Author: Minervacat
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Spoilers: Everything through the end of HBP.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Warner Brothers own the rights to these characters; I'm just messing about.
Rating: PG
Summary: i could have sworn the heart you wore upon your sleeve was mine/i could not see in front of me, you were leaving, i was blind

In the long days between waking in the hospital wing after the second incident in the Shrieking Shack, Dumbledore telling him that Sirius was gone, again, and the moment that Sirius appeared on his doorstep nearly a year later, to spend the summer lying carefully in wait, waiting for something or anything at all to happen in their second war, Remus thought often of whether the second disappearance was worse than the first.

Time passed the same way as when Sirius had gone to Azkaban, the days crawling as though they were stuck in a bowl of particularly sticky lemon jelly, and the second disappearance was at least marked with letters, and a relief in knowing that Sirius had not, was not, would not - everything that Remus had taught himself was true over twelve long years, reversed in a split second under a nearly-risen full moon.

The letters come, and with every one Sirius is still innocent and still wanted; his handwriting is still a mess, a snarl of angry vipers, but Remus has been reading it for years, and he can decipher every message as clearly as Sirius speaking directly to him. Twelve years and no letters, and Remus waited for letters then, too, knowing they were never coming, knowing what he thought was the truth.

The second disappearance is the worst, because the truth exists, in Sirius's awful penmanship, in having seen him again, gaunt and frightened and angry. The truth exists, and Remus knows what it is and what it means.

The worst is that the truth is there and it could still end everything for them.

He waits for the letters, borne by birds he's never seen before, and every time one arrives, it is another day in which Sirius is alive and innocent, and those days never happened, not once in the twelve years before.

The second time is harder. The second time is worse.

Sirius is a terrible housekeeper; Remus doesn't understand how he could have forgotten the mess that always surrounded his bed in Gryffindor Tower, when they were in school, or the tide of newspapers, cups of tea and crumpled bits of parchment that Remus managed to keep barely in hand in their earlier years of cohabitation. Twelve years of quiet living - even quiet living in the shadow of a great betrayal - had muted his memories of screaming rows over whose turn it was to cast the washing up spell; three days again with Sirius slinking through Remus's tiny cottage like the fugitive he is, and Remus is longing, though never completely, for the blissful solitude of Sirius's certain guilt.

Remus had wondered, nights he lay alone while Sirius and Buckbeak ran from the Ministry, why, how, he was so certain of Sirius's innocence. The first time he slams down a plate crusted with eggs and says, "For God's sake, Sirius, you're not a child anymore," he knows: he was never this angry at Sirius when Sirius was guilty.

He was betrayed; twelve years of thinking of Sirius's great betrayal. He felt guilty, himself, and lost and frustrated and sad and frequently stupid, frequently blind. Remus never in those twelve years once felt angry.

He thumps the plate back onto the table and when he slams the kitchen door behind him, he can hear the windows rattling in the frame and Sirius kicking a chair across the floor.

He is sitting in his study later; outside his window, it is raining, fat drops slapping against the glass and on the roses he planted around the back door. When the door to the room creaks open, Remus does not look up; when a cup of tea slides onto the desk beside his elbow, he does not move.

Sirius's arms slide around his shoulders; Sirius is thinner than he should be, the energy that was contagious in his teenage self now only frantic, and misplaced. Remus turns his face and Sirius kisses him, slow and soft and sorry, and Remus's anger has faded. Sirius's apologies have not changed, still wordless, and when Sirius tugs Remus from the chair onto the floor, Remus goes.

The third time is the worst. It is final, fatal, finished. Remus tries to live his life, go on with the day to day of everything he has to do, but he sees Sirius everywhere, every flash of dark hair on the street, every teenager's foolhardy laugh among his friends. It is stupid, he tells himself, because it is has been years since Sirius could even walk the streets freely, but he cannot stop it.

So he stays inside, retreats to his cottage where Sirius hid for a summer and a fall and a winter, and he reads and cooks and waits for word from Dumbledore. When it comes, he goes back to Grimmauld Place, once more - and this is the last time, he tell himself, there is nothing left for you there, there is nothing left there - and gets his orders and eats dinner, one last dinner as though before an execution, as though nothing is wrong.

Tonks turns up to dinner that night wearing Sirius's black hair, dark sparkling eyes. Remus leaves the room so quickly that he does not see the hurt written across Tonks's face; he only sees it later when she comes to find him, babbling apologies and looking mousy, washed-out, as normal as he's ever seen her.

Remus twists his hands together in his lap and does not look at her, grief written too clearly across her face, and Tonks says, "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He says, "It's all right, Tonks." He does not say, "Please go," which is what he wants to say, or "How could you ever think that I would take a poor replacement," or "You have no right to do that."

It is not that he had ever hidden what Sirius was to him; it is only that he does not want to speak of Sirius to anyone who did not know him, too. Tonks is old enough to remember Sirius, before he went away the first time, but she is not old enough to have known him, either. He would try to understand where she is coming from, but he cannot - her grief is not his grief, and it never will be.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he knows that she means it.

"It's all right," he says, and he knows that he never will mean it.

The third time is the worst.

author's notes: for kel., on her birthday. happy birthday, and thanks, beautiful. title and summary from the old 97s, "blinding sheets of rain".