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When you're five-years-old, the most blistering insult ever conceived is "baby". At an age where you're constantly trying to convince your parents you're old enough to do things by yourself– cross the street, fly on a broomstick, or put on a jacket– there's nothing less you want than to pummel whoever calls you that horrendous word.

Yet someone is saying the word again and again, screaming, "My baby!" Remus decides the voice sounds awfully like his mother's. But that can't be; there had been an agreement that she wouldn't call him baby anymore if he stopped playing with her makeup. She wasn't one to break a compromise.

"What's happened to Remus? What's happened?"

Remus bubbles up to consciousness. Whatever darkness that had been choking him has dissipated. His mind is jumping at a furious speed.

The first thing that comes back is the pain.

It is red, oozing, burning, ripping, shredding, licking. Acidic. It is a fire. Purple poison in his veins threatening to dissolve his cells and invade is mind. He wants–needs–comfort. He reaches out for the only thing he can think of.

"Bear!" he gasps, surprised by his frail and static voice. Nobody has registered his want. Someone's sobbing, a terrible grind of vocal chords.

"Merlin, bitten at his age… My beautiful baby… You have to do something… Anything… My beautiful baby…"

He remembers a tall moon playing with shadows in the forest. He remembers a wet dog–or maybe just the smell of one. He remembers matted, dirty fur and yellow fangs and eyes speckled with red.

The pain is a fire curling at his belly and his breath catches in his throat. Then it morphs to rivers of molten lava sinking down his legs. Then the venomous spider of gut-wrenching pain driving fangs into his wrist.

Remus screams and the darkness grabs him again.