Remus Lupin tapped the still form that lay on a ratty old couch in the living room of the Burrow. They were the only ones awake there, the rest of the inhabitants waiting for a later hour to rouse from their slumber. Light was creeping over the edge of the dark horizon, spilling rays of gold and pink across the land and creating a tapestry of beauty. A few stars still clung to the vestiges of night that yet remained. In the yard, the animals were beginning to stir, voicing their respective calls of hunger.
Now, more urgently, Remus grasped her shoulder gently and shook carefully. "Tonks, please wake up. Dumbledore wants us to go down to Hogsmeade to meet with him in an hour. He's giving us our assignments."
"Go away, Remus," a muffled voice begged.
Remus drew back, hurt. "Tonks, you have to," he protested weakly.
"No, I don't," she argued, still hiding under a comforter. "I don't have to go anywhere."
"If you want to stay in the Order — "
"Well, maybe I don't want to stay in the Order!" she burst out in sudden fury, curling into a tighter ball. "Maybe I'd rather not see everyone die! Maybe I just want to quit this whole thing, all right, Remus? Maybe I…" But then she fell silent.
Remus chewed his lip pensively, watching her through his overgrown bangs of hair. He didn't know how to respond to this.
"Remus, are you still there?" Tonks asked.
"Yes."
"Please, Remus. Please leave. I'll face the consequences."
If anything, the pain in her voice convinced him that he had to stay until she was ready to come out. "Tonks, this isn't like you. I hate to see you this upset."
She sighed, the plaintive breath almost disappearing into the folds of her blanket. "So do I, Remus. But there's nothing we can do about it."
"On the contrary." Hesitantly, Remus sat on the edge of the sofa, his back against her knees. "If you sit up and talk to me, I'm sure we can work something out."
Tonks chuckled weakly. "You've always had a useful listening ear."
"Care to put it to use?" Remus offered again.
"Do I have to sit up?"
"I'd like it," Remus said, careful not to put too much meaning into the words. "It's easier to talk face-to-face than like this."
Tonks didn't respond, but she stirred, and gradually her head peeped out from under the covers. "Wotcher, Remus," she mumbled.
Remus bit back a cry. Her face, once so bright and youthful, looked dead, thin, the hollows in her cheeks more obvious than ever. She was bone-white, even paler than him, the circles under her eyes pronounced and enhanced by her pallor and dark eyes. Old tearstains decorated her cheeks. Bubblegum-pink hair was out of the question — it had become a dull, limp blonde, bordering on brown.
"Oh, Tonks," he managed to say.
A ghost of a smile flickered across her face. "Yeah, I know," she muttered. "I look a sight."
"I didn't know you felt this bad," Remus said, and instantly regretted it. "Not that you look terrible or anything," he amended hastily. "It's just…"
Tonks saved him from certain embarrassment with a weak chuckle. "Don't bother, Remus. I know it looks like I've been living in a crypt."
Caught unaware by her ghastly appearance, all Remus could say was, "Do you want to talk about it – what's bothering you?"
Tonks grinned slightly, almost like her former self. "No, not really. Of course, you're bullying me into it, so I suppose I'll have to."
Wretched, Remus replied, "Tonks, I'm sorry. If you really don't want to talk about it, don't. I was just trying to help; I thought it might make you feel better…"
"Remus, don't feel bad," Tonks assured him in the awkward pause that followed. "Honestly, I'd rather talk to you about it than, say, Molly. She's a sweet soul and practically a saint, but she'd just gush over me and make me tea, whereas you'll just hear me out and offer practical advice. No one can't beat that." Her smile was bittersweet and wistful, the hint of some incomprehensible longing lingering around the edges. In the half-light of the room, Remus almost thought that he could mistake her for a jaded lover, but quickly stomped on that thought.
Tonks sighed again and sat up fully, positioning her body next to Remus, her knees still covered by her rather ugly orange afghan. From here, her T-shirt-clad frame appeared particularly skinny. She sat slumped, as if unable to muster the strength to keep her back straight.
Remus clasped his hands in his lap and cocked his head at her. "What's wrong, Tonks?"
For a moment, she was silent. Then she shrugged, hopelessly waving a hand in the air. "Nothing. Everything."
Remus quirked his mouth to the side. "That's a hard answer to work with."
Tonks let out her breath in one long whoosh. "It was my fault, you know," she murmured, her voice cracking.
Remus frowned, his brow knitting in confusion. "What?"
Tonks shook her head, sniffing, a tear trickling down one wan cheek. "Sirius. Him dying. I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it. I was the one fighting Bellatrix, but I was too weak to beat her."
"What? — Tonks, you're not weak," Remus objected. "In fact, you're one of the strongest people I know. Just because a Dark witch got the better of you in one fight doesn't mean you're weak. She possesses knowledge that we don't, and doesn't hesitate to use it to her advantage."
"It doesn’t change the past, Remus," Tonks argued. "She killed Sirius because I couldn't stand up to her."
"Tonks, this is survivors' guilt," Remus explained. "And it's perfectly natural to feel this way. I've often felt it myself. But I want you to know that it wasn't your fault at all. No one blames you in the least."
"Except for myself."
Remus had nothing to say to that.
Tonks smiled grimly. "Checkmate. Remus, I never imagined that any of the Order would blame me, but if they did, I could manage to live with it. Oh, sure, I'd quit the Order and hole up somewhere remote rather than face you, but I'd live. But to exist with the knowledge that I could have saved my cousin? Remus, that's just not something I think I can do."
Shakily, Remus replied, "Tonks, it – it was his time to die. I think he sensed it. Sirius was always too much of a daredevil, that would have killed him in the end anyway. Going there, dying to save his godson, that was what he realized would happen. Nothing you or I could have done would change that."
Tonks hit the sofa, suddenly incensed. "That's where you're wrong, Remus!" she exclaimed. "For all your intelligence, you're just not getting it. I – could – have – stopped – Bellatrix! And that would have preserved Sirius's life!" Angry tears sparkled in her eyes. "I'm not stupid. That's the truth, Remus, whether we like it or not."
"The past is the past, Tonks," Remus said steadily. "Even if this were so, we can't change it now. We make mistakes, Tonks, we live and learn from them, and we move on. At this point, that's what you have to do. It's been two weeks since then, and we – we've all dealt with our grief in that time. Even me. Even Harry. It's what we need you to do too, Tonks."
Remus discerned that she wasn't telling the whole truth about the reason for her grief. No one was this cut up about it, and many besides her had better reason to be upset. Remus was determined to get to the bottom of it.
And Tonks, it seemed, was determined to be difficult. "Oh, so what I need has no precedence?" she shot back. She was so angry that she leapt to her feet, clenching her fists and glaring at him defensively.
Remus rose as well, wishing he could find some way, any way, to calm her. "What do you need?"
"I need — " she started, then bit off her sentence, visibly struggling to retain some measure of self-control. She tried again. "I need to somehow escape from myself."
"There's no way to do that, Tonks," Remus informed her gently. "Unless you're asking to be Obliviated, and that strikes me as unwise."
"Not a bad idea," Tonks said, lapsing into her former humor.
Remus rubbed his eyes. "Tonks…"
Her smile faded. "If you're so tired of dealing with me, you're free to go."
"No, no," he said, slightly abashed. "That's not it. I'm still trying to comprehend this."
"It's not that hard," Tonks retorted, her formerly amiable temper flaring up, as it did so easily these days.
"Tonks, the problem is, I think, that you're wallowing. You're not even attempting to face yourself," Remus ventured.
The effect was rather like that of a bomb.
"Because I don't want to see who I am anymore!" Tonks bellowed furiously, color suffusing her face. She ran to a mirror that hung on a wall. "You see this face?" She pointed at herself. Remus saw his worried face reflected behind her own enraged countenance. "I don't want to deal with it anymore!" In a bout of physical violence, she punched the mirror with two fists. It smashed.
Crickets chirped in the dumbfounded quiet that followed. Both sets of eyes were riveted on the hundreds of fragments of glass that littered the floor. Then, slowly, Remus's eyes traveled to Tonks's lacerated hands. Beads of blood dripped to the floor. "Tonks," he said, "you're bleeding."
Tonks lifted her hands in front of her, causing rivulets of blood to trickle down her arms. "Oh, Remus," she whispered. "God, I'm so sorry. I just completely lost it. I'm sorry." She knelt and gathered up a handful of the slivers.
"It's all right, Tonks," he comforted her quietly, not daring to move. "It's fine."
She was so helpless, standing at the edge of the dim room, her white face glowing, her cupped, rent hands full to the brim with glass. Remus desperately wished there was some way he could help her.
Tonks rubbed the pieces of glass absently in one bloodstained hand. "Odd, this. This is what I am now: a broken mirror. I'm completely unlucky. I'm useless and broken and can't be put back together again. A mirror is all well and good, but what is it when it's smashed? Just a mess to clean up, that's all. I feel that you can see right through me, because I'm just completely transparent." Tonks picked up a large shard of glass and held it up to her eye. "Like this piece of glass."
"Tonks — " Remus attempted, but she cut him off.
"It's funny, these pieces of glass," she continued. "Some of the edges are sharp. And somehow, other edges are dull. Strange…"
"Tonks, you will feel better," Remus persisted. "It's devastating, what happened. I understand that. But eventually, you have to move on. You have to, Tonks."
Tonks shook her head slowly. "It's not that easy, Remus. Somehow, it's just not." For a moment, her eyes wavered, her gaze averting to the floor. Then she blinked and lifted her head again. "Now I'm just part of something I used to be, you know? Before, even with all the Order business, I was whole. And then Sirius died, and – and everything fell apart."
She laughed shortly, staring fixedly at the mess on the floor and in her hands. "I was the mirror, Remus. And now I'm just shattered glass. And what do you do with that? You throw it away." Her expression was bleak as she gestured vaguely at thin air. "You forgot about it."
Remus strode to her and grasped her upper arms in a firm clasp. "Tonks, we don't ever want to forget about you," he told her somewhat sternly. "Survivors' guilt is one thing, but this is too far. Please cheer up." He tried to smile; it wavered. "We miss your pink hair."
Tonks laughed, sniffling a bit. "Just my hair?"
Remus smiled. "All of you, Tonks."
She swiped at her eyes with the unstained back of one hand. "I finally see, Remus," she whispered. "All right. I'll listen to your reason and try to forget about it. I'll warn you, though, I'll probably fail."
He squeezed her arms lightly. "You will if you think like that. Chin up."
It was amazing how quickly this had escalated and then dwindled to a hasty resolve. But then, Tonks's mercurial temper was unpredictable. Remus wasn't about to argue if she suddenly came to terms with what he was saying, even if it was too good to be true.
He stepped back. "Clean up, I'll wait for you outside. We still have half an hour to meet Dumbledore."
As he walked away, Remus couldn't shake the niggling feeling that he hadn't found the core of Tonks's depression.
Tonks stared after Remus and sighed. Sirius's death was but a convenient excuse to blame for her recent gloominess. That was only half of her sorrow. It did affect her, true, but the main reason for her misery was that, in the past two weeks, Tonks had suddenly realized just how much she adored Remus, and despaired of him ever feeling the same way. The knowledge had saturated her like water, a blight of anguish that wouldn't abandon her.
Normally, she'd never give up on an argument so easily. However, she saw how futile her protestations were against Remus's logic. Also, she hated to worry and bother him so. For the time being, she acquiesced, inwardly coming with no improvement for the better. Still, if it made Remus happy, she was more than willing to put on a façade.
I can't tell him yet, though, she thought as she changed and made her preparations. I'm not quite up to that. But eventually I will. Eventually…
Pausing on her way out of the bathroom, Tonks scrutinized her face and sighed. How could he ever love her?
He and Dumbledore were waiting, however. She'd reflect on this at a more appropriate time.
She sighed again and trotted out the door, leaving the crushed litter of mirror behind her.