Trauma, Triggers and Therapy
They left James with a smiling Poppy. James had the uncanny ability to connect with people in mere seconds. He had made best friends while Sirius simply had been on the toilet. If there was one thing James Potter could do it was to wow people, to make them feel like they’d always known him. Sirius knew that this ability came with a cost which was that James transformed himself in whoever he knew the person opposite him would like to see. Most days he enjoyed this, as he did playing imaginary games in their childhood, but other days he felt lost within himself and Sirius was the only one who could convince him that James being James was all he wanted.
Nevertheless, it was no surprise to Sirius that Poppy and James were already giggling like schoolgirls and that James somehow knew about Poppy’s wife. “So, are you gonna have a chill night in with Minnie tonight?” was the last thing Sirius heard before Remus closed the door behind them.
Sirius turned around to take Remus’ hand in his and his heart fell at Remus’ tired and dumpish expression. His lanky body hung lamely over his frame as he took slow steps towards Sirius. Sirius’ eyes must have welled up again because Remus’ frown deepened and he rubbed his face with his face ungently. “Don’t cry. If you cry I have to cry and I really can’t do this right now.”
Sirius pulled Remus’ hand away from his eyes. “Hey, don’t do that. I’m not gonna cry, I promise.” Remus sniffled at that quietly and nodded slowly. Darkness was still swimming in his eyes and mirrored the dark circles below them. Sirius stroked his thumb over the back of Remus’ hand and said, “Baby,” Remus looked up at the pet name and smiled sadly. “What do you need? Do you want to talk or first get your mind off things?” Sirius said.
Remus considered this before shaking his head. “If we don’t do it now, I think I might not be able anymore.” Sirius nodded and pulled Remus towards a bench determinedly. Remus stopped him with a soft pad on his shoulder. “Wait, maybe we can do it while going for a walk? My brain- I work better when I’m outside. I just feel less… anxious maybe, or less caged in my mind.” Remus said and Sirius could very well relate to that.
They left the big hospital doors hand-in-hand and walked towards Tavistock square which was a little park close to the hospital. Sirius pulled a chocolate bar out of his jacket pocket and held it up to Remus. “Do you want some? I know that it makes you feel better sometimes.”
Remus looked at him with big eyes like a deer caught in headlights. Sirius had come to learn over the course of their relationship that this was Remus’ look when someone did something nice or thoughtful for him. Sirius hated that Remus reacted to small kindnesses this way but he was slightly appeased when Remus took the chocolate. After swallowing a bite, Remus said, “I know you don’t randomly snack on chocolate. You don’t have to carry that just for me.”
Sirus narrowed his eyes at Remus. This man was going to be the death of him. “I swear to god, Rem! How often do I do things that I don’t want to do?”
Surprisingly, Remus let out a small laugh at that. “Rarely ever I guess.”
“Alright,” Sirius said in an established manner, “So please let me do things for you because I really *want* to do things for you. You know, some might even say it brings me joy to make you feel better in the ways I can.”
Remus grinned at him and Sirius basked in this small success. “Okay okay,” Remus put up his arms in a gesture of surrender, “You’re cute. Thank you. For the chocolate. And for… you know.”
Sirius understood and sent Remus a soft smile. “You’re welcome.” He tugged Remus closer to his side and said in his ear, “Thank you too, Moony.”
Remus flushed but didn’t react further as they had arrived at the park. They passed the entry and both of them knew that they had to talk now.
“So,” Sirius started and Remus nodded, taking a deep breath. “So,” Remus replied back.
“Wanna tell me why you’re blaming yourself for some reason?”
Remus adorably and heartbreakingly blushed at that. “I.. I don’t know. I mean I didn’t hold him back you know. I didn’t prevent what happened. And you… Or anyone really, I feel like they would have.”
“Oh, Remus.” Sirius sighed and led them to a park bench, pulling Remus basically on his lap and rubbing his back. “Nobody could have stopped him if he gets in that stubborn mindset of his. And even if they could have, that doesn’t mean that it was your responsibility at all. This is not your fault, not at all. But I don’t think,” Sirius paused, trying to formulate in a way that wouldn’t offend Remus who had curled up on him. “I don’t think you had a completely natural reaction to all this, baby. Do you think,” He paused again, remembering the words his therapist had told him years ago, “this could be dredging up something from your past?”
Sirius could feel more than see Remus swallow. “What do you mean?” Remus chose his words carefully, as if he knew exactly what Sirius could be hinting at but did not want to give that away.
“I mean,” Sirius pulled Remus even closer to convey that he only wanted to support him and would never judge or harm him in any way for what he shared with Sirius. “Sometimes things can be triggering to us because they somehow seem similar in our heads to something bad that has happened to us earlier in our life. And that makes us react in certain, mostly intense, ways to things which do not warrant such a reaction or at least don’t need to. Like, for example, in my first year at school I always got terrified whenever James and I got caught during one of our pranks, which happened quite often. And James was always confused at that because he didn’t understand why it would bother me so much to get detention or whatever lame punishments our headmistress cooked up for us. He thought it was annoying but nothing to lose your head over. I didn’t stop being afraid until the end of our first year when I finally understood than nothing bad was going to happen to me, to trust that I wouldn’t get hurt. I never got why I was so convinced for that whole year that our headmistress would one day change her peaceful demeanour and physically or emotionally actually punish us. Only in therapy years later I understood that my brain associated getting caught doing something you weren’t supposed to in school with how it was at home. And how trusting an adult was dangerous and so my brain refused to do it. Long story short, I was triggered by getting caught and had intense unwarranted feelings of terror. Do you think, I mean do you think it could be possible you’re experiencing something like that right now with James and his accident? Like why you’re feeling this unjustified guilt?”
Sirius was aware of his rambling but he just wanted to show Remus that he understood; that he’d been there and they could work through this together. There was a silence for several minutes after Sirius had stopped talking but he was happy to let Remus order his thoughts before replying.
Finally Remus cleared his throat and looked up at Sirius from where his head was resting on his chest. “Maybe... Maybe that is possible. But how would I know?”
Sirius slowly stroked Remus’ hair, it was only them in the park and Sirius faintly heard birds singing. “I’m no therapist but for me it helped to go deeper into the emotion, the terror and fright of it all you know, and try to gauge whether and when I’d felt like this before. At one point, suddenly images of my mother and then my father came in front of my eyes and then it all started making sense.”
“So... lean into the guilt?” Remus asked, clearly uncomfortable but willing to push through. Sirius’ heart swelled at that.
“Yes. I mean only if you feel safe, like if this is an environment you think you are content doing that in. There’s no pressure, we don’t need to do this now.”
Remus only shook his head and took hold of one of Sirius’ hands. “This is fine. This is good. Okay-“ Remus closed his eyes and Sirius continued drawing small circles on his scalp. “I’ve felt guilty a lot in my life...”
Sirius hummed, “Do you remember maybe when the first time was?”
Remus was silent for a second and then suddenly his face crumbled, small tears running down his cheeks. Sirius immediately grabbed hold of the taller boy and moved his head so that it was pushed into Sirius’ neck. “It’s okay, it will be okay.” He kept whispering while Remus silently wept.
After a while Remus’ body stopped shaking and so Sirius pulled away a tiny fraction, just so that he could look into Remus’ watery eyes. He didn’t say anything but just cocked his head at Remus, waiting for him to explain whenever he felt ready.
“I think,” Remus said, his voice laced with pain, “I maybe know. I might know my…What did you call it? Trigger?” Sirius nodded, a sad smile on his face. “Do you remember when I told you that my parents died in a car accident?” Remus continued and Sirius nodded again, his heart feeling heavy and cramped together. “I... Well I remember not a lot about what happened before and after but I have this one memory, I guess I don’t even know if it’s real, that I said something right before it happened. I think I asked if we could stop for a pee break or McDonalds or something. And my parents, they were fighting I think, or at least discussing something heatedly. So when I asked to stop... They got both snapped out of it and just looked back at me in sync, asking ‘what?’ or something. And then... Yea, then we crashed.”
Remus fell silent and Sirius wanted to kill the whole world for this man, this cruel world who made his boy go through so much. He softly stroked Remus’ cheeks, making him look back at Sirius. “Thank you for sharing.” Sirius said quietly and Remus gave a sharp nod before slowly leaning in and pressing a kiss on Sirius lips. God, Sirius wanted to marry him. “And… did you feel guilty about that?”
Remus sighed, “I guess so. I guess I still do to some extent.”
“But you know that was not at all, not even the tiniest bit, your fault. Like you had literally nothing to do with what happened. You were a child, Rem, and you didn’t do anything wrong. You know that, right?”
Remus bit his lower lip and nodded. “Yea...” He said and Sirius felt the half-lie in his whole body but he decided not to press. They had gone over enough painful stuff today and he would propose a therapist to Remus that evening, he noted to himself dimly.
“How do you feel about James’ accident now? Can you see how you had nothing to do with it? How you maybe were just projecting something terrible that happened to you on it?” Sirius yet again felt like a therapist and wondered if he was doing the right thing talking about this with Remus so directly. But he didn’t know how else to help him and he couldn’t just sit by and do nothing.
Remus nodded again, “A bit, yes. I still feel guilty though if I’m being honest.” He admitted almost embarrassedly.
“That’s okay.” Sirius immediately replied, rubbing their noses together. “That’s normal, baby. We will take it one step at a time, okay? Minute for minute?”
Remus kissed him again. Sirius felt him slowly return to his own person. “Minute for minute.” Remus affirmed.
After a few soft kisses Remus separated himself from Sirius’ again, much to the latter’s dismay. “We should probably head back, no? See if James is doing alright.”
“Okay, you little care-taker.” Sirius let himself be pulled up by Remus and threw his arm around his waist. Remus gave a little giggle and Sirius felt his heart relax a fraction.
When they got back to the hospital and closed in on James’ room, they heard soft laughs from inside. Then, Lily’s voice: “James, oh James, you really are too crazy for your own good.”
“But you like that, don’t you Evans?” That was James. He sounded quite content.
Sirus and Remus entered the room just as Lily was saying, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Sirius cleared his throat. James eyes shot open and Lily was quickly turning around as if caught. “Lily, hi! How come you’re here?”
Lily rubbed her neck in a way that seemed almost sheepish. “Well James texted me what happened and I- I wanted to come check on him.”
“Oh.” Sirius mouth pulled into a grin. “Oh, right, that’s interesting.” He said the last word so lowly that he was sure only Remus who was still right next to him could hear it but the biting look James send him made him second-guess that.
Very interesting.