A/N: This is my first Harry Potter fic at all, and also my first slash fic, so try not to kill me. Enjoy!
Prologue: Deep in the Black
Too dark. Too dark for too long. Months of it, maybe even years, he wasn't sure anymore. All he remembered was the last battle, fighting her, wanting to kill her, rip her to shreds. Fighting. Screaming. Not his own screaming but people he knew.
And then a whisper of fabric, brushing past him as he fell too far, infinitely far.
After that he knew nothing. Until now. He hadn't even realized he was in the dark, but now he was all too aware of it. The oppressive blackness, on his eyes as he opened them or maybe he hadn't opened them at all? He couldn't remember anything, not with the black pressing in on his heart and his body and his soul.
But there was a reason. Something, somewhere, calling him back. He needed to go back, to wherever he had been. There was something he had left behind, something he needed.
He had to get out.
The sound of ripping fabric reached his ears, a harsh tearing through his consciousness, and he felt cold stone under his cheek. Rough and painful against his skin. His lids were closed tight—he wasn't sure if he even remembered how to open them.
His fingers curled under, into the stone floor, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, his aching and unused limbs trembling with the effort, he raised himself up so he was sitting. He did not dare open his eyes. But he wanted to. God, how we wanted to. To know that he was here, wherever here was, to know that he could feel and that there was something other than that darkness that had snatched and trapped him so cruelly.
With a deep, shuddering breath, he opened his eyes, and though the room was dark, even the residual light from a door at one end burned him like sunlight. He stood, his joints cracking and his muscles crying out in protest.
He went to the door, passing it, the veil, as he went out, and shivering as a sharp chill went up his spine. The door creaked open under his hands, though his limbs shook and buckled. He walked out, out of the room that had taken his life, out of the place that had nearly taken his soul as well. He walked up the stairs, past the people bustling around who hardly seemed to notice him as he passed with his head down and his eyes on the ground. There was another door ahead, and this one opened more easily, swiftly even, and for a moment he simply stood, staring out through the door at the world.
And Sirius Black walked out into the sunlight.
A/N: Review, if you please. Obviously, Remus will be coming along shortly, but I'm the kind of girl who likes a good progression of things, so the romance might not heat up for a little while. This is the part where you push the review button.