[For Close Friends] Dated 2 September

[not_the_grim]

The first hour was a total blur, one event melting into the next. He remembers the feeling of Buckbeak strong beneath them, the flash of blue water skimming below. The intense feeling of relief that couldn't be blown away, not even when Rob had hustled him into a white, sterile room and poked him in the arm

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[dr_robchase]

Chase had been there since the moment Sirius arrived. He didn't trust himself to leave on the paranoid thought that something might happen and this was so new a feeling to experience -- it was almost like hope. Someone vanished, but they came back. He'd brought charts with him to read, but inevitably, he only wound up watching Sirius -- his nose itching as though a reminder of the things that Sirius had done (both this and the one before).

He'd be there when Sirius awoke. Chase knew that much, because he wasn't going anywhere.

[not_the_grim]

"You're hovering."

The voice is rough from disuse and faint enough that it might almost seem to be coming from someone else. Sirius' eyes slit open just enough that he can take in Rob's blurry but unmistakable form at his bedside, but he otherwise remains still. If he moves, he may ruin it. He may wake up and find it's all a dream.

A sudden cough bursts from his throat without his consent, though, and Sirius pushes himself up to better breathe, his shoulders shaking until it passes.

[dr_robchase]

"I'm your doctor, I'm allowed to hover," Chase said, determined to keep the small hint of shaking out of his voice. He did avoid eye-contact, helping to support Sirius with a pillow behind his back and busying his fingers in seeking out a pen-light.

Chase tipped his head to the side, flashing the light towards Sirius and focusing on his lower lip. "Open up, say 'ahhh'."

[not_the_grim]

Sirius' hand lifts in an aborted swipe at the light and hovers before it falls back to the blankets, resigned. He opens his mouth and stares past Rob out at the sterile whiteness of the room. Just being in here makes him feel dirty and used up.

Before Rob's done, Sirius snaps his mouth shut and shifts his gaze to the blond.

"I'm not him," he reminds him in a quiet rasp.

[little_moons]

I don't even remember how I got here.

The time from when Shari came bursting into the Winchester, and right now, sitting hunched beside his bed with my heart lodged up in the back of my throat... It's a chunk of time that might as well have happened to a different person.

But I remember not believing it. I remember being convinced this was a dream, and it still feels hazy, disconnected, like any moment I might wake up and realize that he's still gone. That everything's still fucked.

But he's here, sleeping in the bed in front of me, so frail that he barely makes a lump under the sheets. I hardly recognize him, under the scraggly beard, the sallow, dirt-stained skin. But it's him, and I find myself unable to look away. Waiting for him to wake up, or maybe waiting for him to disappear all over again.

[not_the_grim]

Sirius wakes on a cough, a faint clearing of his throat that builds until he's pushed himself up on arms surprisingly strong for how whittled down they appear, dirty fingers clutched at the edge of the mattress and head bowed between sharpened shoulders. His entire body quakes with it, looks about to shake apart, but the episode passes quickly enough, and he lifts a hand to wipe the wayward saliva from his bottom lip.

Only then does he see bent knees and skinny legs perched on the edge of a chair beside the bed. Worn, familiar trainers are pressed to the polished concrete of the floor, and Sirius sucks in a shuddering breath but doesn't look up, isn't sure he can right away, the tightness in his chest now from something altogether different.

"Is this real?" he asks in a faint rasp, eyes wide and wrapped in tears as he stares at those feet.

[little_moons]

He wakes with a jolt, the worst fuckin' coughing I think I've ever heard rattling through his chest, and I sit forward in my seat, wanting to reach for him but half afraid he might shatter, if I do.

His eyes open, fall on my shoes resting on the floor, and my heart wrenches in my chest, so painfully that the air leaves my lungs with a choked sob of laughter.

"It fuckin' better be."

[not_the_grim]

The noise that pushes up from Sirius' chest doesn't sound real, a broken, choked sort of wail from some distant part of him that he doesn't even recognise. The moment he lifts his eyes to Neil's face, something in him snaps and he can't keep his hands to himself, fingers dirty as they splay desperately across tanned cheeks.

"Is this a dream?" he asks, gray eye wide and wild, afraid to believe. "Just say no, say no, please say no," he says in a rushed whisper that chokes off with a sob.

[yeah_wow_lovely]

If asked, Cassie couldn't commit to any one reason why she's here, a still, pale shadow in the Clinic doorway. There'd been a girl, she thinks, small and sweet and smelling of pastries. She might have told her to come. Or perhaps it's her mobile again, or Alan, but when she thinks of both something new settles in her belly, not warm and safe as it's been before, but cold and fearful. Not them, then. Perhaps the girl. Perhaps something else.

She'd pause to wonder, to remember why it is she's come, but there's a man on the other side of the threshold, tiny beneath his blankets and covered in filth. With matted hair and sallow skin, he's unrecognisable.

Cassie doesn't know him. She doesn't know anyone like this, yet when she looks at him, she feels she wants to cry.

[not_the_grim]

A heavy sigh rattles out of Sirius as he stirs, and his dirty fingernails claw at the place where the IV is taped against the back of his hand, the only clean spot on his body. When his eyes slit open, they take in the room with a glassy look of disbelief and then shift to the tiny figure in the doorway.

His chest hurts so much, so abruptly that he's surprised his fingers find nothing but skin when they fly instinctively up to his heart.

"I forgot your shells," he says, the sound breaking out of him and tapering into a sob. "I had- I had collected you some and I left them."

[yeah_wow_lovely]

Cassie makes a sound in turn and feels something come loose, knows it should feel more violent than it does, but it slides across her numb heart as gentle as the brush of fingertips. She should feel this, and she knows it as well as she knows her cheeks are wet, but in many ways it feels like she's been used up, like the fight went out of her with the flames of their hut.

She's moving, though, silent across the too bright floor, and climbing onto the bed with him. She has to see. She moves that ratty hair away from his face, searches features lined in dirt. He's not newly made, not newly returned. He knows her. He forgot her seashells.

"Where did you go?"

[not_the_grim]

"The sea," Sirius replies, and finds her tiny shoulders with his hands to pull her close, just for a moment, just to confirm that she's truly there. He's dirty and he smells, and it twists him up inside to see his own dirt-caked fingernails curling in against the frothy weight of her hair, but he has to touch, has to pull in the delicate scent and feel of her body so that he can remember. He'd been so afraid, out in his isolation, that he'd forget.

"I missed you," he murmurs, his voice choked by emotion. "I missed you so fucking much."

[seek_to_end]

That much time had not passed, but it felt as though the day had lasted a week. Harry had stayed out of the way and always in sight, but he had discovered that there was not all that much to do. The doctor had said something about malnutrition, exhaustion, but there were no spells to cast, no surgeries to perform. Just more sitting around, waiting for Sirius to feel better, waiting for him to wake up

[not_the_grim]

The moment the damp cloth touches his cheek, Sirius awakes with a start, sucking in a sharp gasp that turns into a violent coughing jag. Bent over, one hand grasped hard in the blankets, he catches his breath and wipes the spittle from his bottom lip.

He stares at Harry for a very long time with an air of cautious disbelief.

"It really happened, then," says a voice, rough and broken up, and it takes Sirius a moment to realise it's his own.

[seek_to_end]

So much for that hope. Harry nearly jumped and lost the bowl of water when the coughing fit started, but he kept his seat and only a little bit of wash sloshed over the edge and onto his jeans. He set bowl and cloth onto the side table and scooted his chair closer to the bed, ready to help somehow.

All he ended up doing was laying his hand on Sirius' arm. "Yes," he said. "You're back. I got you back."

[not_the_grim]

Of course he did. He's-

No, not James. James' son. Harry.

"I knew you would," Sirius replies on a heavy sigh that makes his whole body shudder. It's true, too: Even before the present and past had started to melt together, he'd been confident in that.

"I'm a bit turned around," he admits when his gaze falls to the hand on his arm.