Gravity

Part IV: Blood and Alcohol

Let us run beneath the moon
Forget the times are out of tune
The morning always comes too soon
But right now the war is over

Remus jerked awake, sensitive ears catching the heart-stopping sound of Sirius's enchanted auror badge buzzing. The golden sunburst pin, lying discarded against the top of the bedside table, was gleaming like a fallen star in the darkened room, vibrating at a nerve-wrackingly high pitch. It was a sound that all aurors and their friends and families had come to know and hate over the past few months, as the war intensified; the sound of a summons. Invariable, it meant danger, bloodshed, hexmarks, and late-night interrogations. Remus wasn't sure which were worse--the times when Sirius returned from such a summons with hexmarks and bruises stamped the length of his body, or the times he came home with blood on his knuckles and frustration in his eyes. The aurors were finding their own ways around the Death Eaters' new potions-induced resistance to veritaserum.

"Oh bloody fuck," a voice muttered into his shoulder. 'I just got off shift five hours ago." Sirius pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing at eyes bloodshot from fatigue. "Can't the bastards even let me get a night's sleep?"

Remus was already getting out of bed, scooping the clothes Sirius had stripped off a few hours ago off of the floor and tossing them to him. Keeping up a constant litany of complaints, his mate began pulling on the jeans and muggle style shirt, looping the leather belt with its holstered dogwood and dragon heartstring wand about his waist.

"It must be bad, for them to call you back in so soon," Remus ventured, searching the floor for his own robes. There was no point in going back to bed with Sirius out on call--he'd never get a moment's sleep until he returned safely home.

"Yeah." Sirius sat down on the edge of the bed, tugging on socks and lacing up sneakers. Despite years of attempts by James to convince him otherwise, he still steadfastly maintained that muggle shoes were better than wizarding ones. "More traction on the souls," he said. The white lettering on his shirt seemed to glow against the black fabric in the half-light: Triumph. Remus hoped it would not turn out to be some sort of ironic foreshadowing.

"Prob'ly another attack." Sirius sighed, shrugging into his golden auror's robes, already crumpled from a day's wear. "I wonder who it is this time." There was a world of anxiety beneath the weary question, nagging whispers that pulled at everyone's mind these days. Is it Polaris? Vesta? The Longbottoms? The McKinnons? The Ministry offices? Lily and James? Every day it seemed another courier or analyst was found dead. Even accountants like Peter were in danger, and half the time the aurors arrived too late to do anything more than clean up the bodies. Remus found himself half hoping that this would be one of those times, horrible as the thought was. At least that way Sirius won't have to face down the business end of a wand.

"I'm going into work," he announced, as he snapped the collar tabs closed on his robes. "If it's really serious, they might need me."

Sirius nodded, reaching out to lay his right hand on Remus's shoulder. The left, unbeknownst to him, was obsessively caressing the hilt of his wand. "Don't wait up for me, Moony. I have absolutely no idea how long this is going to take."

Remus pulled Sirius into a hug, wrapping his arms around him as hard as he could. "Be careful," he breathed, not wanting to let go, wanting to hold Sirius back in the safety and warmth of the flat for another handful of moments. "Consider that an order from your pack leader."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be careful," Sirius said. But he didn't let go right away. It was at least another half minute before he finally pulled himself free and made his way down the stairs and out of the building, apparating away as soon as he left the wards.

^_~

The Ministry building where Remus worked, normally silent and dark this late at night, was unusually crowded. When Remus apparated into the street outside the front entrance, he could see yellow light gleaming from a scattering of windows, reflecting golden in the puddles that had formed between the paving stones. Inside, the halls and cubicles lacked the eerie, ghostly air of desertion that usually characterized office buildings at night, wizard or muggle. They were filled instead with an even more unnerving feeling of tension.

Remus reached his desk to find Lily waiting for him. She was chewing on the end of a piece of long, red hair, a sheaf of papers in her hand and a sleeping Harry in a bassinet beside her. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps, gesturing to the sleeping Harry and holding a finger to her lips.

"I thought you'd be coming in," she said softly, voice humming with suppressed tension. "Algie Longbottom said his brother's squad had been sent out. James was called out too, and Andrew Diggory. They've got two couriers out tonight. Two couriers and an entire squad of aurors." Worried green eyes met his. "Who's the target?"

Remus shook his head. "I don't know. But I couldn't just sit around and wait at home."

Lily nodded agreement, gesturing at the papers she was holding. "Sit down and help me sort these intelligence reports. A good half of them are useless junk, and I think about half the rest were planted by the Dark side, but at least it's something useful to do."

Remus pulled a chair over from another cubicle and sat down across the desk from Lily, leafing through the stack of parchment. But even as half his mind scanned the writing, analyzing data and checking it against the facts they already knew--yet another whisper of leaks within the ministry--the rest of him was occupied worrying over Sirius. And James, zooming across England on a broomstick to God knew where, carrying messages and communiqués to delicate to be trusted to the floo networks. The Iris, the Ministry's courier network, often ran messages from Headquarters to aurors in the field.

"Still here, Potter?" A hearty voice enquired. Algernon Longbottom's broad, ruddy face poked around the corner of the cubicle, to be followed shortly by the rest of him, a mug of steaming tea in each big hand. "For Merlin's sake, girl. I've told you, you don't need to wait around here. At least take some tea." He thrust one of the mugs toward her, pressing the other into Remus's hands. "Good of you to keep her company, Lupin."

He smiled broadly, noticing the sleeping Harry. "Cute little tyke." One stubby finger brushed a fringe of black hair off the toddler's forehead. "Much smaller than Frank's boy." Harry wrinkled his tiny nose, sighing in his sleep.

"He's started talking now," Lily volunteered, smiling tenderly down at her son. "He can say four words now. Mama, Dada, up, and bottle."

"And Padfoot," Remus added. "I heard hours worth of raptures about that one."

"Actually," Lily corrected, "he said 'Puh.' And he was pointing at his stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear when he said it. But it made Sirius happy to think Harry was saying his name." She smiled again. "I suppose we'd better add 'Pooh' to his vocabulary list."

Algie chuckled. 'That boy ought to find a good woman and have himself some sons of his own, so he can stop adopting yours."

Lily sputtered, choking on her tea. "Ah, I don't think he plans on having children," she managed after a moment. Her cheeks had gone faintly pink. She was still a little uncomfortable with Sirius and Remus's relationship, though she was trying hard to come to terms with it. James had greeted the news with a delighted laugh and an announcement that it was about time, given the way the two of them had been looking at each other for the past three years. Sirius had responded instantly with a demand as to why, if James had know that the two of them had liked each other for so bleedin' long, he hadn't taken it on himself to bloody well tell one of them, to which James had responded cheerfully that it was none of his business. Lily, after a brief period of confusion followed by an even briefer period of uncomfortable awkwardness, had eventually decided that it was cute. Kissing in her presence, however, was still a surefire way to make her blush. If the two of them kept it up long enough, both Peter and Lily would start twitching and have to leave the room.

"Sirius isn't the, er, marrying type," she added.

Luckily, Algernon Longbottom was not a man for noticing subtleties. "Likes the bachelor life, eh? Well, he'll settle down soon enough, once he meets the right girl." He gave Remus a hearty clap on the back, nearly unbalancing him. "You could use a nice girl yourself, Lupin. Get you out and about, get rid of those circles under your eyes." He turned back to Lily. "Don't worry yourself, Potter, girl. This little one's father should be fine. The Iris always manage to pull through somehow. It's their job. Got to get the messages through. I'll tell the two of you as soon as I get any word about what's going on. I've heard it may be the McKinnon's' house." He sobered slightly, pulling a face. "Let's hope they were out for the evening when the buggers hit."

Lily shuddered. "From your lips to God's ears. I don't want to file another casualty report tomorrow."

"Can't blame you for that, Potter, girl, can't blame you for that." Algie nodded at Remus. "Keep up the good work, Lupin, Potter. I'll be 'round as soon as I get some news." He left the cubicle, his departure seeming to leave an empty space in the air behind him. One never really realized just how much space Algie took up, both physical and psychological, until he was gone.

Remus turned to Lily, raising his eyebrows. "Isn't the marrying type?" he asked, suppressing a smile.

Lily shrugged. "I thought it was a bit more subtle than 'My son's godfather flies both sides of the quidditch pitch.'"

Remus shook his head. "He'd probably just ask if that wasn't rather hard on his broom." Wait, that didn't sound right. "I mean, he'd just ask what position he played." Even worse. "I mean, never mind."

"Er, yeah," Lily managed. Her cheeks looked a bit pink. She tapped a fingertip against Remus's pile of reports. "Anything interesting?"

"Well, there's this one here." Remus slid the parchment over to Lily, accepting the change of subject. "It's an interrogation transcript. The subject makes several references to a source he calls "Iscariot." He shook his head. "They couldn't get much out of him, but it sounds like this "Iscariot" might be some sort of mole within the Ministry."

Lily whistled, eyebrows going up. "Shit. That's all we need." She picked up the report and began scanning it. "Never tell Sirius I said this," she murmured after a few moments, "but his sister puts me in mind of the Spanish Inquisition. They could have used her, back in the seventeenth century."

A quarter of an hour later, they had red flagged the unnerving transcript, and had begun a search of the other transcripts in the files, accio-ing several of the older ones from the records room. No further references to "Iscariot" had turned up, but there were several mentions of some sort of inside source. Some of the reports from their own spies looked very interesting, especially a collection of Top Secret ones sent in by Dumbledore, which looked as if they might actually have come from inside the Death Eaters' inner circle. Remus would have to remember to read them over later, some time when the words didn't blur before his eyes and his mind didn't keep racing off to contemplate all of the gruesome things that could be happening to Sirius.

He had just laid one of the rolls of parchment down on his desk, giving up the attempt to concentrate for the moment, when Algie came pelting up, out of breath and wheezing.

"Your young man's on the floo network, Potter. Has news about the attack."

Lily and Remus were out of their chairs in a second, rushing over to the cast iron wood stove in the corner of the office space. It looked bizarrely out of place in what was otherwise a modern office building, but some sort of communication equipment was necessary, and it posed less of a fire hazard than an open fireplace would have. The flames burning inside were casting flickering green patterns over the semi-circle of floor space that surrounded it, their colour a sure sign that it was in use.

"James?" Lily dropped down to her knees by the stove, putting her face close to the grating in front. "Are you alright? What's going on?"

"It's bad, Lily, really bad." James's usually cheerful voice was tight and strained. "Death Eaters attacked the McKinnons' house. Both McKinnons are dead, and they've got two other aurors down as well."

"Which two?" Remus whispered, a spear of ice suddenly lancing through his gut.

"I don't know," James admitted. There was a pause, and Remus, Lily, and Algie could hear him yelling something indistinct at someone else in the room with him. There was a murmur of background noise. Andrew Diggory's voice suddenly came through loud and clear. "All they said was 'Longbottom and Black.' And no, Potter, I don't know which Black. They didn't say whether it was Sergeant Black or Auror Black. Didn't say which Longbottom it was either. And what are you doing hanging out by the floo port anyway? I thought I told you to go roust out the second squad. The first squad's getting slaughtered." The sound cut off, the flames reverting to their usual orange and gold.

Remus stood motionless, feeling numb. The air in the room had become thick and hard to breath. Longbottom and Black. The words seemed to echo in his ears. Black. His knees felt weak.

Algie let out a long, shuddering breath. "That's it then," he said. "I always knew Frank or Denise would get hurt some day. Auroring's no job for parents, I told them. Women oughtent to be running around chasing after Dark wizards, I said. Why didn't Frank take that staff promotion they offered him?"

"Remus," Lily said, giving his shoulder a little shake. "Remus, breathe." It occurred to him suddenly that she had been talking to him for a good half minute. "It might not be Sirius. Maybe it's Polaris. Maybe it's only a stunning spell."

Remus seized onto the notion like a drowning man clutching a plank. Love, he realized, makes you selfish. The last thing in the world that he would ever dream of was to wish Sirius's sister ill, but he found himself praying with all his heart and soul that that downed auror was Polaris. Let it be her that was injured, her that fell before a Death Eater's curse. Just please, God, don't let it be Sirius.

He was never sure how long the three of them stood there, staring at the stove as if willing the floo port to reactivate. It could have been mere minutes, it could have been hours. Lily's face was white in the firelight, her hair gleaming around it like a halo of flame. Algie was silent, all attempts at hearty encouragement spent.

When the flames became green again, the transition was jarring.

"Moony?" The voice broke suddenly over the floo network, issuing out of the stove grating as if from the bottom of a well. "Are you there? Only you're not at home, and I need to talk to you..."

"Sirius!" Remus was instantly down on his knees before the stove, reaching for the door. His fingers halted inches away from the grate as he belatedly recalled that the office floo port was set on voice only, no entry, and had been ever since the last attempt at a break in. "Sirius, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah, fine," Sirius responded, sounding anything but. "Just come and get me. Come and get me, please. I need to go home, and I can't, I can't... look, just come, alright?"

Remus didn't hesitate. Shoving the sheaf of half-forgotten parchments into Lily's hands, he was out the office door and racing down the corridor in moments. His feet thudded into the sound deadening carpet of the hallway and then clattered on the marble of the entrance hall. The hit wizard on duty at the front door barely twitched an eyebrow as he went by. People rushing frantically in or out of ministry buildings were a common sight nowadays.

The Aurors' Headquarter building was several blocks away as the broomstick flew, but only a short hop for a wizard with an apparating license. It was alive with lights and noise and groups of people either milling around aimlessly or rushing back and forth with grim, determined purpose. Most disquieting of all was the team of mediwizards loading several body bags into a Ministry Ambulance. Two more healers were helping a groaning and semi-conscious Frank Longbottom into another vehicle, his face white and lined with pain and his thigh soaked in blood.

Oh shit. Remus stared in horror at the gruesome scene, frozen in place for a moment, until a hand grabbed his arm.

"Lupin," a harsh voice barked in his ear. He swiveled around, startled, to find himself looking straight into the scarred and battered face of Captain Moody, his blue glass eye darting around the courtyard wildly and the smaller, hazel one tight with concern. "Come inside, man. Don't stand waiting out here like a target."

Remus let Moody steer him toward the Headquarter building's great iron-bound oak doors, built to withstand the worst a magical siege could throw at them. "What happened?" he gasped out finally. "We heard there were aurors down?"

"Lieutenant Longbottom and Sergeant Black," Moody said flatly. "The McKinnons are both dead."

"Was, was that them, in those body bags?"

"And a few others, lad, and a few others." Moody's face was unreadable--its usual state, thanks to the frightening network of scar tissue that seamed it. "Your young Black is a bloody berserker in a fight."

"My..." Remus's voice trailed off.

"I may have only the one eye, lad, but I'm not blind." A firm grip on his shoulder halted him in front of the door to the main squadroom. "Go in and pry McGonagall's hip flask out of his hands. Get him home, and back here again by tomorrow. Well, later today. I don't care how you do it. We're short-handed by at least three men now, possibly four. I need him."

But Remus had stopped paying attention to Moody's grating voice the moment the squadroom door had come into view. Stomach hollow, he pushed it open and stepped in.

Sirius was sitting on the edge of the duty desk, clutching a silver flask in a white knuckled grip. Vesta McGonagall stood beside him, her usually sleek hair in disarray and her eye make-up running in violet streaks down her face, making her look like a red-headed raccoon. Both of them were covered in blood.

"Moony!" Sirius was across the room in a single bound, arms suddenly clasping Remus in a hug so tight that it hurt. He buried his face in Remus's hair. The smell of blood and ozone seemed to cloud the air around him, and Remus could feel him shaking. Fine, uncontrollable tremors that rippled through his muscles, as if he were very, very cold. "Reg an' Sally are dead," he whispered. "Dead. We didn' get there in time. An', an' Pols is 'urt, an' Frank's prob'ly gonna need a cane for the rest of 'is life, an' I killed one of them."

"Padfoot, where are you hurt?" Remus tried to pull back from Sirius's embrace to check the other man's body for injuries. All that blood... It had to be coming from somewhere.

"M'not," Sirius mumbled. "M'fine. Everyone else is 'urt."

"It's not his blood," Vesta announced. She hadn't moved from her place by the duty desk. "It's from some Death Eater. I've never seen anyone open up somebody's carotid artery with a cutting curse before. Slit it open from left to right, blood everywhere. Most incredible aim I've ever seen." Her voice was flat, oddly monotone.

"I didn' mean to," Sirius half-sobbed. "I was jus' so angry, seein' what they'd done to Frank an' Pols, an' with the McKinnons lyin' there dead like that..." He shuddered, arms closing even tighter around Remus, until the silver flask in his left hand pressed into Remus's back, the metal stinging him with cold even through his robes.

"Padfoot..." Remus didn't know what to say. What could he say? What could anyone say? He was acutely conscious of Vesta's eyes watching the two of them from across the room.

"Oh, bugger." Sirius pulled back slightly, loosening his hold on Remus to gaze at Vesta's silver hip flask, as if slightly surprised to find it still in his hand. "I'm burnin' you, aren't I? S-sorry." He dropped the thing onto the floor, oblivious to Vesta's indignant mutter. "I only 'ad a few pulls, I swear. I don' know what's wrong with me."

"I think you're in shock." Remus reached up to catch Sirius's chin in one hand, gazing intently into his eyes to gauge to size of the pupils. They were definitely dilated, but whether that was due psychogenic shock or simply to whatever was in Vesta's hip flask, he couldn't be sure.

'Oh, for God's sake, Black," Vesta's voice cut across their conversation--if you could call it that, disjointed as it was--like a knife. "Why don't you and your boyfriend just go ahead and make out in the middle of the squadroom already?'

Sirius jerked back from Remus as if he'd been hit, face going even paler. Vesta was instantly contrite. "Nevermind," she muttered. "Just ignore me, I'm worried about Frank and Pub, that's all." She crossed the carpet to scoop her hip flask up off the floor, lifting it to her mouth and throwing her head back in a long swallow.

"Does everyone in the aurors know about us?" Remus asked, in spite of himself.

"Only Captain Moody," Sirius said. He raised one hand to run his fingers through his hair, loose from usual ponytail and hanging in blood-stiffened elflocks around his face. "I 'ad 'im put you down as my next of kin. I don' know 'ow she knows."

Vesta sighed. "Well, judging by the bite marks on your neck, you were either dating a werewolf or involved with a vampire. And while there are several dark creatures working for our side, only one lives with you. And nobody hugs someone like that unless they're in love."

"Don', don' tell Pols, please," Sirius whispered. "She... she... Oh, Christ, it might not even matter. She might be dyin', for all I know."

"Black..." Vesta shook her head. "Don't jump to conclusions. Wait 'til Potter or Wet Blanket Andy gets here with the medical reports."

As if her words had conjured him up, the squadroom door suddenly creaked open, revealing a wet and flushed James Potter, one hand still clutching his Nimbus 900. His glasses were half fogged-over from the transition from outdoors to the warmer squadroom, and behind them, his brown eyes were wide and shocked.

"Sweet Merlin! Sirius! Are you okay?"

"I... Jim..." Sirius shook his head slowly, looking very close to crying. "It's not my blood."

James looked awed, staring at Sirius as if he'd never seen him before. "Then whose... no, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know." He shook his head sharply. "I'm supposed to tell you that Polaris and Frank are going to be fine."

Vesta sagged with relief, suddenly looking several years younger as previously unnoticed lines seemed to fade from her face. Sirius latched onto Remus's arm in a near-death grip, as if needing support to keep his footing.

"Polaris has a slight concussion--they're keeping her overnight for observation. Frank's got a broken femur, but they're going to pull the bone fragments out and give him Skelo-Gro. There's going to be some scarring, but..." James's voice trailed off as he realized that no one was listening to him any longer. "Padfoot, are you sure you're okay? Maybe you ought to go home and, er, get cleaned off."

"Yeah, home'd be good." Sirius allowed Remus to lead him towards the doorway. James stepped aside to let them pass, laying one hand on Sirius's shoulder for a moment. His eyes found Remus's, and he apparently trusted what he saw there, because he nodded slightly and held the door open for the two of them as they left the room.

"You apparate us, Moony," Sirius said, voice weighted with exhaustion. "I don' think I oughta try, the way my hands are shakin'."

Remus obeyed, feeling Sirius's arm wrap around his waist in mid-transit, his knees apparently giving out as the world dipped and distorted around them. Remus practically had to drag him up the stairs to the flat. Once they were inside, he pulled Sirius into the bathroom, ignoring the wet, muddy footprint the two of them tracked across the carpet.

Sirius leaned against the edge of the sink as Remus turned the shower on, nearly ripping his robe open in his haste to get it off. He balled the blood-saturated fabric up and flung it into a corner of the room. Beneath it, his jeans and t-shirt were equally soaked, sticking to his body as they dried a disgusting red-brown colour. He must have been standing right next to that Death Eater, right in the middle of the arterial spray. Remus suppressed a shudder.

Jeans and t-shirt followed robe, until Sirius stood naked on the tiles. Some of that blood had been his. There was a long, thin cut across his ribs, bleeding sluggishly. He was still shaking, gooseflesh rising on his arms, though the room was not cold.

Remus shrugged off his own robe and stepped into the shower, tugging on Sirius's arm until the other man joined him under the hot spray. Pink-tinted water swirled down the drain as the blood on Sirius's skin and in his hair was sluiced off. Now that they were back home, now that everything was over, Remus felt himself begin to shiver as well, delayed reaction catching up with him. For a few terrifying minutes, back in the office, he had feared that Sirius might be dead. That he would be left abandoned and packless, alone, forced to seek in vain for a new mate. A mate he would never find. No one but Sirius could fill up all of the empty places inside of him, satisfy both man and wolf, until the two almost seemed to blend into a harmonious whole.

As the hot water poured down and the steam rose up around them, Remus reached for a washcloth and began to scrub the last remnants of blood off of his lover's body, cleaning gently along the edges of the cut.

"When Lily and I heard that there were aurors down... They didn't say who it was. They just said 'Black.' Oh God, Padfoot, I was so afraid it was you." The words spilled out of him suddenly, like a dam breaking.

Sirius reached up and took hold of his hand, halting the scrubbing and gently pulling the washcloth away, dropping it on the floor of the shower. "I promised I'd be careful, remember? My word to my pack leader." He stepped forward, arms coming up around Remus. "F'r a moment, back at the, at the McKinnons', I was afraid I was gonna die and never see you again," he whispered. "I never break promises. I don' wanna start."

The two of them stayed in the shower long past the point when the last of the blood had been washed away, stayed until their skin had grown flushed from the heat and the water was beginning to run cooler as the hot water tanks emptied, holding each other until they both had stopped shaking.

We make love, too hard, too fast
He falls asleep, his face a mask
He wakes with the shakes and he drinks from his flask
I put my arms around him

Hold me 'neath the London skies
Let's not talk of how or why
Tomorrow's soon enough to die
But right now the war is over.

^_~