She walks as if she is in a dream, where a thin wall of illusion separates her from reality, She is mad, they say. Poor her. And she wonders why they say this, why they speak such lies.



She walks with her shoulders hunched as one does after a long day. She still hasn’t put together her life. It is stretching, stretching, stretching until it shatters into a thousand pieces and falls. Her tears form dew on the ground but she thinks of it as rain.



She sits by the fire watching the golden embers die into darkness. It is her life that is fading away though. And every painful moment she lives is slowly killing her from inside.




**




He watches her and holds back his tears. He wonders what she wants with him, why she hates him enough to love him? Doesn’t she know he is torn? Once he had cherished something with her but it was a mistake, why didn’t she realise that?



He looks at her and immediately looks away. Her once-beautiful face is now white and drawn. He cannot bear to look at her anymore, it hurts him too much.




**




She is running somewhere far away. She doesn’t know where she will go, just that she will escape. But she is trapped. Her memories hold her back, and when she finds out that she can never leave, her soul screams and she purses her lips, refusing to look up.




**




He’s speaking to a blur of nameless, faceless people and even to him, every word he speaks sounds false. All he can think about is her. What he has done to her.




**




She is slowly wasting her life. ‘ I will not tell his name,’ she scolds herself repeatedly and all that echoes in her head is: Remus, Remus, Remus.



She breaks down and cries; there is nothing left to do.




**




He looks at her, trying to hold back his tears. Logic tells him he shouldn’t see her and he has lived by being logical. But his heart sings a different song.



And he tries not to cry.




**




A thin, red veil covers her eyes and the room spins in front of her, a blur of colours, faces and people. Rough hands pick her up as they shout at her and ask a lot of meaningless questions, but all she sees is his face.



Then her world goes black.




(5 months later…)




Her long-sleeved robes fail to cover the raw red scars running down her wrists. Her hair has turned a mousey-brown and her eyes look cold, empty and somehow much more icy, as if all the life and warmth in them has slowly been sucked out. He knows he has done this to her and he still can’t meet her eyes.



His eyes blur and he wonders what is happening until he realizes that he is crying, he has never cried before and now he wipes his tears away and pretends he had never shed them.



“ Why won’t you look at me?” she asks, and he doesn’t know what to tell her, what he can tell her.



"You see!" says a strained voice. She glares at him. "She still wants to marry him, even though he's been bitten! She doesn't care!”



"It's different," says Remus, barely moving his lips. "Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely -"



"But I don't care either, I don't care!" she says, seizing his robes and shaking him.




“ I have told you a million times, I am too old, too poor, too dangerous…” And his mind is screaming, I am a coward, I am a werewolf, I am dead.



"You know, I have always thought you two would do well together," states Molly Weasley as she places a hand on Tonks’ shoulder.




“It’s…it’s mad,” he says, still refusing to look at her.



It's mad...it's mad...



And he is spinning back in time.



James watched Lily with a slight smile on his face.



Sirius shifted and broke James’ gaze. “Mate, she’s not the only one out there. It’s mad to continue chasing her like this.”



James looked at Sirius, his eyes blazing. “Love without madness isn’t love at all.”



Remus laughed and told Sirius that James was right.



But he won’t laugh, he cannot laugh. She is still watching him, waiting for an answer. She knows he is broken, torn, and expects to see some emotion, some sorrow, but all she receives is stone and an icy faraway look.



She knows she has lost.



She rises up slowly and tries not to look at him but even when she shuts her eyes tight, she sees his face. I don’t care anymore,she thinks. I don’t care.



Even she knows it isn’t true.



He watches her move further and further away. He wants to run behind her, hold her and never let go. But he can’t, so he just sits and watches the only person he has ever loved walk away.




He is six and is standing under the light of the full moon. Moonlight falls on his deathly-white face, twisted, tortured and pained. He wastes the night away but he doesn’t know where, he doesn’t know when.



It is the next morning and the children are pointing at him and laughing, his hair is matted and filthy, as if he hasn’t woken up for four thousand years but he knows it couldn’t be more than four hours, and it makes all the difference in the world. His blue eyes are a dull brown like the colour of mud and he tastes blood in his mouth.



It is a year later and this time it is he who goes and asks the children if he can play with them. But he immediately runs home, not waiting for an answer, and he never goes back again.




Remus has never been understood, never wanted to be understood, except here a thousand years of history is turned against him and somewhere, his heart is telling him he did the wrong thing and somewhere, his brain is telling him he has never done anything wrong. Somewhere he is the only child, doomed to a life of prejudice and greyness and he knows only one thing could have changed all that and that he had just let it slip away.




















~Fin