If everything is an illusion, then our senses are sacred. Touch is sacred.

- Genesis P-Orridge

Atmospheric charms made the inside of the church as cool and odorless as a cave. The way the inside didn't match the outside made Remus anxious and distractible.

The Minister had portkeyed him and Tonks to the bottom of the hill that lorded over Kilnaricroy and walked them into the stone ruin that slumped at the top. When they'd walked through the gaping maw of a door, the incomprehensible system of charms and glamours that made the inside a huge, bright basilica of gold and stained glass had dizzied Remus all over again. The Minister had led them up marble steps, past the altar, and bade them wait their turn to perform in a wing that was shielded from view of the nave by gauzy white curtains.

Where, Remus wondered, was he standing now, in that ancient pile of grey stone? Was he physically inside it? Outside it? Somewhere else?

He'd had to stop Tonks peeking through the curtain twice already. He could see the hazy outline of the Minister through the gossamer cloth, prowling up and down the chancel with all his showman's aplomb, and the man's voice was amplified magically to an echoing boom. Remus hadn't really been listening and he knew Tonks hadn't been either. She kept whispering to him—don't forget to make eye contact; remember to hold your hands up so everyone can see—with a badgering affection that reminded him of Molly Weasley. It made him ache a bit for the time when he'd lived at Number 12 and had been beset from all sides by the inexhaustible and warmhearted nagging of Molly, Tonks, and Sirius.

His rib ached as well. The pain retreated and advanced with every breath. His joints were prickling with jagged pains and he alternated between deep chills and waves of sweaty heat.

Tonks had fussed over him all the night before. She had ground her little spray of herbs in a bowl with a teaspoon (which Remus had dutifully fetched for her, along with the salt cellar, a paring knife and a couple of lagers from the fridge. She had barely seemed to notice how the trips up and down the stairs had winded him, but he hadn't minded: it had felt like penance for showing her his repellant, immutable patronus) and made a cold salve that she'd rubbed almost viciously into his sore chest, the muscles in her forearm jumping under her skin. All his pent-up wanting from earlier that afternoon had come out then and made his hips jerk at her touch.

He'd told himself over and over that he didn't want her to have to look after him, be his nursemaid, subjugate herself to his bottomless need. That was the fate he'd meant to save her from when he'd left her. But even her rough and unforgiving attentions filled him with a longing that was somehow helpless, childlike, and sordid all at once.

Later, after she'd worked her wand mercilessly into the tender space between his ribs and zapped him with an anaesthetic spell, she had tried to bring him off with her hand. She'd straddled his lap on the bed, touching him with a methodical rigor that would have made quick work of him if he'd been well. But the discomfort in his chest and the lingering sting of their argument had made it impossible to finish and eventually he had delicately caught her wrist and moved her hand away, stammering apologies.

She had shrugged it off. (It was hardly the first time he'd been too anxious to perform. She had a way of making it seem like she didn't care whether it happened or not, which he supposed was meant to make him feel better but often sent him into a dismal, self-recriminating spiral). He'd lain awake with his thoughts burrowing into the dark, throbbing miserably as he wondered whether he'd live long enough to make love to her again, until she had snapped go to sleep, Remus. I can feel you pitying yourself.

Now, through the thin curtains, the frenzied sounds of the congregation were coming to a peak. Remus saw the shape of the Minister bend into a flourishing bow. Tonks, as close as she could get to the curtains without the tip of her nose poking through, looked back over her shoulder at Remus and gave him the curt, bolstering Mad-Eye nod that had preceeded all the hundreds of missions they'd run together.

Then she pushed through the curtains—he had to help her get her arm untangled— and strode to the altar.

Remus was surprisingly good onstage. Tonks had been a bit uneasy about it. Last night had been painful. After she'd tried to get him off, he'd disappeared into the bathroom for so long that she'd eventually given up waiting, put out the light and tried to sleep. When he'd finally come out, he'd lain rigidly on his side on the farthest sliver of the bed, as if he felt he didn't deserve to take up much space.

Even that had been a tiny victory for her: she'd had to badger him into sleeping in the same room. No, fuck you, Remus, you're staying in here, she'd insisted. If your rib goes wrong in the night you're gonna need me, and it's just safer, and—that's all beside the point, anyway. We're partners and we need to stick together. We're a team. He'd barely been able to meet her eyes while she'd rubbed the anti-inflammatory potion into his chest (nor when she'd sat in his lap and stuck her hand down his trousers, for that matter), but he'd stayed.

And when she'd woken in the morning, his arm had been slung across her stomach and one of her legs was crooked over his knees. Like their bodies had snuck over and found each other under cover of darkness. His thumb had even sleepily stroked her hip for a moment before he'd realised where he was.

He had been stiff and formal in their brief rehearsal this morning, but now in front of the crowd (after a few minutes of pacing and awkwardly clasping and unclasping his hands) he seemed to warm up a bit. Tonks supposed it wasn't that different from teaching in front of a class at Hogwarts.

"Listen very closely," he instructed the congregation of muggles, who shifted and murmured and tilted their heads.

He raised his hands (she could just see the crease his wand made in his shirtsleeve) and then lightning strobed in the mosaic windows and a deafening crash of thunder made everyone but Remus and Tonks jump. The crowd sizzled with wonderment.

"Don't be alarmed," he reassured them, smiling. "Nothing can harm you in here. Where there is faith, there is no fear."

The Minister had told them to say things like that.

Remus cast a quick look at her over his shoulder and she beamed back. With a subtle swish of his hands, he made great hailstones batter the false ceiling of the church. The charmwork rippled and popped under the force of them. A few muggles ducked and held up their hands like they expected to be pummeled.

Remus waved the storm off with his hands and sunshine sparkled again through the coloured glass. The congregation burst into a flurry of applause.

Remus smiled warmly down at an elderly woman in the front row. She wore a gaudy fascinator of pheasant tailfeathers and butter-yellow primrose blossoms in her wiry grey hair.

"Madam, may I borrow your...?" Remus stepped down the altar stairs and extended his hand to the flowers on the woman's head.

This was off-script. He was supposed to choose a little girl. Tonks's mouth perked into a lopsided smile. An unexpected relief coursed through her.

The old woman's gnarled fingers fumblingly unclipped the fascinator and she handed it to Remus. He held it up for all to see.

"Ah, yes. What a lovely—is it a hat?"

The congregation tittered and Remus chuckled along with them.

"Doesn't matter," he continued. "And don't worry, if you don't like it I shall change it back at once."

He touched the primroses with his fingertip. They shivered and hardened into brilliant, precious topaz stones. He stroked the long stripey feather between his forefinger and thumb, and it became a delicate blade of marbled jasper that shone in the midmorning light.

A frisson of thrilled whispers rippled through the crowd. The old woman clasped her hands together in delight. Remus bent to reclip the fascinator into her hair, which sagged under the new weight of it.

"Thank you. Well done," he told her quietly, and she fairly glowed in her pew as Remus retook the stage.

Tonks had never seen him teach, but she'd imagined it loads of times. He talked about it like it was just another job (and, like most of his jobs, she could barely get him to speak of it at all, presumably because of what had happened at the end of it. Sirius had told her once that Remus had been beside himself for weeks at how close he'd come to biting someone, and that he'd said some things that made Sirius think he might harm himself over it). But she had seen how animated Remus would get when he was explaining something to the kids at Headquarters—or, honestly, the adults at Headquarters. She'd seen how he could focus himself on another person, draw out their understanding with open, prompting questions, challenge them with an unjudging firmness.

Those were some of the few times, outside of bed, that she'd ever seen a grin on him that wasn't complicated with some sadness or restraint. He could sit with her for hours in brooding quiet, then chatter like she'd put a sickle in him once she got him on the right subject: politics, magical creatures, the warbly old music he liked. She hadn't even realised how much she liked him until one day she'd gotten back to her flat after a mission and realised she had listened to him talk about the medicinal properties of recorded banshee shrieks for over an hour without so much as an eye-roll. For days she'd thought about the little twitches the corners of his mouth did when he was talking.

She used to think, secretly, that that grinning, chattering, eagerly solicitous man was the real Remus, and all the melancholy and reservation and stilted courtesy and relentless self-doubt were just protective layers he'd built up. She used to think, with a proud certainty that seemed arrogant to her now, that she'd be the one that could peel those layers back and get a peek at the truth inside.

But she'd been digging her fingers in for two years, now, and if there was some true and incorruptible core somewhere inside him, she'd never found it.

"Ms. Taylor," Remus said reverently from the other side of the altar, cuing Tonks with a sweep of his hand, "Now that I've done my party tricks, would you care to share your gift with us?"

Tonks nodded, strode up to the altar, made a peace sign with her fingers, and morphed herself into Ginger Spice. Gasps and wolf-whistles trilled from the pews.

"Don't worry, I can't sing," she assured the room (in the corner of her eye, she saw a mix of expressions struggle across Remus's grinning face). "But I can take requests!"

The muggles loved her. They'd seen magic tricks before, but they'd never seen anything like Tonks. Remus watched with pride swelling in his chest as she bounced round the stage and showed off her repetoire. The crowd blitzed her with requests: Dame Edna, Alan Partridge, the Teletubbies. Tonks hadn't seen much muggle television but she did her best. She did the Prime Minister and the Queen (one of her favourites, Remus knew, though he was relieved that she didn't include the unflattering turkeylike voice she usually did). She worked in a few of her old standards: Siouxsie Sioux, Genesis P-Orridge (who nobody recognised and Remus wouldn't have either if he hadn't seen her do it a hundred times), Morrissey with a forlorn expression and an exaggerated wobbly quiff. When she moved on to animals the crowd was raucous and Tonks was absolutely radiant with pleasure; bright-eyed and beautiful somehow even with a warthog snout.

She had always seemed comfortable at the centre of everyone's attention. Back at Number 12 she'd bring the kids to fits of giggling tears after every dinner. The Weasley twins had been much more creative with their prompts than these muggles were: Can you do an octopus mixed with a flamingo? Can you make your skin glow like a veela's does? Can you, like, make yourself a cube? Tonks had applied herself with the same singular focus and sincerity to every one. She had answered Hermione and Ginny's tremulous questions about how morphing felt and what it was like to live in a metamorphmagus's body with such frank detail that it had made Remus flee the room in discomfort more than once.

She had invited Remus to ask questions too, and when she'd get bored on a long stakeout she would prod him to give her requests, but he'd always felt uneasy about it. He would make a few halfhearted suggestions he knew she'd enjoy, and then he'd change the subject. Watching the way she shone, now, he wondered why he'd never tried harder.

He knew why, if he was honest. Asking about her powers felt prurient and intrusive. Remus imagined she must get all manner of lascivious interest from men; he was disgusted by the thought (and by the faint titillation it enkindled in him). He had shaped his whole life around the quest to be better than his base desires, the things about him that were brutish and carnal and hungry. Those were the things that belonged to the wolf. To impinge on Tonks's dignity in that way would be a failure of his humanity, a victory for the curse in his blood. That's what he'd thought.

He'd thought the same about sleeping with her, though, and he'd done it anyway. He'd craved it and he'd reveled in it, even as it had made him sick with guilt and self-disgust. If he could do that, why couldn't he have just humoured her, shown a little curiosity, taken the chances she'd given him to understand her better?

Her hair cycled through a rainbow of colours for the crowd. The piéce de resistance was coming up. Remus glanced over to the white curtain that hid the transept where he knew the Minister and the Elder were watching.

"Cheers, everyone, you've been lovely, I just have one more thing for you..." Tonks looked back at Remus with mad, wicked, chaotic glee on her face. His stomach fluttered with affection. Of all her many different expressions, that one was his favourite, besides the ones she'd make in bed.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her skin turned a leathery burnt orange and a glossy black pompadour sprouted from her head.

"Be blessed, my children," she crooned, in the terrible American drawl she'd been practicing all morning. "Y'all, uh, do your prayers and such. Stick your head up inside you and find the light, yeah?"

Remus carefully kept his face impassive. The congregation was roiling with a mix of astonished scoffs, uneasy mumbling and braying, maniac laughter. Some were looking around as if they thought lightning bolts might start crashing down around them again.

The curtains whispered aside and the Elder himself strolled onto the stage. Tonks flung out her arms to showcase him to the crowd.

"Well isn't that sum'n," the Elder mused, and the muggles burst into cheers and applause. The Elder went right up to Tonks and wrapped an arm around her waist, which sent an uncontrollable shudder through Remus. Tonks and the Elder regarded each other with their identical pearly grins.

"I oughtta have this one sub for me on Sundays once in a while, catch up on my beauty sleep," the Elder jovially told the crowd. He massaged Tonks's shoulder with his thick fingers. "Terrific job, sweetheart. You're a natural."

He turned and winked at Remus. Remus showed his teeth in a tight approximation of a smile. He had the simmering urge to shove the Elder off of Tonks, grab her arm and get her away from here.

But, like so many other urges before, Remus didn't give in to it. He wasn't even sure he could give in to it if he tried.

"Not bad," whispered the Minister. His eyes were on Tonks, and there was a sly look in them she didn't understand.

"Cheers," Tonks said brightly. She looked up at Remus. His face was solemn and a bit pale. Hard to tell if that was from the performance or the rib. Or the Elder putting his hands on her. She knew he didn't like that.

Remus's hand was hovering over the small of her back: not touching, but she could feel the warmth of it. Remote and possessive at the same time.

"Listen," Tonks whispered to the Minister. "If we needed to disappear for a bit—" here, Remus's hand briefly pressed against her back as if to stop her; she glanced at his ashen face for just an instant before continuing. "—could we do it without being noticed? Seems like now's the time—"

The Minister cast a glance over his shoulder at the curtains. The Elder was onstage, introducing Sister Dymphna, who stood behind the altar in a diaphanous pink dress.

"Two o'clock," the Minister said gravely, looking at Remus. "At the Shrike and Marten. Meet me there and I'll apparate you back. You're late, you get left behind and I tell Chuck you've run off. He won't like that. I recommend you be on time."

Tonks gave a sharp nod. Remus let out a heavy sigh and said, "Yes. Two o'clock."

"Shrike and Marten," Tonks chimed.

She could feel the Minister's eyes on her as they slipped out the back.

Once the peaked slate roofs of the town were out of sight over the hills, Remus grasped Tonks's wrist and stopped her.

"Tonks—if we should get held up—"

Tonks spoke over him. "That's not an option, mate—"

"—I want you to go to your parents' house, you'll be safe there—

"Oh, fuck off. I'm not doing this again," Tonks huffed. She slashed her wand while Remus still held her wrist and apparated them both to St Mungo's.

"You're like a fucking broken record," she finished, when their feet touched the sticky floor of the waiting room.

The hospital was packed, as usual. Tonks had sat in this waiting room dozens of times, usually handcuffed to a suspect who was hexed or bleeding or suicidal. Witches and wizards shifted testily in their chairs, some bearing the telltale blisters and scorchmarks of a lost duel. At the admissions counter, an old woman sneezed a shower of orange-hot sparks, which singed the sleeve of her robes and bounced all over the floor. Tonks automatically circled her wand and cast a shield charm in front of herself and Remus.

"Dragon pox," she whispered, and stuck her tongue out, grimacing. Remus nodded uneasily. Tonks slotted herself into the long queue behind the old witch and Remus sidled up behind her.

They'd been here together before, after Bellatrix had cursed her and knocked her down the stairs in the fight at the Ministry. Remus had zapped her awake with his wand and slung her arm over his shoulder to help her limp far enough from the building to apparate to St. Mungo's. Tonks had been unconscious when Bellatrix had murdered Sirius. Remus had told Tonks what happened in the waiting room, but she'd been concussed and kept asking him if Sirius was coming to pick her up.

(She still remembered the strain in his face when he'd finally told her yes, Sirius was coming, but for now she needed to stay awake and cooperate with the healers. He'd disappeared as soon as she was admitted, and the next time she saw him he had made her a cup of tea and announced in his infuriatingly placid tone that she was never going to see him again.)

They waited in the glacial queue for ages, shuffling forward a step at a time. Remus kept looking around and his hands fidgeted in his pockets. Tonks lightly pinched his elbow to get his attention and smiled up at him.

"It's going to be okay," she murmured. She slipped her hand around his elbow and ran her palm down the smooth inside of his arm. When their hands met, she tried to interlace their fingers, but he pulled away and scratched nervously at his neck.

"Haven't seen a healer in a long time," he mumbled. "Other than Poppy. Haven't been in hospital since—since I was a boy."

Tonks stroked her finger down the seam of his shirt. He leaned away from her and she stopped.

"Might not be a bad thing," she said, resolutely chipper. "Get yourself checked over. Since you're getting on in years." She poked him in the ribs and he winced slightly even though the bad one was on the other side. She grinned steadily up at him, but he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were trained on the conelike hat of the wizard in front of them in line.

She laid a comforting hand between his shoulder blades, just wanting him to look at her so he could see in her face that she was going to make everything all right—

"You shouldn't be touching me like this," he muttered. He still wasn't looking at her. "We could be recognised. One of your colleagues—"

"I've told you before that I don't care," Tonks said through her teeth. "What is it going to take for you to believe me?"

Remus finally looked down at her, and there was something almost like pity in his face.

"It doesn't matter whether you care or not," he said. His voice was strangely hard.

"Next!" called the receptionist.

Tonks shook her head at Remus and marched up to the counter.

"Right, erm, we'll just be needing some Skele-Gro, please," she said crisply.

The receptionist blinked at Tonks and primly adjusted her gold-rimmed spectacles.

"Name?" she droned.

"Tonks." Tonks lowered her voice to a growl. "Nymphadora Tonks. Auror," she added with a quirk of an eyebrow. She held up her left hand and touched her wand to her palm. The bold M insignia of Magical Law Enforcement appeared there like a tattoo before vanishing. "I'm on official business, so I'm afraid it can't wait."

She felt Remus shifting uncomfortably behind her. He'd never had the stomach for this sort of thing—making demands.

"Skele-Gro is by prescription. I can't just give it to you. Auror or no, you'll have to see the healer." The receptionist picked up her quill. "Name again? Nympho—"

"It's for me, actually," Remus said from behind Tonks. He stepped up to the counter and laid his palms on it, leaning over to speak closely to the receptionist. "Lupin. Remus John Lupin."

The receptionist scrawled in her big narrow-ruled logbook. Below Remus's name, a column of typewritten notes populated itself down the page.

"Lupin," echoed the receptionist. She ran her finger down the notes as she skimmed them. "Born the tenth of March, nineteen-sixty?"

Remus nodded.

"Complaint?"

"A missing rib. Splinched." Remus nervously drummed his fingers on the counter. "And, er, a low fever, I believe."

The receptionist scribbled in the book. Another column of text appeared. Suddenly, she looked sharply up at Remus, her eyes huge behind her glasses.

"Werewolf?" Her shrill voice pierced the din of the waiting room and people standing nearby fell abruptly silent.

Remus glanced around, then leaned even further over the counter. The reception witch leaned back in her chair to keep the distance between them

"Yes," he said sheepishly, "I'm—I'm registered, I'm in full compliance–"

"Well, you're going to have to go up to the Isolation & Infectious Disease ward. That's the new policy. All dark creatures and disease-carriers go—"

"He's not infectious," spat Tonks. "The full moon's not for a week—"

"Oi, the veterinarian's down the road, werewolf," jeered a wizard with a faceful of boils at the end of the queue.

Remus was pale and Tonks could see little pinpoints of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"That's the policy," the receptionist reiterated, tapping her finger against her book with every syllable. "All dark creatures submit to blood and urine testing and a twenty-four-hour isolation period before any—"

"That's absolute bollocks—testing for what? He needs a fucking vial of Skele-Gro and we'll be on our way."

"Miss, please mind your language—"

"Please mind my fucking fanny, you—"

"Stop," Remus snapped. Tonks whirled around to face him, her cheeks hot and her eyes blazing.

Remus's lips were pressed tightly together, as if he was holding himself back from shouting at her. His face was white. He looked up at the ceiling and gave a shuddering sigh. The waiting room was alive with whispers and gasps, and the wizard behind them in the queue had drawn his wand and backed away, training it on Remus. Tonks's stomach lurched. She reached out for Remus's hand, but before she could touch him he grabbed her wrist and disapparated them both from St Mungo's with a splitting crack.

In the fields outside Kilnaricroy, Tonks got stuck at the anti-law-enforcement wards again. Remus had stormed halfway up the hill before he realised she wasn't with him. His knees creaked and ached as he scrambled back down the hill to help her lift the enchantments. When the spells were broken and he turned to start up the hill again, she grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back to facing her.

Her face was still pink with her fury in the waiting room. The childish indignation of her made him so tired. This, he thought, had been a vision of their future: Tonks's wasted rage against the buffeting, eroding force of Remus's condition. She'd be ground down into nothing before long. Her stubbornness exhausted him; how did she not exhaust herself?

She rubbed her hand across her sweaty forehead and took a deep breath, and he could see the corners of her mouth jerking like she wanted to cry.

"You know," he said, before he could stop himself. "I've never asked you to defend me and I don't understand why you do. It's humiliating and pointless."

He steeled himself for her explosive retort, but none came. Her chin was quivering.

"I know," she said, and for a minute she just looked at him without saying anything else. When she spoke her voice was cracked and the vulnerability of it startled him. "I'm so sorry, love. Fuck, I'm just..." She shook her head, and her mouth opened and closed, but she didn't go on; she just stared at him with a look he'd never seen on her before: lostness, defeat. She seemed frightened by her own speechlessness.

Remus felt very odd. That look on Tonks might ordinarily have made his heart twinge with sympathy. Being called love (rare, for Tonks, even in their most intimate moments, to be soggy like that) might have set sparks of elation popping in his chest. But all he felt now was the rising force of a manic, angry laugh. He pushed it down with the cold strength that a thousand humiliations and capitulations had annealed in him. He unhooked himself from all the teeming pressures inside him and faced her with the cold, impassive countenance that shielded him from his own feelings.

"I've told you," he said evenly, "that this is what it's like. This is what it's going to be like. All my life. It only gets worse."

Tonks nodded quickly and her eyes wandered down to where her hand gripped his sleeve.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"It's why you shouldn't touch me when we're in public." Remus's voice was sharper than he meant to be and he took a breath before continuing. "Everyone in that waiting room is talking about us at this very moment. The Auror who came in with the werewolf. You'll almost certainly have to explain to your boss what you were doing, why you made a scene—why you were standing so close to me..."

"I know," Tonks said flatly. "That's not—I'll handle it. We need to get your rib sorted, Remus—I didn't know you were feeling feverish. That's... that's not good."

Remus stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground, unbalanced by her uncharacteristic yieldingness.

"Just since this morning" he said dismissively. "And shooting pains in my back for the last few hours."

Tonks reached up to lay her palm over his forehead, checking his temperature. "Better or worse than the morning after the moon?"

"Not as bad. More like the night before."

Tonks nodded. Her hand slid from his forehead to his cheek. Her thumb stroked the crease at the corner of his mouth.

"I thought for a second you were going to leave me in the waiting room," she told him solemnly. "I'm glad you didn't."

Remus didn't know what to say. He couldn't bring himself to look at her. He was cold all over and her warm hand felt good. The barrier inside him was cracked and selfish desire was fizzing up through it. It was always hard to think, hard to push back against himself when she was touching him. He hated how much he wanted it—how much he liked it when she treated him gently and fussed over him. There was tenderness in her hand now that wasn't there last night and it drew wanting up from inside him like a cold compress sucks the heat up from a fever.

She moved to cup his chin and guided his face until their eyes met.

"Look. I know I can't help all the... all the horrid and embarrassing and painful stuff that's going to happen to you. I'm not stupid. I know I can't do fuck all about any of it. But I don't want you to have to do it by yourself, and go back home alone afterwards, and have to sit there and—and be in your head alone with all of it. I could be there as much as you'd let me, I could...I dunno..."

She let go of his sleeve. The fulminating anger of a moment ago had dissipated and left a hollow space inside him. He'd rather have been angry than drained and jellied like this. His body felt both heavy and fragile. He supposed it was the fever. He desperately wanted to lie down.

"Sorry—er—d'you think I could just hug you for a minute?" Tonks asked quickly, brushing a hand roughly through her hair, as if she had annoyed herself with the question.

Remus swayed on the spot, then, not even knowing why, he timorously raised his arms to receive her. She wrapped her arms tight around his chest and he wheezed with the pain it spiked in his rib. Both her hands grabbed and clung to the material at the back of his shirt, and she sagged her weight against him and let out a long breath.

In the two years they'd known each other, they had never held each other like this. Tonks was always touching and pulling at him, but this kind of contact was foreign and confusing. He usually knew what she wanted from him when she touched him, but what could she expect him to give her right now?

He awkwardly patted the back of Tonks's head, then withdrew his arms and gently took hold of her shoulders to peel her away from him. She straightened up, sniffed, and seemed to gird herself.

"We're due at the Shrike and Marten," Remus said briskly, smoothing down the front of his shirt where she'd rumpled it.

She gripped his hand as they headed back, and he let her have it until they topped the hill and the grey roofs and chimneys of the still and silent town came into view before them.

Two odd couples, Sebastian thought, as he filed out of the church behind his sister. It was always a bit nasty to watch The Elder with Sister Dymphna. The way Dymphna's eyes followed the Elder was like a child expecting to be shouted at.

The other two—Mr. Alphard and Ms. Taylor, such obvious fake names–were weird in a different way. He knew right away that they were fucking. He could always tell. They weren't touchy like Dymphna and the Elder (in fact, Sebastian had seen "Alphard's" hand reach out toward "Taylor's" arm, then quickly draw back and cover up the movement by raking through his hair), but there was an unmistakeable smouldering when their eyes would meet, and a sort of gravitational tow between their bodies, like one was always aware of just where the other was standing and the distance between them. Sebastian had fought that tidal pull himself, out in town with Eric: the instinct to turn and lean himself closer, to catch a bit of warmth or a stray touch, to brush the hair from his face or fix his collar, or sneak a glance or a little smile. The invisible tether between two people who shared something that no-one else understood.

Poor little Sister Dymphna. This was one of the worst spectacles Sebastian had seen her put through. She'd done her usual reading, spacing out with her big shiny eyes. Then little Dinah's mum had started yelling out (off her face again, obviously) for Dymphna to try talking to Dinah's brother. Dymphna had shaken her head no, her mass of curls quivering, but Dinah's mum had only gotten louder and then a few other people had joined in, clamoring for Dymphna to speak to the dead.

"I've told you," Dymphna had said through her teeth. "I don't do that, that isn't how it works—" Then she'd suddenly looked behind her at the curtains that hid the backstage. Sebastian hadn't heard anything, but Dymphna had frozen with a frightened look, like someone back there had snarled at her.

Then she'd wiped a tear off her cheek.

"All right," she'd said, in a voice even more quavery than usual. "Very—very well. I'll speak to Levi."

Sebastian had blinked in surprise. People were always pestering her to do things like this, but she'd always adamantly refused.

"Er—okay—Levi," Dymphna had stammered. "I... your mum would like to hear from you..."

"Ask him if he's all right," Dinah's mum had shrilled, leaning over the pew in front of her. The sick-sweet malt of Tennent's was wafting off of her and her voice was raw with sobs. "Tell him mummy loves him, won't you? Tell him—ask him if he's cold down there—"

"He's not cold," Dymphna had snapped, glancing backstage again. "He's—he's in a peaceful place. It's like a meadow... there are flowers, and trees, and... and sheep..."

Sebastian had had to hold back a scoff. Sounded a lot like Kilnaricroy, and if that was what came after, he'd much prefer to just rot obliviously in the dark of the ground.

But Dinah's mum had seemed satisfied (or at least she'd gone from shrieking at Dymphna to weeping quietly in her pew, with Dinah still and big-eyed next to her) and Dymphna had gone on to the others. They'd all wanted the same thing, really: to believe that love outlives the body, to reach across the membrane that divides what is from what was and pass all their dead, pointless love through it.

Walking back to town, in the sober quiet that always fell after church, Sebastian thought of what Dymphna had told him once: the vision she'd seen of his guts unspooling from the barn rafters. What a terrible curse it must be to see such things. How maddening to know the way from what is to what will be but still have no access to what isn't anymore.

And he thought of poor young Levi in that chill mossy well where the Elder's men had dumped him, his mum aboveground and wailing, dead love leaking from her eyes and mouth. Dead love that couldn't reach Levi. He'd thought of himself and Eric, and the grey-faced man and the pink-haired woman. How their bodies aligned themselves like magnets. What would happen to that force when their bodies were gone? Where did it go? Did it decay into something else, get eaten up by worms and beetles? Was Levi's love in the well with him, or did it go to the made-up meadow with the flowers and sheep? Was the ground just filled with all the dead love of all history's dead lovers, still reaching and reaching for something that couldn't ever be touched?

note: hi! i've been updating this fic on AO3, but i stopped posting new chapters here because, tbh, i wasn't sure anyone was reading. i'm going to post the last couple of chapters over the next week, and i would really appreciate anyone who's read this far dropping a review and letting me know what you think. even an emoji or something is amazing! it's just difficult to keep floating work out into a silent void, you know? anyway, thanks for reading 😘