Like that, again—over and over, most lethal of all—she pierced the heart of it, to one more reversal.
He collapses. Sadly, he still can’t sink to to her, but it’s something that he doesn’t sink away either. He sinks back in his seat, in on himself.
Maybe this proves it. That being here with her is after all a purposeful gift. Clearly she had to tell him this, tried to, so many times. But now, here, she’s the older one. And! the one who knows what the future holds, not just with more evidence to theorise but definitively. So here, he's not the one who knows it's wrong but can't undo a lifetime of trying to take responsibility; instead this younger Remus collapses in abject needful relief. Still the version of himself ever yearning for someone who actually knows enough to guide him, but he hasn't yet given up on that—and in this pocket reality, he's found them.
"So you know how I got these?" He points vaguely toward his face. The three symmetrical scars seem dramatic. They're actually mild (compared to his torso, having been repeatedly, frequently raked across and across, so the flesh is so raised and mottled, it doesn't look clawed, it looks deeply burned). They're just among the few he can't hide with clothes.
Whatever he reads in her face or body language makes him go on—or maybe he's just so relieved to be able to say these things aloud. "Sirius gave them to me. That first night they came to the Shack. They weren't really prepared for the reality of it, you know? It's… upsetting. Especially the… process. So Peter couldn't transform. Not that I think the desired effect would have happened right away. It's kind of bonkers it worked at all, ever. It was a taming process. This probably would have been necessary regardless. But Padfoot—the dog—gave them to me over the course of him and the stag fighting me off trying to kill Peter all night.
"In the morning, we were all so hurt and bloodied. We kind of carried each other back to the castle. Peter couldn't look at me for a week. But I wasn't looking at any of them. And as soon as we got back, I found a room to lock myself in and locked all of them out. I'd never done that before. I tested my Defensive magic for the first time in earnest… that was when I found out I really was good at it… because I was better than they were. They couldn't get to me. I didn't let them in.
"I only came out and reconciled with them, finally, 'cause… Lily Evans came in after me. I couldn't keep her out. She talked me down and convinced me to reconcile and I owe her for that. We all do.
"Thing is… the reason it all went down that way…
"I wasn't in on the animagus plot. For two years, they kept it from me. That night, they surprised me with it. Sirius genuinely thought I'd be pleased.
"And yes. It led to some of the happiest times I've ever known in my damn life.
"But I've been thinking about it ever since. And a lot of the ways they talk about… M…Moony and… even the way they have me talk about it sometimes… Usually I try to be grateful and I think it has helped in some ways, but sometimes it still makes me… angry… or… lonely. Like… painfully lonely even when I'm right there with them. And I don't know why and I hate that I don't know why, and I assume it's just the wolf asleep inside me making me crazy.
"Because that's part of it, you know… not part anyone talks about because no one talks about it. Not the people who have it as still being people, when they are still… No one talks about being afraid to have intense emotions even though you know the moon won't be full for another week, but what if… what if it's not really you, it's the wolf, this anger, this fear…
"That's not… that's a different… anyway, it's…
"I"m still trying to figure it out but…
"I think what gets me…
"They keep my secret. They get that it's bigger than us. That they can't protect me if they just go shouting to everyone that I'm… that I have this thing.
"But at the same time. They act like just because it's not an issue for them… that I have no reason to have a hard time with it when I'm around them, either. That them accepting me should mean that I should just accept it too. Like the only bad feelings were because I was scared they wouldn't like me for it, and that's solved so why am I still bothered?
"Even though they know… I've told them… how my whole childhood… we moved house every six months because we were always afraid people would notice I was strange; the things we'd have to do to the house on moving in and moving out to diminish the terror of me breaking out to hurt my family and the realtors figuring it out to report us when we left; how I couldn't go to school and couldn't have any friends and until that visit from Dumbledore I lived assuming I never would so I spent my childhood just waiting for my parents to die so I could kill myself without hurting them more… it still haunts me that if I hadn't written him a fan letter, would he ever have come, would that just have been my life…?
"But it's still not just that, not just about me being miserable… It was watching them. My parents couldn't make friends either. They had to sit in the living room every four weeks—and it's more than one night, you know—listening to me change, and be awake all night with Dad's wand pointed at the basement door…
"They talked about Mum getting a gun and she refused but they talked about it.
"And sometimes I did break out and… they would try to lie to me when I killed… something I don't want to think about… pets and… but I knew. I never bit anyone, but god, I hurt people. Including my dad.
"They had to try to give me some semblance of a life except I—we—kept retreating from each other more and more until not only did we have no life or connections outside the house, we had no connections to each other inside either. And my dad blamed himself, and my mum tried not to blame him, but how could… My mum. I was so little but I remember she used to be so… vibrant, so lively and creative and…" his eyes definitely slipped away from Tonks's hair, "colourful, and over my childhood she just got paler and paler and thinner and thinner until she was like a skeleton…
"I only said it once. That maybe we should just stop running. Don't wait for someone to discover me. Just go ahead and send me to St Mungo's ourselves. It wasn't the worst scenario anymore; it'd be better than Azkaban. …And they immediately said 'no'. And I didn't really mean it because at that point they would have gotten in trouble for harbouring me. But I finally said it aloud because I wanted to see it in their eyes. And I did. We all wondered: would it actually be worse than what our homes had become?
"The reason Sirius started the whole Animagus thing was because he convinced me to let him give me some of his old clothes, and he tricked me into letting him be in the room while I tried some on, and he saw me shirtless. I never let anyone see me without… He did it on purpose of course 'cause he had a theory I was being abused. And I mean, he was right, he just assumed my abuser was someone in my family because that was his story and we all project ourselves. He didn't know my abuser was myself. I finally told him to get him not to go after my poor parents—who were my victims too.
"Whether someone who likes me—even loves me—accepts me or not… No. That's not the whole battle. That's not enough to make it okay for me within myself. And I know… I'm learning better control… even if not as the wolf, then as a wizard… so much is different… and people will say that they're better able to take care of themselves but my dad was a wizard too and… Someone saying they accept me, they like me… I know. I know I may not be rational. But that's still not the only active variable to overcome my conviction that I'm a death sentence. And they think they know what I mean. Yeah. I mean maybe from the world's politics resulting in homelessness. Yeah, I mean maybe from getting horribly suddenly killed. Yeah, I mean maybe getting bitten. But also I mean maybe a very slow one. And when people just tell me I'm being stupid…"
He glanced up… and the look wasn't for her, it was somewhere past her… but for a moment his eyes glinted like an animal's reflecting the moon.
"I don't know who's right and who's wrong. But if the goal with that is to make me pull away less and be less mournful and angry… It doesn't fucking work."
The glint faded. What was left was a teenage boy looking at her, looking so empty, like he'd never gotten to say that in full to anyone before, and he'd so wanted and needed to… but now that he had, especially to her who he didn't want to feel blamed or disliked at all, he also regretted it so badly. It hadn't even been in response to anything she said, beyond revealing she knew. Stick a pin in him and all the air came out.
"So… maybe… in the future… That might help? Get around my defensiveness? 'Cause I think adult me would be so stupid not to… try… to get out of his own way with you.
"But I don't think people show enough… um… It totally backfires how people are so dismissive, without having lived it, to what 'his'—'my'—'own way' actually is. It's not just the political stuff. Which is bad too."
… He still doesn’t know who provides this gift. Hopefully, exactly as she says, only not an accident: her.
[ooc: being a little ahead of his time, both in maturity and in sociopolitical ideation. But why that bloody scene in whichever book it was made me, even then, fucking furious. Not from Tonks but from friggin' everyone else just calling him 'ridiculous'. I usually don't pay attention to anything not in the books for RP backstory, but Hope Lupin's likely deterioration/death from this is from HPwiki/Pottermore]
content warnings: depression, suicidal ideation, animal endangerment… sorry for going so dark
He collapses. Sadly, he still can’t sink to to her, but it’s something that he doesn’t sink away either. He sinks back in his seat, in on himself.
Maybe this proves it. That being here with her is after all a purposeful gift. Clearly she had to tell him this, tried to, so many times. But now, here, she’s the older one. And! the one who knows what the future holds, not just with more evidence to theorise but definitively. So here, he's not the one who knows it's wrong but can't undo a lifetime of trying to take responsibility; instead this younger Remus collapses in abject needful relief. Still the version of himself ever yearning for someone who actually knows enough to guide him, but he hasn't yet given up on that—and in this pocket reality, he's found them.
"So you know how I got these?" He points vaguely toward his face. The three symmetrical scars seem dramatic. They're actually mild (compared to his torso, having been repeatedly, frequently raked across and across, so the flesh is so raised and mottled, it doesn't look clawed, it looks deeply burned). They're just among the few he can't hide with clothes.
Whatever he reads in her face or body language makes him go on—or maybe he's just so relieved to be able to say these things aloud. "Sirius gave them to me. That first night they came to the Shack. They weren't really prepared for the reality of it, you know? It's… upsetting. Especially the… process. So Peter couldn't transform. Not that I think the desired effect would have happened right away. It's kind of bonkers it worked at all, ever. It was a taming process. This probably would have been necessary regardless. But Padfoot—the dog—gave them to me over the course of him and the stag fighting me off trying to kill Peter all night.
"In the morning, we were all so hurt and bloodied. We kind of carried each other back to the castle. Peter couldn't look at me for a week. But I wasn't looking at any of them. And as soon as we got back, I found a room to lock myself in and locked all of them out. I'd never done that before. I tested my Defensive magic for the first time in earnest… that was when I found out I really was good at it… because I was better than they were. They couldn't get to me. I didn't let them in.
"I only came out and reconciled with them, finally, 'cause… Lily Evans came in after me. I couldn't keep her out. She talked me down and convinced me to reconcile and I owe her for that. We all do.
"Thing is… the reason it all went down that way…
"I wasn't in on the animagus plot. For two years, they kept it from me. That night, they surprised me with it. Sirius genuinely thought I'd be pleased.
"And yes. It led to some of the happiest times I've ever known in my damn life.
"But I've been thinking about it ever since. And a lot of the ways they talk about… M…Moony and… even the way they have me talk about it sometimes… Usually I try to be grateful and I think it has helped in some ways, but sometimes it still makes me… angry… or… lonely. Like… painfully lonely even when I'm right there with them. And I don't know why and I hate that I don't know why, and I assume it's just the wolf asleep inside me making me crazy.
"Because that's part of it, you know… not part anyone talks about because no one talks about it. Not the people who have it as still being people, when they are still… No one talks about being afraid to have intense emotions even though you know the moon won't be full for another week, but what if… what if it's not really you, it's the wolf, this anger, this fear…
"That's not… that's a different… anyway, it's…
"I"m still trying to figure it out but…
"I think what gets me…
"They keep my secret. They get that it's bigger than us. That they can't protect me if they just go shouting to everyone that I'm… that I have this thing.
"But at the same time. They act like just because it's not an issue for them… that I have no reason to have a hard time with it when I'm around them, either. That them accepting me should mean that I should just accept it too. Like the only bad feelings were because I was scared they wouldn't like me for it, and that's solved so why am I still bothered?
"Even though they know… I've told them… how my whole childhood… we moved house every six months because we were always afraid people would notice I was strange; the things we'd have to do to the house on moving in and moving out to diminish the terror of me breaking out to hurt my family and the realtors figuring it out to report us when we left; how I couldn't go to school and couldn't have any friends and until that visit from Dumbledore I lived assuming I never would so I spent my childhood just waiting for my parents to die so I could kill myself without hurting them more… it still haunts me that if I hadn't written him a fan letter, would he ever have come, would that just have been my life…?
"But it's still not just that, not just about me being miserable… It was watching them. My parents couldn't make friends either. They had to sit in the living room every four weeks—and it's more than one night, you know—listening to me change, and be awake all night with Dad's wand pointed at the basement door…
"They talked about Mum getting a gun and she refused but they talked about it.
"And sometimes I did break out and… they would try to lie to me when I killed… something I don't want to think about… pets and… but I knew. I never bit anyone, but god, I hurt people. Including my dad.
"They had to try to give me some semblance of a life except I—we—kept retreating from each other more and more until not only did we have no life or connections outside the house, we had no connections to each other inside either. And my dad blamed himself, and my mum tried not to blame him, but how could… My mum. I was so little but I remember she used to be so… vibrant, so lively and creative and…" his eyes definitely slipped away from Tonks's hair, "colourful, and over my childhood she just got paler and paler and thinner and thinner until she was like a skeleton…
"I only said it once. That maybe we should just stop running. Don't wait for someone to discover me. Just go ahead and send me to St Mungo's ourselves. It wasn't the worst scenario anymore; it'd be better than Azkaban. …And they immediately said 'no'. And I didn't really mean it because at that point they would have gotten in trouble for harbouring me. But I finally said it aloud because I wanted to see it in their eyes. And I did. We all wondered: would it actually be worse than what our homes had become?
"The reason Sirius started the whole Animagus thing was because he convinced me to let him give me some of his old clothes, and he tricked me into letting him be in the room while I tried some on, and he saw me shirtless. I never let anyone see me without… He did it on purpose of course 'cause he had a theory I was being abused. And I mean, he was right, he just assumed my abuser was someone in my family because that was his story and we all project ourselves. He didn't know my abuser was myself. I finally told him to get him not to go after my poor parents—who were my victims too.
"Whether someone who likes me—even loves me—accepts me or not… No. That's not the whole battle. That's not enough to make it okay for me within myself. And I know… I'm learning better control… even if not as the wolf, then as a wizard… so much is different… and people will say that they're better able to take care of themselves but my dad was a wizard too and… Someone saying they accept me, they like me… I know. I know I may not be rational. But that's still not the only active variable to overcome my conviction that I'm a death sentence. And they think they know what I mean. Yeah. I mean maybe from the world's politics resulting in homelessness. Yeah, I mean maybe from getting horribly suddenly killed. Yeah, I mean maybe getting bitten. But also I mean maybe a very slow one. And when people just tell me I'm being stupid…"
He glanced up… and the look wasn't for her, it was somewhere past her… but for a moment his eyes glinted like an animal's reflecting the moon.
"I don't know who's right and who's wrong. But if the goal with that is to make me pull away less and be less mournful and angry… It doesn't fucking work."
The glint faded. What was left was a teenage boy looking at her, looking so empty, like he'd never gotten to say that in full to anyone before, and he'd so wanted and needed to… but now that he had, especially to her who he didn't want to feel blamed or disliked at all, he also regretted it so badly. It hadn't even been in response to anything she said, beyond revealing she knew. Stick a pin in him and all the air came out.
"So… maybe… in the future… That might help? Get around my defensiveness? 'Cause I think adult me would be so stupid not to… try… to get out of his own way with you.
"But I don't think people show enough… um… It totally backfires how people are so dismissive, without having lived it, to what 'his'—'my'—'own way' actually is. It's not just the political stuff. Which is bad too."
…
He still doesn’t know who provides this gift. Hopefully, exactly as she says, only not an accident: her.
[ooc: being a little ahead of his time, both in maturity and in sociopolitical ideation. But why that bloody scene in whichever book it was made me, even then, fucking furious. Not from Tonks but from friggin' everyone else just calling him 'ridiculous'.
I usually don't pay attention to anything not in the books for RP backstory, but Hope Lupin's likely deterioration/death from this is from HPwiki/Pottermore]