The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CXIII: The Novelty of Going Outside

"No, I understand," Remus said. "I'm amazed you want to go inside at all."

"Well you vetoed the sex on the beach idea so I have to go inside sometimes," Sirius joked. He smirked at Remus, then turned back up to look at the sky again.

Remus closed his eyes. 

Sirius was staring at the moon when he asked, "How did you spend full moon nights?"

Remus opened his eyes. "I thought of you - during every one of them."

"You did?" Sirius asked.

Remus nodded. 

"I thought of you, too," Sirius said. He held up his arm, showing the old moon-cycle tattoo that circled his wrist like a bracelet. He paused, cradled his arm over the top of his knees and stared at the ink, at the little wolf, at the trees... "I always wondered if you were alright, if you were taking care of yourself, if you were staying safe and eating properly and staying warm." Sirius paused and turned to look at Remus, then, twisting in the sand so he was facing him. "I always wondered if you were warm enough."

Remus sighed, "I'm never warm enough."

"Are you cold right now?"

"It's a little chilly," Remus admitted.

Sirius shrugged off his leather jacket and lay it over Remus's shoulders. The jacket was warm with Sirius's heat and smell and Remus hugged it 'round him closely.

"You gave your old leather jacket to Tonks," Remus said.

"Yeah," Sirius said quietly. "She asked for it for her birthday. So I gave it to her. That was -- just a couple days before -- everything."

"I wondered at first where it was," Remus said, "I looked everywhere for it. I finally figured you must've left it at the house." 

They both know he meant the Potter's house in Godric's Hollow.

"Then one day, I saw Tonks wearing it. I knew it was yours the second I saw it, there was no doubt about it. And I asked her where she got it - she lied at first, she didn't think I'd let her keep it." Remus laughed, remembering the suspicion on Nymphadora Tonks's face when he'd asked her, the way she'd clutched the front of the jacket as though keeping it on, as though he'd tear it off her if he knew the truth." Remus sighed. "I wanted to... I wanted anything that might still hold your smell as deeply as that jacket did."

"I'm sorry, Moony," Sirius said. "I didn't know then that you'd need anything to - to remember me by."

"Would it have mattered if you did?" Remus asked. "The way we were by then?"

Sirius was quiet. "I don't know," he said finally.

The silence that hung between them then was long and heavy, both of them thinking about the way things had gone back in 1981. 

"I didn't think you were a traitor," Sirius said.

Remus laughed. "Of course you did. Everyone did. That was the point, wasn't it?"

"I knew you better than that, Remus," Sirius said solemnly.

Remus was quiet. He wanted more than anything to be able to say that he knew Sirius better than to have believed for even a moment that he'd been the traitor - but he had believed, hadn't he? He'd been talked into believing by Dumbledore and Moody and the myriad of others that thought that Sirius Black was the reason that the Potters had been murdered... Guilt rumbled in the deep parts of Remus.

"I wished I could've done more work like you were doing," Sirius murmured, and he took a deep inhale on his cigarette. He lay down then, too, right next to Remus, staring up into the dark that hung over them. "I wanted to be more involved, to be more active and fighting more directly. The funny thing was that nobody wanted to send me because they thought I was the obvious target, that You Know Who would go after me because he knew how close I was to the Potters. They thought I ought not to be involved because of how close I was. The same people who said I was too close said I was the betrayer." 

"Because you were the only one that knew everything, they said," Remus supplied. "Nobody knew that you and Wormtail had switched places. Nobody knew Peter knew more than you did. Not even me."

Sirius sighed. "Fuck Peter. Fuck Peter. I should've done it myself!" And suddenly there were tears in Sirius's eyes and the sky was blurry. "Gods, I should have done it my gods-damned self. I would be dead, of course, because he would have killed me. But I wouldn't have given up James and Lily and if any of us had to die it should've been --"

"Don't. Stop. Don't say it," Remus interrupted.

"It should've been me," Sirius said quickly, shaking his head. "I was as good as dead for twelve years, wasn't I? You were mourning me as though I was. I might as well have been. And if I was, then James and Lily would still be here, wouldn't they? At least Harry would have his parents, at least Harry wouldn't be alone all this --" Sirius's voice caught in his throat.

"I would be alone."

The words hung there and Remus felt his face flush. What a fucking selfish thing to say, he thought, what a selfish fucking thing.

But there it was, the truth.

The biggest fear Remus Lupin had ever had.

"I would be alone," he repeated. "And there'd be no hope of you coming back - however thin it may have seemed back then, there was still hope that you'd get out, that you'd find a way back to me somehow... I can't believe it happened, I can't believe you're here. I'm still pinching myself. Pinching myself like I did that night." A breathy laugh escaped him. "Remember how I pinched myself when you kissed me the first time?"

"I do," Sirius answered.

"I feel that same way every time I look at you now. Like you're not real, like I must be dreaming, hallucinating, that you musn't really be real, that I've lost my mind and gone mad from wanting and wishing and dreaming and -- but you're here, and the warmth in this leather jacket is real and you're --" Remus reached out and put a hand on Sirius's face. "You're here."

Sirius drew a deep breath and nodded. "I'm here."

"I'm selfish," Remus whispered, "I want you here more than I want --" his breath caught. He shook his head. He couldn't say the words he was feeling. It felt too dirty and horrible to say. It felt like some level of betrayal of his own, and he sat up, the leather jacket curving over him, and he covered his face. "Bloody hell, I'm awful. I'm awful."

"You're not awful," Sirius said, and he sat up, too, crawling up beside Remus, hugging him close and kissing the side of his head. "You're not awful."

"I am awful," Remus choked out the words. "I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else in the world - and there are loads of reasons why that is selfish, because if I had a time turner the only thing I'd change about this is that we would've run away before you went to Azkaban, we would've been here on this beach twelve years ago instead of now. I love you, and I would've trade you for - for anything. And it's that which makes me horrible." Remus looked into Sirius's grey eyes. "But I love you too much to take it back."