Through the empty blackness in his mind, he could feel a merciless pounding, ragged gasps that tore his chest apart. Why? Why should he still breathe? He stared at the archway, its black shroud fluttering vaguely, as if still disrupted by Sirius' passing. It drew his eyes and tugged at his soul. The tears did not come.
With cold and empty eyes, he scanned the arena, seeing bodies and figures silhouetted against the dark, standing still and uncomprehending, as an abandoned child disbelieving. But he could not lie to himself. He knew death all too well. Its ugly face had reared behind his own for more years than he knew, eating away at his soul, though he refused to relinquish his sanity. He had shouted it, cementing Sirius' death passed reconciliation, while the boy struggled and screamed. But it was over now, and there was nothing to be done but tend the wounded and remember what it felt like to live. Not that he'd ever known in the first place, really. He couldn't remember the boy he had been, before, when his blood had been his own, free of contagion.
The Death Eaters sat roped still in Dumbledore's spell, mute and powerless. He stared dispassionately at each unmasked face, having no pity for them, but not the energy to hate. The nights grew brighter. He counted off each of their names, and rued only slightly the absence of the woman. He knew not what he would do, had she lain there for him to see, his brother's killer, and did not trust his cool-headed self not to assail her and return the favor, cold blood or no.
Slowly, others trickled down into the room, but he heeded them not. He moved slowly, ghostlike, deaf to their silent panic. They didn't know, didn't know, they could never understand. Even more slowly, Remus walked around the dais and knelt beside Kingsley, shaking him gently by the shoulder. Knocked over, that was all. Dislocated jaw, a nasty cut, but very little spell-damage otherwise. The black man rose with a grunt and wearily looked around, but Remus walked away, having no words. Moody had dragged himself halfway up the dome, sitting with his back against the stone beside a prone form, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion, his silver mane sweat-drenched and disheveled. Remus bent and plucked the magic eye from the stones, rubbing the dust off with his thumb, feeling only the cold of the glass, nothing else. With great heaviness in his steps, he ascended the steep tiers, not sparing emotion for the people in the basin below.
The old man's face looked ghoulish in the grey-black half-light, the hollow of his eye socket distorting his scarred visage even further. Dark blood caked his bronzed, scarred skin, dripping lethargically from a wound on his temple. Wordlessly, Remus handed over the eye, sitting down on the edge of the bench. He let his feet dangle aimlessly like a boy as the eye squelched back into its owner's face. There was a terrible coldness gathering in his chest, borne like poison on his blood to flood his whole being, but he forced himself to see only the imperative. There was no time nor place for grief. First, there would be words and testimonies and sneaking out the back. Then, when he was alone only with his tainted blood and the accusing darkness, then would the tears come, and the hurt begin. It wasn't real, yet, for all this numbness.
It was second nature, now. He'd spent so many years looking after those who wouldn't look after themselves. He'd been able to stop them screaming. Maybe this levelheaded lack of feeling helped him rise above the panic that he watched slowly creeping up in others, rising like water in the lungs of the drowning. So he looked around, making sure everyone was all right, like always. Kingsley was down in the pit with the rest of the Aurors, ensuring the compliance of the accused. Mad-Eye seemed to be well enough; he was talking coherently, gingerly stretching the stump of his leg. The words washed against his ears like the tide on rocks, leaving no embossment in his mind. Inexorably, his eyes were drawn back to the gently fluttering veil.
"—Some amount of resistance, standard Innervate didn't do nothin'. Best chance to sneak her up to the castle and let Snape have a look before the parasites see. Less anybody on the outside knows about this, less time to gawk, there's that much less skin off the Order's nose."
Indifferent to the calumny to a workforce Moody had led for some years, Remus looked down at the pale face beside him on the stone. A ripening bruise in striking shades of green and mauve and black spread up her jaw and cheek, crushed on the stone, the brow scraped beneath the shock of violet hair. Amazingly, her wand was still in her hand. Chastened, he put his fingers to her throat, feeling for the thrum of a pulse. Its lassitude sent a shock of unwarranted fear through him. She was young, so young, too young for shit like this, and what did he know about fair, anyway? He pulled his own wand out again, remembering how it had sparked and blazed with heat and power, and laid the tip against her chest.
"Told you, mate, won't do her any good," Moody grumbled, but he didn't hear, didn't care. She looked like him, like Sirius, just a bit, but the likeness was there. The line of her jaw was softer, her nose less hawkish, frank and knifelike, vaguely feline. Her eyes, though, were dark like his, blacker than velvet, lilting with laughter, as Sirius' had so many years ago. But his were closed now forevermore, and her eyes did not open.
His eyes burned, and the charm left his lips as a strangled bark. Her face shone ethereal white in the afterglow, but remained unchanged. She breathed, but it was a near thing. Behind the bruises, her face was bloodless, cold. An unnamed emotion surged through him, and he wanted more than anything to hear her laugh again, see her face lighted up by her brilliant grin, warmer than the sun. Sirius' body was gone, eaten up. But she lay here, wrapped in grim indecision. He looked down into the basin without really seeing, watched Kingsley talking to a man with a long blonde plait down his back, who gestured up at them on the stairs.
"Come on, can you stand?" he asked as Moody fastened his wooden leg. The old man nodded and rose. Bending, he gently gathered Tonks's inert body in his arms, cradling her to him. Her limbs dangled lifelessly, her head snapped back limply against the neck. Her too-pale face, darkened by the flooding bruise, screamed silent accusations, and he flinched, looking away from her lidded eyes. He wasn't sure whether she could feel or not, but a tumble down the stairs wouldn't leave her unmarked, and he held her tenderly, to save her even that small amount of further pain, whether she could feel it or not. Walking steadily up the tiers without looking back, he felt the emptiness inside him and the gentle warmth of the body pressed against his. Hot tears blurred his vision, but they did not fall.