Fic: Kübler-Ross (Remus/Sirius) (Rated: PG)
Title: Kübler-Ross
Author: wook77
Pairing: Remus/Sirius (sort of)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~2k
Warnings: strong language
Summary: There are five stages of grief. Some go through them in months, some take years.
Author's Notes: Written for Round II at rs_games. Prompt was Libra: You may be waiting for something or someone. And the whole process has left you frustrated and anxious. But if you get a quarter of what you're hoping for, you'll be happy. And you will, soon, get at least that. Genre was Angst. Beta'd by nefernat and elanorofcastile. All mistakes are, obviously, my own.
Stage 1 - Denial
Remus likes sleeping the best. In point of fact, it's the only activity he's capable of right now. If, when he wakes, he remembers and that isn't something he wants or needs. There's no use to it as his brain can't make sense of the chaos in his life right now. Considering the order he happens to like in his world, well, the disorder of the actual is too much to handle.
The house is still paid for regardless of what Sirius did. Remus doesn't have the energy to move and, more importantly, doesn't have the mental fortitude. He can't help it if he pretends that reality is just some sort of nightmare while the dream world - touching, loving, smiling, being - is reality.
Besides, in sleep, he can pretend that the pillows stacked behind his back with a warming charm on them is someone else's body. He can pretend that the arm lying over him with palm brushing his chest isn't his own. It's easier to pretend in his sleep and grief-addled mind that the body that's supposed to be behind him isn't currently screaming out his false protestations of innocence while their best friends in the whole world - his fucking brother by choice - aren't mouldering in their graves.
It's easier to deny that anything is wrong if he's sleeping. So he does. For days at a time. He only wakes when his body demands it - bladder waging war with his stomach on who needs what, more and sooner. Head aching from too much sleep and not enough food, these moments of clarity and wakefulness are just too much for him to handle. He doesn't get out of the manky clothes, either, that takes too much energy and concentration. Instead, he'll head to the kitchen, make a piece of burnt toast with a bit of butter and jam and then take a piss before slipping back into bed. Pressing his back against those pillows again, he recasts the warming charm and slips into sleep again.
"Budge over, taking too much of the bed," he mutters sleepily as he curls further into the pillows. They're just stiff enough that he easily slips into that world of pretend though there are moments when he listens for the sound of Sirius's breath or those little snort-snores that he made. Makes. And he can't fool himself in those moments though he tries desperately. "Love you but you smell like feet. Go wash yourself, for God's sake. We're not twelve anymore."
Stage 2 - Anger
This isn't fair. It's not. Why is he the only one left? There were four of them. Four Marauders. Odds were in their favour that they would have at least half of them if not three-quarters of them, live to a ripe old age. Sure, a heart attack or a random motorcycle accident or Lily killing one of them for stepping on her flowers again. But this? This senseless loss and betrayal?
Why is it him that's left? What did he do to deserve being so fucking alone?
He hates it here. Abso-fucking-lutely hates it here with a passion. There are too many memories of happier times here on the streets of Hogsmeade. The gaiety of the season - fucking Christmas with its fucking fairy lights and its fucking carols and its fucking cheer and if he hears someone singing God Rest Ye Merry Hippogryffs one more time, he'll target them on the next full moon, just see if he doesn't - only serves to make him feel even worse about the loss and pain.
Remus, as he rails against the callous God that has allowed all of his friends to be murdered by the one person he loves more than the rest, wonders if what he'd done in a previous life to piss off God. He'd been a good kid - almost dutiful and he'd never smarted off. Almost never anyway. What sort of God, regardless of his smarting off to his mum, would let a kid get ravaged by a werewolf, turned and then this? Fucking this. He's only twenty-one. No one at twenty-one should have to bury all of their best friends. No one should be expected to bear this sort of burden and carry on while the rest of their world disappears.
Raising his fists as he tilts his head back and screams here in the middle of the woods, Remus yells out his anger and his heartache, his sense of betrayal and his sense of loss. By the time he's done, his throat hurts and his voice is hoarse. Feeling spent (finally), he feels like he can make it through another day. That sentiment is put to the test as he walks past the Shrieking Shack. Memories - pressed against a wall, kissing so hard that their mouths felt like they fused, Sirius's hands pulling his hair as he took charge of the kiss, the feel of Sirius's hard chest under his hands - haunt him.
The rage is back in an instant. Perhaps he could just start a small fire, keep it contained to just the Shack itself, and snuff out those memories. He could and he wouldn't regret it. At least not right now but in the future, he would.
He walks back into Hogsmeade and the shop where he's working, ignoring the swirl of snow and the twinkle of fairy lights. Everyone else can have their fucking holiday with their fucking fake cheer and their fucking families and their fucking friends. Remus John Lupin says 'bah humbug' to all of it.
Stage 3 - Bargaining
If he can just go back in time, he'd be able to stop this whole thing. He'd hold on to Sirius, follow him to the meetings and demand answers. He'd make them talk and then James and Lily would be alive while he'd have Sirius back. He'd be happy if he could just go back in time.
He applies for a Timeturner; an application that is summarily denied. He just needs to go back in time, why can't they understand that? If he'd been braver, been willing to be the person he actually was supposed to be instead of the failure that he is, everyone would be happy. He can make this happen if they'd just give him a fucking Timeturner.
He steps into a Muggle church and gets down on bended knee, lighting a candle and whispering, "if you let me go back in time and make this right, bring Lily and James and Peter back, keep Sirius from killing them, betraying me, I'll do anything you want me to do."
Stage 4 - Depression
The anger left long ago and he's alone with the reality of the situation. Peter is not coming back. Lily is not coming back. James is not coming back. Sirius is not coming back.
He's the last Marauder left, a situation he's never considered before. Out of all of them, he'd always thought that James would be the last to go. Not himself, never himself.
Lost in the emptiness of his life, he doesn't really much care as his jumpers grow threadbare and he moves from job to job to job. He's merely counting time, now, so what does the sleeves of his jumper matter in the bigger picture? They don't, that's all. None of it matters and when it does start to matter, he washes it away in a small flood of drink.
It's in the process of washing the care away in a small flood of drink that he sees the poster. Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. Remus immediately thinks of Harry and his safety. Feeling guilty as he hasn't considered Harry for years, Remus fears for him. The owl that comes immediately after the noticing of the poster scares him, shocks him into feeling something for the first time in far too long.
What's he going to say to Dumbledore? So sorry, can't accept the position because I'm too busy feeling sorry for myself what with my murdering bastard of an ex out there stalking the son of my best friends that he killed? He needs this position but he doesn't want it. There's too much pain and too many memories lurking in the walls of Hogwarts. He won't do it. He can't do it.
Staring at the bar and the array of bottles behind it, he curses himself and Sirius and the world. He's starting to feel again, to remember again, and that won't do. He can remember the way that Sirius smiled at him instead of screaming insanely at the photographer. The demands of what they were - what he'd been able to deny they were - have finally swelled over his own self-control.
As he relives each touch, each happy smile or soft kiss, each moment of fierce want and need, the way that Sirius felt inside him, around him, beside him, with him, near him, there, Remus feels the depression slip away while pain takes its place. In the end, there isn't a thing he actually wants to do about it. He misses those times, misses them so fiercely that he thinks about just ending this miserable existence completely and totally.
Harry needs you.
The owl is enough to help him shake the bitter longing enough to write a letter back to Dumbledore, containing just one word. Yes.
Stage 5 - Acceptance
The first time Remus sees Harry, his heart seizes. They're there, in a compartment on the train and in that instant, Remus isn't a man grown. Instead, he's eleven and wondering when the trolley will come by with sweets that he can't afford. By the end of the train ride, Remus wants to go back home and crawl into bed. Instead, he greets Hagrid warmly and then makes his way into the castle. The rest of the staff are just as welcoming and, soon enough, they make their way through the feast and then classes.
Even with the Dementors swirling - memories of being bitten and watching Sirius get dragged off to Azkaban and the sense of betrayal and the realisation and - Remus finds peace at Hogwarts. He makes his peace with Sirius's betrayal. He won't ever be able to understand it but at least he can accept that it happened. He mourns Peter, Lily and James there in the rooms allotted to the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.
Eventually, he no longer even sees James when he looks at Harry. Instead, he sees Harry for Harry, interacting with him and seeing just how amazing of a child James and Lily made. One night at the Hog's Head, alone except for a hag in the back corner, he raises a pint to them and gives them a salute, You made a fine lad.
He still misses the arms around him and he still does the thing with the pillows but it's few and far between any more. The Sirius Remus loved is dead if he ever existed at all. Sirius is insane, an escaped insane man who will get his comeuppance for murdering James, Lily and Peter. He can't change the past much as he might wish they'd had the future they'd envisioned. It's time he started living in the present and protecting Harry from the man he'd thought he'd known best is a good place to start.
Repeat
Stage 1 - Denial
Except he isn't and Remus has been wrong all these years. Sirius isn't the betrayer. Remus is the betrayer. Denial sweeps over him.
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.
Author: wook77
Pairing: Remus/Sirius (sort of)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~2k
Warnings: strong language
Summary: There are five stages of grief. Some go through them in months, some take years.
Author's Notes: Written for Round II at rs_games. Prompt was Libra: You may be waiting for something or someone. And the whole process has left you frustrated and anxious. But if you get a quarter of what you're hoping for, you'll be happy. And you will, soon, get at least that. Genre was Angst. Beta'd by nefernat and elanorofcastile. All mistakes are, obviously, my own.
Stage 1 - Denial
Remus likes sleeping the best. In point of fact, it's the only activity he's capable of right now. If, when he wakes, he remembers and that isn't something he wants or needs. There's no use to it as his brain can't make sense of the chaos in his life right now. Considering the order he happens to like in his world, well, the disorder of the actual is too much to handle.
The house is still paid for regardless of what Sirius did. Remus doesn't have the energy to move and, more importantly, doesn't have the mental fortitude. He can't help it if he pretends that reality is just some sort of nightmare while the dream world - touching, loving, smiling, being - is reality.
Besides, in sleep, he can pretend that the pillows stacked behind his back with a warming charm on them is someone else's body. He can pretend that the arm lying over him with palm brushing his chest isn't his own. It's easier to pretend in his sleep and grief-addled mind that the body that's supposed to be behind him isn't currently screaming out his false protestations of innocence while their best friends in the whole world - his fucking brother by choice - aren't mouldering in their graves.
It's easier to deny that anything is wrong if he's sleeping. So he does. For days at a time. He only wakes when his body demands it - bladder waging war with his stomach on who needs what, more and sooner. Head aching from too much sleep and not enough food, these moments of clarity and wakefulness are just too much for him to handle. He doesn't get out of the manky clothes, either, that takes too much energy and concentration. Instead, he'll head to the kitchen, make a piece of burnt toast with a bit of butter and jam and then take a piss before slipping back into bed. Pressing his back against those pillows again, he recasts the warming charm and slips into sleep again.
"Budge over, taking too much of the bed," he mutters sleepily as he curls further into the pillows. They're just stiff enough that he easily slips into that world of pretend though there are moments when he listens for the sound of Sirius's breath or those little snort-snores that he made. Makes. And he can't fool himself in those moments though he tries desperately. "Love you but you smell like feet. Go wash yourself, for God's sake. We're not twelve anymore."
Stage 2 - Anger
This isn't fair. It's not. Why is he the only one left? There were four of them. Four Marauders. Odds were in their favour that they would have at least half of them if not three-quarters of them, live to a ripe old age. Sure, a heart attack or a random motorcycle accident or Lily killing one of them for stepping on her flowers again. But this? This senseless loss and betrayal?
Why is it him that's left? What did he do to deserve being so fucking alone?
He hates it here. Abso-fucking-lutely hates it here with a passion. There are too many memories of happier times here on the streets of Hogsmeade. The gaiety of the season - fucking Christmas with its fucking fairy lights and its fucking carols and its fucking cheer and if he hears someone singing God Rest Ye Merry Hippogryffs one more time, he'll target them on the next full moon, just see if he doesn't - only serves to make him feel even worse about the loss and pain.
Remus, as he rails against the callous God that has allowed all of his friends to be murdered by the one person he loves more than the rest, wonders if what he'd done in a previous life to piss off God. He'd been a good kid - almost dutiful and he'd never smarted off. Almost never anyway. What sort of God, regardless of his smarting off to his mum, would let a kid get ravaged by a werewolf, turned and then this? Fucking this. He's only twenty-one. No one at twenty-one should have to bury all of their best friends. No one should be expected to bear this sort of burden and carry on while the rest of their world disappears.
Raising his fists as he tilts his head back and screams here in the middle of the woods, Remus yells out his anger and his heartache, his sense of betrayal and his sense of loss. By the time he's done, his throat hurts and his voice is hoarse. Feeling spent (finally), he feels like he can make it through another day. That sentiment is put to the test as he walks past the Shrieking Shack. Memories - pressed against a wall, kissing so hard that their mouths felt like they fused, Sirius's hands pulling his hair as he took charge of the kiss, the feel of Sirius's hard chest under his hands - haunt him.
The rage is back in an instant. Perhaps he could just start a small fire, keep it contained to just the Shack itself, and snuff out those memories. He could and he wouldn't regret it. At least not right now but in the future, he would.
He walks back into Hogsmeade and the shop where he's working, ignoring the swirl of snow and the twinkle of fairy lights. Everyone else can have their fucking holiday with their fucking fake cheer and their fucking families and their fucking friends. Remus John Lupin says 'bah humbug' to all of it.
Stage 3 - Bargaining
If he can just go back in time, he'd be able to stop this whole thing. He'd hold on to Sirius, follow him to the meetings and demand answers. He'd make them talk and then James and Lily would be alive while he'd have Sirius back. He'd be happy if he could just go back in time.
He applies for a Timeturner; an application that is summarily denied. He just needs to go back in time, why can't they understand that? If he'd been braver, been willing to be the person he actually was supposed to be instead of the failure that he is, everyone would be happy. He can make this happen if they'd just give him a fucking Timeturner.
He steps into a Muggle church and gets down on bended knee, lighting a candle and whispering, "if you let me go back in time and make this right, bring Lily and James and Peter back, keep Sirius from killing them, betraying me, I'll do anything you want me to do."
Stage 4 - Depression
The anger left long ago and he's alone with the reality of the situation. Peter is not coming back. Lily is not coming back. James is not coming back. Sirius is not coming back.
He's the last Marauder left, a situation he's never considered before. Out of all of them, he'd always thought that James would be the last to go. Not himself, never himself.
Lost in the emptiness of his life, he doesn't really much care as his jumpers grow threadbare and he moves from job to job to job. He's merely counting time, now, so what does the sleeves of his jumper matter in the bigger picture? They don't, that's all. None of it matters and when it does start to matter, he washes it away in a small flood of drink.
It's in the process of washing the care away in a small flood of drink that he sees the poster. Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. Remus immediately thinks of Harry and his safety. Feeling guilty as he hasn't considered Harry for years, Remus fears for him. The owl that comes immediately after the noticing of the poster scares him, shocks him into feeling something for the first time in far too long.
What's he going to say to Dumbledore? So sorry, can't accept the position because I'm too busy feeling sorry for myself what with my murdering bastard of an ex out there stalking the son of my best friends that he killed? He needs this position but he doesn't want it. There's too much pain and too many memories lurking in the walls of Hogwarts. He won't do it. He can't do it.
Staring at the bar and the array of bottles behind it, he curses himself and Sirius and the world. He's starting to feel again, to remember again, and that won't do. He can remember the way that Sirius smiled at him instead of screaming insanely at the photographer. The demands of what they were - what he'd been able to deny they were - have finally swelled over his own self-control.
As he relives each touch, each happy smile or soft kiss, each moment of fierce want and need, the way that Sirius felt inside him, around him, beside him, with him, near him, there, Remus feels the depression slip away while pain takes its place. In the end, there isn't a thing he actually wants to do about it. He misses those times, misses them so fiercely that he thinks about just ending this miserable existence completely and totally.
Harry needs you.
The owl is enough to help him shake the bitter longing enough to write a letter back to Dumbledore, containing just one word. Yes.
Stage 5 - Acceptance
The first time Remus sees Harry, his heart seizes. They're there, in a compartment on the train and in that instant, Remus isn't a man grown. Instead, he's eleven and wondering when the trolley will come by with sweets that he can't afford. By the end of the train ride, Remus wants to go back home and crawl into bed. Instead, he greets Hagrid warmly and then makes his way into the castle. The rest of the staff are just as welcoming and, soon enough, they make their way through the feast and then classes.
Even with the Dementors swirling - memories of being bitten and watching Sirius get dragged off to Azkaban and the sense of betrayal and the realisation and - Remus finds peace at Hogwarts. He makes his peace with Sirius's betrayal. He won't ever be able to understand it but at least he can accept that it happened. He mourns Peter, Lily and James there in the rooms allotted to the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.
Eventually, he no longer even sees James when he looks at Harry. Instead, he sees Harry for Harry, interacting with him and seeing just how amazing of a child James and Lily made. One night at the Hog's Head, alone except for a hag in the back corner, he raises a pint to them and gives them a salute, You made a fine lad.
He still misses the arms around him and he still does the thing with the pillows but it's few and far between any more. The Sirius Remus loved is dead if he ever existed at all. Sirius is insane, an escaped insane man who will get his comeuppance for murdering James, Lily and Peter. He can't change the past much as he might wish they'd had the future they'd envisioned. It's time he started living in the present and protecting Harry from the man he'd thought he'd known best is a good place to start.
Repeat
Stage 1 - Denial
Except he isn't and Remus has been wrong all these years. Sirius isn't the betrayer. Remus is the betrayer. Denial sweeps over him.
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.