A/N: A long title but I like it. Basically, this is a story of two of the most pivotal moments in Remus and Tonks' relationship, which are pretty self-explanatory. Why I always torture these characters, I don't know... I hope I got character, tone, etc. right. Please read and review!

Words: 2065
Characters: Remus, Tonks
Time: During Deathly Hallows
Genre: Angst, Romance

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to JKR, not me.

He'd been gone for most of every day doing work for the Order. If he had been around more, perhaps he would have noticed, had some warning as to the news she was about to impart. Instead, in the weeks following their wedding, he had seen her only in the evenings, where he, cold and aloof and terrified, avoided her bubbly good cheer.

Perhaps his reluctance to focus on her was a mechanism, an unconscious form of self-defense. Every time he did focus on her, his fear for her threatened to overwhelm him. Perhaps that was why her news came as such a shock.

Like usual, Tonks was home before he was that night, waiting in the sitting room of their little flat. Weary, tense, Remus entered to the sound of her gasp. She hurried towards him and grasped his arm, her eyes searching his out. Only with great effort did Remus manage to look at her, for his mind immediately began to fill with terror, anxiety, regret…

"Remus?" Tonks said, unusually quietly. "Remus, I've got something to tell you."

There was thinly veiled excitement, or perhaps nerves, building behind her voice. He could only nod, mute, and wait.

"Remus, we're – we're going to have a baby!"

Seconds passed. Perhaps minutes, even hours. Ringing silence echoed through the room. Her words seemed to travel sluggishly through the air, into his ears, into his mind, like a slow-acting venom, gradually numbing all his facilities for comprehension and action. He stared blankly into her shining, beautiful face, with her eyes that reminded him of peace and joy.

"Remus?"

"A – a baby?" he repeated.

A spark lit in his soul, something he didn't quite recognize, but it was gone almost before he could even remember that it had happened.

"Well, yeah. I'm pregnant, Remus. I know for sure."

"You do? For certain?"

He was speaking at random, just repeating her statements back at her, anything to delay the terrible truth of what she had said from spreading from his dark mind to his feeble heart. There was no stopping the dawning, however; soon panic swarmed, clasping around his heart like little claws. He stumbled backward and could no longer see Tonks as she was, radiant and eager, but rather saw his nightmares, a beast growing in her belly, ripping her apart, destroying her, born with his terrible affliction, and it was, of course, his fault, always his fault, for loving her, marrying her, a crime and a sin beyond belief…

"Remus, what's wrong?"

She was running towards him, holding out her delicate, clean hands to him…

"NO!" he roared, shoving her away with brutal, inhuman force.

The crash of Tonks hitting the coffee table and tumbling backwards startled Remus back to his senses. The sight of her on the floor, an angry red abrasion on her elbow, as minor as such an injury might have been, sent a wave of remorse through Remus so powerful that he nearly dropped to his knees.

"No – no – Dora, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean - "

Wavering on his feet, he made to help her. The look on her face stopped him dead in his tracks.

It wasn't anger or even shock. It wasn't even sorrow. No, what was so staggering and dreadful in her eyes was the blank, simple resignation, tinged with disappointment. Part of her – most of her? – had expected this, and she had been prepared.

"I'm sorry too, then," she said flatly. "Not for being pregnant. I'm not sorry about that at all. I'm sorry for you."

She rose to her feet on her own, wincing a little bit and rubbing her arm. Then she crossed to where Remus stood, still as a statue. She extended her hand, smooth fingertips barely brushing his arm.

"Not now," Remus begged at last. "Please… not with me… I can't – what I've done to you - "

"How much more selfish can you get?" Tonks breathed, and her hand on his arm was trembling. "How can you continue to demand that all the blame be yours? Do you enjoy wallowing in your own self-pity? You're ashamed of loving me, Remus. Ashamed of yourself! How can you live like that, Remus? How can we?

"Don't you see the beauty of this? The life, the hope? Don't you know that I'm scared, too, and I need you, more than ever, because I love you, my husband, my child's father, Remus!"

"I can't… I can't… My crime is unforgivable, you don't understand – the baby – the baby will - "

"I don't understand? I married you!"

"You shouldn't have!" yelled Remus, tears scratching his throat raw. "I have ruined you, and an innocent child, and for that, I should never be forgiven!"

"Shut up. Shut up! I've had it, Remus, I've had it, I never want to hear that again – I never want to see it in your eyes when you look at me – stop it, Remus, stop!"

For at her words he had begun to back away. He refused, in his despicable cowardice, to make another promise he could not keep. He backed away, unable to tear his face away from her stricken one, all the way to the door through which he had just entered. He shoved it open. Cool autumn air made the gray hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"No! Remus, where are you – no!"

And he could hear no more. Nothing but his name, as he ran as fast as he could away from the one person that ever made him love, and thus made him cruel, detestable, irredeemable. He left her standing in the doorway, no longer even screaming his name. She merely watched him leave while tears streamed down her set face.

The night he returned to her was a new moon. The sky was black as pitch, cloudy, and starless.

His whole body ached, every muscle, every fiber of his being. Every beat of his heart was like a stake driven through his ribs, hot and sharp.

Then he began to run.

He flew through freezing, dirty streets like a madman, senselessly, knowing only the general direction of Tonks' parents' home and taking those turnings which he deemed most helpful in pointing him to her. The house, he knew, was miles upon miles away. It didn't matter. He ran for the sake of running, of exhausting himself. As he ran, he mind churned, as if the pounding of his feet, his racing legs, were flicking a switch in his head and his heart. The exertion cleansed him.

He didn't know what had sparked his change of heart. It had been coming on, he supposed, ever since Harry's ringing words in Grimmauld Place. Since then he had only wandered, searching for the courage, searching for the reason… and it was her face in his mind's eye that made him come to and see sense.

When he could run no farther – when his mind was made up – he turned mid-step and Disapparated, emerging outside the protective enchantments of her parents' house. He remembered her favorite place there, in the backyard, and a feeling deep in his gut told him that she would be there tonight.

A ripple of dry water cooled him down as he, privy to the area's Secret, passed into its magic boundaries. Skirting the front door, Remus pushed open a rusty kissing gate and squinted through the blackness. Something made him hesitant to light his wand just yet.

Perhaps, though, his hesitancy was poorly timed, for mere seconds later, he found himself with a hot, glowing wandtip pressed against his throat. Its silvery light cast its owner's face into sharp, half-shadowed relief.

Her eyes were cold.

"When was the first time I kissed Remus Lupin?"

Why does that have to be your security question?

Well, it had better be one you can remember the answer to!

I'll remember.

Snow-cold lips meeting in a rush, a moment of blissful miscalculation, spiraling into thoughtlessness, lost in her, in the moment, her lips and pink cheeks and soft hair…

"In the kitchen of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, January of two years ago."

Hard as he tried, his voice was not steady. Nor was her wand. Tremulously she lowered it, so the light on her face became paler and more gentle. But then her other hand flew out of nowhere and struck him hard across the cheek, her gold wedding band slamming into the corner of his lips. He felt a tiny bit of warm blood trickle to his chin.

"Payment in kind, Remus," she said softly.

"I deserve much worse."

She didn't refute him.

"We can't keep doing this, Remus. You can't. You can't keep leaving. I can't handle it again. You have to stay here, or stay gone, for good, because this… this can't go on. I can't handle it again, I just can't. I love you too much for that."

Only twice, in all the time he had known her, had he heard such fear pervading her voice, making her words waver, her confidence crumble. Once was when he had been about to leave for Greyback's lair for the very first time. He had hoped that Tonks, not, after all, directly involved in the mission, would not be informed, but in a such a small organization as the Order, communication was rapid and vital.

"Goodbye, Remus," she'd said to him. "I mean – good luck, right? Yeah. Bye. See you – see you when you get back."

He hadn't registered her concern at the time. Anxious, cautious, and preoccupied, he had avoided her gaze and merely nodded as he swept out the door. Now, though, he knew.

The other time was much more recently, and he had noticed and acknowledged her fear very consciously. It was after Mad-Eye had died, when, despite Remus's mounting misgivings, he had succumbed to his own sorrow, and they had spent the night in each other's arms. He couldn't tell which tears were his and which were hers, but he heard her voice distinctly. "I don't know how we're going to get through this, Remus."

She could have meant anything – mourning Mad-Eye, surviving the war, mending their deteriorating relationship.

But here and now, everything was compounded, every deep-seated dread and mind-numbing fear spilled out of her in one shaky, threatening rush.

"So decide, right now," she finished. "I don't know if I can forgive you yet. But I've got to know. I can't keep waiting. I've got to know."

"Dora…"

Remus tried to step closer to her in the semi-darkness. But before he had expected to, he was forced to stop. Her stomach, big and round with their baby, filled the space between them.

Slowly Remus sank to his knees before her. He placed his hands on her big, smooth belly, feeling life under his fingertips. He kissed her stomach and rested his forehead there, just holding her, supporting her. He felt heat in his heart, suffuse and simple and warm, and it burned away the memories, the nightmares, the things he had once feared, and through touching the life growing inside Tonks, the spark grew until all he could feel was hope.

"I swear," he breathed. "On the life of our child… I won't leave you again. Never again. I was wrong, and I was foolish, and I do not deserve your love… but I will cherish it, you, more than anything. You saved me from myself, Dora... On the life of our son or daughter, I swear…"

He could not go on, but he hoped desperately that she understood. With slow, careful deliberation, Tonks sank to her knees too, then clutched his face in her hands. Her thumb brushed away the sticky blood she had drawn.

"I'll take you at your word, then," she said.

And at last, she smiled. Smiled through glittering tears. She pressed trembling lips to his. For how long they stayed like that, he didn't know; he kissed her back and held her. They breathed together as the clouds cleared, revealing bare patches of a moonless night, scattered with him.