Chapter Text
In hindsight, it had been the wrong choice of footwear entirely.
Sirius tries not to wince as the soles of his polished brogues make contact once again with some sort of animal dropping he’d rather not spend any amount of time thinking about. He really had thought this would be easier: park the company car up in a convenient, well-maintained car park, and then a smart walk up a tarmac path to the house. A quick chat with the owner, a signature on the dotted line, and back in London in time for lunch.
It was, Sirius realises now, a fool’s errand, and he detests his father more with each uneven step through the undergrowth as he curses him for sending him out on this assignment. He hadn't even been the firm's first choice: some junior employee had been sent out on Sirius's instruction weeks ago but had got a flat tyre half a mile from the edge of the forest and never made it, which had ended in him being summarily dismissed by their Head of Operations caught in a bad mood one morning. Another worker from Finance had come out a fortnight later but had turned back at the last minute, citing a call from Legal that had apparently instructed him not to go on as the plans had changed; a week-long investigation into the source of the errant information had followed, with no one being any wiser by the end of it and the whole thing had been written off as a prank by some team or other, by which point Orion had lost all patience and, in his ire, had bellowed at Sirius to do the job himself.
"Just get the signature, Sirius," Orion had snapped at him over dinner last weekend. "It's not difficult."
"But why do I have to go?" he'd whined. It all sounded odious; some vast patch of land out in the middle of nowhere, entirely uninhabited save for one solitary dwelling that was preventing the company from taking over the whole lot and letting a client run a private road right through the middle of it, ripe for development and an industrial park and whatever else was going to make the investors lots of capital. All rather ugly, when Sirius thought about it, which he tended not to do because it tended to send him into an existential spiral that required James and, usually, a large bottle of whisky to give him any chance of clawing his way back out. But it was where he was, and he did what he did, and although Sirius couldn't say with any degree of conviction that being a legal attack dog for the family business was bringing him anything even approaching job satisfaction, he truly has never been able to come up with an alternative.
Which is how he finds himself now, standing quite literally at a crossroads, staring dumbly at the map on his phone and wondering how on earth he could've managed to lose a house when it's quite clearly there, right there, at the edge of the forest.
Except, it's not. It was; he’s sure it was. But it's not anymore, and Sirius huffs out an incredulous, disbelieving laugh as he finds the plot is actually marked on his map much deeper into the woods; far off the beaten track, nestled on a promontory jutting out into a river, or stream.
"I'm going insane."
He rubs his eyes, and looks at the map again, and then up at the path forking ahead of him. It looks like he should take the left fork; it looks, on the map, like the left fork should lead him back out towards the western edge of the forest, over a small brook, and then straight up to the house approach. But that's what he thought last time, when he turned left at the broken tree stump and got his pea coat caught on a low, prickly branch that put a hole right through the wool, and it still doesn't look as if he's any closer to reaching the godforsaken place.
"This is ridiculous," he mutters airily to himself, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and striding off down the left fork of the path. The forest is a horrible place; never one for being out in nature as it is, Sirius finds this particular forest exceptionally objectionable, and thinks, actually, maybe it will be a damn sight more pleasant with a good stretch of tarmac running through it. He kicks a small rock in frustration and scowls when it ricochets off a tree and propels itself right back at him, hitting him sharply in his shinbone.
"Awful, awful place," he spits, and looks up ahead, and sees the path forking again. Which it absolutely isn't supposed to be doing. Shaking his head in despair, he pulls his phone back out and opens up his map, and sees that he's apparently now much too far east, as if he'd taken the right-hand fork rather than the left, and now the house isn't sitting on a promontory at all but rather tucked deep in a copse of trees, a stone's throw from a stretch of path Sirius walked down a good half hour ago.
Sirius stops, and closes his eyes, and takes a slow, bracing breath through his nose, and tries to recall precisely how many glasses of wine he had with James last night, because this is ridiculous. Houses don't jump around merrily on maps. Paths don't change spontaneously of their own accord the moment you walk down them. Owls don't scowl at innocent passers-by with genuine, human disdain, but the great tawny owl perched on a bare branch a few paces ahead is doing just that, and actually, Sirius thinks, owls shouldn't be around in the daytime at all - disdainful ones or otherwise - and truly nothing - nothing - about this cursed place is acceptable.
He scowls right back at the bird as he rams his phone into his pocket, and then sets off, and finds himself back at a crossroads, and the map has changed again, and again, and again, and that bloody owl is still following him, and then, rather than feeling the sheer, abject dread that probably should come with finding that one's phone battery is now entirely flat when one is comprehensively lost in the middle of an unfamiliar, ever-changing forest, Sirius instead finds some measure of peace in knowing that at least the map can't trick him again, and it's with a sort of wilful madness that he sets off blindly back into the undergrowth, following his nose, or his instincts, or something.
And it works. He rounds a corner, hops over a small beck, and there it is: the house, as promised, several hours later and at the gut-wrenching expense of Sirius's brogues, smartest wool coat, and, possibly, sanity. It's a crumbling, ramshackle old thing, all broken chimney pots and moss growing over the roof tiles; ferns and tiny, white-capped mushrooms sprouting up through the cracks. There's a window facing out over a small garden, tangled green weeds and wildflowers in a patchwork of colour, climbing the walls and winding in tapestry patterns around the leaded glass panes. It looks more ancient than the forest itself, and Sirius - to his surprise - now feels mildly sick at the thought of turfing out the little old lady who lives inside and bulldozing a road through the place.
He straightens himself and walks purposefully down the overgrown path, adjusting his shirt collar as he raps smartly on the wooden door. It swings open almost immediately, and Sirius blinks in surprise at the face looking out at him across the threshold.
"You made it."
Not a little old lady, then. It's a man; a young man, Sirius's age or thereabouts, but a head or so shorter. He's a blur of freckles and soft, brown curls, full lips and a jagged, white scar darting across one cheek like lightning.
"You... were expecting me?" Sirius hedges uncertainly. There's a crow perched in the rusted guttering above them; Sirius swears it's looking at him funny.
"You'd better come in," the man sighs. He's frowning out at Sirius as if there's some great cosmic puzzle that Sirius isn't seeing and the other man can't unravel. The crow's probably in on it too, Sirius thinks wildly, as he steps across the threshold and into the house.
"It's, erm. It's quite a walk here, isn't it?"
The other man nods, brow still pinched in scrutiny, and he pushes the heavy wooden door shut behind them. "It can be," he says, and Sirius has no idea what that means. "Tea?" the man sighs wearily.
"Thank you," mutters Sirius, and the man wanders off further into the house, down a narrow corridor flanked by walls of dark timber, every space taken up by drawings and sketches in wooden frames, herbs hanging from the ceiling in spriggy bunches and a long, uneven shelf covered in books and papers and jars that Sirius can't make out the contents of. To his left, a doorway leads through to a bright, busy sitting room, and Sirius ducks to mind his head on the low ceiling as he takes in the patchwork sofa, tattered and worn, and end tables topped with more glassware and papers. There's an ancient piano with broken keys pushed up against the far wall, its top decked with half-burnt-out candles, wax running down their brass holders in rivulets and webs, and then the room leads through to a wide, cluttered kitchen, the man from the doorway tinkering in the corner with china cups and an old, brass kettle.
"Did you get our letters?" Sirius says hesitantly, pausing beside a scrubbed wooden table in the middle of the room covered in sketches and torn-up lists and what looks like a map of the forest. There's a scattering of earth strewn over the faded paper.
"No," the man says airily, then turns to offer over a cup of something that Sirius doesn't think is tea. He smiles politely and takes it anyway.
"Right," Sirius nods, and curses Orion again for sending him to this ungodly place as he mentally prepares his sales pitch. "Well, my name is Sirius Black, and I represent Black Industries," he says, clearing his throat and feeling a horrible gnawing in his stomach as the man watches him coolly from across the kitchen. "And I've come to talk to-"
"I know who you are," the man cuts him off, folding his arms across his chest, sleeves of his cotton shirt rolled up to his elbows. His voice is some curious meeting of gentility and absolute, unbreachable strength, with an accent from nowhere and everywhere all at once. "I know why you're here."
"Right," Sirius says again, and takes a sip of his drink. It's strong and bitter; herbal in a way that makes Sirius's nose wrinkle in distaste.
"I imagine you have some papers you'd like me to sign?"
Sirius blinks across at the man in surprise.
"That's right," he says dumbly, not quite daring to believe that it might be that easy after such a hellish journey here. "I just need a signature, and then I can be on my way."
"Okay," the man nods, arms still folded across his chest, and Sirius sets his cup down atop the scattered maps on the kitchen table to reach into his jacket in search of the thick wadded envelope in his inside pocket. His fingers scrabble at the material where the envelope ought to be - where the envelope definitely was when he stepped out of the car - and he feels a surge of despair creep back up on him when he finds the pocket empty save for a pen, his car keys, and an old tissue.
"It's here somewhere," he mutters, patting the other pockets of his coat, and then the back pockets of his trousers and then, for good measure, his inside pocket again. All empty, or thereabouts, and he stares stupidly across the room, half-expecting to see the papers in the man's hands already, as if he might've performed some cruel sleight of hand when he passed Sirius his tea.
"Not there?" the man simply says, and now Sirius fancies he can see a small quirk of a smile pulling at his lips. He feels mad.
"I definitely..." he mutters, still scrabbling inside his pocket futilely, then sighs and takes a deep, bracing breath. "No matter," he says smartly, offering the man a tight smile. "I have them on my phone. Do you have a printer?"
The man looks across at him, leaning back against the counter and crossing one foot casually over the other. "No," he says lightly, which - Sirius thinks - he should've seen coming, because he's not entirely sure the house even has electricity, never mind Wi-Fi, and then: "And I think your phone might be dead, anyway."
Sirius blinks dumbly at him.
"Maybe you should come back another day," the man goes on, and he's definitely smiling now. "With your papers."
The thought of trekking through the forest again next week makes Sirius want to throw himself off a cliff. But then Orion is there over dinner, scolding him and shaking his head in abject disappointment, and Sirius grits his teeth and nods.
"Right," he says, buttoning his ruined coat back up and straightening himself up. "I'll do that."
"You do that," the man says, and Sirius finds him utterly, suddenly infuriating. "Thanks for dropping by."
Sirius knows he's being watched as he walks back down the garden path moments later, tea still bitter on his tongue, and he glances over his shoulder to see the man standing in the doorway of the house, arms folded across his chest again as he leans easily against the doorframe and nods to Sirius with a small, maddening smile, and Sirius scowls at him before stuffing his hands into his coat pocket and trudging back through the treeline. How impossible, Sirius thinks crossly; how infuriating and impossible that man had been, with his smirks and his arrogance and his horrible tea, and Sirius loses himself to his temper long enough to kick out again at an errant stone at the edge of the path, furious with himself and the forest and his father at the prospect of having to make this horrendous journey again. The stone sails off down the trail, and Sirius looks up with a jolt when he hears it connect with something with a loud, metallic clank.
It's the car.
It's his car, parked up there at the edge of his makeshift car park just as he'd left it. But it can't have been more than ten minutes since he left the house, and it took him hours to find it, and he feels a cold grip of panic seize the back of his neck as he wheels around and blinks dumbly back down the path into the forest. It looks innocent enough; the same trees and shrubs opening up at the mouth of the trail to the expanse of the same patch of gravel he'd parked up in that morning, and Sirius can only shake his head in disbelief as he runs an exhausted hand over his eyes and pulls his keys from his pocket. He leans his head against the steering wheel when he clambers into the car, taking a deep, steadying breath, and vows to himself to get an early night. And maybe swear off drinking for a while.
***
It's a week before he makes it back to the forest. Between Orion, catching up on paperwork from his day spent wandering in the woods, and a dispiriting blind date courtesy of James on the Tuesday, he finds himself in, if anything, an even darker mood than he'd been when he first set foot in the place seven days ago. He parks up on the same patch of gravel, and checks his pocket for the fourth time that morning, and finds the thick wadded envelope securely there beside his pen and his fully-charged phone, and he nods firmly to himself in the knowledge that after today he won't have to see this forest or that house or the maddening man inside ever again.
He foregoes the map on his phone in favour of his certainty that last week, all he had to do was walk from the house and keep a straight path forwards to find the entrance to the forest; no turnings, no forks in the road, just straight ahead, following his feet. The path opens up just like he remembers it, tall pines lining the avenue deeper into the woods, and as he makes his way in he takes solace in the fact that nothing seems to have changed at all. No forks have appeared in the track; no crossroads jumping from east to west, no trees realigning themselves when he turns his head, and it's not until he has a hundred paces or so under his belt that he notices it. Something has changed, and it takes him a few moments more to pinpoint what it is. It's the air; there's something in the air that wasn't there before, and the further he walks, the more apparent it becomes.
It's smoke. Not from the forest, as if the trees or the very earth itself is on fire; it's just something in the air, acrid, like melting plastic, sharp and caustic and catching painfully at the back of Sirius's throat. Somewhere between acid and ozone, dense and poisonous and more overwhelming with every step.
He coughs, covering his mouth and nose with a hand. His first thought - absurdly - is to wonder if the man in the house is alright. Perhaps there's been an accident; a gas explosion or something, a spill from a septic tank flooding chemicals and fumes out into the woods. Every shred of logic in him is telling him to turn back, to retreat, to breathe, and yet there's something else - something deeper, more primal, somehow - pushing him forwards, into the swirling, poisonous mist, eyes streaming and coat pulled up around his mouth, doing precious little to filter the noxious air as he stumbles along the trail. The fog is thick and soupy now, the way ahead obscured by some impenetrable haze of black and algae-green until suddenly, mercifully, he's spilling out into the clearing around the ramshackle house again. The air clears, and he coughs, and the man from the cabin is standing at the threshold and looking out at Sirius as if he can't believe what he's seeing.
"You're here," the man says, incredulous.
"Are you alright?" Sirius gasps. He tastes burning on his tongue, and tries not to think about how his new coat is probably going to smell for weeks.
The man lingers in the doorway, frowning across the garden at Sirius. His arms are folded across his chest, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows again. There's dirt under his fingernails.
"What?"
"The smoke..." Sirius says weakly, dragging his eyes away from how the man's full lips are now pouted in distaste, and gesturing at the trees behind him. "Has there been an accident?"
"No," the man says wearily, and then, pushing himself off the doorframe and wandering back inside: "You'd better come in."
And blindly, Sirius does. He ambles, without ever really choosing to, up the garden path, past the roses and the ferns and the little white-capped mushrooms sprouting from the ancient roof tiles, and ducks his head under the low doorframe into the hallway. The man is bustling about in the kitchen again, just like last week, and Sirius follows the noise through the sitting room to find the man at the scrubbed wooden table, pouring something from a great pewter flagon into a clear glass.
"Here," he says flatly, passing the glass to Sirius, who eyes it sceptically as he struggles to catch his breath.
"What it is?"
"Water," says the man, and Sirius fancies there's a hint of a smile pulling at his lips. "Drink it."
Sirius squints at him, taking a cautious sip from the glass, and then closes his eyes in relief as the crystal-clear water soothes his burning throat and seems to chase away the smoke and the sting entirely. He downs the lot, nodding gratefully, and hands the glass back with a tight smile.
"Thanks," he mutters.
"You're welcome," says the man, clearing his throat and padding off towards a deep porcelain sink under a low window. Sirius watches him go; the way his hands flit over the heavy taps as he rinses the glass out. The way his socked feet seem to pad noiselessly across the uneven wooden floor. The way he's standing there, suddenly, back in front of Sirius, eyebrows raised and arms folded once again across his chest.
"So you came back," he says flatly, and Sirius has to shake himself from his reverie.
"I did," he says, drawing himself up to his full height and attempting to smooth back his hair into something presentable. It's dry and chalky from the smoke; he tries not to grimace.
"And you brought your paperwork, presumably," the man presses on, and there's no question in his voice. He's just looking evenly across at Sirius, caught somewhere between boredom and a mild, unbothered sort of amusement.
"I did," Sirius says again, nodding and opening the button on his jacket to slide a hand into his inside pocket. "I did..."
It's empty. There isn't even an old pen, or a tissue in there today; it's completely empty. He stares at the man, wide-eyed, as he frantically scrabbles at the silk lining of his suit, and then pats every other pocket desperately, turning the ones on his coat inside out completely and finding nothing at all, save for his car keys and phone.
"No, I did," he insists wildly, still staring at the man in disbelief, pockets turned-out and useless. "I did. I brought it this week. I had it, in the car..."
The man watches him, and there's a faint pinch of something between his eyebrows that Sirius won't register until later; something that might be sympathy, or regret, but then he's shrugging and shaking his head, and Sirius feels as if he's gone completely mad.
"Must've forgotten it again," the man says, and then he's turning and crossing to the scrubbed table, gathering up the mess there; the pewter flagon, an old book with battered edges and a broken spine, and a hand-turned bowl that Sirius swears leaves tendrils of smoke in its wake as the man moves it over to the counter and dumps it unceremoniously in the porcelain sink.
"I didn't forget it," Sirius says numbly, eventually, and then pulls out his phone as if that might have an answer for him.
A part of him expects it entirely, but the bottom still falls out of his stomach when he sees that the phone - fully charged when he left the car - is now dead.
"Maybe it's just not meant to be," the man is saying, sounding kinder now, as if he might be speaking to an upset child. "Maybe your company should just forget about this place."
"No, it's..." Sirius mutters vaguely, still absently patting his various pockets as if the paper might suddenly reappear, as inexplicably as it vanished. "It's important... my father thinks it's very important that we acquire this land."
"Do you think it's important?"
Sirius looks up and across at the man, blinking dumbly. It's a clear, jarring question; cutting right to the root of all the things Sirius never lets himself think about. About what he's doing. About who he's doing it on behalf of. About how none of this brings him anything other than sleepless nights, worry, and a flat, grey sort of feeling at the end of every day when he realises, alone in his bed, that if he's made any real difference to the world that day it's probably not a good thing, and no one's ever going to thank him, for any of it. Not his father, or anyone in the company, or the smallholders and residents and everyday folk whose lives the firm turns upside down all in the name of a quick profit and expanded portfolios that benefit nobody, in the end, other than Orion and his inner circle. He'd never intended to end up here; doing cold, ugly things at his father's bidding, drafting contracts and agreements so viperous and grey that it's easy - always far too easy - to convince that homeowner they should sign over their land for pittance, or to tempt that growing business into dissolution to benefit some nameless conglomerate to whom Orion owes a favour or a debt. He'd sleepwalked right from school, to university, through graduation and blindly into a job that he hates with every part of him, and all for lack of a better idea at the time; the inspiration he'd been waiting for since he was a boy had never come, and Sirius resents himself a little more each day for it, feeling with every passing glance in the mirror himself - his old self - slip away to something formless and hollow, a shell that Orion can and has so easily begun filling with everything - every dark, insidious thing - that he himself takes pride in being. And there's just never been another path apparent to Sirius; he's longed for one, prayed for one to empty hotel rooms in the dark - anything to steer him, to usher him onward to where he's supposed to be. But it's never come. No paths, or escape hatches. No other options. Just emptiness, and numbness, and now this man blinking across the cluttered cottage kitchen at him, asking him the question he never dares ask himself.
"No," he says eventually, and with it feels some great weight peeling itself from his shoulders, somehow. "No, none of it's important to me."
The man smiles at that; a kind, gentle thing, pulling at his lips and dimpling his scarred cheek.
"Then perhaps," he says, voice soft and final. "We should say no more about it."
Sirius stays for a while after that, and he isn't sure why, but when the man pushes a cup of tea into his hands and offers him a seat on a squashy, blanketed settee in the low-ceilinged living room he doesn't question it, and he sits with him and sips at the herbal drink and doesn't, miraculously, think about the paperwork, or the walk back to the car, or what Orion's going to say on Monday when Sirius still doesn't have a signature. It feels unimportant now, as if saying it out loud has diminished it somehow; Sirius doesn't care at all if the firm doesn't secure the land, and his father already finds him unacceptable and disappointing in every imaginable way, and the rest is just noise. Just static, now; a droning hum in the background that, for the first time in years, is easy enough to push aside and live instead, brightly and clearly, in this little cottage in the woods with the man who makes him tea.
"How's the tea?" the man asks after a while, breaking the comfortable silence of the room.
"It's good," Sirius says, and looks down at his cup in surprise because it is - suddenly - good. It's all hibiscus flower and mint, clear and strawberry-pink in the bottom of the chipped china teacup. "It's very good."
"Good," the man says with a smile, and then, after a sip from his own cup: "I'm Remus."
It's a funny, whimsical sort of name, Sirius thinks; something out of a storybook and the pages of history. It suits him. It also, he notes, with a horrible, sick twisting in his stomach, makes the thought of the firm one day triumphing all the more untenable. It was all very well - in a sense - when the plans involved one vague, unnamed dwelling, inhabited by some aged resident of the forest who perhaps would've fared better in some sort of communal living anyway. But now it's Remus, in the cottage with the white-capped mushrooms sprouting from the gaps between the mossy slates above their heads, and that doesn't feel right at all.
"Have you been here long?" Sirius asks quietly, even if half of him doesn't want to know the answer.
"Ever since I was born," Remus nods, making Sirius feel even worse. "Or thereabouts," he adds. "My grandma lived here. And she raised me from when I was very young."
"That's nice," Sirius says, taking another sip of the honey-sweet tea and trying not to imagine a great armada of bulldozers charging their way through the clearing. He swallows, and tries for a tight smile. "You've never wanted to live anywhere else?"
Remus laughs; a soft, breathy thing, all secrets and riddles, and Sirius finds himself drawn in entirely. "No," Remus says, shaking his head as he smiles across at Sirius. "I could never."
A bird lands on the windowsill at that, perched on the frame outside the mottled blown glass just over Remus's right shoulder. It's a blackbird, Sirius thinks, with beady round eyes and an egg-yolk yellow beak, and Sirius watches it, and Remus watches him, and sips his tea, and Sirius feels like something's passed him by. Some joke he's not a part of yet.
He leaves a while later, thanking Remus for the tea and not, this time, promising to come back the following week with the paperwork. Remus waves him off at the threshold of the cottage again, and Sirius treads the path back into the woods and finds himself - as he suspected he might - back at the car in a few short minutes. He doesn't question it today. He does, out of a sort of mild, unbothered curiosity, check the glove compartment and the back seat of the car to see if the paperwork ended up there somehow, but it's nowhere to be found and that, too, comes as no great surprise to him.
It takes the whole drive back to the city for the taste of the strawberry-pink tea to leave his lips.
***
Orion is livid. There's an ugly, expected fight over lunch that Sunday, with Orion reeling at Sirius over his incompetence and hubris, and Walburga scolding him for his various inadequacies, and Regulus laughing quietly into his glass of wine and making Sirius want to punch him square in the face. There's talk of sending someone else to the woods, and on Monday Sirius hears word of another lackey from Legal heading out of the city with the paperwork and then, as he knew would be the case, there's an internal message sent round the team saying that there's been an accident out on the ring road; nothing serious, just an inconvenience, and the young trainee turns up back at the office the next day with a red face, a dented rear bumper, and a blundering, mumbled apology to Sirius for failing to get the signature. Sirius just shakes his head and goes back to his work, and sips at his tasteless coffee and wishes vaguely that it was the hibiscus tea from the cottage.
He goes back out himself the following weekend and tells himself, with Orion's voice still ringing in his ears, that this is the last time. The paperwork is stowed in duplicate today in his inner pocket and his locked briefcase respectively, his phone fully charged but switched off and tucked away in his jacket, as if that might make a difference. He'd convinced himself, the previous afternoon, that he'd get the job done today and that it would be fine, actually, because Remus would realise - in a last-minute change of heart - that the firm's deal was sound, and that he did want to move away, and he'd sign on the dotted line and Sirius would thank him and tuck the papers back into his pocket and that would be that. They would shake hands, and Remus's long, tanned fingers would curl around Sirius's palm, and he'd feel the grit on his fingertips brush against his skin and watch as the freckles on the back of Remus's hand flexed and shone with his grip. And he'd hung in that moment, inescapably, for most of the evening. It had been another date; another one of James's contemporaries from some bar or other, he isn't sure, and she'd been kind and funny with cherry-red lips and chestnut hair that she twirled prettily round her fingers over Negronis at some place in Soho, and Sirius had been bored to tears the entire time.
He parks up at the edge of the woods as usual, tightens the laces on his boots - brogues ruined entirely from his last two trips - and sets off down the trail, new waxed jacket buttoned up smartly and briefcase tucked under one arm. Birds sing overhead as he treads the now-familiar path, ignoring the forks and the meanders on either side of him, plunging headlong towards where he knows the cottage is and then, as the trail narrows and dark shadows from the pines draw in, the heavens open.
It's a flashing, violent thing; one minute the sky above is a plain sort of grey, flat and featureless, and then it's splitting, and the light seems to disappear entirely, and Sirius slips on the mud as the ground beneath him becomes saturated and marshy, the earth sucking at his every step as he wrenches his boots free. The rain is deafening, hammering on the branches above and the waxed canvas of Sirius's coat, sticking his hair to the back of his neck as he feels cold, rushing rivulets flood down past his collar, soaking his shirt. He pushes forward and blinks against the deluge, trying to see the path ahead, but it's like trying to see underwater; everything's blurred and shifting, raindrops clinging to his eyelashes, rivers now running in torrents around his boots until he slips, again, and he's in freefall.
He'll never know what happened to his briefcase. It slides from his grasp as he falls, spinning off down a bank into the undergrowth, and Sirius throws his hands down into the mire around him as he tumbles after it down the slope. His boots find no purchase, and the sky upends itself as he falls and falls and he'll wonder, later, why his life didn't flash before his eyes; he thinks that's what's supposed to happen, in moments like that, when the earth spins and everything starts to go dark and reality slips away. And then, he'll think glumly, perhaps it did; perhaps his entire life played out, on some canvas before him, and perhaps he just didn't notice. So few and far between are the times in his life that he deems worth recalling that he reasons it is, in fact, entirely possible that he witnessed the whole thing in that moment, in all its dull, grey nothingness, and simply didn't register it happening.
He does register the sharp, sickening crunch when he reaches the bottom of the gully and his ankle finds the immovable face of a small rocky outcrop, jutting up from the mud. He feels his bones shift, and the breath is punched from his lungs in a ragged gasp, and then he's letting out a deep, animal groan at the hot jolts of pain shocking their way up his leg.
"Fuck," he pants, blinking down at his foot. He tries to sit up, to reach and to try prise the sodden material of his trousers from his skin so that he can see the damage. His vision is black at the edges by the time he manages it, hands pale and trembling, and his stomach lurches when he pulls back the fabric to see something small and angular poking out against the skin near his ankle bone. It looks wrong, and unnatural, and Sirius breathes deeply through his nose as he grits his teeth and swallows against the nausea threatening to rise in his throat, and it's only then that he realises the rain has stopped. As quickly as it started, the deluge subsides and the sky clears, and the birdsong returns to the branches overhead as the sunlight streaming through the tree canopy warms his back and dries the mud crusted into the lines of his knuckles and underneath his fingernails.
And then he hears it.
It's his name being called, desperate and ringing, from the treeline up the bank he just tumbled down and when he looks up and squints against the bright daylight now rushing through the woods and down into the gully, he sees it's Remus. Remarkably, inexplicably, it's Remus, hurrying down the hill towards Sirius to stumble to a halt next to him, falling to his knees on the now-dry earth and peering down at his ankle in alarm.
"Oh god," Remus says breathlessly, hands hovering over Sirius's foot, amber eyes wide and panicked. "I'm sorry. Oh god, I'm sorry."
Sirius frowns at him, jaw still clenched against the rising tide of nausea in his stomach.
"What?" he pants, swallowing hard and wincing as a fresh shock of pain shoots up his lower leg.
"Oh god," Remus mutters again, and then seems to war with himself over something. He grimaces, a deep, troubled frown creasing his forehead, and then he's looking around the small clearing searchingly and then back at Sirius's ankle, and then at Sirius himself, biting down on his lower lip in consternation, as if he's on some great precipice and can't decide whether to jump or to turn back.
"It's broken," Sirius says harshly, hands fisted into dry leaves as he lays back and blinks dazedly up at the tree canopy. "It's definitely broken."
"Yes," Remus says, and then he's looking down at Sirius again, and a long moment passes between them. The blackbirds sing overhead, and the sun still streams down into the gully, and Sirius watches Remus through vision dotted with static, his ankle throbbing and his stomach turning every time he fancies he can feel the bones grind against each other.
And then Remus nods.
"Okay," he says, still breathless, and then he turns to Sirius's shattered ankle and - carefully, and so slowly - peels the fabric of his trousers away from the skin. "Okay."
"What are you doing?" Sirius murmurs. His tongue feels heavy and big in his mouth.
"Just..." Remus says, hovering his hands over Sirius's leg. Sirius thinks they might be trembling. "Okay."
He won't remember, later, if he actually felt Remus touch him. He won't recall the feel of his hands, or his fingers on the ugly, jutting bone and the taut skin that was already beginning to purple and bruise around it. All he'll remember is the heat of it; some warm, glowing ember that seems to start deep in his tendons and radiate, hot and rushing and golden through his flesh and his skin and the very bones of him, and then an electric spark as something inside himself knits back together, some small tapestry of veins and marrow finding its way back to where it used to be, back to something whole, and healed. There's a lightness to it all, as if Sirius might look down and see his skin aglow with some ethereal blaze, but when he finally feels the surge of energy that has him pushing himself up to his elbows, and finding his vision clear and bright again, it's to see his ankle covered back over with the fabric of his trouser leg, and Remus knelt with his head bowed, hands balled into fists in his own lap.
It's a long moment before either of them speak. Remus holds himself rigidly there, eyes still averted, and Sirius watches him, his mind entirely blank and raging with a thousand different questions, all at once.
"What," Sirius says finally, swallowing and tasting electricity and copper on his tongue, "was that?"
And then Remus does look at him, and there's something pulling at his eyes; something afraid, or regretful, and he's pushing himself up and taking a step away from Sirius, a distracted hand running through his hair and making it stand on end comically.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, and Sirius frowns.
"Why do you keep saying that?" he says, and then glances down at his ankle. He flexes it experimentally, tipping his foot side to side in his boot, and finds no pain at all. If anything, he thinks, it feels freer than it did before, the muscle loose and fluid like after a good stretch, or a glass of whisky.
Remus has wandered off now, a few paces down the clearing from Sirius, still running a hand distractedly through his hair as he stares off into the middle distance. Sirius watches him and then, carefully, pushes himself up to standing. He sets some weight on his ankle experimentally and finds it holds, and he takes a slow, tentative step, and then another, and then he's looking down the gully at Remus and shaking his head in wonder.
"I don't understand," he says stupidly. He looks down at his foot again, and the way he ankle looks normal and untwisted. "I don't get it."
Remus sighs, and looks over at him.
"I'm sorry."
And at that, Sirius feels the pieces of something start to come together. Some great puzzle; the joke he wasn't a part of. There's the winding paths of the forest, the cottage that loses itself in the woods and the old maps laid out on Remus's scrubbed table, strewn with dirt. How no one finds their way here, except Sirius. There's the acrid smoke and how it wound its way down his throat, and then that bowl of something that same day; that old mortar in Remus's kitchen, leaving tendrils of fog and ash in its wake. And then Remus, standing there across the clearing, hands twitching by his sides and apologising to him, and the way Sirius's ankle feels warm, and glowing.
"The rain," Sirius says dumbly. "Did you do that?"
It's a preposterous question. No man can control the weather; no one on this earth can summon storms, bring in great rolling banks of clouds and command the heavens to open, soaking the ground and conjuring rushing torrents of mud, rivers of rainwater washing away the scree and the detritus of the forest floor. No person in this world could do that.
But perhaps Remus can.
He's looking back at Sirius now, still lost and distracted, and then he's shrugging and nodding his head.
"Yes," he says quietly. Sirius holds his breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to fall, I just-"
"It was all you, wasn't it?" Sirius says, cutting him off. "The paths, and the smoke? It was all you."
"Yes."
"How?" Sirius says flatly, frowning. He barks out a sharp, manic laugh that makes Remus flinch. "How was it you?"
Remus shakes his head. "Sirius, it's just-"
"No," Sirius interrupts him again. "No, you have to explain this to me, Remus."
He thinks, in that moment, that he must be going mad. He hit his head in the fall, he reasons, and something shifted inside his brain, and now he's on the other side of his own sanity and he's talking to a man who can apparently command the elements, and the only possible explanation for any of it is that he's gone mad. And actually, he reasons, maybe that's fine; maybe that's better, in fact, than trudging back to the car, defeated for another week, and driving back to the grey city and sitting back in his grey office and waiting for the onslaught he knows will be coming from his horrible father when he finds out Sirius has once again failed. Maybe this is better than all of that, and he can't bring himself, yet, to worry too much about it. Let me go mad and live in the woods, he thinks. Let me just stay here and lose my mind in peace.
"Alright," Remus says quietly, after an age. He's moving then, treading through the sea of dry leaves to the very bottom of the gully, where a small beck babbles happily over rocks and pebbles in a narrow riverbed. He falls to his knees beside it, and looks back at Sirius over his shoulder before leaning forwards over the water and slipping both hands below the surface. Sirius takes a step towards him, frowning, and watches as the clear water meanders around Remus's wrists, crystalline and smooth as glass, and then Remus is bowing his head and saying something that Sirius can't hear. The water stills at that; freezes as if caught in some great gust of icy air, and Sirius flinches as he feels something land in his hair, fat and wet and cold. He looks up to find darkened clouds above the tree canopy, and then the sky is raining down on him again, running in rivulets over his upturned face. None of it makes sense; none of it makes any sense whatsoever, and Sirius is more certain with every raindrop that he's gone entirely mad, but he finds, wondrously, that he's never felt freer. He feels wild, primal and beautiful and Dionysian, as if he's suddenly been shown how to breathe for the first time in his life.
He laughs, madly, and opens his eyes in time to see Remus pulling his hands from the stream. The rain stops, and the skies clear, and Remus stands there quietly on the riverbank with his hands tucked into his pockets, teeth nibbling at his bottom lip as he waits for Sirius to speak.
"I still don't get it," Sirius says, but he finds he's smiling now, and shaking his head at Remus in wonder. "I don't get it at all."
"Me neither," Remus shrugs, nudging at a pebble with his boot. "It just is."
"And my ankle?"
Remus shrugs again, one side of his mouth quirking up into a smile to match's Sirius's. "The least I could do. I really didn't mean for you to fall."
"You just don't want anyone coming here."
"Basically."
Sirius nods at that, and knows - if he didn't before - that Orion will never get this land. Whether it's Sirius blocking the path himself or Remus building his fortresses of smoke and rainstorms and twisting, changing paths, Orion will never win, and the thought brings him such joy that he finds himself wishing he had the stack of paperwork in his hand if only to tear it up and ask Remus to set it on fire.
He laughs again then, and nods in realisation.
"The paperwork," he says, and Remus grimaces comically. "That was you, too."
"Yeah," Remus shrugs, smiling in apology. "Sorry."
"I thought I was going mad," says Sirius. "I still think I'm going mad."
"You're not. I promise."
They lapse into a silence then, Remus still toeing at the pebble by his shoe and Sirius gazing across at him, caught at the apex of wonder and bemusement and the sheer, fantastic delirium coursing through him at the thought of being here, in a forest, with a man capable of such wild and beautiful alchemy. He seems on edge now, though, as if waiting for Sirius's judgement; waiting for him to run for his life, perhaps, into the trees and out the other side and straight to tell the church or the police or the village locals with pitchforks. But there's no part of Sirius that feels afraid. He feels safe, and right, here in this hollow in the woods; he understands none of it and yet everything, everything about this makes such wonderful, blinding sense to him that he feels he might die if doesn't stay here, if he doesn't see more, learn more, know more, and he isn't sure if it's the woods that are taking him in, or Remus himself, or perhaps that quiet, innate instinct that pulled him through the forest to the cottage in the first place. Perhaps it's all three.
It's Sirius who speaks first.
"You haven't got any more of that tea, have you?"
Remus's answering smile is magic.