A/N: Marlene & Sirius – Part 2.

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He hears the whispers when he walks into the meeting alone, hears them mutter that a guy like him didn't deserve a wonderful girl like her. He hears them say that he toyed with her emotions, dragging her down with him. He hears them say she should have left him. And though he agrees with the former and can't help but be angry at the second, it is the third that makes him laugh. Because she did leave him, just not in the way they mean. And he fell apart.

When Marlene dies he breaks down, really breaks down, sobbing till he chokes in a way he hasn't since Regulus was killed, and they find him hours later curled up in his apartment with a bottle of firewhisky, finally grieving for all who have died. He can't keep up his facade of humour and jokes any longer, not without her there to drown his sorrows, and everything he has pushed to the back of his mind erupts, sending him reeling. For a while he thinks he lingers on the edges of insanity, and through the haze in his eyes he thinks he sees her, but there is no one there because he kicked them all out when they came round to talk to him, even James and Remus and bumbling little Peter.

He doesn't leave the apartment for a week after that, and when he does he is a changed man. Without her, the meetings are quiet, and he sits alone in their corner, and where once he was fire and lightning and storm he is thin ice and jagged edges and poison. Only in battle and anger (and he is angry often) does the flame ever ignite, and he goads his enemies mercilessly, calling them with reckless abandon all the names he used to reserve for only Snivellus. Several times it is nearly his downfall when he is too busy laughing to see the curse that hits him, but they patch him up well at headquarters, and slowly, slowly they come to see the real Sirius, the broken Sirius, and now when he laughs too hard in an attempt to choke back his emotions, they look at him in pity not annoyance, and it makes him mad.

And so piece by piece he builds back his walls, and when the next death comes and he feels like crying, he finds a new way to cope, driving his motorbike through the night until the wind has dried his tears and left him too numb to feel the pain. But still he misses Marlene (not his Marlene, because she was never his), and when everyone asks him if he was in love with her, he lies and says "Yes", because if he didn't, nobody would understand that in each other they had found passion, and desperation, and even friendship, but they were never in love. Because to Sirius, love implies tenderness and affection and commitment and everything they never had; they had violence and anger and tears, an escape from the realities of the world, and they burned too hot and too fierce to last forever.

Seemingly a lifetime later, sitting with Remus at the table in the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place, he tries to explain what it was they shared back then, tries to explain how he could never love her, but there are some things that even Remus can't understand, because the werewolf is in love with Nymphadora in a way that Sirius has never loved. And he is glad for them, because it means he can believe that there is still hope for his friend, he can believe that Remus isn't quite as broken as they once were, because nobody deserves to fall apart.

And this, more than anything, Sirius Black understands.

The End. Thank you for reading & please review =D