I'm alone with you tonight
I can't find my way out of here
The memories we've never left behind
Will come alive this broken night
It�s quiet. Deafeningly so. After twelve years of constant screaming, crying, mummers of insanity I have yet to grow accustomed to nothingness. I�m alone. With him. Seems like only yesterday I saw him again for the first time. Seems like only yesterday he was pulling me into that embrace in the Shrieking Shack. I might not have known it was him had it not been for the familiar scars across his face. He looked so very different from the last I�d seen him, pale and impoverished. I almost cried at the sight, not out of pity, but of joy. Of all the people in the world, he had come to my rescue.
That was nearly two years ago. Now, so much had changed. I was free, in a sense, working once again for the Order from my family�s vacant home. I�ve always hated this place, but with him beside me I can tolerate it. He�s always had that effect on me, and I often wonder if he had been with me in Azkaban if my time there might have been manageable. Probably not. The Dementors would have sucked us dry of that happiness. Besides, he doesn�t deserve that kind of life.
A log cracks on the fire and it seems to echo in the room, making my pulse quicken at the suddenness of the sound. I scoff at myself. When had I become so jumpy? I glance sideways at him to see if he noticed, but if he did he�s being kind enough to not say anything. He�s staring into the flames, just as I am, unseeingly. I wonder what he�s thinking about, and find myself anxiously hoping it�s me. My heart tugs painfully. He would have no reason to think of me, at least not in the way he might once have.
I knew it wasn�t my imprisonment, or reasons thereof, that were to blame for what had happened between us. That fault lies solely in me. My foolish pride. I was afraid then, afraid to admit that I could possibly love another man, especially my best friend. I�d loved him and left him, and somehow in all of my confusion I had managed to lead James and Lily into thinking that he was the one trying to betray them. My mind had managed to concede that that had been why he had opened up to me that night. Disturbed by my own actions of rejection and betrayal to him, I asked James to switch the Secret-Keeper to Peter. Surely I was right. Moony wasn�t�well he couldn�t be in love with me. It was all a ploy to get to James. Or so I had thought. I had been wrong. So very, very wrong.
We haven�t spoken of it since. I cannot fathom the pain and suffering it must have caused him. I would give anything to take it all back, I wish that I could tell him how much I care for him. I hadn�t realized it until I�d been thrown in Azkaban with nothing but my thoughts. Alone in the darkness, my cries of anguish had been lost among the screams of others.
A lump forms in my throat and my eyes burn with tears. I will not cry, not in front him, but I cannot escape from the room. I feel almost trapped, the nervous anxiety of a caged animal welling up inside of me until there is one thing left to do.
�Moony?�
My voice sounds broken and foreign to my own ears and I can only pray that he doesn�t hear my inner distress.
�Hmm?�
Noncommittal. He gives nothing away unless intending to, and now I find myself lost. How could I possibly say what I�ve been thinking for fifteen years? What words could express my emotions, what could be done to undo my past regrets? My faltering is not lost on him.
�Padfoot?�
Concern. He always did care about others before himself. Oh, typical predictable Remus. How I wish I hadn�t missed out on his life. How I wish I could have told him then how much I loved him. Damn me.
I feel a hand upon my face, and it startles me for only a moment before I realize it�s him, wiping away the tears that must have finally fallen from my eyes. He says nothing and I�m grateful. I feel him move nearer to me and his hand covers mine. I inwardly sigh and feel a weight I hadn�t known was there lift from my shoulders. He knows.
Through the days where empty quiet rain will pass away
Fading to gray
Wreathe yourself to pale and lifeless bliss
And all will soon be done for nameless grave
I can't see your face here at all
Who are you?
He�s gone. He�s gone and there�s nothing I can do to change that. I know it�s what he would have wanted. To go out in a blaze of glory, fighting for what was right. But there was no glory, not for him. Only those of us in the Order will ever know that Sirius Black had died a noble and honorable death.
I try to picture him as he once was all those years ago, carefree and jovial, but my mind can only see those haunted eyes and the pale gaunt face. The years of torment and abuse that Azkaban had chiseled into his very soul. That wasn�t him. It couldn�t be. Not the boy who had lived for adventure, mischief and mayhem. The handsome young man with the sleek black hair and laughing gray eyes. I could remember him as he should have been, why couldn�t I see him?
I can�t sleep without watching him fall through the veil. It never ends. He just keeps falling. And falling. And I never try to save him. I can only watch, dumbstruck, as I had when it happened. The flash had been red, not green. He was fine, he would get up and come back through that veil and hex the hell out of Bellatrix. But he hadn�t been fine. He hadn�t gotten up. He hadn�t come back through the veil.
Harry had known it too and it was all I could do to stop him from going through the veil. Maybe I should have let him. Maybe we both should have gone through and saved Sirius. Maybe then, if nothing more, he could have had a proper burial instead of an unmarked and empty grave.
The colonies of useless lives go by
Pleased with their own way to die
Hope is dim and vague in here
Can't even wait the forthcoming with fear
Days have passed and Sirius had become but a memory to those around me. Their universe had not been shaken up and turned upside down. They had not lost everything. I had. I can feel the despair slowly enveloping me, pulling me down into it�s depths and numbing every emotion I once had.
I see no light of hope, nor gloom of death. I feel as though I�m in slow motion in a world that has been sped up and the only thing that has been left with me is my own lament and despair. It�s as if I�m drowning in a sea of sorrows, but I don�t care. I feel nothing, I know nothing, I am nothing without him.
Fin
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