TIME AFTER TIME

Remus Lupin couldn't say he was surprised when he found Sirius Black at the shrieking shack. And he wasn't surprised to see him with a cigarette in his mouth, and his body poised in a location it had occupied years ago. Sirius sat with his back to the wall, his legs stretched in front of him, and his hands resting on either thigh. His dark eyes were watching a mouse hole that had been there as long as any one could remember, though no one remembered a mouse to occupy it. The cigarette had fallen comrades around Sirius's body, squished and mostly used. His black hair was still long, though he'd shortened it some since they were kids. His eyes still had that hollow glaze to them, as if they were able to slip away from the real world to some fantasy no one else had experienced. His face had aged, and the lines showed in ways that made clear time was not as kind as it could have been. Though Remus found himself still marveling at the cut of Sirius's jaw, or the way the facial hair always made him appear rugged.

Remus had aged as well. He saw it in the mirror. He wore lines in places that were too soon for his age, and the gray in his hair was gradually becoming more and more prevalent. He wasn't ever able to keep it as short as he wanted, he'd taken to adjusting his vision around the strands of salt and brown. He was self conscious of the scars that came and went over his forehead and cheeks. They were fading now, slowly dwindling and would be gone entirely before the week was finished. His robes reflected himself, clean yet broken down, well worn and ready to crumble. Remus noticed that Sirius's clothing had the same affect.

"Hey." Remus said finally, stepping fully into the room beyond the cracked doorway. "Aren't you supposed to be gone by now?"

"Little early for the full moon, isn't it? Or am I interrupting something else?" A curious brow raised on Sirius's face and he slowly rolled his head to look at the other man. When he smiled a shadow of his former self haunted his features, the lopsided grin held a manic edge to it far greater than the half-cocked mischief of former days.

"What if someone finds you here?" Remus asked. He came closer to where Sirius sat. With Sirius's body prone on the floor Remus towered over him, and could view the hints of mistreatment in Sirius's hair, the knots that formed in the longer strands, and the grease that accumulated with a lack of proper hygiene.

"What if someone finds you here?" Sirius smirked, and let his eyes settled on the mouse hole again.

"I'm not the one who's an escaped felon."

"Nope. You're just a former professor, current werewolf. Won't raise any one's suspicions at all cavorting about with a murderer." There was a snort of laughter following Sirius's words.

"Why are you here, Sirius?" Remus sighed.

"Waiting for you." He said plainly.

"Why?" This time it was Remus's turn to quirk an eyebrow at the statement.

"I don't know. Maybe I thought 13 years of no communication might leave us with some catching up to do." He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a large clump of smoke.

Remus wrinkled his nose as the pungent smell. It was over powering to his sensitive nose.

"It's just the beginning you know." Sirius said, motioning towards the hole in the wall. Remus followed Sirius's gesture with his eyes. "Behind that wall, there's probably a network of tunnels and dens that reaches all over this shack. A whole mouse metropolis behind these walls, and no one is any the wiser. Why I bet they even have prisons, jail cells for wicked mice who don't follow the rules."

Remus slowly eased himself to sit in the space next to Sirius. He couldn't count the number of times he'd sat with him just like that. Staring at that same hole, on the same wall, calmly waiting for everything to fully pas shim over, the pain to ease away, the cuts to fade and heal to small lines on his face and back. Sirius always sat in the exact same position, waiting with what always seemed to be infinent patients for Remus to be ready to head back to the school again. Every month as children they had sat there together. And now as adults it felt strange to be sitting next to him again, so close he could smell the sweat that mixed on Sirius's skin.

"That's what you want to talk about? Rodent architecture?" Remus asked, reaching inside of his shabby robes into one of the few pockets that hadn't had patches stitched together to keep items inside. He removed a bar of chocolate, half of it had been broken off already, but it was set on his lap regardless.

"He looks so much like him…" Sirius's voice trailed off, and his eyes momentarily lost their focus.

"Harry? Yes. He does. And there are days he reminds me a lot of James. I see both of them in Harry. Lily and James. He's got a good heart, and his father's sense of what to do with his time." Remus smiled pleasantly at memories stored deep in the recesses of his brain.

"I thought it was him, at first. I could have been fooled so easily."

"You shouldn't dwell too much on it, Sirius…" Remus said it cautiously.

"Why not? What else do I have to do, but spend 13 years dwelling on his death?" Sirius was angry, the growl crept into his throat and held tightly to it. "You don't seem so broken up over it."

"I spent my time grieving."

"Bully for you, Remus. Did you grieve for me too? Or did you shed all your tears for James and Peter?" Sirius said the last name with a spit on his tongue. It hung like acid in the air, venomous hatred.

"That's not fair, Sirius…" Remus broke off a piece of the chocolate bar, carefully unwrapped. He offered it to Sirius.

Sirius kept his eyes on the hole, though his jaw had set suddenly with stubbornness. Reluctantly Remus tucked the piece of chocolate back into the foil and sealed it up. "You were in jail, they…he was dead. I didn't have-"

"Didn't have what, Remus? Time? Energy?" Sirius snapped. His eyes came to focus on Remus and they were cold.

"What was I supposed to do? I tried to go see you before they threw you in Azkaban…But you wouldn't have me!" Remus protested in his own defense.

"Sirius?" Remus asked as he stood out side of a small cell. The bars were humming, alive with energy. A collar had been fixed around the raven-haired man's throat, holding him fast and his magic bound inside of the device.

"Go away." The man growled. His shoulders were rolled forward and his hair hung in front of his face.

"Sirius, please talk to me. I have spoken with Dumbledore, he thinks there might be somethi-"

"I said go away!" Sirius stood, his body moving with a power that Remus had only rarely seen him use. He was at the bars, his fists had coiled around the bars and his face pressed against them. His mouth spat spittle as he screamed at the werewolf. "Get away from me! Get away from me!"

Remus backed away from the bars, pressing his back against a far wall. He stared at his friend, his lover with foreign eyes. He'd seen Sirius through dark times, but this was an entirely new beast inside of him. He was like a caged animal, scratching and clawing at the bars, threatening any one who came close. In his black eyes was an agony Remus did not recognize.

"Get away from me, faggot! You miserable dog! Get away!" Sirius shook at the bars, rattling them. With the pressure applied they responded and sent a jolt through the man. He crumbled to the floor with the stun.

Remus rushed forward, kneeling to get a better look at him. "Sirius! Sirius are you okay?" He wanted to reach through the bars and touch him, run his fingers through the fine black hair, but dared not get too close.

Sirius looked up. His upper lip drew back and he spat at Remus. The saliva sailed through the bars and hit Remus in the face. Remus recoiled, his face held a mixture of horror and a great sense of loss. He wiped the spit from his features with the sleeve of his robe. He managed to get to his feet, and stare down at the huddled figure of Sirius Black in the cage.

"You pathetic waste of fur and flesh, get away!" Sirius bellowed up at him.

Remus felt the tears in his eyes as he looked at his friend. He turned and hurried down the hallway to the main door of the long row of cells, and prisoners waiting their turn in front of a judge. The sounds of wild laughter chased him out of the building.

"You broke my heart, Sirius…" Remus said it with a sigh. He had spent nights crying by himself, whimpering and wishing his bed didn't feel so empty.

"I know." Sirius said flatly.

"You meant to do it?" Remus wasn't really surprised.

"I could keep you if I hated you. I could have everything of you if I just hated you enough. They took so many things from me. I didn't even remember his face till I saw that boy… but I wouldn't let them have you. They didn't get you." Sirius said it all while watching the mouse hole, his eyes were intently focused on the small cut out, as if he was peering through it, and into the mouse world that was beyond.

Remus reached a hand out to touch Sirius's shoulder but drew it back when half an inch from its goal the shoulder moved away.

"I trusted him. I trusted Peter with everything. I didn't know how much time I had. If something happened to me… I wanted them to be safe, Remus. More than anything I wanted that boy to have his parents." Sirius leaned forward a moment, narrowing his eyes at the hole. He let out a long breath and leaned his back against the wall once more. "But he doesn't have his parents. And I made the mistake that cost him that."

"You couldn't have known. None of us…we…We didn't even suspect." Remus felt strange remembering it all. He felt his stomach twist into knots and his body chilled with the bitter memories.

"No. I knew. I knew it. I just suspected wrong." Sirius looked at Remus than, bringing a cold gaze onto the copper-eyed man.

Remus's eyes went wide, and then fell to their normal size as his face cleared with recognition. Pain crept along his brows and into his mouth that went slack. "You thought… Me. You thought it was me." He felt his chest seize, and his lungs felt as if they pushed a thousand bricks away with each breath. His heart sank, and it seemed to slow to an agonizing pace. "You came to me every night. Every night I told you how much I loved you…and you thought it was me? You thought I would betray you? That I would betray James and Lily? They were my friends too, Sirius!" Remus was standing, screaming down at the other man.

Remus jumped backwards when Sirius stood. Thirteen years had not changed so much that Sirius couldn't come up with amazing power in his own body when he needed it. He was standing in one swift motion and his height still dominated Remus's.

"Yes! I suspected you! I thought it was you! And I was wrong and look what it cost me!" Sirius's face was twisted with anger, his eyes had turned hot.

"I loved you! How you could think that I would do that!" Remus yelled.

"Because you said you loved me!" Sirius shouted in return.

"What?" Remus's voice reached an octave he had not heard sine he was Harry's age. His face immediately turned red afterwards. "What kind of logic is that, Sirius?"

"I don't know. I just…I couldn't believe you." Sirius's face was losing its grip on the anger. He was slowly calming, his shoulders were less tense, and his stare less fixed.

"After everything I did…. After all I went through for you…. You couldn't believe me?" Remus couldn't believe his own ears. His heart had suddenly found its beat again, and pounded rapidly inside of his chest.

"What was I supposed to think?" Sirius offered only a shrug to accompany his words.

"Oh, I don't know, Sirius. Let me think on that one. Oh I got it! Maybe I was telling you the truth!" Remus's voice climbed higher in volume.

"I made a mistake…"He shook his head, and ran a hand through his knotted black hair. His fingers caught on several of the knots and he simply pulled harder until they were pulled free. He shook the strands that came with the tearing from his hands. "And I'll spend the rest of my life paying for it. So leave me alone about it."

Sirius threw his hands towards Remus as if to brush him aside. He stepped past the other man and headed for the door to the ram-shackle bedroom. His step had a faint hitch in it, as if his bones were soar to their very core and it ached him slightly to move. He'd spent thirteen years in a small dark cell, locked away from daylight and everything else but his own tortured thoughts, his soul was soar to its very core.

"I'd have taken your place." Remus said it to the air where Sirius had been standing.

"What?" Sirius turned at the doorway, looking back at his only remaining childhood friend.

Remus turned around, looking at Sirius with his head tilted to one side, as if that would some how make it easier to confess. His hands were in small fists at his side, held tightly there by rigid, straight arms. "I'd have taken your place. I'd have gone there instead of you. I would have traded places with you with out a thought…" His voice trailed off as he choked on it. "I'd have done anything to prove it to you, Sirius. Anything." Remus's cheeks stung with tears. He hadn't cried in so long, he barely remembered what they felt like.

Sirius didn't say anything, but he came back into the room. He walked slowly towards Remus, keeping his expression carefully neutral. His ragged clothes, borrowed from some one, or simply picked up in the trash hung off his body like dishrags. He wasn't nearly the picture of handsome darkness he had once been, so bold, young and brash. He was older now, though the quick temper remained to an even greater degree, and those bottomless black eyes still left a haunting touch to Remus.

"It always seemed James knew more than I did. He was always one step ahead of me when it came to you. I couldn't keep up. I wanted you to trust me, I would have done anything to prove how much I loved you. But you never talked to me, not about anything that mattered. You always confided in James. When he died, Sirius, I knew how badly it must have hurt you. I wanted to be there for you, I wanted to hold you…I wanted a chance to prove how I loved you. But you wouldn't let me." Remus's face was moist, and the faint light in the dark room caught on the tears, making his flesh reflective. The pale white stood out amongst all the dull grays that dust and time covered the room in.

"I couldn't." Sirius said softly. He was so close, his breath caressed Remus's skin.

"It destroyed you when he died. He knew everything about you….I knew nothing…" Remus struggled with his voice. He felt it in his head and over his lips, catching and pulling on his emotions.

"He was my best friend…" Sirius swallowed through the large lump in his throat.

"What was I?" Remus quivered when he asked the question. He felt the cool from out side, it touched him and seeped through his skin and made it prickle. He thought his heart would burst, it felt as if a vice had a grip on it, squeezing tightly.

"Everything." Sirius whispered. He kissed Remus, bringing his lips down gently on the other man's. Thirteen years gave way and force took over. He pushed against the other man, sliding his arms around Remus's body. He held him, pulling him as close as he could with in his grip and kissed him with more force by each passing second.

Remus's legs gave out almost instantly, and the whole of his weight rested in Sirius's arms. He kissed him back, everything inside of him returned that kiss that had been thirteen years in coming. Remus's heart rattled in his chest, his whole body trembled and his hands were only steady when they touched Sirius's dark hair. He stroked along Sirius's temple, reaching back through the matted darkness to cling to it. He felt Sirius's half-grown beard scratching his skin, it irritated the flesh and made it sting, but he didn't make note of it. Thirteen years boiled down to a single kiss, and in that moment Remus Lupin knew for all his work to forget the past, to move beyond his first love and for all the time he'd referred to Sirius in the past tense, they all meant nothing. For as much as he'd loved Sirius Black than, he loved him more now.

The End.