A Lonely Lifetime (Wk 47)
Title: A Lonely Lifetime
Author/Artist: blanketdinstars ( AO3)
Rating: G
Contents or warnings: 1997
Word count: 1262
Summary: Well, Remus thinks, he’s changed. He’s had to. Even these two years have wrought more in him than the thirteen previous. He moves into the sitting room, where they would dance to Muggle music, then crosses to the kitchen where Sirius kissed him up against the cupboards. He was liable to burn the food when he was distracted like that, Remus remembers.
But there’s no food now. No papers cluttering up the counters or sticking to the refrigerator he insisted that they buy to save the trouble of a freezing spell. All the cupboards stand empty.
Notes: Title from the Beatles song "I Will"
The funeral is predictably awful and surprisingly surreal. The beautiful summer’s day clashes with the event in a way that makes no sense. Remus does his best to ignore it, and holds Tonks’s hand because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Afterwards, she leaves with Moody, and Remus lingers a few yards away from the marble tomb. It’s a familiar sensation, standing at a graveside with the sun hot on his shoulders and a fresh breeze in his lungs. New, though, is the true loneliness-when he lost James and Lily and Peter, when he lost Sirius, there was always Dumbledore to tell him what to do next. Now he’s rudderless.
So he Apparates at the edge of the grounds, thinking vaguely of the Burrow, but when he spins back into existence he’s standing in Yorkshire on the front walk of the cottage.
He opens the door with a charm and knows that the house will smell empty, because it is, because nobody has lived in it for two years. That doesn’t prepare him for the stark absence of anything familiar. He knows the walls, but they don’t seem to know him.
Well, he thinks, he’s changed. He’s had to. Even these two years have wrought more in him than the thirteen previous. He moves into the sitting room, where they would dance to Muggle music, then crosses to the kitchen where Sirius kissed him up against the cupboards. He was liable to burn the food when he was distracted like that, Remus remembers.
But there’s no food now. No papers cluttering up the counters or sticking to the refrigerator he insisted that they buy to save the trouble of a freezing spell. All the cupboards stand empty.
Remus walks quietly through the cottage without thinking of anything specific, especially not the growing thunder in his chest that has nothing to do with the full moon less than two weeks away. He doesn’t think of how pointless all of this seems, or the fact that there is still a bit of dirt from some forgotten potted plant in a ring on one of the windowsills.
What he does think about is the sound of Sirius’s voice as it carried down the hall. He doesn’t mean to dwell on it, but there has to be something to fill the emptiness inside his head, and why not this? Why not the way it seemed to take up a physical space in the air?
“Who knows how long I’ve loved you?” Sirius croons from the bathroom, the door open and steam spilling out from the hot shower. “You know I love you still.”
Remus, in the kitchen, smiles and charms his bread into toast. Although you wouldn’t know it by the guitar and the long, vain hair, Sirius Black could sing a man to death-and not a pleasant demise. He winces at a particularly discordant note.
“For if I ever saw you,” Sirius continues, “I didn’t catch your name.” He is several seconds behind the record that plays from the sitting room, enhanced with Sonorous to fill the whole cottage.
On the next line, Sirius grows exponentially louder and also more off-key, and Remus has had enough. He abandons his breakfast and takes the needle off the record. The music stops abruptly.
“-Will always feel-hey!”
Remus hurries down the hall and into the tiny, humid bathroom. “Sorry,” he says, “but I’m trying to eat and-”
“-and my silvery voice is just too much for you, isn’t it?” It’s obvious even through the shower curtain that Sirius is frowning.
“If by ‘too much’ you mean ‘painful,’ then yes.”
“Pain is the price of beauty,” Sirius insists, and proceeds to sing a capella. “Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart!”
Remus rolls his eyes. “You haven’t got a heart.”
“Love you whenever we’re together, love you when we’re apart!” Sirius pauses. “Although I love you much more when we’re together.”
As Remus opens his mouth to retort, a hand whips out from behind the curtain and yanks him into the tub by the collar of his shirt. The water soaks his clothes immediately, making them much more difficult to remove.
“And when at last I find you,” Sirius murmurs, kissing him and unbuttoning his shirt at the same time, “your song will fill the air. Sing it loud so I can hear you-”
“It is not easy to be near you when you sing like this,” Remus tells him in spite of the warmth flooding his body.
“You sure?” Sirius pulls him closer and unbuckles his belt. “You’re not putting up much of a fight.”
“Well,” Remus points out, “you’ve stopped singing.”
Sirius laughs, and it sounds different in the tight space. “Oops.” He runs his fingers through Remus’s wet and tangling hair. “For the things you do endear you to me-oh, you know I will…”
The cottage is silent, as still as the grave, save for Remus, who gently knocks his head back against the wall he’s leaning on. Then he settles, and nothing moves.
He can still hear the music as if from a great distance. It hardly seems real-that they lived here and laughed and cried and were together, mostly, in so many ways. That this place holds, in the end, no real trace of them at all.
Suddenly that fact is crucial. Because what is he, and what were they, if nothing is left? Dumbledore is gone and buried but at least he has a tomb and lived a long, full life. Is it not memories, Remus thinks, that keep us alive even after we die? And who will remember Sirius Black-really remember him, as he was, in all his carelessness and ferocity and frantic, flawed beauty?
Without knowing exactly why he does it, Remus reaches for a dusty glass ashtray on the end table and hurls it at the opposite wall. It smashes into several sharp pieces. He follows it up with the little lamp and, quickly, a picture frame. Into the motion, picking up and swinging and releasing, he pours many things but mostly his anger. Why does it fall to him to carry this, and why does he have to do it alone?
“Why did you leave?” he demands, and it feels so good to say it that he screams again, “Why did you leave?” He scrapes his throat raw with the force of his own voice, because it isn’t fair. And yes, he is angry. He tried so hard not to be. But his heart pounds hot and the blood rushes in his ears, alone, alone, alone, and damn Sirius to hell for destroying him so completely.
He can see from here that the glass of the picture is shattered like a spiderweb. When he makes his way over to the debris at the foot of the wall and picks it up, all the tiny pieces fall out and he realizes that the frame itself is empty-they must have taken the photograph with them when they went to Grimmauld Place. Or perhaps it’s simply up in the attic. Either way he’s struck by the futility of throwing things and shouting at no one.
Because it’s true that no one will hear him. Sirius is gone. Like it or not, Sirius has left and so has Dumbledore and so did James and Lily and a dozen others whose faces have long since blurred. None of them will come back, and Sirius will not sing to him, off-key or otherwise.
Author/Artist: blanketdinstars ( AO3)
Rating: G
Contents or warnings: 1997
Word count: 1262
Summary: Well, Remus thinks, he’s changed. He’s had to. Even these two years have wrought more in him than the thirteen previous. He moves into the sitting room, where they would dance to Muggle music, then crosses to the kitchen where Sirius kissed him up against the cupboards. He was liable to burn the food when he was distracted like that, Remus remembers.
But there’s no food now. No papers cluttering up the counters or sticking to the refrigerator he insisted that they buy to save the trouble of a freezing spell. All the cupboards stand empty.
Notes: Title from the Beatles song "I Will"
The funeral is predictably awful and surprisingly surreal. The beautiful summer’s day clashes with the event in a way that makes no sense. Remus does his best to ignore it, and holds Tonks’s hand because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Afterwards, she leaves with Moody, and Remus lingers a few yards away from the marble tomb. It’s a familiar sensation, standing at a graveside with the sun hot on his shoulders and a fresh breeze in his lungs. New, though, is the true loneliness-when he lost James and Lily and Peter, when he lost Sirius, there was always Dumbledore to tell him what to do next. Now he’s rudderless.
So he Apparates at the edge of the grounds, thinking vaguely of the Burrow, but when he spins back into existence he’s standing in Yorkshire on the front walk of the cottage.
He opens the door with a charm and knows that the house will smell empty, because it is, because nobody has lived in it for two years. That doesn’t prepare him for the stark absence of anything familiar. He knows the walls, but they don’t seem to know him.
Well, he thinks, he’s changed. He’s had to. Even these two years have wrought more in him than the thirteen previous. He moves into the sitting room, where they would dance to Muggle music, then crosses to the kitchen where Sirius kissed him up against the cupboards. He was liable to burn the food when he was distracted like that, Remus remembers.
But there’s no food now. No papers cluttering up the counters or sticking to the refrigerator he insisted that they buy to save the trouble of a freezing spell. All the cupboards stand empty.
Remus walks quietly through the cottage without thinking of anything specific, especially not the growing thunder in his chest that has nothing to do with the full moon less than two weeks away. He doesn’t think of how pointless all of this seems, or the fact that there is still a bit of dirt from some forgotten potted plant in a ring on one of the windowsills.
What he does think about is the sound of Sirius’s voice as it carried down the hall. He doesn’t mean to dwell on it, but there has to be something to fill the emptiness inside his head, and why not this? Why not the way it seemed to take up a physical space in the air?
“Who knows how long I’ve loved you?” Sirius croons from the bathroom, the door open and steam spilling out from the hot shower. “You know I love you still.”
Remus, in the kitchen, smiles and charms his bread into toast. Although you wouldn’t know it by the guitar and the long, vain hair, Sirius Black could sing a man to death-and not a pleasant demise. He winces at a particularly discordant note.
“For if I ever saw you,” Sirius continues, “I didn’t catch your name.” He is several seconds behind the record that plays from the sitting room, enhanced with Sonorous to fill the whole cottage.
On the next line, Sirius grows exponentially louder and also more off-key, and Remus has had enough. He abandons his breakfast and takes the needle off the record. The music stops abruptly.
“-Will always feel-hey!”
Remus hurries down the hall and into the tiny, humid bathroom. “Sorry,” he says, “but I’m trying to eat and-”
“-and my silvery voice is just too much for you, isn’t it?” It’s obvious even through the shower curtain that Sirius is frowning.
“If by ‘too much’ you mean ‘painful,’ then yes.”
“Pain is the price of beauty,” Sirius insists, and proceeds to sing a capella. “Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart!”
Remus rolls his eyes. “You haven’t got a heart.”
“Love you whenever we’re together, love you when we’re apart!” Sirius pauses. “Although I love you much more when we’re together.”
As Remus opens his mouth to retort, a hand whips out from behind the curtain and yanks him into the tub by the collar of his shirt. The water soaks his clothes immediately, making them much more difficult to remove.
“And when at last I find you,” Sirius murmurs, kissing him and unbuttoning his shirt at the same time, “your song will fill the air. Sing it loud so I can hear you-”
“It is not easy to be near you when you sing like this,” Remus tells him in spite of the warmth flooding his body.
“You sure?” Sirius pulls him closer and unbuckles his belt. “You’re not putting up much of a fight.”
“Well,” Remus points out, “you’ve stopped singing.”
Sirius laughs, and it sounds different in the tight space. “Oops.” He runs his fingers through Remus’s wet and tangling hair. “For the things you do endear you to me-oh, you know I will…”
The cottage is silent, as still as the grave, save for Remus, who gently knocks his head back against the wall he’s leaning on. Then he settles, and nothing moves.
He can still hear the music as if from a great distance. It hardly seems real-that they lived here and laughed and cried and were together, mostly, in so many ways. That this place holds, in the end, no real trace of them at all.
Suddenly that fact is crucial. Because what is he, and what were they, if nothing is left? Dumbledore is gone and buried but at least he has a tomb and lived a long, full life. Is it not memories, Remus thinks, that keep us alive even after we die? And who will remember Sirius Black-really remember him, as he was, in all his carelessness and ferocity and frantic, flawed beauty?
Without knowing exactly why he does it, Remus reaches for a dusty glass ashtray on the end table and hurls it at the opposite wall. It smashes into several sharp pieces. He follows it up with the little lamp and, quickly, a picture frame. Into the motion, picking up and swinging and releasing, he pours many things but mostly his anger. Why does it fall to him to carry this, and why does he have to do it alone?
“Why did you leave?” he demands, and it feels so good to say it that he screams again, “Why did you leave?” He scrapes his throat raw with the force of his own voice, because it isn’t fair. And yes, he is angry. He tried so hard not to be. But his heart pounds hot and the blood rushes in his ears, alone, alone, alone, and damn Sirius to hell for destroying him so completely.
He can see from here that the glass of the picture is shattered like a spiderweb. When he makes his way over to the debris at the foot of the wall and picks it up, all the tiny pieces fall out and he realizes that the frame itself is empty-they must have taken the photograph with them when they went to Grimmauld Place. Or perhaps it’s simply up in the attic. Either way he’s struck by the futility of throwing things and shouting at no one.
Because it’s true that no one will hear him. Sirius is gone. Like it or not, Sirius has left and so has Dumbledore and so did James and Lily and a dozen others whose faces have long since blurred. None of them will come back, and Sirius will not sing to him, off-key or otherwise.