Sinope's Fiction: Passages

Title: Passages
Author: Sinope at (no spam!) gmail dot com
Rating: PG
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: Remus is going insane, yes, but he sees no need to stop the process.
Author's notes: A drabble for musesfool on the above summary.
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work. No profit was made; no ownership is implied.

The bottom hem of the curtain looks like the graying teeth of some ravenous beast, glistening with saliva and hot, hungry breath. A ghost-beast, though: a phantom, else how could the fabric look so softly diaphanous that Remus has often had to jerk his hand back to avoid touching it? He toys with fantasies of waiting for the perfect breath of icy air and catching a fold between his fingertips, and when he begins to contemplate such possibilities seriously, he resolves not to come back again - at least, not at night, when the Death Chamber is always deserted and every path leads to the archway in the center of the room.

Three nights later, he returns. The beckoning potentiality of the Death Chamber frightens him, but the flat, empty halls of 12 Grimmauld Place terrify him even more. There's an empty curve of wrinkled sheets on the left side of his bed, and Remus swears that if he looks hard enough he can see the shape of Sirius, still peacefully asleep, less than ghost but more than memory. Remus is glad that the Order of the Phoenix never gave him a house-elf to replace Kreacher, because he can't bear the thought of someone destroying that after-image. That's one reason that Remus likes the Death Chamber so much: he can touch the clammy stones of the Archway, and he knows that once he finally makes the choice to touch the veil - no, to step through it boldly, like Sirius would have done - all that he could destroy would be himself. (Yet - oh, what he might gain.)

Dumbledore and the others know that Remus is going insane; he can hear it in their condenscending sympathy, see it in the nervous flickering of their eyes. Insane: yes. An inky, brooding vacuum somewhere in his chest that draws everything else inward insatiably. Each morning when Remus wakes up, it takes longer and longer to remember that he knows how to smile. The knowledge could be fading from lack of use, of course, but Remus prefers to think that the Sirius-shaped void sucks in those memories during each night.

As for his dreams: Remus could never remember them anyway. When he wakes up in the chair beside the bed, shuddering uncontrollably with an emptiness too acute even to scream, faceless regret is all that he can recall. Only in the Chamber does he dream and remember, and though it's a dangerous pleasure - were he to sleep too long, one of the Unspeakables might walk in on him - he risks it, again and again.

In the Chamber, he always dreams of Before. He and Sirius wrestle each other in powdery snow, or steal glances at each other over homework in the library, or melt into each other's warmth as they hide in a corner during a mission. It's not Before, though, because this time around, Sirius leans into Remus and kisses him and tells him how much he loves him - never any awkwardness, never any hesitation. Remus wakes up shuddering from those dreams, too, but the tremors vibrate with joy so sweet it aches.

That precious, deceiving joy is one of the few things that Remus lives for these days. Harry is another; so is the Cause, the constant reassurances (lies) that everyone in the Order tells him. More than all of those, though, Remus lives because he knows he doesn't have to. In the midst of all the nevers and can'ts and forevers, the Archway still remains a promise of escape - of hope. He could do it, and he feels the possibility humming beneath his skin whenever he sits in the Chamber, and the promise allows him to say to himself each time, No. I'll wait. Harry would be upset.

Everything seems so simple in the Chamber. It's only outside - when Molly tut-tuts over his hollow eyes, or Dumbledore gently suggests moving to a new house, or Kingsley quietly offers to talk - that Remus knows that he'll never have the strength to make that step, that he can't escape his promises to his friends, and that Sirius is gone forever, forever, forever. He knows that he'll feel the despair washing over him unbearably until he sneaks back into the Death Chamber at night, but that when he does, he'll find some reason to stop short of breaking free, again, and again, and again.

Remus is going insane, yes, but he sees no need to stop the process. He knows that when the creeping shadow has eaten away everything inside, then he'll be able to really work for the Order again. Then he'll stop wanting to go back to the Chamber. Then he'll be free.

finis.