Moony's Regrets
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing. -- Anais Nin
He was not broken. He was just bent severely. Three days ago, he had four best friends. It had been three days since Sirius Black the betrayer, ever the pureblood, had shown his true colors. Seventy-two hours ago, his world was not quite so broken. But now... The jagged pieces of a once-bright and happy life would cut him to death if he attempted to pick them up.
He had not shaved. He had not slept. Remus Lupin stared into space and drank tea, in between bouts of weeping like a child.
He had had four best friends. He had lost three, and a lover.
Sirius was his. Or he belonged to Sirius. It hardly mattered now, with one of them raving in Azkaban, and the other feeling like he would soon follow. My darling, my, love, my only hope. Is this what Fate had planned for us? Remus broke a bar of chocolate into bits with his fingers, and stuck it in his mouth. It tasted bitter, even for dark chocolate. Nothing else could ruin the taste of chocolate like lost love.
James. Lily. Peter. Dear Merlin, Sirius, why? What made you betray us all, love? Did I do something? Was it me?
Remus would not let the anguish rising up inside him out. Throughout the entire nightmare, he had made only one involuntary sound.
A whimper. Not a wail, although the world had never felt so splintered. Not a howl for his mate. Not a scream for his best friend and his wife.
A whimper. The wolf inside him felt like running ever since then, running and throwing its head back and screaming with the sheer pain of it all because life was pain and this was life and it was not a nightmare, it was real, it was bloody real.
Remus reheated his tea with a wand-tap. He sat still. Didn't fidget.
Moony. Wormtail. Padfoot. Prongs. The names flew out smoothly from his careworn quill, glistening iridescently on the parchment scrap.
He held it gently as he stood up. Went outside. The sun was coming up, making the frost twinkle brilliantly.
Another well-placed flick of the wand, and the parchment was burning. Consecrating holy memories to holy ground, he let the wind take it right to the edge of the still-black forest.
Remus watched the ashes fly, and did not attempt to stop his tears. He loved Sirius. Always had. More than chocolate. More than books. Loved him for his acceptance and his laugh and the easy way he moved, all primal grace. Sirius was more of a wolf than Remus.
He remembered waking up one morning to burnt pancakes and a screaming Sirius, his dark eyebrows distant memories. There was a pathetic hand-picked bouquet of dead flowers on the table. Remus still had the flowers somewhere, pressed inside a book Sirius gave him last Christmas, and maybe one of the more brick-like pancakes tucked away in a shoebox.
Their flat in Devon had been shabby at best, but it was within an easy motorbike ride from Godric's Hollow, and had a very lovely garden that Sirius promptly killed.
"C'mon, Moony!" he'd pleaded, wrapping tanned arms around his lover's waist. "I thought that kerosene was some sort of Muggle fertilizer!" And when that hadn't worked: "I can't help it I don't have a green thumb, I'm Sirius Black, not Sirius Greene!"
"There is absolutely no excuse for killing every bloody flower in the bloody garden," Remus said dryly, torn between mock anger and amusement.
He had woken up the morning after to find the pancakes, and what had used to be the flowers, and two very pale long strips of skin on Sirius's forehead, where his brows had been cruelly slain.
Remus had said nothing about the bloody flowers after that. Sirius never had either. But he left the gardening to his Moony.
He remembered that Sirius did not weep when Regulus died. He sat up all night and said nothing, looking out at the crescent moon with a lost expression on his face that had hurt Remus more than he thought possible. He had begged, entreated, kissed, and cajoled, but Padfoot had locked himself away inside his body, and there was no unfettering him until he himself allowed it.
And the next morning, Sirius' gruff apology for something he thought he'd done wrong, and the words he'd said, that made Remus laugh, almost, at their inherent corniness: "I tried to watch the sun rise, love, but I missed it for looking at your face, which was a thousand times more beautiful bathed in its own light."
The ache hit him as the ashes left his sight, a vicious, twisting pain in his heart that cut down into his stomach, forming a knot there and refusing to budge. His knees buckled, and Remus found himself smelling grass. It only furthered the pain in his insides, only caused him to remember wild summer nights in the heat and dark and dew.
The wolf howled, and Remus with it, a terrible desperate longing sound that ripped from his throat. He did not recognize it. Moony wasn't paying enough attention to his surroundings to recognize it. Moony was grieving and shaking, screaming a keening, mournful scream that did not sound human at all.
A rat poked its head from the forest and looked at him cautiously, before scurrying back into its world of undergrowth as fast as its legs could carry it.
Remus lay flat on his stomach in the chill air, noting the sun had risen, but feeling no warmth. He wouldn't feel any warmth again.
If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs,
My beautiful lovely, if only, if only...
Did you like it? Inspired by the Beatles' song Yesterday but, I inform you with pride, I went the odd route and used none of their lyrics at the beginning, end, or even middle of this story. The end lyrics are from the book Holes by Louis Sachar -- could anyone tell me what the name of that is? I'd be forever in your debt. Please read and review! My slash-writing needs work, I know. Don't hesitate to critique me!