counting the stars
Dearest Remus,
You're gone. You're gone and I'm here and I'm not sure that I'm going to be okay anymore. Please come back.
Love,
Tonks
A young witch sat at her desk with a quill in hand. Once upon a lifetime, her eyes could have told a million stories of love, but on that particular day, they only told one: grief.
The story was echoed around her in varying degrees. There was the bed, of course. One side was well slept in, one side was meticulously made. It looked as though it hadn't been slept in for days—and it hadn't been. There were the dishes piling up in the sink, despite the witch's ability to clean them with a flick of her wand. And on some days, it was the lack of new plates that spoke more than words could.
On the day she sat writing to her husband, it was the noted absence of another human life in the small house. Her son, whom she had grown to love and need, was not there. He was at her mother's, after she'd had a breakdown the previous day.
They'd been outside, watching the stars. "How many stars do you think there are, Teddy?" Andromeda had said, fiddling with her grandson's toes. "Four? Five?"
"There are millions, mum," Tonks had sighed. Andromeda just rolled her eyes.
Secretly, Tonks was counting. To her, every star meant one day she had without Remus. Every star was a life not lived, a love not loved, and a tear that stained her pillow.
It was after Teddy had gone to bed that she began to scream. "It's not fair!" she'd shouted. "It's my life! I loved him, mum! I love him!"
Only after she'd collapsed on her couch, shouting "Come back" over the cries of her son, did she realize that he wasn't coming back.
Then, it was morning, and she woke to an entirely obtrusive sun streaming in through her window and a note from her mother telling her she'd taken Teddy until Tonks was 'feeling up to it again.'
She felt empty all morning. The desk she sat at was just yet another reminder of how utterly alone she was. In the mornings, she used to write letters to her dad while Remus was in the kitchen with Teddy, or before the rest of the house got up.
There was no one there anymore, she reminded herself. She was alone, and she was crushed, and she couldn't breathe any longer because the grief pushed down on her lungs until she was in front of the sink, leaning over, trying to feel but not wanting to feel ever again.
The day after she had lost her heart down the drain and tried to forget, she gave up counting the stars.
Instead, she tried talking to him. At first, she didn't quite know what she was saying. She tried to be poetic, if only so she didn't sound like a complete sociopath. She was talking to walls, after all, and pretending they were her dead husband. After a while, though, she gave up.
"I hate you. I love you. I miss you." She hugged a pillow to her chest and looked out the window. "We could have had so much more, Remus. We could have had three kids, and we could have played in that yard, and they could have been driving us crazy but we wouldn't have cared because they'd be ours, only ours, and we would never be alone. Never, ever."
She tried painting, for a while, but all of her pictures ended up being Remus's dead body on the cold floor of Hogwarts. Then she tried to go for a walk, but every time she reached the tree where Remus proposed she had to turn around. She resigned herself to staying indoors and cleaning the house. Little by little, Remus's things ended up in boxes or in the basement. Once, she cut up one of his shirts because it felt better than just staring at it in his closet.
Nymphadora Tonks looked at her ceiling, all alone in her house that longed to be filled, and asked herself—"What happened to my life?"
She had a nightmare, not long after she stopped painting his body and started painting both of them, dead. Her mother had refused to let Teddy come back until she stopped. It was one of those nightmares that she remembered for years after she'd had it, and one that would come back for nights afterwards.
They lay together on the ground. They were holding hands, but he started to get up. She would always try to tell him not to go, that she wanted him to stay, but he wouldn't stay. Of course he wouldn't bloody stay, for some reason he thought it was best to leave and Tonks couldn't get up, so he slipped away. He slowly pulled his hand from her grasp, and she was paralyzed. Helpless.
He kept coming back, and leaving, and then coming back again.
Every time he was almost out of her vision, she would call out to him. "Stop it, please! Stop leaving!" He would come back. And they would start all over again.
She woke in a cold sweat at four in the morning, washed her face in the bathroom, and couldn't fall back asleep.
That was how she began to get up every morning before the sun would rise so she wouldn't have to lay in bed for hours until it was acceptable to get up. That was how she stopped making him pots of coffee he would never drink because the scent was too strong for four in the morning. That was how the dishes got washed because there was nothing else to do and how the unread magazines started to go into the trash.
That was how the house got too clean, and Teddy came back, and she finally threw out all the letters that she would never—could never—send him. The paintings got shredded, the walks got longer, the nightmares stopped, and Teddy got his Hogwarts letter.
She never forgot him, though, especially when she would take Teddy out at night and show him the stars, and tell him all about how his mum and dad fell in love, even when he got too old and thought it was weird. Most nights, they would fall asleep outside, after having contests to see who could change their hair to the most ridiculous shade of pink.
"Count the stars," she would tell him. "That's how much I love you."
That's how much she loved Remus, too.
A/N: This was written for Nayla/The Original Horcrux's Last Ship Standing Competition on HPFC, for the pairing Remus/Tonks with the action, emotion, word, and dialogue. Also for the If You Dare Challenge, with the prompt 'starry night.'
Immense thank-yous to Sam and Joanna, who helped me with all of my infinite insecurities, and to you, for reading!
I'd forever appreciate you if you'd leave a little review.
Allie