Stigmata
1. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
When Sarah Gardiner asks about the scar beside his left eye, James laughs and spins a yarn about secret, late-night kitchen raids and exploding magical crockery. When Diane Caruthers offers to kiss it and make it better, James eagerly accepts.
When Lily Evans finally gets close enough to notice, James is too flustered to come up with a good lie, because she smells so nice and her hair is even softer than expected as he wraps it around his fingers in awe.
"No doubt you and Black were doing something stupid," she says, but her smile is indulgent and her lips warm when she kisses the scar. His eyelids flutter shut and she glides her lips over one and then the other, and he remembers...
Cool night air, everything sharp and clear, no need for glasses. Dog to his left, flanking the wolf, and the rat perched between his antlers as they run.
It feels like flying or like sex -- the same rush of power in his body, clarity in his mind, unbridled joy and freedom, when the only thing that matters is the chase.
The wolf stops, muzzle raised, scenting the air. The stag moves closer, sharing a glance with the dog, warning pricking along his nerves.
The wolf howls and bats the stag out of the way, clipping him in the face so blood runs free. Then the wolf takes off like a shot, unexpected and quick.
The dog bounds after, through the underbrush, and he follows, head lowered to keep from tangling in the trees. His eye stings, but they have to find the wolf before any real damage is done.
Remus was, of course, terribly apologetic the next morning, but James waved him off.
"Girls love scars," he'd said carelessly, and in his case, he was right.
"Yeah," he answers Lily now, before bringing her lips to his.
He never lies about it again.
2. I want your touches to scar me so I'll know where you've been.
Each mark has a story, and on the days when he is lucid, Sirius tells those stories to himself over and over. They are not generally happy stories, so the dementors haven't stolen them away, though there was a time when each scar was turned into a mark of love, dedication, devotion by the touch of Remus's hands and lips.
Now everything he remembers is darkened with guilt and regret. He recalls Remus's shame at the network of scars crisscrossing his body like the map to some lost treasure only Sirius could find, remembers trying to make Remus feel better by showing off his own scars: the one on his chin from a fall as a toddler, the one on his side when he was knocked off his broom by a bludger and the broken rib poked through. Remus's stoicism inspired him to bear the pain, then and now.
When he left home for good, he didn't allow Mrs. Potter to heal the welts on his back, the last display of his father's heavy-handed displeasure written on his skin. He wanted the scars as proof that he was different from his family. Better. Stronger.
He remembers the marks Remus used to leave on his skin after long nights spent kissing and petting in the warm darkness of his bed. Remus was horrified at first, afraid he'd hurt Sirius, but Sirius wanted to be marked, to be owned, wanted to let the world know to whom he belonged; he had reveled in the tangible evidence of their love.
Now, the thought of those kisses and touches cuts him like a whip. He'll never have them again, even if he is released from this hell. He won't deserve them.
Sometimes he's scared he'll forget, and he uses his nails and teeth to carve reminders of his innocence, his guilt, his love and his hate, into his withering flesh and dirty skin.
It is only by his scars that Sirius recognizes Wormtail in the paper when Fudge shows up in Azkaban one day, so many years later, and he realizes his chance to avenge James and Lily has come at last.
3. I want you to know that the wounds are self-inflicted.
He never ceases to be fascinated by the hand. It is not his hand, nor does he think of it as such. It is his master's hand, and he is simply the means by which his master's will is carried out.
His scars are self-inflicted, always: the Dark Mark when he finally made his choice, the finger he left behind on the street in his moment of glory, finally allowed to gloat about outwitting Sirius and James, and now his hand, cut off to bring the Dark Lord back.
As a rat, he never really missed his finger, but even in animal form, he's aware that this silver appendage is foreign, other, and he worries that someday it may take on a life of its own.
Sometimes he wakes crying, gibbering, begging for forgiveness from people he hasn't thought of as friends for almost fifteen years. He'd almost felt sorry for Remus back then, betrayed and alone, but he knows that Remus hasn't spared a thought for him since the night the truth came out. No doubt Sirius has him bent over a table right now and --
Peter lets the silver hand glide down his body, stroking and teasing. It's easy to imagine someone else is touching him when he uses it, though nobody has in years. Life as a pet rat doesn't include a lot of shagging, and he has thirteen years to make up for.
He is panting, so close to release, when the voice that haunts his nightmares breaks his concentration.
"Wormtail! Your arm."
He jerks the hand out from beneath his robes and snaps to attention, offering his arm to his master, the way he has offered everything else.
Voldemort taps his wand to the mark and Peter has to exert every ounce of control he has not to come as the mark burns black. He relishes the pain, because only through pain will he achieve any sort of power, and power is the only thing he has left.
4. One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still.
It burns and he hates it, would carve it out with a knife if he could, if Dumbledore allowed it (Someday, Severus. Someday.). But he can't, so he lives with it, a permanent reminder of his naiveté, his choices, his failures.
He remembers a time he thought it was beautiful, was proud of it, thought it would make all his childish dreams of power and recognition come true.
All it brought him was yet more humiliation and pain, two things of which he's always had a surfeit.
He hides it now, beneath the sleeve of his robes, but he sees them staring, feels their eyes on him at Order meetings, and it makes bile rise in his throat. It is a motley, gormless crew Dumbledore has put together, made up of outcasts, freaks, fugitives and blood traitors. And all of them watch him, waiting for him to falter, to betray them as he betrayed Voldemort. He is not a true believer, and they know it; he has heard them questioning his motives, his allegiance, even the information he provides.
He lives on sufferance, only sure of his welcome among them as long as Dumbledore needs him. Dumbledore's trust and support are almost as heavy a burden as his own regret and Voldemort's suspicion.
(I understand, Severus. I believe you. I trust you.)
He wishes there were comfort to be found in those words, but there is no comfort for the likes of him these days, serving two masters and walking a very careful line between them.
The mark burns and he prepares, clearing his mind and steeling his body for the long night ahead. He has grown used to the pain -- the wounds have had years to fester, and no others are visible on his skin -- but some small part of him, not yet immune to hope, still wishes it would end.
Finally, he Apparates, and attends Voldemort. He plays his role to the hilt, even as his skin crawls with loathing for them all, and for himself.
5. And the moon, / under its dark hood, / falls out of the sky each night, / with its hungry red mouth / to suck at my scars.
Even magic has its limits.
Remus has heard the words more times than he can count, first from the healers at St. Mungo's the morning after he received the bite, and then for years after from his mother, Dumbledore, Madame Pomfrey -- the list is endless.
The scars are old now, white and faded against his skin, a map of where he's been and who he has become, engraved on flesh and bone.
Of course, the deepest scars aren't visible, aren't even physical; thirteen years of suspicion and mistrust, loneliness and despair leave a mark that even time won't heal, and time is the one thing he and Sirius haven't got, and never had.
Sirius is gone now, more irrevocably than before, but only after rekindling hope and reopening old wounds, leaving Remus to put himself together again, like he has after every full moon since he was six. Sometimes he thinks he is nothing but a patchwork of scars, inside and out, more Humpty Dumpty than big, bad wolf.
Sirius had worn his scars with pride, called them the story of his life carved into his body, and he'd tried to convince Remus to feel the same. Remus had never quite believed it, though he'd learned every inch of Sirius's skin by touch and taste and scent before losing him the first time, and the second.
There were new scars for them both to learn after Azkaban, new awkward silences waiting to be filled, new nightmares that kept them both awake, huddled together like puppies on the new mattress Sirius had insisted be brought in, because he refused to sleep in the bed where Great-Aunt Griselda died.
They hadn't done much sleeping in that bed; instead they'd traded secrets and heated embraces, and made promises they swore they'd keep this time.
Promises that, once again, have been broken.
In some ways, Sirius was crueler than the moon, and just as inexorable, but Remus wants him back all the same, though he knows it's impossible.
Which is what he says when Harry demands answers, and there is no one else left to give them.
"I'd bring him back if I could, though I doubt he'd thank me for it. But even magic has its limits," he says, trying to sound calm, but even to his own ears he just sounds tired, hollow. He hates that it has come to this -- that he's repeating to Harry the same useless truths he's heard his whole life.
"I don't believe that." Harry's teeth are clenched, and if Remus squints a bit, he can see James, see Lily, even see Sirius in the pugnacious set of Harry's shoulders. "There has to be something--"
"Even Voldemort hasn't found it, and I can assure you, he's been looking for longer than I've been alive," Remus answers tartly, and Harry looks startled.
"How can you just go on, like it means nothing? How can you--" Harry's voice breaks and Remus touches his shoulder fleetingly, unsure how Harry will respond.
"Because that's what we do."
"What kind of answer is that?" Harry is snuffling now, eyes raised to the ceiling in an attempt not to cry.
Remus ignores the display of emotion, knowing Harry won't want it remarked upon. He wouldn't have, at Harry's age. "The only one I have to give you."
Harry's shoulders slump and he turns away, his breathing thick with unshed tears.
Bugger. Sirius should be here. Remus is not capable of dealing with this, and Harry needs more than he can give. He thinks of his scars, and of Harry's -- new ones would be signs that they are getting better, moving on, but they're both broken, and Remus has no healing left.