and small feet), and put her arms around his neck from behind when he was reading a book, and kissed his ear. He laughed, and said, "Leave off, Pads." And then looked at her, scared. Heartbroken.
The night after was the first time he left. The nights after were more difficult for his presence.
It wasn't the name that made him start to leave. It wasn't even the fact that sometimes Tonks could almost feel Sirius lying in the bed between them. It was her mistake that pushed them; her pushing that made things so strange. She listened too closely to Molly, with her euphemisms and her, "Did you know, Sirius…? Did you know they-?", barely able to say the words.
She prepared. She practised something, naively, that she hadn't since she'd been fifteen and terrified and excited and curious about what her body could do that no one else's could. She practised the lump at her neck, the long angle of a jaw, flattening herself, widening her shoulders, coaxing what was between her legs to resemble something else entirely.
Finally, when she got it right, she changed as they went to bed. She waited, in the darkness, until he turned to her, then rolled over and pressed herself against him.
She whispered, "If this is what you want. If this is what you like…" and kissed him with a harder edge; everything smoother, less soft; herself hard against his thigh, pressing him down, more excited than perhaps she should have been, honestly believing – fool that she was – that this just might fix them. She rocked against him.
It seemed like hours of silence before he threw her off, horrified, and stared at her in terror from outside of the bed; her, sitting there in shock with her man's body, her erection still painfully visible pressing at her pyjama bottoms, her breasts, small initially, now entirely gone. His eyes flitted across her; adam's apple, to chest, to her eyes in what was now a man's face. His mouth, aghast, closed. She had never seen him angry before, never felt him like this, never been so ashamed. After the shouting; ("Never do this again. Never do this again!"), he left. Again.
When he came back, he was calm. He told her she was beautiful (but what did that mean?); that he loved her. He did not explain anything more. He did not touch her for a week afterwards. When that week ended, he acquiesced to her prodding; let her do what she wanted. Three weeks later, she missed her period. In all that time, the man – the man she had been - was never discussed. Sirius' name did not cross his lips. They continued, blindly, as usual.
Sometimes Tonks wishes she were brave enough, or mad enough, to force him. To roll over again and press herself against him instead of the other way around; not for love, but to feel like she was in control. She wishes she could bite him and claw at him and force him to love her, force him to beg and whimper, to worship her, like she did him. It was easy to love him when she did not know him. Now, some days, it seems almost impossible.
She presses a hand against her stomach. She touches her face with the other; jaw lengthened again, a man for all purposes but where the baby sits, a warm weight inside her.
She stares out of the window and decides he will never see her like this again. She would see it; in quiet moments, when he left her; in the bathroom, fascinated; but never again would he see her so changed.
She hardly has the strength for it nowadays, anyhow.