(no subject)

[grimsirius.livejournal.com]

Time: July 13, 2000
Place: Bar
Status: Public (Complete)
Summary: Sirius comes out of hiding.



When the heat, the tangle of heavy blankets, and the sweat running down his legs became too much, Sirius woke up. He could see the darkness behind the skin of his eyelids, and he clenched his eyes shut until he managed to stop his hands shaking. When he opened them, finally, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. There were strange shadows on the floor, and after a few seconds of blinking the rough outline of his hand was clear before his eyes. It wasn’t complete darkness, just the darkness of being alone in his room after night had fallen and Remus had left for work.

He hadn’t had to wake like this for some time. Lately, he’d been sleeping during the day when he slept at all, and prowling the grounds or the little town around the manor at nights. He would have preferred to sleep away the times between sunsets and sunrises, but Remus worked nights, and the fear and nausea brought on by the darkness and shadows was nothing compared to not having Remus for the nightmares or those first, terrifying seconds after waking but before his memory returned. Besides, the darkness was easier to ignore in the dog’s world of smells and sounds and fuzzy sights.

The dreams were bad tonight. Sirius waved a hand to turn on the lamp at his bedside and began to rummage through the dresser drawers for the half-empty bottle of firewhiskey he knew was around somewhere, but changed his mind. He wanted to get drunk, but not in the creaky, empty bedroom. He wanted smells and noise and light and laughter and Remus, damn it. Remus had left him for work again, but Sirius was sure if he could find him, he could get Remus to come back upstairs with him. Only Remus was working, and he might get angry if Sirius went and bothered him, and Sirius didn’t know what he’d do if Remus hated him.

There was a bar downstairs, if Sirius remembered it correctly. He’d seen it sometimes on his way out of the manor. It had looked pricey, and truth be told he didn’t want to know anyone in the manor—people who wanted to get to know him better tended to ask a lot of questions he never had the answers to. But maybe if he went there, Remus would see him, and would leave work early and come upstairs and be with him. He allowed himself a small smile at the thought—his friend was so caring sometimes and really might do that.

He pulled on Remus’ worn old jeans and a black shirt that Remus bought him to go out in (he smiled again as he shrugged it over his bony shoulders). There were a few muggle coins in his pocket, and Sirius didn’t think they were worth much but he didn’t know where Remus kept the rest of the money. He closed and locked the door behind him, and crept down the halls and stairways until he reached the bar, careful to stay in the shadows so no one would try to talk to him.

When he reached the bar, he blinked a few times in the brighter light, and sat on one of the barstools. He didn’t look the bartender in the eye, but took the coins out of his pocket and put them on the table. There were six golden ones, and four silver ones in different sizes and shapes.

“Give me the strongest drink I can get for this,” he said, glancing towards the doorway in case Remus walked by.

Comments

[grimsirius.livejournal.com]

“Workin’ for you?” asked Sirius, somewhat surprised. Lucius Malfoy’s only son was working for an unknown man staying at a small, mostly muggle hotel in a small town in the English countryside? The boy should have had no trouble gaining a high ranking position at the Ministry, a place among the Death Eaters, or a cell in Azkaban by now. Sirius wondered whether this development said most about Draco, the Wizarding World, or Crowley. The man he’d been talking to could be far more influential in the Wizarding World these days than Sirius had suspected—he knew a lot had changed since his death, and Remus always changed the subject when Sirius had questions—or the Malfoys could have become a whole lot less influential in the last five years.

Still, Sirius suspected he might be a little drunk, as he couldn’t find it in him to be suspicious. Crowley seemed like an okay sort, a generalization that would currently encompass anyone who was buying drinks. “Well, you seem to have me at a disa...disad…” He paused and squinted. “I don’ know who you are,” he concluded. Then, he picked up his glass, frowned, realizing it was empty, and poured it full again.

"Haven' kept ‘n touch the past few years,” he added. “’Cause I was dead.” He chuckled and shook his head as though this was really funny, but the laughter turned hollow quickly, and he blinked his eyes a few times and gulped down some scotch.

“Horrible,” he whispered, and although he was looking at his glass, it was clear he didn’t mean the scotch.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, working for me," said Crowley, bemused by the play of reactions across Sirius' face. "There was a scandal involving his father - something about a goblin fetish and a surprise pregnancy - and the kid ended up in a cult after running away from school. I... rescued him, I guess you could say, and gave him a job. He had some particular skills I was looking for." Lying, spying, and mischief making. Good talents for a demon-in-training. He suspected that Sirius wouldn't be bad at it either. If the man were capable, willing, bored and/or broke, Crowley thought he could find some work for him, too.

Taking a sip of his drink, he said, "I told you who I am. Anthony Crowley. Temporarily in exile, I'm pretty much stuck here for my own protection. You wouldn't believe the rest of it, although having been dead, you just might. What was that like anyway?"

[grimsirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius allowed himself a few moments of grim satisfaction after hearing about the Malfoy’s downfall. It seemed that the Black lineage had finally come down to the disgraced Malfoys, a disowned and likely mad son who was never planning to reproduce, and the halfblooded Nymphadora Tonks. It was times like this that Sirius almost wished his mother was still alive.

Crowley’s question took him by surprise. He hadn’t talked about his time behind the veil with anyone. Remus had never asked, managing to sense as he always did that it wasn’t a welcome subject for discussion. Merely thinking about it brought the darkness creeping back along the edges of Sirius’ consciousness. The terror, the emptiness, and the knowledge that someday, no matter what he did, he would go back, was too much to handle.

He shook his head, not sure if he was doing it in response to Crowley, or to try and shake the darkness from his mind. “It was…” he shuddered, and felt surprisingly sober as he tried to think how to start. “Dark. Not normal dark. Nothing at all. Not even enough of me to…” His voice broke, slightly. He wasn’t going to start crying to a stranger he met in a bar, but he couldn’t stop the way his hands shook against the countertop. The bar was dimly lit, but the void at the edge of his consciousness was creeping across his vision. It was going to devour him completely, until there was nothing left.

“No,” he whimpered.

[-moonylupin-.livejournal.com]

It was late, dark, when Remus left, five-fifteen in the morning. He left a note for Uriel, The dining hall was long closed, but the coloured glow from the bar showed people still up, a voice still talking.

He heard well, heard a vaguely familiar voice - Mr. Anthony Crowley, presumably, from the front desk records. Or, more notably, the one he had accidentally caught with Mr. Fell not so very long ago.

"...that like anyway?"

Stunned, the wizard stopped in the entrance of the bar, and watched Sirius Black think about that answer. No, it was not think, he felt that answer, and Remus felt the hair on his arms raise as Sirius spoke.

He couldn't move if he'd wanted to, the sight was horrifying - how does one recover from death? This was a place Remus couldn't follow him to, couldn't save him from. But perhaps... he could help now.

Remus could try.

"Sirius," he choked, walking forward. "Sirius, Sirius, don't think about that." He wrapped thin hands into open, lax, unresponsive hands, looked into eyes that were unseeing. "Look at me. You're alive."

He glanced at the dark-haired fellow across from him, still clutching the shaking Sirius. "I'm terribly sorry, he's been a bit fragile since the ordeal. I should take him to bed."

[grimsirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius was trying to focus on the dim ceiling lamp hanging above him. The orange light might have seemed eerie to some, but the shadows and flickering lights were an anchor holding him to the waking world. He knew the darkness wasn’t real because he was terrified—in the real void, his own consciousness had been taken away from him to the point that he could no longer feel such individualized emotions as terror—but he also knew that if the dark by his mind took him, he would never return. This wasn’t the worst attack he’d ever had, though. He could still sense Crowley, and he still had enough sense to care about what an arse he was making of himself.

He felt Remus grasp his hands, and let his friend’s reassuring voice wash over him. He buried his face, body still shaking uncontrollably, against Remus’ neck. “Oh. Remus,” he said in a hollow voice. “Oh. Thank God.” He quickly abandoned his taxing struggle with his mind, confident that Remus could take care of the rest of it. Childlike and trusting, although still shaking, he let Remus lead him off to bed.