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𝚇𝚇𝚇𝚅𝙸 >> 𝚂𝙻𝚄𝙶-𝙿𝙰𝙲𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝙽 𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙴𝙰𝚅𝙾𝚁𝚂

< 3 MONTHS, 1 WEEK, 2 DAYS >

Remus doesn't like shifting on his own, or being undraped beneath the moonlight without someone else coveting for him to be.

But he stands like this now, alone, derobed, moon-drowned, waiting for claws to burst out of his fingertips and fur to cascade its way over his skin like lichen. He perches as close to the window as he can get within the outmoded shack; the sooner he's touched by that full moonlight, the more volant it'll all be through with.

There is one avail to being unescorted during a change, and that is his lack of a façade. His mask is off and his curtain down; he can show all his pain, all his dread, and no one will worry. Nobody is there to be concerned, or harrowed, or to pity him. As a wolf, he wants the world not to notice the savagery of the agony coursing through him, but rather the sleekness of his fur when it's through, or the softness of his agrestal regard. This does not exclude Severus. He'd like to worry him the least of all.

He closes his eyes, leaning toward the window and letting the imperceptible light of evenfall sweep over him. Any moment now, the moon will be the only gleam there is. It will become him and kill him and let him be reborn.

'I wish you were here,' he says internally to Snape, who is out doing whatever it is he needs to in order to prepare (it does not matter to Lupin what he is doing as long as he is doing it). 'I wish you were here to watch me, and to stand in the room and keep me company.'

He knows the response before it is said. 'I don't say much anyway. Pretend I am there.'

He looks up into the light, the gray planet above him in the darkening universe; what a wolf knows to be the sun. It's colder than what is truly sunlight. Lonelier. He wouldn't mind the cold if Severus were never born, but now that he has him, he cannot go without. 'You have a unique silence that I cannot replace.'

'You poor, doting Romeo. Are you going to cry in the middle of our mission?'

Lupin smiles. He smiles as if Snape is really there with him, sitting here in the room, pretending to write notes to keep his eyes off his nakedness. 'Yes,' he replies — a light lark that could be easily argued as a hidden truth if only Severus were in the mindset to have nerve. But he is not tonight. Tonight he has only consternation, and focus, and the same moon that Remus watches above him.

'I'll see you soon, Rem.'

Remus does not respond. He feels his skin tightening — the glow digging into him, into his bones, his muscles — his every physical structure no longer recognizing its own perenniality. He braces himself. He closes his eyes.

In a moment, he is torn by a force greater than hell. The sun is his enemy, but it burns in his chest. The flames engulf and the cold kills; the pain is too intense to tell its temperature. He falls to the floor in anguish, his muscles instinctually making the effort to convulse and corrugate to thwart the act of bursting at the seams. But it's to no avail. His skin splits, changes, stretches and tears away as it has always done and always will. His screams last forever. Time stops its change.

He's left panting on the floor in exhaustion, everything aching within him. His fresh fur brushes against the damp and malleable floorboards. He wants to sleep, but everything is too loud.

He can hear for miles now. He can smell visitors weeks away.

Like the sea, Severus speaks to him. He is calm and lucid and cold. Lupin's fire melts at the remembrance of him alone.

'I'm at the shack in the woods.'

With a groan, Lupin forces himself to his four fresh feet, pushing his way out of the building and into the streets he's always changed within. He stands in the air, sensing all that he can.