“Do you think we would’ve found each other?” Remus sighed, looking up from his work, looking up to meet Sirius’ eyes, he tried to decipher whether it was a serious question or not.
It was. “In every lifetime,”
“Then, how come this one had to be so tragic, do you think?” Sirius said, averting his eyes.
Remus closed the book in his hand, eyes roaming over Sirius’ face, searching for something.
-
He’d seen it in the movies, running beside the stretcher, the doctors yelling.
He’d been the doctor yelling.
The beeping noises, fuck they were so shrill, they were mocking him.
The doors closing, someone’s hand on his chest keeping him out, how many times had he done that to someone before.
No one coming out.
Leaving with teddy. Leaving without tonks.
Going back six months later and not being able to breath when he had to stop someone at the doors.
The man in front of him crumbling to his knees, baby in hand, sobbing into the bundle of blankets.
-
“Do you think this is the best or worst lifetime we got together?”
“I think we made it in this lifetime”
-
Finding out about James and Lily Potter, bagging their personal effects, handing it over to Sirius Black.
Watching him leave with a trash bag and a baby he was wholly unprepared to take care of.
It was like leaving his own body and watching history repeat itself.
Fear coursing through his body watching someone break as much as he had. He knew exactly what was going to happen.
Running before he could think about it, clutching his ID, jangling against his chest, telling him to leave it alone. He would’ve left it alone if it continued, pushing on his chest. Matching the pounding in his heart.
stop
stop
“STOP”
-
Grief was unrelenting.
“Do you think we would’ve like each other, if we’d met under different circumstances”
“Do you think you’re a different person?”
“I think so”
-
Sirius doesn’t remember a lot from before leaving the hospital with Harry.
He’d been born, beaten, broken.
He’d gotten high and watched everyone grow older.
Until going to the hospital to meet Harry for the first time.
Then he remembered family dinner, orange lights and lily’s smile. He’d never been on the receiving end of that smile before. It was golden.
Suddenly the lights are red. The doors are blue. The walls are white.
His house is gray.
Harry’s blanket is a soft yellow. But anytime his eyes leave Harry's green, everything turns black and white.
But the man in front of him. His eyes, they’re amber. His scrubs are pink.
Teddy’s eyes are golden.
-
“I think we made it”
“In this lifetime?”
“Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard”
-
Grief drowns them, they breath under water.
-
They have family dinners.
They have a bed they share. White sheets, soft under touch. Softer sheets pulled over themselves, Remus on top of him. Feeling full, feeling consumed.
He wondered if sex had ever felt so good before.
Tears caught on Remus’ tongue.
Being held down. He’d never wanted to be held down before. Wanting to be held down.
-
“I don't recognize myself”
“Me neither”
“If they came back they wouldn’t be able to find us”
Silence.
-
What they could've been is lost on everyone but themselves.
There's a distant dream under the canopy of their bed, Dr. Remus Lupin M.D, that’s how he knows the doors, no where else. He comes home to bright pink hair and golden eyes.
In that lifetime Sirius doesn’t meet anyone, it's unmarred. He’s made a life he’s proud of. Never knowing the weight of loss is so much brighter than any colors he might’ve found in the face of it.
There’s a bike, a small house.
-
“We don’t make it”
“Are we unhappy”
“No, because they do”
-
“Is it wrong not to want this”
“Do you? Want this?”
“Yes”
“Me neither”
-
The world keeps spinning and they remember the life they could've had, but continue living the one they have with each other, pretending it’s enough.
They live wishing they’d never met each other.
They never say it.
This love is nothing to the love they could’ve had. This life is nothing to the life they could've had.
But it's all they get.
In this lifetime, and the next.
Cursed to have one another, and nothing else.
-
the end.