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small_giftsTitle: In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snow_blossoms
Recipient:knitterlywitch
Rating: Maybe an R? It’s a little dark & angsty.
Word Count: 417
Summary: Remus deals with Sirius’ death the only way he knows how.
Author's notes: I’m not entirely sure how this relates toknitterlywitch’s beautiful prompt (He who has become a monster might take care lest he thereby fights with monsters. And if you gaze for too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.) – I guess this is just what materialized when I thought about it.
The title is from a Pablo Neruda poem, which follows the fic, because it was too lovely not to include.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how it all – memories, history, people, love, life, the sun, the moon, the stars – they ebb and flow. Time and time again, they ebb and flow.
Remus goes to the seaside. His mother loved the seaside. He thinks maybe Sirius, too, loved the seaside, but he’s not sure anymore. Things slip away in the tide. And of all the things in the world, he wonders, how could he forget whether Sirius loved the seaside?
Just now, he thinks about standing on a cliff, overlooking the sea, and taking a leap of faith. Jumping, diving, tumbling, plummeting to a cold and icy death.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he waits on the sand where the waves turn to foam and lick-lick at the tip of his shoes.
His toes grow cold like his soul, which once curled up and died, only to be stoked back to life like a weary flame by the dry laugh of a best friend, long lost.
His life, see, it ebbs and flows. The flame goes out.
Remus wakes up sweating, dreaming about the seaside and the teasing of the curtain as he fell through. How it swallowed his life, whole, and laughed out loud as if to say maybe next time.
There are no next times. Remus knows this like he knows the moon. It courses through his veins, beating violently at his wrist, his temples. Boom boom, his pulse says. Alone again, it mocks him. Boom boom.
Sometimes he sees Tonks. She wears her hair dark and unwashed. Her eyes are hooded and grey. He should hate her for that. Instead he kisses her hard on the mouth and dies over and over in her arms. He calls her Dora and Dear and touches the curve of her lips with his thumb. He hates himself for that.
Snape comes once a month, knocking on his door. Remus drinks the potion that makes him half-catatonic and watches his body change. He looks at his hands, touches his face and wonders when he became this monster, inside and out. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He’s afraid. Afraid he will look too much like himself.
Sirius used to touch his scars and call him beautiful. He was a jubilant liar. He’d laugh and laugh.
They’d laugh and laugh.
Sometimes Remus wonders about the things they never got to do. The questions he’d ask if he had the chance.
Do you like the seaside, Sirius? He’d say. I’ll take you there.
------------------------------
In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
- Pablo Neruda
Author:
snow_blossomsRecipient:
knitterlywitchRating: Maybe an R? It’s a little dark & angsty.
Word Count: 417
Summary: Remus deals with Sirius’ death the only way he knows how.
Author's notes: I’m not entirely sure how this relates to
knitterlywitch’s beautiful prompt (He who has become a monster might take care lest he thereby fights with monsters. And if you gaze for too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.) – I guess this is just what materialized when I thought about it. The title is from a Pablo Neruda poem, which follows the fic, because it was too lovely not to include.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how it all – memories, history, people, love, life, the sun, the moon, the stars – they ebb and flow. Time and time again, they ebb and flow.
Remus goes to the seaside. His mother loved the seaside. He thinks maybe Sirius, too, loved the seaside, but he’s not sure anymore. Things slip away in the tide. And of all the things in the world, he wonders, how could he forget whether Sirius loved the seaside?
Just now, he thinks about standing on a cliff, overlooking the sea, and taking a leap of faith. Jumping, diving, tumbling, plummeting to a cold and icy death.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he waits on the sand where the waves turn to foam and lick-lick at the tip of his shoes.
His toes grow cold like his soul, which once curled up and died, only to be stoked back to life like a weary flame by the dry laugh of a best friend, long lost.
His life, see, it ebbs and flows. The flame goes out.
Remus wakes up sweating, dreaming about the seaside and the teasing of the curtain as he fell through. How it swallowed his life, whole, and laughed out loud as if to say maybe next time.
There are no next times. Remus knows this like he knows the moon. It courses through his veins, beating violently at his wrist, his temples. Boom boom, his pulse says. Alone again, it mocks him. Boom boom.
Sometimes he sees Tonks. She wears her hair dark and unwashed. Her eyes are hooded and grey. He should hate her for that. Instead he kisses her hard on the mouth and dies over and over in her arms. He calls her Dora and Dear and touches the curve of her lips with his thumb. He hates himself for that.
Snape comes once a month, knocking on his door. Remus drinks the potion that makes him half-catatonic and watches his body change. He looks at his hands, touches his face and wonders when he became this monster, inside and out. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He’s afraid. Afraid he will look too much like himself.
Sirius used to touch his scars and call him beautiful. He was a jubilant liar. He’d laugh and laugh.
They’d laugh and laugh.
Sometimes Remus wonders about the things they never got to do. The questions he’d ask if he had the chance.
Do you like the seaside, Sirius? He’d say. I’ll take you there.
------------------------------
In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
- Pablo Neruda
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 05:34 pm (UTC)His toes grow cold like his soul, which once curled up and died, only to be stoked back to life like a weary flame by the dry laugh of a best friend, long lost.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 07:42 pm (UTC)I felt so sorry for poor Remus here, his plight felt so starkly real. The whole piece is just permeated with that vague, persistent sense of loss that affects the grieved. It's not just Sirius, it's his everything.
This bit just made me want to weep: Sometimes he sees Tonks. She wears her hair dark and unwashed. Her eyes are hooded and grey. He should hate her for that. Instead he kisses her hard on the mouth and dies over and over in her arms. He calls her Dora and Dear and touches the curve of her lips with his thumb. He hates himself for that. That just makes it so much worse, does it not?
Depressing, yes, but beautifully, beautifully crafted.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 01:53 am (UTC)His life, see, it ebbs and flows. The flame goes out.
Your words are stunning. I think you've exactly captured Remus of the later books.
Sirius used to touch his scars and call him beautiful. He was a jubilant liar. He’d laugh and laugh.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 12:39 am (UTC)