he knelt beside the bed.

He stared out the door a moment. Tea. Sure. Why not? He stood and followed.

He sat at the table as Remus busied himself with the kettle. His hair was a mess, his sleep clothes loose and wrinkled, filled with holes like everything else he owned only these he had not bothered to patch up. They were not as nice as the ones he'd given Sirius to use. It felt oddly intimate to see him in such a state. His day wear seemed to consist of nothing outside of knit jumpers and comfortable work pants.

"Sorry for waking you," said Remus calmly, glancing over his shoulder at Sirius.

"Don't worry about it." A beat. "What I said earlier-" "It's alright-" "No, it's not. Sometimes I think I'm properly mad now, you know? I just get things in my head and... It's not fair to you," he said softly.

Remus just offered a small, reassuring smile as he continued to tend to the tea. Sirius looked for resentment, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't find much of anything behind the quiet pleasantness. Always a sure sign he wanted to move on from something uncomfortable.

As much as he had changed, there were some ways in which he was very much the same man Sirius remembered.

"Is it the moon? The nightmares, I mean," asked Sirius.

He remembered the nightmares Remus used to have in the week leading up to the full moon. It had been an issue as long as he'd known him.

"The moon. The whole Voldemort being back from the dead thing," he said with a quirk of his brow. "I think there's a number of factors, but no mind, I'm awake now."

A moment later Sirius had a cup placed in front of him and Remus sat across from him. He looked exhausted. As calm as he seemed now, there was a sort of discomfort behind his eyes. Remus sipped at his tea. He closed his eyes, focusing on the heat of it. Sirius watched him curiously, caught off guard by how quickly he had composed himself.

When they had lived together during the war, when his panic attacks had been at their worst, Remus would be agitated the whole night after a nightmare. He would toss and turn, eventually giving up entirely and leaving Sirius alone in bed. He was always calmer and steadier by the time Sirius came out in the morning. Of course, he eventually learned that the means by which he quelled the panic had not always been the healthiest.

Remus' hands still shook ever so slightly, drawing Sirius's attention. Goosebumps stood up on his arms, no wonder with the short sleeves and flimsy material in the cool night.

Then Sirius noticed it. He hadn't registered it at first. It had been dark in the bedroom, too dark to make out fine details. He felt a deep, encompassing chill as his eyes caught on Remus' scars.

Remus of course had a great deal of scars. Sirius had spotted at least a few across his neck and face that were not part of the map he had memorized so many years ago. However, until now he had only seen Remus completely covered up.

He knew what transformation scars looked like. They were ragged things from skin that was ripped and torn. These were long, thin, neat lines that ran most of the length of Remus' left forearm and about half of his other. They were bright white, clearly long since healed, though not as faded as some of the others that intersected them. His arms in general looked a mess, dotted with small, discolored scars along the inside of his forearms and elbows, though Sirius was hardly paying attention to those.

Sirius had seen scars like that before. There had been inmates who had tried to leave Azkaban that way and failed. Well, maybe some had succeeded, but Sirius had no doubt that information of that nature would be concealed from inmates at all costs. After all, Dementors don't feed off hope, nor death, and those two concepts were often interchangeable in that place.

It wasn't until Remus folded his arms across his chest that Sirius snapped out of it enough to realize Remus was staring right back at him. He glanced away, letting out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

He picked up his tea and took a long sip, not wanting to make Remus uncomfortable. He already looked self-conscious enough, arms crossed tightly, leaning back in his seat. He seemed almost embarrassed. Remus stood up, walking over to where his coat hung by the front door. He pulled it on before coming to sit down again, not quite looking at Sirius.

"I didn't mean to stare," Sirius said quietly.

"It's fine," said Remus as he stared down at the table. "A foolish moment, years ago now. It's less dramatic than it looks," he said, glancing up at Sirius with a tight smile.

Suddenly Sirius and Remus were sitting together on the rooftop of their old apartment building. They were sat on a ledge. Remus was struggling to remain conscious. He lurched forward violently, and Sirius called out his name, reaching his arm out to steady him. He grabbed Remus' shoulder in a vice grip.

"Moony! Hey, look at me! What did you take?" he asked urgently.

Remus was staring back at him with wide eyes. Eyes that were bright and alert, not glassy like they had been a second ago.

"Nothing! Sirius, what are you talking about?" asked Remus in alarm.

Sirius blinked very hard. They weren't on the roof anymore, they were in Remus' home and he was, for the second time that night, not in the danger Sirius imagined. He yanked his hand back from where he had been grasping Remus' shoulder. He clenched his fists tightly on the table in front of him.

"Sorry," he said a little breathlessly.

"It's alright," said Remus gently, and Sirius couldn't stand the concern in his eyes even though he had been giving Remus the very same look just moments ago. "You're getting mixed up again, aren't you? It's worse when you're tired. I shouldn't have suggested tea, you should get some sleep."

"I'm not a child," snapped Sirius.

"I know," said Remus, taken aback.

They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments before Sirius let out a deep sigh. He leaned back in his chair looking beyond exhausted.

"You're right. It's worse when I'm tired. Sometimes I just lose track. I thought…" he trailed off as the memory replayed, though this time he was able to keep his distance.

"You thought what?" asked Remus hesitantly.

"We were in London. On the roof of our building. I found you up there, on the ledge," he said almost at a whisper. "I thought you were better now. You seem so much better."

Remus folded his arms across his chest again even though they were now covered. He was tapping his foot on the ground and while he didn't look away from Sirius, it was clearly an effort for him.

"I… I haven't thought about that night in a long time," he said. "I don't really remember that part. With everything that happened after... I suppose it always seemed inconsequential in the grand scheme of things."

"You tried to kill yourself, Remus, of course it wasn't inconsequential," said Sirius, breath hitching as he spoke.

Remus looked down at the table. "You're right. It's not."

"You always said you didn't remember what happened on the roof that night. I never really knew if I believed you."

"A dozen sleeping pills and a bottle of Firewhisky aren't conducive to good memory," said Remus with a tight, bitter smile.

"I remember every detail." Sirius looked at him. Really looked. How could he have thought that after everything that happened Remus had just been okay? "Remi, what the fuck happened? How could you do something like that again?" Sirius asked, and it wasn't an accusation so much as a plea.

Remus was very quite. He was quiet for so long that Sirius thought he wasn't going to answer. That he'd just hit another dead end.

"I know you think I don't talk about my past for your sake," said Remus abruptly. "It's not pity, Sirius. I'm not trying to protect you from anything. Truth is, I just don't want you to know how much I wasted what was taken from you. What was taken from James and Lily and all the rest. You want to know why I moved so much? Because one day I lost everyone I ever loved all at once and after that it just seemed easier to go to a new city, a new country, than to stay and risk loving someone like that again. I didn't date. I didn't have relationships. I fell into bed with whoever would let me sleep there afterwards because sometimes I had nowhere else to go. Do you really want to hear these things? The shit that I did to survive?" Remus said, voice breaking. "I just fell apart. I fucked it all up. The worst you ever saw of me during the last war doesn't even compare."

Sirius just watched, struggling to process everything he was hearing. He'd shown up with so many assumptions based on memories he was only now realizing he half remembered. Remus just seemed so… fine. He seemed like he'd gotten his life together. Like maybe Sirius had been right all those years ago and his problems were just something he just needed some time to get over and it really wasn't all that bad. His scars seemed to tell another tale but he couldn't figure out what. Sirius could not form a clear image in his mind that reconciled the young man he had known who had always seemed to exist on a knifes edge with the grounded, world weary man in front of him.

He felt left behind.

They had been young and passionate and falling apart together. Now it felt like Sirius had only lost more of himself while Remus had done the opposite. He just wanted to fill in the blanks. To understand.

"I want to hear all of it," whispered Sirius.

Remus hesitated a moment before reaching down to the sleeve covering his right arm. He rolled up the cuff slightly, careful to place his hand in a way that covered the larger scarring as he revealed his wrist, where one of those odd, discolored little scars sat.

"They're from needles," he admitted ashamedly.

Sirius looked on in confusion as Remus quickly covered back up. He knew what needles were. He had muggle tattoos. It took a moment for it all to click into place.

He'd talked to Lily about it when they had been nursing Remus through withdrawal. She showed him one of her books, explained that some muggles took these drugs directly into their blood stream. She'd told him how relieved she'd been that Remus wasn't doing something so dangerous.

"I thought you didn't do that," said Sirius.

"I didn't back then. Things changed. I didn't spend those twelve years before Hogwarts clean and sober, Sirius. I was fucked up for a really long time. Maybe if they'd let me have Harry it would have been different. I could have found a way to pull it together. I wish I could have had the chance to try. But then again, maybe it wouldn't have changed anything. Can't say I blame anyone for not wanting to take the risk," he said sadly.

Sirius could feel the grief radiating off him. It was pouring into his veins. Everything they had both lost. Everything they never had the chance to find.

"Heroin?" he inquired.

Remus nodded.

Sirius leaned back in his chair, taking it in. He never really understood Remus' addiction. He knew it was bad when they were young, but when he'd showed up and Remus was sober, he just assumed it had been for the duration. In retrospect, he had no idea why he assumed that. He'd spent so long in hell, it was sometimes hard to remember that he wasn't the only one who had lost everything.

Images flashed in his brain. Remus slumped over a club toilet, covered in his own vomit. Kneeling on the kitchen floor, surrounded by broken glass. On the couch, lips turning blue-

"I'd tried getting clean over the years, but it finally stuck about a year and a half before I went to Hogwarts. Dumbledore never would have considered it otherwise, I'm sure," said Remus, interrupting his dark reverie.

Sirius nodded towards Remus' forearms. "What about that?" he asked gently.

Once again, Remus crossed his arms tightly across his chest.

"I... I think that's enough for now," said Remus. "I'm pretty tired, with the moon and all."

Sirius nodded at him. He stood up, collecting the largely untouched cups of tea and cleaning up. Remus flashed him a small, grateful smile as Sirius let the conversation go. Truthfully, he didn't think he could stand to hear much more anyway. Remus excused himself back to bed, looking decidedly more exhausted than he had been when he got up.

Sirius lay awake the rest of the night,