Sinope's Fiction: Shapes in a Shadowbox

Title: Shapes in a Shadowbox
Author: Sinope at (no spam!) gmail dot com
Rating: R
Pairing: Snape/Lupin
Summary: One story about Snape and Lupin: two men and a world all to themselves.
Author's notes: This was written as a birthday present for the amazing and talented Lore. Thanks to Jude and Vivian for encouragement and beta suggestions!
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work. No profit was made; no ownership is implied.

This is where one story begins: I knock on the door of a cheap hotel room in Bombay with a wand up my sleeve and a book in my pocket. I'm undisguised; I know you too well to think you'd open the door to anyone else. (I'm wagering my mission on the belief that one night in Spinner's End, never again mentioned, is enough to give me thirty seconds of your time. If I'm wrong, well, I doubt the Ministry would mind my loss. Feel free to be cynical, Severus; the only reason they send me on these high-profile missions is to keep the uncomfortable presence of Dumbledore's pet werewolf out of Britain.)

My fingers tremble as I wait for you to answer, naked without a wand in my grasp. I'm nervous - I'd be an idiot to deny it. You open the door with apparent nonchalance, but I know better; I've been counting seconds, measuring enough time for you to feel for magic and realize that I'm undefended. "Severus," I say, just as you say my name: "Lupin."

The script I'd rehearsed suddenly seems shallow and false; I know you'd see the lie, and condemn me for it. I wish I had the option of telling you the truth, but, though I may have convinced myself that the Ministry's plans for you are just, I have no illusions that you'll go willingly. After all, you've been hiding for six years at this point. If public redemption is your goal, consider me fooled. At this point in my hesitation, your wary curiosity has faded into irritation; "What do you want?" you snap.

"I wanted -" I search through my head for a convincing lie, and nothing's coming up except the pure truth, "- I wanted to see you." And I'm glad I told the truth, because I see immediately that you can sense it, uncomfortable as you are with my affection. (That, I remember well.)

You invite me in; the hotel room is bare and cheap, a hovel better suited to a backpacking student than to someone as meticulous as you. I see the trunk open in one corner, each article of clothing precisely folded, and I smile. When we sit down on two wicker chairs, you offer me tea without milk or sugar, and the sight of your lips taking in neat, dropless sips makes for an all-too-easy distraction from my mission.

Our conversation feels like the chess games you and I used to play, each line of conversation carefully constructed to reveal nothing and gain everything. I inquire into your health; you respond politely and ask about Tonks's wellbeing. I know you think I'm here to try to get you to return, and I imagine you think I don't have any tools of persuasion beyond my voice and my promises.

When I pull the book out of my pocket on an excuse of showing you what I've been reading, I discover how much I underestimated your caution. I drop the book intentionally, ready for you to catch it and touch a page, but even faster than your hand around the book is your hand around my wrist. Our eyes meet, and yours are black and sneering, and then -

- pop -

- you're still holding my wrist, and we're standing in the middle of an icy stream, surrounded by deep green forest.

The first thing you do is look around, slowly, taking in the sun-speckled canopy without ever loosening your grip. When you speak, each work is calm and measured. "I hope to God that you prepared yourself a way to get out of here."

I close my eyes and try to concentrate, try not to panic. "They - the Ministry will notice I'm missing. They'll find the book."

You let go of my wrist, then, and start walking toward the bank, your back to me. You say, "Not with the concealment charms I've put in place."

It's the smothered disgust in your voice, then, that finally makes me acknowledge it: I'm trapped here with you, in the prison I'd intended to use to bring you back to England. Nobody's going to find us, and I know perfectly well that there's no way out. This is it.

Over dinner - fish from the stream and tart apples, skewered over a crackling fire - I tell you what I know about the book. It's a safe world, filled with food and clean water and a temperate climate; what it doesn't have is a way out. You and I simply live inside the world of the book, and since the book doesn't describe magic, we can't do magic to get us out. That's it: simple and neat, just as this world will eventually fade into a simple, neat blank space at the borders of the book's descriptions.

You take this in, and respond with other practical questions: will the weather ever change? Will plants regrow if we eat them? Will you and I grow old, can we die in here?

The answer to all your questions is "yes." I respond briefly, trying to meet your eyes and beg you to stay with me, but I know that these words will be the last ones you exchange with me for a long while. It's not that I trust you; some romantic part of my heart still wants to think that you were working on Dumbledore's instructions all along, even to the point of murdering him. You've taught me to be too skeptical for such fancies of redemption, though. I know that you're a selfish man, a man with clear sight and cold determination, and although I'm sure you had your reasons for your actions, they likely wouldn't justify your deeds in my mind.

Yet despite all this, I know that I'd rather fall asleep with my hand in yours than dream alone. I'm weak like that, I suppose.

After dinner, you settle yourself on the opposite side of the fire from me, and still we don't talk about the real things. (You'll say that, if I'm so interested in talking about your choices and alliances, I should've brought up the subject myself. You're right, as usual.)

"This is unlike you, Lupin," you say, and for a moment I think you're responding to my avoidance of important subjects, and almost laugh. But you continue: "You may be foolish, but you're not this stupid. How could you overlook the possibility of becoming imprisoned in your own trap?"

I avoid your eyes, perhaps ashamed of my own sentimental reasons. "I suppose I believed . . . I believed that if I got trapped inside, you'd rescue me. Silly, perhaps, but I trust you more than I do the Ministry. Probably best, since they're the ones who told me that the book could only contain one man."

At that, you look right at me, and the cynical smirk in your eyes says what you don't have to: Yes, because to them, you don't count as a man.

I lie down on my bed of leaves, watching you through flames and half-lidded eyes, and pretend I don't understand. I wonder whether the message you read in my eyes is this: And the other reason I didn't worry about getting trapped? A life in this bland, English paradise is still a better one than the one that the outside world thrust on me. And I can't regret spending it with you, much as I know I should.

You're gone by the time I wake, and you've left me precisely half of the fish and all of the firewood.

Hours pass, then days, then weeks. I consider keeping a measure of days, carved in wood or tallied in stone, then realize that there's no need. If we ever do get out, the outside will remember how long we've been gone. If, as is more likely, we don't, then the only time that concerns me is the slow, inexorable waxing of the moon.

In weeks of small victories - shelter, bedding, cooking, rudimentary ink - I haven't seen any animal larger than a hare. As the moon nears her fullness, my fears become darker and more frequent: what if the wolf's enhanced senses find your scent where I could not? What if I wake with the taste of your blood on my lips, spending the next weeks searching the forest for the unrecognizable remains? What if the wolf devours your body completely, leaving me with no evidence beyond an unanswerable search?

When I realize that what-ifs are going to drive me mad if the isolation doesn't, I start searching for you. The search isn't difficult; the book describes a large space, from what I remember, but suitable sources of water and shelter narrow the field. I finally see a small thread of black smoke rising above the trees and follow it to the ocean. You've set yourself up in a cave in the cliffside, far enough from the water to stay warm and keep your hearthfire dry. As I approach the cave, I can see your handiwork, and I can't help being impressed. I pass herbs drying - the obvious ones, like thyme and comfrey, but others as well that I don't recognize - and rabbit skins stretched over branches to tan in the open air. From a concave stone balanced over the fire, I can smell a greenish poultice of juniper and something sour.

"You've been busy," I murmur - I've been talking to myself more often than I used to, these days, if only so I don't forget how.

Your voice, dry and understated, replies "More so than you, it appears." I look up sharply, startled by another's voice, and see you step out of the shadows of your cave. I'm sure I look awful, but you look remarkably well; your sallow skin has browned and reddened in the summer sun, and the lines of bitterness wreathing your face have faded into a contemplative calm that I've only seen before in rare glimpses.

"The full moon's in a week," I begin.

"I'm quite aware of that," you say, and give me a wry smile - but it's a smile, nonetheless. "What do you intend to do about it?"

I force my voice to stay calm. "I'd hoped you could help me with that. There's a chance that werewolves don't exist in this world, of course, but I don't want to rely on it. I need you to be able to tie me up and wall me in, then let me out when I'm . . . when I'm myself again."

Then I notice the knife you have at your side, the knife you've chipped out of stone until it gleams, and I know that I can trust you to do what's necessary. You follow my gaze, then look back at me and nod. "Very well. I'd thought a pit would work best; that way, we need only cover and weigh down the top."

I agree, and we discuss the logistics, and I try to ignore the fact that I'm trusting you to bury me in the black earth, with no one else to blame or punish you if you choose not to open the pit in the morning. After all, I've trusted you with everything else.

Days come and go; I make myself a bed in your cave, so we can share duties more easily, and we settle into a quiet rhythm of work, meals, and sleep. We still don't talk, though, not really, and when I wake up at night, I can see you curled up into yourself in bed, looking just as you appeared when I left you that morning, worlds ago. (I can still remember waking up shivering, then turning to see you lying with your back to me, arms wrapped around yourself. At the time I took it for a coded message: you slept as you lived, alone.) Every night, I fall asleep resisting the urge to walk to your pallet and mould my body against your own.

Then the evening comes, and we're ready. An hour before sunset, I clamber down a makeshift branch ladder into the pit, a good twelve feet deep, and find myself a comfortable place to sit as you begin to cover the pit with layers of heavy logs. My mind wanders in the thick sun-scarred darkness, and it's then that I have the revelation: there aren't two people on this island, after all. There are three - you, me, and the wolf - and as long as he's around, you'll never feel safe enough to trust me the way that I trust you. It only makes sense, after all, for you to trust me no more than I trust myself.

I wake up with confused recollections and a fading memory of primal frustration. I'm exhausted physically, of course, but I'm in much less pain than usual, and when I feel my skin, my usual post-transformation injuries feel shallow and light. Something isn't right.

The timber ceiling still seems solid overhead, though, and I can't imagine the wolf breaking out, then hiding back inside. So I dig myself deeper into my bed of dirt and wait for you to pull me out, falling asleep so I don't have to wonder whether you'll come at all.

Dreams come and go, vague blurs of underground caverns and dead friends that leave me disquieted.

And on the morning of the next day, I awake. I'm lying on a springy mattress of straw and leaves over molded sand, and you're sitting beside me, cross-legged, watching my face. When my eyes open fully, something softens around your eyes, and I give you a faint smile. The bright light hurts, though, so I close them again, and it's then that you start speaking. Your voice sounds rougher than usual, more open, and I let it weave around me like a summer blanket.

"Dumbledore would never have believed me if I told him I'd turned against the Dark Lord out of idealism, or greed, or cowardice. Putting my lot in with the Death Eaters may have been the poorer choice in the long run, but playing spy? That was a game Dumbledore knew no Slytherin would dare unless he was certain of a reward worth such risk. But Dumbledore knew he had the one thing that Voldemort denied me: power over the mind, and particularly my own. It rankled me that no matter what secrets I gained, what hidden legacies of Dark Arts I uncovered, all Voldemort had to do was rifle through my mind to steal them all away. It's not a particularly altruistic motive, but I daresay that won't surprise you."

You stop talking then, but I'm too tired to intrude on your silence. In the distance, I can hear the chattering of a morning bird, trying to out-sing the washing of the ocean waves. At last, you exhale softly and continue. "I daresay as well that you won't believe what I'll tell you next: I think I grew to love the old man. Remember that I was young, and I mistook the pity of a kindly mentor for trust, even love. When I slipped away for my lessons in Occlumency and Legilimency, passing on the crumbs of information with which the Dark Lord trusted me, I almost fancied that Dumbledore saw those hours the way I did: the only lifeline I had left to a world that remotely resembled normal humanity."

I don't think I've ever heard you talk for this long, and most especially not about yourself. With my eyes closed and my thoughts drifting, I can still see you at that age: pale-skinned and slender, with the body of a teenager too busy for nourishment and the cold eyes of one whose only defense against reality is to scorn it. I can imagine why Dumbledore pitied you; I might have, too, if your hissed whispers of inhuman beast hadn't still been ringing in my ears. (It took many more years of forced loneliness taking their toll on my face before I began to recognize their marks on your own visage.) As you continue talking, telling me about the ways that Dumbledore taught you, protected you, trusted you, and ultimately commanded you to kill him, I realize that your words aren't merely a vindication of your own actions; they're the requiem that you never had the luxury of giving him.

(Are these stories the truth? I choose to believe so, because in this fairytale world, the only truths are those that you and I choose to enact.)

When you finish speaking, I blink open my eyelids, and the morning light swims and swirls around my eyes. I slide my hand toward you; the position's awkward, and all I can reach is your left foot, clad in a makeshift sandal. The physical contact is enough, though, and I speak slowly and carefully. "Thank you for sharing that. And - thank you for watching over the wolf last night."

You shake your head, then, and look pointedly away at the sand beyond me. "There was no wolf; your body never changed, and I never heard a voice that wasn't human. The only being in that pit last night was you."

I breathe in and out, and try to process what that means, even as another part of me wonders what about that revelation convinced you to finally break our silence. I could think of a dozen competing explanations, but for now, what I do is this: I stroke my hand over your ankle, feeling the salty crags and rough lines, and I fall into sleep's arms as though she were a lover's embrace.

Days pass, just as they ought to, and things slowly become easier. I gather the few belongings I'm proud of making and move into your camp - more efficient that way, you say - but we never quite get around to making me a separate bedchamber. The weeks alone have changed you remarkably; I think you've realized that in here, none of the walls or deceits matter any more. You know quite well how I feel about you, and you know it won't change. The rest is up to you.

We settle into a rhythm of mornings and evenings, organizing our tasks to suit our strengths. Your fingers are more nimble than mine, and your herbology puts mine to shame; but I grew up in the Muggle world, a Scout who learned to tie Clove Hitches and start fires with twigs and leaves. We measure our successes in days we don't go hungry, all the while counting down to the coming of winter. Most nights, I'm so exhausted by the time I lie down that the pang of seeing you so temptingly and obliviously close doesn't even sting, much.

We discuss different possibilities for winter, structures to keep out the snow and keep in a fire's warmth. In the meantime, we catch all the rabbits and ferrets we can, sewing together their skins to make blankets that never turn out as smooth and soft as I'd imagined. I try to push away thoughts of how warm your own skin would feel against mine, then taunt myself with the irony that, in this prison locking me away from all vestiges of the world I'd known, the one thing I crave is that which is right beside me. You - well, I don't know what you feel. Perhaps your mind is so consumed with planning for survival that you don't care to think about fallible human hearts. Or perhaps you do think of someone, someone whose touches wouldn't make you start and turn away, the way mine do.

The nights have just begun to send chill air into our cave when I wake up one evening, close to the full moon, and see that you're not in your bed. Shivering slightly, I get up and walk outside the cave, rubbing my arms for warmth. You're sitting outside by the embers of our fire, whittling at something with your stone knife, your uncut hair falling over your face like a dark shroud. "Severus?" I say, and when you look up, I see your fingers twitch, tempted to conceal your labors. You don't say anything, so I walk forward, and when I'm close enough to touch you I can see through the shadows to recognize what's resting in your lap: a nearly-smooth, slender wooden wand. My mouth opens slightly in a quiet "oh."

"I had to use human hair, of course, but that's not unprecedented," you say. "The greatest obstacle was the element of time; I feared I'd have to wait a year after selecting the wood, to allow the proper period of separation from the tree's life, but I was fortunate enough to find a piece of driftwood of the appropriate species and age."

"Why didn't you -" I begin, then change my question. "When will it be ready?"

"After the next full moon," you say. Then you look away, off into the ocean. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to hope."

"Can I help?" I ask, but you shake your head and bend back down over your carving. I don't sleep much that night.

Soon enough, the moon waxes full, and you board me up again in my hole. As the sun sets and I wait for the moon to rise, I can hear a faint murmur through the wood; I lose consciousness to the sound of unpausing Latin, too distant for me to recognize individual words. "Severus," I cry as the change comes upon me, and it's the last thing I remember until morning.

When I wake again, you've removed the logs that held me in; the sun's nearing noon, and it dazzles my eyes so painfully I have to cover my eyes with my hand. You're probably busy with the day's duties, I think, but then I hear the heavy shuffling of wood sliding over the side of the pit. The night was easier for me this time, so I have the strength to pull myself up the makeshift ladder, one branch at a time. (That comes from being better fed this month, you'd say, and I'd just smile because it'd show you cared.) I drag myself up over the edge, then lie down beside you, grateful for small things: the cool dampness of grass against my cheek, and the shade of autumn-blushed leaves between me and the sun.

You seat yourself beside me, and, after a few moments, you speak. "The wand doesn't work."

"Maybe there was just a mistake with . . .?"

"No," you cut me off. "There weren't any mistakes. I knew the length of time it'd take to make another one, and I followed the rituals precisely. There is no magic here to channel."

I've never heard your voice like this, so broken, so openly raw with pain. "I'm sorry," I say, though I know words won't help you right now. My hand moves toward yours, resting my palm on your own; you allow me to interlace our fingers without resisting, and I stroke your skin with my thumb in gentle circles. It's easier, time has taught me, to ease another's pain than to indulge in my own.

We don't speak much all day, but when night falls and you rise from the evening fire to go to sleep, I stand too, though it takes every drop of remaining energy in me to do so. "Can we stop playing this game, please?" I say. Then I grasp your hand, and pull you close, and kiss you on the mouth, and it's as awkward and hungry and wonderful as I'd remembered. I draw away eventually, but I don't break our mutual gaze as I lead you into the tent. (Remember, I'm still tired from the change, and anything more than a careful embrace is more than I dare tonight.) We arrange our limbs around each other, and when my left hand ends up underneath your own, both wrapped around my waist, I feel you pull me just a little bit closer. The gesture is enough to warm me all night.

You and I don't have sex that night, but we do on the next night, and the night after that. No, I'm not lovesick enough to believe that I can take away all your burdens; nevertheless, I like to fancy that after that point, everything does get a little lighter.

I won't bore you with the details of days, seasons, or years. Life is difficult, viewed purely as a series of physical challenges, but as for the bleak, soul-numbing ways that it had disappointed both of us in the past? The book's world is paradise. We build a home together; we build a life together, filled with little pleasures like the bracing streams of melting snow water in spring-time, or the triumph of discovering a cache of sea-salt to preserve meats and season our diet. One year, you present me with an unexpected gift - a wooden chess set, each piece painstakingly carved - and you take my breath away.

These are trivial stories, I know. But this is what I realize, what we would realize: that the trivial, ridiculous details are the ones that matter most. Over time, you teach me to name and use every plant in the forest, but I teach you to tell stories and recite poetry, and I still believe my gift is the better one.

The full moons come and go, and each one takes a lighter toll from me, up until we realize that it can't just be due to my health or food. I keep my theories to myself, but one month you surprise me by looking me in the eye, the day before the full moon, and saying, "I don't think it's necessary to put you in that pit. I believe that your body can remember that it is human, now that the physical change no longer occurs."

I'm speechless. But I urge you to still tie me with the strongest cords we can make out of sinew and vines, and when I feel the clock within my flesh ticking toward the full moon's rising, your words are all that keep me grounded. "Listen, Remus," you say, knowing that the sound of my first name will jerk me from my reverie, "you are not a wolf, you are no magical creature. You are yourself, a man who can control these changes. You are a man, and you are stronger than whatever calls for you to abandon yourself. Stay here. Stay with me." And with those words, with a voice that brooks no disobedience, you look into my eyes, and you refuse to glance away until the two of us look up, together, at the full moon that shines above us in tranquil innocence.

(This is when, Severus, I truly convince myself that I was never a fool to love you.)

You and I map out and memorize every inch of our storybook world, from the ocean on one side to the tangle of forest that faded into a greenish blur on the other. Years pass, and eventually we can't deny the effects of age: grey threads in your hair, a crinkled translucence in my skin. We fight sometimes, of course, and spend whole months apart from each other's company, but we always return to each other eventually. Maybe it's because we're all the other has, but maybe? Maybe we both grow to realize that in this primitive place, we've found something that's right.

Then you come to me one morning and tell me that the field of primroses, out near the border of the world, has faded into an unreachable pink blur.

We try to tell each other that the world's boundaries may shift naturally, as attention is given to one area or another. We both know it's a lie. I realize that I'm an idiot for not thinking about the possibility: your spells may have made your hotel room invisible to all human minds, but it's still a physical place, vulnerable to flood or decay or the gnawing of vermin. Magics like this book may be powerful, but they're so intrinsically linked to the physical object that they can't survive without it.

There's a chance, of course, that if the book completely crumbles, we'll return to the true world outside. It's not a great enough chance for either of us to risk trying to penetrate the borders. Instead, we submerge ourselves more fully within each other; we spend whole days lying together in beds of grass and lilies, tracing every plane and pore of the other's skin. When the gray places encroach upon our cave by the sea, we gather our food and belongings and set up a hut near the stream where we first appeared. You and I hold each other tighter every night, and nibble on dried fish with no real hunger, and wait for an end that neither of us can pretend to ignore.

On the last day, all around us is a featureless blur of green and brown and blue, lit by a hazy unmoving sun. The only thing I see clearly is you. The last thing I smell is your skin, more familiar than my own, and the last thing I touch is your lips when you -

- and that's all.

It's a good story, and a good death. I don't know whether you deserve it.

The Ministry put this cemetary on a small island in the Outer Hebrides, difficult to Apparate to and impossible to visit as a Muggle. They don't like to think that anyone visits it, but I've seen others here during my pilgrimages. The fallen enemies during the War had too many well-connected families and innocent children to be forgotten as much as history would like.

You fell in the crossfire of the final battle to reach Voldemort, as we fought to kill the small fraction of a soul that still inhabited him. Nobody knows who killed you, but few regret your loss; I imagine you would have been buried with the losers, whichever side won. (I try to tell myself that I would've avoided that fate, had I died, but I've never convinced myself.) Yours is one of a row of identical stone markers: "A. Mulciber, d. 2002. R. Nott, d. 2002. S. Snape, d. 2002." I know only one thing: the stories I imagine about your true part in the war may be entertaining, but the only ones who could tell the truth are buried in this salt-crusted dirt.

I look away from your grave again; the wind whips across this earth too steadily for any souls to hallow it. That's one story I haven't told myself, yet: the tale of where on this earth your soul could find true rest. I'll tell you the story eventually, though. After all, I have nothing but time.

finis.