Remus:

Bugger. I... you're a problem, mate. Not like, you, but- you know. You're like a bloody gigantic painful problem I don't want to stop having but no choice about it because you're, and cheerio, end of Hogwarts and all, so off we go. That is, Prongs has his firey red-haired demons to contend with and Peter's just, always, Peter, but you. And you have your own problems, of course, but you're Remus, and what are you even going to do with yourself after school's over?

Oh, fuck, I didn't mean it like that. You need to just, maybe take a breath or something once in a while, Moony, because you're going to be fine no matter what. You're so, you, you know, and I bet every hiring place in London is going to leap at you and fight each other to death over who gets you, with a bit of monthly fur or not. With broadswords. Moony, they're going to have broadswords. They wouldn't have broadswords over Pete, you know, and not me either unless it was self-defense. Surely once Prongs pulls his face off Evans for five minutes they won't have broadswords for him either.

So do stop worrying because it's the end of term and you should be partying with the rest of us, not, I don't know, blothering about worrying like you do and letting your forehead crinkle. Weird word, that, crinkle, but you know what I mean. And you do. And it's so Remusy that it's certainly damn bad for you because every time I see you do it I want to slam you against a wall somewhere and snog you until they go away. The... the crinkles.

Bollocks. Bugger, fuck. See, Remus, not good for you and not for me either. Oh, pansies. I'm a girl and a hippo-crate or however the hell you spell that because here I am anyway and it's the end of term and I am sitting here writing a letter to you. With feelings. Remus, you sneaky bastard, I don't have any feelings. Then you came along with the... the making me want to snog you and all. But I guess if I really was a girl and not just a very good comparison including feelings and soppy letters I wouldn't be a flaming pansy anyway so maybe I wouldn't be writing this. Except I'd be a girl so I'd have the feelings anyway so chances are good, I might just be writing it anyway-Bugger all, I am, blathering and if you were here you'd be listening to me go on with a little half-smile and quirky (weird word again) eyebrow until I stopped and I'd want to kiss you again just to shut myself up.

I don't want to let you go away even though you're a bloody gigantic painful problem because of all this, and I know if you had, you know, without the monthly fur and all you'd have a girl who liked you and you'd like her and make a bunch of beautiful, beautiful little Remus babies together so maybe it's not a good idea to tell you all this, but hell. Hell, maybe there's half a chance hiding somewhere in the back of your brain so I won't regret it, but more likely it's my desperation and, you know, all talking especially now that it's end of term and we'll go our separate ways, sort of thing and there will be broadswords.

Now you've done me in. Look at this, Moony, I haven't written this much for school in a thousand years or only seven, not that it matters anyway because we're done now. But feelings, Moony. See what's become of me your dear ol' friend. With the feelings.

I... Merlin, it's hard to even sign this thing. I'll just shove it in your already-packed trunk, you neat and tidy nutter, because I haven't the balls to send it and I'll just spend the time 'til you reply crinkling my forehead and blothering as you do.

Sirius Black

Remus Lupin was cleaning. It came from nervous energy, he supposed, this sudden need to just do something, anything, and scouring the room worked as well as anything. Better! He swept a layer of lint out from under his bed and sneezed violently, then flattened himself to the floor and stretched sideways, groping for anything else. If he could throw himself into this pursuit, whole-heartedly, mindlessly, perhaps he'd have no room, no energy left to think about things.

His world had fallen apart. There was more that went into it, of course, as it was with all humans - and wizards especially: intricate emotions, feelings, bits of personality, past and perceptions that came together to form him. Together they produced something far more complex than fit into one statement, but there was a simpler answer: his world had fallen apart. How could-

Remus' heart gave way to a dull ache, and he stopped straining to reach the hidden depths of hell and apathy beneath his bed. Feeling suddenly all of his twenty-one years and thousands more, he picked himself up and sat, staring dry-eyed at nothing. It was unreal, what had happened. No- it was too real, and his brain refused to accept it, built up a protective wall between what he knew, factually, on the surface and what had actually happened, lest he be drowned in it.

After some time he shook himself back to awareness and sighed. He was heavy. It was heavy, this knowledge, and he found himself too tired to care. Dully he drew a wand from his pocket and directed it under the bed.

"Accio." A dust bunny flew at him, and he did away with it. "Accio." A crumpled piece of parchment now, and as he moved to throw it away it struck a note in his memory:

Nearly five years ago, he'd returned here for good and unpacked lethargically, mechanically, unsure what to do now that Hogwarts - a place of friends, learning, purpose - was no longer part of his life. Books, he'd filed on the shelves. Clothes, he'd put away or tossed, as necessary, into a pile for washing. Other, smaller objects one might consider by-products of life -a Christmas present there, a shoe here, notes, memories- were more random, and he'd closed the trunk, unready to deal with them just yet.

And this bit of parchment...

He opened it now, five years later than he should have, fingers caressing its folds as though to erase them. "Remus," it said. "Bugger. I..."

Remus jolted, as though electrocuted, and spread the parchment wider. "You idiot," he said softly. "What do you want?" It was so like him to crumple a letter before leaving it, so - just - pure, unaltered Sirius.

"you're a problem, mate. Not like, you, but- you know."

He rose compulsively, stumbled back, and collapsed on his bed, leaning heavily against the wall before reading on. "You're barely coherent," he murmured, scanning the page. Halfway through, his eyes widened in shock, then returned to a look of forced calm, mouth a bit thinner.

Having read twice through, Remus cast the letter aside and sighed, then buried his face in his hands, allowing the heels of his palms to dig into his eye sockets. Fireworks seemed to burst behind his closed eyelids and so did a plethora of memories...

Sirius watching him in class, all the times he'd turned to find silver eyes hastily slipping away...

Sirius moody, moping and he the only one able to cheer him up...

James, even, giving him sidelong looks of questioning, uncertainty...

Sirius grabbing his arm a little too much for no reason, looking at him a little too long after a shower...

Sirius after full moons, hurrying not to be naked beside him...

And after they'd left, Sirius becoming nervous, then distant, refusing to meet his eyes, not smiling quite as easily. A chasm had seemed to grow between them.

Sirius...

Arrested, he thought. Arrested. It hadn't been a week, not a single week after the Fidelius Charm was cast and the world was split. James and Lily were dead. Peter was dead. And Sirius... arrested. Sirius, the cause of it all, was destined to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban.

"Why?" he said aloud. "Why, Sirius? What made you do it?"

And he could not help the tears that began to leak, for the first time, from behind his pressing hands. He turned from the answer, allowed grateful shadow to envelope it once more. I did that. I did it to Sirius.

Padfoot stared balefully at the door. A niggling bit of human brain insisted he knock, announce his arrival, but he could see no way to do it. He stretched one paw to the side of the house, heaved his weight up onto it- slowly, slowly, and pulled down the handle with the other.

The inside was gloomy and still, smelling of weariness, Remus, and dust. He sneezed violently, shaking his head and backing against the swinging door as a human tangle of emotions assaulted his more simple brain. It would be easy just to turn around and head back to Azkaban, he thought bitterly, returning to a human shape. It would all be so much easier- except for Pettigrew.

Sirius closed the door dazedly, trying not to focus on the struggle within him. He moved deeper into the house instead, running a hand along a chair back, wiping the coat of dust from an old volume's spine. No one had cleaned here, certainly.

A shadow moved behind him; there came a dull scuff on the wood that only just made it to his duller, human ears. Still jumpy from his time in hiding and yet too late, Sirius tried to turn and was caught up from behind instead. Instinctively he struggled against the arms that held him in a not-quite embrace, twitching convulsively away, breath coming hard and fast, and being held ever the harder for it. Before he could scream and thrash in a blind panic, an old, familiar scent drifted to him even as did a voice:

"Hi, Sirius," said Remus into Sirius' ear, and a new kind of shudder slipped over him.

"Remus," he responded hoarsely, "Let me go."

"No," Remus said, tightening an arm still more around his torso. "Not yet. I have something to tell you."

"Remus!" Sirius gasped, though whether in desperation or threat, he couldn't quite tell himself.

"Remus indeed," his captor said gravely. " ' Bugger,' it continued, then, 'I... you're a problem, mate.' " In his grasp Sirius seemed to tense with every muscle that could do so, and Remus could hear his breathing slow to a forced, anti-panic mode. Ignoring this, he added, "Most of the rest of it was incoherent and jumbled- Characteristic of you, of course, but it mentioned a couple of points I wouldn't have guessed. An interesting letter."

Sirius seemed to wince in pain, closing his eyes as though unable to face... what? His own affections? "It's done, Remus. I'm over it." The response, hoarse as all else that passed his lips, was torn from them and thrown in all its mangled glory to Remus' feet.

Remus examined it carefully, just as he always had, and sighed. Smoothed out the wrinkles, held it to the light, and said simply, "No, you're not."

"Let me be."

That too turned to dust beneath Remus' inspection. "I won't," he replied sadly. "I won't. James and Lily are gone, Sirius, and they were so in love that they might have been gone from us before they truly were. We both saw Peter. Sirius, aren't we all that's left? Aren't we unable to afford the canyon that grew between us?"

There was a silence. A wave of panicked revulsion swept over Remus as he realized just what the letter meant and just how close he was to Sirius now, and he fought it down, kept strong his hold. Aren't we?

"Imagine me finding that parchment, Sirius. Imagine," he whispered by Sirius' ear, words coming hard and fast, stirring the lank black hair and making Sirius' skin crawl with feeling. "Just after it all happened, I found it... after they took you away. I thought you'd done it, I really thought you had, and I knew I'd done it to you."

"After...?" Sirius said quietly, allowing the small question, pale-white, to escape, catch air, and rise, spreading until it was too thin to hold its substance, too insubstantial for its own implications and weight.

"I never ignored you, Sirius," Remus said softly. "Never. I never knew. I'd give anything... anything to have those five years back and these twelve. Anything to make history reverse itself and take another chance, another path. Seventeen years... I wish I could."

"But you don't... you're not?" Sirius said, a strange mixture of defeat and smallest, ruffled hope. There was no reply but the even breathing of Remus at his shoulder, so he read it from the air. Regret. "Let me go, Remus," he said, lifting a thin arm to push at the strong ones around his chest. This time they loosened, and he slipped free, walking slowly.

"Aren't we?" Remus' whisper followed him, foggy what-ifs and potentials made oblique by the passing of years, wrapping him in their loneliness, sadness.

"It can't happen, Remus," Sirius said.

I want it still.

"It's all over. I won't take your comfort, you can't - you can't make up seventeen years. They're gone."

It's everything I need.

"It's my fault."

My fault.

"I should have told you."

…

Then:

"I shouldn't have tried."

"There's no blame, Sirius," Remus' voice, though strong, was near-false in its strength and bolstered with near-false warmth. "No one can ever be blamed for trying." Remus' hand, solid on Sirius' shoulder, rippled a little before forcing itself still.

Yet his fingers were gentle on Sirius' face, daring, almost certain of the movements and touches they made, and Sirius' eyes flickered closed. "Don't tease me," he rasped. "Don't forget what I am, Remus, don't..."

"Aren't we able to fix this?" Remus' words were low and soft. "Can't we reach across the canyon still, Sirius... can't we put right what we upset..." He leaned in, ignoring Sirius' trembling and the thousand flutterings in his stomach and the million hormones screaming, "wrong! wrong!"

Sirius shuddered violently at the meeting of their lips, torn in half and rejoined sloppily, but so warm, such warmth in a cold life that when he pulled back in confusion, his shuddering became all the worse. He abandoned himself to comfort and leaned in again.

You're like a bloody gigantic painful problem that I don't want to stop having but-

-but-

Can't we yet reach across the canyon to each other; aren't we unable to afford its presence?

Aren't we all that's left?

Aren't we?

What a strange thing hope is.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

• If you ask for more, remember that: a) I will not end a story based solely on your request. b) As this piece of writing is nothing more than a handful of memories / short scenes strung together to give shape to a larger event, I can only end it in one conclusive way: Sirius' death. They have no happy ending, unfortunately.

• If you'd like to review: I'm interested to hear opinions on the style this was done in. I didn't actually have the beginning of the third section -Sirius' arrival- or the very ending paragraph in me, so I'd like critique on them. (Should I simply delete the ending paragraph and leave it at "Aren't we?")

Past that, I'd like to hear what you all thought of the slightly more... synesthetic tone this dipped into from time to time. It's not typical of me, but I write as I feel.

• Thanks for reading. ^_^