Thirteen Years Of Yesterdays, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, PG.
JKR owns the boys - or the pups, whatever. I am merely playing in her universe.
A/N: Have barely written a word in the last year. This newfound love for puppyshipping is doing me good.
Feedback appreciated. Both good and bad. Unbeta'd, for which I apologise.
Sometimes Remus thinks, Thirteen years.
Every time, that thought is shallow, fleeting. It doesn't register, merely vanishes quickly, without a trace. It's almost like Remus's mind completely skips it, denys it, refuses to let it grow. It doesn't exist.
Those thirteen years didn't exist.
To Remus, this is true. He has vague memories of those years. He knows what he did, obviously, knows what it was like not to have a job or friends or allies or money or love, knows there were dozens of times when he transformed into a wolf, painfully, reluctantly, alone, knows how it happened that he returned to Hogwarts to teach. But it's as if these are pieces of built-in knowledge; instinct rather than experience. He knows these things, but he doesn't remember living them. Like someone else's memories.
In his mind, each new day replaced the one before, copy of a copy of a copy. Living in a limbo of one day on constant repeat. Time passed, life went on, for everybody else but him. In his mind, he was forever stuck repeating one day – the day after Sirius Black was sent to Azkaban.
Through those thirteen years, Remus kept his cool exterior. But beneath it, there was fire. In time, the feelings of love, doubt and betrayal became a mess of loveangerpainconfusionregret, but they never lost an ounce of their intensity, forever remaining sharp as a needle, as if Sirius had been sent to Azkaban only yesterday.
And then, suddenly, Sirius was no longer in Azkaban, and Remus's life lurched into motion on fast forward. His feelings for Sirius were still fresh, while Sirius's feelings had been numbed over the years by the dementors. Once everything was cleared and Remus could, once more, believe in Sirius's innocence, thirteen years' worth of pain and anger melted away, laveing behind only love. Remus full of it, Sirius lacking it; they made compromises, found common ground, balanced each other out. They both had to learn how to live again.
Things that happened thirteen years earlier were suddenly far, far away. There were no longer yesterdays, only todays. Despite the war rising around them, the next few years practically flew by, every day vivid and so very real.
Until.
Until Remus's world was once more lurched into an unbalanced state of stillness and emptiness.
Until Sirius fell.
Thirteen years, Remus sometimes thinks, absently, the thought shallow and fleeting. Then something stops inside of him and he suddenly realises, Fourteen years, before he catches himself and squashes all such thoughts and firmly focuses on something else, something important. Something more important than counting years he's already lost – years he's endured without Sirius.
Sirius, Remus thinks in the back of his head while his conscious mind is focusing on something else. Sirius. He feels oddly warmer at the thought, even though in his heart, the pain of loss is still clear and needle sharp. His feelings are still fresh.
After all, wasn't it only yesterday that Sirius fell?