"Beyond The Distant Star"
Pairing: Remus Lupin / Sirius Black
Rating: "M", for language and descriptions of homosexual relationships
DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional – that's F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It never happened, and is not real. It is the product of my own imagination. It contains descriptions of male slash (that's male/male homosexual relations). If you do not like this type of content, or if you find homosexuality or its practice offensive, please click the "Back" button or close your Internet browser NOW, and do not read any further. All characters and copyrights are owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers™ (AOL Time Warner), but this story is owned by me and is all my own work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Lyrics taken from "To Where You Are" as performed by "G4", written by Richard Marx and Linda Thompson, published by Sony Music UK, a trademark of Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited. Copyright © 2005, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Limited. Lyrics used here without permission.
Now the blasted kids had gone back to school, Remus could think. He could finally start to grieve. He could finally cry without anyone asking awkward questions about how much he was missing Sirius already. Sure, they would have had to tell the kids about their relationship someday, but tonight wasn't supposed to be it. So he had kept silent until they had gone back to school and he had returned to Grimmauld Place.
And cry he had done. He had cried and wept and wailed until he simply had no more tears to offer. And then he had become angry and thrown things – vases, ornaments, Kreacher… And now that his bedroom, his and Sirius's bedroom, was smashed up and barely recognisable, he had no choice but to tramp upstairs, exhausted, and curl up in the straw next to Buckbeak. He didn't even know why he was even here, doing this, but he sat cross legged, eyes sodden with the last of his tears, feeding the hippogriff dead rats from a half-empty bucket beside him, because that's what Sirius used to do when he was upset.
And suddenly, he felt a cold shiver down his spine. He remembered an old saying his mother used to proclaim, "That someone had just stepped over his grave". With the smallest twinge of hope, he started to think once more about Sirius. Could it be?
Who can say for certain?
Maybe you're still here?
I feel you all around me,
Your memory's so clear.
He couldn't seem to get his lover out of his mind, for the minute he did something stupid or pointless would remind him of happy memories of him which would rip open the wounds of grief for all to see. A favourite ornament, a scrap of parchment with a note scribbled onto it, their bed… Remus knew that he should be concentrating on being strong for Harry, on his work for the Order. But he didn't want to. Remus wanted to do nothing more than to mope about and cry and shout and feel sorry for himself, but Sirius wouldn't. Sirius would have wanted him to get on with things as normal.
Deep in the stillness
I can hear you speak.
You're still an inspiration –
He couldn't believe how cruel the Fates could be. To make him lose Sirius for all those years, only to be reunited for such a short time. After all, Sirius had even agreed to be his husband that night. To marry him.
Can it be?
That you are mine?
Forever love?
Sirius had promised that he would never again leave Remus's side, but now he had. He had sworn to always protect him from the incessant loneliness which Remus had always suffered from, but now he could not. Or could he? Maybe, just maybe, could he?
And you are watching over me
From up above?
How could Remus carry on? How could he remain here, in Sirius's home, taking on Sirius's work and preserving his memory, and James's, and Lily's, and all the others'? How could he, when all Remus wanted to do was to join him?
Fly me off to where you are
Beyond the distant star!
Why that night? That single, most sacred night of all nights? When Sirius had made him so happy, and Remus had made him smile, truly smile in a way Sirius had not done so for years. Not since James and Lily were married.
I wish upon tonight to see you smile;
If only for a while.
Why couldn't he turn back the clock and stop it from happening?
To know you're there;
Stop him from falling? For now he was gone. So close, so nearby and yet so far beyond his grasp.
A breath away's not far
To where you are.
How could he be gone? After all, there was no body at all. Remus would go to sleep, and when he awoke Sirius would be sat up, positively bouncing with energy, and love. Or was that lust! After all, they had just got engaged! There would be lots of lovemaking to do, lots of practice to do, just to make doubly positively sure that their marriage could be consummated properly! That is what Sirius would have said, and that there was no time like the present!
Are you gently sleeping
Here inside my dream?
But he wouldn't. Because he had fallen, fallen beyond the veil and slipped away out of sight. Through a veil, its velvety smoothness taking away the only person he had ever loved. Its beauty, its shining, shimmering beauty, almost hypnotising him, urging him to follow Sirius through to the world which lay beyond it. And if he hadn't had to stop Harry from doing the same… It wasn't fair! He couldn't believe that something so simple, so insignificant, could have that much power over someone… over him…
And isn't faith believing
All power can't be seen?
No! Sirius could not be truly gone! He was still here, wandering, lost. Remus would find him, even if it took the rest of his life. Even if it killed him, for he no longer cared whether he now lived or died. Who now was there to live for – Harry? Harry be damned! It was that bloody brat's fault in the first place – why couldn't he have been a good little boy and learned Occlumency like Dumbledore had asked him to? And now this whole playing the fucking hero thing had taken away his one and only, his soul mate. And Harry didn't see or even understand what he had fucking done! He didn't understand how much Remus clung, physically clung to Sirius, out of loneliness, and fear, and hurt, and a need to be loved, and sometimes even for dear life itself… Most of all, out of his aching, undying love for the last member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. What the Hell could he cling onto now, eh? Sirius's name? Sirius's memory? For that's all that he had left of him now, wasn't it? Everything else had been taken away? No Sirius, no grave, no… no bloody anything. Just his memory.
As my heart holds you
Just one beat away,
And earlier that night, when Sirius had accepted his proposal, had agreed to spend the rest of his life with him… It was so like Sirius (when he was in a romantic mood!) to notice that while he was wearing a simple – (cheap) – gold engagement ring, that Remus's finger was bare. At that sight, Sirius had run out of the dining room where Remus had made his pledge and returned with a ring of his own. A ridiculously ornate gold signet with a wide top-plate bearing the Black Family crest. And Sirius had proclaimed that he was no longer the last of the Blacks, the cessation of his bloodline incarnate, and that he would never – no! – they would never be lonely again. Remus absent-mindedly stroked a finger across the ring's smooth, cold surface, the ring which looked so out of place and at the same time so perfect on him. As he had not yet taken it off… would never take it off…
I cherish all you gave me
Every day.
And why should he? He and Sirius had been betrothed to each other, after all. And that meant
'Cause you are mine,
Forever love
that Sirius must have loved him, must still love him just as much as he had loved Sirius? That Sirius Black, who had promised him that he'd never be lonely again, was still in existence somewhere, making sure of it, love finding a way…
Watching me from up above
And surely, surely that meant that somewhere, wherever he was now, Sirius would be waiting for him, longing for the time when Remus would cross over and find him, just as much as Remus himself was longing for it, aching for it?
And I believe
That angels breathe
And that love will live on and never leave…
Because if it was not to be, if not even the soul meant anything at all, then what was the point of it all? If there was no death and the Beyond, if all that there was could be split up into existence and non-existence, then surely that meant that there was no life either? At the thought of it all being for nothing, Remus began to weep once more, to sob great, fresh tears at the prospect of never seeing his love again because Sirius Black had not (as Sirius's favourite euphemism had been) 'gone to join the choir invisible', but had simply ceased to be…
Why couldn't he just stop, and make the pain just go away?
Why couldn't he just stop, and turn, and slowly fade away?
Why couldn't he just stop?
And be, forever more, in the embrace of his one true love?
"After all," he whispered, eyes focussed, unblinking on the starry velvet night sky out of Buckbeak's window, "A breath away's not far to where you are…"