The title and snippets of poetry are from "This is for you" by Leonard Cohen. Written for hpsauce on LJ (in an exchange in the hpslashnotsmut community). Harry Potter isn't mine.

This is for you
it is my full heart
it is the book I meant to read you
when we were old

I. Now I am a shadow
I am restless as an empire

Remus doesn't know if it's worse because Sirius didn't love him or if it would be worse now if he had. Of course he doesn't know; one of those premises is contrary to fact, out of his realm of experience by definition.

All he knows is that it is bad enough; as terrible as anyone would expect it to be to lose all the friends one has on this earth in one fell swoop, all at the hands of one of those very friends. This is the part of the story everyone knows, and it earns him more sympathy than he knows what to do with, he who is inured to a lifetime of painful monthly ordeals that earn him repugnance, not compassion.

If only they knew. If only they knew that the friend who is the traitor, the friend who is the murderer, the friend who as good as killed Remus along with the rest, is also the friend Remus watched, the friend Remus waited for, the friend Remus loved - without expectations, guardedly, hopelessly – for years.

On the one hand, obviously if a murderous madman never loved him back, he's well clear of him; but if he had ever had even one night with Sirius, at least now he would have that night, however tainted. As it is, he thinks it should be easier to forget Sirius, because he has nothing tangible of him to cling to; but it seems paradoxically and exponentially harder to eradicate a might-have-been than a was.

II.I saw you watching the moon
you did not hesitate
to love me with it

Remus never started counting how many moons he spent alone. He didn't see the point, really. The number was only going to get bigger. He'd always be alone, now. Not just at the full moon.

The first moon had been the worst, of course, not just because of the shock of it all after so many months of running free, but because after he was locked in, before the change, there was nothing to do but think. About the moon. And about Sirius.

He had fallen in love with Sirius because of the moon. Remus remembered the occasions he'd woken in Gryffindor Tower, roused by who knew what instinct, to find Sirius awake, at the window, gazing at the moon. He was beautiful by moonlight, transformed from the impulsive and vibrant boy who goofed off in classes into a creature of black and silver contrasts, melancholy and somehow merciless all at once. The moon, which had given Remus only pain for so long, did that to Sirius, and as he lay in his bed feigning sleep, careful to breathe calmly though his pulse raced with the rightness of this new discovery, for the first time in eleven years he'd been glad there was more in the heavens than the sun and stars.

The moon had given him hope that Sirius loved him back. Oh, not that way, not in the way that lingered on Remus's skin and prickled the back of his neck, but in a way no less enduring. Not just Sirius, all of his friends. From his first look at their new Animagus forms, he had known. They had done this for him, so he wouldn't have to face the moon alone. That was love.

The moon had deceived him.

III. All this happened
in the truth of time
in the truth of flesh

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Remus knew the truth now, after all these years. He had seen it on the Map. He had he had felt it in Sirius's embrace, in the frighteningly thin body in his arms.

He didn't feel any freer.

Free of Azkaban and innocent, this Sirius was still no more his than the mad murderer or the moonlit boy had been.

IV. This I only learned tonight
as I recall the mirrors
you walked away from
after you had given them
whatever they claimed

It turned out that he was mistaken; Sirius, ironically enough, was more his than ever before, as he clung to what survived of happier times. And cling he did, obviously desperately lonely. Loneliness was something they had in common, something Remus understood, something he had long ago learned to live with.

And there was the problem: Remus was no longer Sirius's, hadn't been for years. He supposed you never really knew if you were over someone in their absence, but now Sirius was no longer an absence but a broken, brooding presence trailing Remus through Grimmauld Place. And in the presence of Sirius, Remus knew that while he still loved him, still valued his friendship, still enjoyed his company, whatever it was his teenaged self had thought would work between two relatively carefree boys was impossible for them now.

You had only to look at their bodies - sprawled carelessly on a couch, doing a crossword, reading a book, a travesty of scenes played out years before in the Gryffindor common room – to know how much things had changed. Sirius was a dilapidated ruin of a man, a shriveled relic of the boy Remus had fallen in love with, silently, by moonlight. Remus himself – shabby, careworn, aching constantly in a dozen different places – was better off in comparison.

And then there were their eyes - haunted, guarded, troubled. Their eyes spoke of disappointment, not love.

V.Now I am a shadow
I long for the boundaries
of my wandering

Remus doesn't know if it's worse because he's done it before or if it would be worse now if he hadn't. Losing Sirius a second time is not the same as it was before, in ways that are both better and worse. For one, he can mourn properly now, without feeling guilty for it. No need to subsume his grief for Sirius in the grief for three other, legitimate, losses; Sirius died a hero.

On the other hand, this new loss is both final and strangely endless; with Sirius alive in Azkaban, Remus could always imagine there would be a finality to his grief, a moment in which Sirius, by confessing, by repenting, by dying, might act and end it all for him. Now there is no Sirius, ever again, and while Remus knows that, just as before, the sorrow will not come to a single end but diminish by the day, by the hour, by the minute until one day, unexpectedly, it simply isn't there, now he cannot imagine what will bring about that day.

There isn't even a body, or a memorial service, or a tomb he can visit. There's only Remus, and his memories, and the moon.

and I move
with the energy of your prayer
and I move
in the direction of your prayer
for you are kneeling
like a bouquet
in a cave of bone
behind my forehead
and I move toward a love
you have dreamed for me