To Find Sanctuary - Cannibalschism - Harry Potter (2024)

Padfoot trudged along the path, warded with a magic so strong, and familiar he felt almost guided along the route that took him ever higher up the rolling hills, overlooking the River Spey. It smelled of peat moss, and autumn, musky. Earthy with a sort of deep nature that made Padfoot feel each step planted firmly into the ground.

It was a long walk, but it was easier on four feet than it would have been on two. His paws padded the soft earth, the sweet scent of protection magic, and smoke of a nearby fire keeping his aim true. He spent more, and more time as Padfoot these days. More, and more time hiding from the scraping, grinding, metal on metal agony that was the human mind, and how easily it was splintered under the blunt force trauma of human thoughts.

It had been awful business in the Department of Mysteries, and as Padfoot it all whirred to static. When he dared to don Sirius’s skin, the memories screamed in his skull like an endless cacophony intent to break him open. Intent to carve into him, and spill out whatever dregs of whoever he was obstinately remained, for lack of any other apparent purpose.

He had died. Or gone somewhere very much like death. And then, as though he’d never gone there at all, he’d returned. Yet the memories haunted like banshees in the attic, and though time ticked mockingly forwards, dragging him along, cruel in its infinite apathy, they festered. It took a very long time, indeed, to feel he was alive at all. A joke. A sick joke that this broken beast should walk while James and Lily and even Harry were little more than dust now.

The skies were so blue here. Had they always been that way? So often it felt Sirius saw mundanity for the first time, since he’d returned from where he’d gone. Azkaban had sucked so much away, and then it had all come back in that moment beneath the Willow, when he’d laid eyes on Remus after so very long. When he’d stood face to face with Harry, who looked so very much like James had, whose eyes were entirely Lily’s as though her fire burned within him.

The desire to live, and fear of death were heavy, wretched burdens, and Azkaban had lifted them, ripped them away, replacing them only with pain, only the icy cold of the Dementors’ frigid guard. But in Remus’s sunlight gaze, it had crashed down again upon Sirius’s slim shoulders. He’d been nearly crushed by a fear worse than death. A desire stronger than living. He’d had it. Right there in his hands, he’d held it, and then, what felt a moment later, he’d lost it all again.

Halting, he sniffed at the thick highland air. He was close now, and even Padfoot’s dogged resolve was not enough to steel his nerves and quiet his pounding heart. The scent in the air had grown overwhelmingly commonplace in its intimacy, and Padfoot was a creature of routine, and habit. He could feel even in this skin, the split between Padfoot’s excited anticipation, and Sirius’s very human, very fragile apprehension. Letting Padfoot’s mind grow loud, and forefront, Sirius sank into the recesses of his own consciousness. He bounded up the hill to the cottage that sat at its apex, a cordial fire stacked so precisely with wood, it appeared picturesque, just off to one side. Some things never changed, did they?

The wards let him pass, but he felt their ripple, and heard the high-pitched tinny vibrato that was surely designed to make his arrival well-known. The cottage was surrounded by dense forest, with only a small plot of land around its perimeter, and the slope of the path up the hill which led to the old green door at its front.

A heavy thunk had one of Padfoot’s ears perking up, attempting to place the sound, but finding himself unable to recognize it for what it was. He padded around the right side, following the rhythmic thunk , pause, thunk that grew louder with his approach.

Thunk . His scent crashed into Padfoot’s heightened olfactory receptors, even before its source's messy russett, and grey hair, and the slope of his shoulders, far broader now than when they were young, could thrust him through the folds of history to a time when things were so agonisingly simple and pure.

Thunk . The heavy axe blade split the dark wood beneath it with a practised elegance only Remus could manage, performing such a task. Padfoot watched his old friend pick up a round log from a pile nearly three metres high, and place it on a fat old stump, raising the axe over his head. Padfoot’s deep black eyes blinked, anticipating the thunk , but it did not come. Instead, Remus lowered the axe, letting it come to rest beside his worn brown boot with a heavy sigh.

“You going to sit there, and watch, or are you going to help?” he spoke over his shoulder, and even for Padfoot, his sunlight gaze was a piercing reminder of all that he’d lived without. All that he’d left behind, when the Veil had drawn him into its ethereal grasp. The pale scars that striated his face, like silt in the marble, accentuated just how much more grey there was in his hair now, and how many more lines had etched themselves into his face. How many had Sirius put there himself?

Padfoot pawed at the ground, stepping forward, then shifting back, unsure of where he stood, and noting the axe to be a weapon. Remus saw all of this, as he always had, he saw straight through Padfoot to Sirius within, letting the axe handle fall from his hands. As soon as the gentle thud of the tool hitting the soft earth tickled Padfoot’s sensitive ears, he bounded forward, paws pressing into the ground such that he had enough momentum to topple Remus to the earth when he collided with the man.

“Merlin , Pads,” Remus choked as the air rushed from his lungs. He wore a tattered brown corduroy jacket that Padfoot stuffed his nose against, taking in the woodsy scent of the forest as it mingled with the sweet honeyed smell of Remus. Neither Padfoot nor Sirius had ever been much for restraint, and he lapped at Remus’s jaw, pinning the man to the ground as he nuzzled against him, wishing for a moment he could just dissolve into Remus. That he could tether himself permanently to this man’s smile, always laced with sadness, and a grief that sat so close to the surface it competed with the gashes on his face for prominence.

“Alright, alright, let me up, you mangy mutt.” Remus shoved Padfoot off of him, sitting up such that his eyes were of a level with Sirius’s own.

It had not been a short while, at all, since they’d last seen each other. After Sirius had returned from the endless nothing that lay behind the Veil, the world he’d found had changed. Remus had found, and lost, true love in Ted Tonks’s girl, and Harry had died, doing what the rest of them had failed to, twice before.

The world had moved on without him, and Sirius became a stranger in his own life.

“Are you intent to bring fleas into my house like that?” Remus asked, the hint of a smirk tugging at one corner of his thin lips, split in the middle by a white scar.

Sirius had wandered for quite a while, trying to find purpose in what seemed a life devoid of such, before realising his slow meanderings had, as they always seemed to, drawn him back to Remus. How many years had it been since Voldemort had died for the last time? Sirius could scarcely chance a guess. Five? Ten? He’d spent so much time as Padfoot, he had shifted into a territory so unfamiliar that the few, and far spaced moments he spent as Sirius were accompanied by a sort of existential mania. The passage of time itself was so loud; it seemed a constant deafening drone.

Remus’s eyes did that thing where they sort of widened, and squinted at the same time with incredulity, and Sirius felt his assessment, even through the fog of Padfoot’s limited perception.

“Alright then, Pads,” Remus grunted a sigh, pushing himself slowly to standing in a manner that evidenced the years’ unkindness. “Have it your way,” he said, and then added, “you always do.”

Padfoot followed so closely behind Remus’s heavy footsteps, and, several times, he needed to turn to the side to avoid getting a boot to the face. A quick Alohamora was all it took to open the green door, and Padfoot snuck around Remus’s legs when the man pushed it open. “Not on my rug, you filthy thing!” Remus called, only a split second, before Padfoot’s muddy paw made contact with the deep blue rug that separated Remus’s tatty old sofa from his dusty old floors. The cottage appeared ancient in every way, and Remus’s stuffy decorating had offset that little at all.

“Scourgify ,” Remus grumbled. Padfoot yelped as the lilac scent of Remus’s Cleaning Charm rustled his fur, and scrubbed away the dirt caked between his toes. He jumped up on Remus’s couch, curling up in the spot that smelled most like the man to which it belonged. Remus untied his old boots, kicking them to the side of the doorway in a manner that registered to Padfoot as routine, but instead of joining him on the sofa, he continued past the parlour, and small kitchen, to the hallway just beyond. Ears perking, Padfoot recognised the sound of running water, and part of him felt a sense of sorrow at the idea that Remus would emerge from that blasted place, smelling of soaps, and shampoos instead of Remus.

It had not registered, until he was in this place that smelled only of his old friend, and things that reminded him of his old friend, that Padfoot realised how intensely exhausted he was from his journey. He could not recall the last time he’d eaten, nor how long it had been since he slept. Padfoot cared little at all for schedules. He ate when he was hungry, and slept when he was tired. Right now, the latter outweighed the former, and before he could grunt a disapproving huff at the overwhelming eucalyptus, and thyme scent wafting from Remus’s shower, he was asleep.

Sirius was roused by several things all converging at once: the alarmingly bright sun that crested the Speyside hills, the intoxicating aroma of what smelled to be bacon, and the screaming wretched din of his human mind. His breath halted painfully in his throat as he felt the wrenching sensation of being plucked back from the abyss as he woke. How similar sleep was to death. Darting his eyes around the room, feeling lost in his surroundings, and barely recalling at all where he was, Sirius’s heart hammered.

“Sirius?” Remus’s voice sounded miles, and miles away, and Sirius grit his teeth, bringing his hands to his face trying to quell the whirring, grinding of his own thoughts. “Stubborn old fool,” Remus lectured, mercifully for only a moment before Sirius felt the pressure of Remus’s embrace squeeze together the pieces of his splintering sanity, until they fused back together enough for Sirius to take in a gasping breath. “You can’t just spend your life as Padfoot, and expect to slide back into Sirius like a mangy old boot.” The not-so-gentle patting of Remus’s hand on Sirius's back, jarred him from the terrible half-sleep, half-waking fugue he’d slid into. Sirius gripped Remus desperately, as though the winds of instability would simply blow him away if he let go.

“You’re alright, Sirius.” After several uncomfortable moments, his breath slowed to a somewhat more reasonable rhythm, though he obstinately clung to Remus long after he had calmed.

“The bacon will burn,” Remus stated, tugging free of Sirius’s tight embrace.

“I like it burned,” he remarked, finding a familiar glee in the way Remus rolled his eyes, and sighed in Sirius’s face.

“Well, I don’t,” Remus quipped, pushing himself to standing, and walking the short way to the kitchen, obscured only by a half-wall that parted the small space. It was such a small distance, but, yet still, every millimetre seemed a kilometre, and Sirius found himself following after Remus, the scent of (burning) bacon sending his stomach rumbling boisterously. It only just then dawned on Sirius that he was wearing clothes. Remus’s clothes, it seemed, by how poorly the old jeans, and scratchy black sweater fit him. Sirius leaned against the sandy countertop, beside the gas range, on which the bacon popped, and sizzled in a pan, watching Remus crack an egg into another.

“Over easy for me,” Sirius remarked, delighting in the way Remus’s brow twitched in obvious irritation.

“I’m not your wife. Cook your own eggs,” Remus spat, even as he reached for several more, cracking them beside the first. It turned out to be an absolutely ludicrous amount of food, but Sirius hadn’t eaten in quite some time, made more apparent by the way his ribs protruded, and the ridges of his sternum were visible beneath the loose collar of his borrowed sweater. They sat at Remus’s small wood table, the scraping and clanking of fork on plate their only conversation for a rather long while, before Remus clanged his butter knife against his plate.

“Why are you here?” he asked, and Sirius blanched at the way his eyes betrayed him, his face a mask of what do you want from me? Sirius had been mid-bite, and he placed his fork with the bit of egg (over easy, just like he liked it) back on his plate.

“Why are you?” Sirius replied, his voice gruff with the grit of sarcasm he wielded to stave off whatever high-horse Remus would attempt to mount.

“Don’t start,” Remus snapped. “It’s been nine years, Sirius. Five since I heard you were alive. Thanks for telling me, by the way.” Sirius had expected the anger and frustration, but somehow he had not planned for the deep hurt in Remus’s tone. Just as his eyes betrayed him so, too, did the way his voice almost shook with the effort of maintaining this façade. His lips were pressed tightly together in a sort of pained scowl, and Sirius felt a stab of guilt seeing the way the small lines around his eyes etched deeper with his hardened expression.

“Is it not enough that I’m here now?” Sirius postulated. “Must it always be what I’ve failed to do?” Remus’s scowl deepend, and his eyes shifted away. He wore a grey flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the top button (which appeared to be missing) that showed one long pink scar running over his collarbone. Sirius bit back an inopportune smile at the memory of that night. Padfoot and Moony nearly ripped each other to tatters each full moon, but it had somehow always felt a game. A tradition, even. Remus scoffed, bringing a hand to his face to squeeze the bridge of his nose.

“I want to say no,” he admitted, speaking against his fingers, his eyes focused on anything other than Sirius. “I want to be so angry with you. It’s what I deserve after all this time. I deserve to be furious.”

Sirius ached watching the furrow on Remus’s brow, and the way his eyes strained with the effort of attempting to conceal the obvious.

“Why is it that this still eludes me?” Remus asked. Sirius offered a smile that felt as weak as all of the excuses his mind worked to conjure for why he’d abandoned his closest friend when he’d needed Sirius most. None of them were good enough. There was no apology that would suffice, so with a sigh Sirius shrugged.

“Because I’m Sirius. And you’re Remus,” he offered. Remus’s eyes flicked up to Sirius’s, holding his gaze for a long tense moment, before he huffed a razor thin chuckle.

“Right on both accounts, I suppose,” Remus remarked. “You’re also a mess. Have you eaten in the past month, or does Padfoot not do that anymore?”

“Not as much as he probably should, but I’m also not chopping wood, or whatever it is you do up here every day.”

“Chop wood, tend to the unicorns, put out seed for the Phoenix that visits, infrequently,” Remus explained. Sirius’s dark brows raised as he finally forked the last bit of egg into his mouth, reaching for the dish with more toast, which Remus slid closer to him.

“Unicorns?” Sirius asked.

“I sell their hair for a criminally low amount, so fancy wandmakers can make a fortune later. The wood, too. Rowan trees grow around here.” Remus sat back, and Sirius felt the way he watched while he ate, a familiar glint of irritated worry in his amber eyes.

“Seems hardly fair,” Sirius remarked, shoving the buttered toast into his mouth, and recalling all the delightful things he’d missed, scrounging on dead bunnies, and berries.

“It’s work,” Remus stated. “And I’m not too near anyone out here. The unicorns know not to be near when the full moon is out. Devilishly perceptive, they are.”

“Could I see them?” Sirius asked. He’d never seen a unicorn outside of Hogwarts books. They were quite rare, and said to be very beautiful. Sirius supposed that’s why Remus was so good with them.

“Are you planning on staying?” Remus asked, a hint of accusation in his tone. Sirius hadn’t planned on anything. He hadn’t planned to be here, hadn’t planned to live after the Department of Mysteries, hadn’t planned to get out of Azkaban. Sirius hadn’t planned one bloody moment of his entire life.

“Yes,” he answered, and it felt true enough. “If that’s alright.”

“I’ll make the spare bed for you,” Remus said.

“Oh, come on, Moony, you don’t have to do that. You basically lived in my bed at schoo-”

“I’ll make the spare,” Remus stated, his tone final. Not quite back to that stage, it seemed. After breakfast, Remus did as he’d said he would. It was in a room the size of a shoebox, next to his bedroom, but there was only the one bathroom, and Remus had insisted that Sirius use it to take a shower before he ‘made the whole house smell like dog’.

The hot water was near scalding, but it did feel nice after months of bathing in little more than streams and rain.

His hair took quite a bit of coercing to free all of the knotted tangles. It had grown so long now, well past his shoulders, and a fair bit of it was as grey as Moony’s. They were forty-seven. Sirius laughed to himself thinking how old that had once seemed. How it made no sense, at all, that, somehow, he’d lived longer without James than with him.

This is why he spent so much time as Padfoot. The dog spared no heart for the past, or future. He lived each moment, one at a time.

When Sirius stepped from the bathroom, towelling off his hair with a butter yellow thing, little more than a rag, Remus sputtered, turning a brilliant shade of pink, before whirling to face away.

“Merlin’s pendulous tit*, Sirius!” he yelled. Sirius barked a laugh.

“What? You’ve seen me naked a thousand times, Moony.”

“This isn’t the bloody Gryffindor Common Room,” Remus snapped. “There’s clothes for you on the bed,” he pointed into the guest room, before stalking off down the hall. The door outside slammed a moment later.

Sirius dressed in the borrowed clothes. If he had a wand, he’d Spell them to actually fit, but he’d lost his somewhere. In truth, it had been years since he’d last used magic. Remus had lent him a pair of dingy grey trousers, another sweater, this one deep green like the door, and a tan cardigan, which Sirius knew he would whinge about if he didn’t wear, despite the fact Sirius was almost never cold.

When he stepped outside, the day was as grey as his borrowed trousers with little sun at all poking through, casting the Speyside river lands in a sort of murky fog. The thunk of Remus’s axe parted the silence as deftly as he parted the two halves of the Rowan logs. Remus wiped at his brow, placing the axe on the ground as Sirius approached, recalling the unease with which Padfoot had eyed the weapon.

“I’m not so easily started,” Sirius said, running a hand through his long hair, and marvelling at how good it felt to not be caked in grime for once. “Carry on. I’ll watch.” Remus rolled his eyes, sunlit even in the sun’s absence.

“I need to go feed the unicorns. Did you want to join me?” I always want to join you. Sirius thought. “Might be cold.” Now, it was Sirius’s turn to roll his eyes.

“I’m a grown man, Moony, let me make my own bad decisions,” he chuckled.

“I’ve never once been able to interfere with your insistence on making awful decisions, Pads,” Remus said, and Sirius saw the blush bring a bloom of colour to the man’s cheeks. There was something intimate about their school days nicknames. Remus cleared his throat, a telltale tick that he was embarrassed, or otherwise uncomfortable, before trudging off towards the forest behind his cottage.

Sirius followed.

“I noticed you shaved. Look a bit less like Headmaster Dippet now,” Remus remarked. Sirius let out a loud laugh, and several birds flitted from the nearby trees, bringing a hand to stroke his newly trimmed beard, and moustache. It remained dark brown despite the threads of grey that striated his hair, and Sirius had looked in the mirror after trimming it, and felt, for the first time in some time, he was truly looking at himself, again.

“You’re one to talk, old man,” Sirius chuckled. Remus may have gone mostly grey, but the physical labour had kept him from looking even a pinch old . He was bloody fit with broader shoulders than Sirius thought possible on the man, a trim waist, and bulky thighs that Sirius had no intention of taking his eyes off of as they walked down the forest path.

It was quiet, and Sirius had almost forgotten this aspect of their seemingly unbreakable bond. They could just exist near each other, in peaceful silence. Rare were the nights Sirius had not taken a nap on Remus’s lap in the Common Room while Remus read some tired old rag, from the library, about magic stones that glowed when it was going to rain, or some other such rot. It was easy, as it always had been.

“Just up ahead here,” Remus warned. “They are creatures of prey, and startle very easily.”

Sirius nodded, following cautiously behind Remus. When the creatures came into view, Sirius felt the air punched from his lungs at their sheer perfection. To call them beautiful was entirely too simplistic. They were ethereal, and all manner of colour, too. The textbooks had only ever shown white unicorns, but in this glade there were black, white, tan, and even spotted beasts, all with iridescent horns that glinted even in the dim of the forest’s belly.

“They are docile creatures once they trust you, but they always keep their distance.” Remus Accio ’d a heavy bag of some sort of feed, and upended it into a trough. The unicorns whinnied, and neighed at the sudden sound, but they were familiar enough with this process to know they were about to get food. Sirius stayed near Remus while he worked, feeling a sense of wonder as the unicorns approached to take their meal. The black one was a massive thing, and while he was the first to step towards them, he was also the first to cower away, tossing his head, and stepping back as though he’d been lashed.

“Easy, Corvus!” Remus called, but the stallion was inconsolable. It reared back, twisting on its hind legs to dart the other direction. Remus turned back over his shoulder. “Go back to the house. You can scent the way, right?”

Sirius could, and he nodded as much to Remus. It would be slow going as Sirius, but as Padfoot it was quick work to amble back towards the cottage. He snagged the clothes before he left, and changed back into them as he shifted into Sirius’s body again. It took a long while for Remus to return, and when he finally did he looked entirely knackered.

“Is everything alright?” Sirius asked, and Remus nodded though it would be clear, even to a blind man, that everything was not at all alright. “What is it, Moony?” Remus leaned back against the green door.

“It’s fine, Sirius,” Remus assured, more hollow than even his first attempt. So we’re back to Sirius, then? It had begun to get even darker outside than the sunless day, and Remus pushed himself off the door, heading towards the kitchen.

“It doesn’t seem that way,” Sirius said, following into the kitchen as Remus let out one of his finer long, deep sighs.

“Sirius-”

“Why is it suddenly ‘Sirius’ again?” Sirius found himself asking, despite the better judgement he clearly did not possess. “I was Pads there, briefly.”

“Why does it bloody matter?” Remus snapped, and Sirius felt the familiar tensing of his fighting-with-Remus muscles, long emaciated by lack of use.

“It matters because you only call me ‘Sirius’ when you're pissed off, and I’ve come to loathe my name on your lips,” Sirius retorted. They eyed each other, and the difference in height, and stature could not be more evident than it was just then. Remus glared down at Sirius, crossing his arms in that way he did just before he got all self-righteous.

“If you loathe it so bloody much, then why not leave, and never hear it again?”

“If that’s what you want so badly, then maybe I will!” Sirius argued, but inside his heart clenched at the idea of leaving already. Being with Remus was breathing just before drowning. He had been bleeding, and suddenly he was healed. Sirius knew in his heart he could not bring himself to let this go again. There was a tense pause during which Remus’s marred upper lip twitched in aggravation, his grey, and rusty brown hair, falling in his face.

“I have nothing to give you, Sirius,” Remus said, then darted his eyes away for a moment, heaving a windy breath. “Pads,” he corrected.

“I didn’t come here for what you could give me,” Sirius said, the offence a sharp note in his deepened tone. “I’ve never asked you for anything, you sanctimonious prick.” Remus’s golden eyes shot back up as he tsked a sardonic chuckle.

“Now, that’s your worst lie yet,” Remus intoned, one brow raised haughtily.

“Prove me wrong,” Sirius barked, and somehow, again, he’d ended up arguing with Remus just because the man knew exactly how to crawl under Sirius’s skin, and pluck at every one of his last nerves. Sirius sighed. “Nevermi-”

“Oh, Moony, please ,” Remus mocked, in a bloody awful impression of Sirius’s Islington drawl.

“Come off it, you bastard, I get it,” Sirius waved Remus off.

“Just this once, Moony,” Remus added about twenty-five o’s to his own name in the damnable caricature of Sirius’s late drunken pleas they vowed never to discuss again.

“You’re a right arse, you know that?” Sirius stated, crossing his arms. Remus smirked a victorious sh*te-eating grin that made Sirius want to punch him right in the gnarled up face. To add insult to injury, Remus laughed, stepping in front of Sirius to open the fridge and fish out some dinner.

While he cooked, Sirius sat on the counter in spiteful silence, something that only bothered Sirius because he f*cking hated being aggravated, and quiet for so long, while Remus couldn’t care less.

“Pass me the salt, will you?” Remus said, holding out his hand. Sirius turned, grabbed the shaker, and smashed it petulantly into his waiting palm. “Thank you,” Remus said, knowing it would only further annoy him. And, indeed, it did. Sirius crossed his arms like a child instead of a forty-seven year old man, because Remus brought this out in him, every f*cking time.

“Oi! Not too much!” Sirius barked as Remus nearly upended the salt shaker into the cast iron, where he was simmering up, what appeared to be, a whole rainbow of vegetables. Remus raised a brow at Sirius.

“Are you bleeding kidding me right now?” Remus asked. “You’ll eat whatever I cook for you, and like it, or you’ll be hunting bunnies as Padfoot.”

“Sorry, mum,” Sirius groaned in a mocking tone that made Remus’s eyes go wide with obvious irritation.

They ate, and it was delicious. Sirius decided that food tasted better when Remus cooked it for him. The conversation had remained strained throughout the meal, and when they were through, Remus piled their dishes into the sink, casting a quick dishwashing Charm before yawning impressively, and declaring he was going to bed.

Sitting in the spare bedroom, no larger than a postage stamp, Sirius found himself thinking back to the nights he’d spent in Remus’s arms, or curled up by his feet as Padfoot. He struggled to find sleep that night, and when he did his rest was plagued with all manner of dark horror, and night terror.

He dreamed of the Veil, as Sirius often did, and the way he felt his life slip from his body like an unbuttoned shirt. He dreamed of waking in a world where Harry’s death was as mundane as yesterday’s weather. But worse, Sirius dreamed of the funeral. How he was not even man enough to shift from Padfoot for that one day. How he’d watched Remus weep himself sick. How he’d watched Arthur, and Molly, and Andromeda do the same. He was a bloody coward, but worse, Sirius was a sh*te friend.

His nightmare shifted, as seamlessly as Sirius shifted into Padfoot. One moment he was obscured behind the tall gravestones, and the next he was in the inky blackness that lay just behind the Veil of Death in the Department of Mysteries. The nothingness suffocated him, it deafened him, and blinded him until he wasn’t even him at all. Until he, and the nothing, converged, and there was no Sirius at all anymore. He remembered what it felt not to remember. When his thoughts had faded, and his soul dimmed. Sirius had wondered, as all humans do, what comes next, but now he lived with the wretched truth that there was nothing after. There was nowhere to go. There was just alive, and not alive, and things that have been not alive should never ever become alive again.

Sirius screamed yet no sound came out. He could feel the muscles in his throat grow ragged, and worn with the effort, but the silence mocked him yet. He felt himself splitting, screaming as each atom parted from its neighbour, until he was little more than mist in the rain, and still he screamed. He wished it was cold, but it was simply void. Even pitch darkness would be a welcome relief, but it was only black emptiness. Sirius felt himself dissolving.

“Rennevate! ” The Spell seemed to wrap itself around Sirius’s throat, and hurl him bodily back to waking. He gasped, feeling the familiar grating ache of his throat when he swallowed as though he’d attempted, and succeeded, to eat barbed wire.

Groaning, he brought his hands to his face as even the near total darkness of the room seemed blinding when compared to the utter nothing of the abyss.

“For Merlin’s sake, you nearly scared my bloody soul from my body. Are you alright?” Remus’s voice was a booming drone that seemed to rattle his skull with each crescendoing word, and Sirius half-wondered if it might just burst.

“Moony,” he croaked, wincing at how loud his own voice felt in his head. “I’m fine. A dream is all,” he whispered, though it did not allay how brutally loud it all felt, and rubbed at his eyes, blearily, until Remus came into focus beside him. A dream. Nothing more.

“That was no dream, Sirius,” Remus hissed, pressing a steadying hand to his face, then turning back to face Sirius with those eyes that bore into him like roots beneath the soil. Sirius met his gaze, scowling.

“Fine, then what was it, if you know so much?” Remus didn’t scowl back so much as he made that face , the one that said you’re too fragile, Sirius as though he were a bloody infant. “Bloody hell, Moony,” he snapped, and Remus’s expression hardened.

“There is something amiss in you, Sirius. Something perhaps from Azkaban or from…” Remus trailed off, his voice suddenly softer. Somehow, his patience always cut deeper than his ire. “That would certainly explain the unicorns’ behaviour.”

Sirius studied Remus for a long moment, watching the way one stray lock of hair fell into his face in the same way it always had when they were young, and foolish. What lingered on Sirius’s soul, like poison, that the blighted unicorns feared so much? What had clung to him, like rot, from beyond the Veil? Or was it something else entirely? Maybe it wasn’t that Sirius was shrouded in some darkness, only visible to creatures of pure light, and love, but that he was missing something. That the man who went behind the Veil was not the man who came back. At least not all of him. Sirius had felt an aching emptiness in his heart, but he’d spent so long running, and hiding he had not stopped to consider that there was more to this than grief, and loss.

“I feel like I am breaking, Moony,” he whispered, looking deep into Remus’s eyes, and letting the unaffected façade slip away like so much sand in the hourglass. “I feel as though I am shattering in slow motion.”

Remus held his gaze even if Sirius could plainly see how deeply the man wished this not to be so. Remus could endure endless amounts of his own suffering, but he could never abide the suffering of others. Heart’s too big. Sirius had always said. Takes up too much space.

“The cracks widen each day, and I wonder how long I can live like this before the pieces are spread so thin that I’m more nothing than something.” Sirius felt a million-fingered hand grip his heart, and clench it tightly as the dim light glinted off the wet that rimmed Remus’s eyes, and the way his lips twisted down, hindered by the scar there. “I feel a ghost.”

“You live, Pads,” Remus declared, abruptly, but it sounded more that he was assuring himself than he was Sirius. “Against all odds, you are here. You are no ghost.” And then Remus’s hands found Sirius’s face, his rough palms caught in the hairs of Sirius’s beard, a moment, before he ducked his head to lean down against Sirius’s bare chest. Merlin, the man was warm. Or perhaps Sirius was simply cold like the walking corpse he was. “I can hear your heart,” he said, convincing only himself. “You live.” Letting his arms rest around his friend, clothed in an old red robe, and, what seemed, nothing else, Sirius was unable to halt his very human need for nearness after so long spent away. After so long spent nowhere. Sirius let his lips rest softly in Remus’s hair mussed by sleep, and then startle, taking in the man’s scent, and allowing it, as he always had, to calm the churning seas of doubt within him.

“I live, Moony,” he sighed against the crown of Remus’s head, hoping that speaking the words could will them true.

“It is enough,” Remus said in a small voice, one of desperation that pricked Sirius’s already bleeding heart like a million white hot needles. His breath was even, but every few soft exhales hitched somewhat, and each time, Sirius was lanced by a pang of guilt.

“I have missed you, gravely,” Sirius admitted.

“I have spent most days resenting you to your very core,” Remus replied. It was entirely fair, and deserved, and, perhaps somewhat arrogantly, Sirius felt a small trill of joy knowing that Remus thought of him often, even if poorly. “But now that you are here, I fear what would expire were you to leave again.”

“I’m not leaving,” Sirius stated, demonstrably. He’d lived many lives. A rich prat in London, an arse who thought there was nothing more to life than f*cking girls, and shoving Severus Snape in the nearest broom closet. He’d been a hero, and then he’d been a convicted murderer, and then a hero again, all in the span of what felt one minute. Even the bit in Azkaban could not compare to the lifetimes he’d spent in the nothing. How jarring it had been to find that time had waited for his return to tick ever forward, and tug him along in its infinite wake.

“You can stay with me,” Remus offered, his hand squeezing one of Sirius’s arms. “At night. If that will help.”

Help whom? Sirius wondered, smirking gently into the man’s hair. Some things never changed. Remus could never truly deny him anything for very long. Such a sap, that one.

“Alright,” Sirius agreed.

And so he stayed. Weeks passed like minutes with Remus. Sirius made himself useful around the house, even if he couldn’t cook for sh*te, and he was bloody awful at cleaning (he’d grown up with House Elves, for Merlin’s sake), and he just loathed laundry in all of its forms. But, he was excellent conversation, and always had loads to say on any given topic.

They’d tried again with the blasted unicorns, several times, since that first day, but it always went the same. Corvus, the big black stallion, was the first to react every time. The bastard nearly broke Remus’s f*cking arm the third time they’d gone out there together, and they’d agreed that, perhaps, Sirius should stay out of the forest from then on. Unfortunately, for Sirius this meant that Remus had gotten the irritating notion that Sirius should chop the Rowan wood while he was with the unicorns.

“Why not just use a bloody Spell? Why even have magic if not for this very purpose?” Sirius whinged like a prat, because at his very core, that was what he still was. Remus laughed because he just loved watching Sirius suffer, and it was pure suffering with that stupid Muggle axe.

“Can’t use magic on the wood, or it’ll taint the wand they make from it,” Remus explained with a haughty grin that said sorry Pads, you’re sh*te out of luck.

“I’m an old man, Moony,” Sirius grunted. “I’m not going to take up lumberjacking in my twilight years.”

“You’re forty-seven, you bastard, not eighty-seven,” Remus elbowed him slightly.

“Ah, yes, but forty-seven plus the time I was literally dead,” Sirius argued. Remus only raised a brow at that.

“Think you’ll play that tired card in every hand, Pads?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a damn good one,” he scoffed, but Remus held out the axe anyway. Sirius took it, but the thing was brutally heavy. Padfoot had an entirely different body that built muscle, and stored what little fat remained on his body in a manner suited for hunting, stalking, and running. Not swinging a bloody axe around like an idiot. His arms were thin now. Not at all like Remus’s biceps the size of entire Christmas hams. Sirius did not at all trust his aged body was up for this task, but Remus forged on heedlessly, placing a fat log onto the fatter stump, and moving well to the side as though he expected it might blow up.

“It’s not going to blow up, is it?” Sirius asked, heaving the axe up onto his shoulder which already ached supporting the heavy metal head.

“What? Oh, no, but you’ll be sh*te at it at first,” Remus declared. “Have at it, then,” he called out, and took another step to the side for good measure. Much farther, and he’d be tumbling down the bloody hill. “It’s all about the momentum.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. He’d spent the last few weeks waking up in Remus’s arms, laughing about days when the highland skies were so clear it felt they could see damn near to Norway. This just felt like a waste of time, something Sirius had already spent so much of his life doing.

What was worse was Remus’s repeated and insistent rebuffing of his advances. It had always been like this. Sirius knew exactly how he felt about Remus. It was not confusing or scary or strange. Like the wind through the forest boughs, it simply was. But Remus seemed ever poised at the water’s edge, afraid to dive in. Sirius sighed, heaving the axe up over his head and letting it fall with a heavy thunk into the log. It did not split the way it had for Moony, and he could not, for the life of him, get the bastard back out of the now only somewhat inconvenienced log.

Remus laughed uproariously .

“Oh, bugger off, you tosser,” Sirius snapped. Remus laughed his way over to the stuck axe, and with two quick motions had the thing free again.

“Try it again,” he said, handing Sirius the axe. “Now that you know what not to do.” His quiet smirk was almost more detestable than one of Prongs’s patented sh*te-eating grins.

“Maybe if you bloody told me how to do it,” Sirius mumbled under his breath.

“When have you ever once listened when I told you something?” Remus replied, his hearing evidently just as razor sharp as always. “You’ll figure it out, Pads, you always find a way,” he encouraged, stepping yet farther away from the log than before.

He didn’t. Not that day, not the next, and not the one after, either. Sirius spent the daylight hours swinging that f*cking axe, determined, for Merlin only knows what reason, to prove that this log would not be was bests him. He ate voraciously each evening, and slept as though nearly dead (though his nightmares had remained blessedly calm of late).

On the fourth day, Sirius did manage to cleave off a bit of the log, but, when Remus returned from the forest, he noted that it was too small to be of use.

The fifth day seemed promising, but Moony didn’t go into the forest, and instead, sat, and watched Sirius fail to split the log over, and over, and over until he just couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Don’t you have some damn ponies to feed?” Sirius snapped, sweat sliding down his temples even in the crisp highland autumn.

“I can’t go into the forest today,” Remus replied, cryptically. Sirius frowned.

“Why not?”

“The unicorns know the moon will be full, and today they won’t trust me. Likely tomorrow as well,” he explained. “They are sensitive beasts, and they fear the malevolent.” Sirius scoffed, letting the axe thud against the earth, as he panted heavy breaths that puffed in white clouds in front of his face.

“Well, they sound entirely foolish if they think you’re any flavour of malevolent.”

Remus laughed but it was thin and his smile did not reach his eyes.

“Yes, well,” he started. “They are not satisfied simply by survival, as most other creatures are. They wish to thrive. They crave sanctuary, not just safety. And where ‘Moony’ is concerned they know there can be neither.”

“That’s tosh,” Sirius snapped, but Remus’s stare grew frigid, and harsh.

“It is far more true than I care to admit, Sirius,” he said, despondently. “How do you think I came into this work? Do you think I interviewed for it? Perhaps sent my CV along with some references?”

Ah, so they’d skewed into sarcasm, then, how droll.

“Come off it, Moony,” Sirius urged as Remus let his head tilt back against the side of the cottage where he sat. The look on his face was one of regret, and not only that—one of anguish. It drew Sirius back through the wretched folds of time to the Shrieking shack, when Remus still believed Sirius to have been the one that betrayed James, and Lily. The look on his face had said then, as it did now, I will carry this pain with me always.

“Moony killed Corvus’s mate,” Remus revealed, his eyes sliding shut as though the grief were a physical pain. “I did, I suppose.”

“Don’t say that,” Sirius hissed. “That’s grade school. You’re so far past that thinking.”

“What do you know of my thoughts, Sirius?” Remus sighed, and Sirius felt the sting of that question like it had reached out, and slapped him.

Where were you when he needed you most? He thought, as he had so many times since arriving here.

“I found purpose in this wrong I could never right. I found a life in light of Moony’s unforgivable sin.”

Sirius wanted to argue, but he only listened. Only Remus could do this to him. Only Remus could steal Sirius’s voice away, and leave him without a single word to speak.

“I had hoped, perhaps, you could, too.” A long strained moment passed between them during which Sirius found himself truly at a loss.

“Remus, I am sorry,” he began, continuing even after the sardonic scoff Remus huffed at that. “I have not been good to you. Not when it mattered. Not when you needed it.” Remus’s eyes were tight with a hurt that threatened to rend Sirius’s beating heart straight from his chest. He grunted a sigh, catching his face in his hand. “I have never lacked the desire to right my wrongs against you, Remus. I have only ever lacked the ability.”

“Talk about grade school,” Remus remarked, his tone icy with a contempt likely due more to the moon than anything else. Not that it dulled its sting at all.

“Out with it, then,” Sirius called, tossing the handle of the axe to the ground.

“You’ve never once lacked the ability to do anything in your entire posh life, Black,” Remus spat, and Sirius felt the twist in his guts at how vitriolic the use of his blighted surname was. How honed the edge of the blade designed to eviscerate him. “It simply has never been convenient for you. Not until now.”

“I know that’s the moon talking,” Sirius said, fending off an attempt to carve him like a goose for supper that was all Moony, and no Remus at all. “I know you feel like sh*te, and you want me to feel like sh*te along with you, and I do, Remus Lupin, I genuinely do. I hate what I’ve done to you. I look back on my life, and I regret how much more time I spent without you than with you.”

Remus brought the backs of his hands to his face which contorted with the obvious effects of what would eventually be his change that night. The sun hung heavily behind the horizon, and only the purple, and orange blazes across the sky shielded Remus from a fate more inevitable than the sun’s return on the morrow. Remus clawed at his face, curled in on himself, his body uncertain of what form it should hold. Seasons could change, and years could pass, but this torture had yet to dull, it seemed.

“You are Remus John Lupin,” Sirius said, his voice low and steady.

“f*ck off with that,” Remus snarled.

“You are my best friend,” Sirius said as though they were sixteen again. As though time had both forged on, and stood still. “What the moon takes from you does not define you.” The sunlight’s dying glow dimmed with each passing minute as the moon sunk its claws into Remus, and tore him open so that Moony could spill out.

Sirius saw the bulging musculature as his already threadbare shirt split along the shoulder seam, and his trousers along the inseam.

“You are man first, and foremost,” Sirius had to nearly yell to cut through Moony’s snapping grunts. “You will be man again when this night is through.” This monologue was as rote in Sirius’s mind as his own f*cking name. He’d recited it every month of his life for a bloody decade. He slid into Padfoot just as Moony lunged forward, and they tumbled awkwardly down the face of the hillside biting, and clawing at each other. Sirius let Padfoot’s instinct consume him.

The full moon was a beaming beacon in the sapphire blue sky as it climbed ever upwards. Padfoot was faster, and he led Moony along the quiet banks of the River Spey, smelling the peat moss, and crisp river water as they bounded over rocks, and flatland alike.

This was, perhaps, the only thing Sirius had ever done right for Remus. He’d learned how to be the perfect prey. The wind over Padfoot’s shaggy fur felt a blissful thrill even as Moony thundered behind him. The few times he was able to swat at Padfoot’s tail or flank, he’d nimbly twisted on his path, sprinting away with only Moony’s sombre howl to chase him.

Neither Padfoot nor Moony were as swift as they were when they were younger, and by the time the moon had sunk below the horizon, the two were bloody knackered, panting, and flushed within the forest by Remus’s cottage. He had been right about the unicorns. They were not in their glade, and had likely journeyed bloody miles to stay clear of the moon’s malevolence.

Sirius let his breath slow, naked in the dirt, looking up at the hints of pink and yellow that signalled the coming sunrise through the forest’s thick canopy. It was bitingly cold, but Sirius was so heated by Padfoot’s blood, and the thrill of surviving the hunt yet again, he did not care at all.

“Sirius,” Remus croaked from somewhere behind him. Sirius rolled onto his side to find Remus sitting against a large rock, his knees bent such that he could rest his arms atop them. His breath still came in ragged pants, and Sirius knew it would be some time before he could stand let alone walk back to the house. The shift was not kind to him, and it seemed to grow more savage with age. “I owe you my thanks.”

“You don’t owe me sh*t, Moony,” Sirius scoffed, waving off his friend’s deeply-ingrained shame.

“You have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve had such an easy moon.” Sirius could hear the exhaustion laced among the man’s rasping voice drawing his register low, and somewhat sultry.

“Think nothing of it,” Sirius said.

“I think everything of it,” Remus replied, his tone earnest, and raw as he ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head slightly. “I am so sorry for what I said. I didn’t—”

“I know,” Sirius interjected. This part was also painfully rehearsed. Sirius went through the lengthy process of pushing himself up to standing, so he could close the gap between them. He awkwardly manoeuvred to sit beside Moony whose face was currently obscured in his hands. He was always delicate through the sunrise after the change, so Sirius simply stayed nearby while Moony’s breath slowed, and his tensed muscles began to relax somewhat.

“We should probably get back before we die of exposure,” Remus said, his voice scarcely more than the morning breeze.

“There’s no rush, old friend,” Sirius consoled, placing a hand on Remus’s bare shoulder. He’d half expected the man to flinch away from his touch, but instead Remus leaned to the side, letting his head rest against Sirius’s shoulder, likely more bone than meat.

Sirius turned to nuzzle against the man’s hair that smelled of dirt and river, and Remus again. His heart stumbled an awkward beat in his chest at how good it felt to be filthy, and flushed beside this man. How theirs was a quiet yet visceral bond not unlike a Wizard, and his magic, though Remus had always been far more magic than any Spell. Far more rare, and magnificent.

The morning played them an autumn sonata of crickets, and owls in blissful harmony with the soft trickle of a nearby brook, but it all dulled to little more than static when Remus turned, leaning into Sirius to brush his lips against the corner of Sirius’s mouth. His breath was a fire intent on scorching Sirius to cinders.

Certainly, something so fated, so precious and perfect could not live in the world that had taken so much, and left them so beaten. Something so profoundly good could not occupy the same plane as the great evils of this world.

Remus’s hand cupped his face, and Sirius now wondered if this would be his end. If he would dissolve into this soft touch, and become the early morning quiet that hung like autumn fog just above the ground here.

When finally Remus’s lips found Sirius’s, and their breath braided so tightly there was no saying where one ended, and the other began, it felt a catharsis. Sirius’s heart pounded against his chest as though trying to break free, as though there simply was not enough space in his body, or perhaps in the entire world, for how beautiful it was to have come so far, and lived so long, and lost so much, only for something so simple to make it all feel so f*cking worth it. How easy it suddenly felt to do it all again, with only the promise of this as reward. Sirius exhaled against Moony, his lungs aching with how long he’d held his breath, uncertain if this were waking or dream. When his lips parted for that desperate stream of air, Remus deepened their kiss, flooding Sirius with a purification so strong tears pricked at his eyes, and a brilliant warmth like the rising sun heated his cheeks.

The soft earth beneath his back, and the press of Remus’s broad chest against his own was a perfect euphoria. He had never known joy or relief before this moment. He had lived in shades of grey, and Remus’s fingers in his hair was suddenly seeing blinding, and saturated colour. He had died every morning he had awoken away from this man. He’d been in a prison of his own design every evening he had let sleep take him without the safety of Remus’s arms around him.

Sirius gasped, sucking in the crisp highland air as Remus trailed his lips over Sirius’s throat. It was an indescribable ecstasy all unto its own to have this. To feel the heft of Remus’s half-hard co*ck, thick, and flushed, brush his own. Even if the earth collided with the sun, and they all burned to stardust, Sirius’s atoms would spread through the cold emptiness of space with this memory still humming through them.

“Sirius,” Remus huffed into the crook of his shoulder, and it might have been the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. “Sorry,” he chuckled, just a thick little breath. “Pads.”

“Merlin, I was so f*cking wrong,” Sirius breathed, his fingers running along Remus’s sides as though memorising his topography, recalling every scar with as much wonder as exploring the lines that came with their age. “If you saying my name like that was the only sound I heard for the rest of my life, I would still never tire of it.”

“We should go back to the house,” he said, and Sirius groaned at the man’s endless practicality.

“f*ck the house,” Sirius huffed, drawing Remus into him even if that meant his lungs were near crushed by the larger man’s weight. Remus pressed his palms into the earth on either side of Sirius’s shoulders, and his gaze ignited something in Sirius’s withered soul as though it had never once dimmed. As though he were still young, still whole with all of his life still before him, and not an ounce of regret to dull his shine. Remus’s face was etched both by age and trial, and small lines creased by his lidded eyes, but the sunlight burned within them as though he were still the same boy in the Gryffindor Common Room, nose ever in some book, always with that biting wit.

“You’ll freeze out here,” he lectured, whispering against Sirius’s temple, sending him shivering beneath him. Remus huffed a breath, smirking lightly as though that somehow proved his point. “And you’re filthy.” Sirius scowled.

“You’re one to talk,” he replied, groaning again when Remus pushed himself to standing, and held out a hand for Sirius. He took it, his body stiff from running in Padfoot’s skin all night.

“Don’t quite bounce back like we used to, ey?” Remus joked as Sirius’s knees cracked when he stood.

“Still outran your slow arse,” he retorted, following behind Remus as they made their way into the cloudy grey morning.

“Think Moony went easy on you for old time’s sake,” he said through that thin smirk that had Sirius’s blood near boiling for myriad reasons, now.

“Don’t you lie, you old bastard, Padfoot would outrun Moony without three of his bloody legs!” He gesticulated as he stepped through the door, padding after Remus who stalked through the living room, towards the bathroom.

Sirius followed in a blind haze, barely recalling the walk back to the cottage at all, still entirely overcome with a sense of after. He felt he’d lived every moment of his life up until the second before Remus’s lips brushed his own, and everything since then was an entirely new life altogether. One he feared losing in a manner Sirius did not believe himself capable of, until now. When he blinked he felt Remus’s heated, scarred skin against his palms, and with each breath he tasted the earthy scent of his hair all over again. He watched the way Remus stepped under the spray, so scalding that steam fogged the small mirror above the sink almost immediately, and wondered how he’d only grown more beautiful. How did Remus manage to wear age like fine robes?

But the light in his eyes dimmed as though washed away by the sobering rain from the shower, and Sirius felt his heart scream out in anguish at the idea that, this too, had been a trick of the moon.

“Don’t pretend it didn’t happen.” The words burst from him as though the universe had reached down into his chest, and wrenched them free. It was not a reprimand or a demand, it was a plea, and Sirius was too desperate to let his pride silence him. “I don’t think I could stand it.”

“‘S happened before,” Remus said in a tone designed to appear apathetic, but instead only managed to bely the man’s obvious conflict. He turned away from Sirius, letting the water run over his hair, more grey than rusty brown now, before the scent of his shampoo pricked Sirius’s sensitive nose.

“Not like that,” Sirius replied, keeping his tone steady. Remus was like those blasted unicorns when it came to things like this. Skittish, easily startled, and damn near impossible to reach once he’d been spooked. Sirius’s old heart, unused to these childish trials of will he, won’t he, and out of practice where love, and courtship were concerned, pounded. His blood seemed to surge up into his skull with such force he felt his vision blur. Mixed up with fear, and wanting all vying for his attention, Sirius could barely manage to breathe let alone speak coherently.

“It was just the moon, Sirius,” Remus sighed, stepping from the shower to cloak himself in the old red robe he’d worn the night he’d pressed his head to Sirius’s chest to listen to his heart. If only he could hear it now. How it broke.

“Don’t you blame that on the f*cking moon, R-”

“I saw you at the funeral.” He did not yell. In many ways it would have been easier if he had. His sorrowful tone was a blade so sharp Sirius had not noticed its sting before he felt his soul spill from him in its aftermath. “Clean up,” he said, stalking past Sirius, each stride cast in an impenetrable shell of finality. “I’ll cook something.” The door latched behind him leaving Sirius among the steam of the small bathroom, the pungent scent of soap so acrid, he began to feel sick. Or perhaps it wasn’t the soap at all. Could one die from regret? From shame?

The hot water mocked his anguish, rinsing away a night that had felt so blissful it seemed more dream than waking. Perhaps it had been as such. Sirius worked his fingers through his tangled hair, washing away the feeling of Remus’s touch, along with the dirt on which he’d laid. He could not live like this. He could not slide back into the before when he’d tasted the forbidden fruit of after, and knew its perfection. Sirius could not pretend.

But Remus could. There were few forces on earth stronger than the dogged will of Remus Lupin. His was a quiet, and stubborn determination.

All the rest of that night he spoke little. He said less. Any attempt Sirius made to explain fell on deaf ears, though he was not so foolish as to believe he could excuse away this, to use Remus’s words, unforgivable sin. They slept beside each other, but not with each other. Separated by a thick barrier of Remus’s contempt, Sirius curled up so close to the edge he wondered if he’d tumble off it in his sleep. In the end, the point was moot as sleep did not find him that night. Just exhaustion, and its scarce minutes of unconsciousness that granted little recuperation at all.

“Giving up already?” Remus had asked before going into the forest, despite knowing he would not find his unicorns in there. That they still sensed the moon about him even as it spun its bright face away to cast its curse upon some other blighted rock, where some other stubborn bastard hid from the truth, so plain it etched itself as though another scar marring Remus’s face. Sirius knew he was just creating distance between them though there was no physical distance that could compete with how emotionally withdrawn he’d become.

Sirius felt ragged. Exhausted deep down into his soul. Enervated. His heart ached, and he hated that it did so, because even though he had never once done anything to deserve Remus, he’d had him, he’d had him, and he was too much of a selfish arse to let him go.

Picking up the axe, it felt three times its usual heft, and Sirius swung it up over his shoulder. The tan jacket he wore did little to protect him from the handle’s harsh impact. He’d cultivated a near permanent bruise there since beginning this endeavour. If he did nothing else with his Merlin-forsaken existence, Sirius would do this. At least once. Remus trudged off into the forest, but Sirius caught the way his amber eyes lingered on him, before the trees obscured his path. The soreness ran deep into Sirius’s bones, and made his muscles cry out when he called upon them, but he managed to heft the axe above his head.

It came down heavily towards the right side of the log, and though the blade dug into the dark Rowan wood, it could not part it. He had to see-saw the axe back out before trying again.

Hours passed like that. The low thunk of the axe as it found a corner sunk deep, but not deep enough, had become the soundtrack to Sirius’s looming insanity. For Merlin’s sake. He thought, cursing under his breath as well, unsatisfied with simply thinking about how much he wanted that f*cking log to split. How easy it would all be with magic. How ridiculous it all was.

I found purpose in this wrong I could never right. Sirius heard Remus’s words in his head, and their bite was as sharp now as it had been then. Their ache just as deep. Sirius was uncertain if he’d had purpose even once in his entire life. He’d had drive. He’d had conviction, and he’d had plenty of grit, but purpose…that was something entirely unto its own, wasn’t it? Purpose was a mission. It was a reason for being. When asked the question why, purpose was the answer. Had Sirius ever had an answer? Or had he simply followed his friends to a war where living, or dying held no true difference in his heart? Who was he at all, really?

He panted, hands tight around the handle of the axe, and sweat dripping down his face so heavily he’d needed to doff the tan coat, and the black t-shirt beneath. He read the runes down his arms, and over the tops of his hands, ink somewhat faded with time. Who am I? He raised the axe above his head.

I am Sirius Black, he thought, bringing the axe down again, digging deep for the drive, and picturing the blade sliding through the log, splitting the bastard in half. I am not a perfect friend, but I would die for those I love. It sunk in deep with a thunk, and Sirius noticed when he pulled the axe out again that there was a thin dark crack continuing down several centimetres from the axe’s bite. He heaved the thing up again, sucking in a deep breath, though it seemed so heavy now. I am Sirius. He corrected himself. I forsook my family name for a cause I believed to be just, and righteous. His body screamed with the effort of driving the axe down again. And I would do it again. The blade sunk in, and, to his amazement, the crack widened, and elongated. It stretched all the way down the heavy log, and there was only maybe ten centimetres left to clear.

I am Padfoot. He told himself, finding a sort of peace, and focus in occupying his mind. He had wandered aimlessly, shifting between Sirius,, and Padfoot for so long with no purpose at all. Alone and broken, he’d survived. But perhaps, like Remus’s unicorns, that simply wasn’t enough anymore. He remembered Hogwarts, and the thrill of victory playing Quidditch with James. He remembered the Order, and the righteous indignation he felt dismantling evil in the name of good. I cannot right the wrongs I have perpetrated against Remus. The axe felt it weighed a million million kilos now. That it was even yet heavier than the weight in his heart.

I cannot right these wrongs, but I can find purpose in them. He assured himself. I can find sanctuary. Sirius huffed an exhausted breath. The sky above was painted with the coming sunset, but on this he was determined. I can do more than survive. It took a few good tries to get the axe up above his head, and he felt his vision swim as he squeezed every muscle in his body to drive it back down. I, too, can thrive if I allow it. As the axe cut through the air, Sirius closed his eyes. There was simply no way he’d be able to lift it one more bloody time, so it had to be now. It had to be this swing.

Thunk. Sirius heaved a heavy exhale, feeling the wood beneath the blade. His heart fell somewhat, and he opened his eyes, prepared to wiggle the blasted thing out of the log, and call it a day. Looking down, however, Sirius felt a sensation he might not have even remembered after all this time. It warmed him from within, clenching at his chest, and sending his hands trembling. So foolish. It was just a bloody log. Just a stupid piece of wood, but after all this time, and against all known odds, seeing the two cleaved pieces, where once stood one whole, filled Sirius with a sense of brimming, and unmistakable pride. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath while his body pulsed with accomplishment. How asinine that something as meaningless as chopping wood healed something so maligned within him that Sirius felt his eyes prick with pure elation.

“I win, you bastard,” he grunted, picking up one half of the log, and tossing it onto the pile of split logs Remus would have sent off to wandmakers all over the globe. Someone out there, some child, or perhaps someone whose heart had simply changed with the seasons, would one day wrap their fingers around a wand that only existed, because Sirius had split the wood for it. Wiping his forehead, Sirius caught his face in his hands.

“That’s rather impressive,” Remus’s voice nearly startled Sirius’s skeleton straight from his bloody body. “I don’t think I truly believed you could do it.” Sirius sighed, turning to face Remus who seemed equally exhausted by whatever it was that drew him to the forest all day.

“Your confidence inspires, old friend,” Sirius huffed, barely able to see through the sheen of sweat still dampening his brow. He sat down heavily on the stump, letting his head hang between his shoulders to catch his breath. Remus’s old boots appeared a moment later, as the man moved to stand before him. He shifted to crouch before Sirius, old knees popping a bit, and a peculiar expression on his face.

“One of the unicorns gave birth today,” he explained. “It’s rather late in the season for such a thing, and I hadn’t expected to find them so near to a full moon.”

“Congratulations are in order, it seems,” Sirius replied. The sun was behind the trees, casting the highlands in pinks and purples as it heralded night’s timely arrival. Remus nodded, pensively, but Sirius felt his heart had hitched to the bright glint in the man’s sunlight eyes.

“Rowan wood really is special, you know,” he stated, the shift in topics feeling almost jarring. “Wands made from it are said to be virtuous, and pure. They cast Charms of protection so strong, they can appear nigh unbreakable.”

“I have never wielded one myself,” Sirius admitted. “Just that old Blackthorn I used in school, then whatever twigs I managed to find laying about at Grimmauld.” Remus nodded, cordially. Sirius knew the man knew all this already, but he felt somehow uncertain of himself just then. Uncertain of what to do, or say to convey all there was between them.

“The wood is truly unique. Nearly indestructible, actually,” he revealed. “It takes a special axe to cut it.” Sirius scowled, looking down at his side to the nondescript tool he felt was almost a bittersweet friend at this point. It didn’t look special. In fact, it looked entirely mundane. Remus’s lips curled into just the whisper of a smile. “And it takes a special person to use the axe.” Sirius studied Remus closely as he spoke, his pulse ticking up somewhat, and his breath hitching in his chest. “You can’t use magic on the wood, but I never said I didn’t use magic at all.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Sirius sighed, and Remus’s slight smile brightened just a bit.

“To make sure the wood was never tainted, I put a Charm on the axe. It only requires one thing to split the wood,” he said, and Sirius felt his heart stumble as Remus brushed a long strand of hair back over Sirius’s shoulder, letting his hand rest there as his gaze dove down into Sirius’s rotted soul, and warmed what he long thought to be permafrost. “Purpose.” When Remus moved to draw back, Sirius snatched his wrist, holding it tightly in his hand.

“I am so sorry about Nymphadora, Remus,” Sirius said, earnestly. “And the baby.” Remus’s eyes flicked away a moment, but darted back after he took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry I was not there for you then, and for how long it took me to face you after. I wasn’t there for you after James, and Lily. I wasn’t there for you after Harry, and Tonks, and Teddy. And though you may no longer need me, or even want me at all,” Sirius swallowed thickly. The weight of wanting more than breath in his lungs, the density of wishing, and desiring, and needing threatened to crush him where he sat. Split him as he’d split the log. “I am here now.”

“I know, old friend,” Remus stated, pushing himself up, with a laboured grunt. There was something so novel about having survived to see Remus as an older man. To indulge in the way he dusted off his jeans and shifted attempting to alleviate the stiffness in his joints or the ache in his back. Age was a remarkable thing, and, on Remus, a beautiful one, too.

Sirius took the hand his friend offered him, feeling the lock-and-key of their hands sliding into one another, and stood with some effort, tired, and aching from a night as Padfoot followed by a day with the axe.

Remus showered, and Sirius did so after, emerging to find Remus in his red robe on his sofa, wire frame glasses set low on his nose as he read a book titled What Unicorns Know. He looked up as Sirius approached, and shifted to the corner to make room for him. Sirius sat with a heavy thump on the ratty old thing that creaked under even his meagre weight. He wore a borrowed grey robe designed for Remus, so it was rather large on his smaller frame. Watching Remus’s eyes scan the lines of text, then turn the page with a quick swipe of his hand took Sirius back to simpler days.

“Well?” Sirius said, drawing one brown, and grey brow up in inquiry. “What do unicorns know?” Remus closed the book with a sarcastic smirk that played so lightly with his lips that those far less skilled in reading his facial expressions might have missed it. But not Sirius. He placed the book on the small end table beside him.

“I suppose you’d need to ask a unicorn for the best answer to that,” he replied, that whip-crack wit having not dulled one iota over the years.

Sirius chuckled, though it was a hollow thing marred by being so close yet so far from what he wanted most. Remus’s shell was so thick, his fortress so fortified that Sirius might require his own bloody book titled what Remus Lupin thinks about.

After an awkward silence threatened to turn Sirius inside out it was so uncomfortable, Remus sighed, catching his face in his hands, and rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses, so like James used to that it caught Sirius off guard a moment. “How long before you leave, Sirius?”

“Come again?”

“I cannot keep wondering each morning if today will be the day I wake up alone once more,” he admitted. “I can’t, Sirius.”

“How long have you planned out this conversation?” Sirius asked, irritation casting his tone in cold steel. “How much of my mind have you written without even asking me, you stubborn bastard?”

“I’ve known you a long time, Sirius—”

“Not long enough if you think me capable of vanishing in the bloody night. If you think me so cruel.” Sirius felt his blood heat to searing. “How many bloody excuses have you concocted in that Merlin-forsaken brilliant insanity that is that mind of yours as to why we should not finally have what, I am certain, we both want?” Remus started at that as though he’d been slapped, and Sirius thought that was just bloody fine. Maybe taking one to the jaw would knock some f*cking sense into that thick skull of his. “I’ll have you know I have no intention of leaving, Remus. I love you, and I intend to make that your problem to solve, because I also have no intention of stopping. You’re stuck with me now, you arse, and if you want me gone you’ll need to burn the bloody house down with me still inside of—”

Remus kissed away Sirius’s words, interrupting his heated diatribe with a heat all to his own. Even in his desperation, he was soft, his hands cupped Sirius’s face, thumbs brushing over his beard, tugging him in close as though attempting to breathe him in. He tasted like rain, and smelled like highland grass, and Sirius could not stop his hands from snaking beneath the loose fabric of Remus’s robe to the scarred body beneath.

Like he had in the glade, Remus pressed his chest against Sirius, pinning him down as though still afraid he would flit away like a bird on the breeze.

How many times had Sirius lounged by Remus’s side, naked or nearly so on quiet Sundays, when neither of them wanted to face how much homework they still had left to do? When all that mattered was that peaceful nearness. So then why did this feel so new? So entirely its own? Who was this Remus that the tight lines of his hips, and the bulk of his thighs tore from Sirius a hunger so demanding, he felt, it may consume him? It drowned out his thoughts until his mind echoed Remus over, and over, and over again, until there was no space left at all for how much he needed, and the repeated name leaked from his lips.

“Remus,” Sirius whispered between them, and gasped when he felt the rough of Remus’s hand brush his achingly hard co*ck. His body thrummed with catharsis, with fate breathing a great sigh of relief as the stars in which they were written gleamed somewhere high above.

Remus was tentative, his hand on Sirius was as featherlight as his gentle kiss, and Sirius could not help but reach down, and urge his hand tighter, his strokes deeper.

Breathing a gruff moan, Sirius felt the weight of existence shatter to dust, replaced entirely with a levity. An airy lightness of bliss. That perhaps it was not so hard to live, or so heavy a burden to fear dying. It all felt so simple pressed against Remus, while one hand stroking him to fevered, and flushed, and the other traced absent fingers over his face, and in his hair.

Remus moved to press his nose against Sirius’s jugular, something Moony had done to Padfoot many times before, but it somehow felt so much more intimate in their human skin.

“So good, Sirius,” he said, breathing out the words after breathing in Sirius’s scent. “You cannot know what your scent does to me.” Sirius let his head fall back, exposing more of the pale skin at his neck that became dotted with goosebumps anew after each delicate brush of Remus’s lips.

“What do I smell like to you?” Sirius asked, his gaze on the wood slatted ceiling as Remus’s hands, and lips, and body washed over him in a rapturous veil of silken pleasure. His thighs ached, and tensed with each long, sultry stroke drawing him nearer, and nearer to his end.

“Safe, ” Remus answered, and the heated syllable in the space just behind his ear reached down inside, and drew forth a small rough simper. It all did. Remus had invaded Sirius so wholly that there was simply no room left to keep it all inside. Every cell in his body, that cried out in blissful triumph, had Sirius sighing, and moaning beneath the man, had him untethered, and free floating, unspooled to threads. “Though you have proven many times to be otherwise, your scent has always been safe and mine.” Sirius ran a hand over Remus’s hair as he nuzzled against his throat, taking in the scent of this undying truth. The one thing that had not been sucked away by Dementors, or silenced beyond the Veil. Inalterable was this. As immortal as the unicorns.

“Remus - ah - I’m—”

“Good,” he huffed, and the burning building screaming pressure broke over him like the highland rain from dark heavy clouds. The hot wet of his relief glazed Remus’s fingers that stroked him through his org*sm so visceral, and powerful Sirius felt himself briefly beyond the Veil once more. In the silent black nothing as though his atoms had spread so far that, briefly, he was more air than man. More nothing than something. The cracks fissured so widely now, but between them beamed something new. Something that had been clawing to escape, dying to live, starving to feast. He had shattered, but instead of pieces on the floor, he felt reborn. Freed. Alive truly for the first time since the Veil. For the first time, perhaps, ever.

“I do not think I believed myself capable of such peace,” Sirius breathed, his words barely audible as he draped an arm over his eyes, too sensitive to take in even the dim light of Remus’s cottage. “But you have always pushed me beyond my beliefs, haven’t you?” Remus’s splayed hand smeared Sirius’s thick release over his tattooed abdomen as though painting him in this moment, as the moon painted the quiet night in mystery.

“Turn over, Pads,” Remus huffed into Sirius’s collarbone and the sensation had him jerking slightly, his body humming with the turbulent vibrato of post-climax sensitivity. “There is more I wish to push past you.” Sirius sighed a throaty chuckle, feeling the plucked harp string sensation of Remus’s intent thrumming through his shaky thighs, and quickening his heart beat yet again. He shifted, twisting in the narrow space Remus’s body above him allowed, to lean his forearms against the arm of the sofa, freeing himself of the old robe. Moony had mounted Padfoot many times prior though the two had silently agreed what happens under the moon stays under the moon, but even still, this all felt so new. This ground was hallowed, untouched, and when Remus ran his calloused hands up along the inside of Sirius’s thighs to cup his bollocks, and slot between the firm flesh of his arsecheeks, a low note of want was stolen from his lips.

“I have pictured this many, and more times over the years,” Remus confessed, his fingers, slicked and readied though Sirius could not place how, teased his tight entrance, sending his fists clenching, and relaxing in a rhythmic anticipation.

“As have I,” Sirius croaked, letting his head fall against his balled fists. He swallowed thickly, feeling his mouth so wet with saliva he felt he may choke. “Though we were always pretty, young things in my daydreams.”

Remus eased his finger into Sirius with a contented sigh that tangled in the heated air around them, and rippled over Sirius’s bare skin like electricity after the lightning strikes.

“Not mine,” Remus said, his tone at once abashed, and earnest. There was both confession, and acceptance to this revelation. A secret like a caged bird finally set free. “When you came back into my life, at Hogwarts, an escaped convict.” Sirius’s thighs tensed, and quaked as Remus drove his finger into him to his knuckles. “That was when I could not stop seeing you for what you’d become. When I could not pass you in the halls of that old wretched house without smelling how you were still mine after all that time.” Sirius moaned, arching into Remus’s hand, feeling the chains of the past break under the bludgeoning brute force of the truth. “You tormented me with your nearness. Tortured me with how little time had changed you.” He pressed a second finger in slowly, and Sirius shivered under his careful ministrations, his breath growing ragged, and shallow as his desire crescendoed to need.

“You haunted me from two doors down that dreaded corridor, and at night I bit back my fitful moans as I pictured this, exactly this.” He twisted his hand to stroke every hot, wet curve, and ridge within Sirius as though intent to spill every small simper, and throaty whine from him, until there were no sounds left. “That’s good, Sirius,” he encouraged. The heat, and caress of his praise had Sirius’s co*ck thickening, yet again, between his taut thighs.

“Did you regret not walking two doors down that blighted hall?” Sirius asked, because something within him had always felt passed over. Something small, and pathetic in his soul had always wondered why her? And in this hallowed space, Sirius felt not only unchained, but unafraid of the truth, no matter what it was.

“No,” Remus stated, his hand sliding from Sirius, leaving him as achingly hollow physically as his answer left him emotionally. “No, because you were always an ephemeral thing, Sirius. You were always as untouchable as moonlight, and twice as vexing.” Remus thumbed Sirius’s arsecheeks apart, teasing the swollen head of his thick co*ck against Sirius’s readied opening. “Your scent was safe, but you were danger like a beautiful, poisonous flower, and I always knew loving you would be my biggest mistake.” The stretching, aching, filling of Remus’s girth easing into Sirius sent every muscle in his body crying out until their screams burst from his own lips in a guttural cry. “Merlin , you feel incredible, Sirius.”

“As do you, Remus,” Sirius gasped, his jaw clenching at the brilliant agony that was taking Remus’s size, and the broad heft of the truth all at once. “Better than even my fantasies.” He could drown in this contentedly. This could flay him open, and spilling, eviscerate him to a hollow carcass, and Sirius would scream through a smile as he bled out. “Moony, I was so jealous,” he confessed, feeling these secrets carved from him as though malignancies, surgically excised.

“I know,” Remus grunted, thrusting into Sirius until his hips pressed against his arse, the wide base of his co*ck urging Sirius to widen farther than he thought himself capable. Pushing him beyond his beliefs yet again. “I know your heart, and how it appears when it is broken. I know what it feels like to be the one to break it.” Remus leaned over him, again pressing his body into Sirius’s and wrapping his arms tightly around Sirius’s slender waist, enveloping him. Each sigh, and grunt, and moan, and simper skittered over Sirius’s skin, sinking into his pores, and flooding him with Remus, and this moment, and them.

“Moony,” Sirius moaned, each long, slow thrust freed him from the constricting binds of his unrequited love. What a wholly indescribable perfection to have what he had so long thought unobtainable. To find what he had so long hunted. “Remus, ” he hissed out the name in a thin stream of air like a tight whisper as the man breathed into his loose hair.

“Sirius, I - ah -” Remus’s cut himself short, his arms squeezing Sirius so tightly he felt his ribs creak with the vice-like embrace. The spill, and shudder of Remus’s end had Sirius’s vision feathering to darkness at its edges with a previously unknowable euphoria. To be so filled with this man, and to be able to draw him into the depths of pleasure until his hot come flooded Sirius more fully than even his stubborn devotion was a death unto itself. An end all on its own. The past dissolved. Healed from gaping wounds to pink scars as a path towards a new life, an entire future with this man, blazed through the thick dark uncertainty.

How beautiful it was to flourish after scrounging on little more than remaining. How brilliant to thrive after so long simply surviving. To find sanctuary. To be it. How perfect to paint the final stroke and see the masterpiece long unfinished, complete. Sirius jolted against Remus, the force of his second org*sm strong enough to sting his eyes with tears both of joy, and relief.

How sweet this melody of hope. This symphony of finally, and at long last.

Exhausted, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, Remus, and Sirius collapsed in a heap together, still sticky, and damp with sweat though it hardly mattered at all. Sleep took them effortlessly, and when they awoke, cleaned themselves up, and dressed, Remus pressed a quiet kiss to Sirius’s forehead. They stepped out into the bright early-winter day, crisp with a fresh frost. Sirius’s eyes slid shut, as he focused on the feeling of Remus, and the soft song of sanctuary when Remus wrapped his arms tightly around him, resting his chin on Sirius’s head.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them outside of the forest,” Remus remarked, and Sirius felt the vibrato of his voice beneath his temple against Remus’s throat.

“Hmm?” he replied, lost in this sacred temple.

“Have a look for yourself.” Sirius lamented parting from Remus’s warm embrace, but he did so only because his curiosity was irritatingly demanding. Looking up, the dark, almost iridescent, form of Corvus along with three of the other unicorns, and the new filly, grazed on the grass still frosted from the chill of the highland winter.

“H-how?” Sirius stammered, unmoored and set adrift by their beauty in the sunlight. They sparkled as though made of a million million diamonds. “Why?”

Remus huffed a thin laugh, that smirk so subtle it just barely curled up one corner of his mouth, casting his face in an expression of serenity.

“I do not know,” he answered. “Despite my research, I have never known what they think or why they do what they do. They seek Sanctuary. A place in which to thrive. They seek purpose and pride. Perhaps…” he trailed off, leaving Sirius at the precipice beyond which lay his unspoken words.

Corvus looked up from where he grazed, as though seeing them for the first time. He grunted, shaking his head as a white cloud of breath huffed from his flared nostrils. The other unicorns remained unaffected, grazing calmly around the pile of Rowan wood, the filly stepping over Sirius’s axe. Sirius tentatively lifted his hand.

“I understand,” he said, letting himself fall into the blinding brilliance that was this next great adventure. Corvus’s nose was soft as velvet, chilled somewhat by the frosty grass he’d been nibbling. He nuzzled against Sirius’s palm before stepping forward to brush his cheek against Remus’s elbow.

“Hello, my friend,” Remus whispered. “So good to see you.”