Pure Sinners

Remus had been waiting in the foyer for Lily and Sirius to emerge. 

Riddle had demanded he wait there as to not ‘influence the pair's answers’ which Remus thought was bullshit seeing as they were under a truth serum but he agreed anyway in order to keep his face intact. 

Sirius came out first, he looked angry, worried and more than anything like he could use a nap. 

“Hey, you alright? I heard what happened that must have..” Remus was cut of abruptly as Sirius pressed his lips against his own. Remus blinked as Sirius kissed him, only realising he was supposed to kiss him back as Sirius pulled away. 

“I'm so glad you’re here” Sirius confessed and Remus blushed scarlet. 

The door opened loudly and the boys pulled apart. Remus let out a sigh of relief, it was only Lily. He turned to Sirius only to find his boyfriend looking anywhere but the girl before them. 

“You good to go?” Lily asked, a smile on her face that Remus couldn’t help but think was fake. Sirius snorted, the sound violent and mocking. Lily's eye twitched and her smile widened - definitely fake. 

“Sure thing.” He tried for a neutral tone, forcing a casual pace as her led the others out the the car Riddle had given him for the trip. It was small but it drove well and Remus didn’t care about much else. 

Sirius moved quickly over to the car, pulling the passenger door open and jumping inside. The slam reverberated through the air. Remus blinked, turning to Lily who merely shrugged, avoiding his eyes as she wrenched open the door and slid into the backseat. 

Remus sighed, he sure as shit wouldn’t get any answers here. He took one last look at Riddle’s security system (labelling it unbreakable) as he got into the car and sped away. 

He drove quickly, well aware of the argument occurring between the two passengers. 

Well…Remus was unsure of whether you could call it an argument if no one was speaking.

His passengers had been communicating with passive-aggressive looks and movements for the whole journey. 

Sirius would open the window, watching as Lily shivered, before opening it wider.  Lily would stare at the back of Sirius’s head until the man felt her eyes and turned - at which point she would look away. 

Remus watched as Lily kicked the back of Sirius’s chair for the third time and decided he’d had enough. He pulled over, sharp moments sending Lily flying across the back seats.

 “Out” 

He flicked on his hazards and opened his door. 

It was raining and Remus didn’t particularly fancy being outside but he didn’t trust Riddle's car not to be bugged so he stood shivering as he waited for the wonder twins to join him. The layby was small but well-secluded in a tree line. The road itself wasn't busy; Remus counted only two cars before the others got bored enough to join him. 

“What” Sirius snapped, crossing his arms over his chest. His hair was absorbing the rainwater, clinging to the sides of his face as he held back his shiver. Lily followed him, reluctant but quieter than Remus thought she would be. He stared at her watching as she raised an eyebrow. 

Remus sighed. “Look. I know you both like James..” he stared at Lily as she turned her eyes to the ground “but you can't let his lies tear us apart. We were a team before him, were still a team”. Sirius nodded along thoughtfully but his face looked saddened. “Hey, he’s someone else’s problem now” he declared, expecting them to smile and move on. 

They didn’t. 

Sirius winced and Lily flinched, her whole body moving an inch to the left. “What?” He asked, brutally aware he was missing something. 

“It's not someone else’s problem” Lily told him, and Remus felt his heart drop. “No” the word escaped him and Sirius laughed. “Oh yes” His laugh was painful, wrenched from him by some cruelty Remus would blame on his mother, “Remus dear, we’ve got to catch ourselves a cop” 

Fucking James. 

Remus tried counting as his eyes bounced between his friends and instantly he understood why they were fighting. Neither one of them wanted to go and find a man who had been their friend and bring him back to Riddle.

“What if we don’t find him?” He asked and this time both of his friends flinched. 

Oh. 

“He didn’t?” Remus didn’t realise he’d spoken out loud. He hoped his voice would be lost in the wind, strangled under the downpour.

 Lily looked at him, and he saw the tears she was trying to bury. Sirius laughed, unbothered by the tears already falling down his cheeks. 

“We have a week.” Sirius sang, his voice was pitched high and his hands grappled with the ends of his hair. “If we don’t find him in a week, he’s coming after you instead.” The song fell to a growl and Remus watched in shock horror as Sirius battled himself.

Remus took a step forwards, throwing his fear aside as Sirius barreled towards him. He didn't dare touch him, afraid it might send him over a precipice he couldn't come back from. 

“He doesn't get you Rem” They weren't words, more a vibration that radiated out from Sirius. 

“Riddle doesn’t fucking get to have you” His eyes were a blazing grey, torn and bitter. 

“James dies” A flurry of emotion and black leather rushed towards the car. 

Remus felt too much, all of it overwhelming and wrong. 

Lily turned without a word, her eyes trailing her own footsteps back to the car.

The hotel room was cramped, but when half the cops in the city were looking for you, you took what you could get. 

So far Riddle sources had confirmed the police were searching for Lily and Sirius. Remus’s name hadn’t been mentioned but he figured it was only a matter of time before someone connected him to the pair of idiots currently drunk on the hotel floor. 

It wasn’t smart. 

Remus knew that, and deep down they did too, but still he allowed it. 

Allowed Sirius to pull drink after drink out of the mini-bar. He’d allowed them to down them, one after another - in the hopes it made him a better person. 

He knew neither of them wanted to hunt James down. 

He knew they didn’t want to hand him over to Riddle for questioning. 

And he knew without a doubt neither of them wanted James to die. 

He also knew that James had betrayed them. 

He had taken their trust and crushed it under his heel as he fled back to the police station. He had destroyed something rare and fragile - and he knew Lily and Sirius knew this too. 

He knew they’d pick him. 

And he hated how good that felt. 

So he’d let them drink; more than they should. He let them have their mourning before the body was cold, because what else could he do. 

Remus didn't want to die. 

He’d known it the second he’d woken up in the hospital after his overdose, with lily looming over him. 

He'd known it when Sirius had laughed, bitter and cold in the rain. 

And he knew it now. 

So Remus listened to them talk, hushed whispers underneath the bedsheets, as he typed on his computer.

It was slow going, but it was all Remus could do. 

He was working his way into the London police mainframe. It was easier than he’d suspected, just a lot of hurdles to jump. The passwords he could garner from Facebook - relatives' names, birthdays, anniversaries, were easy enough but the encryption was solid. 

Remus reckoned it would only take his software a matter of hours. 

Morning really, he would know where James was by the morning. 

James would be dead by nightfall. 

He rose quickly, the thought making him struggle for his footing. He moved to join his friends on the bed, reaching underneath to slip the whisky from Sirius’s loose hold. 

“Hey!” Sirius’s voice was muffled, and Remus waited for him to calm. 

"Mmkay fine” Sirius mumbled, emerging from his linen hide out to stare out into the empty hotel room. Lily followed. 

She was quiet, much too quiet. 

Sirius began talking about the wonders of whisky, listing everything he knew about the process. Remus indulged him, knowing not to push Lily in a moment like this. Sirius spoke for a few minutes, and Remus stared at Lily as she tore the skin off her fingers. 

“Do you think any of it was real?” She asked in a voice so quiet Remus almost missed it. 

“I don’t know” he confessed, and Sirius shook his head. 

“I think it was real” He declared, and Remus sighed.

Sirius carried on, “No I'm serious..” Lily snorted despite herself “..I think he gave us as much truth as he could, remember all the stuff he said about his parents”

Lily nodded and so did he. 

“That didn’t seem like a cover, at least not a good cover” Sirius conceded “Why would he lie about his dad being a cop or his childhood?”

Remus blinked, he hadn’t thought of that. 

“Why would someone who wanted to fit in with a bunch of criminals…a bunch of kids with shitty childhoods, tell us he had a great one.” Sirius theorised as Lily drank more wine, the red dripping down to join the small blood stain at the edge of her top.

Remus’s temples smarted, his forehead creasing as he absorbed Sirius’s words.  It was a terrible cover story - it didn’t form links, it didn’t provide common ground. He felt his frown deepen. It did no good to believe in the virtue of a dead man. 

“Stop” he demanded, voice short. Sirius looked down, ashamed at his naive belief in James's goodness. “Yeh, yeah. You're right” The words fell flat in the room and Remus raised his gaze over Sirius’s head.

Lily’s eyes had already locked onto his. She saw it, he thinks. 

She saw his suspicion, she saw his confusion. She nodded. 

She knew James had to die, so why make it hurt more when he did? 

“Let's get some sleep” he requested, Lily agreed moving towards the bathroom as Remus helped Sirius into his pj’s. He spent a few minutes forcing Sirius’s hair into a shabby ponytail before wrapping him in the soft cotton sheets. He crawled in beside him, closing his eyes as Sirius rested on his chest. 

Remus tried to sleep, but he knew it wouldn’t come. 

He lay fitfully for a few hours before finally sliding out from under Sirius and moving towards the desk. 

His laptop was glowing and Remus didn’t need to open it to know. 

He had broken into the London PD’s mainframe and he didn’t feel the slightest bit pleased. 

From the corner of his eye, he saw the curtains move, soft satin swaying in the breeze. Remus stumbled the few steps to the balcony, body relaxing as he saw Lily's silhouette against the skyline. He slid through the gap in the door, unwilling to risk waking Sirius with a larger movement. 

Lily had been crying, that much was obvious. 

Her eyes were red, and she was sniffling. 

An ashtray sat next to her, a few butts abandoned in the dish as she stared out onto the street before her. Remus knew they were high enough no one would recognise them but still he hurried towards the ground. His legs, too long to sprawl like Lily's, were tucked under him as he sat beside her, pushing the ash tray forward. He said nothing as Lily turned to him, cigarette hanging from her lips as she spoke.

“Can't sleep?” Her voice was soft, floating into the darkness beyond them as she offered him a cigarette. 

He accepted, allowing Lily to light his cigarette with her already burning butt. 

“No, you?” He asked, she shook her head and Remus pretended to believe that she’d tried. He allowed his gaze to trace the splotches of ink under her sunken eyes, if he were a betting man he would say she hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last few days. 

Lily turned back to the street and Remus focused on the cigarette in his mouth. He inhaled, his tense shoulders unwinding as the smoke hit his throat. He held it, thick black smoke in his lungs, he let it fill him, every inch of his being - and then he let it go. 

He watched as the smoke poured out of him, flowing over his body and out into the night. 

His body shuddered, and Remus inhaled again. 

“Why would he tell us the truth?” Lily asked, staring at the sky as the cigarette burned in her hand. “Why would he tell us anything real, if he were only going to leave?” She asked, gaze pinned on a star a few million miles west. 

Remus blinked, he truly thought Lily wasn’t even mad about the fact James was a cop. She didn’t care that he was a narc - she cared that he left. That he had disappeared with no explanation, no goodbye.  

Remus stared at the girl, breathing smoke through her nose and he pitied her. 

“I don’t know, Lily….I just don’t know,” he said, and she nodded, stubbing her dying cigarette. 

She lit another.

“You’re going to destroy your lungs” Remus informed her as he stubbed his own. Lily nodded, turning to face him with a sorry excuse for a smile. 

“I know,” she said, and Remus hated how she didn’t care. He hated how she’d never cared about herself. He hated how she sat there burning herself to ash, simply so he and Sirius had light.  

Remus frowned, anger welling inside him. He hated how James had used her light, leaving when he could see well enough on his own. He hadn’t said goodbye. 

“I found him,” he said, aware of how Lily's eyes snapped to his. “I got in the system, I’ve got everything.” He whispered, staring into Lily's forest eyes. 

“What do you want me to do?” He asked her. The girl who had given him everything he wanted, no matter the cost. 

“I’ll do anything you ask,” He told her. The girl who deserved more than he could ever give her.  

Lily blinked, eyes somewhere else as she stared unseeing at Remus’s face. 

Her hand rose, fingertips brushing across his scars. Remus didn’t flinch, it was Lily - she would never hurt him. 

She smiled, this one a little better than any she had tried.

“I’ll deal with it,” she said, moving to stand. 

“Lily,” He said, rising with her. “Y-you know, you don’t have to do this one alone” he offered, praying that for once she heard him. 

She stared at him, and then at the cigarette in her hand. Remus wanted her to ask, wanted her to take his offer, take anything he could give her. 

Her fingers loosened, and he watched as the cigarette fell from her shaking fingers. 

“I-i” Her voice stopped, dying in her throat as she closed her eyes. 

Remus opened his arms, wrapping the stone girl in his embrace. 

She didn’t cry, she was too good for that, but she stayed there in his arms. 

And he held her until the cigarette on the ground burnt itself out. 

Then he lifted her, an arm under her neck and the other below her knees. 

He carried her into the room, carefully stepping to the bed. 

Sirius was still sleeping as he deposited the frozen girl next to him. 

“Tomorrow” he told her sternly as she looked towards his computer, “tomorrow” she confirmed as she pulled Remus in next to her. 

He heard her sigh, he felt the way her body shook as she forced the word out. Remus thought it must have hurt, this word, small though it was - he theorised she had buried it somewhere unreachable, somewhere no one else would ever find. 

“Together?” She asked, much more than a question. 

“Together” he confirmed, much less than an answer.