Disclaimer: Who would I be fooling if I said these characters were mine? No one, that's who. Plus lets face it I would never feel good telling people I'd made the wonderful characters of Harry Potter when really all the credit belongs to Mrs. J.K. Rowling.

Savin' Me

Moonlight kissed the cold concrete wall in front of him. The pale white light seemed to burn into his mind, fighting away the cloud of misery that had set in…

The walls hurt him, almost physically with their oppressiveness and so he kept his eyes fixated on the soft but harsh light now cascading in through his cell window.

With no sense of awareness, he pulled himself from his sitting position to his knees and crawled over to the small window. Painfully he dragged himself up to look out at the scene surrounding him.

The unforgiving and violent waves crashed, the sound of the ocean had once soothed him but here it seemed to burn his ears, slamming into his brain over and over again. He didn't like to look at the water…

So he turned his eyes to the sky, at least he could see the stars tonight.

I wonder if James and Lily are watching… Before he could stop it, horrible mental images of James' crumpled body lying on the doorstep and Lily's tear stained lifeless face bombarded his mind.

It is my fault. I should've known Peter was weak, I should've known he'd be the one to snap. Dead… All my fault.

NO!

Sirius forced himself out of the spiral of despair for what seemed to be the millionth time that week as he heard the rattling breath of a dementor slip by his cell. Somebody was following the creature and opened up the metal hole in his door to throw in his dinner.

He ignored it.

His eyes scanned the stars again as he repeated to himself over and over Innocent…Innocent… It had become a mantra he would repeat whenever he felt the chill of the dementors pass. It was this word and this word alone that kept him sane.

He stared at the sky as if he were trying to discover something he already knew. Then he saw it.

The moon: full, and almost beautiful.

But something kept pounding in his mind. Something that told him he should hate it because it hurt someone he loved…

Remus…

Soon his thoughts became a steady stream of his old friend, and lover's name…

Remus…Remus…Remus…

I need Remus! If I could just get him to come, if I could only talk to him for a moment I could explain. He'd know the truth, he'd help me prove my innocence, we could kill Peter, we could--.

But Sirius knew Remus would never come, even if he, a registered werewolf, were granted permission to visit the mass murderer… Sirius knew Remus would never come. Remus thought he'd betrayed them, Remus thought Peter, Lily, and James were all dead because of him.

No… He'd never come.

Sirius felt as though a weight were pressing on his chest and he wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor of his cell and just die of despair, but the moon was holding his gaze and it refused to allow him to look away.

It's perfectly circular form brought a sense of agony to Sirius that he'd never experienced before. He knew somewhere his old friend was in his wolfish body, the form he hated so much, caged… tearing himself to shreds.

It was his fault again. Remus had no one to come keep him company on the full moon any more and so he'd just take out all his anger and sadness on his own body. And it was his fault.

Sirius could see him in his mind's eye; bloodied, unconscious, naked, and completely alone in the darkness of his barn… of his prison. Sirius was painfully aware that this image would be very close to the reality that awaited Remus in just a few hours.

Sirius wanted to leave his cell… for the first time since his imprisonment he wanted to leave his cell with his entire being. Until now he'd hated his cell, loathed every stone, every bar… but he'd felt too much despair to actually want to leave. He felt he deserved to be there, it was ultimately his fault they were gone, his fault the truth remained hidden… but now Sirius felt a desire unlike any other he'd ever felt, to leave his cell and be with the man he loved… to keep him safe and explain everything.

But he'd never come… and Sirius could never leave.

"REMUS!" Sirius screamed as loudly as he could at the moon.

He put his hands through the thick angry bars of the cell window, reaching for the sky, tears pouring down his face.

"REMUS!" He howled his name over and over again. With fury, agony, despair, pleading, and finally he barely whispered the name.

"Remus… please."

Sirius slid down the cold stone wall into a ball on the floor, tears running down his cheeks.

And the moonlight still shone silently through the window, and the waves still crashed down below… but Sirius felt something new inside himself break.

And the rattling passed by his door again…