Flying Free
Title: Flying Free
Rating: PG for kiss and some language. Very, very AU
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm just borrowing them because I like them. The world they're playing in today is mine, though.
Wordcount: 2372
Prompt: tellmeakiss Day 16 - AU, wings. Note the AU, please.
Notes: PoA, as it might have happened in another world, where everyone has wings.
Even from the shadow valley of Azkaban, Sirius could see the moon. Its light filtered through the low mesh of branches that roofed the valley and cast silver shadows on his wings.
His mind was clearest when the moon rose. It made him dream of bloody feathers pooled around a sleeping friend. It made him remember the curl and bend of wings breaking as a frail body was reshaped under the cold light.
It brought other memories, too: riding the night winds, owl and hawk on the tail of the beast, the green parakeet clinging to the hawk’s back; Lili, her wings as flame-bright as her hair, chasing Jaames through the summer skies, the baby in his sling against her breasts; Remus, folding his glasses up and tucking them away safely before he took to the wind.
Those memories brought the Grey Walkers to crowd around him; tempted them to hiss and sigh around him. He hated the sense of them, the cobweb brush of their robes, and the shuffle of their chill against his mind.
They made him want to thrust his shoulders back and let his wings unfurl, blacker than the night. The walls were too close, though. There was no space for wings in Azkaban, and if he ever forgot it he would die, as most of those confined here died, their wings snapped against the hard bricks.
Instead, he gave them the only memories they would allow: Lili, bright wings broken; Petaron, the Darkness swirling around his hands, on the high road above Tiaalam; Jaames with the light fading from his eyes, shattered glass shining amongst his black feathers.
The Walkers were happy with that, and they left him to his thoughts.
His wings hurt. They always hurt now, too weak to bear him.
There were days when he wanted to break them, to snap each treacherous feather in turn, and drive the sinews against the walls until they were too broken ever to mend.
He was too afraid it would not kill him.
When it got too bad, he became the hawk, roosting in the tangled branches. Even then, he was too big to fly above the vines, but it was easier. He could coast along the corridors. The hawk could not see the colours in his memory, the red of blood, the blue of the open sky, the moss green of the traitor’s wings.
He traced the passing of the years by the moon and the changing flowers. When the vines hung heavy with ripe flowers, he cursed the summer. The flowers blocked the light, and the pollen fell into his eyes, making him swear and sneeze, his wings and hair dusted with the pale stuff. It made him think of Remus, whose stone-brown wings had already been growing dull, and whose hair was threaded with grey.
They had barely had a chance to be young before they got old.
His feet grew rough from the endless wandering beneath the cage. His skin roughened, and his flesh fell away, his bones pressing against his skin. His feathers lost their iridescent sheen, becoming dull and scraggly. His eyes began to yellow.
It all lasted until the day the Seneschal came to Azkaban. The prisoners were all confined, bound by chains around their ankles.
Sirius watched him walk through, his grey wings held high off the ground, and his face prim with distaste. He enjoyed baiting him with politeness, channeling hatred into courtesy. The man tossed him the court news when he asked, and then turned away.
Sirius looked down at the page in his hand, and saw the picture of the green parakeet with a missing toe.
From that moment all was rage.
When they were set free again, he transformed, coasting through the corridors on the hawk’s wings. He found his cousin Bellatrix wandering the halls. Her eyes were red with madness, and her wings were ragged where she had ripped her own feathers away. He soared past her, brushing her face with his wings.
She screamed and lunged, and he flitted past again, teasing her. This time, when she grabbed for him, he went up.
Bellatrix shrieked, slapping her wings down against the ground and leaping up after him. Her fingers, bent like claws, tangled in the vines.
Sirius swooped away, concealing himself as Bellatrix struggled. The vines, designed to repel attack, twisted around her wrists, growing in thick ropes. He saw her shoulders strain.
She slapped her wings against the wall, screaming as her feet dangled, and at last the Walkers came.
Not far behind them were the guards.
They cut her free, bearing her away for treatment or punishment.
They would seal the hole soon, even though it was not large enough for a man to fit his wings through.
But Sirius was not currently a man, and he picked his way through the vines, careful not to disturb them enough to provoke attack.
When, at last, he climbed out of the valley of Azkaban, the breadth of the sky almost broke him. Then he remembered green wings, and traitors in the halls of the flight house.
He ran into the wind, feeling it lift him, bearing his wings up into the star-scattered sky.
On golden wings, he flew out of Azkaban, for his own were too weak to bear him.
He made for the high skies, feeling the chill air brush through him, calling him back to life. Before him, the world lay under the stars, his to cross again.
He crossed the mountains of High Jiatial with his mind full of Jaames. They had flown together, dark-winged brothers of the heart, hunters of the Dark hidden against the night sky. Then Jaames had gone home to his Shaman wife, and Sirius had gone to Remus.
Remus had always been awake when he came back, hunched over his maps by candlelight. In that light his brown wings had seemed golden.
They were both quiet in that dawn hour, when the night had rolled away in the endless watch for the Dark. Sirius, still resonant with flight, would pace the cave. Remus, after hours too absorbed in his work to preen, would scratch at his wings, annoyed at the necessity.
Then, when the morning came, they would sleep, squabbling over who deserved the sunniest spot.
Where was Remus now? Did he still splash his wings with ink, when he was too busy to refill his pen properly. How did he weather the moon without them? Was he forced to the low caves, bound in stone and darkness while the demon ruled him? Did he hate them for leaving him, and taking the freedom of the sky with them?
The traitor was in the north, in the flight house with a orange-winged fledgling. There was another boy, a boy whose wings would be as black as Jaames, whose eyes would be like Lili’s. Where was he? Did the traitor hide in his shadow too?
Where was Remus?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know where to start. All he could do was fly north.
It took him three days, and he had to hide in shallow caves by day, trying to remember spells to ward the mountain lions away. He slept as a man, huddled below the warm touch of the sun. When he woke, every time he woke, he rolled his wings out, a rush of black. He could hold them in a glide position for a count of twenty before his back began to burn and he collapsed back into the bent shuffle of Azkaban.
He would fly again, on his own wings. He would, once the traitor was caught.
They had surrounded the flight house with Walkers. Sirius hung in the sky above the canyon, looking for orange wings or parakeets. Nobody looked twice at a hawk floating on the breeze.
He saw four orange-winged boys, and one girl, but saw no sign of Jabber. He left the sky at his first sight of the boy who flew like Jaames, tumbling from the wind to crouch in his cave and howl with grief.
He saw other things - the silver-winged bully who looked like kin of his; the tension between Hari’s orange friend and the blue-winged girl with the cat (and what right-minded woman kept a cat?); the lonely Scholar girl who sat atop the bluff and talked to him about invisible monsters when he perched beside her.
At last, though he didn’t believe it, he saw Remus.
He landed on the bluff and risked transforming in case the hawk’s eyes had misled him. The world sprung into full colour around him, the sun washing his skin and the air glowing with the scents of food and fire and wing-dust.
It was Remus, his hair greyer than it had been, and his wings a little more ragged. His head was bent down as he spoke to a student. Of course. Of course he was here. Of course his Remus would be a teacher.
He leant over the edge of the bluff, and a stone shifted under his hand and went clattering down.
Remus looked up sharply.
Sirius hurled himself back from the edge, transforming as he went. He took to the wind, flaring his wings over the heat from the kitchen chimneys, trying to rise beyond pursuit.
Fucking feathers of a hero, he didn’t have the wingspan. He could feel the air stirring behind him; feel the shadow of Remus’ wings touch him.
Remus was not the traitor. Remus was not the spy. Remus was the man who had waited for him to come home, though it had taken Azkaban to make him realise why. Perhaps Remus would listen to him.
And if he wouldn’t, if he was doomed to die at Remus’ hands, he would die wearing his own wings.
He dived down, and felt the rush as Remus followed.
He saw Remus pass him, landing roughly, his knee bending as his wings spread around him.
Of course. It was only three nights past the moon.
Sirius landed on the outcrop opposite, with the most perfect timing he could manage.
Remus straightened, his hands shimmering with light. His face was cold as he said, “Transform.”
Sirius blurred into his own form and heard Remus catch his breath.
“If you’ve come to hurt Hari, I won’t let you.”
Hurt Hari? He’d never hurt Hari. He opened his mouth to protest, and only a croak emerged. His voice had failed him; he had been a bird too long. Instead he shook his head, and looked up to meet Remus’ gaze.
He looked so old. When had the lines of worry overtaken the ones made by laughter?
“Then why are you here?” Remus asked.
He still had the court news tucked into his rope belt. He offered it to Remus, appalled to see his hand was shaking.
Remus glanced at it, frowning. Then he gasped, and his wings hunched up his back.
“Petaron,” he said.
Sirius nodded.
Remus looked at him, as if he was trying to strip the years from him and see his soul. “But then,” he muttered, “why hasn’t he shown himself before now? Unless-” His eyes widened, and Sirius could see how they had grown orange with the passing of time. “-Unless he was the one… unless you switched… without telling me?”
His voice still wouldn’t work. He nodded. Please, Remus, please. Understand.
The light around Remus’ hands faded, and he stumbled across the bluff. Sirius braced himself for an attack, but then Remus was pressed against him, his hands sliding up beneath Sirius’ wings to hold him tight.
He’d held Remus like this before, though he always told himself it was a brotherly gesture. He didn’t want to hold Remus like a brother, not any more, so he wrapped his arms under Remus’ wings, holding him so tightly he was afraid he would cut off his air. He couldn’t loosen his grip. Not now. He hadn’t touched another human being in twelve years ago, and now it was Remus.
“Oh, Light, Sirius,” Remus was muttering. “I can feel your ribs. And your wings, your wings.”
He didn’t want to think about his wings right now. To shut Remus up, he lifted his face and pressed his mouth against Remus’.
Remus choked, and kissed him back.
It was a clumsy kiss, rough and wet and unpracticed, but it was the most perfect thing. It was Remus, and he didn’t hate him, and it wasn’t just the sunlight which made him feel as if he was alive again. He had finally left the shadow of Azkaban.
Remus finally drew away, though Sirius could feel his chest heaving against his.
“What now?” he said.
Sirius grinned at him, feeling his face ache with the unfamilar movement, and managed to make his voice work. “Kill Petaron.”
“That is not a long term solution.”
“Don’t care.”
“Imbecile,” Remus said fondly. “We at least owe the children an explanation before we steal Ronall’s pet.”
“Kill,” Sirius croaked. “Not steal.”
“Steal,” Remus said firmly. “Then we turn him back to his own form and pin his wings to the door of the Lord Seneschal’s office. His explanation should be, interesting, shall we say?”
Sirius thought about it. He still wanted to feel Petaron’s blood wash over his hands.
“He’ll suffer longer in Azkaban,” Remus said, his voice low. Then he added, his voice choked, “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sirius said, resting his cheek against Remus’. “So sorry. Forgive me.”
Remus snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Forgive me for doubting you.”
“Of course,” Sirius said, and breathed in. He could smell Remus, the old smell of ink and books and the faint tang of blood.
“Sirius,” Remus said, his voice breaking. “Sirius. It’s going to be alright.”
Sirius looked at him and saw the soft warmth of his wings, the shimmer of tears in his eyes and the start of a smile on his tired face. He was right. This was a beginning.
“Remus,” he said. “Tell me. What I missed. Tell me about Hari.”
“It could take a long time.”
“Got time.”
Remus laughed, and it seemed like the perfect moment to kiss him again.
Rating: PG for kiss and some language. Very, very AU
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm just borrowing them because I like them. The world they're playing in today is mine, though.
Wordcount: 2372
Prompt: tellmeakiss Day 16 - AU, wings. Note the AU, please.
Notes: PoA, as it might have happened in another world, where everyone has wings.
Even from the shadow valley of Azkaban, Sirius could see the moon. Its light filtered through the low mesh of branches that roofed the valley and cast silver shadows on his wings.
His mind was clearest when the moon rose. It made him dream of bloody feathers pooled around a sleeping friend. It made him remember the curl and bend of wings breaking as a frail body was reshaped under the cold light.
It brought other memories, too: riding the night winds, owl and hawk on the tail of the beast, the green parakeet clinging to the hawk’s back; Lili, her wings as flame-bright as her hair, chasing Jaames through the summer skies, the baby in his sling against her breasts; Remus, folding his glasses up and tucking them away safely before he took to the wind.
Those memories brought the Grey Walkers to crowd around him; tempted them to hiss and sigh around him. He hated the sense of them, the cobweb brush of their robes, and the shuffle of their chill against his mind.
They made him want to thrust his shoulders back and let his wings unfurl, blacker than the night. The walls were too close, though. There was no space for wings in Azkaban, and if he ever forgot it he would die, as most of those confined here died, their wings snapped against the hard bricks.
Instead, he gave them the only memories they would allow: Lili, bright wings broken; Petaron, the Darkness swirling around his hands, on the high road above Tiaalam; Jaames with the light fading from his eyes, shattered glass shining amongst his black feathers.
The Walkers were happy with that, and they left him to his thoughts.
His wings hurt. They always hurt now, too weak to bear him.
There were days when he wanted to break them, to snap each treacherous feather in turn, and drive the sinews against the walls until they were too broken ever to mend.
He was too afraid it would not kill him.
When it got too bad, he became the hawk, roosting in the tangled branches. Even then, he was too big to fly above the vines, but it was easier. He could coast along the corridors. The hawk could not see the colours in his memory, the red of blood, the blue of the open sky, the moss green of the traitor’s wings.
He traced the passing of the years by the moon and the changing flowers. When the vines hung heavy with ripe flowers, he cursed the summer. The flowers blocked the light, and the pollen fell into his eyes, making him swear and sneeze, his wings and hair dusted with the pale stuff. It made him think of Remus, whose stone-brown wings had already been growing dull, and whose hair was threaded with grey.
They had barely had a chance to be young before they got old.
His feet grew rough from the endless wandering beneath the cage. His skin roughened, and his flesh fell away, his bones pressing against his skin. His feathers lost their iridescent sheen, becoming dull and scraggly. His eyes began to yellow.
It all lasted until the day the Seneschal came to Azkaban. The prisoners were all confined, bound by chains around their ankles.
Sirius watched him walk through, his grey wings held high off the ground, and his face prim with distaste. He enjoyed baiting him with politeness, channeling hatred into courtesy. The man tossed him the court news when he asked, and then turned away.
Sirius looked down at the page in his hand, and saw the picture of the green parakeet with a missing toe.
From that moment all was rage.
When they were set free again, he transformed, coasting through the corridors on the hawk’s wings. He found his cousin Bellatrix wandering the halls. Her eyes were red with madness, and her wings were ragged where she had ripped her own feathers away. He soared past her, brushing her face with his wings.
She screamed and lunged, and he flitted past again, teasing her. This time, when she grabbed for him, he went up.
Bellatrix shrieked, slapping her wings down against the ground and leaping up after him. Her fingers, bent like claws, tangled in the vines.
Sirius swooped away, concealing himself as Bellatrix struggled. The vines, designed to repel attack, twisted around her wrists, growing in thick ropes. He saw her shoulders strain.
She slapped her wings against the wall, screaming as her feet dangled, and at last the Walkers came.
Not far behind them were the guards.
They cut her free, bearing her away for treatment or punishment.
They would seal the hole soon, even though it was not large enough for a man to fit his wings through.
But Sirius was not currently a man, and he picked his way through the vines, careful not to disturb them enough to provoke attack.
When, at last, he climbed out of the valley of Azkaban, the breadth of the sky almost broke him. Then he remembered green wings, and traitors in the halls of the flight house.
He ran into the wind, feeling it lift him, bearing his wings up into the star-scattered sky.
On golden wings, he flew out of Azkaban, for his own were too weak to bear him.
He made for the high skies, feeling the chill air brush through him, calling him back to life. Before him, the world lay under the stars, his to cross again.
He crossed the mountains of High Jiatial with his mind full of Jaames. They had flown together, dark-winged brothers of the heart, hunters of the Dark hidden against the night sky. Then Jaames had gone home to his Shaman wife, and Sirius had gone to Remus.
Remus had always been awake when he came back, hunched over his maps by candlelight. In that light his brown wings had seemed golden.
They were both quiet in that dawn hour, when the night had rolled away in the endless watch for the Dark. Sirius, still resonant with flight, would pace the cave. Remus, after hours too absorbed in his work to preen, would scratch at his wings, annoyed at the necessity.
Then, when the morning came, they would sleep, squabbling over who deserved the sunniest spot.
Where was Remus now? Did he still splash his wings with ink, when he was too busy to refill his pen properly. How did he weather the moon without them? Was he forced to the low caves, bound in stone and darkness while the demon ruled him? Did he hate them for leaving him, and taking the freedom of the sky with them?
The traitor was in the north, in the flight house with a orange-winged fledgling. There was another boy, a boy whose wings would be as black as Jaames, whose eyes would be like Lili’s. Where was he? Did the traitor hide in his shadow too?
Where was Remus?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know where to start. All he could do was fly north.
It took him three days, and he had to hide in shallow caves by day, trying to remember spells to ward the mountain lions away. He slept as a man, huddled below the warm touch of the sun. When he woke, every time he woke, he rolled his wings out, a rush of black. He could hold them in a glide position for a count of twenty before his back began to burn and he collapsed back into the bent shuffle of Azkaban.
He would fly again, on his own wings. He would, once the traitor was caught.
They had surrounded the flight house with Walkers. Sirius hung in the sky above the canyon, looking for orange wings or parakeets. Nobody looked twice at a hawk floating on the breeze.
He saw four orange-winged boys, and one girl, but saw no sign of Jabber. He left the sky at his first sight of the boy who flew like Jaames, tumbling from the wind to crouch in his cave and howl with grief.
He saw other things - the silver-winged bully who looked like kin of his; the tension between Hari’s orange friend and the blue-winged girl with the cat (and what right-minded woman kept a cat?); the lonely Scholar girl who sat atop the bluff and talked to him about invisible monsters when he perched beside her.
At last, though he didn’t believe it, he saw Remus.
He landed on the bluff and risked transforming in case the hawk’s eyes had misled him. The world sprung into full colour around him, the sun washing his skin and the air glowing with the scents of food and fire and wing-dust.
It was Remus, his hair greyer than it had been, and his wings a little more ragged. His head was bent down as he spoke to a student. Of course. Of course he was here. Of course his Remus would be a teacher.
He leant over the edge of the bluff, and a stone shifted under his hand and went clattering down.
Remus looked up sharply.
Sirius hurled himself back from the edge, transforming as he went. He took to the wind, flaring his wings over the heat from the kitchen chimneys, trying to rise beyond pursuit.
Fucking feathers of a hero, he didn’t have the wingspan. He could feel the air stirring behind him; feel the shadow of Remus’ wings touch him.
Remus was not the traitor. Remus was not the spy. Remus was the man who had waited for him to come home, though it had taken Azkaban to make him realise why. Perhaps Remus would listen to him.
And if he wouldn’t, if he was doomed to die at Remus’ hands, he would die wearing his own wings.
He dived down, and felt the rush as Remus followed.
He saw Remus pass him, landing roughly, his knee bending as his wings spread around him.
Of course. It was only three nights past the moon.
Sirius landed on the outcrop opposite, with the most perfect timing he could manage.
Remus straightened, his hands shimmering with light. His face was cold as he said, “Transform.”
Sirius blurred into his own form and heard Remus catch his breath.
“If you’ve come to hurt Hari, I won’t let you.”
Hurt Hari? He’d never hurt Hari. He opened his mouth to protest, and only a croak emerged. His voice had failed him; he had been a bird too long. Instead he shook his head, and looked up to meet Remus’ gaze.
He looked so old. When had the lines of worry overtaken the ones made by laughter?
“Then why are you here?” Remus asked.
He still had the court news tucked into his rope belt. He offered it to Remus, appalled to see his hand was shaking.
Remus glanced at it, frowning. Then he gasped, and his wings hunched up his back.
“Petaron,” he said.
Sirius nodded.
Remus looked at him, as if he was trying to strip the years from him and see his soul. “But then,” he muttered, “why hasn’t he shown himself before now? Unless-” His eyes widened, and Sirius could see how they had grown orange with the passing of time. “-Unless he was the one… unless you switched… without telling me?”
His voice still wouldn’t work. He nodded. Please, Remus, please. Understand.
The light around Remus’ hands faded, and he stumbled across the bluff. Sirius braced himself for an attack, but then Remus was pressed against him, his hands sliding up beneath Sirius’ wings to hold him tight.
He’d held Remus like this before, though he always told himself it was a brotherly gesture. He didn’t want to hold Remus like a brother, not any more, so he wrapped his arms under Remus’ wings, holding him so tightly he was afraid he would cut off his air. He couldn’t loosen his grip. Not now. He hadn’t touched another human being in twelve years ago, and now it was Remus.
“Oh, Light, Sirius,” Remus was muttering. “I can feel your ribs. And your wings, your wings.”
He didn’t want to think about his wings right now. To shut Remus up, he lifted his face and pressed his mouth against Remus’.
Remus choked, and kissed him back.
It was a clumsy kiss, rough and wet and unpracticed, but it was the most perfect thing. It was Remus, and he didn’t hate him, and it wasn’t just the sunlight which made him feel as if he was alive again. He had finally left the shadow of Azkaban.
Remus finally drew away, though Sirius could feel his chest heaving against his.
“What now?” he said.
Sirius grinned at him, feeling his face ache with the unfamilar movement, and managed to make his voice work. “Kill Petaron.”
“That is not a long term solution.”
“Don’t care.”
“Imbecile,” Remus said fondly. “We at least owe the children an explanation before we steal Ronall’s pet.”
“Kill,” Sirius croaked. “Not steal.”
“Steal,” Remus said firmly. “Then we turn him back to his own form and pin his wings to the door of the Lord Seneschal’s office. His explanation should be, interesting, shall we say?”
Sirius thought about it. He still wanted to feel Petaron’s blood wash over his hands.
“He’ll suffer longer in Azkaban,” Remus said, his voice low. Then he added, his voice choked, “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sirius said, resting his cheek against Remus’. “So sorry. Forgive me.”
Remus snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Forgive me for doubting you.”
“Of course,” Sirius said, and breathed in. He could smell Remus, the old smell of ink and books and the faint tang of blood.
“Sirius,” Remus said, his voice breaking. “Sirius. It’s going to be alright.”
Sirius looked at him and saw the soft warmth of his wings, the shimmer of tears in his eyes and the start of a smile on his tired face. He was right. This was a beginning.
“Remus,” he said. “Tell me. What I missed. Tell me about Hari.”
“It could take a long time.”
“Got time.”
Remus laughed, and it seemed like the perfect moment to kiss him again.