For dimitrigirl18's Big/Lil Sis comp with the prompts RemusSirius and forgotten.
He is pale.
Pale as the moon that always left him so broken, pale as the cool light that twisted his limbs into knots and threw his body aside to make way for the wolf for so, so long. Too long.
(Not nearly long enough.)
And Sirius' fingers are twisting into Remus', ignoring their stiff lethargy, the sickening coolness of his touch. His heart feels heavy in his chest, sinking like a dead weight, and the word why is tripping from his tongue over and over and over. It is a question that will never be answered.
Remus is bloody and still, so bloody still and still so bloody; his body slumps forward, naked, scratched and battered and broken. Sirius wants to trace the pathways of trauma on his thin limbs, wants to run his fingers across each deep slash and every long-healed scar that litters his torso, his back, his sides, wants to memorise the pattern that Remus hacked into his own skin with the wolf's claws and, sometimes, Sirius knows, his own shaking fingers wrapped around the steel of a blade.
Sirius can tell which it was this time, sees it in the precise slices and slashes down Remus' forearms. He is too bright, jarring red on blank white with silver-scar shine; Sirius cannot look away, no matter how much he wants to.
When James finds him, he has forgotten how to speak, how to tell him what has happened. How to say anything other than why.
"Sirius, please," James chokes, "Sirius, let go. Please."
But if he lets go, Sirius knows they will take him away, hide him somewhere, throw his body into the dirt and let it nurture the weeds sprouting from beneath a gravestone, and he doesn't want that to happen because this is Remus, and Remus doesn't die.
Remus bleeds.
Remus bleeds and Madam Pomfrey bandages the worst of his wounds and heals the others with a flick of her wand; Remus bruises and Sirius presses tender hands to his skin and promises it will all be okay; Remus scars and they all pretend not to notice, or beg him to stop, or try to imagine how it would feel to wear Remus' skin, to house the wolf, to bend your bones for the moon.
And Sirius remembers telling, remembers whispering to James and Peter in the night about new scars that are too straight, about lines that aren't claw marks or shadows of teeth. He remembers nothing being done. Remembers them telling him to forget it. Remembers no one taking him seriously, remembers being told Remus is a wolf, Remus is bound to hurt himself.
But James is crying as he tries to pull Sirius' hands away from Remus, his fingers growing slick with blood, and Sirius is shouting why why WHY WHY over and over and James is echoing I'm sorrys and no one is listening to anything but the silence Remus has left behind.
When James finally pulls Sirius free, he hauls him to his feet and wraps him in his arms and holds him until Sirius' knees give way and he is a heap on the floor beside his lover, and he hates hates hates the part of him that wishes the blood on his hands was his, that wishes he could stay here, wishes he was dead.
"Sirius, please," James says, but Sirius isn't listening.
And why should he? No one ever listened to him, and now it is far too late.