Everything belongs to J.K.Rowling.
Third and final Remus/Tonks fic - managed to put them up in completely the wrong order, sorry about that. If you want to read the others it should go "Pink", "Moonlight" and then "Ashes" but as they are one shots it doesn't really matter if you haven't read the others. Thanks for reading and thanks to those who reviewed.
It was hard to remember a time when he had not been afraid of the darkness. As a boy he had watched the moon untroubled and curious, read books he had smuggled up to the bedroom by it's dim light long after he was supposed to have been asleep. Strange to think that the light cast against a dead lump of rock thousands of miles away could have such an effect on him, stranger still to think that it had not always been so.
The attack itself was hazy. Sometimes he would wake in the night shaking, forcing back an image of yellow eyes and sharp teeth, unsure if it was Fenrir Greyback he was remembering or a transformed image of himself. There had been only one occasion when he had found himself lying amongst the remains of his bedroom with the copper taste of blood in his mouth, naked and confused. He did not dare revisit that memory often. His parents had been more careful about security after that mistake, and aside from the unforeseen incident in which he had almost attacked Harry he had removed himself from people enough to prevent any chance of a reoccurrence.
The moon. It waxed and waned with relentless inevitability, a calm silver light with no more knowledge of the havoc it could cause than he had when he transformed.
He had grown to hate it, and yet..
The woman curled beside him on the bed was silver as a unicorn in the pale light, her face serene. There was no worry shadowing her face; whatever her dreams may have been they were peaceful and untroubled, her hair a silky black shadow on the pillow. Shifting slightly on the bed Remus watched as she snuggled closer, all her usual bravado lost to exhaustion.
He pulled her closer and brushed his fingertips against the soft skin of her shoulder.
Too old, too poor, too dangerous.
He had argued with her until even he could not remember why they had been fighting, all his carefully constructed arguments collapsing in the face of her stubbornness. It was never wise to underestimate an Auror - she had fought him with all the single minded aggression she would have shown a Death Eater, and with none of the mercy. Perhaps if she had not show such courage, had not been so vulnerable he would have been able to parry such blows, perhaps if he had not fallen in love with her he would have been able to disentangle himself. Their world was falling apart around them and he could not remember being so happy.
Pulling the blankets over them Remus nuzzled her cheek and listened to the soft sigh of her breath in the darkness. The half moon watched them with a silent silver gaze, but pulling her closer Remus found that for once he found he did not care.