My clock has stopped ticking. It will never tick again.
I'm not sure when the shift had occurred, when I had stopped measuring time in hours and minutes and began to count it in "with Sirius" and "apart from Sirius." But I'm not sure about much anymore. After all, my clock is gone now.
"With Sirius" had meant for so long when we were just together. Talking, eating, laughing, whatever. But there had been times when it had meant touching. Touching became our obsession once we left school. Life was like this: work, "apart from Sirius" time, then home and touching. Always touching. It was like the two of us were trying to memorize the feel of each other. And we were so desperate to memorize every touch, like each might be the last.
And one day, that was true. That was when "apart from Sirius" became the norm. And I was alone. No James, no Lily, no Pete, no Sirius. It was like a bad day that seemed to stretch on and on and you just wanted to curl up in bed and cry until it went away, but it wouldn't.
But then, just a few years ago, I could measure time in "with" and "apart" again, and I felt… saner perhaps. Safer.
But I should know by now that safe and sane don't last long. Because now there is no clock. I can hear myself scream, I feel myself cry, but I feel numb. I don't really feel anything.
I'm suspended in a world without time.
Until she shows up, she hears me scream, and she asks "What's wrong?" and she looks just like Sirius. Not physically, because that would be cruel, but there's that tilt to her head, that mad gleam in her eye.
She doesn't press me for details, she probably already knew about Sirius and I. She doesn't mock; she just holds me and lets me cry.
I don't know until later that this will become her job. To help me move on. But at that moment, when she's holding me and I cry…
The second hand moves.
a/n I thought I needed to write a Tonks/Remus fic, because I should a least TRY to pay attention to cannon. For Cara, who makes me like Tonks, even if I don't really...
I own nothing... here, at the bottom, I tell you that...
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