Author's Note: So. Sorry about the egregiously massive delay. I wrote a twenty-chapter fic. And then I started college. It sets a girl back a wee bit.

Aww, I'm just makin' excuses. Let's get to the good stuff.

CHAPTER TEN

Mutilated

Sirius was watching Remus closely. He had been harboring a suspicion for a while, and that suspicion was that this whole becoming-a-werewolf business was a lot more painful than Remus let on.

What he'd told Remus before had been true down to the last word. They were his brothers, these dumb, confused, capricious boys, and it would kill him to lose one of them.

He'd already lost one brother, in all the ways that counted.

The sickening medley of indignation, anguish, and deprivation burned all over again as he listened to the words that were still so clear in his head.

"You're leaving?"

He'd looked up darkly. He'd known that a tantrum was building and had half-hoped to escape before it broke.

One look was enough. He went back to folding things and setting them in his trunk. It felt more final than using a spell, somehow. He liked that—the finality.

"You can't leave," Regulus repeated dogmatically.

Sirius owed it to him to look him in the eyes. Regulus's were like his—cold and gray. There might as well have been electricity crackling between those matched, identical gazes. Wouldn't that have been exciting?

To his mild shame, Sirius broke the eye contact first. "This place is a madhouse, in case you haven't noticed," he said.

"Yeah?" Regulus sounded far from convinced. "And you're the only sane one here, is that it?"

Sirius let his silence answer for him.

Some of the derision had gone from Regulus's voice when he spoke again. There was a soberness to it, and a poorly-feigned indifference. "So where are you going, then?"

"James's house."

"That blood traitor?"

Sirius looked up again, sharply this time, hot blood running through his veins. That was too far—too much. "That blood traitor is my best friend, you little shit," he snapped.

"No, Sirius!" Regulus had screamed then—just as much desperately as angrily, it seemed. "No, Sirius, he's not! I'm your best friend, remember? You said so! You said it a million times! You said—you said it was a damn good thing I was your brother, 'cause it meant your best friend was always just down the hall!"

He had said it. It had been a long time ago—a few spare years that felt like decades—but he had said it. And, once upon a time, it had been true.

Sirius jerked his trunk off of the bed. It plummeted to the floor with a satisfying crash. He reflected that he should have put his head under it and made things easy on himself. "Then come with me," he said.

James wouldn't have been happy about that. He wasn't sure that James would be happy about having him show up on his doorstep with some bleeding heart story, let alone doing so with his snarky Slytherin little brother in tow. He knew, however, with a terrible and resigned sort of certainty, that Regulus was going to say precisely what Regulus said next.

"Burn in Hell, you filthy turncoat," Regulus spat.

Sirius's once-best friend then proceeded to make a great show of storming down the stairs and slamming his door shut.

Sirius took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. Regulus had always been a bit on the melodramatic side.

Halfheartedly he muttered some spell or another that lifted his trunk a few feet off the ground and made it trail him like—he managed a watery smirk—an obedient dog. Slowly he made his way down the hall, down the stairs, down another corridor, his trunk hovering eagerly behind him, knocking into his shoulder impatiently when he lagged too much. He ignored it. For all his professed conviction, it was hard—leaving forever. This might well be the last time he ever saw the floorboards, the carpet, the wallpaper. Sixteen years of his life had revolved around this place. That wasn't something you could walk away from easily.

He tried to memorize everything as he went, but it was hopeless. Remus might have managed it. Remus had twice as much brains as he did.

That was how he did it, in the end—he pushed the old family out of his mind and focused on the new one. On the Marauders. On Peter, James, and Remus.

So there he was, out in the street with a bloody trunk floating at his right shoulder.

You fucking idiot, Sirius thought blankly.

Then he put his arm out, wand extended, squeezed his eyes shut, and wished hard for the Knight Bus.

When he opened them again, it was coming to a precarious and ungainly halt before him, tires squealing in protest.

Ignoring the cheerful gambits offered him by the middle-aged conductor, he shoved some money into the man's hand, muttered out the address he wanted, and selected the armchair furthest from the front. He didn't think he was up to conversation just yet.

Folding his arms tightly across his chest, Sirius stared out the back window as the driver gunned the engine. They hadn't even pulled away before he considered getting off.

Just who was he kidding, thinking he could really do this? Wasn't a very funny joke, as far as he was concerned. Just stupid—stupid like him. He should just get the hell off now and march his ass right back in that door and up those stairs, and go sulk in his bedroom until he felt better.

The bus jerked forward, and then it was careening through the streets like a bad dream. Sirius felt vaguely ill, but at least it was too late to go back. Admittedly, he could certainly live without ever seeing his parents again—moreover, the very recollection of the rigid silence at the dinner table the night before made him feel sicker still—but Regulus… He… loved… Regulus.

There, he'd said it. Thought it. Admitted it. Bitter tears climbed his throat, trying to reach his eyes, and he forced them down. He wouldn't cry. It wasn't worth it.

But he had. He had buried his face in one of the Potters' spare pillows and cried, and the cot had creaked softly as his shoulders shook.

Blissfully, James had slept through everything. If there was one thing that would have killed Sirius Black instantly at that moment, it was pity.

There hadn't been any letters. Honestly, he hadn't expected any, but he had still preserved some stupid little shred of hope that Regulus might write. Regulus didn't. He was his parents' son. Pride came first—before truth, before virtue, before love. It was the way it had always been.

Accordingly, Regulus hadn't said a word to him since "turncoat." Sometimes he wanted to grab the little bastard and throttle him until he said something—"Stop," or "Damn you," or "Fuck off," or "Avada kedavra." Anything.

But there was nothing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Padfoot," James said.

Sirius returned to Earth, shook his head, and blinked away the remnants of the atmosphere that clung to his eyelashes. "Huh?" he said.

"Eloquent," James remarked. He looked over. "Moony?" he prompted.

"Hm?" Remus replied, glancing up suddenly from his scrutiny of the grass.

"Did I miss a memo?" James inquired, grinning now. "Was I supposed to be lost in thought, too? Because I could always do that, you know, if you wanted."

Predictably, Sirius rolled his eyes, and Remus smiled. Peter, James knew for just about an absolute fact, would have laughed—except that, at this particular moment, Peter was a rat bouncing along on Remus's shoulder.

The three of them were huddled as best as possible under the Invisibility Cloak—which was to say, not very well at all. Their feet, and probably their shins, and possibly their knees, were painfully visible, but James was banking on the fact that it was dark. The full moon, obviously, had not yet risen.

When they reached the Willow, Remus placed Peter gently on the ground and let him scamper off to hit the trigger. In moments, they were dragging the Cloak along behind them as they made their cramped way through the tunnel. Moments after that, they emerged into the eerie, enigmatic silver wonderland that was the Shack. James trailed his hand along the wall, his fingertips skimming over the deep gouges left by a wolf's claws, the peeling wallpaper, the dust that lay thick and full over every surface, a tangible testament to the silence and isolation. This was a sad place. A cold place.

Faintly James smiled. It was warmer when it was full of a small zoo's worth of animals.

They picked a room at random. As it happened, this particular specimen wasn't quite as frequently used as the others, meaning that the furniture hadn't been maimed and the rug hadn't been mutilated—not much, anyway.

Remus was shaking already, tremor after tremor seizing his slight form, and he looked even thinner and frailer than usual.

James had long been of the opinion that Remus needed to eat more.

Remus sank into an armchair, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, his head bowed, agony written in every line of his innocent face—a face that contorted now, wracked and wretched. He curled up smaller in the chair, little and delicate and harmless.

Temporarily.

For then, of course, it happened. The fur flooded out; the fangs surged free; the muscle mutated before their very eyes. James felt himself cringing. It was never any easier to watch, and he could only begin to imagine how it… felt. He'd had nightmares that had given him an idea—he'd woken up tangled in his blankets and panting heard, scrabbling with one hand on the nightstand for the glasses that would permit him to see that everything was all right.

But for Remus, it would never be all right, would it?

"Now would be good," Sirius remarked.

"True," James acceded. Promptly he said the word.

Nothing happened.

He swallowed hard, watching the roiling figure on the armchair starting to take on a single shape, and said the word again, slowly and distinctly.

Still nothing.

A droplet of frigid sweat beaded at the top of James's spine. Ever so slowly it slid its way down, riding the ridge of every vertebra.

The wolf raised its head. Yellow eyes glowed in the moonlight.

"Sirius…" James said slowly, backing up. Too soon he hit the wall, and his fingers danced over it behind him, as if they expected to find a secret passage there, a miraculous egress of one sort or another.

But of course they wouldn't. There was nothing to be found. He was trapped in a corner, and that was all there was to it.

Something like a whimper escaped his throat, and the wolf's ears flicked towards him. Then the wolf pressed them down and back against his skull. A growl that began deep in a hungry, cavernous stomach rolled out into the air like a tidal wave.

Sirius, a great black dog now, snarled in return, lips drawn back from his shining ivory teeth. The wolf growled again, angrily now, challenged. There was an adversary between him and his prey. Even with the cold sweat sliding down his temple, James understood that much. Animals made sense. It was people that were mad.

Sirius barked once, a short, harsh, abrupt sound, and the wolf took two steps forward. Apparently he wasn't intimidated.

Well, James was.

At that moment, without hesitating, Sirius leapt. And maybe it was motivated by instincts, by the dog's thoughts, by the ingrained canine need for dominance, but James still felt a surge of desperate pride. If that wasn't Gryffindor courage, he didn't know what was.

A furious howl died in the wolf's throat as Sirius barreled into him, but almost instantly he was retaliating, his claws raking across Sirius's muzzle. Crimson teardrops flew. Sirius snarled and aimed a bite at the wolf's neck, but his opponent ducked out of the way and lunged for his leg. Gleaming fangs snapped shut a centimeter short, and Sirius took the opportunity to slam his shoulder into the wolf's again. Undeterred, recovering quickly from a brief stumble, the wolf lurched forward again, teeth bared, claws swiping. They found their mark, and Sirius yelped piteously.

Then the wolf released his grip, his rage escaping in a single ear-rending howl, as a rat buried needle teeth in his back paw.

Sirius barked once at James before racing out the doorway and down the hall. Shaking off the stupefaction, James pelted after him.

Another echoing howl followed him like a specter, and close behind it came the sound of skittering claws on the wooden floorboards.

If Dexter Walton, the Quidditch captain, had seen how fast James was running at that moment, his jaw would have dropped to the floor.

As they tore up the lawn, dew spattering behind their feet, the Willow slammed shut just in time to lock the wolf inside. And perhaps then they were safe, but the two boys—for the black dog had become a boy, a boy whose dark hair streamed behind him—continued to run. They ran into the castle, and they ran up a set of stairs, and another, and another, until they collapsed on the floor and gasped to catch their breath.

James stared dazedly at the ceiling. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, and he couldn't think. What was left to him but that ceiling, with its arching beams and its ominous shadows? Nothing, as far as he could tell.

Not that he could tell much of anything.

"Sirius?" a girl's voice asked tentatively. "James?"

The next thing he knew, he was sitting up straight, and his head was spinning wildly to express its disapproval of this sudden action.

"Wh… the curfew," Noelle Cook said slowly.

Dragging in deep, ragged, greedy breaths, Sirius staggered to his feet and leaned heavily on a wall for support. "Listen," he panted. "Listen, Noelle, okay? Here's what you're listening to. I will fuck you backwards, sideways, and upside-down if you don't write us up, all right? All you got to do is not—say—anything. Got it?"

James's spine felt like jelly. He wondered if it would tilt backwards and drop him to the floor or telescope in on itself, eliminating his torso.

"You're an idiot, Sirius," he managed to say.

Noelle was looking at Sirius like he had parked his flying saucer in the middle of her flowerbed and emerged from the hatch door wearing a fishbowl helmet. She raised one arm and pointed her index finger at him. Her fingernails were painted a deep red.

"You're bleeding," she announced apprehensively.

Wearily Sirius raised a hand to the broad slashes that arced over the right side of his face, narrowly missing his eye. He drew his fingers away wet and looked at them contemplatively for a moment. Then he sighed.

"Fuck it," he said. "Fuck it all."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When they got back from seeing Pomfrey—who hadn't bought their unforgivably thin "juggling knives" excuse but hadn't been able to weasel anything else out of them—the two of them collapsed onto their beds. Sirius got up again, brushed his teeth, itched at his bandages until James scolded him, and then burrowed under the covers and slept.

James folded his hands on his chest. He'd taken his glasses off, so all nearby objects were little more than fuzzy outlines of their former selves, but astigmatism couldn't completely conceal reality. Remus was still out there. He was still a wolf. And he was still alone. They had abandoned him, the boys who had sworn to accompany him to his hell and anyone else's, because he, James, hadn't been able to change. He didn't know why. He'd done everything right. And now Sirius was sliced up, Peter was scrambling around somewhere as a scruffy rat, and Remus was out there, a wolf, alone.

Tears stung James's eyes, and he bit them back, rolled over, and tried to force himself to go to sleep.