WHO: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin WHAT: Sad because their friend is gone and scared of losing each other WHERE: Sirius' place, which kind of became their place WHEN: Not long after realizing people are gone RATING: M FOR MATURE. WOOF.
Hand in my hand and we promised to never let go Walking a tight rope with you
Gone. James was just... gone. He hadn't even been around all that long, but suddenly he just wasn't anymore. Had he gone through the Door alone? From what Remus had heard from quiet talk around town, some others were missing too. Regulus, Sirius' younger brother being among them. Remus wasn't sure if the missing were all accounted for yet, but he figured that if those who were lost hadn't turned up yet by now, they likely were gone. But where? Had they got back home? Or were they trapped in a void created by the Door in which they could not return? Thus far, Remus had only gone through during the Full Moon to either get to a place where there wasn't a Full, or somewhere he could safely spend the night without hurting anyone. If the Door was the culprit to why some had gone missing, he wasn't sure going through it was such a smart option anymore. That said, they had to go through at times for supplies and whatnot, so that was kind of a problem. The other problem was that they couldn't really be sure if it was just the Door, or whatever entity that brought them there selecting who should be sent away. That was terrifying to consider.
The bigger problem, however, was that James was gone and that realization had been pretty awful. Remus had lost him once in his lifetime and that had been excruciatingly painful enough as it was. Losing him again, after gaining him back from death, was pretty heart breaking. And Sirius, bless him, hadn't yet gone through that sort of loss so Remus could only imagine how hard it was for him to lose his best friend. The situation with Regulus was a bit more complicated and Remus wouldn't even pretend to think he knew what Sirius was feeling about that, no matter how well he knew Sirius. All he knew was that they'd both been gloomy and couldn't do anything to fix what was lost.
What scared Remus to death was that if the people who were gone were selected, what would stop the powers that be from taking Sirius from him? Or taking Remus, which would leave Sirius alone? Remus had entered one of those phases where he couldn't get his brain to shut off and Merlin, he needed his head to be quiet because it'd been on a non-stop seemingly run-on sentence for days.
He'd tried going for an early morning walk in the woods before Sirius had awakened, but that hadn't quieted his mind at all. Remus came back to find Sirius awake, which he felt terrible about because he'd meant to come back before then so there was no need to fear he'd disappeared too. That was sort of a new Thing. Being afraid the other was gone so needing to be within eyesight or if not, then knowing where the other had gone and for how long. A bit obsessive, a bit much, but after losing James it was hard not to be.
Seeing Sirius draped upside down on the couch tugged at Remus' heartstrings. He took his cardigan off and hung it up next to where he kept his shoulder bag. He reached into the bag and fished out two silver foil wrapped chocolates. He only had a few left, but he felt the time was right. They both deserved it. Slowly, he moved to join Sirius on the couch and held a chocolate kiss out to him in his palm. "It might help a little," he offered, softly.