On My Own (A Duet)

Remus J. Lupin locked his apartment door for the last time. Placed the key in the box. No one would miss him here. He hadn't even met his neighbor. He packed the dress robes in his satchel and wore the muggle teeshirt, and jeans he had once thought only good for painting. It was going to be a hot night.

The teeshirt was black. Hmm Black... but now it had faded to a grayish blue with mothy balls on the edges, over washed, over ironed. He tied the jacket around his waist. He had to carry it with him or he would never have it again.

So now I'm all alone again

No where to go, no one to talk to.

Two girls came on the arm of a young dark haired boy flashing a nice smile at everyone. Remus sped up just for a second. Maybe he'd see someone bust out of the pub. Maybe James with his huge idiot grin, with his knobby knees. Maybe Petey, their first minion. James didn't fancy Remus calling him their "fag". On the other hand he wasn't too found of any the alternate titles (bitch, beer monkey, decoy, scapegoat, all of which made Peter squirm) Course Petey didn't stay that way for long and he graduated up to a Marauder. The position was soon filled by a little red haired owlish Bill Weasely, who used to lie down face first to keep a parking space for Sirius Black's Triumph. The Black Bitch.

He walked close. The boys stared at him.

The ladies man tossed a huge grin at him. Remus was warmed. He smiled.

"Oi, Prof where'd you snitch that, Dude."

"It's mine, it was a gift."

"Profesor Lupin. I thought my dork kid sister took that Werewolf stuff too hard. Lupin then."

The lilting, rough East End voice was astounding. His hair in the dark shimmering like a second night. Bright eyes teasing and playful.

Okay, it wasn't as if Sirius could come back from the past. Anyone else wouldn't have thought it. Maybe he was cracked and seeing things in the mist of his past. Maybe hye was lonely and hard up

But there was the thought that if he stepped in that muggle car they'd take him back. Would they take him away? Could they go back to where it went wrong?

He smiled "Oi Professor, you need a lift anywhere

I do not want your money sir

I came out here 'cause I was told too.

"I'm waiting for a friend. You head off, kids. Make sure to stay out really late, and make your parents yell at you."

And that was the last person Remus talked to in London.

And now the night is near.

I can make believe he's here.

He was boiling through his shirt. How could he think of wearing long trousers, anyway? He was tempted to dunk his robes in the Thames and put it on again. But the Thames is soup. He could probably walk across the sludge. Nobody threw themselves off the London Bridge anymore.

He was not about to follow in such a great tradition. He was in another neighborhood with a car bridge. A tiny one that hadn't been there for but twenty years. He wasn't the type to die in a fashionable place like the Tower of London.

Sometimes I walk alone at night

when everybody else is sleeping

I think of him and then I'm happy

with the company I'm keeping

Remus looked out at pollution. A sick sluicy soup of grey night in the water. His feet were walking on black smelly tar. His head was swimming and there was nothing to do. He placed his head against the metal bar and sank down swinging his legs over the ledge, The metal felt good for a fraction of a second. Then it sogged up, then it became sticky against his skin.

He was as close to hell as he was going to get today. Closest to the ground he could get in this city.

The city goes to bed

And I can live inside my head

"Dear Sirius,

Thanks for remembering I exist. I saw a boy on the street, he had a girl on each arm and still gave me a once over. Remind you of anyone? Maybe I'm flattering myself, I'm 34 and if this shit you're pulling doesn't kill me, I'm middle aged for a werewolf. But hell, I didn't want to hurt your feelings. He drove off with his women and didn't give me a second thought. Thought of jumping off a bridge. Must wait till I find a river that's not the Thames. I don't want to bounce back out. Got to find a place to cloister myself in two weeks. Running out of decent wolfsbane.

Cheers,

Moonie"

Remus sighed. Nice letter. The letter he would never send. He looked up at the sky. He could hear the voice in his head. The voice he had held onto so closely. The only treasure he had.

"Look at that Moon. Big old thing. Not a thing for you to fear."

"What will I do if I can't stop?" Remus said, looking between the roots of the Whomping Willow.

Sirius blinked. Tapped his nose twice. No words were used in the Animagus spell, for any word would be lost forever in the beastly mouth.

Remus smiled.

The shag of ragged black hair dissolved into soft fur, the long ears, the long mouth. But the eyes were the same.

"Cor, look at those feet."

"You're going to be bigger than Remus." Potter said.

"You're already bigger than Remus."

"Look at the Moon, Kid. Look it that. Isn't it nice?"

He could play that one phrase. Looking up at the sky. The one phrase he could never forget. Etching the grave into his life. Sirius's voice....

Remus Lupin let out one heavy puff of wet air.

On my own

Pretending he's beside me

He turned to his side. He missed his night running. He missed the way they ran together. He couldn't imagine that his other self had a feeling. But the first time he saw Sirius on his huge feet looking him in the eye, he stopped.

The other one was a huge lean puppy. Remus was threatened, he shook. The wolf was frightened. He didn't understand. The wolf never understood. It just killed and fought. Remus was the one who thought. It was scared.

Sirius approached. Was it Sirius? It had human mind. It was Sirius but in the wolf's fear, Remus could not protect him. The wolf bit Sirius.

Sirius shook and stood. He tackled the wolf. And Remus was glad. The wolf even gave up. A wolf doesn't understand, but it can be controlled. The wolf knew that the Sirius was bigger, and the wolf was somehow lonely. It saw its first other. The first one. Wolves should never live alone. This was someone.

A deer flanked him with one twitchy rat. Remus finally told the wolf: this is a pack. Don't fight, they love you. Despite everything that the wolf had done to ruin his life, all the pain, all the scars inside, the wolf knew love. And he settled.

He sniffed Sirius, his tail, his face, and walked off. It would be time to hunt. There were animals around. Hunting was what one did with a pack. Potter/deer walked after him. The wolf didn't think a think about the juicy rat on his back. The wolf should have eaten the good rat. But because the wolf understood he wasn't alone, and Remus understood love like this, the wolf just walked into the wood.

All alone

I walk with him till morning

That first morning when nothing had gone wrong. The bigfooted Sirius dog was still behind him as he felt the wolf sleep, when he felt his skin against the ground again. He collapsed.

"Oi, Remus. Why you naked?" Petey said. Not rat anymore.

Remus couldn't lift his head he was so tired.

Sirius, real Sirius, knelt down.

"Here you go, boy. Cover up." He gave him the black teeshirt.

Remus swooned

"I'm so hungry."

"Jamie-boy, would you be so kind as to take Moonie back to the Whompin' Willow. I'm too hungry to think."

Sirius was still the brawn of the group. He pulled Remus up off the ground.

Without him,

I feel his arms around me

And when I lose my way I close my eyes

And he has found me.

Sirius set him on the stag's back. Finally willing to relinquish control. He was looking rather pale. The stag swung about "Oi, you. Watch the prongs Jimmy-boy. You'll brain me. Can't you make those things smaller."

The deer snorted. James had a lot of dignity. He was up for Prefect. Why not King of the Forest as well?

Sirius clutched his head. He had never even peeped about the migraine until he crashed into the table in Divination. He'd practically gone into a state of complete exhaustion. Couldn't even move for a day. He never said anything. He said that he, Remus, was tough.

Remus remembered being small enough to be in Sirius Black's arms.

Remus remembered what it was like to run in the woods. And stars, the memories of stars in the world.

A sick unzipping snap of thunder cracked in the city.

It would rain again in the city. It would be as cold as it was hot before and yet, anything for one thing to stop. Was that the only joy there was these days to take away everything that he loved change it, make it into something he hated? His career, his friends, now even people who had become more. His pack, and someone he could never have back again.

He thought about it as slimy rain slid down his back, wetting the tee shirt, once black now as grey and beautiful as his stormy eyes. His teeshirt.

In the rain

The pavement shines like silver.

The street stretched out like a world of moonlight. It pierced everywhere. It was like waking into a silver world. It was beautiful and shiny. But not real if it had, Remus would be cut into ribbons. He twirled in the false silver, wishing for a sick twisted second that it would rip him apart while his body cooled.

Just one second before he was too hot or too cold, lonely or pestered. The one second of his life when something didn't hurt. He wanted to just spend one moment in beauty ignorant of it. Even if it was his last.

Is this what love did? Did it make even summer rain hurt like knives?

All the lights are misty in the river.

Could he handle it any longer? He walked down the back, shaking off his jacket putting it on. He sighed.

"Impermeable." He muttered

A soft layer of dryness appeared around his body. He wouldn't have to go wet. And no one would be stupid enough to go out in the rain to watch him stay dry.

He walked to the tree.

Maybe tomorrow...

In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight,

There had been a fight between them on what was the appropriate night sky. Remus pointed to Orion and Cassieopea and Noble Draco and the Bears. Sirius smacked him in the shoulder and muttered.

"No no no. This is not a proper night sky. There's at least three thousand. These aren't like the stars."

He looked "That's just starlight. It takes 3000 years for the light to reach Earth."

"More then our lives."

"If it's just the light, Sirius, why do you care? There might be 29 hundred or 57 hundred. As long as we can see one, doesn't that mean something?"

"I guess. Stars in the sky."

Sirius didn't talk. Remus pointed out the Dogstar.

"We don't have to see the stars."

And all I see is him and me forever and forever.

Remus looked up at the star.

"And Sirius is still up there."

His light wasn't going to fade just like that. His light was still there.

*****

"I'm sorry Moony. You always liked my hair."

And I know it's only in my mind

That I'm talking to myself

And not to him.

A tiny boat thudded on the surface of the water. He was at least 2 miles out from Burton Island and still drifting. He looked out at the still silver Lake Champlain. Vermont hadn't been his first choice to spend the winter. But then probably the Aurors were swarming the sunnier contingencies that Sirius had planned.

The wind was stronger then it had been in Azkaban. But everything outside of Azkaban had become nice.

He grabbed the swatch of hair. He knew he was doing it backwards. He had sat up in the bathroom washing green tea and beer into it, earlier that night.

Now he was bent over the rail in his house boat, Long shags of black hair hanging over the edge falling helplessly into the water.

There would be those who protested. Mostly inside his head. Having perfect black hair was too much to give up. But he needed a quick change. The beer he had washed into his hair had helped him get past Interpol. A glamour over his eyes made them unconvincing hazel. But not suspicious, more like a bloke trying to make his eyes hazel with contacts. He couldn't very well pull it off if his hair was raven black tresses. He had to live.

"I don't even feel like myself what? Would anybody else be able to see me?"

Still, it was cut like it was long. Very long in front. Brownish instead of obsidian. Such a dull color. The beer was doing very good for his hair, but he hated it more than anything. They should make it into a shampoo "Gee your hair smells." The green tea he had pinched from a chinese restaurant. It was the only thing that lightened his hair, making into a dashing red and black, dark and deep but complex.

Oh Mooney, was it all your bad thoughts that turned it gray, or maybe it was his color? His color as a wolf seemed to be closer.

Perhaps he could make it back to England. Find Lupin, pose as a German (he made passing grades, the only problem with that he was in German). He smiled. A rag mop haired professor of Astronomy (the Muggles didn't have Astrology) a few counter-circuitous conversations, then Remus would have a new mate all of a sudden.

Sirius Black would be found dead, head blown off beyond recognition and Remus and new blonding lover would shag like rabbits and laugh at the dolts.

For although I know that he is blind.

Still I say there is a way for us.

Sirius clutched the edge of the rail of his houseboat. The water was clear to the bottom. He could see it in the night. Now he only saw the reflection of his lonely pale self. Washed out, desperate to hide. Everything about him drifting away. Sirius tossed his locks into the water, rinsed the rest out of his sink with hot water

I love him, but when the night is over

He is gone; The river's just a river.

Without him the world around me changes.

He looked at the haunted rocky plains of the islands that passed. They looked like death. They looked too weird to be mortal. The rocks imposed themselves in the dark mist. There were no trees. He passed a bare cement strip abandoned. Muggles tried to make an airplane flying place maybe. Now it was a stone field. And if it weren't for sucking cold and crickets he would swore he was sucked into a pit of hell. Some lower layer of the prison he gotten himself thrown into. Some layer in which the one you could love, was thousands of miles away, hated you and you would die before you saw them.

Why had he escaped to such a hell? To save? To avenge? What was it now? What was his life if he could do neither? If he was trapped in this hard large lake in America.

The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers

Remus sat at the bus stop smiling. He looked down the street.

Now his coat was not wet. He'd get cold, but now he wasn't. The world didn't change for him.

I love him, but everyday I'm learning

Sirius looked out onto the black lake. Funny how getting out of hell was only the beginning. What was this place he was at?

How this place? This one place with the thought of Remus here. There was no waste. Remus and him floating in nothing. Not like before. Those childish flirtations, those meaningless things. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he would bring to a desert island if he could. He knew what the one thing he would have above anything else. This couldn't be where he was. He had escaped. He was alive and he was better.

All my life I've only been pretending.

Sirius thought again. It was too much. Too big. Too much pressure upon someone who had been his friend so long ago.

He has better things to worry about.

Without me his world will go on turning

This world that's full of happiness

and joy I'll never know

Remus shook his head. Sirius has forgotten you. He's forgotten himself. How can you expect him to feel anything for you after all this? All his suffering has nearly destroyed him. How can you force a feeling on him he doesn't have?

He has better things to worry about.

I love him,

Remus stared into a puddle on the street at himself

I love him,

Sirius dipped his fingers into the water of the icy lake.

I love him

But only on my own...

In the flash Remus jumped up. One glimpse not of himself but something like a dark animal reaching out to him.

It was Sirius's face. Sirius sighed and looked into his eyes.

Sirius looked up in the dark splendid reflection of the endless lake.

One glimpse of a creature painted in silver moon as if he had been surprised. It was Remus's face in the night, as clear as if it had been painted. Sirius could feel his eyes. His hand reached for the cheek. But he pulled his hand out frigid cold.

Remus looked at himself, kneeling against the ground. He pulled himself up and began walking.

"It's too hot."