ACCEPTED
Dora," Remus begins, putting his hand on her hair. "I love you. And that's exactly why I can't—why we can't—do this. Please," he begs. It tears his heart out to say the words, but he couldn't possibly put his burden on anyone—least of all the woman he loves.
"I don't care," Tonks replies fiercely. Her eyes, an intense gray today, pierce into Remus', but he tries to minimize the effect that they usually have on him by not meeting them.
"It doesn't matter if you don't care," Remus says sadly. "What matters is that I care. You're young! You don't deserve to be tied to me. You know what I am, Dora." Remus is exasperated. Why can't she just let up? By holding on, she's only making this more painful for both of them.
"I do know what you are, and I love you anyways," Tonks says, leaning in so that her lips are nearly touching Remus' chin. "I don't care about it—any of it. There's a war going on; I can't wait anymore."
Remus tears his eyes away from her. He can't stand this, knowing that he could have her but he won't let himself. He can't stand knowing that he's choosing to hurt her and seeing the pain in her eyes kills him on the inside. "That's exactly my point, Dora," Remus says softly. "There's a war going on. Being with me would only get you k—it would only get you in trouble." He cannot force the word killed out of his lips, not with the nightmarish images it brought to his mind.
In the dim moonlight he can barely see her lips as they whisper, "I understand."
That sentence, the fact that she understands why he can't love her, why he has to let her go, makes Remus forget every remnant of responsibility in his veins and lean in to press his lips to hers. He feels her tense muscles relax under his touch and for a moment he feels weary age melt off of him and for a minute he feels like they are both teenagers kissing in the Shrieking Shack.
He loves the way her lips aren't perfect; they are slightly chapped, but they touch his with a fierce passion that makes his veins burn with fire such as he has only felt while transforming. With a sigh, Remus pulls back, a ghost of a smile in his haunted eyes, only a shadow of the grin on the face of the woman in front of him.
"We don't have to be like that," she whispers. "Are you tired of it all?"
He nods.
"Let me try," she says. "I can be that part of you."
"I can't put you in dan-,"
She cuts him off. "Shh."
Neither of them speak for a moment, and then Remus says, "Nobody can know. I can't—if they knew... you'd be good as dead."
But they don't have to think of that right now.