(These are arranged chronologically, with the oldest at the top.)
Substitutions
After half a bottle of firewhiskey, Remus starts to beg her.
After three quarters of a bottle, Tonks agrees.
Remus closes his eyes to her transformation, and then Sirius is there, slouched and heartbreaking.
He looks different, and for a second Remus thinks Tonks got it wrong. But it's just the expression, that deep sadness in his eyes replacing edgy frustation.
He looks even sadder when Remus starts to cry. He holds Remus, whispers love-words that Sirius could never say, and Remus sleeps in his arms.
Remus wakes hungover, alone, and he doesn't know which of them he hates more.
Returns
Sirius has been caressing the motorbike, obsessive as a new lover, since Hagrid turned up on it an hour ago. Stammered thanks, tears in his eyes, and a smile, a smile like . . . like Sirius smiling. A smile that wasn't, after all, forgotten in Azkaban and never found again.
"Let's take a spin, Moony," Sirius says, and Remus is so smile-dizzied, so rapt and lost, kidnapped as always by Sirius's delight, that he can't say a word about lying low.
And pressed to Sirius' back, watching the world recede, Remus can imagine time's wounds healing, all losses restored.
Notes: For Gina, who asked for Remus/Sirius and the flying motorbike.
Escapees
Sirius twitches in his sleep now. He shivers and curls up small. He mutters, groans, whimpers, sometimes sobs, sometimes makes noises Remus has no name for.
In the mornings he looks sickly and exhausted, but relieved. As if day's a thing he can't believe in and never dares hope to see. He doesn't talk about his dreams.
Remus mostly lies awake, these nights. Sleeping would be abandonment, leaving Sirius in another dark prison. An expiation's needed, payment for every night Remus slept without thinking of Azkaban.
"I'm here," he whispers while Sirius trembles through nightmares. Unhearing, helpless. "You're not alone."
The Man and the Moon
The sky out here, vast and dark, always comes as a shock. Remus has never seen so many stars, not even at Hogwarts, where Professor Sinistra put an anti-light-pollution charm over the whole grounds.
Not that Greyback's followers look at the stars. In their astronomy, the moon is the center of the universe. They swear their oaths on it; some of them, Remus suspects, are starting to worship it.
Remus hates its vast, sickly face more than ever. But he knows he envies them their joy, their howls.
Note: This is not technically a drabble (it's only 88 words). It was written for Glossolalia's "first lines" challenge, which invited people to write new fic beginning with the first lines of Gloss's stories.
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