A year ago, hell six months ago, Remus would have laughed had anyone said he'd crave being touched. If people could touch him, they were too close. But, after three nights of lying awake with a gulf between them that felt as wide and as cold as the North Sea, it was impossible not to sigh softly and relax just a bit when he felt Regulus' fingers in his hair. A simple touch.
"I'm apologising because I feel like you're ashamed of me now. You told the entire castle I'm incompetent and going to get them killed," he said quietly, miserable with the thought this was how Regulus saw him. And maybe he should be angry about the way Regulus had done it, calling him out like that in front of everyone and undermining anything Remus might have accomplished had he been given the chance to say anything before being attacked. But, he couldn't find it in him to be angry when it had made him open his eyes to see how badly he was failing the people that depended on him. "It wasn't Moody or Snape or James you were attacking with your words. It was me. How could I not see that as you being disappointed in me?"
Taking a breath, he relaxed his grip on his ankles, letting his knees fall to the side as the simple act of talking did more to settle his thoughts than days of thinking. "You've seen me fight out there. You know it's different. And maybe you don't care what I teach them, but I do. I was given a responsibility to see them trained so they can stay safe and I've failed at teaching them anything." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter why I gave Harry room in the fight. There was a lesson in all of it that I intended to explain to them, make them see how damaging the idea of trusting in subduing an enemy has been to the very way they think about a fight.
"God, Regulus, I don't even care about the number of times I've heard them say 'But, I disarmed him. I win.' as much as the number of times I hear the reverse. 'But, I was disarmed. I lose.' The bloody wand is less than three feet away, they're in a perfect position for a foot sweep to send their sparring partner off balance long enough to get their wand. But, they were disarmed, so they lose. They've been taught to give up.
"That's what I was trying to show them, that even The Boy Who Lived could be brought down by a nobody.
"The fire and smoke, that was a stage trick, something to get their attention. Taking the time, giving him room...I had to let them see him, see the fancy spells, overused strategies, and excessive waste of spells. That's the sort of thing they're imagining this is going to be and I needed them to see it and then see how easy it is to make all of it meaningless. In the end, it wasn't a spell that defeated Harry, it was his own way of thinking and two bare hands. That's what I needed them to see, to understand."
Remus sighed and looked away, ashamed of his actions that afternoon and not wanting Regulus to see that shame in his eyes. "I didn't realise fully what I was doing. Not when I nearly killed him or when I used him. I didn't mean to, but as we started and there were testing spells and the same routine patterns I've seen in the trainees, that's when I started to think how I could use it, use the fact it was Harry and they are, in large part, families of the men he'd trained to subdue in the first place, to hammer in how flawed their thinking has become. By the end, I was not only using him to teach a lesson, I was using his own good nature against him to play a dirty trick that would force him to lose. I don't care if I trick people in a real fight. But, he's my friend and I broke his trust. I could see it in the way he kept an iron-fisted grip on his wand after as though he expected me to dishonour his surrender the way I'd already tricked him once.
"Then, when I was holding him down, I was so afraid he wouldn't yield and I wasn't fighting him any more. I was fighting myself. Something happened, I don't know, but there was only one way he was walking out of there and that was if he yielded, if he submitted. I just kept thinking how easy it would be to squeeze just a little bit harder and crush his windpipe. He's one of my closest friends and I was coldly calculating the ease of killing him. If I hadn't maintained control..."