OMG fic?!?! aka, you will all love remus or i will know the reason why.
Title: Realistically
Rating: PG for mild language.
Characters/Pairings: Sirius, James, and Remus. Gen.
Disclaimer: Ahahahaha. You're funny. Not mine.
Summary: Remus strives for heroics and survival during the first war, but can't stop thinking. Some interactions with James and Sirius thrown in for good (sentimental) measure.
Notes: I really had to write some Remus fic. Honestly. It was a compulsion. :P I broke several rather basic grammar rules in an attempt to get a message across. I'm not exactly sure what the message was, but hopefully it's in there somewhere. Maybe you can tell me. ;]
"Realistically," he tells Sirius as they sit in the James' (the Potters', the Potters', he isn't quite used to it) living room, "just, think about this realistically. Frank and Alice --"
"Moony you bore." Sirius says, with a pinch of humor and a lot of desperation. "We can't all be dry old geniuses."
For one instant Remus wants to hex him because he doesn't want to be dry, or old, but Frank and Alice, oh God, Frank and Alice, and he's tried not to think about it but he can't seem to stop thinking -- but then he remembers that it's Sirius, and he can't help it, and sits back in his armchair and doesn't think for two hours (or, well, alright he thinks a bit, but not much at all, and it's a vast improvement over imagining torn limbs and empty eyes every time he tries to take a deep breath).
Being in the presence of James and Sirius has always helped him stop thinking, something he ceased to complain about years and year ago.
"That's our Moony," James says as he sprawls in a chair of his own, "wise before his time."
Being 'our Moony' helps make up for things, usually.
*****
Remus sees the look in Bellatrix's eyes as she taunts Sirius, but more importantly he sees the look in Sirius' eyes and wants very badly to jinx her into unconsciousness and then wake her up and repeat the process, possibly several times, but he knows that realistically (damn it) he's a competent dueler, better than competent, but no match for Bellatrix. And realistically, he wouldn't have the guts to do it anyway. Of course realistically, his guts aren't the problem.
"Chivalrous Gryffindors." Marlene McKinnon had said to all of them once, to James and Sirius and Remus and Peter. "To noble for your own good."
Of course, she's dead now, isn't she?
Remus shuts down that train of thought in time to watch Bellatrix get away.
Sirius mutters a few things under his breath that Remus had never heard until his first year at Hogwarts (he heard them from Sirius, incidentally) and James claps him on the shoulder, fishing for something helpful to say.
For once Remus knows the right words before James does, brimming over as he is with words, and uses them; the exact same words Sirius had used moments before. Sirius and James stare at him for a moment and then both of their faces break into grins, Sirius' sarcastic and unexpected, James' crooked and open.
"Good man." James tells him later, quietly, and claps him on the shoulder, which is ridiculously inadequate, and yet exactly what Remus needs to hear.
*****
Remus really can't stop thinking, and sometimes he cannot escape the stark, terrifying realism that is the inside of his head. That's when he starts making footnotes to his own thoughts, adding desperate postscripts and what-ifs.
I should come with supplemental reading, he thinks one cold November day, and tries to shove thoughts like James and Lily and dead out his ears.
In the end everything slams into that spot just between his shoulder blades, and the weight of all the hours spent not panicking settles there to wait.
He would give a great deal to know what it's waiting for.
*****
He has the distinct idea that James and Sirius could make the weight disappear entirely, but they aren't here, are they, because one of them's dead and one of them's almost worse than. All the books he read when he was young would say worse than, sans the qualifier, the books about quests and glory, but despite everything he can't wish Sirius dead. And those thoughts, the ones he can't stop, tell him he'd like to see Sirius again wouldn't he, in hopes that Sirius, who was never very good with words, can offer some explanation.
The irony, he thinks bleakly, is that he, Remus, can (and does, because there he goes thinking again) think of dozens of explanations, but he knows that Sirius won't be able to come up with a single one.
Feedback is loved to bits, pieces, and other generally small things. :]
Rating: PG for mild language.
Characters/Pairings: Sirius, James, and Remus. Gen.
Disclaimer: Ahahahaha. You're funny. Not mine.
Summary: Remus strives for heroics and survival during the first war, but can't stop thinking. Some interactions with James and Sirius thrown in for good (sentimental) measure.
Notes: I really had to write some Remus fic. Honestly. It was a compulsion. :P I broke several rather basic grammar rules in an attempt to get a message across. I'm not exactly sure what the message was, but hopefully it's in there somewhere. Maybe you can tell me. ;]
"Realistically," he tells Sirius as they sit in the James' (the Potters', the Potters', he isn't quite used to it) living room, "just, think about this realistically. Frank and Alice --"
"Moony you bore." Sirius says, with a pinch of humor and a lot of desperation. "We can't all be dry old geniuses."
For one instant Remus wants to hex him because he doesn't want to be dry, or old, but Frank and Alice, oh God, Frank and Alice, and he's tried not to think about it but he can't seem to stop thinking -- but then he remembers that it's Sirius, and he can't help it, and sits back in his armchair and doesn't think for two hours (or, well, alright he thinks a bit, but not much at all, and it's a vast improvement over imagining torn limbs and empty eyes every time he tries to take a deep breath).
Being in the presence of James and Sirius has always helped him stop thinking, something he ceased to complain about years and year ago.
"That's our Moony," James says as he sprawls in a chair of his own, "wise before his time."
Being 'our Moony' helps make up for things, usually.
*****
Remus sees the look in Bellatrix's eyes as she taunts Sirius, but more importantly he sees the look in Sirius' eyes and wants very badly to jinx her into unconsciousness and then wake her up and repeat the process, possibly several times, but he knows that realistically (damn it) he's a competent dueler, better than competent, but no match for Bellatrix. And realistically, he wouldn't have the guts to do it anyway. Of course realistically, his guts aren't the problem.
"Chivalrous Gryffindors." Marlene McKinnon had said to all of them once, to James and Sirius and Remus and Peter. "To noble for your own good."
Of course, she's dead now, isn't she?
Remus shuts down that train of thought in time to watch Bellatrix get away.
Sirius mutters a few things under his breath that Remus had never heard until his first year at Hogwarts (he heard them from Sirius, incidentally) and James claps him on the shoulder, fishing for something helpful to say.
For once Remus knows the right words before James does, brimming over as he is with words, and uses them; the exact same words Sirius had used moments before. Sirius and James stare at him for a moment and then both of their faces break into grins, Sirius' sarcastic and unexpected, James' crooked and open.
"Good man." James tells him later, quietly, and claps him on the shoulder, which is ridiculously inadequate, and yet exactly what Remus needs to hear.
*****
Remus really can't stop thinking, and sometimes he cannot escape the stark, terrifying realism that is the inside of his head. That's when he starts making footnotes to his own thoughts, adding desperate postscripts and what-ifs.
I should come with supplemental reading, he thinks one cold November day, and tries to shove thoughts like James and Lily and dead out his ears.
In the end everything slams into that spot just between his shoulder blades, and the weight of all the hours spent not panicking settles there to wait.
He would give a great deal to know what it's waiting for.
*****
He has the distinct idea that James and Sirius could make the weight disappear entirely, but they aren't here, are they, because one of them's dead and one of them's almost worse than. All the books he read when he was young would say worse than, sans the qualifier, the books about quests and glory, but despite everything he can't wish Sirius dead. And those thoughts, the ones he can't stop, tell him he'd like to see Sirius again wouldn't he, in hopes that Sirius, who was never very good with words, can offer some explanation.
The irony, he thinks bleakly, is that he, Remus, can (and does, because there he goes thinking again) think of dozens of explanations, but he knows that Sirius won't be able to come up with a single one.
Feedback is loved to bits, pieces, and other generally small things. :]