Title: Sorry
Summary: An old woman overhears a conversation
Disclaimer: I own Ben and Anabelle Morris.
Author's Notes: Sad fics seem to be my thing tonight.
Once week for the past fifteen years Anabelle Morris had come to this graveyard to tend to her husband's grave. Bless his soul, he'd passed on before her, but she knew he was just waiting for the day when she would join him...just as she was.
It was an old graveyard, full of plots belonging to people long dead. In fact, the last people to be buried here had been fourteen years ago, a young couple by the name of Porter, or something like it, who died in a tragic accident.
That was why she was so surprised when she saw the new grave, not far from Ben's. On the other side of a hedge in fact, right next to the young couple's. Still, she pushed it out of her mind. The plot had probably been reserved for years, that was all.
But one rainy day, a day she really shouldn't have been weeding, with her old bones that creaked so, the new grave was brought back to her attention. A man sat in front of it, his shaggy sand-coloured hair plastered to his head as he spoke to the gravestone, mouth stumbling over the words. Shamelessly, Anabelle eavesdropped. If he was going to talk in a graveyard he had to deal with the fact that someone might be listening.
"Dammit, Sirius, why did you have to leave me?" His voice seemed weary, as if he'd been pushed down one too many times. "You always promised you'd be there for me to the end. And you weren't." He was crying, no, more than crying. Sobbing. The weariness was coupled with loneliness, and hopelessness. This was a man who had given up on life. "Ai, how my bones ache, Sirius. I miss you so much. The others...they don't realise. It isn't just the lycanthropy that's killing me. It's missing you. My mate. Wolves mate for life, Sirius. You knew that, yet...you let me...how could you let me? He cries for you, Sirius, when the moon's full. And I don't know how much longer I can live like this." He coughed, a deep, rasping cough that shook the thin shoulders.
Anabelle felt a pang of sympathy for him. He wasn't long for this world, no matter how one went about it. He had to be thirty, forty years younger than her, but she'd seen enough death to know that while he had days, weeks, months, she had years, decades, even.
"I...we shouldn't have wasted those years in suspicion. We should have known! Neither of us...we were loyal to the end! It was Peter, that rat, Peter. Even his animal should have given it away. Dogs and wolves are loyal, but rats! Oh, Sirius, how could we have been so blind!"
An argument, then. Anabelle surmised. The pair must have split up before the young man's lover died, and now he was wracked with guilt.
"I'm sorry, love. I know...I know I told you, but I can't help but feel you never truly believed me. I miss you. I love you." He pressed one hand to the tombstone, and stood, walking away slowly.
Anabelle got up carefully, grimacing at the pain in her joints. She really had to stop gardening in the rain.
End