Summary: Because Sirius is more broken than he lets on. Oh and the mentions of fifth year are referring to the Whomping Willow incident and Sirius running away from home in the summer. Remus' POV. Can be slash if you want it to be. Un-betaed.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Full Circle
He's broken, but you can't imagine him any other way. Without the shadows in his eyes, you think, he wouldn't be the same; the madness in his laugh, the smoke curling up from parted lips and inky hair, the amber liquid swirling in a dusty bottle, a shattered glass in the doorway, it's all Sirius. Because you know that the grin, the bravado, the cocky arrogance, those are mere parts he plays, fooling the world with smart words and long-perfected charm. It's an act so well choreographed that you would have believed it, but bottles of firewhiskey and fifth year and scars and broken hearts told a different story. You remember those times well, the nights he came stumbling through the portrait hole pissed out of his mind, the nights he spent curled up in your bed when the pain in his eyes was like a vacuum and you rocked him to sleep and held him as he cried, the nights when it was just the two of you wrapped in the shadows like a blanket as you tried to make things right. Those times passed with the years, and by graduation they were mere memories of a time when he was struggling to break free, struggling and failing and breaking. And then the war came and you saw a new kind of madness in his eyes, no longer the vulnerable child but the dysfunctional adult cracking up inside but never on the surface, because he was too strong for that now, and for a time he fooled the world into thinking he was coping.
You weren't there when he hunted down Peter in the street, but you can imagine the terrible laughter forcing its way out of his chest, tearing him apart with bloody fingers as it wrenched at his muscles. You can imagine the moment he shattered for good, but you can't even begin to imagine Azkaban and you are amazed that he kept his sanity, but then again maybe he didn't, because you're pretty sure he was insane to begin with. Sure, his first few years at Hogwarts were pretty normal, but there were times even in first year when you knew him to be different, knew him to be damaged. Nobody else saw it, but you were always the one who was looking, and when he tried to kill himself in fifth year you were the only one who had seen the signs, but you ignored them because he had hurt you and you thought that maybe, maybe he deserved what he got. You know now that he didn't, and you still feel ashamed about that, but you talked him down off the tower anyway, and you tried to teach him what it was to love unconditionally.
Now, years later, he's shuddering on his bed with eyes so dark they're burning pits, shaking with sobs and wild laughter, and the mask he has crafted lies forgotten on the floor because he knows you can see through it even if the others can't. When the night ends and the terrors slip away back into his memory, he will put it on again, and when Harry is around you see that sometimes, just sometimes, it isn't a mask anymore. But for the moment you just hold him, keeping him together as he relives the years of his torture, holding him because nothing you can do will drive away the terror, nothing will drive away the madness, but maybe, just maybe, you can hold him together till the dawn and pretend that this house isn't as much as a prison for him as Azkaban was, pretend that war is just a nightmare, and that tomorrow we will pull aside the curtains and wake up to the Gryffindor boy's dormitory. Because to do otherwise, to do otherwise is to admit that he has come full circle. And he never wanted that.
A/N: Sorry it's so short. Please review.