Fare Thee Well
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns the characters, Indigo Girls own the lyrics, silly me decided to combine the two.
Author's notes: I was listening to this song the other night, and something just clicked. First attempt at a songfic in a very long time, so bear with me. I'm always open to suggestions for improvement. :)
Warnings: Implied slash, obviously. If this bothers you, please go away.
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Fare thee well, my bright star
I watched your taillights blaze into nothingness
But you were long gone before I ever got to you
Before you blazed past this address...
I had hoped that there would at least be a trial, that there would at least be a chance to speak. But no, they sent you off without even that. And though I should be asking you "How could you, Sirius?" it is them I ask. How could they?
I don't have to ask you, my friend. Too well I know the answer. As you were the first to find out what I am, so I found out, in my turn, what you are. But I thought it made you dangerous only to yourself, not to the rest of the world.
I should have seen. I should have understood. I blame myself...for all of this. I was not human enough to understand, perhaps, and you were far more human than most of the people I know.
And now I think of having loved and having lost
We'll never know what it's like to never love
But who can say what's better, now my heart's become the cost
A mere token of a brighter jewel sent from above...
I can hear you, Sirius, as if it were only yesterday, that first time you followed me into the Shack. The other two hadn't learned to transform yet, but you insisted that I needed you there, and you left without them.
And when I was...myself again...I saw you. I couldn't believe that you had stayed for the whole thing. Theoretically knowing that one of your buddies is a werewolf is different from actually witnessing the transformation, actually seeing the pain and the madness that goes along with it. But then I heard you, your voice a choked and broken whisper.
"Remus, I swear it on my life, if there was any way I could take this pain from you, any way I could shift the curse to myself, I wouldn't hesitate even a second."
Your face, normally so bright and laughing, was covered with tears. Still, I couldn't stop my sarcastic response: "Why? Curiosity again? You always want to know about everything, about how things feel, do you think you'd be able to endure two months of it?"
As you grew paler, I regretted my words. Perhaps my mind was still more wolfish than I had thought.
Your eyes closed.
"Professor Laetitia said I had the Sight, stronger than anyone she's taught in years. I don't think she knows though, it's not so much that I see into the future...I see into people, Remus. I feel what they are feeling. Sometimes I can block it away, but not when it is someone...someone that matters."
Fare thee well, my bright star
The vanity of youth, the color of your eyes
And maybe if I'd fed the blazing fire of your day to day
Or if I'd been older, I'd been wise...
You never told anyone else that, never told anyone but me of the driving force behind your curiosity. The others used to tease you about being a ladies' man, but I know how few of those relationships went far beyond friendship, and how many of them started because you saw someone in need, someone who didn't know she was beautiful, someone who learned after she was with you that she could love and be loved. "The practice boyfriend" you used to call yourself, sometimes, and those who left you behind regarded you with friendship and affection after the romance was gone.
And I knew why you never stayed with any of them. My curse, my pain, it drew you like a magnet, didn't it, Padfoot? I saw the look on your face as you stayed by my side after every full moon, concentrating, as if you could somehow take the pain from me into yourself.
Too thick the heat of those long summer evenings
For a cooler evening I began to yearn
But you could only feed upon the things which feed a fire
Waiting to see if I would burn...
It worked, you know. Not completely, but it worked. The summer after fifth year, I realized just how well it worked, when I was home and had to face the change alone. Without you there, the pain was doubled, at least. The others helped, of course, by keeping me company while I was the wolf, but only you could help me with the change itself. And I let you, when we came back for our sixth year, even though I could imagine how much it hurt you.
You tried to explain, once, that it actually hurt less for you to try to help me than it would for you to stand by and do nothing. I still don't know if I understand how that works. "Might not be magic at its deepest, Moony, but it's pretty damned close," was the most I could ever get out of you.
Were you trying to tell me you loved me? Did you ever love me? Or was it all because you could not bear to be around pain without trying to ease it, and I suffered more dramatically than anyone else that you knew?
Fare thee well, my bright star
It was a brief, brilliant miracle dive
And that which I looked up to and I clung to for dear life
Had to burn itself up just to make itself alive...
I think you loved me more than you wanted to admit, to me or to yourself. I'm not empathic like you, Sirius, but you taught me something just by being there. I know I loved you, love you still. But how could I ask more of you than you were giving to me, when you gave me so much, so much...?
We could have even been happy, if the world had been a decent place. Damn your questions, damn your curiosity, damn your understanding...that's how you betrayed James, how you betrayed us all. Somehow the Dark Ones took advantage of it, turned your gift in on itself. I can still hear you, curse it all:
"Why, Remus? Why would anyone do that? I just wish I knew, I just need to understand, if I could understand why maybe I could help stop it. But how can I understand inflicting pain? The real thing, Moony, not pranks gone wrong...you know I wouldn't have even killed Severus, I just wanted to teach him a lesson, get him to leave you alone. I couldn't, and I don't see how anyone could. I just can't understand it. And I have to know, Moony. I have to know."
And I caught you then in your moment of glory
Your last dramatic scene against a night sky stage
With a memory so clear it's as if you're still before me
My once in a lifetime star of an age...
The last full moon we spent together, just the two of us, you were strangely dark and brooding. "I've seen things, Moony...I keep changing forms of divination, but no matter how I look at it, all I see is betrayal. I know that there are possibilities and definites, and I keep hoping this is only a possibility...but I can't make myself believe it. And I still don't understand how this is happening. I don't know who to trust, or what to believe, anymore. Half the time, I don't even trust myself."
I wanted to comfort you, I tried to comfort you, but something I said turned your face still darker, this time with suspicion. At the time, I wondered if you thought it would be me that betrayed you. Now, I believe you were trying to warn me - about yourself. Had you gone over to them yet, when you told me that? Or were you about to try, because you needed to know, needed to experience first-hand what they were doing? Because you were reckless enough to think that if you just held your hand out to Voldemort and his crew and showed them your idea of a world without pain, they would stop what they were doing and follow you? Was that it?
It must have been something like that. I know you, Sirius. I don't want to know what they made you become, my love. That was never you.
Fare thee well, my bright star
Last night the tongues of fire circled me around
And this strange season of pain will come to pass
As the healing hands of autumn cool me down...
I am alone. You are gone to Azkaban, where the dementors will drain you of all that made you what you are, leaving you only with pain and fear, perhaps the same pain and fear you spent so much time trying to take from me and from everyone else you knew.
My healer, my friend, my love, my life...you are lost to me. But I am alive, and I will fight them to the death, because I must avenge you as well as James and Lily and Peter.
You were never a murderer, Sirius. I know you. I know you would have felt the deaths within yourself, would have destroyed yourself along with those you would kill. They did this to you. They have killed you, Sirius - they have destroyed your soul, leaving behind a mindless machine.
If only I had a grave to leave flowers on.