----
He is quicksilver and silent, like the moon that rules him. There is agony in his eyes, and need and desire, and a hundred thousand things, choking off her air so she can barely breathe. It would be easier, she thinks, if she kissed him. Simpler, if they were lovers.
But watching him sleep at night, she cannot tell if it is her he dreams of, or of some other, eternally lost.
She's been with other men. Some are dead now; some are Death Eaters. It is much the same. In her mind they chase each other, endlessly; replaying that same old battle, night after night. Each time there is a different victor, though she cannot tell their faces. But every morning when she wakes, everything tastes like ashes.
So she's been with other men. And it wouldn't matter so much, to add one more. He's a werewolf, yes, unique, but no more prone to death or betrayal than any other. She could be his lover. But there is the spectre of him between them. Her mind is unsettled, divided, and she cannot tell what he was to him. His best friend, says the tidy, untroubled part. His lover, whispers the other.
Her cousin, they both agree, and it seems disloyal to want what so obviously belonged to Sirius. Remus. His name is like a prayer, an invocation. She's never been religious, but she thinks that surely if there were a heaven, there would be mercy in it for this man. He's lost so many, like scattered puzzle pieces strewn across the floor, again and again. She watches him gather them up again; each time, finding fewer pieces. Each time, a few more holes.
She is afraid to touch him, as though he might shatter, like glass, at the slightest pressure. She knows he must be stronger than that, to have watched him pass from life to death and not have run hurtling after. If anyone had loved her like that, she thinks, she could not have borne it to live without him.
No, he must be strong, stronger than she can tell. He is the last; the last of his friends to stand against the darkness, to remain firm where so many have faltered. The weakest link in the chain has finally proven itself, if not by heroics, then by endurance. Divination, like so many things, is not her talent, but this one thing she can See with startling clarity. Remus will be there when the sky falls in. And she will be there, too, watching him.
