Although it had been sunny when the train had come in, clouds moved in and it started to rain on the way back from King's Cross, the sneaky icy sort that slid down collars no matter how high they were tugged up. Tonks conjured an umbrella for herself, and Mad-Eye made an exasperated sound.
"Yellow ducks, girl?"
She beamed at him. "Cute, aren't they?"
He muttered something about her abysmal Stealth scores and stumped off down an alleyway, leaving her alone with Remus.
She said, "Umbrella?" seeing that he was still walking along in the rain.
"Is it big enough?"
"Mhm." She handed it to him so it wouldn't poke him in the eye, with her holding it.
They plodded along for awhile. Normally, in such miserable weather, Tonks would have Apparated straight home as soon as she could, but not tonight. She didn't want to leave Remus behind. She wanted to be near him right now, while she had a good excuse.
Merlin knew, she'd used enough flimsy ones in the past six months. She wondered if he'd ever noticed, and what he thought of it. He wasn't stupid, after all. Maybe he was pretending not to notice, so he wouldn't hurt her feelings.
Oh, please, not that!
His sleeve brushed hers, and her heart jumped. Stupid, she thought. As bad as still mooning over him calling you sweetheart at St. Mungo's.
He'd never said it again. Not once in six long months. Neither had he ever opened up as far as he had in that quiet waiting room. It had been a busy and trying six months, to be sure, but she'd hoped for a few moments, at least. One or two . . . here and there . . . was that too much to ask? But Remus had pulled his accustomed reserve around him like a thick cloak, and left her frustrated on the outside.
And now that Sirius was dead . . . .
Tonks took an unsteady breath, inching herself backward from that particular abyss. She just wanted, she thought carefully, to be near Remus right now, as close as he would let her. She wanted to bask in that warm-bath calm and let it quiet everything inside her that wanted to scream and beat on the walls.
And she didn't want to leave him alone, Remus who had just two weeks ago lost the dearest friend still left to him. If he was hurting, she didn't want him to hurt alone. If she had to rip off that cloak of reserve with her bare hands, she'd do it.
"Listen," she said. "You eaten?"
He thought. "No."
"I'm starved, and I'm not too keen on eating alone tonight. If that's all right," she added tentatively.
"It's all right."
She nodded, trying to conceal her relief. "Hot food's called for, I think," she said. "Takeaway?"
He shrugged.
"D'you fancy Chinese?"
"Anything you like," he said politely.
She saw her favorite takeaway Chinese place down the street and dug in her pocket. "I'll get you orange chicken," she said, bringing out the Muggle money she always kept in a pocket for impulse takeaway. "I'm having sweet and sour. We can share."
Ten minutes later, he took the two bags she handed him, and looked sideways at her two. "Have you an army in your flat that needs feeding?"
She looked down, and laughed, more in surprise than amusement. She always ate too much when she was unhappy, and the last week or so she'd been eating like a sumo wrestler in danger of losing weight. "None but me. And you. It should keep. I just re-charmed my icebox." She paused in front of another lighted door. "Coo. Samosas."
"What?"
"You like samosas?"
"What are they?"
"I'll get two."
She handed him her bags and ducked into the light for a moment, returning with a fragrant takeaway bag. "You'll like these," she promised, holding the paper bag up to him so he could smell.
He looked doubtful.
Her flat was on the second story, her door accessible only by a set of wobbling iron stairs that were presently slick with rain. Biting her lip, Tonks stepped as carefully as possible. These stairs had gotten her this morning--she'd had to disguise the bruise along one cheekbone, and it still ached a bit.
They had to pause on the landing while she let him through all the protective spells Moody had set up. After a couple of quick Drying Charms, they set all the food on the table. "Chopsticks?" she asked, extricating two sets from the bags.
"No, thank you." He smiled fractionally. "I can never quite get the hang of them."
"Me neither." She dropped them in a drawer, where they clacked against several other, older sets.
They spoke very little as they ate. Tonks concentrated on her food--bland steamed rice, sharp-sweet sauce, chicken. Soft egg-drop soup, the bits of white sliding around her mouth. Crab puff, the outside going crunch between her teeth, and the delicate crab/cheese filling a counterpoint.
Gradually, she became aware that Remus had stopped eating. "Don't you like it?" she asked.
"It's very good," he said. "I'm just--not hungry."
"That's all right." She glanced around the table and saw the bag with the samosas. She picked it up. "But try one of these, at least."
He looked at it a moment.
"They are really good," she said. "One bite?"
"Perhaps a bite," he said.
She unwrapped the two fat, triangular pastries from their oily bag and gave him one. He took an experimental taste.
"Good?" she asked.
"Bit like a Cornish pasty, isn't it?"
She smiled. "This time bite into the filling, Remus."
He obeyed, and she followed suit, to taste what he did. Savory potato, a pea, and--
Abruptly he started coughing.
"Ah, the spices have kicked in." She savored the fire in her mouth, the prick-prick-prick of Indian spice all over her tongue.
"You might have warned me," he choked.
"I never could have explained it." She gave him a quick, concerned look. "Not too much, is it?"
He shook his head and took a gulp of water. "Just unexpected."
She laughed. "I bring these to Sirius. He loves them, except he picks the peas out and flicks them at me--" She broke off. "Loved. He loved them."
Silence descended. She'd actually forgotten, for a moment, that Sirius was dead. It felt like a betrayal.
Remus said, "He never did like peas. He'd bounce them off the back of Snape's head in the Great Hall."
His voice sounded like she felt--as raw as if every layer of protection had been stripped away. It was the first she'd ever heard him sound like this since Sirius's death.
"Remus," she said in a quavering voice, and he looked up.
His eyes decided it.
Her voice settled, firm and clear. She wasn't going to like what was coming, but it had to be done. "Tell me how it happened."
Her Aunt Bella had knocked her unconscious, and Tonks had woken to the news that Harry was safe, Fudge had done a one-eighty, and Sirius was dead. For a few moments, in the sunny ward at St. Mungo's, the first two had meant nothing. Then they'd crept in around the edges of the black horror and lightened it a little--but only a very little. Things had been too confused and hectic after that to get any details, and she wasn't sure she wanted them. But now she did.
And Remus . . .
Remus had to tell her.
He sat looking at his samosa as if memorizing the exact pattern his teeth had left in the pastry. For a moment, she thought she'd pushed too hard. Then--
"He--was fighting--Bellatrix Lestrange."
The words came in jerks, as if they were being forced past something in his chest. Tonks waited, her stomach heavy and her breath blocked up in her lungs.
"He ducked--one of her spells. Said, 'Come on, you can do better than that!' Yelled it--so we could all hear."
"Sounds like him," she managed.
"Yes." Something that might have been a smile, but for the look in his eyes, flickered across his face and was gone. "It echoed. He was laughing. I remember that too. Laughing--dancing--as if it were a party instead of a duel."
"Then?"
"Then," he said. "Then." He looked at his food as if he could not bear the thought of it anymore. "Then Bella hit him again."
For several moments, there was no sound but the thrum of the rain on the roof. Tonks' hand clenched, and her fork shifted with the movement, scraping against her plate.
"I'd turned when he yelled. His words were still echoing. I saw it, and I knew. Just the way his eyes widened--I knew. He fell through the arch--you know the arch."
"Yes." They both did.
"And I thought--" He broke off, rubbing his hand over his face. "No."
"What?"
"It's nothing."
"It's something."
"I thought, My God, now I really am the only one left. Awful."
"No. Understandable."
He looked at her a moment, then away.
"What next?" she asked.
"Then Harry--I saw Harry. He didn't understand. He didn't know about the arch, or what someone looks like when they die. I wish he still didn't." Remus closed his eyes. His throat worked convulsively. "I had to hold him back, or he would have gone charging after Sirius. I had to tell him--he was struggling--and he screamed at me that Sirius wasn't--" He stopped, opened his eyes, and looked straight at her. "I've done a lot of hard things," he said quietly. "But the worst was having to say to that boy, 'He can't come back. He can't come back because he's dead.'"
For several moments, they sat. Tonks stared at her food. A tear slid off her chin and dropped into a puddle of sweet-and-sour sauce, making a tiny clear dent in the reddish-orange liquid.
She'd really gotten far too much food.
She thought, Sirius would have helped me eat it.
Another tear landed in the sauce.
She lifted her head, and Remus turned his away. In the instant before he did, she saw the tears shining in his eyes. "No," she said. "No. Don't stop yourself."
He shook his head, but it was the motion of a man who didn't know what else to do.
She wanted to crawl over the table, across all the food, and wrap her arms around him, but she couldn't seem to move. "Remus," she implored. "Please don't." Her voice cracked. "I couldn't bear it if you did. For once, please, please, don't be strong."
She reached across the table then. His hands lay on either side of his half-empty plate, the fingers curled slightly under. She slipped her fingers into the curl, needing the contact. For a moment, his fingers were cold and limp over hers, then they closed.
"I don't know how not to be," he said, so low she could hardly hear him.
She tightened her grasp, just fractionally, trying to communicate in that gesture what she couldn't find the words for.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, she thought he would pull away. Then she saw the tears. They slid silently from his lashes down over the bump of his cheekbones, down the hollows, into the lines of sorrow around his mouth, down to his chin to drop onto the shabby jumper and disappear.
Her grief rose up then, like a black tsunami, and swamped her. It was almost a relief though, to give in. She hadn't been able to before. She'd been afraid she'd never find her way back.
But here and now, Remus's hands remained in hers like an anchor. As long as she was with him, neither of them would get so lost that they wouldn't be able to come home again.
When the storm receded, it seemed as if it took everything else with it. She felt hollowed out inside, as if someone had scooped out her insides with a melon baller.
But she didn't feel quite so raw. The ache of grief was still there, but it had lost its bite. Sirius was still dead; nothing had changed. But she felt as if her world could maybe continue now.
She lifted her head and met Remus's reddened eyes, and she saw him realize, just as she did, that they still held each others' hands.
They both pulled away.
Tonks put her suddenly cold hands in her lap and concentrated on breathing. Her lips, when she licked them, tasted sharply of salt. The inside of her mouth felt gummy and dry. Her cheeks and neck were damp from tears, and cold with it.
Remus said, "I'd better get back."
She said, "Yes."
In silence, they packed the food back into takeaway boxes and stored them in her icebox. When he turned away to pick his coat off the back of the sofa, she took a moment at the sink to wash her face.
When he'd put his coat on, she picked up the umbrella. "Will you need this? Or are you Disapparating back?"
"If you wouldn't mind?"
"No." She even erased the yellow ducks before she handed it to him.
"Thank you."
Their voices were stilted and formal, like the morning after a drunken tryst. Worse, Tonks thought. They'd shared something that far outstripped stupid sex for intimacy, and neither of them had been quite ready for it.
He looked down at the umbrella, rubbing his thumb over the handle. For a moment, she thought he might say something, but he didn't.
So she did. "Remus."
He looked up.
She inched closer. She wanted to touch him, her fingers almost itching with the need, but she kept her hands at her sides. "Thank you."
"Tonks, I--" He stopped, closed his eyes a moment, and swallowed, and didn't say anything more.
She undid the protection spells and went outside with him. It was still raining, but lighter than before. Softer. She went down first, stepping carefully and holding onto the railing as the stairs shivered under her.
The cement at the bottom was colored reddish orange from rust. They stood on it under the umbrella, water soaking into their shoes instead of slithering into the gutter.
"See you at the next meeting?" she asked, for something to say.
"If nothing comes up."
"Right."
She felt as if she were being pulled apart inside, torn between shivering fear and sharp, sweet yearning. She thought, staring down at the odd patterns that the rust had left, I'm going to kiss him.
She turned her face up to his, and met his eyes. Oh, Merlin. He's going to kiss me.
She rose up on her toes, just a bit. He bent, just a bit. Their lips touched.
She didn't move closer, and nor did he, though less than an inch separated their bodies. The world fell away until the only thing in the world was his mouth on hers.
After a quiet, humming moment, she sank back onto her heels. He straightened up.
Rain drummed on the umbrella.
"You'll put up the protective spells?" he asked quietly, as if the taste of him weren't on her lips.
"Yes." They were mandatory for members of the Order now that they'd revealed themselves to Death Eaters. "You'll be careful on the way home?"
"Yes," he said.
"Good."
They looked at each other a moment, then he walked out into the rain.
When he'd disappeared, she closed her eyes and let her tongue slip out to touch her lips. She tasted orange chicken, spices, fresh rainwater, salt tears.
And him.
