FIC: You Open Your Eyes (1/1)

[leashy_bebes]

You Open Your Eyes (1/1)
PG-13
Remus/Sirius; offscreen Remus/Tonks with a distinct lack of bashing.
Sort of semi-afterlife fic. Sirius watches.
~3700

PS I cried when I wrote bits of this, if you are a softy like me, you may want tissues



"Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you." William Shakespeare - As You Like It

Oh, my darling. You're so brave. You've been so brave for so long and it makes me ache to see you properly, to offer you some scrap of comfort or relief. I want to hold you in a way I only remembered after it was too late. I've been unable to give you anything in the way of support, and I know better than most how hard these last years have been for you.

I watch you as often as I can. It's not as often as I'd like, and that's mostly because of the sheer bloody effort it costs me. Partly though, and I hate myself for admitting it, it's because of how much it hurts. I can - just - understand the choices you've made, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch the outcomes of those choices - to see you kiss a swelling belly, or cradle a tiny baby - to see you drunk and desperate, asking questions aloud of a dead man that I cannot answer.

I love you though, and that's why I watch even when it hurts the most, when you're overjoyed with your life, even when you're beaming and naming Harry as godfather, and I know without a single doubt that I am no longer the greatest love of your life.

If I let myself, I can get furiously angry about this - us - how things worked out. I try not to though, because it makes it harder to watch over you - I tell myself that's what I'm doing, although I have no chance of protecting you. I don't know why anger should make it harder to get through when grief seems to ease the way, but it does, so I turn away from thoughts of having loved only once, but lost more times than I care to remember. Sometimes though, when exhaustion becomes the latest in a long line of things to tear me away from you before I'm ready, it's impossible to ignore the bitterness I feel.

At school, I loved you almost straight away, although it took me a few years to realise exactly how I loved you. When I was thirteen, I dreamed of you every night, and I hated you for it. You were an easy kid for someone like me to hate, because you were poor and clever and quiet. I think you knew, even then, why I was suddenly cruel and cold to you, and I don’t think you ever truly forgave me, not even when I came to my senses and knew there was no point hating you because it didn't make me want you any less.

I've never been able to explain to myself or to anyone else how things evolved between us. We came to know each other better and better, and by the time I was fifteen, I knew I ought to spend my life with you. That's a terrifying thing for a fifteen year old boy to know about another person, but we managed it. We adjusted, without even realising we were doing it, until it was perfectly normal for us to hug, or touch, or talk for hours before falling asleep in the same bed. The others teased us about it, but I didn't care. I was floating on air, happier than I ever remembered being before. I was so sure that one night, one of us would make the first move, that it hardly seemed to matter when that move would come.

And then - then I messed up. Yet another thing I've never been able to explain to myself, and it makes me wonder whether I've ever known myself at all. I don't see myself as the kind of person who would betray a friend, but I know that I did. It's uncomfortable, and has been one of the memories that has always stayed with me. There was no way the dementors would have removed that kind of hell from my mind. That time on the run, obsessed with finding Peter, saving Harry, was always a blur to me afterwards, once I started to 'recover', as well-intentioned friends termed it. I do remember knowing with a sick certainty that there was a man called Remus that I had loved who must now hate me more than anyone in the world.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After that night when I sent Snape to the shack, you presented me with a month of icy silence and trembling anger before you snapped and lunged at me one night, spitting fury and hate and loss. You caught me a few solid blows to the face before you lost it and I lost it and we sat apart and cried. You only stayed a few minutes, long enough to force yourself into blotchy-faced silence before fleeing the room. Then there were months where we lived like polite strangers, and meals were the highlight of my day because I could guarantee you'd say something to me, even if it was as bland as, 'pass the sugar'.

A whole summer passed, and I saw you for only a week at James' house. Outside of the structure of classes and meals and studying and moving around that school leant us, it became harder for you to maintain your distance, and harder for me to deny that part of that distance was down to me as well. It didn't make it any easier to change things though, and I spent most of my time with James, sulking and hiding and quietly hating myself. And wanting you. God, how I wanted you. The sun lightened your hair and darkened your skin, and your rare smile was bright white in your face.

I only stayed at my parents' house for three days when I got back from James' place. A minor squabble with mother the moment of my arrival seethed in my mind until one night I very quietly packed a bag, slid my wand up my sleeve and slipped out the back door. I got to James' as the sun was rising and while his mum fussed and fed and worried, he slipped off and floo-called you. The first I knew of it was when I woke up in James' bed with you sitting on a chair in the corner, watching me thoughtfully.

"Alright?" you asked, shifting warily.

"Oh, right. The long awaited jail-break." I mumbled. "Excellent. Except the bed smells like Prongs."

"Oh, foul."

"Rancid."

"Putrescent."

"Stomach-churning."

"Bowel-freezing."

"Urgh."

"Yes," you said, with that crooked little grin that made my stomach flutter. "Padfoot, are you really alright?"

"Yeah. It's been a long time coming."

You watched me with careful eyes and I could tell you didn't believe me.

"I - Why are you here?"

"James called me. He said you - well, that you looked pretty rough."

"Oh, he's such a charmer."

"Pads…"

"Oh, lay off. Long night, that's all. I'm going to be fine, now."

I said it with determination and willed it to be true, and largely it was. You stayed for the rest of that day, the three of us lazing in the sun and chatting idly. My chest felt swollen that whole day, with the sheer joy of being away from them, and with you, seemingly not hating me.

For the rest of the summer, you dropped in with what James assured me was a very unusual regularity, and two weeks after we went back to school for the new term found us in the common room very late one night returning from a revenge prank on some Ravenclaws who had tried to sabotage the Gryffindor Quidditch equipment. You stoked up the fire and settled into the couch, nodding to the space beside you as I joined you there, sprawling happily with my feet towards the heat of the flames.

"I'm glad we're friends again," I said quietly. "Properly," I added, forestalling what I was sure would be your response about never having not been friends. Instead, you said 'me too', and squeezed my shoulder, your hand lingering until I turned to look at you. You looked at me seriously for a moment and then leaned forwards and kissed me. Needless to say, I froze like an idiot and you jerked back uncertainly. I think I said something about, no, no don't go, and pulled you back for a proper kiss.

From then on, it was almost worryingly easy to fall into a kind of placid happiness that felt deceptively unshakeable. I'd never imagined that you could be with someone as a friend, and as more at the same time. Looking back, not a thing changed about our friendship. We maintained the closeness, your mild disapproval of my bouts of stupidity, my half-serious teasing about your obsession with books. It was just that we could back up the closeness and the jokes and the quiet conversations with touches and looks and smiles that only we understood.

I remember that time in our lives as one long blissful episode of loving and laughing and thinking that this, this, was it, this was how life should and would always be. There was a shadow, always a shadow, rumours of a coming war. Like all teenagers we were adroit at ignoring what did not fit with our own self-important world-views and we never really believed in the rumours until there was an explosive attack on Diagon Alley.

It was Voldemort's first show of strength, and the first recorded example of the dark mark. It hung green and malevolent for a long time until the aurors worked out how to remove it. It was chaos, apparently, keeping it hidden from muggle London.

It was that moment, I think, that made things begin to turn for us all. We couldn't ignore it anymore, and young as we were, the world demanded we take a side. We chose our side, and we chose it with all of our hearts. Maybe that was why Peter could do it. All that loyalty that I should have given to you I gave to the Order instead. And you did the same. By giving our hearts and our lives to a common cause, we hardened our hearts against each other enough to let a man with no love for either of us drive us into doubt, and mistrust, and eventually into a desperate, wounded hatred.

My mind shies away from what happened, from how foolish and gullible I was, how fervently I cursed you as I gave responsibility for my brother over to safe, weedy, traitorous little Peter. And then how desperately, crushingly stupid I felt as realisation struck, and again, as Peter blasted with his wand and changed and escaped. Your face in the crowd at my trial, white and set with loss, was what snapped my mind. I would have denied that to anyone, never having had any desire to be one of the Crazy Blacks, but I think now that it was true. Why else would I have failed to say a word in my own defence? I think I decided to punish myself so that maybe you could have some peace. Surely only a crazy man would think that way?

The loss of you, the times I'd hurt you, or let you down haunted me for twelve years. Longer, if I'm honest. It was all I could remember, and despite the way you had seized me and held me close on the night we lost Peter again, I all but flinched from you for a long time, expecting a justified fury to descend on you at any time. I felt rotten and dead inside. Your life was so hard, so much less than what you deserved, and you carried the hurt on your face and in your walk and in your manner even though you thought you hid it well. I couldn't help but blame myself.

I remember giving over my parents’ house to the Order, and writing you a drunken, trembling letter from inside my childhood bedroom. I could hardly believe, after everything I’d done to you, I had the audacity to write to you whining please, please come, I hate this fucking place, please, I need you. The next day I was still drunk when you arrived, a single suitcase in your hand, and we watched each other carefully from the corners of our eyes while you made coffee – strong – and squared your shoulders against that awful, awful place. I doubt anyone else noticed it, because they didn’t see you arrive, but I watched you harden yourself in those first ten minutes and I vacillated between blaming the house and blaming myself, wishing you gone and wanting to cling to you.

You set two coffees on the table and sat down across from me.

“Alright?” you said eventually.

I didn’t see the point in lying so I just shrugged and picked up my coffee with a hand that hardly trembled at all.

To my surprise, your face and voice were fond as you said, “Half cut more like. Padfoot…”

Now, here, afterwards, I can feel everything I should when I think of your voice saying Padfoot, but then I just knew. I knew that it was what you used to call me, I knew that it was friendly, and I smiled with only a little effort. Now though, now it makes me think of watching your transformation through dog eyes, of you trembling against my chest saying thank you thank you thank you I love you Padfoot thank you I love you I love you. It makes me think of the last years of school, and hiding out from James, and pinching your arse when you stood up in class, and the taste of your neck on a summer day, and laughing, all the time laughing.

And this is when I get angry. Because I know now. I know all of this now and I still feel it as fresh and painful and terrifying and exhilarating as it was the first time. I love you. I love you, and I wish I could tell you how much.

You couldn’t stop me being terrified of the house, and you couldn’t stop me from drinking myself insensible in front of Mother’s portrait, answering her back. It started the very first day I was there. I started her off by accident, and grunted, “Yeah fucking, yeah,” as I wrestled the curtains closed. It wasn’t like I had never answered back to the old harridan when she was alive but doing it freely without the added fun of avoiding her hexes was amazing, and I told you as much when you found me there one night, too far gone to answer back, listening all too closely to the things she said.

You tugged the curtains shut, and dragged me away to the kitchen for more of your over-strong coffee – were you fucking a Frenchman in my absence, Moony? – and although I could tell from your face that you were worried, when you looked at me you smiled.

“You know, there’s some good definitions of harridan,” you said.

Now, I know that you used to do this all the time, make a little gift of some tiny useless piece of knowledge. I’d always taken the piss but usually stored it up to whisper back to you later. It always made you smile, wherever we were.

Then, I just blinked and said, “Yeah?”

“Old ones,” you nodded. “’One that is half whore, half bawd’.” I let out a bark of laughter and your smile brightened. “’A poore tit, or leane ill-favoured jade’,” you continued. I laughed again, genuinely delighted now. “’A decayed strumpet’,” you finished triumphantly.

“How do you know all this stuff?” I blurted.

“I read a lot,” you shrugged.

“Yeah,” I said without thinking. “You always did.”

We looked at each other and blinked but the floo roared into life before either of us could speak.

A few days later, you knocked on the door while I was feeding Buckbeak – and I’m going to sound horrible here, but it was easier, simpler to spend time with a bloody hippogriff than with you. You still didn’t seem angry, which I didn’t understand but was slowly coming to accept. But aside from those little moments, you weren’t much of anything. I only knew when I wrote that letter that I needed you there, even if it was only to hate me, and you were just so – polite.

Even then, after knocking on the door, you declined my offer to join me, and waited outside while I finished.

“I made some food,” you said.

“You learned to cook?” I asked and you gave me a curious look that I would come to know very well. I knew even then that it was when I alluded to a shared past that was mostly lost to me, but what I didn’t know was that it was your carefully restrained hopeful face, that every time I said something like that it sparked off a little flurry of wondering inside you.

In the kitchen, over a surprisingly good lamb curry – you really did learn to cook, Moony – you looked at me seriously and said,

“Padfoot – I don’t want to push but what do you remember? Really?”

What a loaded question. I knew that I’d loved you, but did I remember loving you? Not really. Not much. Hardly at all. I knew that I did, but I couldn’t feel it. Or maybe I could, just a tiny bit, because I couldn’t bring myself to say that, resorting instead to vagueness.

“Most – most things. I mean, big things. I know who people are. I know what happened in the war. I can remember magic – well, most of it. Just – none of it’s very happy.”

You bit your lip and said, “What magic are you struggling with?”

‘Expecto Patronum,’ hovered on my lips and now I allow myself the vanity of believing it was out of the hope that you would smile at me – the old crooked sex smile – and offer to make some happy memories. And who knows, maybe you would have?

Instead I just shrugged and said, “You know. Just the movements.”

You nodded and something in your face made me carry on.

“I remember that I did some really terrible things to you, and that I hurt you, and you shouldn’t have to stay here and look at me every day with the things I did and you don’t have to you can go I’ll be fine – ”

You reached over and put your hand on top of mine.

“Sirius,” you looked angry, but I had relearned you well enough by then to know that it wasn’t with me. “The Dementors have messed things up for you, alright?” You spoke gently, as though to a child, or in a conscious effort to keep your temper. “You did hurt me, but most of it wasn’t your fault. I hurt you too, you know? And Sirius, you did good things for me that far outweigh any damage.”

“Like Padfoot,” I said haltingly.

“Like Padfoot,” you nodded, patting my hand and withdrawing into yourself.

I was a mess that year, and you’d never hear me deny it. But things did start to come back to me, Moony. I started to feel it again, that nervous creeping excitement on meeting your eye, the indescribable support of your constant presence. I only wish I had known how to say it to you, to tell you I know, I’m yours, I think I know again.

It was too late, though, in all kinds of ways, and my cousin made it too late in the one that most counted.

And I found myself watching you. As simple as that. With no transition that I could discern – although hours had obviously passed - I went from duelling to falling to watching you weeping in my bedroom. Your tears, Remus, were so hopeless and helpless and desperate, and in that instant I knew and I felt.

So I’ve been watching and it’s selfish, I know that. You would probably me mortified to think of me watching your most trivial moments, your weakest moments, your happiest moments.

Something in me knows that you won’t see out this night. There is too much chaos all around you and you are too scared after you catch sight of a glimpse of bubblegum pink hair. I won’t lie and I won’t pretend to be noble. It hurts to watch you with her. But I don’t want you to die, either of you. Knowing me as you do, would you believe that? I don’t know.

Hogwarts, where we loved each other best, looks like it had been eviscerated. Shouts and spells rend the air and you duel fiercely, maybe even a little bit madly, maybe even a little bit like me with two others at once, sending one slamming into the wall to fall in a crumpled heap while the other vanishes completely.

I’m so proud, so fiercely proud of your bravery and your sudden recklessness as you give everything you have for what you believe is right, for what you love that I don’t notice Dolohov until it’s too late. Every scrap of me wants to shout a warning to you, but he catches you off guard and from that moment you are on the back foot. If I thought seeing your wife and your son had caused me pain it was nothing to this. I would take Azkaban over it any day. He is cruel, needlessly so, and relentless. He makes you bleed and stumble and cry out but you never go to your knees, never fall as you send your last spell over Dolohov’s shoulder, felling a Death Eater who is rounding on a bunch of terrified, frozen kids.

The green light from his wand isn’t as sickening as the other times I’d seen it, the colour is different somehow, it surrounds you, bathes you in light. I don’t want this to happen. With every fibre of what I am, I will it not to happen.

It happens.

You fall, finally, small and broken, and Hogwarts fades to a roaring emptiness, only your beloved, pale face left.

You open your eyes.