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The Sudden Light and the Trees, Part 6
If he were able to move his feet, Sirius would have been pacing. He would have covered the room repeatedly in long, brisk strides, his arms thrown up wide over his head as he thought aloud. He would have touched everything and leaned against the walls, balled his hands into fists against the door, and sworn at the pot-belly stove (for all the good it would have done him) until his mind was at peace.
But as it stood, Sirius could only shift from side to side, rubbing his palms against the hips of his trousers, and so he did this almost obsessively. His head was slightly bowed as he fell to thinking, and his hair strayed easily over his eyes and forehead, giving him an air of troubled adolescence. Remus couldn’t help but study him in all fondness; Sirius’s mannerisms almost made Remus feel years younger, if only for seconds at a time, between one body ache and the next. Watching Sirius, Remus could almost forget he'd ever grown old at all.
Finally, uncertainly, Sirius looked up, his lips pursed and his eyes dark. He clapped his hands and gestured to Remus. “So, okay. We’ll start at the beginning. Sound about right?”
“Sounds fine.” Remus arched an eyebrow. “You’re ready?”
“Never readier,” Sirius replied, though his expression, the hardness of it, betrayed some continuing doubts. “So what’s your earliest memory?”
Remus considered, soon pursing his lips in defeat. “Ages ago.”
When no elaboration came, Sirius only sighed. “Seriously, Remus.”
Remus curled up one corner of his lip and shrugged. “Seriously, Sirius. Ages ago. I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, all right. I do know,” Remus relented, before parting his hands and letting them fall to rest on the lumpy bed blankets. He studied his pillow, and the two or three silver-streaked hairs upon it. “But it’s a little buried right now.”
“All right,” said Sirius, a little disconcerted. He unfolded and folded his arms, gripping his elbows tightly. “We’ll start with something else. Your happiest memory, then.”
Remus picked at the grey hairs on his pillow, letting each drift from his fingers to the floor. His mouth was set tight in a frown; he furrowed his brow in thought and then shook his head.
“Oh, come on, Moony.”
“Buried,” he said flatly, though he cast a wistful, apologetic look at Sirius as he spoke.
Sirius frowned, drumming his fingers along an upper arm in thought. “Well, you’re not exactly making this easy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well then act it, and help me!”
Remus sighed, hands gripping again to his sheets, trying as best he could to ignore the constant dry skin itch on his legs, at the base of his hairs there. “I’m trying, Sirius. My memory’s a bit of a mess right now, that’s all. That’s why you’re here in the first place.”
“Well, we’re not starting with anything morbid, no matter what.”
“But isn’t this whole business already a little morbid, when you think about it?”
“Remus.”
Remus shrugged with his hands palm up, a gesture of helplessness. His head continued to throb and he was feeling the rise of impatience in his bones, the desire just to sleep and be done with this mess. Fighting the weariness was draining. “Then maybe something closer to home?”
“Okay, good." Sirius also sounded somewhat tired. No doubt maintaining even the form he had would be difficult until the flow of memories began. Remus could sympathise. "What’s outside this hovel of yours anyway?”
“Hut,” Remus corrected him, mildly.
“Hovel.” Sirius glared first at Remus, and then at his surroundings: the dim lighting, the falling roof, the sparsity of life, the dirt and battered wood floor.
Remus sighed, acceding the point with a shake of his head and finding in the question excuse enough to stand and stretch his legs, which were starting to lose all feeling. He limped toward the windows and unlocked the shutters. Pushing open each wind-worn set bared the room to a new flood of light, a new, rich fragrance from the outdoors, and the realisation that Sirius could not be seen nearly as well, if at all, in strong light. Remus frowned as he turned from the last window to note gaping holes in Sirius’s form, as if something had taken huge bites out of his friend. Sirius, however, didn’t seem to notice; he twisted his head to peer out of the closest three windows, not at all unnerved by how much of him had gone missing.
“You’ve got a garden.”
“Mm,” Remus agreed, still staring at all the spaces cutting across Sirius’s torso, his arms and legs and hips. “I do.”
Sirius turned to him, a little curious to find Remus so fixated on his legs. Perhaps, Remus decided, Sirius couldn’t tell. “So you remember that, at least.”
Remus reluctantly turned his attention back to Sirius’s face, which, under the shade of the thatch roof, much higher than the windows in the low room, remained ungouged. Focusing on this wholeness, Remus found himself better able to respond. “Of course.”
Sirius sighed again, but this time it was a more playful, relieved sound, a more comical sufferance. “Well,” he said, casting Remus an unhappy look, “this isn’t as exciting as I’d hoped it would be, but… all right, go ahead.”
“Go ahead?”
Sirius nodded to him, feigning exasperation. “Tell me something about the garden, will you?”
“Verbally?” Remus was only partially teasing now, partially stalling. Memories of any sort seemed hard to evoke at present, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why. He wondered how clouded his mind was; how much might be forever beyond recall and salvation. The thought was a numbing one, and it chilled him.
“No,” came Sirius’s reply, cutting through the terrifying possibility. “Relive the moment. Go slowly and try to remember every detail.”
The task would be a sorely needed distraction, and Remus welcomed it. “Well, I’ll try,” he said with a smile, worn though the gesture was, shaking as his hands still were at the thought that all of this might well be in vain.
Sirius smirked, and made a show of bowing a little at the waist, making a grandiose sweep with his arm. “Much obliged,” he announced. “You honour me with your effort, old man.”
“Oh, toss off,” said Remus, the words coming unbidden and wondrously familiar to mind. He closed his eyes and his smile then was genuine, as he contemplated what might be thrown at a ghost and hit its mark.
And for a moment, as he let his thoughts relax, the years really did slip away.