Unforgiven

UNFORGIVEN

Silver-bright moon, hanging full and pregnant in indigo sky.

Gleaming starved eyes, devouring feast of moon and stars.

Quickening heart, full and empty at once--raging with beauty, with pain.

Hands, white-knuckled, gripping iron window-bars in a silent scream.

Despair.

Vows broken, littering his soul like shattered glass on blackest asphalt, glittering in moonlight, glisten up at him like shards of diamonds. Like something smooth and perfect splintered beyond repair.

Years of waiting, years of watching the haunting slide of moon over sky.

Years of waiting for the moon. Years of feeling the pull as new waxed toward full. As full slid away again like an unfulfilled promise. Like an unreachable dream.

Like friendship, whole, abandoned in a moment of distrust.

Bright-silver moon obscured by clouds.

Alone beneath that vast magnet, white and cold in endless sky, he felt the sting of tears.

Felt emptiness like a vast, growing desert inside him, unlit by even a single star.

Felt memory stirring.

Memory, flitting lightly along the edge of sanity, sparkling tiny oasis in the midst of all-consuming desert.

Sand dunes, implacable, waiting, wanting only an errant breeze to obliterate memory.

How long could memory survive on the edge of such a wasteland?

The moon, cold and indifferent, gave no answer.

He watched it, grasping at memory and catching hold.

The moon seemed to brighten for a moment, and he felt its pull drawing him out of himself.

He went gratefully.

Running under the full moon, through dark-light forest, chill wind lending wings to his feet.

Outrunning the wind.

Outrunning the cold.

Dodging low-hanging branches and downed trees.

Chasing Moony.

Running alongside Prongs.

Courage and loyalty equally shared.

Broken promises something belonging to an unimaginable future.

Moony, turning to take his stand.

Prongs butting Moony, but carefully so as not to cause too much damage.

Padfoot moving in, pouncing.

Rolling over autumn-dry leaves, through soft cool moss, snapping and growling.

Their own sort of laughter, shared every full moon.

Never leave you.

Never apart.

Every full moon.

Every month.

Friends.

Brothers.

Always.

Promised.

They'd promised.

He'd promised.

Hands tightening on iron bars, mind screaming in silent anguish. Heart beginning to break, along fault lines deepened with every passing full moon that saw the promise unfulfilled.

The blame was his.

He had forgotten the lessons of those full-moon nights. Had forgotten friendship and brotherhood and forever in the foolish spotlight-glare of suspicion. In the failure of loyalty and courage.

In the failure of heart.

He did not rail against imprisonment.

There would have been no point.

Nothing they could do to him here, however terrible, could possibly compare to the devastating knowledge that he had betrayed a friend's trust.

That he had destroyed brotherhood.

That he had failed to avenge the murder of a brother.

Had helped cause that murder, by suspecting another.

Had, finally, caused a vow to be broken.

Forever.

Unless I choose differently.

Unless I ignore my heart, and yours.

Unless I fail.

Clouds slid past the moon.

Shadows deepened.

Did Moony run alone under this same moon?

Could he run, alone and unprotected, without a friend to watch over him?

Could they ever run together again some day?

Would Moony allow it?

Would Moony want it?

Would Moony?

Moony...

Heart-faults deepened in the darkness of the moon. He turned away from the window and sat on the cold stone floor.

Fought back howls of anguish that washed through him in tidal waves, weakening the dam that held them back.

Shadows melted and ran together as the moon slipped fully behind clouds, leaving him draped in darkness, alone with his own agony.

The howls threatened, closer to escape than they had been in years. He felt them in every muscle, in each bone.

He was losing control.

Ghostly slide of dark robes in the stone-lined corridor outside the cell.

Bare gleam of dark grey eyes, glassily aware of growing chill.

Of rapidly increasing despair.

Of approaching hell.

When the moon slid out from behind the clouds, it shone though iron bars to reveal Padfoot, grey eyes gleaming in the half-light.

Curled squarely in the center of the patch of moonlight pooled on the cold stone floor of the cell.

With Moony during the full moon, in the only way he could be.

Waiting for the night when they would run together again.

Saving himself for that moment.

But not saved.

Unforgiven.