Promises Unbroken

Something woke Remus in the coldest hours of the night, those few gray moments of dawn before the sun appeared. He sat up stiffly--it was only two days past the full moon--and looked blearily around the room. He was on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and when he had sat up, he'd kicked a stack of books onto the floor. The familiar shapes of the place he'd grown up in loomed around him, alien in the strange light. Everything seemed skewed, tilted, distorted--exploded from the way it had been before last night.

Remus sat on the edge of the couch for several moments, listening to the unnatural silence. It hung off the ragged couches and cluttered bookshelves like spider webs, and Remus wanted to sweep it clean. He stood, gathering the blanket around his shoulders to ward off the chill, and walked very softly through the halls of the cottage. It was all cold feet and unyielding stone. His bedroom door was ajar, and he took that as an invitation, knowing that it was probably the only one he would receive. He pushed into the room and the silence intensified. Morbidly, he wondered if Sirius had died. He'd certainly looked near death when he'd arrived. Remus squinted in the gray light and detected the faint rise and fall of the dirty pile of rags on the bed. It was enough. He stepped heavily across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The pile froze and Remus reached out to touch it, seeking skin.

"Sirius," he whispered. "Sirius, are you awake?"

Sirius shifted and Remus realized that the other man was lying on his side, curled into a ball. Remus remembered five years of sleeping beside him, Sirius sprawled out at weird angles, when they were so young that it hadn't mattered to not hold each other every second that they slept. Remus had imagined then that they would sleep together forever; now, faced with a man he hadn't seen in thirteen years, faced with a man he'd tried to stop loving but never could, faced with... Remus felt the lump hardening in his throat and cut off those thoughts. He had promised, once, to look after Sirius whenever he needed it, and whatever the man before him had become, he needed Remus's care now more than ever.

Remus pushed the matted black hair away from Sirius's face. His fingers came away wet. "Sirius?"

"What?" Sirius asked, his voice very hoarse.

Remus didn't know the answer to that. He continued to stroke Sirius's head. The silence returned; Remus could vaguely see gleaming tears on Sirius's cheeks. He must have been crying before I came in, he thought. That must have been what woke me up. "Good dog," he murmured, to break the tension.

Sirius smiled, and stuck out his tongue. The motion caught them both by surprise. Remus felt desire uncoil itself, flaring in his stomach like it hadn't in so long. Briefly, he closed his eyes, warding off the years that lay between them.

"Sorry," Sirius said, and Remus wondered if the other man could still read his mind.

"For what?" Remus buried his fingers in the hair, remembering the way that it used to feel, like silk sliding over his skin.

"For just showing up," Sirius said, shifting so that his face was pressed against Remus's thigh. "I should have warned you."

"No," Remus said. "That's nothing you should apologize for." Sirius twisted his head to look up at him and Remus thought, He's still crying. "What should have you done, sent me an owl?" He affected a strange voice and said, "'Dear Remus, I'm on the run, and I was wondering if I could stay with you. Please write me back at--'"

Sirius made a strange noise that might have been a laugh. "Then I'm sorry I wasn't good company. I just came in, didn't take tea..."

"Let the hippogriff rampage about the drawing room..."

"Did he?" Sirius asked, all trace of joking gone.

Remus slipped his hand slightly down Sirius's robe to rub his back. "I don't even have a drawing room, Sirius. He's sleeping."

"Oh," Sirius sighed. The muscles in his back were very tight. "I'm sorry for suspecting you."

Remus felt the atmosphere change. "I already forgave you, in the Shrieking Shack."

Sirius sniffled. "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I realized that I should have gone to get you before I went after Peter."

A mental image of Sirius appearing in his office at Hogwarts and asking for help reared in Remus's mind. "I don't know what I would have done. Probably turned you in." Sirius mumbled something that Remus couldn't hear. "What?"

"I didn't know you suspected me back then."

Remus realized that Sirius was still thinking of the night that James and Lily had died. It was disconcerting, as if Sirius was a visitor from a different era. But, Remus thought, he is... He remembered happiness without limitations, friendship without wariness, true love. "Sorry, I thought you meant last year..."

"Oh," Sirius said, as if the idea had never occurred to him. "I wanted to come to you, but I thought that you were..."

For a long time, the only sound in the room was the drip of rain on the windowpanes. Remus tried to put together what Sirius was thinking, but when he looked down at the other man and realized that Sirius was crying desperately, silently, against his leg, it scared him so much that he gave up thinking and moved to comfort. He removed his hand from Sirius's head and lay down beside him, wrapping his arms around Sirius's thin body. Sirius went rigid, and Remus wondered how long it had been since he'd been held--really held, not just that brief hug in the Shrieking Shack--and then Remus realized that he hadn't held anyone in a long time either. Not, in fact, since Sirius had gone into Azkaban. Remus kissed his dirty forehead and Sirius's breath hitched painfully. Remus had seen Sirius cry many times in the past, but never silently, as if there was no one to care that he was.

"I think," Remus whispered, "that things are going to be better now."

Sirius relaxed against Remus. "Why do you think that?"

"You're here." Long ago, they had liked to hold hands more than anything else. The intertwining of their fingers had tethered them to each other and to the earth. Remus slid his hand down Sirius's side, ignoring the coarse feel of the robe, until he found the thin line of Sirius's arm. "I'm here." His fingers dug through the cloth until they felt the icy marble of Sirius's skin. Their hands twisted together as if they hadn't come apart thirteen years earlier. "Things are going to be better."

"Remus?" Sirius was suddenly clinging to him. "This isn't someone else's place, is it?"

Long years of running, ever-shrinking horizons, countless cold nights spent in lonely places--"There hasn't been someone else, Sirius."

Sirius propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Remus. "Why not?" Tentative fingers traced the line above Remus's eyebrows. "Didn't you miss...?"

"I missed you," Remus said softly. "No one else could fill that hole." Sirius frowned, but Remus could tell that those words reassured him.

"You shouldn't have had to wait," Sirius said.

Remus shrugged. "If we're going on things that shouldn't have happened, then we'll be at this all night."

"And all day... and all the next night..." Sirius slumped down and burrowed into Remus's shoulder. "And I don't want to do that."

"I know," Remus replied softly, wrapping his arms around Sirius once more.

"I can't live in the past," Sirius added, and Remus nodded. "I can't dwell on what happened anymore." Remus nodded again, certain for a moment that Sirius had forgotten he wasn't alone in the room. Then the other man looked up at him from red-rimmed eyes, the pale gray of a sunny winter sky and said, "I can't do this without you, Moony."

Remus reevaluated and said, "I know that too."

"I can't... We have to rebuild everything." Sirius closed his eyes, and Remus was almost glad that he couldn't see that haunted look anymore.

"We will," Remus whispered.