Crossing Lines

Crossing Lines

When the bough breaks,

The cradle will fall...

At first the firm, calm hand on his shoulder had been enough to pull Sirius Black back from the brink.

The soothing deft touch was enough to stop the trembling and quiet the moans from the nightmares that swooped down like Dementors in the dead of night; when Sirius would wake up with a start, alone in Remus Lupin's narrow bed and tangled in the sheets, his mouth desert-dry and skin flushed and sweating. The smooth hand stroking across his shoulder reminded him he was alive and thankfully, not alone, not with Remus sitting beside him. With Remus to anchor him firmly, he'd drop back to sleep just as quickly, and forget the horror the next morning.

But (as sometimes happens when one is finally sheltered in unquestioned warmth and friendship and safety), Sirius' defenses, borne of thirteen years of keeping sordid reality at bay, slipped, and even that sure warm hand wasn't enough to stay his mind's rush towards hell. He had half-heartedly offered, and Dumbledore (damn him) had accepted, the Black ancestral home for the new Order headquarters; and this precipitated a new wave of stark memories, all of which he'd fought his entire life to repress, only to hear them join in the chorus that already taunted his nightly dreams.

A couple of nights before moving to Twelve Grimmauld Place, under the non-light of the new moon in the haven of Remus' small Dorset country cottage, he shot up blindly in the full grip of terror.

Sirius stands in the playground on Magnolia Crescent in Little Whinging, where he first saw Harry after those twelve hell-bound years in Azkaban, and there is Harry again. Only Harry is not thirteen years old now, but thirteen months, pudgy and smiling, swinging in the baby swing with Lily pushing him and oh God, Lily, with her copper hair burnished like living fire in the September sun. Yet the sky is not autumn blue or even rain-cloud grey, it is bitter green, and only Sirius sees it and knows what it means...

Lily and Harry are laughing, the toddler's chortles carrying on the wind and piercing Sirius in the heart. James walks up to them, and Sirius wants only to reach out and ruffle that tousled head and never let him go again...Lily lifts a sweetly struggling Harry out of the baby swing and hands him over to James and James snuggles him tightly, loving and wise and all things as they should have been...

James and Lily inexplicably fade away and Peter is standing there in their place, Peter the rat, who holds Harry triumphantly and smirks conspiratorially at Sirius and says "Let me tell you a secret." Sirius lunges at him, shimmering into Padfoot in mid-air, thinking only Protect Harry at all costs--but Peter sidesteps and Padfoot misses, and it is not Peter's neck into which his jaws clamp but Harry's tender innocent throat...

Sirius is falling, falling, falling to the ground and it is not Harry's lifeless form he cradles in his arms but Remus, Remus smooth and unscarred save for Padfoot's vicious puncture wounds in his neck. His neck is snapped, his head lolls at a sickening angle but he still stares up at Sirius with those warm and kind brown eyes and whispers "Dark Creatures are born, not made..."

Now Sirius is back in Azkaban, an Azkaban that somehow exactly resembles his ancestral home at Twelve Grimmauld Place. He is restrained and ready for the Dementor's Kiss, and he is giddily resigned because everything else good and beautiful is gone. The Dementor drifts up to him with the chill and stink of death wrapped around it like a lover. The Dementor pulls down its hood to give the Kiss and Sirius screams because it is himself.

Shooting up, back arched, Sirius screams hemorrhaged, wordless and liquid before collapsing in hiccuping gasps as his body starved for air in the close stillness. Right now, at this moment, he did not know who or what or where he was.

From the living room, on his makeshift sofa bed, Remus woke with a start. Immediately alert, he listened to the initial sounds of the nightmare-in-progress. Since Sirius had arrived to stay with him, they'd reached a tacit, fragile agreement, one that had slowly began to strengthen the bonds that had stretched hair-thin, though thankfully had not snapped completely, all those years ago. They were forging new boundaries, of space and silence on certain things, the nightmares being among them. So usually he didn't go immediately to his side when the first signs appeared; occasionally the dreams abated by themselves and he could leave well enough alone. When they didn't, he'd found that sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand on Sirius' shoulder, settled him quickly without the need to fully breach the space between. As Sirius never seemed to fully remember them the next day, Remus felt at ease enough to go to him and soothe him in the night, and not mention it in the daylight, though he saw the shadow of them lurk unspoken just behind his friend's somber eyes.

Once or twice Remus stayed after the shudders subsided and the breathing slowed, perched on the edge of the narrow bed until he knew Sirius was fully asleep again. Then he would steal back to his own solitary nest on the sofa and, sleepless now, mull over the turn of events that had brought Sirius to seek solace under his roof. He did not yet know what Sirius had become, had dared not even guess. He did know his current duty to this man was borne in the memory of friendship for the boy he'd been, an obligation he knew he had to meet, no matter the cost--one he might have resented, but couldn't, if only because he knew Sirius would always be paying for it too.

On this dark, humid-weighted night when the moans rose above the suffocating air to piercing shrieks, Remus sprinted to his side.

Remus sank onto the bed and, reaching around violently flailing limbs, gripped Sirius' shoulder as if trying to yank him back from the yawning abyss. "Sirius!"

Sirius shook his head furiously, lank hair plastered around his face, and tried to fight Remus off too, fists pounding desperately against Remus' chest, keening in a high-pitched animal whine.

"Padfoot. Padfoot! PADFOOT!" Over and over, he used the old boyhood endearment, the last a shaken shout--because the nightmares had never been this bad until now.

There was no response.

Sirius stared right at him but did not see him; his blank murky eyes stared right through him, to the hell only he could see. Remus' heart chilled in fear at the man he could no longer recognize. Unable to bear witness to this slow destruction of his friend any longer, something in Remus' carefully guarded reserve snapped.

Sod the boundaries.

At Hogwarts, as children, they'd sometimes shared a bed, generally just before and after the full moon, when Remus' body would thrum with the waxing, then waning magic; and only Sirius', then later Padfoot's, body warmth could moderate it somewhat. He'd been grateful then, for Sirius' boyhood comfort; so now, letting that memory bridge the gap between them, Remus lifted the twisted covers and crawled into the narrow bed beside him.

Sirius had now withdrawn completely into himself. Still shuddering uncontrollably, he did not seem to notice another body in his bed. Telling himself that his chest ached terribly only because of the physical blows Sirius had rained on it, Remus pulled him into his arms, rocking him back and forth to soothe the anguished struggling. He guided the dark shaking head onto his shoulder, not taking notice of the sweat-soaked bedclothes or Sirius' tear-stained face against his thin cotton shirt, absorbing the now-silent sobs; he slowly rubbed his bare back in small circles and whispered comforting nonsense syllables until Sirius' trembling stopped and his hitched breathing slowed--

And grew regular.

With a soft snore.

Still nestled against him.

This, Remus thought ruefully, made it too difficult to slip out of the bed without waking him and thus risking the wrath of a sleep-deprived Padfoot. His lips quirked in a brief smile. With Sirius settled now, Remus' own fatigue dropped on him like a huge, crushing weight. Too tired to care, Remus fell asleep beside him, sharing the pillow.

Sirius stirred in the grey half-light just before dawn. In that floating limbo between sleep and waking, when nightmares are held mercifully at bay and consciousness is just out of reach, he reached out to find something solid and warm beside him. Eyes still blissfully closed, he sought out and burrowed instinctively like a young child into the wonderful, soothing heat. The warmth embraced him more tightly with a wordless whisper, Safe. You are safe here. Nuzzling deeper into it, he dropped back to a restful, dreamless sleep, lulled by the steady heartbeat under him.

When he woke again, the sun had risen, about seven in the morning by the angle of the beams, and the bedroom was flooded with diffuse bluish light through the faded curtains. He'd never felt so peaceful or so comfortable, and curiously never so grateful, for the slumbering warmth at his back. How had it got there? He rolled over to see--

What the fuck?

Oh.

He knew he ought to be fully embarrassed at whatever unmanly show of naked vulnerability he'd displayed, which had brought Remus to his bed. As indeed he was, he acknowledged, and he was thankful Remus was not yet awake to witness the furious flush now blooming over his face.

He supposed he ought to extricate himself from the closed circle of his friend's arms (cozy though it was, he had to admit), climb out of bed despite the outrageously early hour, cook some breakfast and never again think about or discuss what happened.

Instead, on some undefined and inexplicable impulse, he stayed to watch his friend sleep.

Of course Sirius had seen him asleep before. He hadn't shared a Gryffindor dormitory room with the boy for seven years and a small crowded London flat with the young man for another four without having seen that too many times to count. In his bed or on the sofa, Remus always snuffled, remarkably like a canine, with his mouth open against a pillow and gently drooling, curled in on himself, childish and graceless and thus oddly endearing to observe, though Sirius had never openly admitted it.

It was just that Sirius had never seen Remus sleep, much less thought about it.

So, on his side with his tumbled head propped up by his hand, Sirius studied Remus in repose.

Remus still snuffled the way Sirius remembered, replete with the thin line of drool pooling on the pillow. Still curled in, he was relatively motionless, save for his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, though his remarkably long lashes fluttered and a muscle in his jaw twitched. Whilst there was silver in the stubble of his beard, much of it appeared to be strikingly auburn, not sandy. One fine scar shot down the bridge of his nose. The blanket had twisted about his waist and the thin cotton pajama shirt was partly open at the neck, revealing a strip of pale, scarred skin beneath. Intently studying him, Sirius could still see lingering traces of the boy under the shockingly grey fringe that fell across his eyebrows; the soft wisps of innocence before crushing loss, etched in the tired lines of the man's face.

His breath caught, and from somewhere in his battered heart he felt a surge of aching tenderness for this still-young man who had grown too old before his time. "Oh, Moony," he mouthed, his eyes stinging, shaking his head in regret. "You never should have had to suffer like that. Not because of me." He reached out to smooth a tuft of hair off of his forehead, calloused fingers feathering over furrowed skin. Neither you nor Harry should have had to suffer. And please God, let me be able to make that up to you both somehow.

Remus stirred, and Sirius quickly withdrew his hand and schooled his face to something a little less maudlin so that when Remus opened his eyes to a lopsidedly grinning Sirius watching him, nothing would appear to be amiss.

Remus groaned, rubbing his eyes with one hand and blinking blearily, trying to bring Sirius' absurdly Cheshire cat-like features into focus. "Was I really that drunk?" he quipped, sleep slurring the edges of his words.

"And a sunny good morning to you too, dear Moony," was Sirius' flippant, and fond, reply. "Breakfast?"

"'S long as you don't burn it like last time." He yawned mid-way through "burn", making Sirius snort with barely suppressed laughter. "Don't laugh at me, you bloody git," Remus grumbled.

"Are you mocking my culinary skills again?"

"What culinary skills?"

"Hmmph. Sodding prat." Sirius swatted Remus' head affectionately, sat up and grinned at him again, relieved that they were slowly, finally starting to fall into the casual rhythm and ease of their past friendship; tentative maybe, but real enough.

Remus returned the easy smile, then, fully awake, grew serious again. "You all right, Padfoot?" he asked carefully. "Last night..."

"Yeah, 'm fine, Moony." His voice brittled, sounding false even to his own ears. His smile faded, and tensing, he felt like glass about to shatter.

Remus nodded slowly. "I--just wondered, getting ready to move to Grimmauld Place and all--I thought maybe you just needed a little extra assurance last night," he offered diffidently, laying his hand gently on his friend's shoulder.

Sirius bit his lip and looked away, long hair swinging around his face to hide his pained expression. "They were just dreams, y'know?" He mumbled awkwardly and blinked rapidly, not wanting to admit how much he'd needed that 'extra assurance'. "Just--dreams." He pasted a cocky smile on his face before meeting Remus' eyes again, took his hand, and squeezed it briefly. Remus couldn't help but notice the shadows still haunting his friend's eyes, but he mercifully refrained from commenting. "Now let's go, Moony, breakfast awaits and I am a starving man."

They both rose from the narrow bed and went about their respective mornings. There was a lot to do in the next two days, before moving back to Twelve Grimmauld Place in London.