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Remus found it unfair to feel that way, and he felt stupid for believing it was unfair. He was in pain, but it was a pain so deep and rooted that he wasn't sure it would ever go away. It lightened at times but always lingered there. So he ran that icy blade across his skin one, two, three, four times, and then he lost count until he found himself simply bleeding from random parts of his body, abandoned in the shadow of himself, sitting on the bathroom floor.
He had lain in the tub filled with hot water and let time and space mock him, crushing him under their weight. His heart bled more than his wounds, and his senses dulled.
«Remus!» someone shouted from outside the locked door of the room. But the voice sounded distant, unclear, and so insignificant— though not as insignificant as Remus himself. A speck in the universe.
He burst into hysterical laughter, loud and uncontrollable.
«What the hell are you doing?» This time, he didn’t even hear the voice.
His laughter turned into muffled screams, drowned by desperate sobs. Everything was so confusing, so absurd, and surreal. There was the tub filled with water and blood, his body torn apart by a blade—a reflection of the shattered soul within him—and a space around him that was simultaneously too vast and too small. He wanted to get up and start running, but he felt his strength falter. He was weak. He always believed he was weak. He had started cutting himself when the awareness of his weakness had intoxicated his mind and clouded his vision. He wavered between the conviction that he was insane and the certainty that he was stupid, though usually, he was simply convinced he was a stupid madman.
When had he stopped making sure to eat, drink, and sleep? There had been a day, one evening when James had asked him if he'd eaten or slept, and he'd laughed, joking that he couldn't remember. But then, was he insensitive or too sensitive? He had never figured it out, and so he ended up making millions of hollow promises to everyone he met, only to forget them and stumble over them when reminded. He wallowed in the hope of being a naive little boy, given that he'd been raised to be a mature man.
«Remus, open the door!» The shouted plea reached the young man drowning in the agony of existence like a faint whisper.
«I would, but I've lost the ability to do so,» he replied in a tone he couldn’t define. He wasn’t listening to himself, believing no one should have to.
Then the door miraculously opened. He turned and started laughing again, dissolving the tears from earlier with the acid of apathy.
«Sirius! What are you doing here?» For him, it was all so normal that he hadn’t considered that the large bloodstains on the floor, his shredded skin, and his hysteria might be something unusual.
«What the hell have you done? Get up immediately!» Sirius said, but Remus only heard fragments, his ears as muffled as his mind.
«I can't.» Those words rattled in his mind enough to make him cry again, words escaping his mouth that he didn’t even know he had in him.
He felt a pair of arms lifting him, and as his feet tried to support him, he thought his thoughts were more unstable than his body. He chuckled at the absurdity.
«I'm fine, darling. It’s nothing. Put me down,» he said to Sirius, already weary of the outside world bothering him again. He preferred when his mind was the one administering the poison of life.
Sirius replied, but Remus wasn’t paying attention. He was already in the future, one where he repeated the same miserable mistakes of the past and tripped over their consequences. He was walking—or at least Sirius was dragging him along. He remembered wearing clothes, but it was only a short-sleeved shirt and sweatpants rolled up to his knees. He felt something dripping from his body and wondered if it was his personality or just blood.
He realized he was probably already out of the bathroom, leaning on Sirius, which meant he was staining him. So he pushed the other boy away, saying something like, «Stop, I’m getting you dirty.»
«Remus shut up and stay still for a moment so I can treat you. You're bleeding out,» Sirius replied as he cautiously approached. But Remus wasn’t sure if Sirius was speaking—he feared he was hearing voices, the same ones that deemed it right to carve his flesh into slices.
There was something so ridiculous about the situation that Sirius felt like crying while Remus laughed uncontrollably.
«Oh, come on, stop it and have a laugh! Even if I die, what would you lose? Haven't they told you not to waste time on lost causes? Look at me! Look at me! Don’t you see how lost I am?» He was nearly shouting as he lay on the ground, repeating those words.
His head spun, heavy and disoriented. Maybe this was the time he’d pass out and never wake up.
«If you need them, I did the History homework. Or maybe I dreamed it; you check,» he said as he saw Sirius approaching, slightly panicked.
«Shut up!» And once again, he wasn’t sure if someone had said it or if it was his inner despair speaking.
His body was wracked with hysterical sobs as he lost consciousness.