Is It Over Now?

Chapter sixteen

The nickname slips out, the child that Remus hardly got to be crying as it clung to someone familiar, to something other than the dread coiling in his chest that made him sure that he would hate what came next.

"It's Reg," the other man starts, sounding just as horribly young and terribly old all at once, as if it was both a miracle that they had lived this long and as if they each had their entire lives ahead of them all at once.

From inside the apartment, Remus can hear the wine of a dog that he knew to be Padfoot, and Remus is already shaking his head.

"No," the teen whispers, terrified and small like he had been when Greyback came for him that night, tearing at the seams like he had been when he had killed the wolf last fall.

"Remus-" James starts, but the wolf is only shaking his head more.

"No."

"Moony-"

"No, no, no," the words fall from the scarred man's lips like some sort of prayer, as if he said them enough then it wouldn't be true.

"He's dead, Moony."

" No!"

There were tears in the wolf's eyes, tears that he hadn't cried since he was young and learned that doing so was weakness. The boy's hand flew to his chest, where his heart was racing as if it wanted to use up all of its beats now so that he might join the man that has claimed a piece of him that no one else could ever have. He clutched he'd at the ring that lay on his chest and almost wasn't aware of the ground rising to meet him, or the dog curled against him in the hallway before the apartment door, each of them grieving someone that they hadn't thought that they would lose.

James stared down at the pair, sadness in his gaze that in no way measured what the boys - his boys - must have been feeling as he sat down with them as well, holding onto them both as if he could mend the broken pieces by being there. He couldn't, but he was damn sure going to try.

(None of the three noticed or had any way of knowing, but in the apartments surrounding the trio, all of the plants within them died, as if they too mourned the loss as the wolf did.

They didn't of course. No one could have)

—-

When Remus left the flat his eyes were red and stung and his movements were as slow and strange as the morning after the full moon when he still hadn't settled back into his skin. It wasn't the conditions for apparating - in fact it was just about the opposite and any instructor would cry and revoke his license if they were to see - but the wolf truly didn't care. Not about how much worse he would feel after doing so, not about the possibility of splinching, not about the war that had killed his lover. Not about anything.

(A part of him hoped that he did die, at least then he wouldn't have to wait long to see him )

But there was no blood on his skin when Remus landed in the field outside of the cottage, only the smell of his sick as he fell to the ground and lost what little he had eaten that day.

The lights of the cottage shined brightly as Remus approached it, but even from right outside the door he couldn't hear the usual swell of music and laughter. It was a good thing, the wolf didn't know what he would have done if he had.

When he opened the door Dora was there waiting for him, her arms open and face drawn into a complicated frown as the man fell into them, tears streaming down his face even as he thought that he had none left. The girl's hand rubbed circles on the boy's back, familiar symbols that the teen wouldn't remember until later. When she drew back, it was with a soft smile, and for the first time Remus felt the genuine urge to hurt the girl, wondering how she could look so close to fine when they each should be falling apart at the seams.