Warning: Please note that this chapter contains some violent images.

Carry You Over To A New Morning

'How're you feeling?' said Alice, and, reluctantly, Remus pulled his gaze away from Sirius's face to look at her. She looked tired, the circles under her eyes a dark shade of grey, making an uncomfortable contrast against her pale skin. Her eyes were bright and alert, though, and she was surveying him calmly.

'I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel,' Remus shrugged, fumbling a bit uncertainly around the words. 'I think I'm fine, but I'm not sure. Tired, I suppose.'

'Well,' said Marlene primly, 'that's to be expected. Healer Goldstein did have her wand in your brain. She probably rearranged things to make you more bearable,' she added. She looked just the same as she'd had when he'd left for his procedure, her black curly hair pulled back into a springy ponytail. She was grinning, broadly, relief evident.

'Charming,' said Remus dryly, and he made another attempt at sitting up. He succeeded on his third try, and much appreciated that none of them rushed to his side to help him up.

It was then he noticed that the hospital room around him was different from the one than he had been in before. The walls were a bare white, and this one had a window which, surprisingly, offered a view of London's foggy, early-January weather. The russet-coloured brick and spindly turrets of nearby buildings were almost visible when he looked out. The bed he was lying on was a lot smaller than his previous one had been, and his clothes and winter coat were lying haphazardly on top of his old Hogwarts trunk, which was stood in the corner.

He frowned. 'Where did that come from?'

'Your mother,' said Alice, her mouth a very thin line, as if she was holding back from saying something else. 'She sent it over, because she thought it might come in handy.'

Remus stared. 'For what?'

'No one knows,' said Marlene ominously, her voice low and raspy.

While Alice pulled a face at Marlene's dramatics, Sirius grinned, but otherwise remained quiet. Remus frowned. Sirius's silence was a bit unnerving. Whenever Sirius had visited him in hospital before, it was like the words couldn't stop pouring out, inane observations and clever ideas mingling to form a pleasant conversation. In all the time Remus had known him, Sirius had never really been quiet. So Remus raised his eyebrows at him, blinking a bit in surprise.

'What?' demanded Sirius, in a low voice, looking extremely uncomfortable finding himself on the receiving end of Remus's expectant gaze.

Remus opened his mouth to reply, but Marlene beat him to it. 'You're absurdly quiet, Black. You're not planning on exploding a Dung Bomb in the room or something?'

'That was one time, McKinnon,' Sirius told her, and it came out kind of breathless and annoyed and fast. Marlene's eyes narrowed and she seemed ready to tell him off, but Sirius turned to Remus, and said, decisively, 'So, you're better now?'

'That's the idea,' said Remus, smothering a smile at Marlene's annoyed face. 'I don't know what the plan is –'

'Oh, good, you're awake,' came Healer Martin's relieved voice from the doorway. She was stood there, beaming at him. 'I was hoping.'

'Yes, awake, that's me,' said Remus, fully aware of the fact that he sounded a bit stupid. His head hurt, a little bit.

Healer Martin, apparently, took no notice of his stupidity, and merely stepped into the room. She studied the parchment that materialised in front of her with interest, and seemed neither satisfied nor completely unsatisfied by what she found there. She made her way over to the bed, an inscrutable look on her face, and pulled out her wand only to tap it firmly against the side of his head.

Remus winced at the sharp knock of wood against his skin, but put effort into keeping perfectly still as Martin leaned closer, examining him with unsaid spells, which pulsed out of her wand and touched his temple, comfortingly soft as they pushed past the skin. Remus felt one of them rush in a blaze of blue behind his eyelids, which he'd closed without realising. The feeling was slightly uncomfortable.

To distract himself, he thought blindly of a holiday he had taken once with Valerie, to a small coastal town in Cornwall. They had spent most of the day at the beach, and while Valerie had opted to remain sitting by the shore, reading quietly on a soft blanket, he had chosen to swim. He remembered the roar of salty water in his ears, deafening the surrounding sounds as his head was comfortably leaned back to face the sky, his body floating on the surface. He could picture the sky, formidable and vividly bright, like the Yorkshire sky at his grandparents' house in the country.

From there, he was suddenly in Yorkshire, at his grandparents' house, walking through its magnificent back garden, feeling the softness of the hydrangea petals under his wandering fingers, and smelling the heady scent of his grandfather's pipe tobacco. Remus met his grandfather in the sitting room, then, and saw, as he had back then, his grandfather's formidable bear-sized hand banging on the grand piano to emphasise a point in an argument they were having. The impact of his closed fist on the keys produced a discordant, shrill rush of sounds, and the whiskey he had been nursing splashed over the rim of his glass.

'Remus?' came Sirius's pleading voice, from very far off, and the form of Remus's grandfather faded back into the shadows of his mind when Remus opened his eyes. Slowly, he followed the sound to the corner of the room, where Sirius was stood, leaning against the wall.

The light outside of his window had faded to a dark, inky shade of black. The stars and the soft light of his hospital room were casting an odd, distorted shadow over Sirius's face, which Remus couldn't see.

'Sirius?' he asked, sleepily, and then Sirius pulled himself away from the wall and stepped closer to Remus's bed, into the light.

A horrible, nauseous feeling dropped into Remus's body, seeping into his stomach. It seemed like all the injuries Sirius had suffered over the years had taken hold of his body all at once. He was cradling his right arm within his left, and his movements were slow and looked excruciatingly painful, his broken, bare feet making splintery, bone-chilling sounds as they met the floor. These were injuries Sirius had sustained as a child, under Healer Wilkes's care.

Remus was horrified, and tried to move, but found that he was rooted to the spot, and couldn't do anything except watch Sirius's terrifyingly slow journey towards him.

Sirius's breathing was ragged and blood was gushing from his mouth in great, sickening bursts, soaking through his shirt. The burn marks the silver polish had left were covering his lips and even though it shouldn't have been physically possible for him to speak, Remus could hear his words as clearly as if he had been uninjured.

'Why didn't you help me, Remus? Why didn't you tell anyone? I was just a child. It doesn't really seem fitting to let them keep punishing me because you're too much of a coward to risk your job, does it?'

The walls of the room pulsed, the whole room thumping with Sirius's deafening heartbeat. Sirius kept coming closer and closer, blood spilling and dripping and steadily soaking the floor, staining the walls red. Remus didn't know what to say, didn't know how Sirius knew what had been going on in his mind, didn't know where his wand was, didn't know what was happening, what was going on; his mind couldn't make sense of anything. Was any of this for real or not?

Sirius's grey eyes were almost unseeing, and the flesh of his right leg was burning away, slowly, revealing more of the layers underneath with his every step towards the bed. His head was tilted to the side, which he had sometimes done when Remus had been speaking to him, but it was ill-fitting in the current situation. When Sirius finally reached the bed, Remus could only say sorry until his throat was raw and the words came out as a stuttering, gasping rush of sounds.

Sirius laughed at him, that same laugh he had come out with after Remus had kissed him on New Year's Eve, and it sounded all wrong for this moment, misplaced and out of context.

'Sorry isn't enough anymore. Don't think my blood isn't on your hands, too,' whispered Sirius's voice, his broken face taking up Remus's entire view, and his blood covered Remus, soaking through his sheets –

With a startling, terrified gasp, Remus sat straight up in his hospital bed.

'Hey, you're awake!' came Sirius's voice, and Remus drew in a sharp breath, whipping his head around to face a perfectly all right and unbroken Sirius, who had just come into his room. He looked happy to see him.

'Fuck,' Remus said, falling back on the pillows, his breath still coming out in stuttering gasps. He closed his eyes.

'If you're offering,' said Sirius, with that same warm laugh as he'd had in the dream, and Remus saw Sirius's face loom in front of him, broken and bruised and bleeding. It made him feel sick.

'Are you all right?' said Sirius, and he was suddenly very close, his tone soft.

Remus opened his eyes and looked at him, trying to force down the nausea. 'What happened?'

'Martin put you in some sort of trance,' Sirius shrugged. 'Something about making sure they were healing the layers of your mind that might've been damaged during the procedure. It sounded really complicated. You've been out for a while.'

A dream. His mind had given him a dream, made up out of his fears and emotions and things he had always left unsaid. Remus was tired, breathless, but he knew that he had to do this now, or he would never.

'Listen,' said Remus, and it came out far more urgently than he meant it, but Sirius was looking at him with soft grey eyes and all Remus could see was the blood, which seemed to be there one minute and then gone the next, blinking in and out of existence. 'I'm sorry.'

'Sorry for what?' Sirius said, sounding genuinely surprised. 'Sleeping? You know some people do that after they've just had their brains mended –'

'Listen to me,' Remus said, grabbing his hand and pulling him close, his tone urgent and desperate. Sirius's face was covered in blood one moment, and then completely free of it in the next one. Remus was sure he was going absolutely mad. 'I should've helped you. I should've kept you away from your parents and gotten you to the Ministry and testified and given them my memories – but I justified it to myself and said that you didn't need me interfering and you didn't want me to report anything and I stopped asking and you were just a child, I'm – I'm so sorry.'

Sirius was quiet, looking at him with a kind of puzzled frown.

'It was my job to make sure you didn't fall under any harm,' Remus said, and his voice exploded into the room without him noticing, agitated by Sirius's silence. He tightened his grip on Sirius's hand, the bones seemingly broken and bruised one moment, and then perfectly fine in the next. 'I sent you back to them knowing full well the next time I saw you might not –'

'Remus, let go of my hand,' interrupted Sirius quietly, and his tone somehow made Remus deflate and look at him. He dropped Sirius's hand on the bed, and looked at it, seemingly willing it to stop breaking under his gaze.

'I don't know where the hell this is coming from,' Sirius said, putting a hand on the back of his neck and grabbing the skin there in what seemed like an almost painful gesture. His tone, however, was low and commanding. 'But you know as well as I do that your suspicions wouldn't have held up in front of the Wizengamot and you would've lost your job. My parents would've made sure that you could never work again. And if you had been really, really lucky, my father would've paid you a visit and no one, not even the memory of your grandfather, would be able to save you, then,' he added, and his tone sounded bitter and raw, but Remus knew that every word was true. 'That's why I told you to bugger off when you asked me if I was all right. I was trying to protect you.'

Remus opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't find any words to say, so he closed it again. The words had been unstoppable as haunting images of Sirius's injuries blurred the lines between reality and the dreamy, filmy pictures in his own mind, but reality was taking over now, and Remus could clearly see the fading daylight streaming into his room, and Sirius's soft black hair, which fell in front of his eyes. In fact, Sirius looked perfectly fine, if a bit brassed off.

'Look, let's just drop it, all right?' said Sirius, then. 'I mean, I appreciate it, but this is not really something I want to talk about with you.'

'Sorry,' said Remus, and his voice had lost its certainty and booming power, and sounded a bit resentful and lost even to his own ears. But it had maybe been good to get the words out, still, even they had been unplanned and all wrong. He felt himself calm down, his heartrate slowing down, and Sirius was looking calm, too. In fact, during the whole conversation, Sirius had been eerily calm and adult.

'Prat,' responded Sirius, but it sounded affectionate, almost. He ran a hand through his hair, a movement that seemed almost unnatural, as if it was copied from someone else. But then, seemingly making up his mind, he flopped down onto the bed and onto Remus, who let out and involuntary grunt at the sudden weight on his stomach. 'I'd rather we talk of happier things. I was going to invite you to my flat to get all healed up. What do you think?'

Remus stared at him.

Sirius grinned at him, his slow, pureblood anger apparently forgotten as quickly as it had come. 'Excellent idea, right?'

Remus opened his mouth to say no, but what came out instead was, 'When did you get a flat?'

Sirius's grin widened. 'Last night.'

'You got a flat last night and now you're inviting me to stay?' Remus repeated, incredulously.

'Yes,' Sirius said cheerfully, looking up at him with wide, innocent grey eyes. 'Why, bad idea?'

'Very bad idea,' Remus assented, but Sirius's grin didn't dim, only increased ten-fold. 'I mean, you don't even – know me all that well –' Remus said, uncertainly.

'See, that would be the point,' Sirius said, and he sounded suspiciously patient, like he was talking to someone who was very dim. 'You could stay with me and get to know me better.'

'Aren't you supposed to be in school?' Remus asked.

'Details,' said Sirius, waving his hand dismissively, as if a little thing such as having to attend school on a regular basis wasn't something that really impressed him.

Remus opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, feeling Sirius look at him with expectation written all over his face. It was incredibly endearing. 'I can't,' Remus said eventually. 'I'm sorry.'

Sirius blinked, shrugged, and then leaned forward and kissed him.

The kiss lasted for a while, lazy and intense, and then Sirius pulled back, putting his nose into Remus's neck. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'Would've been fun, though.'

'Yeah,' said Remus, putting his head on top of Sirius's. 'It would've.'

'Well,' said Healer Martin cheerfully, the next morning. 'You seem to be in excellent health, Lupin. I'm going to dismiss you from hospital. Here's a list of potions that will be delivered to your house within the hour,' she said, shoving a list in his left hand. Remus looked down at it a bit stupidly, his right hand stilling on one of the buttons of his shirt, which he had put on himself with slight effort.

'Remember, you're supposed to take them daily,' Healer Martin reminded him in a commanding voice. 'Skip one and we don't know what will happen. The potions will last you a year. You need to come into my office once a month and we'll check to see if everything's still going well.' She stuck out her hand towards him, expectantly.

Remus dithered for a moment, eventually putting the parchment under his arm, and shook her hand with a bit of effort.

'Thank you for your care, Healer Martin,' he said.

'You're quite welcome, Healer Lupin,' she said cheerfully. 'Oh, and you've got a visitor.'

She grinned at him and stepped aside and revealed Valerie, who was stood in the doorway, dressed in a set of beautiful, blush-coloured robes, which complimented her light blonde hair and blue eyes perfectly. She did always know how to dress well. Remus smiled at her.

Valerie came into the room and stood aside, leaving the door open so that Healer Martin may step through. Healer Martin winked at him and stepped out of the room.

'Valerie,' Remus said. 'How nice of you to visit.'

'Darling, it's so good to see you up and about,' Valerie said, sitting down on the edge of his bed. 'I can't stay very long, I'm afraid.'

Remus, meanwhile, had finished buttoning up his shirt and now looked up at her. 'Back to New York?'

'Yes. I'm going to leave you,' Valerie said, ever-so-direct, her voice smooth and cold like glass.

'I see,' said Remus, and wondered why he didn't quite see this coming. It was so perfectly practical. Classic Valerie – always taking the decisions without him, pulling the reins in the directions she would see fit. It was a quality he would always admire her for.

'I've arranged to have your things sent over to your flat,' Valerie continued, having seemingly not even registered his response. 'I'm sure you'll be happier without me.'

Remus put his hand over hers.

She squeezed his hand, and then looked up at him. 'If there was ever a man I'd marry, you know it would be you, Remus.'

'I know,' Remus told her. 'Me too.'

She smiled then, enchanting and resilient, and it seemed to Remus that the world stopped for a moment, and he saw then all that was calm and beautiful in her, in their relationship, which he hadn't always appreciated as much as he probably should've had.

So he did what he should've done a long time ago. He leaned forward, pressing their lips together in a final, goodbye kiss.

'I love you, Valerie,' he said, softly.

She laughed, surprised and genuine and a little bit broken. 'I love you too, Remus,' she said, and if her voice sounded a bit tearful, they both ignored it. 'I'll see you,' she added, kissing his forehead, and standing up.

'Yes,' said Remus, squeezing her hand and leaning back against the headboard of the bed. 'See you.'

Just outside the door, Sirius Black took his right hand off the door handle, which had been pushed down under its weight. His fingers trembled slightly when he put them back in his pocket and he just stared at the door for a second or two, during which he could feel his heart shatter, the sound of the splinters falling all around him loud enough he could hear it in his own ears.

He shook his head, making a noise of disgust in the back of his throat that sounded a lot like the one his mother would make whenever he had done something that was not to her liking. He turned on his heel, stomping past a surprised Marlene, who was stood on the stairs. He left St Mungo's, intent on never setting eyes on Remus Lupin again.

Author's Note: This chapter turned out a bit differently than I had originally planned, but it was mostly necessary to tie up loose ends. I wanted to thank you all very much for your amazing reviews and kind words.