There's been a slight change to chapter two: there was a sentence saying 'but it was unlikely that he would have been very good with magic anyway, considering his background'. That used to have something to do with the plot, I believe, but I lost my original plan for the story (That's the last time I write a plan on loose-leaf paper), and it's pretty contradictory now, especially in this chapter. Just wanted to clear that up. Now, to the real chapter...
Chapter Four: The Curse of a Kiss
It took a full week for Remus to start eating regularly again, and, disgustingly enough, Sirius found himself, during that week, longing for the brief moments when Remus left his room. It was frightening enough to comfort the werewolf during the full moon, but now that he was back to normal... Sirius shook his head.
Then, after the week passed, there were those moments when Sirius felt he had to talk.
"Hello," he'd say, pretending he had just been strolling around and, by chance, happened to come across Remus, eating dinner or walking around the perimeter of the house, reaching his hand out every now and again to test his barrier, then quickly withdrawing it with a hiss of pain.
"Hello. Nice day, isn't it?" That was how Remus would always reply, although neither knew why, because it really didn't depend on the weather. For some reason, there was always a smile on his face, a vague smile, but a smile all the same. Once, on one of the days Remus had been outside, raindrops had found their way through the canopy of leaves, sometimes making small indentations where the droplets of water forcefully hit the ground. He had obviously been outside for quite some time: his hair was dripping, his clothes were plastered to his body, and his socked feet were covered in mud.
"Apparently," he explained when he saw Sirius looking at his feet questioningly. "I don't need shoes, because the only pair I have are the ones I've had for ten years, which I had on when I first came here. It's a wonder this place believes I need clothes at all..."
A blush coloured Sirius's cheeks at that statement, but Remus was looking amusedly down at his muddy feet, wearing a dry smile.
"Ironic," agreed the dark-haired boy, and though he was sure he hadn't used the world correctly, Remus didn't correct him.
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Two full moons passed quickly, and without much distinction between them and the two Sirius had previously experienced. These times, however, he didn't find himself at the werewolf's side, although on the first of these two, the wolf did scratch at the door he was behind, whimpering softly. Never once did it throw itself at the door the way it had on his first night, just whined for a few minutes, then turned away and left him alone.
Four months had certainly changed everything. Already, it was early summer, though it was not marked with birdsong, the way Sirius's earlier summers had been. Animals of all species seemed to avoid the werewolf, leaving in their absence a surreal silence.
Besides this, every day, Sirius could feel the guilt growing inside himself. It burned him from the inside, twisting his stomach into a knot every time he thought of Remus. It disgusted him, and yet pacified him, as if confirming that he was human.
Maybe, he sometimes reasoned, it was just a side effect of being alone for so long. Despite his attempts to convince himself of this, somewhere in his mind, he knew that wasn't it. He had loved the werewolf since the first time he saw him: frightened and scarred in the snow, unable to form complete sentences. The realization was what had taken time.
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Remus smiled as he noticed the other boy standing in his doorway, leaning against the doorframe and watching him intensely.
"Good morning," he said, not meaning to sound as happy as he did. The corners of his lips twitched unconsciously, but he made a great effort not to smile, to keep his face placid and even. He rose from where he had been sitting (the edge of his bed), and walked closer to Sirius— maybe too close. Grey eyes regarded him thoughtfully, and an unsure, choked voice issued a quick, "Good morning," in reply.
"I want to talk to you," Sirius finally stated simply. "It's important."
"Sure." Remus shrugged, raising his eyebrows.
"I... You're not that bad. I mean, werewolves are supposed to be monsters. You're not." Sirius looked as though these few sentences had caused him a lot of grief, but it also seemed that he had more to say.
"Thank you..."
"And, well... I enjoy your company."
"Well, I—"
Sirius raised one hand, silencing the werewolf. After a few deep breaths, he said, "There's something else I have to tell you."
"What is it?"
"Tonight. I'll tell you tonight." And he walked off, looking as though he regretted saying that very much.
Remus stood in the doorway for a few more minutes, watching an imaginary spot on the wall in front of him. When he finally turned, he walked swiftly to his dresser and swept his finger down the mirror's surface.
"Why...?" The question was never finished, possibly because there wasn't just one, but many, swirling around inside his head. The glass seemed to understand, though, because an image slowly materialized. It was the same image he had seen when he had asked about Sirius's presence, after his encounter with the werewolf: Sirius and a girl kissing passionately in the snow.
There was only one difference between what he had seen then and what he saw at that present moment: there was something strange about the girl. Her hair, for one, was not the dark red, nor was it up in a bun. Instead, it was tawny and hung near her shoulders. And her features were oddly familiar...
It took a few moments for Remus to realize that it wasn't a girl he saw kissing Sirius in the snow— it was himself.
He gasped, cursed, and stumbled backwards until he hit a wall, then sunk to the floor, staring blankly ahead. And while this had gone on, a smile had formed on his lips, and there was a wonderfully fluttery feeling in his stomach.
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Just before sunset, Sirius was back at Remus's doorway, and he had to clear his throat several times before the werewolf acknowledged his presence with a mumbled "Hello". Remus kept his eyes downcast, perched once again on the edge of his bed. After his eyes flickered over to the dark-haired youth a few times, Sirius seated himself beside Remus, watching him.
Slowly, Remus looked up and met Sirius's eyes, breathing rapidly and shallowly and Sirius took this as an invitation to start.
"Remus," Sirius began, at long last.
It took Remus a few moments to realize he was being addressed; it had been that long since he had last heard his name. Hearing Sirius say it for the first time caused the whole world to sort of melt away until it was only the two of them, floating in midair, but somehow sinking at the same time.
"Remus," Sirius repeated, bringing the world back with a popping sound. "I have to tell you something. I've been meaning to tell you this for a long time."
Remus nodded.
It took a surprisingly short time for Sirius to speak again, possibly because he was no stranger to giving this speech, although his heart was racing in his chest:
"I love you. Really, truly, uncontrollably love you." He meant every word, which made it harder to say than it had before. He knew that he'd never say it again, not to anyone else, not meaning the same thing. Sirius Black would never, ever, ever love someone like he loved Remus Lupin.
Despite the fact that lycanthropy had improved his hearing, Remus didn't quite understand what the other boy had enunciated so clearly until several moments had passed. Those were agonizing moments, the sort that actually bring about a sudden headache and nausea. The room seemed to become much colder, causing Remus to shiver while he attempted a reply.
After making a few strange sounds of shock, he cleared his throat. "You... love me?" he asked shakily.
"Yes."
"But... you? No one ever has, and the first is you?"
"Yes."
"Sirius, I'm... I'm a werewolf."
"I know."
"And..." He wondered how to state the obvious that Sirius had evidently forgotten, at least temporarily. "I'm a boy."
"I know that."
"And so are you."
Voice dropping to a whisper, Sirius replied, "I know that, too."
Silence for a moment, and then, he continued.
"Does it matter, Remus?" The werewolf flinched, and tears began to fall silently, even though he urged them not to . "It's true love, and that's the most powerful thing there is. More powerful than any sort of magic. I love you, and you love me back. I can tell— I've made it my business to tell that sort of thing, you know. I'd take advantage of love, use it for selfish reasons. It's an awful reason for knowing, but I know anyway: you love me, too."
"Please—"
Remus was cut off then, because Sirius had leaned in close to him, pulling them together. Slowly, he raised a hand and dragged his thumb across Remus's wet cheek, catching a few tears as they fell. Just as the distance had disappeared between them, Sirius felt Remus's hands on his chest, pushing him away.
"Don't," he whispered. "Please don't. Not now."
"Wha—"
"The only way to cure me is for my first kiss to be with my true love. I have to love her and she has to love me back. If it's not the first kiss, it's no use. And... Sirius, I don't know if this counts as love." Sirius winced slightly at this, but Remus went on with a sigh, "Just listen for a minute... My parents were the local healers in our village. It's fortunate I used to watch them while they worked; that's how I learned to take care of myself after the full moon. We weren't very rich, but we weren't poor either, just comfortable.
"But, one winter, a woman came to the door. She said she was extremely ill. My father was out of town, apparently to buy supplies, but, as I would learn later, secretly seeing other women. Anyway, this old woman had no money, so my mother turned her away. Just before she closed the door, the woman saw me, and started shouting.
" 'He will be the one to pay for your unkindness,' she screamed. 'The one you love more than yourself. An innocent, someone pure of heart who does not deserve it. He will become a beast under the full moon, just as much a beast as yourself!'
"The next night, my mother watched over me carefully, to make sure that the woman's threat would not be carried out. When, finally, she became convinced that I was safe, she put me in bed and went outside, just to be careful. Only a few minutes later, I heard her scream and ran outside to her. There was a werewolf pinning her to the ground, but it didn't even scratch her. It looked at me and, as if had been waiting just for me, sunk its teeth into my arm..."
Remus trembled as he spoke, and grabbed at his right shoulder, where, underneath his shirt, a long, spiralling scar ran its course. Drawing a shuddery breath, he continued,
"When my father came back and found out what had happened, he told my mother that he had been unfaithful.
" 'And it is justified by this,' he said, pointing at me. 'You've given me a monster for a child.'
"And..." The werewolf paused for breath, wiping away his tears. "And before the attack, I had eyes just like him. Whenever he was gone, my mother would tell me that she couldn't be lonely, because she still had his eyes with her. After, when my father left, I had the wolf's eyes. She hated me for it.
"She searched for years for a cure, and found this old rhyme. It said that if I found true love, that if my first kiss was from my true love, I would be free. All she could say, when she read that, was how alone she was, all because of me. Because no one could ever love me, she would never have his eyes back." A small sob that could be mistaken for a gasp caused a pause between this and the next sentence. "And she was right." He stood up suddenly, and raised the volume of his voice greatly. "I can't love a man! That's not how it's supposed to be! I can't just take a risk on something like this, the consequences are too great!"
"The only thing that's missing is that I'm not a girl," Sirius stated calmly. "I love you, don't you understand? It's love, not like. And you love me, too, so what's the problem?"
"This is wrong, that's the problem. I don't love you, because I can't love you. That's not the way it works!" Remus stamped his foot for emphasis. "Do you even understand what it's like to not to have control over your mind once a month? To be trapped inside another being, a little voice in the back of its mind that it will only ignore? It's not something I enjoy, you know. And you— you told me you exploit love, so why should I trust you? Give me a single reason I should give up my whole life and one chance at happiness on something so meaningless."
Remus never got that reason, and Sirius never gave it. The black-haired boy concentrated on breathing normally as he got up and walked through the doorway without a second thought.
"Goodbye, Remus," he said calmly over his shoulder, as though stating that the sky was, in fact, blue.
Within a minute, he had crossed the invisible barrier that kept the werewolf confined to the house he had occupied for four months. Before he had even reached the front door, Remus's knees gave out, although his eyes remained fixed on the doorway, waiting for Sirius to come back and fill the empty air.
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Rosa Stork, who had stayed in her room for a month when Sirius Black never returned for her sixteenth birthday, who cried every night as she wondered what had happened to him, who had questioned the logic behind life itself so many times since his disappearance, heard the sound that carried through the air as, somewhere, Sirius Black, the man she sought after, made his way through dense forest. The sound, at first, terrified her; it was a haunted howl, like the sound a wolf makes, but this sounded eerily unlike any wolf she had ever heard.
Her fear quickly dissolved, though, because she soon recognised it. It was the sound she had been hearing in her head for four months, a sound she knew all too well. It was the sound that a heart made when it lost something it loved more than life itself.