The Promise

Sirius spends the next two days waking in fits and starts. Whenever he nears the surface of consciousness, someone whispers something from very far away and he feels calm and sleepy all over again.

A warm, rough hand wipes something wet from his cheeks, trying to avoid the distended masses resting on top of it that Sirius can only assume are some kind of paper weight, but later realizes are also overblown, inflamed parts of his face.

“Shhhhhh. It’s alright. Just go to sleep, okay?” A disembodied voice whispers.

What’s Remus doing here? He’s supposed to be in Arithmancy class- wait, no, that’s not right. He’s supposed to be… supposed to be… away… somewhere. The thought makes Sirius sad. He doesn’t want Moony to leave, but he knows he has to. Whatever the other is supposed to be doing is important, too important to spend time babysitting Sirius in the hospital wing- that’s where he is right? Did he fall off his broom? James told him not to try the Wronsky Feint… James… for some reason, the thought of James hurts so badly that he can’t help but whimper. He can only think of one place that’s ever hurt so much. Maybe that’s where he is. His cell? But that makes no sense either, because Remus is here, and in all these years (he’s not entirely sure how many) Remus has never visited, much less touched him.

Sirius is relieved of course that this can’t be Azkaban, but he’s still so confused and Moony- oh! Moony would know! He just has to figure out how to talk around the large mass of tongue in his mouth.

He tries to ask but all that comes out is an incoherent “mmmmhnnn.” That sounds more like a steer grazing in the fields than anything else.

“Shh, shh.” The voice says again, and this time Sirius is even more certain it’s Moony. He feels the welcome heat of calloused fingers in his hair.

Sirius decides that even if it’s selfish, he’s happy Moony is here instead of wherever he’s supposed to be.

…

The first day, Remus is so consumed with worry that he almost forgets to be angry- almost.

They weren’t going to tell him. Dumbledore, Mad-eye, Kingsley- they actually weren’t going to tell him. He has only wild and kind Nymphadora to thank, who catches him alone smoking behind a dive bar and grips his shoulder, eyes urgent and terrified. Even now, Remus feels a surge of loyalty and gratitude. He hasn’t had a friend in fifteen years, but he thinks he remembers it feeling like this.

So it’s thanks to Tonks’ rebellious streak (she’s related to Sirius, after all) that Remus is there at Grimmauld Place the first day at all, and he vaguely registers a homicidal urge to destroy any member of the Order who had tried to keep this from him. That, however, would necessitate entrusting the care of Sirius Black to another, something he’s fairly confident he will never do again.

So instead he sandwiches one cold, thin hand between his own and tracks the progress of impossibly red blood pooling beneath Sirius’ thin, sallow skin. Had he already been so unwell when Remus left? He decides he would rather Sirius hate him than to ever allow the other to miss a single meal ever again.

It’s six o’clock in the morning when Molly shakes Remus out of a trance twelve hours in the making and suggests that he takes five minutes to attend to the basic necessities of living, or as she says “Go piss, eat, and have a cigarette. I’ll watch him.”

Remus knows she means well, but the wolf in him wants to bite her silly little ears until she squeaks. Because Sirius is his.

But he thanks her and cleans himself up, and before he knows it he’s waking up on the couch five hours later with a cold cup of tea forgotten on the coffee table before him.

His singular thought is Sirius and he takes the stairs two at a time to the other’s childhood bedroom.

Remus is relieved to see that Sirius didn’t wake up without him there, but concerned to find that the other hasn’t moved an inch since he left.

He’s still lying, black hair splashed across the pillow, with an unusually calm expression on his face- at least, as far as Remus can tell beneath the monstrous swelling of Sirius’ nose, lips, cheeks, and left eye, the last of which appears to have worsened, bulging like a violet balloon.

To the untrained gaze it would’ve been nothing short of horrific, but Remus has been well educated in the way of injuries. He can see a thirty year-old Poppy Pomfrey in his mind’s eye waving her hand dismissively and saying “You can fix that fractured orbital yourself, Mr. Lupin. I have five third years with dragon pox to attend to.”.

Still, the reddish purple bruising looks disturbing contrasted against Sirius’ pallid complexion, and the wolffish part of Remus’ mind growls again, and he thinks of Severus, who claimed the altercation was the result of Sirius’ ‘deliberate meddling and goading’, which to Remus sounds about as likely as Snape dressing up as Father Christmas to amuse the children on holiday. Sirius hasn’t meddled in anything or goaded anyone since age twenty, not because he wouldn’t have liked to, but because he’s far too miserable and brooding to carry on a conversation, much less seek one out with Snape of all people.

Yet, Remus considers what he’s been told about the vivid bruises around Snape’s neck. What possibly could’ve provoked that?

Just then Sirius emits a whimper from the back of his throat, choked and very dog-like, and Remus watches his features intently.

Sirius slowly but surely purses his lips and squeezes his eyes further shut. With a rasping groan, his eyes fill with tears.

Swallowing thickly, Lupin carefully brushes them away with his fingertips.

“Lenire Animum,” Remus mutters with the brush of his wand. He murmurs comforting things as the contorted face becomes momentarily wistful before being pulled down deeper into the depths of unconsciousness.

The spell only lasts a minute, and then Sirius fights his way back to the edge of wakefulness, mumbling quietly. His lips are too swollen to open his mouth fully and the word sticks there somewhat, but Remus is certain it’s “Moons”.

Remus hushes him, because he did not spend two hours setting a broken jaw just for Sirius to break it all over again.

He half expects Sirius to protest and squirm about until fully conscious, but he sleeps on. Lupin cards through his hair with gentle, weathered fingers, wondering at the impossible blackness of it, especially when Remus is more grey than blonde these days. Somehow, despite all the things Sirius has lost, his youth isn’t one of them. When Remus looks, really looks, at the other, he’s still so painfully young. The sharp good looks and childish good nature have been stolen away, but the boy of twenty-one is there, plain as day, before his eyes. His youth is in every movement, every slammed door and stubborn look; It’s in the way Sirius hides his unlikely innocence; In the way he washes down his problems with liquor because he lacks any and all of the coping mechanisms he should have had the last fifteen years to develop.

With this understanding now fully intact, Sirius’ wild and temperamental nature doesn’t anger Remus anymore, nor does it hurt or confuse or frustrate. It just makes him feel protective, maybe too protective at times. But the wolf would rather tear itself to pieces than stop keeping Sirius safe, and Remus decides there are worse dysfunctions to have than an over-abundance of loyalty. As a Gryffindor, it shouldn’t even be all that surprising.

He spends the entire afternoon and a great deal of the evening in Sirius’ room, sometimes resting on an out-of-place sofa under the window, but he never strays further than that.

Every couple of hours he works over Sirius’ injuries, which are not life-threatening but not minor by any stretch of the imagination. He mends ribs and clavicles and fingers, and he feels their brittleness under his fingertips as magic courses up through his wand. It’s no wonder Snape was able to deal some damage. It’s a miracle Sirius hasn’t broken anything sooner. He feels as though he could snap his radius in half just by knocking on a door too firmly.

Remus imagines coaxing the other into taking skele-gro will be a fruitless pursuit, but he finds he’s smiling a little in spite of himself, and he knows immediately that he’ll coerce the other somehow.
“Besides,” Remus thinks wryly, “it’s probably smoother than half the stuff he’s been knocking back lately.”

A highly congested and only semi-coherent voice rouses Remus from his thoughts.

“Fromb dis ankle I ca’ sill see your earring ‘ole.” It warbles, and Remus looks down to see a very delirious Sirius Black grinning beneath the mass of black and purple that is currently his face.

Remus sighs in relief and exasperation, but it quickly dissolves into a chuckle.

“Welcome back, you prat,” he says, placing an affectionate hand on the other’s unharmed shoulder.

“Mind that jaw,” he adds dryly when he sees Sirius opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. “It’s new.”

“Fucking heeeeell,” the other whines, raising a sloppy hand to his face.
“Pleass dell be you didn’ ruin my nose.”

Remus snorts.

“I did what I could, but I’m afraid you’ll be begging to trade with Dumbledore, mate.”

Sirius glares rather like a cat roused from a patch of sun.

“Joking! Only joking. Though, with the number of episkey charms I’ve performed on you today, you’re lucky I didn’t bungle any of them.”

Sirius hums in agreement, but it sounds more like a pained groan. His voice sounds a little clearer when he speaks up next.

“Snivs. Who knew the little prick had it in him?” he says, gingerly attempting to sit up. He makes it halfway before going sheet white.

“You’re not exactly at your fighting weight either, Padfoot,” Remus points out sardonically as the other flexes his newly repaired fingers, wincing.

“Yeah, I probably should’ve taken that into consideration before I tried to throttle him.”

Remus sighs in ascent and massages his stiff neck.

“How much trouble am I in?” Sirius says, sounding very much like a sulky teenager.

“Not a lot. Dumbledore’s thinking the horcrux had something to do with it.”

“Horcrux. Hoooooorcrux. You could say it was the crux of the issue.”

“Oh good god.”

They snicker. Then there’s a pause. Neither is looking forward to what they know is coming next.

“Sirius, why-.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Moons,” Sirius says with a breathy chuckle devoid of humor. There’s hurt flashing everywhere in those grey eyes.

Remus leans in closer, firm hand at the nape of Sirius’ neck.
“I know you, mate. You wouldn’t go after someone for no reason. But right now it looks pretty-.”

“Moony, please,” the other says in a ragged voice. Remus is horrified to see that Sirius is near to tears.

“I really don’t want to talk-,” he says, voice catching, breath coming quicker now.

“Okay. Okay, we don’t have to, Pads. But Sirius, love, you need to brea-.”

“He said they- the night that- that I- they celebrated- because a Black- James and Lily-.”

Sirius turns just in time to vomit on the ornate Anatolian carpet.

…

Remus paces the floor, a more violent shade of red than Sirius has ever seen on his usually carefully arranged features.

“I’m going to kill him,” he says abruptly in a very matter-of-fact voice, as if he said “think I’ll go for a pint”.

“It’s really not-,” Sirius tries, but is cut off by Remus’ raised hand.

“Yeah. No. You- shush.”

Sirius snorts, but it hurts his throat like gargling razor blades, so he stops quickly.

“I am,” Remus continues. “I am actually going to kill him.” He places his hands in the air before him as if presenting a small box containing the only reasonable course of action, which happens to be premeditated homicide.

“Well, watch out for his right hook, in that case,” Sirius advises, voice dripping with sarcasm.

It’s as if Remus suddenly recalls that Sirius is there, and he stops pacing abruptly in favor of gripping each of Sirius’ hands.

“You know- you KNOW- none of that is true. You are NOT responsible for their deaths and, AND-.” He raises his voice firmly when Sirius attempts to protest, “You are NOT your family. I know you better than anyone, and you have never gone ‘round hurting people just for the hell of it.”

They lock eyes for a very long moment. Sirius’ are round and vulnerable, Remus’ fierce and reassuring. Sirius bats his doe-like eyelashes self-consciously.

“… Thanks, Moony,” he manages quietly, voice only a little watery.

“I’m not saying it to make you feel better,” says Remus stubbornly. “I’m saying it because it’s true.”

Sirius nods slowly, unsure.

“Thanks,” he says again.

“You’re welcome,” Remus says, a humorous, defiant edge still in his voice.

“You’re awfully doggy today,” Says Sirius.

Remus snorts.

“Doggy?”

“You know, wolfish. Assertive. Piss on things and lick things to claim them, like. Doggy.”

Remus rolls his eyes, in awe of the ridiculousness that is the man before him.

“You have that effect on me,” he says tiredly, smile dissolving into something infinitely gentle and caring.

“Glad,” says Sirius. “But don’t piss on me, alright?”

“God, you need sleep,” says Remus, watching the other giggle drowsily.

“Come lay down and make me then,” Sirius pouts.

Remus blinks. Once. Twice.

“As you wish,” he sighs contentedly, and climbs into bed beside his dear friend.