The Deafening Silence

We open the door and we have no words for each other. I have been expecting him for some time now - Dumbledore had the courtesy to owl me before his arrival, informing me of the tasks set before him. It just took him longer than I expected to make his way to my humble abode, tucked far away in the middle of the nondescript woods, safe from prying eyes or narrow minds.

He looks atrocious, much as he did a year ago when I finally met him again in the Shrieking Shack at the end of my all-too-brief employment at Hogwarts. His robes are threadbare, his eyes and hair are wild, and he wears no shoes. He does not seem to have gained back any of the weight he lost during his imprisonment.

And I remember with heartbreakingly vivid clarity a time when he was tall and strong, broad-shouldered, with thick black hair that made him the picture of rebelliousness when he rode his motorbike. I remember when I was the sickly, scrawny one - those days when I first arrived at Hogwarts, I was the poster child for neglected prepubescent lycanthropes. Not that anyone really cared about neglected prepubescent lycanthropes, other than my three best friends.

He is looking at his bare feet. His face is full of the same shame and guilt and muted rage that I saw in the Shrieking Shack, until he finally looks up at me. I look into the eyes I once knew so well, the eyes that I once said looked best when they were an inch above my own and glazed over with desire, and I know that we need no words. I open the door fully and we fall into each other's arms.

It is awkward, at first - awkward, and somehow tender. I smell the years of dirt and sweat and terror upon him, but underneath it is the scent that will eternally conjure up images of first love and starlit strolls and long days of lying in bed, making love. It is Sirius's scent, one that I always loved, one that for twelve long years would periodically haunt me - every few years I would be walking down a street somewhere and I would smell him, or think I smelled him, and the world would cave in on me and I would have to duck into a pub somewhere and sit down so I didn't cry or faint or die.

"Sirius," I whisper, holding his fragile body in my arms with a tempered gentleness, a genuine concern, that I rarely felt during the years we were lovers. He was the strong one then. "You came."

"Remus," he replies, his voice a ragged breath. He is the first to step back, balancing on his dirty feet on the doorframe. "If it's - I mean, Dumbledore -"

"Please stay," I say immediately. There is such a relief in his eyes that I cannot resist touching him, putting out my hands once again to lightly grip his thin arms. As if I am afraid he will run away, leave me again...

"Thanks...thanks, Remus." He is weaker than the last time I saw him, which was over a year ago. I wish I could have been with him after that night in Hogsmeade, wish I could have restored him to his former being - to the achingly handsome man I fell in love with. It must have been the fury at Peter, the passion with which he kept his oath to Lily and James, that had animated him so that night. He is a mere shadow of that now.

"Come inside," I instruct him, pulling him gently in through the door and closing it behind him. I finally let go of him, because the awkward sense pervading my kitchen is now rolling over me as well. "What do you need? Food? Sleep? ...A bath?"

Our eyes meet and we both acknowledge the humor, minimal though it is. His eyes are silver; mine are gold. We had always remarked that that was funny, considering the rest of him was bright and golden like the sun, and the rest of me was pale and silver like the moon. We had said it connected us - that we completed each other.

"Food would be good," he says, and slowly lowers himself into one of the two chairs around my tiny kitchen table. This act of sitting makes him look so old, so tired. "Thanks," he adds again.

"Sirius," I say, looking him directly in his silver eyes, so he knows I mean it. "It's nothing. It's no more than what you would do for me."

He nods, and while I make tea and sandwiches as though I am his mother and not his ex-lover, I ask him where he has been, what he has been doing, how Harry is recovering after the Triwizard Tournament. It is short, rather tense conversation at first, but gradually we lapse into our old habits - the way we spoke to each other, the tones of voice we used, the expressions of speech we had retained since boyhood.

"Whom did you visit after the Tournament?"

"Who didn't I visit, is more like it. Mundungus Fletcher...Arabella Figg...Lane Levine...Tatiana Shiresong... The Weasleys are in. So is Snape." This last remark is delivered in a tone of absolute disgust.

"So Dumbledore said. He is on our side now, Sirius."

"That doesn't mean I have to like him."

I have to smile at this remark - the quintessential Sirius. 'I may be down, but I'm not that down.' I say lightly, "Of course not."

"Don't patronize me."

"I'm not patronizing you."

Awkward pause. We had always equated being patronizing with taking the condescending, paternal attitude towards someone. When did I become paternal? Both of us grew up hating our fathers. "Sorry," I murmur, and he returns, "No, I'm sorry."

I set the sandwiches and tea before him, and join him at the table. I cannot take my eyes off him. I am making a list in my mind of the things he will need, things I will be able to do for him. He needs robes, a wand, toiletries, a comprehensive review of spells and our training from the Order of the Phoenix. While I think, he devours three of the sandwiches and takes two cups of tea.

"Better?" I ask with a smile.

He treats me to a remembrance of his old grin. "Much," he answers, still remaining stiff and rather hunched over in the chair.

"How long have you been traveling?"

He still chews on his bottom lip while thinking - old habits die hard. He pins the lip between his teeth, much like I have done with that lip many, many times before. After a minute of retrospection, he replies, "Probably two...maybe three weeks. Yeah, three." Suddenly he looks up at me with those silver eyes. "I'm tired, Remus."

"It is rather late. Would you like to sleep?"

"No." Is that...fear I hear in his voice?

So I indulge him, and ask him another question. "How is Harry, Sirius? Dumbledore told me about the Tournament..."

"He's - he's alright. I just...wish I had done more for him." And he looks away from me, his eyes pointed towards the ancient linoleum floor but not really seeing it. "I feel like I failed him, Remus. Just like Lily and James--"

"Stop it," I say, as his voice begins to crack. "Stop, Sirius. You never failed them. Or if you did, then we all did. And you haven't failed Harry, either. He's safe, isn't he? He's alive."

"But all those years - Lily and James trusted me to take care of him, when they were gone..."

I reach across the table and grip one of his hands in both of mine. "Sirius," I say, and he looks at me. We hold the gaze for long minutes, simply sitting there, looking at each other after all these years. I wonder if I have changed as much as he has - if it is possible to change as much as he has, and still have shreds of the same person left within.

I wish I were a mind reader, or a telepathic. I wish I could tell him about all the injustices in the world that happened to us, all the terrible things that tore us apart in the prime of our love. I would tell him about a world that was so heartless, it would murder beautiful people like the Potters and place their innocent, orphaned son first in the clutches of Voldemort, then with fiendish Muggles. And I would tell him that at one time, when we were strong and young and brave and in love, we would have made love, and in that love we would have found the strength to continue and fight to reform such a heartless world. But now all I can do is stare into the fathomless silver eyes of the man I once loved.

The man I still loved?

Finally, I smile faintly at him. "You should go to bed," I murmur, and stand up, keeping hold of his hand to help him to his feet.

And he is in my arms again, clutching my robe, holding me so tightly that I am almost surprised. There are no tears, no lamentations, no wails about the injustices committed, only a kind of sad, exhausted desperation in his embrace. I let him stand there as long as he wants. I lay one hand gently on his back, I thread the other through his unwashed hair, and I hold him as I have longed to do so for these many years.

At last he lets go and takes a deep, steadying breath, and lets me lead him to the bedroom. "You can sleep in here," I tell him softly, using my wand to light the candles around the room. The bed is made up perfectly; my clothes are tucked into their drawers. I will sleep on the couch.

"No, it's your bedroom, Remus," he protests, trying to walk past me, but I stop him effortlessly with my hand.

"No, it's where you're going to sleep. I'll take the couch."

"Don't leave me?" he whispers imploringly. And when he looks at me with such childlike pleading - not innocence, far from it, but honest pleading - I forget that he is my age and taller than me and was once my protector. He is so very fragile, and I have wanted to comfort him, to love him, for a year...truthfully, for more than a year. For all the years since I met him, when we were first years on the Hogwarts Express and James Potter introduced us.

"Of course I won't leave," I reply, and I step to the bed and turn down the covers. "Let me lock up, I'll be right back."

I go around the few rooms of the dismally small house, methodically charming the windows and doors as I do every night. Only tonight, it is even more important that I do so - tonight, I am harboring a fugitive, a fugitive whom it is imperative that I protect. I must protect him for Dumbledore - for Harry - for the memory of Lily and James - for myself.

When I return to the bedroom, he is perched on the edge of the bed - on the right side, I note, that was always his side - as if he is unsure that I really want him to sleep there. I come in the door and smile questioningly, then I recall that he has no clothes of his own - nothing except that one dirty robe. "Pajamas," I mutter, and reaching into one of my dresser drawers, retrieve a pair of pajama bottoms for him. Long cotton pants. I almost laugh at the thought, as I remember how often we both slept in the nude when we were younger, but that would be inappropriate now.

He takes them from my hand hesitantly, then stands up. I get another pair of pants and walk to the left side of the bed, which was always my side. Simple rituals, habits that linger on, I suppose. I turn around to let him change clothes, and slip into my own pants.

When I turn around, we are both standing on our opposite sides of the bed, facing each other, unsure of what to do. I get that familiar ache in my chest, that tightness in my throat, when I recall the nights we'd stumble into bed already undressing each other, the mornings we'd awake and convince each other to simply lie in bed all day. Getting into a bed together didn't use to be such an uncomfortable moment.

I take the first step and sit on the bed, drawing my legs up in front of me. When I do this, it breaks the spell of our frozen discomfort, and Sirius joins me on the bed, sitting, drawing covers over his body, sliding down so his head lies on the pillow. Then I do the same, and point my wand at the candles to put out the lights.

I sense him stiffen beside me - "Are you alright?" I ask, worrying that perhaps I should have left a candle lit.

"Fine." His answer is false and curt. I know he is embarrassed, both at the fact that I know he is now afraid of the dark and at the fact that it is true.

I can forgive him for this curtness. I was so overjoyed to learn that he truly was innocent, that it was Peter whose name I should have been cursing during those twelve years, that I could forgive him for anything. He lived through Azkaban to keep an oath to Lily and James - he was not the one who betrayed them. He was, in fact, the one who was the most loyal to them.

There is also much that I have done that I should be forgiven for. I should have known that he was innocent. I should have sensed Peter's betrayal before it got out of hand. What good are lycanthropic senses if I couldn't save the friends who had once saved me?

"Remus?" His voice is soft and timid.

"Yes?"

"I...I should sleep on the couch. I have nightmares." His voice is low. I know that to confess this weakness, to confess his many weaknesses, is a tremendous step for someone who was once so proud.

Nightmares? Nothing. This was my lover - this was my mate - this was my life, my heart and my soul. "No. You should sleep in here. The bed is softer, you'll sleep better."

"I don't want to wake you up."

"It's alright."

His body is relaxing slightly beside mine, so I go on, "Just rest, Sirius. You need to rest..."

I can feel my eyes growing heavy, much as I imagine his are. If I close my eyes, I can pretend that we are young again - that the last fifteen years never happened, that we are twenty again, and we are young and strong and brave and in love. And as my eyes are closed, somewhere under the covers my hand meets Sirius's, and we hold hands as we drift into the land of dreams--

~~~

I awake very suddenly to the familiar noises of a nightmare. I've had so many, I know the symptoms well: a sluggish thrashing in the covers, a struggling to breathe, a kind of low and frightened moaning. I roll over quickly and put my arms around Sirius, who, true to his word, is lost in the terrible recesses of his mind.

"Sirius, wake up. Wake up, love, you're having a nightmare," I whisper, holding him still and smoothing the hair back from his damp face.

His eyes flit open, and it takes him a moment to recognize me. "Remus!" he gasps, and without explanation presses his face to my chest and holds onto me for dear life. He is shaking - and I remember all the nights when Sirius would wake me from a nightmare and hold me while I shook. I remember the nights when there was no one to wake me. So I hold him and stroke his hair gently, and whisper to him until he stops shaking. He falls asleep holding me, and I fall asleep as well - because I am finally where I want to be: in my mate's arms.