Marauders - Always - Part One

Shattered

Sirius shattered to the floor as violently as the portrait frame did, the sound of shattering glass filled the room as his knees gave out and he hit the carpet.

Remus ran into the room and dropped beside Sirius, hands on his shoulders in concern. "Sirius," he said as his husband folded into himself, breaking down. "Oh god, I'm sorry." He'd overheard the whole horrible shouting match between the brothers, heard everything that Sirius had said about his childhood, about the things he'd been through.

The breaking didn't seem over dramatic - suddenly nothing about Sirius seemed over dramatic. It all seemed justified, all the shouting and the tears and emotional relapses and fiery reactions. Suddenly nothing about Sirius seemed too much. Suddenly Sirius was the bravest person that had ever lived and sure Remus had thought that before time and again, but this time --

"I wasn't weak, I wasn't weak," Sirius was sobbing into Remus's stomach and he could feel the tears soaking through his shirt.

Remus stroked the side of Sirius's face and pulled his husband closer so that as Sirius cried, Remus could feel the tears soaking through his shirt at his abdomen. Sirius clung onto him fiercely, and his body trembled under Remus's touch as his fingers slid through the black strands of his hair.

Remus had a sudden, jarring flashback of the day, in their fifth year, he'd gone to the boys toliets outside the library at Hogwarts and found Sirius in a very similar state, laying on the floor, his hair shorn and Evan Rosier laughing horridly... Remus felt his gut twist and, just as it had in fifth year, his blood boiled now, raw power simmering just beneath his skin. The mirrors shattering echoed in Remus's mind now and he couldn't help but see the parallels between Sirius's pain then and the shattering glass of the portrait frame as it hit the far wall.

Remus would have agreed to go through the pain of a thousand full moon transformations just to be guaranteed that Sirius would never cry like that again.

"Why didn't they love me, Remus?" Sirius asked, choking on his tears. "At least Regulus? He - he did once... long ago."

"I don't know anyone could know you and not love you," Remus said.

"I - I didn't even d-do anything," Sirius cried, hearing but hardly comprehending the words Remus was saying in return. "I just - I was just myself, I was only - I was just myself and I - I tried, I tried so hard to - to be what they - wanted -I tried..."

"I know, I know you did," Remus said, rocking Sirius gently. "I know you tried so hard." And he had, Sirius had tried so hard. All the time that Remus had yearned after Sirius and Sirius had stayed ten steps back, all that time that Sirius had denied himself, his desires, his love... all in the name of being what the Noble House of Black had expected of him, even if it had been only in his subconscious. Remus knew Sirius had tried. And the times Sirius had tried with Regulus... He could still the crestfallen look on Sirius's face, standing in the hospital room, when Regulus was found alive after months of letting Sirius believe him dead.

That rage bubbled in Remus's veins.

"I didn't want the money or the titles or any of the things they promised me when I was the heir," Sirius's voice shivered as jaggedy as the broken glass that lay on the floor beneath the frame across the room. "I just wanted - I only ever wanted to be - to be loved."

"I love you," Remus said firmly, "And James loves you. And Lily... and Dora... and Tonks loves you... God that child loves you so much. You're a bleedin' hero to her, aren't you?"

"I suppose I'm sort of her Uncle Alphard," murmured Sirius.

"Uncle Alphard?" Remus asked.

Sirius drew back from Remus, his head laying across Remus's thigh. The expression on Sirius's face was one that Remus could just tell a long story was coming, so he slid awkwardly the rest of the way down to the floor from the crouch he'd been kneeling in before. Sirius lay across Remus's lap, staring up at him, hair pooling on the floor. "My Uncle Alphard... he was brilliant. He didn't come 'round very often, but when he did... he really shook things up at Number 12 when he did. Mother and Father hated him and, back then, I never knew why. I just remember they said he squandered the inheritance he supposedly stole from my Mother."