#obvious stolen bits from

Remus takes Sirius’ scars away from him. The ones you could see, anyway. [slight AU]

cw: scars, past injuries, implied child abuse

Sirius ran away from home at age thirteen, midsummer. The first time Remus saw him after was in a corner of the Potters’ garden. 

James told him about how Sirius stumbled from the Knight Bus to their front door, clothes soaked through with rain. And blood. The only thing he had on him was his wand. He’d all but collapsed once they got him inside, sending Euphemia into a frenzy trying to heal the gashes that were all over his skin.

Remus found him in the garden, and sat down next to Sirius on the grass, just on the edge of the shade Sirius was hunched under. He must have spied Remus coming, but made no indication to acknowledge him besides burrowing his head further into his knees. Remus had never, never seen him so beaten down, so small. He tried to place a hand on his shoulder, Sirius flinched away.

“You never wore long sleeves in the summer.” Remus said.

“Mrs. Potter did say the sun wouldn’t help the scars healing.”

From his hand white knuckled around his knees, Remus could see the pink lines of recent scars reaching into the sleeves of the sweater.

“You could show me.” Remus said.

Sirius shook his head without lifting it, somehow drawing even more into himself. There was a strange ache in Remus’ chest, and he reached for Sirius’ hand with his, prying loose a thumb and curling his fingers around it. The two of them sat there silent in the long summer grass, until Sirius’ fingers loosened, and started to brush across the thin raised lines of scars on the back of Remus’ own hand. 

“You could show me.” Remus said again.

And then, slowly, wordlessly, Sirius lifted his head while peering at Remus like a scared small animal. 

His eyes were red, his hair a mess clinging to the frame of his forehead. And there were one, two angry-looking gashes across his face and down his cheek. It was the sort of scars Remus knew by looking would stay long after it fully healed. Sirius didn’t let go of Remus’ hand, still clutched against his knee, as he watched Remus watching him. Until eventually, he let out a watery chuckle.

“Thanks for not crying on me.” Sirius said, sniffling and forcing a smile.

Remus tugged at his arm, for Sirius to turn and face him. Remus took both Sirius’ hands in his, as he finally let his knees fall from his chest.

“May I?” Remus asked, thumbing at the loose sleeves of the sweater. 

Sirius nodded, letting Remus push the sleeves up his arm, revealing the criss-cross that jarred against Sirius’ smooth pale skin. He knew Sirius was staring between his and Remus’ own exposed arms, weighing up each of their marks of torn flesh, from claws and curses.

Look at us, Remus wanted to say, what a matched set we are. But it’s not the same. An unnamed horror was growing behind his throat and he tried not to imagine a mother who’d do this to her thirteen year old son.

“Your scars don’t change who you are.” Remus said.

Sirius looked away.

“Your scars don’t change who you are. It’s what you said to me, remember?”

“But they do.” Sirius said, barely a breath, “They made me like this, my, my family—”

“They are not your family,” Remus said fiercely.

Sirius gave him one short, grateful side glance, before it broke with a breathless sob choked into a cough. “How dare they— They want me to never forget, never ever really get away from them— And I can’t. I can’t let them mark me like this—”

Remus didn’t think he’d said this to anyone else. James had grabbed him aside, eyes full terrified and full with worry, asking him to please, try and talk to him, he wouldn’t tell me anything. 

“Moony, it hurt so much. And I— how could I be saying this to you when you have to go through this every month—”

“No, Sirius, stop, it’s not the same.”

“And I can’t even sleep, I keep having dreams. And I can’t tell James about it with the way he looks at me. He told me how in the end they’re family, and that meant they must still care—”

“Sirius, James got it wrong, he didn’t understand—”

Sirius shook his head. A bunch of thirteen year-olds, what did any of them understand?

“I still don’t— Remus, even Reg—”

Remus pulled him forward, held him tight.

“What if,” Sirius said against his shoulder, as if confessing a worst fear, “what if they’d really broken me, made me a monster just like them?”

Remus felt his eyes sting. He clutched Sirius even tighter by way of answer. He wished the caress of sun and soft winds could take all the scars and hurt away, but they didn’t make him feel any less helpless. It was such a bright day, with only plums of clouds crowding the edge of the open, too-bright sky. Somewhere, the pale arc of a moon hung drowned out by all the light. Remus could feel Sirius’ shoulders shaking in his arms, hurting. Let me, he thought, let me carry it instead, but there was nothing, nothing Remus could do to ease any of his pain.

Though perhaps. There was perhaps something.

Remus softly drew back, hands sliding down Sirius’ arm, drawing his attention with the deliberate motion. He could feel the swirling in his chest, a burning urge to heal, to ease, to take away the hurt— and felt it focus in the magic between his fingers. Quietly he reached out, traced with a thumb over a still-healing mark that began on the inside of Sirius’ wrist. And following the warm trail of his finger, the scar sizzled, dissolved away. 

Sirius’ eyes widened, “how did you— even Effie couldn’t—”

Then it reappeared, tracing its way up along Remus’ arm. His brows tightened a little at the prickle of pain that accompanied the scar, now looking silvery and aged, etching into his skin.

“No— no!” Sirius gasped, “What are you doing?”

“They can’t mark you. They don’t get to, Sirius. I could carry this for you”, he said. Because they were young, young enough to care for each other with a kind of bottomless, unabashed sincerity. But old enough to see that their friendship with each other was the purest thing they had in their life, to really mean it when they said ‘I’d do anything for you’. To Remus at thirteen, this all made perfect sense.

“It doesn’t matter. The scars don’t matter at all.” Remus said, bolder now. He traced another scar, relocating it from Sirius to him. His own arm barely looked any different, there were already so many lines on his skin.

“Remus,stop.”

“You said my scars don’t change me, or how you see me.”

“No, of course not, but—”

“But it changes how you see yourself.”

Sirius fell silent. He looked at Remus pleadingly without quite knowing what he was pleading for.

“I— Remus, that doesn’t mean you should take my scars—”

“Shh. I need to concentrate for this one. Don’t move.” Remus said, as his hands moved up to cup Sirius’ chin.

Tears started gathering again in Sirius’ eyes, though he didn’t move to stop Remus, “Why are you doing this? Why?” 

Because they were thirteen, and didn’t know that lines on the body didn’t matter. Or they didn’t know how much they mattered. 

“Sirius, listen,” With a thumb, Remus wiped away the tear just slipping out, and started tracing the scar that began just under the eye, “When you met a boy covered with scars, you tried to help him though everyone else would have thought him a monster. You gave him friendship and kindness and love and it’s so much more than he deserved—” 

“—No, Remus you—”

“Shh. It’s fine. You don’t have to say all that.” He moved his thumb to the second scar, just across the cheek. A trail of tingles was making its way across his face too. 

“The way you stand up for your friends, stand up to your cousins, your parents— You are the bravest boy I know.” He finished, hands falling to his sides.

And Sirius didn’t say anything for a long while, his gaze barely daring to waver from his eyes, flickering with a thousand emotions. He looked scared and all kinds of overwhelmed all at once. Then, slowly, he lifted a hand to Remus’ cheek, tracing where the new scar appeared. 

Remus had almost surprised himself with how much he said, he was never the one with words. But it’d always been Sirius who brought it out of him. When Remus moved his arm to hold Sirius’ hands, they snapped to catch his.

There was no point denying what he’d done. No point second guessing why he did or if he should have done. Clearly, Sirius wasn’t going to let him do it anymore as well.

So with a sad little smile, Remus squeezed his hands before quietly standing and slipping away.

-

When Euphemia caught him, brows creasing from seeing Sirius’ scar on his face, Remus pursed his lips and shrugged a little.

“Please don’t be mad at Sirius, Mrs. Potter. It was me who wanted to do it.”

-

It was near sundown when Sirius came inside and found him. 

“Remus!” he called out, rushed over, and caught him in the tightest embrace.  And years from then Remus might look in the mirror and wonder— wonder. The marks they left the promises they etched deep into the mind and the tiny ways they carried and broke each other. But now, with his nose buried in Sirius’ hair, Remus could just see the brilliant sunset beyond the window, and the slip of moon that was starting to glow.