Note to Self: I love you does not mean I won't ever leave you.
Once upon a time, when he was very small, the young Remus Lupin thought the words 'I love you' went hand in hand with the idea that a person would never leave you.
He thought that that idea, that feeling, was absolute, and that there was no way, no how, a person could ever leave someone if they loved them, it just wasn't possible.
Perhaps this came from the way his mother used to tell him she loved him, quietly, sadly, brokenly, after the incident. He knew, even then, that she couldn't ever properly understand what he was, that she couldn't stand how he'd changed, what he became every month, but he knew that she loved him. He knew that she would never leave him alone. Perhaps it came from his father's too tight hugs, too protective glances and the rough way he had of saying I love you that swore eternal protection, because Remus knew his father still blamed himself, so he would never leave.
Maybe it came from them, or maybe it came later.
Maybe it came when he met three bright, brilliant, boisterous boys that were happy to call him a friend through thick and thin. Maybe it came when they said they didn't care what he was, because it didn't matter, because they all loved each other – even in that short, ridiculously short, time they'd all formed that bond – and Remus had thought that had meant everything. He thought it had meant that they would never leave him…until, one by one, they all did.
James:
Remus lost James only once. He lost James in the worst and only true way you can ever properly lose a person. He lost James to death.
It hit him in a different, indescribably brutal way when he did. James had been the very first person to accept him for what he was, to throw his hands in the air and scream that he didn't give a toss that Remus was a werewolf as long as he'd be a friend.
Remus never met anyone like James Potter in his life. He was uniquely gifted in so many ways and, though many people couldn't see it for many years, he was unbelievably goodhearted.
For many years, at many times, people had asked him how he – someone who was always viewed mistakenly as kind and gentle, so he thought – could hang around with the loud, brash and often harsh James Potter and Sirius Black, but Remus had never seen it that way at all.
He had always known that they were good where it mattered, all three of them, because they hadn't turned on him when they really should have. He knew what he was, they knew what he was, and yet they didn't turn tail and run…they stayed. They did more than stay…and James was the first.
It was always James coming up with ideas, protecting people behind the scenes, leading them all with that cheeky smile and ridiculously loud laugh. He was always keeping up their spirits, dragging even Sirius out of ruts, and making sure they all lived life to the fullest.
It was just as well he had, looking back, because none of them ever got very long.
It was James who'd first suggested them becoming Animagi for him, Remus knew, and then they'd actually done it. It had been James who'd stepped in when Sirius had gone too far. It was James that saved Snape, the boy he hated above all others, in order to save Remus. Remus had never been more grateful to anyone than he had to James then, and he never would be.
James was an unbelievably good friend to him and he'd barely blinked whenever Remus told him the huge things – the big changes, the werewolf talk, the sexuality talk, the 'I'm dating your best mate please don't hit me' talk…all of them and he'd taken them all with a laugh, a slap on the shoulder, and an admission that he'd guessed ages ago and didn't care. Remus had always been grateful.
But then James had vanished. He'd gone like the last curl of smoke in the breeze, like an ember doused in deep water, and he was dead. He'd gone cold just like Remus's world that night and Remus would never see his eyes shine again, would never hear that laugh…he lost the first of his best friends that night and he barely stayed alive to see himself lose the rest through the pain.
James was forever taken from the world, and he was taken first.
Lily:
Remus lost Lily countless times, but he only ever truly lost her once. Just like James, losing her was to the cold absolute of death, but, years before that, he'd gained a habit of losing Lily in a different way. When they were young, he'd gained a talent for losing Lily on a weekly basis.
Lily later said that this was entirely due to the antics of the others and Remus would have to agree, but it spoke of how frustrated they'd once been with each other, with how the other had responded and acted around the rest of the marauders, how frequently they'd fallen out.
Of course they'd always returned. Lily had been a friend to him, through thick and thin…she'd been there for him when no-one else was, and she was always kind.
Remus lost Lily when he sided with James and Sirius. He lost Lily when he helped Peter set up pranks instead of going on prefect rounds. He lost Lily when he didn't bother to stick up for Snape and tell the others to cool it…but he never truly lost her, not until that night, and all the others paled into insignificance when he did. After that night, he'd never hear her bright laugh again, and that ruined him in a way nothing else did, because Lily had been a different sort of friend.
Lily had always been a single entity in his life. He knew no-one else like her. He'd never had a friendship with anyone the way he did with her. It was calm. It was easy. It was…comfortable.
Nothing with James and Sirius was ever calm, never, not unless they were both passed out, dead to the world asleep, then they were almost peaceful…but not like Lily.
She was a very particular sort of presence and she was an uncommonly loving witch. She'd been there to save him in so many ways and, forever, he would curse himself for never being able to do the same for her. Instead, he'd let her slip away.
So, he lost Lily to death, never to return.
Peter:
Remus lost Peter twice, in very different ways, but at exactly the same time.
He lost Peter to presumed murder and Sirius's presumed wrath. He also, in that same moment, truly lost Peter to betrayal and to the dark.
People liked to miss Peter out of stories, they liked to forget about the people behind James Potter and Sirius Black, and Remus had always been close with him because they'd been stuck into the same category—the category of 'the other two' marauders.
Over time, Remus himself seemed to shift out of it, perhaps because James got so caught up in Lily and Sirius became, around the same time, caught up in Remus. They came as a four, often, in people's head because they were always around together. Remus sometimes wondered if it was this, in the end, which pushed Peter away and made him turn from them.
Remus lost Peter slowly and gradually, if one looked at it properly, but he didn't know it. None of them knew it. If they had, none of them would have been lost at all.
He lost Peter to too many teasing jokes, he lost Peter to too many forgotten invites, he lost Peter to too many unseeing glances, and he lost Peter, most importantly, to jealousy and the promise of power. Peter had always liked to hang around better, more powerful players in the game and somehow, in their trusting naivety, they had all forgotten that.
They all paid the price.
Remus lost Peter, truly, to death in a cellar at Malfoy manner many years after his betrayal, but he lost the Peter he knew and had once loved like a brother that night when he all but killed Lily and James, vanishing into the sewers like the rat he was. Remus never even heard tell of Peter's true death and he didn't need to. Peter was, to him, already dead.
He had been lost long ago, as he should have been.
Sirius:
Remus lost Sirius three times and each was an increased agony. Every single one was a study in heartache that he'd never asked to be taught, and each left him broken.
It was nothing he didn't come to expect, at least, but that made it hurt no less.
Remus first lost Sirius in their fifth year, only briefly, but no less terribly. He lost him to the hot and cold of betrayal, the sickened feeling that made his stomach drop and ran shivers down his spine, and the burning anger that had him gritting his teeth and curling his fists.
He lost Sirius the second time to prison and what he'd thought then was a second, far worse, betrayal. He'd cursed himself no end for it, thinking that it was his fault for stupidly letting the man back in, for foolishly trusting Sirius again when he'd proved before what he was capable of, and all because Remus was stupidly in love with his best friend. The few happy years paled when he thought that they had caused, in the end, the deaths of Lily and James.
He lost Sirius for the third and final time to death, standing side by side with him in the Department of Mysteries and watching, unable to look away, as the one man he'd always loved shuddered from head to toe and dropped backwards through the veil like a rock through water.
Each time, it had been worse. Each time he'd kicked himself for jumping to the wrong conclusions, for allowing people back in, for not allowing people back in, and each loss brought him a little more regret. Everything about him and Sirius seemed to.
The pain of losing Sirius was only ever equal to one thing in Remus's life and that was the pain of loving him through all the years, even when he should have hated his guts. Even when Sirius had first gone wrong, after he'd told, Remus had loved him and it had been what led to him being let back in. It had been why they all returned because no matter how he tried Remus could never have turned Sirius away. All the years when Sirius rotted in a cell though, Remus should never have even thought his name. Then, when he'd thought Sirius had sold Lily and James to Voldemort, he should have wanted to curse the life from Sirius's body…but he didn't, because he still loved him.
At least the last time there was nothing to be done. No-one could have stopped it and by that point losing people seemed to be inevitable for Remus. He no longer thought that I love you meant I will never leave you because everyone that had ever loved him had gone. He almost expected it.
It hurt no less. In fact, it almost made it hurt more.
So, Remus lost Sirius to death, too, in the end, and it was about then that he began to wonder how he'd outlived all the others when, by rights, he should have died first. It was then that he began wondering when his turn would be, when he would tell someone he loved them, and leave.
He got his chance, of course.