By: Spiral
Rating: Rated R for sexual content.
Summary: From exile, Remus Lupin's thoughts turn to forgiveness... Sequel to Werewolf, Farewell.
Disclaimer: Remus and Severus are not mine and I don't make any money whatsoever. They belong to J.K.Rowling. I just like to put them through the wringer from time to time.
Notes: This little story was inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets 33-36, and I was inspired to read them by the RADA CD When Love Speaks. Thank you Mr Rickman, you gift us yet again.
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack, he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
Remus Lupin shut the book that lay in his lap, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His exhaustion and the dull rattle of the train carriage conspired to rob him of his powers of concentration. He so desperately needed sleep after the previous night, but perversely, even though he had a two hour journey ahead of him, his mind would not free him from consciousness.
This afternoon he was going home, and yet 'home' was exactly where he felt he had just come from. He felt ripped, dislocated. Not his body, no, the healing potion had seen to that. It was his mind that was causing him problems, and he knew of nothing that would salve that particular ailment. It had all happened too fast, the events of the previous night and early that morning. He struggled to come to terms with it. Sirius, his old friend who he had learned to hate for so long, was an innocent man...Peter, the friend he had thought of as a hero, a martyr, was alive and the betrayer - an instrument of Voldemort. And Siruius was free, had somehow escaped after Remus had transformed and lost all knowledge of his human cares under the full, round moon. May Taliesin walk with you Sirius, wherever you are now...
The night in the forest was a blur of senses and hunger, of sharp scents and the small shrieks of terrified woodland creatures fleeing before him. The power that had rippled through his body was even now, the day after, like a distant dream of some impossible event. No matter how may times it happened, the memory of his wolf-self always felt like that to Remus.
These were not the only memories that seemed unimaginable to Remus Lupin, but which he knew knew had to have happened. He could still feel Severus' touch on his skin, feel the heat and tightness of him. Lupin shivered, and ached. How long had it been? Had it really been eighteen years? Touching him again after all those years had felt like picking up a game of chess when the last move had been made only yesterday, and the soapstone pieces were smooth and familiar.
He had not forgotten one inch of the man's body, nor the scent of his skin - that beautiful musk of his arousal. Lupin had run his lips across Severus' chest to drink in that scent before moving downwards to the place where it became overwhelming. Gods, he could have stayed there for days.
And then Severus had moved, and Lupin had felt his mouth on him too...and while he was there, his fingers had reached out and entwined Lupin's. It was a gesture that had made Lupin want to cry.
If it had been any other time in the cycle of the moon, Lupin's own release would not have mattered a great deal to him. The pleasure of watching, and hearing, the pleasure he was giving would have been enough - Severus' head thrown back, his long black hair splayed across the pillow, his lips parted slightly as he gave the occasional uncontrolled deep moan. But the full moon had just set, and the wolf's instincts were still flying through his blood. He had been rougher then, no longer able to fight the urge to take, turning Severus over, pushing his slick fingers into that most secret of places...but Severus had responded as Lupin hoped he still would, arching his back and moving into his touch.
When he finally came, it had been one of the longest and most intense orgasms he had ever had. Lupin ached again at the thought of it. The cruelty of nature...that something which had been so profoundly satisfying had sated him so briefly, and now provoked such hunger in him.
Cruelty...had Severus' actions been cruel? Should he have simply turned Lupin away from the threashold of his chambers with a sarcastic comment and a raised eyebrow? It would have been so much easier that way...but even though Lupin knew he would suffer for a long time with the rekindled emotions that morning had engendered in him, he would be forever thankful that Severus had not turned him away. Theirs had been such a cruel parting, before. At least this memory of their last moment together, of Severus' unequivocal desire for him again and the kind of final acceptance that constituted, would sustain him in his lonely exile.
How ironic that the man who had brought about such an ache in Lupin's mind and loins, and whose aquiline features in the jouissance of sexual pleasure Lupin knew he would draw often from his memory in the long nights to come, should also be the cause of his exile.
Could he hate him for that cruelty? Lupin wanted to, knew that he would be more than justified to do so, but in his heart he could not. His presence, he knew, had been a constant reminder to Severus of the Potion Master's weakness, that moment long ago in the Shrieking Shack when he had been totally exposed and vulnerable. After that night, Severus had snapped shut like a clam, hidden behind his scowl and his sombre black robes.
Lupin knew that Severus would never risk a reoccurrence of the situation. He was right, of course - the unthinkable might happen as Lupin, like a fool, had shown he could not be trusted to take the Wolfsbane potion as instructed. Not that it mattered anymore, for as Severus had told him, the Wolfsbane potion did not just taste foul - it was actively poisoning his body to keep the lycanthropy under control. Lupin did not doubt Severus' word on this. Severus would not lie about a potion that he had created.
Lupin picked up the book again and opened it at the page he had marked. He read the next sonnet and smiled sadly to himself.
And make me travel forth
without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy
bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou
break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a
salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can
thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the
loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the
strong offence's cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love
sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
Was that the problem Severus?, thought Lupin. That you could heal my wounds, but were not able to cure the disgrace of my lycanthropy? Did you try and fail, those long nights alone in your dungeon workroom? Was I a constant reminder to you of your failure, too? Or perhaps I am thinking too highly of you now... but perhaps not. You were not prepared to kill me with the Wolfsbane, although you could have kept quiet and continued preparing it. It is such a new potion that I am one of the first it has been tested on, long-term. I doubt that even Dumbledore was aware that it was slowly poisoning me.
Repent? Lupin chuckled softly to himself. I am sure you would rather burn in one of your black cauldrons, my dear Professor, than to do so publically. But did I detect sorrow in your kiss as you left me this morning? Will you shed tears for me, alone in your bed this coming night? I do not know, but you have my forgiveness nontheless, Severus. I cannot hate you.
Lupin read on as the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside of the Esk Valley trundled sedately past the carriage window.
Roses have thorns,
and silver fountains mud:
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And
loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in
this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving
thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual
fault I bring in sense,
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
And 'gainst
myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That
I an accessary needs must be,
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from
me.
I cannot heap such praises on you, Severus. Roses? Silver Fountains? Sweet spring buds? It makes me smile to even conceive of thinking of you in that way. Even when we were at school you never exhibited any such youthful grace. And yet...there was always something about you... If anything, you are the opposite to the poet's beloved, your beauty is stark in its severity - it is the hoarfrost on the bare midwinter branches of a gnarled oak, the midnight scream of a hunting owl seizing its prey - a terrible beauty, like the depths of your black eyes.
But Shakespeare helps me to understand you, Severus - as he has always helped me to understand myself. We are not enemies, Severus, no matter what anyone back at Hogwarts may think, and I would be the first witness to stand in your defence, despite the suffering you have caused me.
The harsh cry of a seagull caused Lupin to look up, and for the first time in almost a year he caught sight of the sea. It sparkled under the July sun and he smiled. He was almost home - Whitby, as much of a home as he had ever known outside Hogwarts. He imagined the narrow cobbled streets in the old side of the town, like the one outside his tiny pantiled cottage at the foot of the 199 steps to the church of St. Mary, thick with Muggle tourists this time of year with their ice creams and fish 'n' chips, totally oblivious to the cares and worries of his secret world. It had always amused Lupin, being a werewolf living in this beautiful Yorkshire coastal town so notorious for its vampiric connections.
He looked down again, at the last sonnet on the page.
Although our undivided
loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
Without thy
help, by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one
respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not
love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
I
may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee
shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that
honour from thy name:
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
As thou
being mine, mine is thy good report.
We can never be together in this lifetime, can we, Severus?, mused Lupin. For as long as I am the thing that you hate, we must be apart. There is no cure for lycanthropy, not in a thousand years have all of the best and brightest in the magical world found anything to remove its curse from my kind. But the biggest curse of all is that I love you, Severus - I always have. Is that what you tried to tell me too, before you walked away forever this morning - that you hated the wolf, but loved the man?
Lupin placed the book of sonnets into his battered old case as the train drew into the tiny station at the end of the line.