Sixteen: Two Promises

[tartancravat.livejournal.com]

Title: Two Promises
Rating: PG-13(ish)
Prompt: # 16 at barefootboys
Word Count: 793
Summary: In the morning, they will worry. Tonight, they make promises.

August 16^th, 1982

The night smells of dirt and grass and small animals in the bushes, and Moony, sleeping in the tent. It smells of other things that have no real name, like desperation and fear and hunger. Padfoot sits at the door of the tent, breathing. Azkaban made it hard to breathe. He’s making up for lost time.

They’ve not had an easy time of it. Though Sirius desperately wants to see Harry, wants to be the godfather he promised James he’d be, they both know that finding Peter has to happen first. But finding a rat in Britain is like finding a needle in a haystack.

They know Peter. Or they had known him, once. With Voldemort gone, he would go somewhere safe, comfortable. He would wait it out. Somewhere a rat could hide easily, not look out of place, hear the news. A pet shop? A Wizarding family? He would go somewhere he would be fed and cared for. That was what the Peter they had known would do. But the Peter they had known would not betray his friends as this Peter had done.

Would the Peter they did not know go looking for Voldemort, who was rumoured to be not quite dead after all? If he was in a position to hear the news, surely he would have heard by now that Sirius Black had broken out of Azkaban. What would he do with that news? He must know why—there was a crime Sirius had been sent to Azkaban for that he had never committed….

Between the trees in front of the tent, something silver steps. In a moment, Padfoot is shifting, bones changing, fur disappearing, and Sirius stands there, wand in hand. It looks like a floating mass of thoughts, the contents of a Pensieve spilled into the woods. Like a Patronus, but more solid, and with more colour. Sirius holds his breath.

The silver thing comes slowly forward, and as it does it is revealed as two silver things, and Sirius makes a small noise like a sleeping dog. He wonders if he is dreaming. This feels like a dream. Sirius isn’t sure whether he wants it to be a dream or not, doesn’t stop to consider.

The stag and his lady stop, watching. Waiting. Sirius wonders if he should call for Moony, but he doesn’t want to wake him. Remus needs his sleep.

“I promise you,” Sirius breathes, and he isn’t sure what it is he’s promising, but he knows he’ll keep the promise. To be a godfather to Harry, to find Peter, to take care of Remus, to fix what’s broken.

The stag and doe look at each other, and then they are gone.

In the next moment, Sirius is inside the tent, moving as softly as Padfoot, and he’s crawling into bed with Remus, pressing kisses against his cheeks, and then Remus is awake, or nearly so, and kissing back. His face is warm with sleep, and Sirius is cold with sitting in the night air, and soon they’re both flushed. Remus rolls over, pinning Sirius, and brushes his hair out of his eyes.

“I saw them, Moony,” Sirius whispers. “I saw Prongs and Lily.”

“You saw—but, Sirius,” Remus says softly.

“I saw them,” Sirius says with all the conviction in the world. “I saw them.”

And Remus believes him.

In the morning, they will worry. In the morning, they will ask questions, and plan, and remember that all is not right with the world. Sirius will keep his promises. Tonight, he has another promise to make—to Remus, spoken in the touch of fingertips against hipbone, and the crash of noses and jaws. That they will never mistrust each other again.

Remus has not felt so present in years, so alive. Like all his insides are pressing against his skin to get out and go dancing around the room. Like he’s watching himself, and he’s seen it all before, this life, it’s all familiar. It’s like déjà vu. He wraps his arms around Sirius, pulls him close, fingers digging into his shoulder blades, finding scars that weren’t there the last time they did this. Azkaban has left its mark, but in this moment, it’s almost as if none of that ever happened. Sirius has always lived in the moment, but for Remus it’s a rare thing to be truly free of the future and the past.

“I missed you, Sirius,” he says into Sirius’ shoulder, and it’s almost not really speech but breath.

“You don’t have to miss me anymore.”

They will fall asleep together, the guard they meant to keep forgotten. They are the only two people in the world tonight. There is no one to guard themselves against.

Day Seventeen