BLACK MOON ⍋ Remus Lupin

Chapter NinetyTwo- A Late Night.

I pulled myself away from the letters, the room only being lit by the small lamp in the corner. The outside pitch black, so late that most people had turned off their lights to go to sleep. The orange hue of the street no longer glowed.

Everything felt heavy.

She was right.

These letters would have destroyed me, but only if I didn't have the opportunity to write back. Only if I had read them until the point of Remus giving up.

I don't know what would have happened or how I would have felt if I had received that first letter and could have replied.

Ecstatic, probably. I would have felt an almighty high.

But if, for whatever reason, those letters stopped once I could finally reply...I don't know how I would have dealt with that.

It probably would have kicked me completely back down to when the devastation began.

Maybe Narcissa was protecting me. But at what cost? My chronic loneliness that still lingers every time I stay up too late? The sadness that was laced within Remus' last letter?

How could a sixteen year old boy feel that way? The pain in his expression and choice of words were beyond his years. He has always been intelligent and has always had a way with words but it just wasn't natural for a teenage boy to feel that way.

I wondered if that feeling still lingered for him too. It did for me at times.

The feeling of abandonment. Feeling so horrifically alone and ignored.

His words read like screaming into an empty room and my feelings were the echo. I felt everything he had described.

We had to miss each other into non-existence, out of survival. To force ourselves into forgetfulness was the only way to begin to sleep at night, at least it was for me. Hence why saying his name felt foreign until I had to train myself to speak it again.

Remus. Remus. Remus.

After holding those pages, reading his words that he thought so many years ago; the fact he called me earlier to simply go round his for dinner felt fake. It didn't feel real.

How could we both have grown and lived in that sadness for this simplicity?

We deserved this simplicity but how did it exist?

He could have loved me, maybe he did. He wrote it, the word love.

Maybe he does.

I couldn't go and see him now. It was past midnight. Though every nerve in my body wanted to run to him and tell him I never ignored him, though we had already established that in the cafe on that first night. I wanted to tell him again, to hold him and never let him go.

That pained sixteen year old still lived inside of him and that boy missed me so much that he wanted to hate me to help the pain go away.

I haven't told him how much I appreciate him accepting me back into his life. Not properly, not deeply. Now I understand the strength and significance of his acceptance. Better than ever, I feel I understand Remus more.

To have accepted me without a second of doubt, without a moment of confrontation or annoyance, that meant a greater deal than I had originally known.

He's full of love and rage. Full of self loathing and self acceptance. A walking contradiction. Wonderfully complex. Heartbreakingly simple.

And it is heartbreakingly simple, he's just a boy that wanted to be loved unconditionally and a man who takes care of others unconditionally.

I couldn't give him the bare minimum in the name of taking things slow. I had the sudden urge to consume him with the passion that haunted those letters. The hope, the excitement, the longing, the anger. I wanted it all from him. Not just the easiness of his kindness. I wanted it all. The good, bad and ugly.

I began pacing around my flat again, wiping the manic tears from my stained cheeks. Ones that fell with grief for his loss of me. I had already cried my tears many years ago, but I could feel it all over again.

I pictured the boy I once knew and compared him to the man that kissed me intensely with great intention, the other night.

That kiss had another meaning now. I could identify the sorrow in it. The rage. The force that threatened the softness that never broke. I just interpreted it as passion, and it was but it was more than that. It was closure, perhaps.

I wanted to feel that sorrow and rage release from him. I needed it to be released from within me. I didn't realise it still festered deep within me like a broken child hidden in the darkest corner of my psyche.

He's been too kind to me. Too gentle. It must still lives inside of him too, that fear that I'll disappear again. It must do, because it still lives inside of me.

I couldn't feel it still existed until I read through his words. Feeling that fear consume me once again that I'd be left alone with no one to hate or blame in their absence. Just a longing that made the healing so much slower.

I haven't healed.

And if he wanted me back so instantly, neither had he.

I couldn't wake him, though I wanted to desperately. I couldn't drag up these feelings in the early morning hours of a Tuesday. Three in the morning wasn't the time to run to him. Though my body burnt at the pull in his direction.

An excruciating desire and need to cry to him, to kiss him, to hold him as if he was still that boy that slept on the floor and held my hand in my dorm because I asked him to. Still the boy that volunteered to be my first friend. Still the boy that made sure I ate everyday, even if it was chocolate. Still the boy who made me feel seen in every crowded room.

He was still that boy.

He was also a man that I was beginning to fall in love with.

Someone who has guided me through meeting those in my past, without letting me get lost in the worry. Someone who kissed me as if I could melt away like candyfloss touching your tongue. Someone who just wanted to feel my skin against theirs, no other intention. Someone who called me beautiful and never stopped smiling at me. Someone who just wanted to invite me round and cook for me.

I couldn't play this subtly. He was consuming my thoughts again, just like he had done before. He was every sliver of peace I have experienced around another person. He was the only person I craved, as if he was water. The only person that has ever made complete sense to me.

He was my right person, wrong time and it doesn't have to be the wrong time anymore.

I managed to force myself to bed. Knowing it would have been irresponsible of me to wake him. He had work. Life didn't revolve around my emotions and my erratic processing time. I had to remind myself that, repeatedly. Out loud too. The urge to see him was enough to almost pretend the world and time didn't exist until I said it did. I couldn't be that irresponsible.

I had to do this the right way and in the most thoughtful way.

He had to know I was falling in love with him and he had to know that I was serious about it and that he was worth time and effort. He spent time and effort writing to me for so long, detailed letters.

He deserved more than a rushed, emotional gesture that someone wanted him.