Title: A broken family
Characters: Remus Lupin, Dora Tonks/Lupin
Summary: He'd never been very empathetic. He then realised that he must be a very hard person to love. One-shot. Remus-centric.
Notes: It's currently eleven O'clock in the evening here in the U.K. and seeing as I cannot sleep, I have write this! Happy August 11th! As per usual, reviews are appreciated and all that! Take care and I hope you enjoy reading this!
Forgive me. Hate me.
The thoughts run through his head, and he can feel himself becoming a shell of who he once was. He's falling apart, his mind tearing himself apart at the guilt he feels.
He needs to leave in order to try to think. But even when he's gone he still thinks of the same things. He keeps thinking of how he has now ruined her life, bringing a cursed life on an unborn child.
Forgive me. Hate me.
He loves her, and that is why, after his thinking time at the local muggle bar by their house, he gathers small snippets of what he needs, before he leaves. He walks out on her while she is sleeping, leaving just a note on his bedside table for when she wakes up.
The sorting hat was wrong with its sorting, he shouldn't have ever been a Gryffindor, he wasn't brave or courageous. He should have been in Slytherin, because he had cursed someone – and that was a crime worthy of Azkaban.
After all, there has never been a Slytherin who didn't come out of school as evil. Take you-know-who for example. He was in Slytherin. The house he was supposed to have been placed in.
Forgive me. Hate me.
He wakes up the following day, confused for a few seconds as to why he is not next to her sleeping form, until it comes crashing back to him. A child – she is expecting a child – and the risks were too much for him to bear.
He has a nagging feeling in the back of his head telling him to go back home, forget about his fears, but for the love of Merlin he knows that he cannot. His conscience may be there telling him the difference between right and wrong, but his fears are too tied up in his subconscious to allow him to even think of doing anything.
He feels terrible, a stabbing pain in his gut, even though it is nowhere near the full moon, and when he closes his eyes to try and get some silence, all he can see is her. Dead on the floor because of what she was pregnant with.
Forgive me. Hate me.
He would love to go back home, for the love of Merlin he would love to. He wants to try and convince her to get rid of it. But he knows his Dora simply too well, and though she would see sense in anything else, she would never see sense in this.
After all, how many nights had she been up telling him that she wanted to have a family with him after the war ended? He knew she would never give up her one chance at a family.
A broken family at least,
Forgive me. Hate me.
He should have been there for her, trying to ready her for whatever problems came with pregnancy – but he hadn't. For months he sat in a muggle park brooding about why he was so scared about this.
If his fellow marauders were around he knew that he would have never let himself come to this. But they weren't there anymore, and thus he had allowed himself to become a coward, a man with nothing other than a broken spirit and no friends to drag him forwards on with his life.
Forgive me. Hate me.
The first thoughts he thinks of when he wakes up in the morning, is whether – had he not ended up passing on his curse – whether he would even be able to raise the child anyway.
He pushes the thought away as soon as he thinks it, trying to remain adamant on his choices to stay away from his wife and not allow them to break apart, like the world seems to be.
Forgive me. Hate me.
Three months pass, the same endless routine goes on and on, and finally he tries to break the chain. The never ending chain of misery and despair,
Before he goes back home he ponders on the thought of his wife seeing him again, how she will react, whether she will allow him to come back into her life. He sighs, and after making several stops around the country, returns to their house – knocking on the door.
Forgive me. Hate me.
She opens the door with tear stained eyes, and a hand on her stomach as she holds onto the door. He guesses that she is about five months along. He immediately feels a strong surge of self-loathing when he sees her eyes fill with tears at the sight of him.
He holds out flowers – roses, her favourite – and a box of Honey duke's finest, as he tries not to catch her eyes, instead finding interest in the floor and his shoes. He bites his lip, trying to come up with a logical excuse as to why he acted as he did, but he cannot find any.
Then he looks up at her, watching as she sobs messily, her morphs fading out to her usual looks, before looking at the floor again. He'd never been very empathetic. He then realised that he must be a very hard person to love.
Sucking up all of the courage in his entire being, he looks at her without a trace of emotion on his face as he says,
"Forgive me, hate me – please."