Chapter 1
When Remus woke up, he was all alone. His cheek was pressed against the cold tile of his kitchen floor, and his eyes were glued together. All around him was the smell of sick– and when he opened his eyes (which was alarmingly hard to do) he discovered he was laying in his own vomit. Gross. He rolled his eyes at the thought of cleaning it up, and pulled himself up using the handle of his cabinets. Who knows how long he had been out for, with everything he took.
Stumbling, he made his way to his bathroom, and took a quick shower. He shivered at the cold water as he washed his hair. After he dried himself off and put on a jumper and shorts, he slinked to his small living room. There was a stack of letters on his couch, and James’s owl hooted angrily at him. “Great,” he muttered. “I’ve pissed them off again.”
Now, Remus was no idiot. He knew James and Sirius suspected him of being the traitor. Every step he made was under intense scrutiny from the pair. It broke his heart that Sirius didn’t trust him. Or knew him at all, apparently, to think he would do something so awful. At the same time, it made him incredibly angry.
Most of the letters were from Dumbledore, likely mission requests. He tossed them onto the floor, unimpressed. Two were from Lily, and one was from James. He glanced between the three letters, trying to pick which one to read first. He finally settled on the one from James, which seemed to be the most recent.
"Moony,
Lily is mighty worried. You’ve given her quite the fright. If you’re trying to make a point, we get it, okay? Just write her back. Or else we’ll come do a wellness check.
Don’t die, okay?
Prongs"
Remus sighed. He figured James had only written to him because Lily made him. It seems he was right, but he better send a response. Frankly, he didn’t want his (however strained) friends to see the state of him or his apartment. He was a mess, and he didn’t doubt that one look at him would tell Lily all she needed to know about how he was dealing with the breakup. Which was perfectly healthy, if you asked him. He didn’t… do things because of the breakup. He did things because of the war. Or that was what he told himself, anyways.
He was fine. It was fine. He knew the truth– he wasn’t the traitor. One day they would too, and they would feel like shit. It would be so vindicating. He didn’t know if he would be able to forgive them or not. It had been hard enough to forgive Sirius for the Prank. This was worse. So much worse. Sirius clearly thought him a monster– and that was something Remus didn’t know if he could come back from. When Peter had admitted his suspicions about Sirius, Remus had denied them in an instant. Because, goddamnit, he knew Sirius. Apparently it wasn’t mutual.
He stood there, feeling quite stupid for throwing the bloody thing. He bit his tongue and cursed, feeling more things than should be possible at once. He glanced down at the sick on the floor, which he had never cleaned up. Sighing, he decided he really needed to clean the apartment. It was a mess– needles and bottles and the like were scattered across nearly every surface. He used a few tissues and some spray to clean the floor, and gathered old needles and bottles into a trash bag, which he shoved deep into his singular trash can and covered with tissue.
Finally done, he still didn’t feel much better. He was lonely and irritated and in pain, stuck in between one high and the next. He read through the letters from Dumbledore, wrote him back, and paced. Nothing settled his mind– nothing. He glanced at his arms, at track marks and old scars, both from the man and the wolf. There was a distinct difference between the two. The ones from his human self were straight, in lines, and pinkish-white. The ones from the wolf were bright white and raised. He hated the ones from the wolf, but had a strange fondness for the ones he did himself.
It wasn’t that he wanted attention, nor that he felt he deserved the pain. It didn’t even hurt that much. He had built up an incredibly high tolerance for pain due to his lycanthropy. But rather it was that it simply made him feel something other than the mind-numbing emptiness that he had felt ever since his first mission spying on the werewolves for Dumbledore. It had only gotten worse, even as he tried to cope. He had tried everything from the scars to drugs, and nothing seemed to last forever. But even just a short while of relief was worth it.
He had always sworn he wouldn't end up here. He wouldn't let his lycanthropy ruin his life, or his relationships. His friends had taught him he was no monster, and he believed the. Or at least he used to. Now, he knew how they really felt.
And by Merlin, it stung.