~Written for the QLFC, Season 5, Round 10~

Position: Seeker

Position Prompt: 1940: I'll Never Smile Again — Tommy Dorsey

Title:

Word Count:

Beta(s): CUtopia, DinoDina, RawMateriel, silently-at-night

Chapter 10: Tick Tock

It was impossible. Inconceivable. Nothing should hurt this much and not leave his chest gaping open as though it had been carved with a butcher's knife.

Nothing — and all he could do was watch.

Blood pumped behind his eyes. A fierce, violent throbbing that seemed to tremble down his jaw and set his chin to shaking. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and all because… because…

Around him, the sounds of battle: brutal and vibrant, vivid with the splatter of magic flung in fierce aggression. The vibrant light soared in a passionate juxtaposition to the tragedy. He hardly saw it. He hardly felt it, because before him, between the floating tresses of thick drapes, a macabre mimic of antique curtains, he was… gone.

Impossible.

Inconceivable.

Everything hurt, ached, thrummed through him with a vengeance the likes of which his lycanthropy had never struck within him. This passed deeper than his bones. It tore more fiercely at his muscles. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt —

Remus closed his eyes. He'd lost another one, and somehow it was even worse this time.

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus hated clocks. They were so consistent. So enduring. Nothing stopped their systematic counting but for the whirring death of powered batteries. Wizarding clocks were even worse because they didn't even have bloody batteries.

Tick… tick… tick…

How long had he been sitting in the shabby little dining room? Remus didn't know. He hadn't been counting but to absently notice the ticking of that damned clock. Was it hours? Days? It could have been years for all he knew. Years, and yet those moments in the Department of Mysteries still welled before his eyes.

Hurt. It hurt. It throbbed, and ached, and —

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus stared at the dining table. He stared at his fingers, his nails little more than claws, as they picked at the pockmarks in the old wood. He stared, but all he could see was a smile. All he could hear was a laugh that was broken jarringly by that bloody ticking.

A smile.

A laugh.

And he would never — Remus would never hear it —

He closed his eyes, but it did him little good.

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus should be with Harry, but he didn't leave. He couldn't bring himself to. That he'd lost again, that he hadn't been fast enough again — Remus needed to be alone. Alone with an infuriatingly persistent clock, his dingy dining room-kitchen, and the emptiness of his flat that barely warranted the title for how shabby it was. Alone was good, even if it hurt. Alone, no one could intrude upon the thoughts and memories that stirred just outside of reach, just beyond that smile, that laugh, that bark of a flung curse as it struck him in the chest and pushed him through…

Tick… tick… tick..

But, of course, it wouldn't happen. Remus wouldn't be left alone. He should have expected that.

The door opened behind him, and it echoed resoundingly. Remus didn't straighten from where he hunched over himself, bowed over his ugly table in his ugly little flat. He heard her, though. He smelt her scent as she edged into the room, his senses sharpened as ever, even through his numbing grief. She scuffled her shoes, a toe bumping against the wall. The sound of the leaning table alongside Remus' front door clattered slightly, as though she'd bumped into that, too. How she managed, Remus didn't know. He didn't really care.

"Remus?"

Opening his eyes, Remus stared down at his hands once more. They were curled like claws, but powerless as his wolven paws weren't. Useless. They couldn't do anything. They couldn't even protect —

"Remus? Are you here?"

More scuffling. More shuffling of footsteps. He heard her as she edged down the narrow, gloomy hallway behind him. He heard the trail of her fingers on the wall as she paused beside the doorway into the cramped, cluttered living room, and continued on further. He heard as she paused at the door into the kitchen, too, but he didn't raise his gaze.

Swallowing thickly, grasping for strength that Remus knew he'd never possessed — because he'd been the strong one, him and James, not Remus — he cleared his throat. "Is something the matter?"

His voice was hoarse. Husky. A catch quirked his last word, making it squeak almost like a teenage boy's. Remus didn't care. He wasn't sure he'd ever truly care about anything again.

"I was just…" She edged into the room, and the slight catch in her step bespoke tripping over her own feet as she was prone to. Remus almost smiled at that; surprisingly, impossibly, he almost smiled, even if he'd never felt further from humour in his life. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

It was a herculean effort, but Remus managed to raise his head. With the barest of turns, he peered over his shoulder to where Tonks stood in the doorway. Her shoulders were hunched, her face closed and pale and ridiculously young. Her hair was the kind of dark black better suited to a funeral, and Remus momentarily loathed it before his rage dissipated into nothing.

She blinked at him with wide, owlish eyes. Her lips parted before closing again, teeth biting cruelly hard. "Remus?"

Sighing, Remus attempted another smile. It failed, but that didn't wholly matter. "I'm fine, Tonks," he murmured.

"Remus, I —"

"I'm fine. Really." He swallowed again, just as ineffectively as before. "Are you?"

Tonks was a strong girl. She was strong, fierce, and animated like an eternal child. But in that moment, her face crumpled only further. Her brow furrowed and tears welled, her lips trembling where they were still captured between her teeth. "I'm so sorry, Remus," she whispered.

Remus couldn't do this. He couldn't. He had his own mourning to battle again, a grief that he doubted would ever leave him. It was young, raw, and he could still feel the stabbing pain of Sirius' departure cleaving his chest. No one would replace him, and no one would fill the space he'd left behind even partially. Remus had to come to terms with that. He couldn't… for Tonks, he couldn't offer the comfort she needed.

But he turned anyway. Insurmountable pain flooded through him, but he turned, and he held out a hand to her. In his dingy little kitchen, snot already beginning to bubble from her nostrils as the tears erupted, Tonks dissolved into blubbering as she all but threw herself upon him. Remus was smothered, Tonks' arms curling around his neck, her funeral-black hair clogging his nostrils. He let himself be held, and if he couldn't quite hold her back… well, she didn't seem to notice.

Remus was broken. He didn't know how he would ever recover from such a pain. What he'd shared with Sirius… it hadn't been romance. It hadn't been friendship. It hadn't even been brotherly, because it was all of that and more. And for Remus, there was no overcoming that. What was the point in smiling again when there was nothing to smile about?

On the wall, the discordant, eternal ticks of the clock sounded in their stoic persistence.

Tick… tick… tick...