You never would have believed it had it not been right in front of you. That face. That face staring up at you with those eyes you know so well. Those eyes that can pierce your very soul. Those eyes that always held so much life, so much youth. And that smile. That stupid smile that makes your heart ache.
It isn't fair. It isn't fair how easily he won you over. It isn't fair how he made you feel so loved, so safe and happy and goddamn normal. But it's even more unfair how easily he crushed your heart. It's even more unfair how he took it all away from you, how he took everything away from you. Everything that had once been your world, gone. Just gone. Forever. And yet he's still there, grinning up at you from the paper like a madman, still making you love him.
But you don't want to love him. You want to hate him. You want to hate how he made you so happy only to rip it away. You want to hate how selfish he is for betraying you, for betraying all of you. You want to hate the way you still yearn for him to come home and hold you tight and kiss you and touch you and make you feel so fucking loved again. But you can't. You can't hate him or his stupid grin or his stormy grey eyes.
No matter how badly you want to, you can't.
It's impossible.
But you know that. You've always known that.
It's impossible to hate Sirius Black. It always was and it always will be.
So all you can do is hate yourself. All you can do is hate yourself for loving him. Hate yourself for thinking that you could be happy with him, that you could have a normal life. You can hate yourself for trusting him and not seeing what he was sooner. You can hate yourself for loving a man you're not sure you never truly knew.
But hating yourself won't change anything. It won't bring him back, won't bring them back. They're all gone now, and you're alone.
Alone in the small flat that the two of you shared since leaving Hogwarts. You think it should hurt being there alone, but recently you've been alone more often than not. He hadn't been around when you were. He'd been avoiding being alone with you. He'd been avoiding slow kisses and stolen touches in the middle of the night.
Now you know why.
It should hurt. It should, but it doesn't. None of it hurts. In fact, you don't feel anything. You're numb. Even though every time you look at that paper on the kitchen table and see his mad fucking grin it feels like a pile of bricks hitting you in the stomach, you don't feel anything. You feel the weight pulling you down. You feel it dragging you to the ground, trying to keep you down like the broken man you have so suddenly become. But you are numb. Even chocolate hasn't been able to help this time.
You suppose that's what happens when someone loses everything that ever mattered to them. You suppose that in the following morning or next week or next month or maybe even next year you will feel something. Something more than the emptiness that now encases you, at least.
Sighing softly, you push aside the paper although you know you will return to it as you have all week. All week. Has it been a week? You can't really remember. Each day has melted into the next, blurring together in a canvas of firewhiskey, this heaviness, relived memories, and emptiness. It's been too much of a burden trying to figure out what day it is. But it has been a week. A whole week. A whole week completely alone. You vaguely wonder how many people have had their world ripped away from them and how they spent their first week so fucking alone. You wonder if they, too, resorted to the soothing sting of alcohol. Or maybe they broke down in a fit of tears and why me's. Perhaps they simply slept, slept away the numbness so they could feel again.
The thought doesn't last long, though, as you busy yourself with reaching for the bottle of firewhiskey you left on the counter the previous night. You glance over at the clock hanging on the wall in the adjoined living room.
9:03 am.
A week ago you have thought it too early to drink. Now you need the alcohol to even start your day. The day you're going to leave this flat. You can't stay. Not when Sirius had kissed you on that old, worn couch that is a hideous shade of orange – he had assured you it would look nice once you painted the flat, but you never got around to that – staring at you from the living room. Not when you have to sleep in the too large bed in the bedroom down the hall. Not when there are laughs and stolen kisses and whispered confessions of love around every fucking corner.
You can't stay. You have to leave.
You sip at the bottle of firewhiskey. The amber liquid burns your throat, but at least you can feel it. You're not completely numb. Even if it just the sting of alcohol, it's something. As you lean against the counter, nursing the half empty bottle, you almost wish for death, for a peaceful slumber away from the hurt and pain in this world. It would be easier. You know it would be. And there is no one left in the world to miss you. What are you? A monster. A lonely monster that has lost everything. The world would be better off without you.
But then you remember him. You remember all the times he assured you that you weren't a monster, that you were just Remus John Lupin. You remember how his fingertips would lightly caress over your scars as he tried to convince you that you weren't bad. And you just can't bring yourself to fully wish for death. You don't want to disappoint him.
Fuck it all! What's it matter if you disappoint him anyway? He's gone! He lied to you and he's gone. It's because of him that everyone's gone! It's because of him that you're almost wishing for an easy, painless death. But you can't do it. You still love, will always love him, and even after he's fucking destroyed your world, you don't want to disappoint him.
Throwing your head back, you down the rest of the firewhiskey, breathing in sharply as it burns its way down your throat. You have already finished gathering your things. It wasn't too hard. Most of the things in the flat were either bought by Sirius or remind you far too much of him to take with you. So you had cleared out what little clothing had been tucked away in the dresser and the closet. It wasn't much. Maybe a suitcase full. But you are used to not having much.
Your case sits by the door, taunting you slightly as your gaze falls upon it. As badly as you want to run, run as fast as you can away from this place, you're finding it rather difficult to leave. This is your home. It has been your home for four years. But it's not really a home anymore. Not without him. It's simply a small box filled to the brim with far too many memories. They're suffocating you, and that's why you can't stay.
You set the empty bottle down on the counter near the small collection that has been gathering over the past week. You push yourself away from the counter, your limbs feeling heavier than they ought to, having to force yourself to move forward step by step. You walk past the small kitchen table, eyes inevitably being drawn to that picture splayed across the front page. The pile of breaks swings down to hit you squarely in the gut once more, making you feel almost sick. You can feel a slight burning sensation in your eyes as you realize tears have begun to well. But you push them back, a lump forming in your throat as you will yourself to not let them spill over. You are not going to cry over Sirius Black. You are not going to cry over the friends you've lost, over the world you've lost, over the happiness that has been so cruelly ripped from your grasp.
You push on.
Finally, finally, you reach the door. Your case rests at your feet. You want to turn around, to sweep your eyes over the flat once more, to try to preserve some memories. But what for? There's no one to share them with.
Reaching down, you grasp the handle on the slightly shabby brown case. Glistening gold letters catch your eye.
Professor R. J. Lupin.
You almost smile. He had gotten it as something of a joke, always insisting you were bound to become a professor one day, might as well have it so you don't end up needing a case – you can thank me later. You almost didn't bring it. You almost left it in the back of the closet with all the photographs and records you two listened to and shirts you had borrowed that had ended up becoming yours. But you can't leave it. Even though you want to forget every memory of him, of your life together, you know you won't be able to. You'll want to remember because, at some point, you were the happiest you've ever been with him. And the case, the case in your hand, is proof that it happened. It is proof that you didn't just make it all up.
You take a deep breath as you reach for the doorknob with your free hand and pull the door open. Willing your feet to move, you step across the threshold, leaving what little is left of the life you knew only a week ago.
You don't know where you are going from here or what will happen to everything stored in the flat. A couple other Order members offered to take care of it as they assume they know how hard this must be for you. But they don't know. They only think they know that you are losing your friends. They don't understand that it's your whole life.
A week ago you never would have believed this possible. You thought you knew him. You thought he really, truly loved you. But you were wrong. Not that it matters now. It's too late to do anything. Besides, you know you wouldn't change a thing even if you had known. Because Sirius made you happy. That bastard made you laugh and smile and feel normal and love without reserve.
God, you want to hate him. As you slowly descend the staircase and exit the building, you want nothing more than to just be able to fucking hate him. But you love him. You'll always love him.
You quickly walk down the sidewalk, feeling the need to run and get away and escape the hold that stupid flat has on you. You quickly walk away, running from the memories and the kisses and the laughter and happiness and life and love that filled that stupid flat. You quickly walk away, feeling the numbness lose its grip on you as a sudden wave of hurt and pain and hopelessness takes of hold. But you keep walking. You keep running. From the flat. From him. From everything. You turn a corner and enter an alleyway, turning on the spot to disapparate to somewhere that's not here.
You don't look back.