Remus Lupin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thattimeofthemonth) wrote2016-12-08 06:48 pm
thattimeofthemonth) wrote2016-12-08 06:48 pm
Broken on the Dawn
Sometimes, one just gave up on life. When there was nothing left to fight for, nothing left to live for, nothing left to even hope for. In one terribly short amount of time, he had lost... everything. The people he had come to love like family - James, Peter, Lily. Their beautiful child he had been so excited to meet, murmuring to the little one in the womb in a way that always made Lily laugh. Even his brother, his best friend, his... maybe one day they might have been something more, but then to find out in one blow that it had been Sirius who had become a traitor, whisked away to Azkaban before he could even find out why. Why he had murdered Peter, why he had told...?!
Why Sirius had said he was the traitor. But... he was all too easy to blame, wasn't he? Who else could Sirius have gotten away with blaming the leak to that everyone would immediately believe? Some people knew who shouldn't ever have, but equally, some of them were dead. He had no idea who knew anymore. What he was, what Sirius said he was... some probably believed Sirius had lied about anything, everything-- hell, he didn't even know.
So he sat waiting, staring up at the horizon as the sun fell. It was a beautiful sunset, streaking bloody red and purple across the sky, more beautiful than he felt. No one was out here nor would they be, on this desolate moor where Dumbledore, bless him, had set him up a place to be able to hide now that he was long out of school. Enough for him to recover and go back to home... but now there wasn't even that. No home, no one to go back to.
His head hung. The tears came. They hung, then fell. Every time he thought there couldn't possibly be more within him, more to wring out of his soul, they came. It hurt more than waking up tomorrow morning would, far more. The nightmares were even worse because they were glorious. James and Lily laughed in his memories, Peter squeaked and shared food, and Sirius gave him that grin and told him to come sneak out to the village with him. Then he woke to nothing.
When the moon started to crest the far hills, Remus reached down and tugged off his shoes, tossing them to the side, then did the same with his pants. It was hard not being a little used to being nude given the amount of times the boys had found him as such, but even more so when no one was around. This time, he met the moon straight on, eyes watching it as it came up. It would take away his humanity and with it, the pain that came with knowing.
What he never would have expected was that long after it happened that night - the change, the creak and crash of bone, the moments between knowing and not until Remus faded away completely and Moony cried to his namesake, the running through the heather, even a hunt that started to bring him towards morning - that something would go horribly wrong. What it was, he had no idea, couldn't know. All the wolf saw was light, smelled the reek of burnt fur, then darkness.
Why Sirius had said he was the traitor. But... he was all too easy to blame, wasn't he? Who else could Sirius have gotten away with blaming the leak to that everyone would immediately believe? Some people knew who shouldn't ever have, but equally, some of them were dead. He had no idea who knew anymore. What he was, what Sirius said he was... some probably believed Sirius had lied about anything, everything-- hell, he didn't even know.
So he sat waiting, staring up at the horizon as the sun fell. It was a beautiful sunset, streaking bloody red and purple across the sky, more beautiful than he felt. No one was out here nor would they be, on this desolate moor where Dumbledore, bless him, had set him up a place to be able to hide now that he was long out of school. Enough for him to recover and go back to home... but now there wasn't even that. No home, no one to go back to.
His head hung. The tears came. They hung, then fell. Every time he thought there couldn't possibly be more within him, more to wring out of his soul, they came. It hurt more than waking up tomorrow morning would, far more. The nightmares were even worse because they were glorious. James and Lily laughed in his memories, Peter squeaked and shared food, and Sirius gave him that grin and told him to come sneak out to the village with him. Then he woke to nothing.
When the moon started to crest the far hills, Remus reached down and tugged off his shoes, tossing them to the side, then did the same with his pants. It was hard not being a little used to being nude given the amount of times the boys had found him as such, but even more so when no one was around. This time, he met the moon straight on, eyes watching it as it came up. It would take away his humanity and with it, the pain that came with knowing.
What he never would have expected was that long after it happened that night - the change, the creak and crash of bone, the moments between knowing and not until Remus faded away completely and Moony cried to his namesake, the running through the heather, even a hunt that started to bring him towards morning - that something would go horribly wrong. What it was, he had no idea, couldn't know. All the wolf saw was light, smelled the reek of burnt fur, then darkness.
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Unfortunately for Vrenille, he had a bit of a case on his hands. One like he most likely wouldn't have expected. Remus wasn't an old man, but he looked older than his years would suggest. War and grief had aged a young man who hadn't been on the best physical track to begin with. But more than that... given what he was, he hadn't exactly gone and sought out anything really in physical comforts. Not when for so long there had been only eyes for a certain someone, but look where that got him in the long run. Betrayal. Death. Loss.
So even when it was being quite literally pressed into his hands, Remus wasn't the sharpest in catching certain things.
So Remus thought Vrenille meant breakfast.
"Right!" He gave a smile that was something more like others might have recognized as normal for him and nodded. "Hold on tight." He patted his side, double checking his wand, and grabbed the small suitcase he had brought before he closed his eyes and thought of where he wanted to be.
After that sickening feeling he would never get over, his eyes opened and he let out a breath, staring at the front of his favorite place to go. "Welcome to the Three Broomsticks," he said with a hint of longing in his voice. BREAKFAST!
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Or...no, not innocence. This was something else. This was disbelief. This was some oddly quaint sense of impossibility, the sort that made him almost wonder if Remus had ever--
Oh, right. Apparating.
The feeling of solid ground suddenly hitting his feet once more forced every other thought from Vrenille's mind and again he staggered a step back, hand slipping free of its grip, before he gained his bearings and had a look at their new surroundings. "Six," he swore softly under his breath, wondering if Apparating was one of those things that got easier to stomach the more that you did it.
To Vrenille the place looked a lot like any ordinary human town--like Applenook Hamlet or Shaemoor, at least in the style of the buildings. Except in those places even the winters were quite mild, and here the ground crunched underfoot. Still, it seemed nice enough on the surface. And it had a nice enough pub for them to eat at. More important, that tone of familiarity in Remus's voice must mean that he was a regular of sorts here, which gave Vrenille a good notion of how he probably ought to act: high discretion, high charm, low flirtation. Last thing he wanted to do was to embarrass Remus in front of people he knew.
"Looks homey. And warm." It was as cold out on the street as it had been on the moors, Vrenille thought, and the sky was just as gray. The wind, perhaps, was slightly less bitter, since it had the buildings to break against, but he was still eager to be indoors.
"Hey, we're still in Scotland, right?" he checked with Remus in a low voice as they headed in, realizing that every time they Apparated he was left with absolutely no idea what distance they'd traveled or what direction they'd gone in. If he needed to get back to the spot he'd first arrived at now, he wouldn't have the first idea how to find it.
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"You'll love this place. It couldn't be better." Remus had definitely perked up a little - not much, but there was something more in his eyes at seeing this clearly familiar place. "And yes, we're still in Scotland." He kept his voice down, given that someone glanced their way with Vrenille's comment, and nudged the other towards the door so they could go inside.
It was toasty warm inside against the chill outside, and people were all digging into breakfasts, chatting, and there was the clink of plate and fork and glass. A proper pub, a lively one at that, and it seemed that Remus was a regular given the reaction of the woman behind the bar. "Remus! It's been a while," she called over, gesturing for him. She peered to Vrenille with a shrewd eye, then gave a quick smile. "And who is your friend?"
"This is Vrenille," Remus said with a small smile. "Vrenille, this is Rosemerta. She recently became the owner of this pub."
There was just a hint of sadness in both their tones and faces, something hard to pinpoint, but it was gone quickly. "You both must be hungry. Come on, let's get you lads something to eat." She was ushering them over to a table, gesturing for them to sit before tucking off out through a door that must have gone into the kitchen.
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Anyway, far more important was the fact that they were somewhere warm and welcoming, somewhere that felt even more homey inside than it had initially looked. This was the sort of environment with which Vrenille had plenty of practice, and he took to it about like a duck to water, giving the proprietress an easy smile when he was introduced, and not giving any indication of how he registered that momentary expression of sadness that flitted across bother her and Remus's eyes. (It went quietly into a mental file he was compiling about this land and these people.) "It's a nice place, Rosemerta, and it's good to meet you."
Seated at the table, he unwrapped his scarf and flexed the cold out of his fingers as he turned his attention to Remus once more. "You come here a lot?" It was half question, half speculation--the greeting Remus got when they walked through the door was the sort of thing a person generally built up to over time.
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But the grin fell and he leaned in, his expression beseeching as he studied Vrenille's eyes, trying to make sure he got this through as important as it was. "You can't mention anything, for any reason, about... what you saw last night," he said very quietly, just barely able to be heard over the din. "Please." There was so much riding on that last word, the begging look in Remus' eyes. Even he wasn't saying exactly what it was, not when there was the potential to be over heard in such a crowded place.
But not only his secret, his entire life, was riding on Vrenille's good will as far as he was concerned. A total stranger held his life.
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It was lucky, then, that Vrenille wasn't the kind of person to use it.
More flies with honey. It was something he'd always told Hakkyuu when they were growing up. If you took something from someone you benefited once. If you made them want to help you, built up their good feelings, then you could benefit from them for a long time.
He met Remus's begging eyes with a soft smile as he leaned in, arms resting on the table. "The only thing I saw last night was a crazy explosion that knocked me through some kind of rift," his own voice was low too, just loud enough for the two of them. It was his eyes that really answered the younger man's plea though. It's okay, they said. See? I'll look out for you. Whatever you show me, I'll keep it safe.
In a way, it was a professional courtesy: discretion, not sex, was the real cornerstone of what Vrenille offered to men. Granted, generally speaking it was discretion about sex, but not always.
The thing was that a lot of people had some secret personal truth that they guarded and disguised. As far as Vrenille was concerned, it didn't objectively matter whether their lives would actually be destroyed by that secret getting out. He wasn't interested in arbitrating which secrets were worth keeping and which ones were not. Maybe Remus's life was at real risk, sure. That wasn't why Vrenille would make sure never to tell anyone about the wolf though. He would never tell anyone about the wolf purely because it mattered to Remus that no one ever be told.
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A menu floated their way and Remus snagged it out of the air, immediately passing it over to Vrenille without looking at it himself. "Nothing bad on the menu, trust me. All good solid food, even if not too fancy." He leaned back, clearly knowing what he wanted, but wanted to give Vrenille time to decide for himself. Rosmerta knew what he liked when he came in - a proper English breakfast, every time, extra meat. Enough protein and carbs to get his body sorted out again and a good strong cup of tea to back it all up.
"So, do you specialize in any specific magic?" he asked out of curiosity, head tilting. "I have a particular affinity towards counter spells and charms, but I haven't done the latter in years now." A memory of a map flitted out of the depths of his mind and he couldn't help the faintest smile before sadness pushed its way in, so he in turn pushed the memory away.
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That floating menu could probably have managed a fair distraction on its own though. Menus certainly didn't just float around where Vrenille came from. Not even asuran menus (or at least he didn't think they did, but then again asura made everything float, so he wouldn't have wholly put it past them). Anyway, it was good that Remus had grabbed the thing, because Vrenille would probably have just stared at it to see where it went.
The selection, though different from what he was used to, was easily recognizable. "Full English breakfast?" That seemed straightforward enough, but he sort of confirmed it questioningly so that Remus could steer him back on track if he'd somehow judged amiss. Tea, as it turned out, was an easy choice for Vrenille as well--if it hadn't always been, the household where he made his home now held it as an absolute staple.
As far as his style of magic went. "Oh. I'm a mesmer," he began as though this was a simple answer, and then looking a little more embarrassed, he cast his eyes downward and tugged absently at the cuff of his sleeve as he amended. "Or, well, chronomancer I guess some people are calling it now--the time stuff." Time for a deliberate change in focus: his eyes were on Remus again, "What do you mean counter spells? You can reverse the effects of magic?"
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"You... you work with time?" he said slowly, confusion and awe coming together in his voice. Those mentions in class about how dangerous any time magic was floated to the surface, reminding him how despite Sirius' desire to be able to use it, he would never touch it himself. "Is that how you ended up here?" Or so he assumed! That was dangerous stuff with the potential for incredible back lash, after all.
"I, uh," get it together, "no, well, yes." He held up a hand, took a breath to get himself focused, then continued. "I can counter spells but mostly I've used it for defensive spells and removing jinxes."
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First off, saying he worked with time made it all sound so grand. "It's really no big deal," he attempted rather lamely. "It's just...slowing things down and speeding them up a bit. Mostly I think it's probably to do with perception, you know? Like if I made everything around us feel like it was moving really slow, we would feel like we were moving really fast." He was back to worrying the cuff of his sleeve again until he caught himself and stopped. "Most of what I do is really just about perception--it's just illusions and stuff. ...And it's nothing to do with how I got here."
It didn't help all this one bit that he was struggling to understand what Remus was trying to tell him about his own area of specialty in magic. "Jinxes...are part of necromancy?" he tried, managing to sound a lot like a student trying to give an answer in class to a question he completely didn't understand.