ataraxionlogs | thirty-first jump;

Entry tags:

thirty-first jump;

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: There is something very easy about waking from the gravcouches this month. The sensation of being watched is absent, and so is much of the sickness - even for those characters who entered Engineering in February. Instead the jump feels comfortable, the stasis fluid warm on your skin, the medbay lights not too harsh as you emerge amongst your fellow passengers. The sensation may be unnerving in its strangeness, but there will be a deep feeling of being well-rested, calm and content, that will not be completely lost no matter how much you question it.

----------------

You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It'd be nice, maybe, if there were a moment where Remus was glad to see Sirius, but there isn't. There is a pause, though. One long enough for Remus to step back, to inhale, and to know that it's all wrong, something is off about his face—perhaps too young, certainly too unshadowed.

He's not someone who's ever been to Azkaban.

Remus doesn't care. He doesn't care at all.

He exhales, and all of the careful sutures he's sewn in the last few months tear open at once. He grabs Sirius by the shoulder and jerks hard to turn him away from Snape, and there's only so much force to be found in Remus's skinny arms but he manages to round up every last bit of it for the blow he aims at Sirius's jaw.

"You," he says. It's quiet, mostly lost in the racket he's making following the trajectory of his fist with the rest of his body—against the lockers, the floor, he doesn't care. He's all elbows and knees and wounded fury, a forearm jamming against Sirius's windpipe.

I'll fucking kill you, he could snarl, but he doesn't see the point in announcing it first.

There's a sudden aborted noise that comes out like a choked yelp-- it might have been Black! but it gets lost immediately as Severus is slammed against the lockers, his chin and jaw hitting metal and blood blooming in his mouth thanks to this goddamn inbred Gryffindor meathead. Again.

It doesn't matter. As soon as he can halfway register what's happened something else is happening and it leaves Severus stunned even as he scrambles away with red leaking down his face.

Severus hadn't - hasn't - forgotten. But even so, there's still a surreal, floating moment where his head's ringing from impact and his shoulder (so recently mended from splinching) is screaming where he thinks

Oh

right.

Lupin's going to kill him.

Severus should probably do something about that.

He coughs, spits blood out onto the medbay floor and hauls himself into a standing posture with one hand against the locker his face was smashed into a moment prior.

Severus should probably do something about that in a minute.

Maybe.

Edited 2014-05-09 07:12 (UTC)

He assumes, at first, that it's Snape, because who else would it be? Some new trick, getting at him while he's got Snape pinned--but that thought lasts about two seconds before it's replaced only by the surprising jolt of being pulled away, and the pain--

And then Snape is standing back, uninvolved, and it's Remus, who never hits Sirius--who has hit Sirius only occasionally, and it hurt like hell, like this does now, dizzying and disorienting, like getting kicked by a bastard hippogriff. The punch that follows actually drives him back--he grabs for the lockers with one hand, throws up his other arm so he can shove Remus back, if he goes for another punch--

"What the hell are you doing," or at least, that's what he starts to say, but it's Sirius' turn to cut off--somewhere in the middle of hell, because the look on Remus' face is like nothing he's ever seen before. There is a cold fury there that Sirius does not recognise, and it weakens him totally, drains the fight out of him--for the moment, at least--so Remus has no trouble with driving him back against the lockers. And so now it's Sirius, pinned, Remus' forearm against his throat and the lockers cold against his back and he grabs for Remus' arm, digs fingers in, tries to drag him off-- "Get-- off, Lupin, get off, wh--"

Remus doesn't get off, doesn't back up. (He almost spares a thought for Snape, but it brushes against the back of his mind and disappears without settling.) He's losing the struggle to keep his arm against his neck, but he doesn't give up easily. Choke all the air out of him, and maybe Sirius will stop talking, like he has any right, at any time, in any universe.

"James and Lily—" He can't finish. His voice snags, ragged and incompatible with the flat, callous set of his face, and if he keeps talking it will break. But the fist in Sirius's side, digging hard—that's for Peter.

Watching Lupin tear into Black isn't frightening, but a cold weight settles in Severus's stomach at the humanness of it. All of his childhood fears associated with Remus Lupin are monstrous, animal things; things without purpose, or control, or motivation. What Severus sees now is a terrible kind of control-- and something else that he understands viscerally, but has always forced himself to ignore. The notion that someone he hates has mourned like he has is intolerable. Empathy is worse than fear.

Students he'd stun and drag apart. Lucius or Antonin he'd just-- watch. But not like this. There's nothing to compare to the contortion act his insides are doing right now, angry and numb and enjoying it and hating it.

He's not sure how long he stares at them.

"Lupin."

Quiet, in a low tone. Severus is too shocked still to be able to force himself to be heard properly. He's not ready to be heard properly. What the hell is he going to say after?

"Stop, Re--"

The pathetic grip on Remus' arm loosens when he's punched--but that's not what takes the wind out of Sirius, not completely. It's really the way that Remus utters their names, James and Lily, rough and low and now, now, Sirius starts to get it.

He sags against the locker, dizzy, but it makes sense now, and he stares dimly at Remus, blind to Snape, to anything he's saying--Remus thinks it's him, he thinks he's the traitor, he doesn't know, and Sirius, for once, has nothing to say. The grip on Remus' arm is more to keep himself upright than anything else; the breath choked out of him, driven out of him, hasn't returned, and he wants to explain, but he hasn't got anything to say--

"Shut up."

But Sirius isn't talking anymore, already, or struggling, and in a way it's worse. Without the momentum of instinct and reflex it's just hatred, of a kind more personal than anything he ever felt toward Voldemort or even Greyback—hatred, another sharp punch, the sounds of the locker room finally growing louder than his own breathing and heartbeat, and the crystalline understanding that this won't fix anything, least of all Remus, but he's going to do it anyway. If he had his wand it'd already be done.

"Lupin, stop it."

His voice is not louder but firmer. Severus, even if he doesn't actually want to stop this for reasons of morals or goodness, knows it must stop or all three of them are going to end up in the brig or-- two of them, and Sirius will be dead, because he's just laying there and Remus is turning his face into something on a butcher's block. (Enjoy how that feels, Black.)

The odd sense of contentment this jump has brought only means it's harder to want to save the life of someone he hates. He's always been a little bit too fine with murder.

That word, the m-word, stops something inside of him and he blames empathy which should be something people can turn on and off at will so that it isn't there to trip them. Like now. There's a lot of blood spilling between the three of them at this point and this isn't a quiet reunion and goddamnit, there's no way this is going to - "Lupin, that's enough--" - go unnoticed, not even if Severus collects himself and puts them in a charmed bubble of solitude. It'd just be closer quarters in which to kill someone.

"Remus." His voice grates, steps forward near to the werewolf, reaches out but doesn't quite touch him. "Not like this." That he's using Lupin's first name is forced, and he doesn't try and hide that fact. Sirius is going to hear everything but he still speaks with private-sounding tension. "I'm not watching him make you a murderer. Stop."

He failed the first time he tried to use Lupin as a murder weapon. That's no reason to let him have another whack at it - even if it's his own life this time, and not Snape's.

Edited 2014-05-09 21:21 (UTC)

When Remus lets up, Sirius sags against the wall, boneless, dizzy--he wins his fights, he doesn't get beaten like this--and he doesn't get saved like this, either, not by Snape.

The second part of that--the Snape part--doesn't even occur to him. It will in a moment; for now, it's all that he can do to slump down, gasping--too shaky, at first, to do more than try to catch his breath. When he raises his arm to draw it across his face.here's blood there, but the ache of it hasn't totally set in yet. What preoccupies him is sucking in another breath, and another, blood in his mouth. The ringing in his ears is deafening. And even if it weren't, the expression on Remus' face would be enough to silence him. It's something unreadable, something he can't make sense of. That's the worst of all; there's nothing that he can even say.

Except Snape called Remus by his first name. Snape's the one that got Remus off of him. Snape shouldn't even be involved in this, I'm not watching him make you a murderer, like it's Sirius' fault, like he's done anything. The surge of hatred in him makes him twists against the nameless feeling of tingling horror that's pitched even deeper in his gut. All of it makes him want to be sick. Instead, he tries to haul himself up the wall, with a cough. Snape can't be the one to tell him. Snape can't be the one to explain--but he can't get breath in enough to do more than cough again, not just yet.

Remus doesn't take his eyes off Sirius or unclench his blood-smeared fists, but he does stop and shift back, on his knees, jarred not so much by the contents of Snape's interjection as its general existence. By the fact that Snape is there at all. He'd forgotten.

Then the words sink in, too, and he bows his shoulders inward and sucks in a deep, stuttering breath. It has nothing to do with what Sirius may or may not be the cause of, now or before—Remus forgave him for that, he honestly did, because if the price of having a friend who wasn't afraid of him was having one who didn't fully understand why everyone else was or what it would mean, for Remus if not for Snape, then that was all right. That was fair. He would pay it. If lately he's picked at that scar until it bled again, it was only to understand how they hadn't seen the rest coming.

But murderer. Like it isn't deserved. Like it isn't an execution.

"What do you care?" he says to Snape. He'd meant to snap it, but he's looking at Sirius's battered, too-young face, and he can't manage indignation. He barely manages a whisper.

"Don't."

If Lupin is ready to take Sirius Black's head off, then he's well aware that Severus is a spy. His anonymity with that venture was scorched away the second Lily was killed; plastered everywhere, keeping him out of Azkaban and in Hogwarts. Lurking somewhere in him is an awful comment about the both of them being Dumbledore's tame monsters. Maybe someday he'll even say it out loud.

'Care.'

He doesn't get to care.

(Which is great, because caring is what's constantly tearing him up inside and making him such a prick.)

Severus looks at Remus, ignoring Black's existence. He thinks if they start up again after he says what he has to say, he'll just leave them to it. Because then it'll be warranted.

"Pettigrew was the secret-keeper."

He doesn't bother with qualifications around supposedly or so I'm told. He can't cushion it because the full impact has to hit Lupin and Snape has to watch it because now-- now, everything has gone to hell. Silently and behind the scenes, relations are fucked. They are fucked. He doesn't trust Harry, and his descriptions of fighting with his teenager parents looks grim and haunting now that he knows Lily's boy is off cavorting with dark lords. What if it's not true? What if it is Black after all?

His execution is paused, but the play button won't be Snape's rescinded intervention. It'll be Lupin's reaction.

"It was."

He doesn't want to agree with Snape. He doesn't want to agree with Snape about anything; he wants Snape to stop talking, because this isn't any of Snape's fucking business, this is between them, the Marauders. If there's any gratefulness to Snape for probably saving his life, again, Sirius can't fathom or allow it. It's Snape. He's done it out of some selfish end, probably, or whatever, who knows what the fuck he does things. Sirius doesn't have room for that.

Remus is Remus, but he's different. His face is not one that Sirius knows--like someone wearing a Remus mask, and there's a little bit of blood, just at his chin, and all the old familiar scars and new lines (like an echo of the older Remus that Sirius met). And he's looking at Snape, not at Sirius, and Sirius wants him to look, to know, to understand--he never thought that they'd be here, that Remus would come back and not know or understand. Because he has to know, doesn't he? Some part of him has to know. Because they're Marauders, and that means something, or it did, once--but the blood on Remus' hands and the dark glare in his eye means something too. There is a time where nothing matters but that: Sirius, a traitor, and James, dead.

Sirius spits blood, pushes the back of his wrist over his mouth. "It was Peter-- it ends up being Peter. They change it. James, Remus, you know--"

He has to know, he has to see, and Sirius fumbles to try and grab for him, but he knows he'll miss, he's too fucking dizzy.

"It hasn't happened. To me. It hasn't happened. But it does, and it's not-- me. It's Peter."

He spits the name, too, and more blood, and he doesn't look at Snape but stares hard at Remus, willing him to understand, to believe. He has to. He has to.

Remus shifts reflexively out of Sirius's reach and echoes, "Peter."

Flat, angry, you expect me to believe that Peter, who worshipped the ground James stood on, who was hit as hard as anyone, who abandoned his considerable good sense to track down Sirius—

"There were witnesses," Remus says, still angry, but something is coming unravelled underneath it. He's never seen Sirius like this before—blood aside, he's desperate—and if Severus wanted to run a controlled experiment then he might have done better not to be someone Remus knows Dumbledore trusts. "They gave his mum his bloody finger, I had to go have tea with her and—"

And reminisce about her dead son without being able to tell her the half of it. Nothing about how he accepted a werewolf. Became a fifteen-year-old animagus. The parts where no one seemed to notice how clever he was. He made self-deprecating rat jokes, and Remus would shake his head. Just means you'll outlive us all.

Fuck.

"—and James would have told me," he tries instead, but he's already sinking to sit on his heels, finally looking away from Sirius and at the blood-speckled ground. He says it again—"They would have told me."—but without so much conviction.

Maybe it's a good sign, that he's trusting Sirius enough to take his eyes off him, but it's also a dismissive one. He's too busy trying not to lose Peter and James again, in brand new gut-twisting ways, to notice that he might get something back in the process.

Sirius starts talking and Severus makes a motion that's aborted halfway through-- gesturing at him, a kneejerk response. Shut up, shut up, telling Lupin that he was lied to because he's a werewolf is not going to help. But if he starts in on Black now he's not going to be able to shut himself up, and that won't help either.

Severus doesn't know what a 'correct' response in Remus will look like. The shuddering downward spiral of emotional betrayal that leaks out of him seems honest, however, which means there's enough room for it to make sense. If it were unbelievable, he doesn't think it'd make a dent.

He's neither relieved nor angry. It's still too inconclusive. From every angle.

The whole wizarding world to choose from, and destiny had to throw these awful people together. The Marauders. If their collective behavior wasn't what it was, this confusion wouldn't exist. No one would assume Black was capable of such a thing-- but they did. Everyone did. (Everyone still does.)

Ultimately Severus says nothing. He just watches Lupin, expression hard and closed away.

Everything has briefly narrowed down to Remus, just Remus, and Sirius--who has always tried so hard to play cool, to not reveal just how capable he is of being tuned toward the moods of his friends--Sirius stares at him, his desperation gripping so strongly at him that it nearly makes him shake. Or maybe he's actually shaking, he doesn't know. He doesn't have that level of self-awareness just now, not when he's willing Remus so hard to see, to understand.

The rawness of the information had never fully dawned on him. Remus, older, was only tired, worn down with the knowledge of something that had happened nearly fifteen years ago. He'd lived with the hurt. And the younger Remus--the knowledge was distant, the future was as far-off to him as it had been to Sirius. But here it is, now, written in the sag of Remus' shoulders, the thick incredulity in his voice when he says Peter's name. And Sirius feels a weird twist of betrayal. They should have told you, he wants to say, we should have told you, we will, we'll change it, because he can't imagine a world where the Marauders are so fractured that they wouldn't tell Remus, that everyone wouldn't know everything.

(That's not true. He'd started to see some hints of that fracturing even before this, in his own life. He doesn't want to think of that.)

"It hasn't happened," he says, uselessly. When he pushes his wrist over his mouth again, it isn't to clean off any of the blood, it's just to stop it, temporarily, so he can speak. "To me. It hasn't happened to me, I don't know why he doesn't-- Harry told me." And Remus, too, older and sadder, he was first to explain--but Sirius does not say that just now. He can't. Maybe he never will.

"It's Peter, Remus. I'll swear on anything, it's Peter." And finally, his eyes flick over to Snape, reluctantly acknowledging that dark and shadowed presence hovering on the fringe of this. "Ask him. He'll tell you too. It's Peter. He passes information to Voldemort, he turns traitor, and then he--"

He can't say it. He shoves his wrist against his mouth, hard, and it aches, but it stops him from having to go on.

"Ask him."

Remus looks up at Harry, jolted out of grief and self-pity by a fresh bout of confusion, but he doesn’t ask. He can’t get his mind around the question. He can barely get it around the idea of Sirius being from before his time—he makes himself meet his eyes, even though that also means watching him tremble and bleed.

“Peter,” he echoes again. It’s the beginning of a thought this time, though he doesn’t finish it: Peter knew everything Sirius knew. Peter knew everything Remus knew.

He thinks he might be sick, and then he thinks he might reach for Sirius’s shoulder. It’s the fledgling instinct of a man who could someday look at a map and believe all of it in one moment of stupid, soaring faith, whose first instinct would be to pull Sirius off the floor and hug him—except Remus is on the floor, too, and Sirius’s blood on his hands and on the towel that’s barely clinging to his hips. He’s not Sirius’s protector here. He’s what he needs protecting from.

Looking at him hurts.

But it works. He doesn’t need to hear it from Snape again. Remus can’t wholly believe it yet, because he doesn’t wholly believe any of this, but when his gaze finally shifts to Snape the balance of his allegiance has tipped.

“You knew?”

"Shut up Black!" is barked as soon as Sirius starts talking. Severus bulldozes over his feeble interjections, "You have no bloody idea what you're talking about, you stupid spoiled child--" he cuts himself off with a frustrated, angry noise, the energy in him that's always lurking coldly beneath the surface now barely-contained in the face of having this bullshit dragged out.

"No," he snaps in Lupin's direction, the glare in his dark eyes practically set to instant death. "No one knew, you have no conception of what it was like then, we're going off of Harry's-" and his voice catches there, either angry or just disturbed, who knows- "word, and by the way, Black, you would know if you'd pull your head out of your arse for five minutes and listen to anyone instead of fucking off and saying the war's too upsetting for your sensibilities to deal with! How long, how long have you been trapped here and you're still clueless while the rest of us live under the graves of everything your precious self can't deal with yet. Do you want to know what I knew? Do you want to hear about how Regulus dies, Sirius? How about your mother? Do you want to hear about how I advised Dumbledore that-- fuck you. Just-- go to hell, the both of you. Sort it out yourselves."

Severus looks like he might just kill them both anyway, but he steps back, feeling like a caged animal. "I'm done coming between you and what might kill you," he says to Sirius, "this is the last time."

There's a moment, a hollow moment, where everything Snape says strikes home, where Sirius really registers what it is to have Snape as witness to all of this. Because there's a truth in some of it that Sirius never wants to confront--one of the many things he never wants to confront, and Snape picks that out too, cleverly, and fuck him for knowing where to strike. And so whatever scrap of success Sirius had felt at getting Remus to list toward believing him, well, that's short fucking lived.

The thing about being someone's enemy for years and years is, they know things, and they know what to say. And Snape has years on him, years of skulking around in the dark, miserable bloody Death Eater. The venom in that thought is of no real comfort right now, because Sirius hasn't got anything to say--for a moment, only for a moment--

He knows plenty, he tells himself. He knows enough. Regulus, that's something he doesn't know what to do with (how Regulus dies, his stupid brother, too stupid to get out or understand or think for himself)--so he puts that away--and fuck his mother, who cares about his mother, and who does Snape think he is, dragging all of that up--Walburga Black and everything she stands for, and Snape has stood with that side, so why the hell would he ever ask for Snape's account of the way things went? Because even after he's been told that Snape is on their side, Sirius can't accept it. Not Snape. Because Snape can't be trusted, because Snape's as great a bastard as the rest of them--and here, finally, is Sirius working his way back toward anger, filling in the empty places with that anger, letting it take over control.

"Fuck you," he spits back in answer, and he tries to surge forward, and up to his feet, like he could even collect himself enough to stand up and go for Snape, like that wouldn't end up being anything but a huge mistake. "Good, because fuck you, I didn't ask you for your help, I didn't-- don't try and make yourself look like a bloody saint! Like I could trust a single fucking thing you'd say, like we--"

We, that's Sirius and James and Remus, and Lily, and maybe it's traitorous, but Sirius wishes that it was them here with him instead, not this version of Remus, who knows too much--and certainly not Snape. The anger that he's got is not a lasting thing, it's undercut too deeply by loneliness. The usual litany of his regular hatreds and prejudices will fill in, far more permanent. For now, it would just be enough that Snape fuck off, and Remus-- he doesn't know what he wants from Remus, and so Sirius doesn't look at him, he glares mutinously up at Snape instead.

"There's a reason I'm not asking you for what you think, Snape. You're hiding from it as much as anyone. You and your fucking friends, and your new department. Think they'd be as keen on you if they knew what it was to be a Death Eater? Fuck you. Get out of here."

Or else might usually follow that, but he leaves it off. Retaliation or gratefulness or sense, it's all too much to ask of him right now, and he's still not looking at Remus. Not yet.

Remus doesn’t say anything. There isn’t anything he could say, but even if there were, he would still only stare at Severus, then at Sirius. He’s astonished, at first, that the two of them are still doing this, like children, as if any of it matters anymore, and he feels like he did just after the war. Like he still does, sometimes. Like the world ended and nobody else noticed. Like he’s standing there with gaping wounds, holding his own guts in with his hands, while everyone around him goes blithely on about the weather, or the Quidditch League starting back up, or the latest theory about the whereabouts of The Boy Who Lived.

But then what they’re actually saying, underneath all of their familiar spitting fury, sinks in. Harry, again, and how long Sirius has been here (an unanswered question), and Snape’s department, his new friends who don’t know—

Remus guessed he was in over his head before he ever staggered away from the pods, but now he knows it. They’ve been here for—for some length of time. They’ve been playing this out without him. They have lives he knows nothing about. He doesn't know anything at all.

He opens his mouth to ask (anything, any single scrap of logical and decipherable information would be a relief), but he thinks better of it. Sirius isn’t looking at him anyway. After a moment he pushes himself up onto his feet instead. He steps in blood. He knows what he looks like, and he hates it, but he gathers what dignity he can anyway: readjusts his towel, squares his shoulders, sets his jaw. He’s never willingly gotten in the middle of this before and he doesn’t quite do it now, either. He doesn’t even block their line of sight. But he turns his back on Sirius, which is a relief as much as a necessity, and gives Snape a look that doesn’t so much tell him to go as suggest he go on and do it.

Or else what, indeed. He's not afraid of being hit - that much is obvious, he's never shrunken back from physical threats, and as intensely egotistical as it might sound, the primary reason why Severus has never fought back in earnest is that he knows how capable he is of killing living human beings, and doesn't trust himself to stop at disarming his former schoolmate. He stares at Sirius through his responses, and he's so angry that the emotion running unchecked through him transcends beyond it. Somewhere far-off, leaving him with disembodied liquid clarity, not unlike when he pretends to be three different people standing in front of the Dark Lord.

(It's possible he'd get on better in life if he'd stop being so fucking dramatic in his own head, but context and Occlumency do things to a person after a while.)

The look he gives Sirius is removed, disdainful, but devoid of any personal intent. He hasn't let anything go or given up, but he feels so intensely beyond rational - even furiously rational - behavior that he can't do anything but look at him. If there's any one coherent thought about it, it's that he's amazed Sirius still thinks anything he does is motivated by whether or not people like him. What a blindingly pointless thing to boil a threat down to.

Slowly, he turns to look at the werewolf who is now hovering at him. Maybe trying to loom in his soggy, blood-dotted towel. Severus is still shorter than the both of them for all the way he's carried himself has changed since their school days, but the instinct to flinch died many years ago.

He snaps his fingers. In his hand a small piece of paper with a number written on it appears, which he shoves at Lupin.

"If you do decide to kill him," he says, voice back to even, low tones that are definitely venomous but not nuclear, "you'll want to know what your chances for continued survival are."

When he steps back further he flashes a cold, cruel smile and raises his hands in a mockery of politeness. "Enjoy sorting through the wreckage of your worthless lives."

And then, he leaves.

Edited 2014-05-12 23:11 (UTC)

When Remus stands, Sirius very quickly loses the battle of not looking at Remus, as his attention switches swiftly to him. It's a burning attention, with an intensity that kicks up a few gears when Remus turns his back on him.

And he goes on staring at Remus, with only a quick interlude to turn one last glare on Snape. The instinct to climb to his feet and go for him is not one that's easily suppressed and he thinks very seriously about following him down the locker bank, grabbing hold of him, doing something--because it's insufferable, sitting here while Snape strolls off after getting the last word, after that dig about killing, and their lives-- like yours is so much better, he nearly calls after him, like you turn out so happy, but the words stick in Sirius' throat, for once, because--

Because of Remus. Because Remus is still standing there, and the second Snape is a little out of range, Sirius' attention goes right back to him. Standing in a towel, blood on his knuckles, his back still to Sirius. And that's even more insufferable, no matter what's just happened, no matter that he's going to be fumbling his way through healing spells later just to get his face sort of back into order, no matter that he's going to wake up tomorrow feeling like he's been trampled by a herd of hippogriffs. No matter that this Remus is older--in so many ways--it's still Remus, and Sirius swallows, hard, staring at him, willing him to look around.

"Remus."

Don't leave, maybe he should say that. He doesn't. Just his name, and then he can't think of how to follow that up.

Edited 2014-05-13 16:10 (UTC)

His head turns at the word, enough to angle his ear back toward Sirius, but it’s another long pause before Remus can make himself turn around to look at him.

Or not quite at him, maybe. Remus is back to not being able to meet his eyes. He also can’t find anywhere else for his eyes to settle that’s any better or get a handle on exactly who he's looking at: Padfoot, his friend; Black, the murderer; Sirius, who might possibly (impossibly) be innocent. It’s all blood and swelling and, underneath, bad memories and good ones that sting more, in light everything and especially what Remus almost did—what he did do. He’s never seen Sirius in worse shape than this. Of course there have been days when Remus wanted to hit him—especially frequent during the last few months, when he thought that if they just stopped beating around the bush and beat each other up a bit instead, maybe things would go back to being all right—but never like this.

He raises a hand to wipe his own mouth but smells copper in time to remember, stopped short of smearing his own face.

He could have killed him. If he gets wind that any of this isn't true, he will kill him.

But he doesn't know what to do with any of that right now. He doesn't even know where he is. So he does his best to put it all away somewhere out of reach, like old photographs on a closet shelf. “I don’t have my wand,” he says, finally, distantly. And obviously. The only thing in his hands is Snape’s mysterious piece of paper, crumpled in Remus’s fist but not discarded because it’s all he has, at the moment.

What he means is I can’t help you, which is not quite I’m sorry, but still—he would help, if he could, for what that’s worth. If it’s worth anything.

Sirius is quick to shake his head, no, that's all right, don't worry, like Remus is at all worried. He couldn't say for certain what Remus is right now. He knows everything about Remus, a familiarity that goes somewhere somewhere beyond mere insight--or he knew, anyways. Now it's all different, the rules have changed mid-play, and it's a little like being partly blind and fumbling around in the dark.

He pushes his forearm against his nose and mouth, scrubs it across his face--a childish movement, and he thinks that somewhat self-consciously after he's already started it. But so fucking what, right? He's not a child, but that's got to be what Remus sees, when he looks at Sirius. Stupid and young and without a single sodding clue.

No. He sees Sirius, but that means he sees a murderer. A suspected murderer, an actual murderer--it doesn't matter. Everything is different.

"S' all right," he says, somewhat thickly. It's better than the silence between them. "It'll be in your locker. But I'll fix it myself."

He's clumsy with healing spells, in part because of his impatience. Or maybe it's because James and Sirius were always going on about the coolness of scars, and his magic just settled to give him as many as possible. Thinking of James hurts in a way that's worse than his other aches, somewhere deep in his chest. If James were here, he would know what to say. Instead it's Sirius and Remus. Champion communicators, the both of them. Sirius scrubs his arm over his face again. It hurts, and smears the blood around, but it's better that then just sitting around bleeding on things.

But when he goes to try and make a joke about that, or about anything, really-- it comes out quite differently. No joke at all, just earnestness, even around the blood: "I swear it's true. That it isn't--wasn't--me. I'll explain it, if you like, I know more than--what Snape said." And hastily, Sirius adds-- "Not now. Later. Only if you want."

It should be better than this, having Remus back. It should feel better. Instead, Sirius nearly feels frightened--not because he fears being hit again. This fear is something deeper, too, something that wants Remus to stay right here until they have all of this worked out, like perhaps he'll disappear if Sirius doesn't keep close. Or, worse: he'll hear, and he won't believe it.

Edited 2014-05-14 15:05 (UTC)

"Of course," Remus hears himself say, like anything that's happened since he woke up has been a matter of course, and some sort of heart-to-heart is the next natural step—maybe they can discuss it over tea.

He edges close to hysteria, close enough to feel something close to laughter twitch in his chest, and then veers back away from it.

Sirius said something about a locker. Something else about not needing help. Remus is happy to take him at his word, if leaving him to sort out his injuries means sooner having space to begin sorting out his own head. He looks at the red streaks on Sirius's arm and only peripherally at his face; Remus can't get a read on how old he is or what script he's meant to be reading from, and the sincerity in his voice is too jarring to be welcome. He tries to find affection and comes up empty-handed. He's only recently taught himself to hate Sirius Black, and only with effort, angling and twisting memories until they pointed to inexorable betrayal. It hasn't had time to fade, and he hasn't had time, here, to begin tearing it apart.

Pity, though, he does manage to find. Pity and self-reproach. Remus has done worse, when he had to, but never so uncivilly. He pulls the towel off his waist and holds it down to him. Plenty of other people are naked, and he doesn't care. There's nothing doing for the scars, anyway.

"I believe you," he adds. It's a hollow thing, but it's close enough to true for his doubt to yield to older loyalty—for the shame of wondering to outweigh the danger of not knowing for certain, for now, and to stay his hand—which must have been how the rest of them felt about him, in the end. He doesn't let himself think about it. He leaves his hand low, an offer to help Sirius up.

Edited 2014-05-15 16:37 (UTC)

Everyone hates stupid trite sayings, because they never seem like they're going to measure up to the magnitude of real human emotion. But then you're in a situation where you're rife with real human emotion, and it's beyond messy, it's something that gets its claws in every bit of you and does not let go--and then it's amazing how true some of those trite sayings suddenly become. Like, for example: Remus says three words, I believe you, and it's like water in the middle of a desert, it's like a lifeline, it's like a great weight has been lifted off of Sirius' shoulders, it's like a thousand thousand things, all of them so effective at undoing just one knot of the horrible twisting in his gut. Even that little bit of relief is good.

It's not as good as it could be, but paradoxically, that's better, somehow. Certainly better than Sirius was expecting, and better, too, in that it's nothing definite. Not an answer given too quickly, either positive or negative. It just is. Belief is something real, and Sirius immediately clings to it. If Remus believes him, that's a start.

It's not as good as it could be, but it's enough that he nearly forgets to take the towel from Remus. For other people, casual nudity might be more of a thing--and maybe it still should be, because this is Remus-but-it-isn't. He has to remember that. It's just that beneath everything else, this is Remus. There's a point where you're half a semester in to living in a dormitory with someone and modesty becomes sort of a luxury that you adjust to living without, until it's sort of not something you much care about. So when he does realise that the towel is being offered, when he stops staring up at Remus with a stupid hot feeling behind his eyes--well, then, he just takes the towel from him, and rub it over his face. That hurts as well, but it's good, it takes his mind off of those three words that are rattling around in his head. Even when he's cleaned off a bit, his voice is still a bit thick--which is stupid, but there's nothing he can do about it, no matter how much he hates it.

"Thanks." And that's even stupider than a thick voice, and Sirius barks a dark laugh, as he gives one last push of the towel over his face. "There's more, down that way, or just-- your clothes. I'll give this one to a robot to wash."

And then he looks around again, and there's Remus' hand, and Sirius takes it at first without thinking. And then, once he's gripping at Remus' palm and he can feel the tiny little differences--maybe it's a new scar, or just a different grip--he realises the magnitude of that tiny gesture as well. He stares at Remus--same height; if Sirius thought about it he could probably pick out a year where Remus had stopped growing taller--but he's not thinking of that, he's just thinking of the weight of Remus' hand in his and the coolness of his palm and how stupid it is, that he hasn't yet managed to blink away that hot feeling behind his eyes.

"Thanks," he says again, uselessly. He has to force himself let go of Remus' hand. He doesn't want to. That's even stupider, he's not a child, they can't go around holding hands--and he wouldn't want to, not really. It's just that instinct to keep close to Remus. He believes you. Get out of it, Black.

Edited 2014-05-15 21:34 (UTC)

(no subject)

fullmoon - 2014-05-16 18:56 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only