Disclaimer: Any recognizable-from-other-places characters, plots, quotes, etc are not in any way property of me.
Author's notes: Beware the angst. It's Halloween :D
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Salvation in Three Parts
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part zero
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Remus expects people to treat him oddly through security. The only way he could be more suspicious is if he were wearing an overlarge trench-coat or laughing madly.
He has dark bruises like circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes, the scars across his face have been looking a little swollen lately, probably due to the humidity that has been sweeping over England in cool mist that clings to the ground. He is young, travelling alone, carrying no luggage, and his clothing is shabby, his in-residence address is a cheap motel in Brooklyn.
But Remus is polite and quiet, and leaves a general impression of being entirely un-threatening while still slightly disconcerting, so the officials waves him through with a gruff nod after only brief consideration.
On the aeroplane, Remus is seated next to a bubbly little girl who has never left Britain before. She is going to visit her cousins who live near a water park, and have a pool in their backyard. They might go kayaking and hiking, or boating. Remus does not have the heart to tell her that it is extremely unlikely any of these things will be possible in upstate New York in the middle of December, as it is probably several degrees below zero.
Remus absently studies a photograph of a mail order candle-lit iguana water dish when the flight attendant approaches him to ask him if he is comfortable seated next to an unaccompanied minor.
"It's quite alright." Remus says, and the stewardess, who obviously could care less whether Remus is comfortable or not, turns her attention to the little girl who is slightly upset to be interrupted in her description of her new doll's clothing.
"I like him." The girl says. "He has a dog, and he is not too loud."
"Well, alright, dear." She turns away before glancing briefly at Remus with a strange expression as though perhaps she has seen him somewhere before, or something about him makes her uncomfortable.
Remus feels like he must make everyone uncomfortable. Everything about him feels wrong, he is a puzzle that is missing pieces and so the blank spaces are filled shoddily with cut out paper bits.
"How do you know that I have a dog?" asks Remus.
She points to the grey jumper he is wearing. "I have a dog and he is always getting hair on everything. Your sweater has a lot of dog hair on it." She removes several strands of black fur that Remus instantly recognizes.
Remus takes it from her and looks at it with a strange sense of detachment.
It takes Remus several minutes to realize that the sharp pinpricks behind his eyes and the high quick breaths that are stacking up, caught in his throat like so many burnt pancakes are not because he is having lung failure but because he is crying. The bloody gaping wound where his heart-joined-soul used to reside, is heavy with emptiness, bright-burning with shadows, has been lying in wait, it seems, to rise against him and Remus is silently choking on all these tears.
"Sir?" the girl asks, tentatively reaching out one hand to pat his shivering shoulder. "Are you okay? I'm sorry I said you had a dog, Sir."
Remus squeezes his eyes shut and shoves the desolation back down, locking it behind silver-as-the-moon bars. Why would you do that to me, Sirius?
He coughs a little, and consciously forces his breath to even out again. "It's alright." He says, "My dog…I…ah, don't have it anymore, and I miss him sometimes."
"Oh." The girl says, looking appropriately saddened. "Did he die?"
"No…" replies Remus. "He was…he did something very wrong and he had to be sent away."
"If you're so sad that he got sent away, why don't you get him back?"
"Hmm…" Remus says, and he yearns for a time when his perception of the world was so simple, when colours were primary and something taken could be returned, and sins could be forgiven with words no more ornate than sorry.
(It was then that Remus realised he was broken.)
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part one
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Remus arrives at his motel late and has to shake the man at the desk awake to check in.
The man at the front desk is obviously only the night manager. He barely speaks English, accent thick in a way that reminds Remus terribly of the man who owned the curry take-out below Sirius' flat, where they would often stumble in, leaning against each other, drunk on laughter and youth and lagers of beer.
And the man would make a sign against evil upon seeing them with wands, badly concealed, sticking out of their back pockets, and wizard cloaks slung over their shoulders, and Remus' eyes inhuman gold-bright. Then he would tell them that they lived in sin together, that God would never forgive them unless they found pretty young English women to marry and have many babies with and then he would smile, gap-toothed and wide, as though he felt he had done his duty to heaven in informing them of their misdeeds, and that now, fun could be got on with.
His wife would bustle out from somewhere behind the counter and shoo them over to the one small plastic table over in the corner with the cheap vinyl tablecloth decorated with small crowing roosters. She would feed them hot samosas that burned their throats in the best possible way and little cups of lamb vindaloo to be scooped up with naan, and when they resorted to nudging the food into each other's mouths, the man would glare at them good-naturedly and the woman would slap at his arm.
"You need not be your father. This is a modern country, let them be modern boys."
"Yes, yes." He would say, and shake their hands like the truest sort of equals when they finally traipsed up the stairs, limbs colliding comfortably, harsh with purity.
That wasn't so long ago at all, but when the man at the desk hands Remus his key, eyes dull and bored, both disdainful and servile, there is no equality. Remus is reminded just how great the space between now and not so long ago can be.
The motel is worth every cent Remus paid, which was not a lot. In short it's crappy and small with the scent of disinfectant, cheap coffee, and cigarette smoke hanging practically visibly in the air - but it is clean.
On his way up to his room a maid pokes her head out of the supply closet/break room. He must look a sad picture indeed if a woman who earns her living by washing sheets she'll never sleep on and hoovering floors that aren't for her to use pities him, but Remus is too jet lagged and depressed to care.
"You okay, honey?" she asks. Remus nods slowly, and gives his suitcase a sharp tug over the threshold of his room and then closes the door. After a few seconds, there is a knock from the other side.
The maid is there again and he notices now that her skirt has been hemmed vulgarly short and her button up shirt has been pulled tight across her breasts. Remus flicks his eyes to her face, which is unnaturally smooth, thick with foundation. Her lips are too red.
"You sure, honey? Not…lonely?"
"Yes. My boyfr - " Remus says. "Yes." He closes the door, and leans against it, sliding down until his back is rigid against the cheap particle-board wood, and now, now, that empty place where his heart once resided echoes and Remus cries, the tears roll down his cheeks and pool in the hollows of his throat, filling those little places Sirius once bestowed his kisses with bitter rain.
When Remus cannot cry any more he thinks. He thinks that he was stupid to run to America as soon as the Aurors told him he was no longer a suspect accomplice, and that he could freely travel again. He thinks he was foolish to imagine that crossing an ocean would put any distance at all between him hopelessness that presses against the inside of his ribcage.
Voldemort, he thinks,is gone, and yet with him he took everything I loved and corrupted everything I needed.
And Remus thinks of Sirius, and how Sirius always said he wanted to go to New York, and he thinks of all the things he knows Sirius would do if he were here with Remus. How he would have said something wicked and witty to the night maid, and then he would have turned the small black and white television on and attempted to imitate the late night news anchor's accent terribly, and he'd waste all the soap in the bathroom. Then, tired, he would fall onto the scruffy mattress and his lashes would cast sinfully long shadows on his cheeks in the yellow light of the single table lamp. Remus would lie next to him, and they would sleep on top of the sheets with their hands entangled, breath sweet and mingling.
He thinks that his Sirius who would do these things could not have also killed his own chosen brother, his best friend. Could not have killed Lily either, who he grew to love as a sister, could not have doomed his own godson to death, or murdered Peter, who, in the end, was the bravest of them. His Sirius would not do those things. Oh, but he had.
When Remus cannot think anymore he sleeps, curled against the door, the door handle digging into the side of his face and the wood astutely unforgiving behind him.
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Remus wakes to an aching back, he feels bruised, chewed up and spit out. He wants to leave right away because something about this place is cloying and it makes him itchy.
It's only eight in the morning, but there is a new man at the desk. He looks bored and like he could have used several more hours of sleep.
"Excuse me," Remus says, his voice coming out throaty and dry like black coffee, "But I'd like to check out."
"Your name?"
"Remus Lupin."
"Sorry, Mr Lupin, but we don't have you checking out till the end of the week. You c'n leave, but you'll still be paying for the room."
Remus clenches his teeth a little in annoyance. Of course it wouldn't be easy to leave. He thinks for a moment about walking back up to his room and just finishing his little holiday the way he ought; drowning his sorrows in all day museum passes, cheap liquor and the flashing lights of tourism.
But something about this man grates his nerves, and he knows he'd likely crumble into dust by the end of the week if he stays caged in that plastic-refinery-scented room.
"I need to leave, my plans changed unexpectedly, and I'm not going to pay for a room I'm not using."
"Well, there's not much I can do to help you. Perhaps you should have paid the extra money for a tentative reservation."
"What is atentative reservation?"
The man shrugs, smirking a little.
"I need to leave. I'm not going to pay for a room you'll probably just rent out to someone else ten minutes after I've gone. Just cancel my reservation."
"Can't." The man replies, leaning one elbow on the desk drearily.
"I shouldn't have to pay for a room I'm not using!" Cries Remus, in frustration.
"Not my problem."
Remus growls a little in the back of his throat, and his headache gives a nice pounding throb.
"I guess it isn't." Remus returns, his voice harsh and low and even, a whisper like gravel. "I guess a lot of my problems aren't your problem. For example, it's not your problem that my lover of five years was just given a life sentence in a prison worse than hell. It's not you're problem that he was given that sentence because he betrayed two of our best friends, and killed the other along with thirteen innocent bystanders. It's not your problem that he's effectively ripped my heart out and ruined my life. It isn't you're problem that…that…that I still love him anyway. Even knowing that he's evil, I can't fucking stop loving him."
Remus claps his hand to his mouth as soon as the last words are out of his mouth. The man behind the desk looks stricken; frightened.
"I'm so sorry." Remus mumbles quickly, and he turns around and rushes out of the motel door, pulse loud and mortified in his ears.
It's raining a little outside but the air is weirdly humid for so late in the year and it feels more like sticky summer rain than late autumn showers. By the time he finds a taxi his shirt is sticking uncomfortably to his back with a mixture of sweat and the misty damp.
Usually Remus is a taxi driver's dream. Quiet and polite and willing to listen to mindless talk with appropriate responses. He even tips as best he can - but today Remus sits sullenly in the back.
What had he been thinking to say those things to the desk clerk. He was such an idiot.
Remus tells the driver to take him back to the airport, but when he finally emerges and finds his way into the stream of international travellers he finds he can't bring himself to buy a ticket back to England. It would be too much like giving up, and besides, even if he did go back there wasn't anything for him there. Just an empty flat and beautiful memories gone too stale and bitter for him to stomach.
Instead, Remus rents a car.
With the money he has, he gets only a tiny two-door car of indeterminate make that has seen one to many university girls on road trips. The seats have the strangest upholstery he has ever seen, a pattern that could either be lopsided giraffes and camels or perhaps mutated kittens. He can't tell what colour it's supposed to be.
It's literally hell trying to drive out of the city, and every turn he makes, he's sure he's done it wrong and he's going to head straight into oncoming traffic or an unsuspecting pedestrian. He wasn't ever terribly good at driving in the first place. Lily taught them all the year after they got out of school so they could get licenses, but Lily is also a manic and controlling backseat driver, which doesn't really lend well to teaching.
Remus swallows a lump in his throat and forces himself back to thinking of her in the past tense.
When he's finally on the freeway, even though it's terrifyingly fast and all the other cars look too big compared to the little hatchbacks of Britain that he's used to, it's a relief not to be avoiding little old ladies and kids anymore.
Remus opens all the windows as wide as they'll go which isn't much because they seem to have chewing gum stuck down in them and then he turns up the radio loud and listens to The Cure and Queen and David Bowie and wonders why this station doesn't play any American people and mostly only things Sirius would've listened to.
All the while his thoughts rattle like empty tin cans; desolation tasting of tinny bitter wishes.
Remus drives for what seems to him a strange time somewhere between days and seconds. He stops twice, once to get coffee, and once to eat a cheap hamburger that tastes like ashes on his tongue. His eyes droop, sleepy and lonely, and he can feel the steering wheel shifting under his hands, out of his control. Dusk chases him as he rushes south, and finally, it falls, a hazy mauve bruise across the sky.
Remus coasts off the road and breaks, and then he climbs out of the car and goes around to the back. He pushes the seats flat and then lies out in the boot. It should be cold this late in the year, even if he is South-East-of-Nowhere, South Carolina, but it isn't, so he leaves the back open, he's partially hidden by a copse of trees and the corn field he's practically parked in smells sweet in the twilight breeze. Remus figures that it probably isn't safe to fall asleep with the doors all open like this, but he also figures that anyone who really wanted to hurt him would just smash through the window anyway, it's so cheap it's more a pane of cling film than glass.
He is too exhausted to sleep, and his mind runs on automatic loop, his leg taps against the plastic door and he realizes that he is going insane. Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. He puts all his favourite words for sinner in front of Sirius's name, and then he puts all the best words for lover after it. He loves a nefarious backstabbing liar. He believes in all the things that came from someone who only used and betrayed him.
Why, why, why, why, why, why, why? He thinks, until he's scraped raw.
In the middle of the night he sits up abruptly. It takes several moments for Remus to realize why he has woken up. It is because there is a large tawny barn owl perched on the open door of the car. The owl studies him with wide apple golden eyes for a moment before holding his leg out expectantly. Remus is wide-awake now, but still disoriented in the hesitant light of the moon and the eerie sound of the occasional car speeding past.
He removes the letter attached to the owl's leg and it flies away before Remus has time to realize he doesn't have anything to feed it as a treat. The envelope is thick and made from the heavy, creamy card the ministry uses. He has no trouble reading, even in the black molasses night.
In the envelope are two things. The first is a crisply folded official looking letter and the other is a grimy, partially torn piece of notebook paper that definitely appears to have been crumpled several times. He unfolds the ministry letter first.
Dear Mr Lupin:
You may be aware the official verdict pertaining to the crimes of Sirius Black has recently been declared, and that he was sentenced to a lifetime twice lived in Azkaban, never to be released. Shortly before this time, Black asked for a last request that the enclosed letter be forwarded to you. Obviously we were hesitant to follow the instructions of a murderer, but as you have been acquitted of any involvement in Black's crimes, and the letter has been thoroughly studied, checked, and tested and all precautions have been taken, it was decided to allow you to receive the letter.
Sincerely,
Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic
Remus reads and re-reads the short paragraph several times, incredulous. Why would they do this? It's never been any secret to him, that the ministry pretty much hates him personally. Remus is everything wrong with modern wizarding society. He is a gay werewolf, who managed to get a proper education, and for a while, hold down a real well paying job-then it turned out that his lover was a Death Eater, but he couldn't even be a proper evil werewolf Death Eater, and so money had to be wasted on thoroughly investigating him, though he was really a worthless lead. He contemplates this for a moment, wondering if they would go so far as to booby trap him and then, gingerly, he then takes out the folded letter, Sirius Black's famous last words, or as good as.
Remus, It begins, in a curling script, perfect penmanship bred into Sirius at a ridiculously young age by his mother, and Sirius had always hated it. Remus feels the bile rise in his throat.
I don't have very high hopes for this reaching you, and if I'm charged guilty, and everything has gone through as it looks like it will, I suppose you might not give me a chance and read this anyway…but I really wish you would. I figure you will because you're always so curious about everything, even if you pretend not to be.
Firstly, I just wanted to say that I'm innocent. I'm really, really innocent. Remember in second year, right after I figured it out, remember when I told you that if we ever had another big lie, or a secret like that one, and we wanted to tell the truth, the absolute, honest to Merlin truth, no questions asked, we'd use a codeword first, like a badge of honour, so we would have to go around in circles like I did then about how maybe I'd noticed you having scars or how you didn't like silver, etc, etc.
Remember?
Of course you do, you remember everything. Well anyway, Eros and Psyche, I'm using it now, Eros and Psyche, and you always said that you liked the ending when Eros tells Psyche to bugger off and that he hates her now, but really he's pining for her inside, because it was more romantic (which, by the way, should have been the first clue that you were as gay as they come, why didn't I ever notice that?) and I said that was rubbish, and that obviously the ending where he forgives her is better. Well, first of all, Eros and Psyche, I'm innocent, and second of all, I wish you'd let today be the day when you like the second ending better.
The next thing is that I am so sorry. I'm sorry I thought you were the traitor, and I'm sorry that I made such a fucking crap mistake and I'm so sorry for you that you're all alone now. I know that there isn't anything I can do to fix it, but if there was, I would do it. I hope you know that. That if there was any possible way I could make anything better for you, I would do it.
I'm running out of paper, so the last thing to write is that I guess you probably can't do anything about me being put in Azkaban, and I guess that you probably don't believe me, and so you don't want to stop them charging me guilty anyway. And I want to say that I forgive you for this. I know you won't get me out of here, I know that you believe I was the traitor, and that I killed James and Lily, and Peter, and that all I've ever done is lie to you, and I just wanted to say I forgive you for that.
Also, I love you.
Yours always,
Sirius
After Remus finishes reading he very gently refolds the letter and swallows the thick acid taste that invades his mouth. At least now he understands why the ministry would let him read this letter. Fudge himself probably got a kick out of it. It was the most painful thing Remus had ever done. How was it possible to put, on one slip of paper, so many fake words and false phrases - like razor blades?
How many lies could Sirius tell to hurt Remus before all of Remus was just used up and shorn away with them? Until he became an empty shell? How could Sirius be so purely wicked as to keep doing it?
Remus lays out on the bed of the car again and stares at nothing, feeling the soft pieces of dust in the air brush his skin and remembering very distantly how it sounds to have someone else's pulse pushed up against his own
He closes his eyes and dreams in black and white.
(It was then that Sirius Black forgave Remus Lupin.)
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part two
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Remus wakes because there is a man standing at the foot of his car. The man has skin like the outside of a coconut, rough and woody brown, and he has the same stark sweet scent the cornfield does. His trousers are patched and look surprisingly similar to Remus's own and his hair is longer than Remus imagined a farmer might wear, thick and tied back like curly shoestrings.
"What 'choo think you doin' in my mama's field, boy?" The man asks after studying Remus for a few minutes. His eyes are black under thick brows.
"Sleeping." Remus replies, unrepentantly. He feels strange this morning, peeled fresh and careless, free. It is a surprisingly good thing to feel. "I'll be going now, though. I didn't mean to be in the way."
"You ain't going no where. That car is as dry and broken as a wishin' well."
"Oh, that's alright. I think I'll walk."
"You can't leave that in my mama's field, boy."
"I'll help you move it. If we leave it on the side of the road I'm sure someone will come along and either collect it or send it back to whence it came."
The man laughs at him, but in a good-natured way that feels warm like the sun blooming across the horizon. "You sure is crazy. Where you gonna walk to?"
Remus pauses to ponder this for a moment, he hasn't exactly thought about where he was going at all, only that it was better to be going somewhere than to be going nowhere. The man becomes impatient.
"Right, look here, boy. We gonna move you're car outta this field or not?"
"Oh." Remus says, moving around to help the man close the doors. "Of course."
It takes them longer than he'd imagined to move it. The car is heavier than Remus had thought it would be and the paint flakes off onto his hands leaving them speckled blue and sick looking, the rusty metal underneath smells sharp and heats quickly in the sun.
When finally they have pushed it up onto the highway shoulder, Remus's throat is dry and scratchy like old paper and he coughs to clear the dust from his lungs.
"So, I suppose I'll be off then."
"Right. 'Cause you just gonna walk wherever it is you is going?"
"I guess."
The man holds out his hand. "I'm Ben Baker."
Slightly confused by the turn of events, Remus hesitantly reaches out to grasp Ben's hand and shake it. "I'm…ah Remus Moon." He hasn't exactly meant to lie about his name, but he feels suddenly that he has so few things that are his own to keep, he must ration them out carefully when he wants to give them away.
"I figure a crazy idiot like you ain't had a good meal in a while. Come on with me and my mama'll feed you."
For the first time in what seems like a long while, some small bubble of a pleased smile escapes up Remus's throat to burst across his lips. "Alright." He says shortly, too surprised to think of anything else.
Ben Baker's house turns out to be a small flat little yellow building with meticulously black painted shutters and more overturned tricycles and bright plastic buckets in the front yard than it seems any single family could have a use for. The air outside is already thick with humidity, but upon reaching the front porch, the heat seems to grow three-fold when layered with the smell of whatever incredible things are cooking inside.
Ben pushes a ripped screen door open and three small brown children come hurtling towards him. They call out "Daddy, Daddy", their voices high and bright like silver coins and Remus feels another half smile winch across his face, a caterpillar of glee. Ben picks up the smallest and a moment later a tall, wide-hipped woman comes around the corner. She has long thick hair, black as ink like Sirius's but contrastingly coarse and wiry. She gestures to the kitchen, with one hand, her other filled with baby.
"You're mama wants you to help her in the kitchen, Ben." She says, her voice smooth and nutty.
"Don't she always." Ben returns, and disappears through the door after first catching the woman around the waist and kissing her gently on the lips. "Take care of our guest, will you Dee? His name is Remus and he's a few marbles short of a found jar."
The woman smiles soft and rose-coloured and then hands the baby in her arms to Remus, before turning away with a nod of a head implying she wants him to follow her. He looks down at the small person he holds clutched awkwardly between his hands. The baby has brown eyes that are too deep and wise and innocent. It twists up something in Remus, so he is all coiled tight and terrified. Unconsciously he adjusts his grip on the child, like Lily taught him, so he is supporting the head correctly, but close up where his thoughts are he is caught. What must it be like to be so small and helpless.
Remus thinks he knows why people don't remember things very well from when they were so young. If they did, they'd be broken, scared all the time, because being all little like that makes a person completely dependant and alone. People would crack to feel that all over again, after they know what it is like to hold their own heads in place.
The woman brings him iced tea and a little basket full of golden crispy round dough balls she calls hush puppies, they are almost too hot to eat, but ever so slightly sweet in the way that very, very dark chocolate is. He likes them immediately. On the porch, where they have set him, the children flock around his feet and tug at the buckles of his shoes. They seem to expect something from him so after a while he begins to tell stories.
Remus has always had a particular affinity for story telling, something he got from his grandmother. Sirius used to make him tell stories, especially after they went on missions for the Order and they were too high on adrenaline, and tilted inside out to rest. He likes the way, in stories; there is an order, a set of rules that can't be broken, that no one breaks. Even in the most horrific tales the innocent never die in vain, and the truly guilty always receive their due.
He pulls the words in curls out of the air and sunlight around them and weaves them into a beautiful thing, trapping them down like exotic birds. When the formed thoughts spill from his mouth they paint the air and hang like laundry, bare and wind scented. Each time he comes to the end, the children clamber, beg for more and he hasn't the heart to stop. It grows dark and he continues to speak. The woman, then Ben, then even Ben's previously illusive mother (laden with dinner) come, clustering at his feet while he spins tales from an ink and paper coloured loom. When the children finally fall asleep the adults rise to put them to bed, and Ben's mother, who instructs him to call her Meg directs him to the couch to sleep on.
Remus sleeps the whole night through without moving once, and if he had dreams he forgets them immediately - in the morning he wakes up when dawn is just pushing her thin pale fingers across the sky, dragging the sun up reluctantly behind her. Through the paper-thin walls, he can hear someone in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, and outside, the sound of a grumbling tractor. For a moment, he ponders what to do and then he very carefully casts disillusionment and muffling charms on himself. He isn't invisible or silent, but he's close enough. He folds his blankets carefully, noticing how threadbare it is as he does so. It gives him an idea.
Remus uses a simple thickening charm on it, and then after further consideration, decides it needs a mending charm as well. It gives him a weird rush that reminds him of them same feeling he got in the dark after hours halls of Hogwarts, flitting like ghosts, as the Marauders once had. He casts his eyes about for something else to fix. He sets the most basic wards around the house, which takes him only seconds, one to discourage theft, one to prevent floods, and one to stop fire, but it isn't noticeable enough, barely enough magic to be sensed even by another wizard.
Finally he decides he will leave one thing for each person. The children each get new plush stuffed bears with velveteen bows transfigured from rag dolls. For the woman, he transfigures an old pile of socks into silky summer dress. Meg gets a resplendent hat from a folded newspaper cap. Ben gets a mug with a charm to refill endlessly. They are all such small things, but the reason that he leaves them is because he knows that even so this family will treasure them. As he leaves, last minute, he places one galleon from his pocket on top of the pillow he'd slept on. It feels to him that the coin is not from him but one of the fairy tales he'd given to them last night. He puts it there not because Sirius would have liked it but because Remus wants to.
---
Remus walks for literally days. He stops whenever he comes across someone who offers him a place to sleep. He stays with an old woman who smells of dried roses and speaks endlessly of her son who lives in New York and is going to be the next big thing in journalism, she's just sure of it. He sleeps in a hammock somewhere on the coast of South Carolina. A cat sleeps on his feet the whole night there, and the little girl with peaches and cream skin who lives in the house wakes up in the middle of the night and comes to ask him if he will help her get a glass from a cabinet.
He leaves each house at the break of dawn and always, he leaves gifts and a single galleon. At most houses he tells stories before they go to bed. It isn't long before it seems that people ahead of him know who he is. They ask him if he is the "coin man", or the "gold man". Sometimes they ask if he is the story-spinner.
The irony of it, Remus decides, is that he'd spent nearly his whole life immersed in a life of magic, and yet he didn't find any until he came here and travelled among the muggles. Sometimes when people ask if he's the "gold man" he stays behind to watch people when they wake up in the morning, hidden away. They always seem surprised to find that he did in fact leave them something behind. Every time the same smiles of shock, wonder alight their faces. Every time the gaping empty place where his heart was feels a little less like shrapnel wounds and more like an old scar.
He thinks his life must be the dustiest phrase in the book, the oldest cliché, but he can't bring himself to think that this makes it any less right or real.
Sometimes he finds himself in places where the people don't know him as those things before he arrives. The first time this happens is the night of the full moon. He doesn't plan to be near anyone come the actual time but he needs to eat something first, so he knocks on the door of a tiny cabin sitting on stilts at the very edge of a gentle lapping marsh.
The woman who opens the door is painfully thin and pale and she turns her face up at him to show her blind milk-white-blue eyes sunken deep into her face, but she doesn't seem particularly old. Or maybe she does – he has trouble deciding.
He is about to offer her his name but before he speaks, she addresses him as "Wolf." It sends shivers down his arms and neck, and he asks her to repeat herself.
"Come in, Wolf." She says with a husky voice like linen book bindings and cigarettes. "You won't fool me, I See you, I Saw you, heartless wolf, who thinks his sky is starless because he cannot see past the clouds. Don't fear me, we will eat, and tonight I will run with you."
He wants to leave or tell her no, but she pulls him in with a skeletal hand and feeds him thick stew that sticks to his throat, hot and good. He knows she can't see but she moves like she can, his only hints at how she manages it are that she cocks her head to listen and scents the air like the wolf inside her.
When the sun sinks they tumble from the house together and spill into their sliver moon-moulds. The marsh grass creeps up tall and bronze and Moony smells the musty lull of salt and peat and presses himself into it, swift like wind. The mud catches in his fur and his eyes and he chases another bushy tail he's never seen before. The she-wolf nips and guides him like a mother and they bring down a small deer together. Moony feels like a god as the hot blood slip-slides down his throat.
At waking Remus is long miles from where he was at moonrise, and the first thing he becomes aware of is soft shuffling sound of small waves on sand. He opens his eyes and meets the grey-blue sky. He stands slowly, the pain half memory and half fresh. There are not too many bleeding wounds; only small cuts across his arms and on the backs of his legs. A pile of clothing is folded carefully next to his head. He shakes it out a puts it on quickly, suddenly feeling too much like a naked animal – lonely and wild.
By noon, he is tired of walking, the sand shifting and dry beneath his feet. It disappoints him because he's built up his strength to the point where he could walk on mostly just breakfast for a whole day. Remus consoles himself with the knowledge that he is always lethargic after the full moon, but it's hard to shun away the other knowledge he has – it is always Sirius who is there to care for him the morning after, Sirius who reminds him that he is a human again.
Softly, Remus sinks to the ground. He is hungry, and used to the strange half-reality he has been living in that always provided him with a bed at the end of the day, he sinks into sleep.
The sharp crack of a breaking stick beneath nervous feet wakes Remus. He is on his feet with his hand deep in his pocket grasping for a wand before he has even opened his eyes, but he relaxes when he hears whoever has come upon him shriek. Anyone who was trying to cause him injury would either have enough self-restraint not to scream, or be expecting him to fight back.
He rubs the dream sand from his eyes and the person who woke him comes into focus. It's a boy, probably about his age, but maybe a little younger. He has light silky hair like spider webs in sunlight and his skin is pale as milk. A faded sunburn colour's his nose – peeling a little. Remus can't think of many words that describe him except maybe pretty, or sweet. The large blue orbs of his eyes do nothing to dispel his youthful innocence.
"Wh-Who are y-you?" The words trip out of the boy's mouth all confused and scrunched up. He looks terrified.
"Remus." He replies, sticking his hand out to shake. It feels like an odd gesture to make all of the sudden - handshakes that is. Why is it that people do that? Giving another person, someone they've only just met leave to grasp your hand, when some people who are friends for years rarely even touch each other – it's too intimate.
The boy appears to be even more scared by Remus's polite gesture and has practically begun to shake, when another voice from behind one of the sloping dunes calls out:
"Eli?" Whoever it is sounds worried. The boy immediately relaxes.
"Over here." He calls. This time his voice is steady.
A man crests the hill. He has thick black hair in dreadlocks pushed away from his face and his skin is night-dark. His eyes narrow the moment he sees Remus and he half jogs the rest of the distance between them. The moment he approaches the man slips his hands over the boy's shoulders. Comparing them next to each other, Remus thinks that perhaps they are both the same age. The boy straightens up a little - the animal-in-headlights look in his eyes fades away - and the tension tugging at the man's frown softens. Probably, neither is much over nineteen.
"How did you get here?"
It is at this moment that Remus notices the sign he is standing next to. It's about three feet tall, and in bold red letters, says "Private Beach. Absolutely No Trespassing." He sighs inwardly. How perfect to end up somewhere that people will immediately assume he's been trying to break the law. Well. He'd known his luck would run out sooner or later, things had been too eerily easy. He'd probably missed multitudes of similar signs along the beach last night.
It also occurs to Remus that he is bloody, unshaven and unwashed and probably looks like a murdering tramp. Self-consciously, he tugs at the wrinkles in his shirt and slides a hand through his tangled hair.
"Umm…I'm terribly sorry," Remus begins, "I appear to be quite lost, I swear I didn't realize this beach was private. I'll just go." He realises as he says it that he's forgotten to fake his accent. He'd been so careful since the beginning of this trip or whatever it was to use a nearly implacable generalized American accent, but with the woman last night, his distinctive Southern-England-with-a-veneer-of-Scottish-brogue slipped free and he hasn't thought to replace it.
The two boys stare at him with matching expressions of confusion. How strange for them to be out walking along their personal beach and stumble across a wounded British vagabond.
Remus's legs have begun to ache again from standing to still for too long, and the afternoon sun is almost unbearable hot. His unhealed cuts bleed sluggishly. He hopes they'll let him go soon, Remus wants to be on his way, because he needs to eat before he sleeps again.
After a few minutes of silence, the pale boy tugs at the black boy's shirt and leans in to mumble something in his ear. They confer and Remus gazes out at the water. The clear blue of the sky melds into the water seamlessly and Remus tries to imagine how explorers of ancient days could ever believe the Earth was flat. It seems like the sand and sky and water must stretch on forever and ever, eternally twisting space around each other. Wavery near-mirages hang in the empty blue.
All of the sudden, a surge of colourful black spots cloud Remus's vision - he feels light-headed as though he's just stood too quickly. The spots expand and fill his vision until everything is black and truly, truly endless. Remus collapses to the ground, and the two boys spring towards him in surprise.
For the third time, Remus wakes in an unknown location, but this time, he is somewhere soft, smelling of lavender and laundry detergent. He sits up slowly to meet the gauzy whitewashed room around him. He is cleaner and dressed in clothes he most certainly has never seen before. Thin white bandages wrap around his arms. His wand is on the bedside table next to him, and he appreciates that whoever must have put him here didn't discard it as a useless stick. The window is open and a cool breeze sings through it.
Upon leaving the room, Remus finds himself in what appears to be a relatively rich person's summer cottage. The walls are all painted in pastels and a tasteful array of modern furniture decorates the room. After a few minutes of standing, and feeling generally lost, a door opens, bringing with it the scent of eggs and bacon, and Remus is immediately reminded of how hungry he is. The same boy from the beach appears, his eyes widen upon noticing Remus. He steps back into what Remus assumes is the kitchen and a moment later, returns with the other boy from before.
They give Remus food and he earns their trust the same way he has earned trust from everyone he has met so far - by being harmless and unquestionably unreal. People don't believe in magic, they don't believe that things from stories will happen to them. In real life no one would appear on your beach one morning having inexplicably gone through seven separate electrical fences and they don't speak to you in a lilting summer voice that paints pictures from far removed places, and so how can something that doesn't exist harm you?
He learns their names, and he learns that they too are trying to get as far from reality as they can. They sit close to each other on a the sofa and Remus sees how they lean into each other, fingers itching to find place on each others' skin, he sees how the dark of the second boy's skin would look so beautiful on the pale of the first boy's, in the same way that Lily's red hair looked against James's brown hair, the same way two kinds of magic, new and old, come together.
Remus tells them stories. But the stories he tells them are different than the ones he told before. He tells them a story about a prince and a monster and how near those two people can be if only they stretch a little. He tells them about how a prince can become a monster, and a monster can become a prince, and that putting the two together can make something whole and new and perfect and better than either alone.
He tells them his own story, but Remus also lies, because lies are what these boys want and need and because Remus wishes he had his own lies again.
They go to sleep late, Remus draped across the couch and the two boys, hands linked, slink to one room together leaving the lights switching off in a trail behind them. It begins to rain in the night, buckets and tumblers of rain, and Remus wakes to the pitter-pattering sound of it, leaves a coin on the pillow, from the Gold man, the Coin man, the Storyspinner.
He walks back out the to beach he passed out on only so many hours before and he stands still and lets the water soak him to the bone, He lets it pour across him and fill all the empty holes inside of him until it's washing him clean. Remus laughs with it, everything wet, wet, wet, and he remembers who he is again, not Sirius's boyfriend, or a werewolf, or the Gold man-coin-man-storyspinning-man or even Moony, or Remus Moon. He's just Remus Lupin, that's it. He cries too because he is saying goodbye to the last of his lies.
(It was then that Remus Lupin forgave Sirius Black.)
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part three
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Thirteen years later finds Remus on his doorstep face to face with a ghost from the past and watch, watch his heart blooms new. Sirius Black presses his dirty fingers into Remus's shirt and tells him Dumbledore said him he'd have to stay for awhile, does Remus mind. No, no, of course he does not, for here, here is his truth.
(It was then that Remus Lupin forgave himself.)