He didn't know what normality meant.
He'd been a child once (he must have been), but he could barely remember. He could barely remember the smiles and the warmth and the smells from the kitchen, and what it was like to have a happy family. Afterwards, his parents still talked to him just the same, but they had changed, and he suspected, long after he grew up and he began to understand a little better, that when they weren't talking to him, they barely talked much at all.
And it hurt. God, it hurt. The physical agony wasn't the worst of it, though – the worst of it was the isolation, and the guilt. He couldn't remember what he did when he was like that. What if he had killed someone without knowing what he'd done? But the only blood he ever tasted in his mouth was his own, or at least, he managed to convince himself that that was true, because it must be, because he always transformed and woke up in the same place.
(He wouldn't have wished it on his worst enemy, he often said, but that wasn't strictly true; it was just the line adopted for well-meaning Healers who took care of his scars sometimes, and for the young witches and wizards he might have happened to mentor. No, he would have wished it a thousand times and more on his worst enemy, if it would have done any good – if he didn't know the monster would enjoy it.)
When he got to school (and he was astonished to be there; he hadn't thought he'd ever have any semblance of a normal life), he met three boys, and a girl, and he had friends. It took him a long time to say the work out loud – years, in fact, though he said it to himself in his head. He didn't think they'd allow them to say it to them.
But they were the best friends, he thought, anyone could have had, and he thought there must have been someone else out there who deserved them much more than he did. But he tried not to question it, and he tried to lead a normal life, even after everything that went wrong during the first war, and then when it came back around again.
He found a woman who accepted what he was, and she made him smile (even if it was only because she reminded him of someone else). But he deserved a little happiness after all he'd been through, he told himself, and then when he was gone, he didn't know where else to find it.
He swore he loved her (and he did, he really, really did), and he whispered sweet words into her ear and she whispered them into his, and he thought maybe this was normality, except that when he was caressing her he thought of him, and he left her when the moon rose because he didn't want her to see what he was really like, and because it was something he had shared with him.
When they lay in bed together, he traced her soft, warm skin with his fingers and he didn't say anything. And when they made love, he didn't look into her eyes but he murmured into her neck just one word: "Sirius."
And she never mentioned it, because all they really had was each other, and might have been the price they had to pay for normality.
Written for Schermionie's 5, 10, 20, 50, 70, 100 Fandoms Challenge and Fire The Canon's Monthly Competion (September) – Write about your first OTP. I like to have my pairings fit canon; I'm not trying to bash Remus/Tonks, just to fit Remus/Sirius in around it!