"Now remember I am under no illusions what so ever that this is a nice place or anything of that sort," Nymphadora Tonks was walking backwards up a very narrow staircase, watching Remus as he took the steps so slowly that it allowed her to be able to walk backwards up the rickety thing without tripping. She had to pause between each step for several seconds while he drew a breath and forced his knees to bend up to the next step. "I mean, if it was a nice place, maybe we'd have an elevator up or something of the sort."
Remus winced and put his weight on the bannister. "How many flights up are you?"
"Third floor."
"Excellent. Only three more to go."
"That's the spirit," Tonks answered.
They made it up slowly but surely, Tonks rattling off various warnings and disclaimers about the apartment they were climbing towards, her voice echoing in the stairwell as she talked without hardly taking a breath. Remus was to remember that her roommate was a muggle, and all the things that go with being around a muggle, and Remus was to call her muggle room mate Spark because that was what the girl preferred being called, and Tonks wasn't really certain she remembered Spark's real first name anyway (but it might have been Kathy-I-Think?). She apologized for about the twentieth time that all she was going to have available to eat up there was tinned soup from the popty-ping and reckoned perhaps they ought to have got take away to bring back but she hadn't thought of that until now. She wondered if they ought to risk disapparating to the top, since Remus's knees were awful, but Remus shook his head and assured her it was fine, his knees were fine, the soup would be fine, and he would'nt forget not to do weird wizard-werewolf shit in front of Spark not to worry because everything would be fine.
Tonks dug through her pocket and turned up a little bronze-color key, which she held up, proud of herself, and turned to unlock the door.
"Where does Spark think you work?" Remus asked, realizing that surely this muggle flatmate must have no idea of Tonks's real job.
Tonks paused, then looked back at Remus, a twinkle in her eye. "I'm a perfume clerk at Fortnum & Mason's." Remus blinked in disbelief. "And a damn good'un at that," she added, grinning.
"I have questions," Remus said.
Tonks smirked and pushed open the door of the flat before he could pose a single one of them.
The flat was just as shit as Tonks had built it up to be. It was small and an odd assortment of things had been crammed into it. Remus was reminded of an article he read about the mixing of waters with different salinity - the waters simply didn't mix, so much so that it was possible around melting glaciers in the North Atlantic to see pockets of water from melting low-saline ice caps refusing to mix in with denser waters, giving a funny appearance as though there were the two different color waters. The flat was a mixing point of Tonks's bright, sunny disposition and her hot pink, bright yellow, lime green, and varying shades of neon belongings coming to meet the darker objects that belonged to her emo-goth-era flatmate, Spark. Chaos reigned and things seemed to have simply landed in spaces and remained where they ended up haphazardly. But the place was lived in, and it had zero expectations or grand illusions of trying to impress anybody - it was what it was, and it gave no fucks what anyone from outside of it thought about it, and overall Remus reckoned that was precisely why it felt like Tonks.
A blood-red couch in the living room aligned itself with a muggle telly, upon which sat a black-haired girl who wore a plaid button-up shirt and torn black jeans with Doc Marten boots, eating a bowl of soup from the promised charity shop china bowls, watching what appeared to be a documentary on alien crop circles. Her hair was up in two knots, violently pinned in place with what looked like four black knitting needles. She had on more eyeliner than Sirius Black had ever dreamed of smudging on his eyes - possibly in all the years he'd worn eye liner combined he'd never used as much as she had on her eyes now, Remus thought - and she'd shaded in her eyelids with black as well. Her eyes were violet.
She looked like someone who might be called Spark.
Spark stared over the back of the couch at Remus hovering in the foyer as Tonks threw down her purse and key on the table. Remus smiled ruefully, his rucksack hanging about his shoulder, aware that his thinning, greying hair had to be quite disheveled and his clothes, although the best "London things" he had, were worn. His exhaustion was likely showing and he was favoring one knee and barely standing on the other, so he was certain Spark was wondering what the hell Tonks had dragged an old man up the stairs for.
"Wotcher Spark," Tonks announced. She grinned at Remus, waving for him to follow her, and fluttered into the living area where Spark was sitting.
"Hey," Spark answered flatly.
Tonks said, "Spark, this is my mate, Remus Lupin... Remus, Spark."
Spark stared at Remus, watching as he limped 'round to a chair Tonks was waving for him to take. Remus half-waved, "Hullo Spark, it's nice to meet you."
Spark's tone was somehow shocked even as it was still flat, her eyes following Remus, "You're Remus Lupin?"
"So my reputation proceeds me," Remus joked.
"Tonks has said some stuff." Spark glanced at Tonks with a raised eyebrow and mouthed really? at her.
Tonks turned pink and shrugged. Remus sat down in the chair moments before his knees gave out on him and dropped his rucksack onto the floor, painfully aware of the way Spark was still staring at him.
"Remus needed a place to crash, found him on my way out of F&M's tonight." Tonks paused. "That alright with you if he stays?"
Spark looked Remus over in a sweeping gaze. On the telly, a man was describing the process that hoaxers used to create crop circles in dried up corn fields using sheets of metal to flatten the stalks down into patterns. Spark shrugged, "Yeah, whatever." She slouched back down, her head resting against the arm of the couch, and Remus wondered whether those knitting needles in her hair hurt. They looked like they would.
"Tomato or chicken-rice?" Tonks asked, turning to Remus suddenly.
"Beg pardon?"
"The soup? Popty-ping?" Tonks reminded him. "You look famished."
Remus said, "Oh. Whatever is fine, honestly I'm not that hungry."
Spark's eyes took in Remus's narrow frame, then turned back to the telly.
"Want a toastie with it?"
"No the soup is more than enough, Tonks, really," Remus answered as she ducked out of the room into what must be the kitchen.
Remus sat uncomfortably - partly because the chair was very stiff and hard and partly because he could feel Spark's eyes darting between the telly screen and himself. He could hear the hum of the microwave. Tonks's voice wafted from the kitchen as she sang - horridly off-key.
"Wake me UP before you go-go..."
Spark groaned and closed her eyes a second.
"She takes after her cousin with the singing," Remus remarked. "He sings all of the time."
Spark glanced at Remus, one eyebrow raised.
"He has a slightly better voice," Remus added as Tonks tried at hitting a high note that was questionable even when George Michael tried hitting it but was utterly and fantastically out of her range. If she had a range, that is. She didn't. She couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, he thought.
Spark's tone was flat still, "I hate Wham." She started biting her nails and diverted her attention back to the telly. There was a pause. "She's totally making you the toastie anyway."
Tonks had indeed made the toastie. With a slice of bacon inserted. She carried a tray with two plates - the toastie cut into two triangular halves and two charity shop bowls filled with thick tomato soup. She beamed merrily as she set the tray on the table, ignoring it as Spark grunted and leaned to look around Tonks at the telly as Tonks handed Remus a bowl and half the toastie before she sank down on the end of the couch opposite Spark but closest to Remus.
The soup and toastie were very warm and Remus found himself eating them quickly - embarrassingly quickly, really - but he was thankful for them. He hadn't realized how long he'd done without eating until the food was hitting his belly and he felt a small bit of the weakness he'd been feeling ease. Most of the weakness was his Furry Little Problem, of course, but some of it had apparently been hunger.
"D'you want more?" Tonks offered 'round a mouthful of toastie.
"No, thank you," Remus said, flushing.
The documentary on crop circles ended and an ad popped in announcing the next documentary would be on unsolved mysterious phenomena. It started and most of it was fairly typical UFO sightings and funny weather patterns - mostly caused by muggles spotting illegally modified cars and spellwork gone awry, he thought, by the descriptions. The muggles reporting their eye witness accounts having been missed by the aurors that had done the clean up. But then --
"The first of November, 1981, is often called the night of falling stars," said the show host - a scruffy looking man who was walking along a path outside of what looked to be an observatory with a large telescope poking out of a rounded rooftop. "Reports from all over the country poured in, in record numbers, claiming to have seen stars falling from the sky."
Remus's fingers tightened 'round the arm of the chair as he stared at the telly screen - a video playing, shaky and old footage, showing exactly what the man said - stars, falling from the sky, in bright purple and pink colors, streaking sparks and whistling as they fell... "No explanation for the stars could be found and the phenomenon has never repeated itself over," the show host said, walking along slowly as the camera followed. "We've taken a moment to pop in to the Observatory here to speak with a lead astronomer who has studied the phenomenon." The screen cut to a man sitting in a library with a globe behind him.
Remus looked at Tonks, who didn't even notice what was on the telly, she was dipping the last of her toastie into the remnants of her soup, oblivious to the fact that Remus Lupin was breaking a sweat in the chair beside her.
How casually this show host spoke about 1 November 1981, as though it wasn't the day that everything imploded in Remus Lupin's entire life.
He could still smell it - the blood on Sirius when he'd come to him, frantic and coated in that tangy, metallic scent. James Potter's, though, not Sirius's own blood.
Suddenly the tomato soup in his stomach felt like a curse more than the blessing it had done before, and he was swallowing back an acidic uprising, his muscles tightening. He closed his eyes, trying to block it out.
"I can still see it when I close my eyes, Remus," Sirius's voice echoed in Remus's mind. His stomach had twisted then - just a few weeks ago when they'd had this conversation. David Bowie echoing through the little house that first day. "But all the stuff in the Daily Prophet the next day and in like ten different wizard history books... they all say that it was the curse.... and the curse leaves no mark. Leaves no stain, no trace, nothin'... All those aurors - some of the best the Ministry had... ther'es no wat they didn't see all the blood that I saw. So who cleaned up the blood? Someone must've done. Or else..."
"Or else what?"
"Something must've changed."
Mopsus.
The name danced around in Remus's mind now.
But what had Mopsus done?
And why was James Potter's blood an artefact of time?
One that only he, Remus, and Sirius seemed to recall?
On the telly, a woman from Kent was describing bright shooting stars that she watched flash in the sky for hours - "Started in the wee hours of the morning," she reported, "And went right through 'til the daylight overtook the night."
Remus only remembered one falling star that night.
"He was on the fucking stairs, just laying there, Remus! He was just laying there..."
He was leaving hand prints on Remus's arms.
Bloody hand prints on his favorite jumper.
"Remus?"
He opened his eyes and found Tonks staring into his, concern on her face.
"You alright, Remus?"
His mouth was full of acidic backwash.
"Bathroom?" he choked.
"That way," Tonks pointed, "Second door on the left."
Remus got up and sprang for it as quick as his feet would carry him, throwing himself through the door and throwing up the second he'd reached the loo.
Tonks hovered in the doorway, gathering up the nerve a moment before she threw herself in and set herself down beside him, kneeling and rubbing his back. "It's alright Remus," she said quietly, gently, her hand looping in circles between Remus's shoulder blades. "It's going to be alright, Remus..."
"I've got to find Sirius," he choked between bouts of sick.
Tonks said, "I'll help you find him."
"I want to go home," Remus murmured. He didn't know if he meant home to Costa Rica, home to the old flat in East London, home to Hogwarts, home to York... Just... just home, some mythical place that he worried that he might not ever get to be again.
"I know," Tonks whispered.
Remus felt tears sting his eyes because he could hear it in her voice - she didn't know which of those places he meant either - but she was the one person in the world who understood the conflict and the pain and the emptiness that Remus felt that made those words bubble up out of him. She understood some broken part of Remus Lupin that nobody else did. He fell back from his position kneeling before the toilet, his knees giving in, and he hit the wall behind him, sinking down onto the floor, his brain a melting pot of memories and regrets and pains all swarming around him.
Tonks gathered him up in her arms, sinking to the floor herself beside him, hugging Remus's shoulders and head, his back pressed to her torso. He stared at the cabinet doors beneath the sink, his stomach still roiling, the nasty smell of sick assaulting his nose, and likely hers, too, but she didn't let go, didn't hesitate to hold him, and she rocked slowly, comfortingly, murmuring, "I know, Remus."
He closed his eyes and his hand slid over her hand and he held on, afraid of how quickly and thoroughly he'd managed to fall apart over a stupid telly program about falling stars.
"You don't reckon he'd go to his parents old house, do you?" Tonks asked quietly.
Remus shook his head. "He would never go back there."
"Even if he was desperate? Isn't there about a hundred million protective charms on the place? It would make an excellent hiding place wouldn't it?"
Remus murmured, "He would rather die than set foot in that place again."
Tonks nodded. Then, determined, "Don't worry, Remus, we'll find him."
Remus squeezed his eyes all the tighter closed.
Tonks brushed his curls from his forehead softly, her own eyes full of tears, and sighed heavily. "I'm sorry I didn't notice the telly."
Remus shook his head to indicate for her not to worry about it. He found he couldn't speak the words it would take to tell her audibly.
"We'll go look for him tomorrow," she promised.
"I have to go to Volsung's office tomorrow," Remus murmured. "Remember?"
Tonks shrugged. "We'll go after."
"I don't want to be registered," Remus whispered.
"I know," Tonks said.
"Why does everything in my life have to turn to shit?"
Tonks frowned and hung her head. "I'm so sorry, Remus."
"We were almost happy," he whispered, thinking of Costa Rica. Thinking of Sirius's barking laugh, of the sound of the sea and the smell of the salt mixed with the heady cigarettes and the dog fur clumps under the table and the sound of the record player's crackle and pop and the twinge of spicy local food in his mouth. Tears silently rolled from his eyes and across his cheeks.
"You will be again," Tonks said. "One day."
"I don't know," Remus whispered, "I feel like the universe doesn't want me to be, won't allow me to be... I feel like I'm being punished and I'm not sure what I did, I don't know what I did, I must've done something wrong... or maybe it really is just because I'm -- a -- monster... just - an unlovable mon--"
"Shh," she cut him off. She ran her fingers through his hair. "Remus, I love you."
Remus whimpered.
"I just want you to know that you are loved and - and you're not alone," she explained quietly, "Whatever you might feel like sometimes. Okay?"
Remus nodded.
"Sirius loves you. And I love you."
Remus clutched her hand over his chest.
"We'll find Sirius tomorrow," she promised.
He nodded again.
That night, sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the living room, after Tonks had gone to bed, Remus lay, curled and hugging his knees, staring at the empty side of the bed that usually held Sirius Black. He shivered and pulled the blankets closer around himself. He could hear the dull thrum of Spark's stereo on the other side of the apartment, some rock music playing like a heartbeat through the bones of the apartment. Remus struggled to stay awake as long as he could... he knew even before he closed his eyes that the nightmares were lurking, just waiting for him to fall asleep.