fanfic: the weary man
Author: catestarks
Fandom: Harry Potter
Ship/s: Wolfstar
Words: 1,031
Rating: T (for coarse language)
Warnings: Subject of death.Summary: He’d had enough lies, enough false attempts, and now that he had finally come he couldn’t bring himself to see what everyone else had told him, to see the truth he had denied over and over again consistently.
A/N First Wolfstar fic which is both exciting and nerve wracking. I decided to use Remus as my primary character exploring an emotional side of him many don’t normally see. I set this just after Sirius’s death approximately a week or two after. So yeah without further ado enjoy. On a side note I’d like to thank Fiona for being my rock through writing this, and gryffinstark for betaing, as there is no trusting me with proof reading.
Song Recs: The Weary Kind Ryan Bingham Sorrow The Nationals Your Heart Must Be Tired Sanders Bohlke Asleep Emily Browning
Don't leave half a heart alone
On the water,
Cover me in rag and bones, sympathy.
Cause I don't wanna get over you.
I don't wanna get over you.
-Sorrow The Nationals
Remus pushes through the front door of Grimmauld Place.
‘Sirius,” he calls out, there is no answer, ‘Sirius,’ still no answer. He slams the door behind him shut. ‘S-Sirius this isn’t funny,’ he stammers in his attempt to hold back unwanted feelings. Moving through the bitter hall that held the endless feeling of death he held his breath almost like it was a disease he was trying hard to avoid. It did seem after all that the Black family weren’t the most fortunate of families, that was one thing that was clear to Remus even if everything else did seem a little blurry. ‘Sirius, you down there?’ he shouted down the stairs that ran through to the kitchen. No answer. Funny, he thought, though it was quite the opposite.
Remus approached the first of many steps which led to the upper floors of the place Sirius called a home. He sighed as he worked on bringing himself to be able to climb the stairs, or in this case just reach the first step. He rose upwards, though as he did his heart sunk within his chest, pressing hard against his other organs, his pulse riveting. Don’t stop, he thought, keep going, just don’t think... move. His stomach clenched as his left foot joined his right. Now just a couple hundred more to go, he thought sarcastically.
It felt as if an hour had past by the time he’d reached the upmost floor of the house. He looked at the two doors that stood before him, both holding a history of their own. He remembered when the two Black brother’s broke to silence. It was a dark time for Sirius as it was for so many around them. Orion and Walburga Black had lost a son, Regulus had lost a brother, and Remus, for sometime, had even lost a lover. It was as if heaven and hell had collided into an emptiness that none could fill.
He opened his mouth to call for Sirius, though realised it’d only be pointless. If he hadn’t already answered him he figured he wouldn’t do so now, and for him not to reply, well that’d just make things harder for him.
Pulling himself together, he approached Sirius’s bedroom door, reaching for the handle with his left hand as he placed his other on the door gently as if a delicate piece of glass that could shatter even at the slightest touch. He turned the handle anxiously and pushed the door wide open, shutting his eyes as he did. Open, he thought, though nothing happened.
He’d had enough lies, enough false attempts, and now that he had finally come he couldn’t bring himself to see what everyone else had told him, to see the truth he had denied over and over again consistently. He scrunched his hands into a fist; they were ripening in color, heightening in heat, and building in terms of sweat. His eyes moved back and forth behind his eyelids that darkened his sight. He sighed letting go of his fears, his worries, his resistance, and weakly opened his eyes.
A subtle smile formed where his sullen expression had taken permanent residence over the past week as he viewed a hunched man that appeared weakened at his desk in the far corner.
‘Hey, mate I don’t if you’ve realised but I’ve sort of been calling you?’ Sirius didn’t respond, though Remus by this time considered this a norm. ‘Obviously not,’ he interwove his hands, and played with them in a nervous matter. ‘You know it’s rude not to answer your best mate, let alone the love of your life,” he walked over towards where Sirius sat causing a large shadow to loom over him, ‘but I guess i’ll let it slide just this once, for you’.
Remus hesitantly raised his hands to Sirius’s shoulders. He needed to feel his touch, to know that what he was seeing was real. He stretched out his fingers and his hands finally came to a halt taking their place on a familiar surface. Remus had thought it was too good be true. He sighed, then everything happened at once. His hands dropped and the familiar hunched figure dissolved into thin air, as if Remus’s smallest of breaths had blown away the last of what remained of Sirius.
Remus’s mouth began to tremble producing broken words of denial. ‘No! No! NO!’ he cried painfully, punching the wall beside him. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he muttered sharply as he took his hand that began to swell quickly. ‘This is your fault! All your fucking fault!’ his voice was filled with rage. He leant on the desk, his eyes hanging in their sockets, red and weary. One would say that you could read Remus’s whole life in his eyes at that moment.
‘See what you’ve done - see?’ His voice cracked, as too did he both physically and emotionally. It seemed to take forever for Remus to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards, hitting the wall as he went. He laid a limped body on the floor, his head being supported upwards on the walls skirting. His eyes became washed out as they began to drown in his held back tears. He had become a sunken ship, in too deep for rescue to be an option.
His thoughts darkened as he drifted in and out of consciousness with the feeling of a cold stab of jealousy passing over him as he began to envy the lost world Sirius was now apart of. He was now with old friends and loved ones, he had been given a second chance to make amends and forgive. Remus though, he was left in a place not suited for the weary kind, feeling like he’s losing his mind, falling behind the world that appears to fly by so fast, feeling lost with no more chances on living a loving life.
With Sirius gone he let his heart on the loose since it no longer has any use.
‘We were idiotic lovers bound by childish games,’ Remus snuffled. ‘Hate you,’ he managed to breathe as he drifted away from the harsh reality.
Well, your faith, it is fragile
And your tears are all gone
Because you cried like somebody
Been loving you wrong
You've slept with lions
And weathered the storm
Oh, your heart must be tired
Because you've been crying too much
-Your heart must be tired Sanders Bohlke