The Only Traitor

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"I never thought I'd die from poison," Remus mutters into the dusk. "And I certainly never thought it would be from you."

The words do not affect Sirius as they should. He focuses his eyes on the goblet, on the fine layer of dust that suffocates the interior, and he briskly wipes it clean, insides burning with furious anticipation. If he could pour the wine any faster, he would; if he could just pour it all straight down the bleeding werewolf's throat, he would. But he can't, and for once, he has to think like the enemy to get what he needs.

Sirius laughs, though humorlessly. "Poison you, mate? The last thing on my mind." Which is not completely a lie. Only partially. He only means it isn't on the forefront of his mind. "Can't I just have an innocent drink with an old friend?"

"If those were purely your intentions, then of course." Remus's voice is dark, and shakes with a tenor equivalent to the shade of the falling sky.

He suspects Sirius because he is not a dumb man, nor has he ever been. But Sirius knows that Remus could never guess what he has planned. Remus is not a Seer and he is no god. As far as Sirius can fathom, Remus is defenseless. Pitifully so.

He pours the wine and cannot have ever imagined the drink cascading so slowly into the silver goblet. It taunts him, infuriates him, with its shocking blood red color that rings through his ears and reminds him of thick, blinding betrayal.

Sirius Black has no regrets as he turns and shields the goblet from Remus's wandering eye. He has no regrets as he taps three colorless drops into the drink in an undetectable movement. No regrets as he conceals the secret vial beneath his cloak. No regrets as he slides the goblet to Remus, and no regrets as he waits, knowing that the moment passed the werewolf in ignorant bliss. But perhaps bliss is not the word.

"Friendship is established on trust," Sirius says, and his words are sharp and clean, as if he has carefully picked and polished them with patient preparation. He pours himself a goblet of wine of his own and keeps his eyes steadily on Remus. "Is it not?"

"You couldn't be more correct," Remus says, easily returning Sirius's heavy gaze. His agreement, with words and with eyes, is almost patronizing. "Cheers, Padfoot?"

A smile flickers at the man's lips, authentic and perhaps not, and he raises his goblet to his old friend, clinking them together. "Cheers, Moony."

It is in Remus's eyes when he and Sirius tilt their goblets back and drain them of their contents that Remus has resigned to his death. But Sirius does not see this, because it is not what he expects, and Remus's face morphs into something entirely foreign, because upon his swallow, it is in fact not what he expects.

A slow drawl leaves Remus lips, and his gaze is pure fire as he utters the word with blatant disbelief, "Veritaserum." He has never been a dumb man.

"Perhaps you would have preferred poison after all?" Sirius proposes, lowering his goblet in unison with Remus. "I assure you that after I hear what I need, we can arrange something of that sort later."

Remus does not respond straight away, only glares ferociously, with such vehemence Sirius knew he might have relinquished, in another day, another life. But now, the clear abhorrence in his old friend's eyes only fuels him that much more. Before Sirius can demand it, Remus spits. "What do you want?"

"I want you to tell me the truth," Sirius says, and then pauses, a smirk falling onto his features.

"Evidently."

"I want you to stop hiding," Sirius continues, finding his stride. "I want you to come clean and tell me how you've been betraying us this entire time so that I can finally kill you with a clean conscious."

Remus laughs loudly, but is appalled, mal-humored. "You've already planned my murder! And I'm the traitor? Me?"

"Are you? How much have you told your beloved Dark Lord, Moony? How much?"

"Nothing," Remus says, and he loses his control, his breath, his confidence. "Absolutely nothing at all." Because Remus is broken. He has been broken for a long time.

Sirius shakes his head rapidly, fury coursing through his veins like blood itself, creating chaos in his mind and trembling throughout his entire body. "No," Sirius says once, and then again, with insistence, "No. You're lying. You're not telling me the truth."

"How can I not? You've poisoned me with bloody truth serum, Sirius!"

But he snaps, because he cannot handle it. Sirius knows the truth, and it has driven him past sanity far times too many in the past. He knows the truth, and still it slithers away, in dark corners where the pair once resided. But he will not let it, and the fury takes him over. It grabs a knife from the kitchen counter with Sirius's own hands, from behind the bottle of blood red wine, and suddenly he is at his old friend's throat, pressing the cool, flat side of the blade against his skin.

"Wizards have been known to build immunities," Sirius hisses in his ear and he hardly knows what his limbs are doing. He is not himself, but who is to blame for that? "What about you, Remus?"

"I've never taken Veritaserum in my damn life, not before now," Remus mutters harshly, and resistance is set so hard in his bones, but he cannot move or his throat will be slit. He knows it. He knows the man too well.

Perhaps Sirius is impulsive. Perhaps Remus knows this, and will take advantage of it. But how much could he really think in a moment like this? How could anyone think in a moment like this? It was Remus—of all people, it was Remus—

"What color is the wall?" Sirius cries furiously, and the cliff of the blade is at the nape of Remus's neck, threatening to impede upon the bare flesh.

The question is ridiculous and Remus can't be sure he's heard correctly. "Have you gone mental?" Remus chokes back in response, because he thinks perhaps he himself has gone mental, but Sirius is not forgiving, and the blade only presses further against his skin.

"What color is the wall?" Sirius repeats, and he reckons that the human in him is hiding somewhere, waiting to return with the truth...

"White!" Remus yells, and his breaths are desperate, pleading, aching. "White!"

And it is. It is a snow white, a pure, innocent, clean white, so unlike the two men, heaving and broken and dying. But it is not the truth Sirius wants to hear.

"Lie," Sirius whispers, but it is so loud that Remus does not know how it could ever be a whisper. "Lie. Tell me the wall's red."

Remus moves his lips in an effort to do as Sirius says, but the words do not surface, and he chokes, writhing in Sirius's hold. "I can't! It's not red, it's white, hell, Sirius, I can't lie with this bloody truth serum!"

Perhaps he is too quick to believe him. Perhaps his old friend has mastered the art of lying while Sirius has had his back turned. Perhaps he has dug his own grave by lowering the blade.

But it is too late, because Sirius already believes him.

"So you really don't have an immunity," Sirius says with an unnatural calm wrapping his voice in a choke hold.

Remus says it through gritted teeth, "I told you." But he is only grateful that his neck is whole and unscathed.

"Then tell me this." Sirius observes his dismantled friend, a disarray of sandy brown hair and a face ridden with scars. He has thinned since Sirius saw him last, and his clothes fall limp from the man's bones, a lifeless body, a lifeless soul. "Tell me what you've been hiding, Moony. Because I know you've been hiding something. You are, aren't you? You have a secret."

It is the first time the Veritaserum truly affects him, and the first time Remus truly wants to back bite his answer. He longs for the immunity, but it is not his. The answer crawls up his throat like a beast, a feeble, weak, "Yes."

And finally Sirius glimpses it, the truth he seeks, the truth he longs for so that he can finally rest in peace, with the truth, the truth that will kill his doubt and his longing for what had never been real, the truth that will drown him but resurrect him all the same.

"And what is it?" Sirius murmurs, threatening to break right there in front of him. "What is it?" Because he does not want to hear it, and he never has, but he knows he has to know the truth.

Remus's jaw drops, numb and empty, and he searches for words to clarify his thoughts and structure the truth that oozes and slithers and crawls and drags, but it will not be reworded and it will not be suppressed. Remus hates Sirius for this, he does, he hates him for everything, for all the pain in the last months, for the torture of his mind and the absence of his warmth. He hates him.

And the truth, in fact, is that he doesn't.

"You," is all Remus says.

It baffles Sirius, flips him upside down and senseless, rattles his mind of all feeling and control he thought he once had. Because he knows it's a clear sign of insanity, hearing what you want to hear rather than what you need to.

He really doesn't want to find this insanity.

"What?" It is his only defense.

It pains Remus, pains him even further, but Sirius doesn't care. Did he ever? He's selfish—or he's being selfish—and all he can see is himself, himself, it's all himself, a big, fat, bleeding mirror, and it's all Sirius, everywhere, it's all him—

When Remus closes his eyes, it's easier to say, because then he doesn't have to see Sirius's furious face, his face that screams murder and vengeance and terror. He can imagine that they're back in that place, the place where nothing mattered except the two of them, when there was a two of them, and here he can confess the truth that Sirius is strangling out of him. Because in this darkness that Remus's closed eyes creates, there is calm, and there is release.

The world is strangely slow, and the both of them feel it, though neither pay it heed. And then Remus says it. Finally. A long, tantalizing pause, where feelings mingle and intertwine and fall over themselves.

"I love you."

And it hurts Remus so much to say. Suddenly the peace of his darkness is abandoned and a war rages in his mind, burning fire and death and destruction. His heart is ripped out of his chest at the very words, and he pulses with hurt, hurt, just nothing but hurt, because it's Sirius and it's always been Sirius, it will always be Sirius, this will always be him...

And Sirius repeats it, the stupid word that hears nothing but what it wishes to. "What?"

But Remus didn't have to repeat it, because he didn't need to. He'd already said it. He didn't move his neck, didn't move a finger, and hell, maybe he didn't even take a breath, but he had passed a point of knowledge and suddenly nothing really mattered that much at all.

Sirius stared, because there was the truth he had expected but never expected, here was the fact that he was wrong, here was the tempting red wine and the murderous blade, here was the traitor. Right here, in his own skin.

This insanity transfigures, like his own bones into a dark canine, but instead into a wild and senseless force, an erroneous impulse, and Sirius says, "Give me the goblet."

It is Remus's turn to question. "What?" He has been tossed back and forth from every wall and then from the ground to the ceiling, and he no longer has strength capable of comprehending the man he once called his friend.

"Give me the goblet," Sirius repeats without patience.

Remus slides it to him, staring.

In one flawless movement, Sirius has downed what Remus left of the wine and Veritaserum, and soon it flows through his core, betraying himself and itching under his very skin. He has betrayed himself, but he has meant to. "Ask me," he says, coughs, maybe, because the strength has been sapped from his as well. He doesn't have the courage to say this without the Veritaserum, and perhaps he never will again.

"Ask you what?"

"Ask me my secret," Sirius says, and it is bitter because there is so much hidden that will never be said, can never be said, even with all the truth serum and manipulation in the world. "You know I have one. You've always known."

"Fine," Remus says, almost gasps, really, because he remembers it, that nothing matters, "what is it? What's your secret, Sirius?"

Sirius thinks he will say it, but he does not find the words because they are not there. They have molded into something much more exhilarating that he cannot encompass it all in words like Remus has. There is truth and apology and longing in his, there is force and collapse and suppression in his, there is regret and sorrow and passion, and it is all him, all Sirius, because after all, it has always, always been Sirius.

He is selfish, and he knows it, because after all that has happened now, it is the only explanation for what Sirius has done and what he does now.

He kisses Remus.

But this, he can hardly say, is a kiss, because Sirius has always thought of kisses as gentle and sweet and loving, and this is so much more complex than that. This is everything and anything Sirius has ever been, and it is his only communication of the feeling, Remus's only glimpse of this truth darker than any other truth Sirius could ever have held. This is Sirius and in the same blinding truth, this is Remus, and this is where they are and this is where they have been, and if either of them ever could come up for air to form another coherent thought, this is where they will always be.

Remus can't handle it. He's never had strength; it was stolen from him when he was young, and forever it's plagued him, killed him slowly, and it is still not here nor will it ever be. He is angry, livid, really, and it is his only fuel. He thrashes away from Sirius, cursing murderously.

"You lousy bastard! Arrogant arsehole, son of a bitch—"

And Sirius only chuckles because he believes every word Remus says. After all, they have been poisoned by the same serum, though he didn't need the potion to know what Remus said was true.

He laughs because he knows Remus and he knows that he has no strength, and he knows, knows somewhere deep down inside of him, that this is why Remus has always come back to him. This is why he always will, and this is why he does now.

Because in that flat, where the sun has dipped down far behind the panes of the window, where the black and soulless sky has revealed itself and stabbed them all, are Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, two objects of self-destruction that have torn each other down and clawed at everything they were to get back to each other. They have always done the same, and Sirius knows, when he's kissing Remus with all the world's left of him, that they always will.

Because Sirius Black loves Remus Lupin, and things of this nature have never been anything but lethal.

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This was written for SilverOwlMalfoy in CheekySlytherinLass's Guilty Pleasure Fic exchange. Ahem, I forgot until afterwards to use the prompts, so sorry! *squeak* Hopefully this is all right. This is my absolute first attempt at ever writing anything even close to slash, and I have absolutely no idea what I've done with this. *slump*

I'd love some criticism, or even just a review, I don't know. I'm clueless. Help, lovelies?

Thanks so much for reading, as always, unless you've never read one of my fics, and in that case, well, case in point, thank you for reading!