The Hollow Men

Last night you bent your head against my knee and cried. I held you in my arms. Tonight your body enfolds me like a shroud, a thin, cold thing, a strange thing, and I'm clinging on to you as you cling to me.

We have to rebuild everything, you said. We will, I told you, and I want to believe it, Sirius, I want to, but it's hard and I don't know if I'll have the strength for both of us. You're clutching at me, hanging on as if you were a drowning man and I'm your straw. My cheek is wet with your tears.

I'm relearning the lines of your body, running my hands over scars where no scars were, over the places where your muscles used to be. Your bones are sharp beneath the skin, and even your skin has changed. A different map, on different paper, and I don't know if I know the way.

You don't feel like Sirius. You don't smell like Sirius. You don't taste like Sirius.

Your hands on me are cautious where once they would have been sure. I wonder what my hands are telling you. Are they confident, are they assured, do they feel as if they've never left your skin? I'm relearning the language of you, with my hands, my fingertips, my lips, my tongue; I'm rebuilding my vocabulary. For twelve years I've been deaf and dumb and now that you're here, I don't know what to say.

Now and then our eyes meet and we look away at once, as we fumble for a rhythm we shared and lost long ago. A false start or two, and we find something - it isn't right, but it's good enough. Your breathing is shallow, harsh, uneven, like a dog's panting. I wonder what I sound like to you.

There hasn't been 'someone else', Sirius. I told you. No one else could fill that hole. But you're someone else now, and so am I, and when at last you throw back your head and cry out, you don't sound like Sirius. It's a different cry, hoarse and high like an animal, a mixture of pain and release. And when you exhale, that long, slow, shuddering gasp, and your eyes slide over mine and away, you don't look like Sirius to me.

And I don't know what to do or what to say, so I whisper something, reassuring and meaningless, like wind in dry grass. Your hair is limp and lifeless, and as I stroke it I realise you're crying again, so I gather you up and hold you as tightly as I can. Your arms go blindly around my waist, your head droops onto my shoulder, and all I can feel for you is pity and tenderness and the memory of love.

I promised once to look after you, whenever you needed it, and I meant it, Sirius. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs.

I can't do this without you, Moony.

Oh God, Sirius, I know. I know.

--

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

(T. S. Eliot: The Hollow Men)