Who: Remus & Sirius What: Remus beating the snot out of Sirius When: Like back when the game opened, oops Where: Their room Warnings: Violence, mentions of HP canon death
Remus hadn't the faintest idea of what had happened. For a while, he thought he was dead, or that he'd gotten so drunk that day that his neighbor, Mrs. Lloyd, found him passed out and bandaged at the wrists and assumed he'd attempted to kill himself, and took him to the nearest hospital.
But the hospital wasn't in Wales. The hospital wasn't … anywhere, really. The information was limited, and it didn't make sense. They'd all come out of the sky, this was Earth in a distant future, and the rest they were still figuring out. Remus did his best to listen, but it all sounded like nonsense. He was too tired to process any of it, to sort or reason any of it out. The scratches from last night's transformation ached, his body was sore and exhausted. All he could do was take the information and his … room assignment, whatever it was, and sleep. And then, perhaps, he'd wake up and discover this was all just a particularly vivid dream.
He shuffled through the corridors in his pajamas and shabby bathrobe, his wand tucked away and hidden in a massive pocket. He felt detached from his body, detached from reality as he sought out the room that had been assigned to him, unlocked the door, and ducked inside.
It … wasn't bad. It was larger than the cottage he'd been living in, and needed less repair than some of the places he'd stayed. He scratched his head, ruffled his hair, and — he stopped dead when he saw that he wasn't alone.
What little color he had in his cheeks now drained away, and Remus Lupin was standing dumbstruck in threadbare pajamas as he laid eyes on none other than Sirius Black. …
Sirius had assumed that he was having a break until some point in his conversation. And no matter what his faults, Sirius knew things just hit a point where he had to shut up and believe. So, no. This wasn’t Azkaban. He wasn’t flocked by Dementors, and apparently, he was in the future, and his best friend -- who had been dead -- was from the past and had been picked up and dropped here as well.
It was overwhelming, and after everything else in the last few days, he didn’t know what he was supposed to be feeling. He wanted to break down and cry. After the hysterical laughter with the hit wizards, that seemed to be the only option left to him. It had fucking hurt to look at James. Young and 18, completely unaware of the road that was going to come at him shortly. (Hadn’t they all been like that? Sure, they were going to war, but Sirius had never for a moment really considered that any of them were going to die when they left Hogwarts. People would. But not Lily or James. And it wouldn’t be because one of them had betrayed them surely.)
He turned at the sound of someone entering the room, and then just stared at Remus. Because this wasn’t a fresh-faced 18-year-old Remus. No, this looked far more like the Remus he had left at home. (That guilt hit him smack in the chest again, too. Because after all those months, all of them pettily sniping at each other, overanalyzing fucking everything: It wasn’t Remus. And Merlin, fuck, fuck, fuck, if he had only told Lily and James to use Remus instead, none of this would have ever happened. It was him who had opened his big, stupid fucking mouth and said to use Peter; who would to go after little Peter? Who fucking indeed.)
So he remained silent. There was nothing he could even begin to say. …
Remus looked terrible, far worse than the last time Sirius had seen him. There'd been an argument of some kind, some disagreement where Remus had started to suspect that he was being shut out of his friends' lives, where for the first time the word werewolf had been thrown around as accusatory and dangerous. It was obvious from his sunken eyes and fresh bandages that he was just coming off a transformation, but that wasn't it. He'd lost weight. There was a gauntness to him, something sad and broken that Sirius had never seen.
His fingers twitched, but he didn't reach for his wand. The shock of seeing Sirius Black, here, was slowly giving way to blinding, violent anger. He nearly growled.
"You."
…
Sirius so rarely saw Remus well and truly angry. But when he was, it was really sight to behold. It was an anger that more ingrained and perhaps more well-honed than anything Sirius had ever seen before. And now it was directed toward him with a frightening focus. It only reconfirmed that Remus was from around the same time as him: He thought Sirius did it.
And Merlin, it was easy to take that anger. It was a relief -- in the same way that letting the hit wizard team arrest him had been a relief. He hadn’t even argued, because why? James and Lily were dead, and no one in the world was going to let him go near Harry. All of their enemies were defeated now, but the cost had been far too much. So if they wanted to lock him up, fine. He hadn’t been able to save two of the only people he really cared about.
“Yeah,” Sirius said, throwing on cocky, surefire grin that he certainly didn’t feel, arms outstretched: an invitation.
…
Remus was rarely angry. He tempered it to seem more agreeable, to be more easily liked. He kept his mouth shut even when he was upset, even when he was outraged, and while Sirius had seen Remus upset enough to really argue, it was nothing like this. There was something wild about him, and with how thin and sick he looked, he seemed nothing short of feral, his eyes fixed on Sirius like he wanted to tear him to shreds.
He'd never had a chance to see Sirius, never had a chance to look him in the eye and confront his friend. How long had Sirius been lying in wait to betray them all? Remus had spent a year attempting to figure it out, trying to make excuses at first and then just trying to explain. Every argument meant something new, every innocuous little action suddenly came to mean something sinister. He had to wonder if Sirius had intended to get at him, too, or if simply getting him out of the way had been enough.
He'd also spent a year thinking about all the things he'd do to Sirius if he'd been responsible for punishing him.
The smile threw him. It startled him so badly that he blinked, and for a moment it almost broke him down — he knew that Sirius had laughed when they took him in, but it was so damn unsettling to see him smile now.
Steeling his nerves, he took a step forward and slowly drew his wand from his pocket. It was a last-ditch effort to give Sirius time to explain himself, to give him more time so that maybe, maybe Sirius would say that this was all a misunderstanding. His hand trembled. He didn't have the faintest idea what he would cast. He didn't think he could cast. For months he'd been thinking of a moment like this and now he froze. Waiting. Hoping for an explanation.
…
There we were. Remus drew his wand as Sirius knew he could be expected to do. (Remus was the only one out of the three of them who would do this properly. James would never had the tenacity. And Peter, that fucking coward, that fucking traitorous rat, would have never had the skill.) But Sirius knew the extent of Remus’ prowess with magical, particularly when it came to a few more archaic charms and spells.
“Do it,” he challenged, teeth showing for just a second too long, a challenge. Maybe Remus wanted him to give a reason not to. A pleading explanation. But he didn’t. Maybe Remus would have believed the truth of what had happened, maybe he wouldn’t. Sirius did have the energy or the patience to go through it all, and mostly he didn’t want Remus’ forgiveness. He wanted his anger.
It had been his fault. All his fucking fault, because he was the one who was supposed to protect them. Him, above anyone else -- even beyond Dumbledore. And he had gone and fucked the whole thing up, and completely hinged on Remus being the spy. And he had been wrong. He had betrayed everyone who had absolutely trusted in him; he had been the one who had ruined all their lives with his pettiness and stupidity. If he’d just said, Let’s go with Remus instead, they’d all be back home, getting sick off the chocolate and candies they would have bought Harry for Halloween.
…
Remus hesitated. He had a number of spells he could have used. Curses, hexes, vicious things that he'd used during the war that he should have regretted learning. He'd always been a dedicated student, and while he never counted himself as a soldier, he knew so many deviously creative ways to ward off the Dark Arts that it … well, it had been sort of funny, at the time.
It wasn't now.
Now, all of that thinking meant that Remus didn't have one curse that he could just go to, one incantation already on his lips. It made him falter, even as Sirius told him to do it.
A flick of his wrist, and he lifted the tip of his wand, pulling it back. Something in his expression shifted, like he was almost about to soften, or chuckle. He tucked his wand back into his pocket. No, he decided. Curses weren't the way to solve this.
The moment his wand was back in his pocket, Remus closed his fist and punched Sirius in the jaw instead.
…
The blow caught him hard. He hadn’t been prepared for it, but he wouldn’t have tried to block it anyway. He wound up sideways, white flaring behind his right eye. Blood was in his mouth, thick around his gum. It wasn’t the sort of pain he wanted, but he would take it all the same. It was more blunt than the spellwork he would have expected from Remus. (Good for you, Moony, he would have said if he wasn’t the one on the other side of this so-called fight.)
He pressed his fingertips gingerly to where Remus had hit him, spat the blood out of his mouth, and then straightened. He looked back up at Remus, eyebrows raised: another challenge. Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? I just murdered our friends, and you have single well-placed punch?
…
Remus was well-behaved. He kept his aggression in check. He worked hard not to let his wolf instincts take over, to let anger get to him. He tried to eat vegetarian when he craved meat. He actively clamped down on anything that felt wild, in order to maintain some semblance of control over his situation. He didn't get into fights. He barely ever raised his voice.
But when he lashed out, he lashed out. He didn't want to cast spells. He wanted to get his hands on Sirius and feel bones break.
He growled, grabbing Sirius by the collar and throwing him up against the wall. Another punch, this time straight to Sirius's nose. He was too angry to speak, too enraged by that cocky smirk on Sirius's face, the one that egged him on, that dared him, that challenged him. He was going to break Sirius himself if no one else was going to do it. He was the last one left of their friends.
…
Sirius bounced off the wall for a moment. (His body was a jittering mess of warnings, pinging with awareness that Remus was going to hit him again.) And, oh, that one fucking hurt. His nose broke underneath Remus’ knuckles. Blood splashed down his lower lip, hot and salty, and dripped onto his T-shirt.
He brought a hand up against it without thinking, trying to staunch the flow. But he didn’t find himself. Instead he looked up at Remus, his ears still ringing. He grinned, knowing that it had to be garish with the blood in between his teeth.
“Is that it, Moony?” he challenged again. (He knew Remus could do better.)
…
The sarcastic lilt to his old nickname was like driving a knife into Remus's gut. Sirius seemed monstrous now, bloody and grinning, the way Remus had had to start imagining him in this past year — the traitor, the snake, the lying bastard who chose his pureblood family ties over what was right, over his closest friends —
Remus was raised alone. He hadn't had friends until he met James, Sirius, and Peter. He'd been so overwhelmed by their warmth and companionship that he'd placed all of his faith in them. They were everything. He'd followed along, stupidly, uncritical, afraid to raise his voice if he disagreed, afraid to do anything that might cause them to revoke their friendship. But they never did. They accepted him, they accepted everything — and all that Remus held dear was gone. His ability to trust. His faith in friends. Lily and James and Peter were all gone after so many other losses, after the death of his mother — he thought that he'd have them. He never, ever thought one of them would turn.
And Sirius had pushed Remus away, had cast suspicion, had done his best to make sure that Remus wasn't involved with the Potters for the last few months of their lives. Now he was smiling. Still smiling, through everything, through blood bruising —
"They were your family!" Remus grabbed Sirius and practically threw him to the floor, but he was quick to tackle him and pin him down. His voice was hoarse and broken, his body already exhausted from last night's transformation. The only thing keeping him from breaking down in sobs was the anger as he went to hit him again.