Disclaimer: Anything you realize isn't mine. Sympathize?

A/N This is incredibly hard for me to write for such a huge Remus/Tonks shipper, but I'll do my best. And Even though the quote that inspired this story is Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy the story was written to the tune of Beautiful Love by The Afters.

"Goodbye, my almost lover/ Goodbye, my hopeless dream/ I'm trying not to think about you/ Can't you just let be/ So long my luckless romance/ My back is turned on you."

Almost Lover- A Fine Frenzy

Tired:

She had gotten so tired but she could never sleep these days. Every time she shut her eyes a vision of her a Remus appeared. The silent times spent in her flat during rain days, just looking out the window from her settee, him drumming his fingers to the rhythm of the drops.

The early Order meetings when they did their bests to resist shouting from the hilltops that, yes, they where seeing each other. When Sirius would make sure that they sat across from each other while eating and slipping sly smiles to one and other while nobody else was looking.

The sorrow and sadness that she felt now where the polar opposite of the love and happiness she had had felt with Remus, but just as deep.

Nobody seemed to understand. Remus hadn't stolen her heart, no. She had given it graciously. He didn't even want it, not fully. But she didn't care. She knew he would never break it if he kept it with him. So now she sat, heartless.

It reminded her of an old muggle movie her dad made her watch when she was younger. She wished she had ruby slippers that could take her away from her home, the one she had shared with Remus.

Well, that wasn't an option, unless she wanted to go to the Burrow and be nailed with persistent questions from the Weasley clan. There where two options. Option One: To hide from everything Remus related and to heal to wound. Option Two: Never let it wound you to begin with and look at it as what he said it was 'an Order duty that causes us to be separated'.

Nymphadora was torn between the two although every time she thought about going to the Burrow the reasons not to go seemed to grow less and less. Molly's tea and sympathy sessions where infamous amongst the Order woman but she would feel more than awkward fessing up with six, counting Harry and Hermione, drama-hungry teenagers around.

They would probably question her bleak mousy hair and her eyes, which had gone from light blue to black. She wasn't up to explaining to the teenagers that their former professor had a love life and that it was with none other than their resident pink-haired Auror.

She knew she shouldn't be mad at the leader of their side of the war, Dumbledore, but she was furious. Why had he assigned Remus a job that required him to be gone for so long? Why had he not given her time to work this out rationally with Remus?

She knew both of those answers. She knew that they needed to recruit as many dark creatures as we could into the Order and that Remus was the only one that had the slightest of convincing them. She also knew that even if Dumbledore had given them months they would never come out with a rational idea. Their love wasn't forbidden but it wasn't encouraged at all, especially around the Ministry.

Someone, namely Lucius Malfoy, had let it slip that she was having a relationship with a werewolf and, much to Remus' embarrassment, the snide remarks had not stopped coming. She denied it, which made her feel so guilty that her heart drop into her stomach. She didn't care about her reputation as much as her job. She was already on the 'two strikes' list and it would definitely be a third strike to have proof of her relationship with Remus reach Dawlish, the Head of Aurors. They had also noticed the lack of colorful hair and constantly changing eye colors, which provided an excuse for more questioning.

As much as the coherent thoughts aided her need to sort things out, she hadn't gotten any farther when it cam to what to do. So she sat, looking out the very same window she had looked out with Remus' arms around her, and stared out at the day. The trees where vibrant oranges and the sun had just sunken below the grasps of the horizon, illuminating the curve of the Earth.

It kind of felt like watching your time run out. Like those counters that you see on New Years Eve, they make you anxious and you just want to sit and stare at them forever, seeing just how much time you have left.