He felt himself slip, the ground teetered away, and his body engulfed in a coldness that stuck to his palms and eye sockets like sick sap. Nonexistent wind traveled through his sternum, whispering voices carried along it as it kept stead fast to it's chill. The sounds were angry, lonely, troubled and confused, trying to hold on to some recognition of what was lost, and what, if anything, they had been. He didn't feel dead at all, instead he was acutely aware of every part of his being, although he couldn't actually see himself or anyone else, he could feel it all severely. There were others- all around him, over and under him, rippling like a cheerless lake. And then suddenly, as if something had tugged him, the veil took shape and was careening closer to him every second. He felt it brush past his ears and everything came back, the sky was now the sky and the ground was now the ground again, there like one good punch to the face. He coughed and spit, a plain white fog rolling out of his lungs and sides. As he inhaled, thick oxygen took it's place, and he was given back his memory.
The years - the war - Pettigrew - Harry - the battle - Remus...
One good punch to the face.
-----
Remus Lupin woke with a start. He was lying on the floor in his tattered nightclothes, head throbbing as it rested on the bottom of the nightstand as it had hit when he'd fallen out of bed. His hand went instinctively to the back of his skull, but nothing was injured very badly. He righted himself and climbed back into bed, straightening the covers and brushing lint from his night shirt as he shivered away the draft from the floor. The pain from the fall had converted itself into hyper anxiety, and the nervous energy flood through him, wiring his muscles around his thin knees, restricting his breathing to tight little rasps.
He'd dreamt of a moor; a bleak, lightless plane riddled with silence, and even as he couldn't remember having it, the dream was there all the same. A translucent white fog silted the plane, which seemed to expand for miles in it's dreary, desolate way. Remus felt compelled to sniff, to taste the dream place. He thought this foolish; he couldn't smell it even if he was dreaming it now, it wasn't real, and he couldn't rationalize it's significance in the slightest. But with the next breath he took, the picture of the fog and expanse still rooted in his mind, the scents flooded his head and made his vision dizzy and his body tingle. He could smell hair, smoke, the fog and the sky. He smelled salty sweat and confusion, clove cigarettes and old garments. Lupin gagged as it all overpowered him, his eyelids closing, eyes pronouncedly pacing back and forth beneath them, examining his memory.
The death list. The names. His vision moving quickly to the bottom left row, to the only entry that mattered. "Sirius Black. 6/21/96. Department of Mysteries."
-----
"I love you." Sirius parted his lips to articulate the words, then closed them slowly on the look he received from Remus's eyes. The homework they'd been diligently trying to finish slipped from their laps between them as their hands left it and replaced themselves on each other. Remus collapsed on him, head in Sirius's chest, and Sirius found himself inhaling the other boy, letting his being drift down his throat and into his stomach, into his blood, as it wrapped itself around his beautiful beating heart. He whispered the words again, softer this time into his ear, leaving them to lay in the air eternally.
"Sirius..." Remus started after both of them had grown comfortable in the silence, "I wonder why you never expect the same, of me. Don't you ever worry that your feelings aren't, well, shared?"
Sirius contemplated this, his features motionless, fingers animating his thoughts as they trailed through the gray blonde hair.
"You want me to fear for words not said, is that it?" and he broke into a smile, tugging tighter around Remus's ribs, letting the other boy burden his entire body with his weight. "Well that's silly. I can feel you now. I can spread my fingers across the indents of you, between your ribs and down your sides, and knot my legs between yours until one could not distinguish theirs from another, and I can even, if I very so want, lift my head until it is level with yours, turn my head until our gazes align, and kiss you, lip to lip, mouth to soul, and I doubt there would be any resistance."
The pause that ensued was both uncomfortable and self-conscious, as Remus was both aware of every inch of his body that Sirius had mentioned. Another whisper reached his ear.
"You don't feel unsaid."
He wanted Sirius to lift his head, he wanted to be kissed by him, lip to lip, mouth to soul. Of course, whatever recognition of love Sirius needed from him, it would come not from words, but only from time, and from action. Words could be broken. Words could be lost. Remus felt in all of his weaknesses the least breakable at this moment, as he knew, when Sirius needed it of him, he would prove just how "said" he was.
-----
He'd been so quick to leave the memories that now, four years later, when everything came to him again, it brought back an almost alien emotion that Remus knew he had not felt for many years. He could not remember a time when he wasn't expecting a tragedy, fearing for a life, or trying to accept the misfortune that was carried heavily by all. Now Remus woke every morning smelling the air for that alien feeling, for that familiar scent of wind and old friends, and woke every night in the same manner after dreaming again and again the undreamt dream. The moor lingered there like some prophetic monster, and he found himself fearing it whilst needing it.
His love had been mourned, dead like whatever lay beyond the fog. It was only in these days that he had come to question his loss, and been truly disturbed by the conclusions his heart had reached. Now that the war had passed, and Harry no longer needed looking after, a window in Lupin was suddenly flung open, as if a great hand had pushed aside all the clutter and found a vacant space where someone had once stood and let in a great big draft to alert the owner of it's emptiness.
Sirius had once stood there, this Remus knew. And soon he wondered if Sirius had once occupied the emptiness, could he not still? Does he not still linger there among the shadows and the muscle, (and Lupin poked his chest at this), waiting to be let back into the light?
This was all that was needed, and soon Remus found the scent again, the moor grew shorter, the fog lifted, and the draft left Remus's bedroom floor.
-----
Sirius was walking quickly now, careful not to trod on his damp robes as he strode, flinging himself across the countryside towards the one thing that could fill the ever deepening hole in his chest and melt the confusion gnawing at his brain. He had no concept of time, only that he was himself and owned his own past, and had, through some twist of fate, skirted death. Because that flash that had seemed only a few moments in length certainly felt like nothing a living man could ever come back from.
The moor was disappearing, being replaced by a sweetly cool breeze and hilly landscape. A low cottage came into view beyond a hill, and Sirius sank to his knees, nothing more than instinct transferring his clenched hands to paws.
-----
A scratch. Then another, and another still, until Lupin was brought from his reading to a mild aggravation. The coyote must be back, Lupin thought, as he went to the door, expecting to see a passive, yellow, canis lupis scratching absentmindedly at the wood until shooed away as he was every night.
Well, not every night, he thought. In fact, nearly half of Lupin's every evening meal was spared for the sad, wild beast. His compassion stretched far beyond his own door.
Lupin unlatched the heavy lock, cracked open the door and peered downwards, straight into the chocolate eyes of a large black dog.
-----
"It was you that pulled me back. Our bond, Remus, that rescued me from the veil and it's power.""Then...what took so long? You...four years, you were gone four years..." the words were choked out as if their weight had just freshly sunk in. The man standing before him had ceased to exist but for Lupin's own memory, but was suddenly completely alive.
Sirius's eyes blazed. He hesitated, a picture of a broken man materializing, the words forming all at once. "Because," he ventured steadily, "You mourned me those first four years. You severed yourself emotionally, took yourself away, expected me to be gone, finished. And it was in those times, I believe, that I was truly dead." Sirius felt two hot tears graze his face and roll down his cheeks. He lifted his hands to Remus and wrapped them on the curve of his chin, bringing their eyes to meet each other.
"It was only your realization that I could still live on inside of you, inside of those who knew me, who loved me...that brought me back."
Remus's face burned , the fingers scorching him, branding him breathless. Neither noticed the heavy teardrops trickling onto Sirius's thumb and down to his wrist until their faces were so close that if Remus really wanted, he could push his lips to Sirius's and maybe, if Sirius really wanted, his mouth could graze an edge of his remote soul. It was only when Sirius released Remus's face to taste a salty tear that had fell to his fingernail that either of them made a sound.
"You never felt unsaid." Sirius nodded.
Remus had fulfilled his promise, and yes, this was much stronger than words.