Lifeline

Lifeline

All there is left to do is wait. For days now, Remus has felt the familiar pull of the moon on bones and sinews and skin. Sudden prickles that cause the hair on his arms to stand on end, shivers of muscle straining, twisting, bending to a stronger will, aching joints that make the school's endless staircases look like Everests of carved stone. He catches his friends watching him as the moon grows fuller, eyes darting his way a thousand times a day, scanning his face for a wince that never comes, measuring his pain in tiny signs that others miss: a certain catch of breath, a glaze of gold-flecked eyes that focus and unfocus on nothing at all, a sudden stillness in his smile. They jostle him and joke; the moment passes away, but the memory does not.

He wakes in the night, shaking in the light of the malevolent moon that spills, nearly full, across his bed. Sirius's voice cuts through the haze, "Look at me, Moony . . . breathe." Gray eyes, turned slate in the darkness, drag him up. "Breathe, Moony, look at me," Sirius whispers, his hands warm on Remus's face, his eyes burning, insistent. "Breathe!" A warm body drapes around him as the spasm passes and they drift together to sleep.

"Breathe, Moony, look at me." Curled up alone in the dark, Remus feels his body begin to shiver uncontrollably and knows that it is almost time. He buries his face in his hands, pictures gray eyes burning in his mind, his lifeline, his friend. The image wavers as his body spasms, hands clenching, nails digging into his palms. He has kept them short, knowing what would come, but even so, they press against his skin so hard they leave a mark. His breath jerks raggedly and he realizes that he has been holding it, reaches out again for the echo of Sirius's voice, his eyes, his breath, warm on Remus's skin, and gentle, as the moonlight is not.

He clings to them as his body jerks again, fighting to hold on as they fade in and out through the haze. His fingers tighten mercilessly in his hair as his body convulses, feet scrabbling to push him into a fetal position, rocking a little there, then rolling, twisting, trying to escape, as his body begins to burn.

"Breathe, Moony, look at me." The voice grows fainter. Remus whimpers as his skin quivers, pricked with a thousand pins of fiery ice. Blindly, he tosses his head and realizes dimly as the side of his face explodes into stars that he has hit it on something. He rolls away, gasping now, in and out in great, tearing heaves like the trapped animal he is becoming. Already he can smell his own fear, thick in the air, mingled with ancient dust and the sweat and blood of past moonlight.

"Breathe, Moony, look at me." The pain sears through him again, arching his spine into the air. The voice is almost gone. With a cry, Remus rolls onto his hands and knees, his body shaking, shuddering, as muscles tear and twist beyond his control. His hands convulse again, nails scoring the floor, and then the part of his mind that is still Remus goes out and the cry turns into a yelp, and then a snarl. The moon is singing in his bones now, calling, sweet and wild; a moment later, the black dog appears to set him free.