If I Die...

If I die, survive me with such pure force
That you awaken fury from what is pale and cold
From south to south raise up your indelible eyes,
From sun to sun until you sing like a guitar.
I don't want your laughter or your footsteps to waver
I don't want my legacy of joy to die.
Do not call out to my body; I am not there.
Live in my absence as you live in a house.
It is a house so vast, absence,
That inside you will walk through the walls
And hang paintings in the air.
It is a house so transparent, absence,
That I without life will see you live,
And if you suffer, my love, I will die a second time.

-Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 94

Early June, 1996

They lie together, tangled in the sun-drenched sheets. It's the only room in Grimmauld Place that gets any natural light, and it's out of earshot of the portrait of Mrs. Black and easily warded against Kreacher. Sirius is sprawled lazily on his back, relaxed and boneless after sex, Remus curled against his shoulder, cheek pressed against Sirius's bare chest. Sirius lets his fingers drift through Remus's hair, ghosting through the tangles and the grey strands and tickling faintly. Remus can feel his lover's breath at the crown of his head.

They don't speak; there's everything and nothing to say, there always is, and it's so much easier just to stay quiet and let the warmth of the afternoon sun and of one another's bodies seep into their bones and lull them into sleep.

Which is why the rumble of Sirius's voice, still low and sated but somehow urgent, too, startles Remus, and he pulls away from Sirius a little bit.

Sirius gives Remus a faintly appraising look, then pulls Remus's head back down against his chest again. Remus can feel Sirius's heartbeat like a distant wardrum, smell the sticky-sweetness of sex and sweat, feel the rustle of breath in his hair as Sirius speaks.

"Stay there, Moony. But listen to me."

Remus murmurs wordless assent.

"If I die--"

Remus jerks upwards. "You're not going to die, Padfoot!"

Sirius pulls him down again, runs a hand softly down Remus's bare side and it's so, so sweet that Remus can't help but tilt his head back and catch Sirius's lips in his own. Sirius slips his tongue against Remus's, and he tastes just like he smells, sticky-sweet, and a bit salty like sweat from the kisses he has been running all along Remus's body.

They break apart for a moment to breathe, their lips apart but their bodies pressed so close to one another, limbs so tangled that they might as well be a single body, one without the ecstasy of sex but instead the solemn sweetness of the melting sunlight. Remus can feel and hear and taste and see and smell Sirius's voice when he speaks again.

"If I die," his voice the low rumble of thunder miles and miles away that leaves lightning darting on the horizon, "it has to not be like it was last time."

It isn't the most eloquent of declarations, but Remus knows what Sirius means. They have never spoken of the twelve long years Remus spent alone, aching with loss, just as they never speak of the twelve long years Sirius spent freezing and starving and damned in the hell of his own memories. Remus has never told Sirius of the week of the funerals, as he had dubbed it in his mind all those years ago, Lily and James's ashes buried together in a single urn; the memorial for Peter with the symbol of the Order of Merlin glinting gold on the headstone; the weight of grief and betrayal leaving him bowed and subdued and almost completely broken. Remus has never asked about Sirius's worst memories, though he has a fairly good idea of what they must be from the words Sirius cries out in the darkest hours of the night, begging mercy from an invisible tormentor.

Remus can't think of what to say, which is strange because he's supposed to be the one who always has the right words. He knows it's best to humor Sirius when he gets like this, morbid and depressed and using his words to cover his own fear. Remus, for lack of the right comfort, says something banal. "Why are you saying this now?"

"I was thinking of you. I was thinking of you alone and lost and with no one to love you, and I realized I couldn't bear it." Sirius pulls Remus even closer, if that's possible. To Remus, it feels like it is. "I know this is an idiotic conversation to be having," Sirius says, with a laugh that sounds like more of a sigh. "But I just thought...I just wanted you to know that I don't want to think of you ever suffering because of me again."

"You could promise to never leave me," Remus suggests, but he doesn't mean it and he knows Sirius won't think he does either. They both know the impossibility of promises now.

Sirius doesn't respond for a moment. "Can I just promise to never stop loving you?" he asks finally. Remus nods against Sirius's shoulder, feeling the scratchiness of the sparse hair on his chest.

They kiss again, mouths hungrier and more desperate now, their lazy sleepiness giving way to desire again, to some way of proving to one another and to themselves they are both still alive, that the shadow of fear and death that hangs over everything now can be held at bay. Sirius's mouth on Remus's is still sweet, and passionate and aching, and Remus is hard again and can feel Sirius's erection against his hip, and really everything is ridiculously easy because they're already naked and tangled together and now their souls are naked too.

They make love in the slippery sunlight, Sirius's lazy thrusts growing more and more urgent as tension and desire and desperate burning need build inside them, and they come almost together, and Remus whispers Sirius's name as Sirius cries out.

They collapse back onto the sheets and press their bodies togther, limp and melted and caressed by the warmth of the sun. As they are drifting off, Remus hears Sirius whisper, so softly that if their bodies weren't so close that it seemed their very frames yearned to melt into each other, it would have been inaudible.

"I'm afraid to die, but I'm more afraid of seeing you in pain."

"If you're dead you won't be able to see me, Padfoot," Remus whispers back.

"I'll always be able to see you, Moony," Sirius murmurs.

They fall asleep after that, sunlight pooling over them, melting them into each other even more, and Remus almost forgets Sirius's dark mood in the golden afterglow. He leans back to brush Sirius's lips one more time with his own before drifting away, the taste and feel and smell and view and sounds of Sirius all dissolving into a dreamy haze of warm light and warm bodies and love.

* * *

It was their last kiss.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall, and in that age every single last flashed through Remus's mind, almost buckling his knees with the grief of it except that he had to hold on to Harry.

Their last kiss, their last touch, their last words to one another--and then it all melted into grief like iron chains locked onto Remus's soul as he saw the look of fear on Sirius's face as he fell and that made everything real, right in that very instant. It didn't take time to process or to sink in; the fear that glinted in Sirius's eyes, the last emotion, the last feeling, happened all in that instant, and Remus wouldn't have even had difficulty saying that Sirius was dead if Harry hadn't interrupted.

He was dead. He was dead, and Remus was once again alone. He wanted so much in those first terrible hours--he wanted to die, wanted Sirius to live, wanted none of all of the terrible events that had torn apart their lives to have happened, and he wept. He almost felt guilty for it; real grief, it seemed to him, was the one too passionate for tears; crying seemed cheap; you cried at a movie or over a dead pet, not for the loss of the only person you had ever loved with all your heart in your entire life.

But then Remus remembered one final last--Sirius's last request. That if Sirius were to die, Remus must not suffer. And Remus decided to live, live with such pure force that his passion was almost rage, that he would have gone to war against death itself except that that wasn't the point. The point wasn't death anymore, it was life, raising his eyes to the golden sun and remembering the joys of the past and having the strength to keep laughing and keep singing and keep fighting.

He felt empty, a vast transparent chasm that was not in him but was him; he was an empty house, walking through insubstantial walls and hanging paintings in the air, but he kept going. It wasn't for Albus, or for Harry, or for the Cause, really, though they all thought that it was one or all of those that kept Remus alive. He lived for Sirius, because on one sun-drenched afternoon, full of sleepy sex and sweetness, Sirius had said that he would always be able to see Remus.

So it was that when he came upon Harry sobbing in the attic of Grimmauld Place one evening he didn't break down himself, or rage at fate, or simply flee the scene, but instead clasped Harry's miserable, shaking form against his own and whispered platitudes and stroked his hair, and smiled at the tiny crack in the ceiling from which a brilliant ray of sunlight was glowing.

The sliver of light brushed across his face as he released Harry and moved away, and the tiny allotment of golden warmth was like a soft kiss, gentle and whispery-sweet on his scarred face.