Summary: He doesn't hear his mother.
He doesn't know what to expect when the first full moon of the month rolls around. He's spent a week looking for the answer in those books his mom loves – the ones about magic and sweet things that he doesn't really know about.
(but he doesn't know of pain either, not just yet)
So he reads of things like pain and transformation and vicious monster and wonders if he truly wanted to know in the first place. But he also reads of locking oneself up and protection so when he charts the full moon he finds a way to lock himself in the basement.
(lock his humanity outside the door and let go of the monster within)
The first few rays of moonlight spreads like a web to the corners of the room, growing closer and closer to him and terror fills him up; things like if he'll attack his mother, if he'll break down the door of this homemade prison and reach out with unknowing, unloving claws to kill. Sometimes he hears his Dad pacing outside, knowing full well he will never enter the room for fear of his own son (the one he condemned to this).
He doesn't hear his mother.
The rays of light flow like silk over his skin, turning it a bright white in the face of the black sky.
There is a pain in his back, spreading up his spine, and his vision doubles over making him very, very dizzy. Behind his lips, just a child's he implores to God, his teeth grow longer and longer digging into his skin before he feels his bones shift and shake and tumble longer and longer until it's a muzzle.
It's really not quite as bad as he thinks it would be. But, then again, it's not the physical changes that hurt as much, it's the mental. It's the collision of the id and the superego in his mind, the id battling for control – for blood and strength and pain – with the superego fighting for honorable things, for protection, and good things that he was raised to love.
At least, that's what he thinks before something runs through his veins and makes his muscles burn. Before his bones grow in his skin and settle through the veins, coiling them in ways they shouldn't, and make him scream.
Except it isn't a scream, it's a howl, a glorious, deep-throated howl that doesn't sit well on his lips.
He feels weak, feels like curling up to sleep, and there is a soft growl in the back of his mind telling him to relax, to sleep and allow it control. It's the Wolf.
But he's so tired, so hurt, that he listens. Fighting only brings more agony.
He blacks out but the Wolf doesn't, instead the Wolf rages in the room – turning it over, looking for fresh blood, for fresh meat, and cannot find it. So he searches. Searches through the cement of the basement, through the dry wall, through the wood, he wrecks the basement and inside he wrecks Remus.
When Remus comes back, when the Wolf is pulled back by the rays of sunlight (like shackles made of warmth and humanity), he cannot move off the floor.
He is weak, he is angry, he is so very, very tired.
Years later Sirius Black will ask what it feels like to change, the black dog asks the Wolf and considers himself family, and Remus will not tell him.
But the answer lies locked behind his lips (the wolf is locked behind his eyes).
" It feels like Death."
SADNESS FOR REMUS! Oh, and worry not TAJ (if you're reading this, which I hope you are), my Mentalist fic will be up soon :)
Aimlessly Unknown.