Cold

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

- Acquainted With the Night, by Robert Frost

It was cold. The rumbling of the highway drowned out any noise that would have otherwise reached the ears of the only figure to be walking in the chill night air. Even the dull thud of his steps was drowned out. The man shivered and pulled his worn coat tighter. He had no thought of where he was going, or if he was coming back. Coming back to what? He had no flat now. No flat he could call his own. All he had was due to the charity of another. I guess they didn't call it charity when you were in love. But they weren't in love, were they? They shared great sex and an apartment and ate tense meals together whenever they couldn't make up an excuse. Lust? Yes. Love? No. They had mistaken a one night stand for something real and tried to make of it something it was not. They had pretended that they didn't care that they had no money, no steady jobs, no possessions worth anything. No lives worth anything. But soon they had turned bitter. One man could not support the other on the meager earnings of what little errands he could find to do. And the other didn't want to be supported.

The man walked. The streetlights cast shadows on the sides of derelict buildings and deserted properties. His breath caught in the air, but he walked through it, not noticing how the misty cloud hung still before dissolving in the onslaught of his body. It was funny, he thought, how all the feelings you assumed were there never really were. You just pretended that you felt the love and the contentment, all the while hoping that the feelings would come and cursing the fact that the possibility of love was still just possibility, while you tried to convince yourself otherwise. Then one night it's as if you've exited your body. You are looking down on yourself from a perch several feet to your right, and you ask yourself what the fuck am I doing here?

The man took in a deep breath. He side-stepped a patch of broken glass, not pausing to see how the light from a street lamp played on the green of the shards, causing them to shimmer, as if a warning to lone travelers, or an invitation to come closer. He was lost in thought, reliving the scene that had played out in the flat he had just left.

///The old bedsprings of the mattress they share sags under their weight; the creaky protests adding to the groans from the two men covering it. The man on top pauses. He sits up; stares at his partner, who leans against his elbows, curious, but also indifferent in a way he had been, they both had been, for some time. The man stands and reaches for his clothes. He silently pulls on his pants, trousers, shirt, coat. It is not until he reaches for his boots that his partner, still propped against his elbows, speaks.

"What are you doing?" He asks.

"Leaving," the other man replies, with a toneless voice and expressionless face.

He walks out of the flat with the melancholy of a man who has finally yielded to what he knew had to happen. In the other room, his flatmate slumps back in bed with the sadness and relief of a man who knows the same thing. Nevertheless, he is left behind with a lingering hardness in the darkness his run-down flat.///

* * *

Eleven months earlier, the man was again walking in the darkness; this time shadowing the movements of his lover, who had disappeared without a word into the night:

///Dark-haired man--lover, my lover--quietly moving towards the door. Turning the handle; everything black and gray- to match the hour, to match his name. Door opens. He turns to look; over the shoulder, cascading hair hiding his face. Dark features and smoldering eyes, even in the shadowed room. Glimpse of moonlight on hardwood floor, two paces up and to the left. Come back... Indistinct lines; face blurred. Except for the eyes, keen and intense, and the patch of moonlight--its harsh, bright light casting the rest of the floor into one murky, black pool and the walls a washed-out gray. Black like his name. Gray like his eyes.///

* * *

Walking. He had been walking for eleven months. Walking, as though in a daze, his body going through the daily motions as if everything were normal. One glance and you may never have suspected that his mind had stopped; that a hard, protective shell covered him from head to toe, shielding him from the inner turmoil that could break loose at any moment.

Three friends were dead at the hands of the fourth, his dearest friend, his lover who had betrayed them all.

So he had gone into shock. His body obeyed the directions of an alien strength as his brain shut down. Nausea, biting and revolting, chewed at his insides. He stayed for hours kneeling on the bathroom floor, head poised over the toilet bowl. He stayed for hours standing before the window, staring at the criss-crossed paths of translucent water droplets, the quickly evaporating remnants of a dreary November rain. Was one place better than the other? The fact was he had stopped, and no matter where his body went he was still vacant inside.

Other friends came, to console and help his grieving, but they were not of the same caliber as those dead, and so they came mostly out of a sense of duty. He served them tea and answered their questions with a shrug and a nod. They never noticed the blank look in his eyes.

He struggled by, eating what he could find and resorting to shifty dealings in Knockturn Alley. He began to cruise the gay wizarding bars, dirty and hidden in the forgotten corners of the city. The atmosphere of these bars was one of hopeless desperation and dangerous thrill that was unique to anywhere else in the wizarding world. The thump and grind of music and dancing in the ill-lighted bars was infectious; a pick-up was guaranteed. These one-night stands were perfunctory. He was unquestioning and unfeeling, until he met the man who would occupy the next thirty days of his life instead of the usual one. The stranger was leaning indolently against the wall in the corner of the bar; and he bore a striking resemblance to Sirius Black, who was in Azkaban and as good as dead. A striking resemblance indeed.

Many heady nights later, the man found himself walking again. This time he was walking away from Sirius' double, instead of toward him. It was funny, he thought, how all the feelings you assumed were there never really were.

* * *

He slid onto the bed as if he were a ghost. The room was shabby--peeling peach wallpaper, a battered nightstand, the bathroom giving off a smell of mold. He paid for his room using a muggle credit card that he carried with him, pilfered off a forgotten acquaintance. It listed him as Linderman, Joseph. He gazed at the ceiling, the shoddy bed bearing his weight silently. He did not think. He did not move. Intake of breath, dog barking, pipe groaning, man shouting. He was conscious of these sounds; of the general seediness of his surroundings. He needed to take a shower.

He swung his limbs over the side of the bed, moving to the bathroom. He stooped over the faucet, which shed flakes of rust onto his hands. The water came out brown. Placing his palms on his knees, he stood, settling for a quick cleaning charm on himself instead.

He stripped off his clothes and lay on the bed again. The dim light from the bathroom's single bulb cast a faint glow on the darkened room. Though his body was relaxed, he remained alert. Anonymous muffled shouts still pervaded his eardrums. He heard a door down the hall open, and a woman's shrill, exasperated voice:

"You never think!"

A deep, pleading voice answered. "I do! Baby, c'mon, I do..."

"Bollocks! You're a coward! Stop pretending everything's fine when it's not!"

Her shuffling footfalls passed his doorway.

You never think! It echoed in his mind. Played across his brain, heavy and unavoidable; rested upon his tongue. For the second time that night, he asked himself: what the fuck am I doing here? He hadn't liked his latest lover, the Sirius Black look-alike. He was uninteresting and mundane. He's exactly like me, the man thought. Drudging through life, menial tasks, nameless fucks... I never think!

Coward, he heard. Coward. Drifting through life is cowardly. Cowardly.

But I can't live without him. I trusted him. He was supposed to be there with me, for me. I need him! He groaned in frustration, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face in his pillow. Why am I so cowardly? What am I so afraid of?

He could feel himself starting to close off again. He was thinking too much. Thinking was Not Good. He was questioning his emotions, the ones that he was not supposed to have. He had no control over these feelings, and so he feared them. He stowed them away inside himself and shut down. He Must Not Think. That was his mantra. If he started to think, he would only lose control again. Like he lost control when he was with Sirius.

Sirius.

///Flash of hand gracing across curved cheek. Lips caressing skin; mouth gently sucking nipple, teeth grazing, then nipping at the hard flesh. Kisses and scars and a million whispered promises and profanities. Hard, yes, legs intertwined, mouth trailing along bony spine, long, thin, toned, beautiful, yes, yes, yes. Long black hair draped across belly, stunning curtain radiating sex. Pressing wet lips to high cheekbones. Urgent, yes; pushing now legs mouth in out more yes. Gentle curve of bruised lips trace eyebrow in final act of devotion and want. Collapse.///

The man pressed his fingers to his temple, as if to drive the images out of his head. He got up from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom, the harsh light compared to the darkness of his pillow making him blink. He stared at his reflection in the grimy mirror. Who was it? It didn't look like him at all. Yet there was the long scar from collarbone to right armpit. There was the vivid crescent of werewolf bite; and there were the faint, dissecting lines beneath his ribcage. His chest was sunken, his skin pale. His arms hung loosely at his sides, bony wrists and jutting hip bones.

Who have I become?

He gazed at his reflection. He was ugly and twisted and skeletal and he wanted nothing to do with himself. He hated who he was becoming. But he had no way to stop it. How could he combat the iciness that had overtaken him? And did he want to? Could he bear to feel the uncontrollable emotions that were stuffed deep inside him? Could he bear to feel the anger? The hate? He didn't know. He knew that he hadn't wanted to, and that was the reason for his shutdown; for his now vacant life. He was scared of losing control over himself and his emotions, and these would indeed be uncontrollable. But now? Could he bear to lose what precious little control he had left? The control he felt in starving his body, denying his mind? Could he? How could he?

In one fluid motion, the man swung his right arm into the mirror. His fist collided with his ugly reflection, the glass shattering. Hand hitting mirror, glass flying outward, his reflection, his body, breaking into a million pieces. The shards soar toward him, lacerate his skin, then fall to the floor. The edges of the mirror cling to the wall, leaving a yellow-ish gap of plaster in the middle. Man on the floor, cradling his damaged hand. Floor spattered with blood; the man's fingers scraped of skin, a bone showing through one knuckle.

He felt it. Searing, seeping through him. Intense and fiery, the anger and hate coursing through him. Uncontrollable. Wild. For the first time. Hate towards Sirius, his lover and betrayer; hate towards the moon, his keeper and tormentor; hate towards himself, his cowardly, pusillanimous self. He had never let himself feel this before. Never. The only emotions he had let escape his guarded nature was the love he felt for Sirius, the love, and now, the hate.

Lover.

Killer.

Betrayer.