WARNING: This is a slash story, which means it contains male/male erotic content involving consenting adults. If you're not of legal age or are offended by such material, please go find something else to read.

Title: Choice
Author: Seeker
Email: seeker@pridemail.com
Category: Drama/Angst, Action/Adventure
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement meant. Just borrowing, don't own them. Hopefully nobody who owns these characters will ever read it. Snape/Lupin.
Notes: Keep in mind this is from Snape's point of view, during the events of the 3rd and 4th books, and he doesn't have all the facts (yes, I have read the books, but he hasn't...).

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He'd known it was going to be an awful year before First Day. Headmaster Dumbledore had assured that when he announced the new Defense Against Dark Arts master. It was quite mad, really.

Bringing a werewolf to live amongst children. Use him to teach the next generation the arts they would need to defeat Voldemort and his Death Eaters. The first made no sense at all; the second, a nominal amount at most. For while Remus Lupin was a monster, he was also the gentlest man Severus Snape had ever known.

Once, they had almost been friends. As close to friends as Black would let them, or Potter would overlook, or Pettigrew would whine about. Once, until Lupin had made a choice. A choice to reveal himself; a choice to betray himself; a choice that nearly killed them both.

In the end, the choice was made to allow them all to escape with no harm done. According to Albus Dumbledore. But harm had been done to Snape. Harm to his body, where the wolf's claws had torn. To his pride, when his fear and concern were dismissed as unimportant. To his heart, which still bled.

Each made his own choices, and each must live with them.

Sirius Black's choices had betrayed still more friends, and ended with him as Dementors' food in Azkaban. James Potter's choice had led him to death at Voldemort's hands and made his son an orphan. Peter Pettigrew's choice had led to mass murder in madness. Severus Snape's choice had led him to hell then up as far as purgatory, where he dwelt uneasily yet. Albus Dumbledore's choice had led them right back where they'd started.

With a werewolf among the children and betrayal stalking the halls of Hogwart's.

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By Christmas the situation was bleak. The children were out of hand, the instructors were too lenient, treachery underlined every brick in the castle and Snape was near the end of his rope.

Lupin was unfailingly calm and polite to him. It brought back memories he'd just as soon never again saw the light of day. The wolfsbane potion worked as it should, barely holding the danger at bay, but Snape expected every month for it to fail and innocents to die.

Winter faded to Spring, and tension mounted. The threat of Black's return loomed over them all. Dumbledore stopped sleeping and starting haunting the corridors at unexpected times. Lupin drank his wolfsbane and thanked Snape politely each time. And with the fullness of each moon, Snape stood in the shadow of the tower, from moonrise until sunrise, and waited for the screams that would announce that the potion had failed to leash the werewolf.

He wasn't certain even in his own mind upon whom the consequences of such a failure would most difficult. Dumbledore, for giving the wrong man a third chance; Snape, for the weakness of his remedy; Lupin, for losing to the monster at last. In the end it didn't matter, for Dumbledore made the choice for all of them.

Black returned, spouting nonsense about Pettigrew living on as a rat, betrayal from the least likely, weakest source, and Lupin believed him. Of course. Believed him to the point he completely missed taking his potion. Snape followed them, the foolish children, the misguided werewolf, the mad killer, saved them all and came within a whisper of the Order of Merlin. Then it all went to hell in a handbasket.

The murderer escaped, with Potter and Granger's help and Dumbledore's blessing, no doubt. Snape stared in horror at the Minister of Magic, who'd looked at him like a savior moments before and now regarded him as if he were a lunatic. At the children, defiance in their eyes and ignorance clouding their minds. And at Dumbledore, looking directly back at him, telling him with his eyes that he'd made his choice. For Black. Lupin. For Potter. Against Snape.

Once again.

The next morning, after another sleepless night watching the Forest from the shadow of the tower, listening to the howls that sent chills down his spine, he made his own.

At breakfast, Snape stared over at Lupin for a long moment. Tired hazel eyes, gray-flecked hair, thin shoulders drooping under his mended robes. It hadn't had to be that way, not this time. Not really, if he'd been given any other choice. But he hadn't. Really. Flitwick gave him the opening he'd waited for, marveling at the sounds of the mad beast that had kept him awake half the night.

"Oh, that was only our own Professor Lupin," Snape said clearly, pitching his voice effortlessly to carry directly to the Slytherin table a few feet in front of them. As expected, Malfoy and his cronies sat up straight and turned toward him, gossip hounds at his command. "Forgot his potion last night. Not a smart move for a werewolf."

McGonagall, two down from him, gasped, and he saw her fingers clench in a fist on the table. Not at Lupin. At Snape, for countermanding Dumbledore's direct order. Idly, Snape watched Malfoy turn and begin to spread the poison, his pale face gleaming with excitement. One place past McGonagall's, a fork clattered against a plate. A chair scraped. Snape kept his eyes on the Slytherin table as Lupin walked behind him, on his way out the door. No doubt on his way to Dumbledore, to resign, then further to his rooms. To pack.

He smelled of wet leaves and deep forest. He made no sound.

Snape carefully laid his cutlery beside his plate and folded his hands in his lap, appetite gone, scowl firmly in place. It was for the best. Dumbledore had made his choice. Lupin had made his.

Snape had made his choice, as well.

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The next two years were hell.

Young Potter took insane risks. Mad-Eye Moody became DADA professor, but then, not. Black had told the truth, after all. Pettigrew came back to life. So did Voldemort. Alliances were made. Secrets were kept. And broken.

The mark on his arm burnt black and began to ache.

Black returned, but Lupin didn't. Dumbledore forced a truce between Black and Snape himself, but Snape knew it was lined with solid hatred and distrust on both sides. Hufflepuff lost a champion and Hogwart's gained one. The Minister of Magic allowed fear to blind him to reality, and Snape went to war. In the dark.

It had been his choice, after all.

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He knew it would come to this, when he made his first choice about Voldemort in anger; his second in fear; his third in resignation. Snape hovered an inch from the floor, wrapt in vile curses as fire ate at him from the bones outward. He had come so close.

Learned so much.

Passed on such valuable information.

Killed so many.

Until, in the end, he'd had to make a final choice. Voldemort stood, his wand blunted by Potter's raised in one filthy, bloody fist against him, and ordered Snape to do what he'd been fighting to prevent for the last six years.

"Kill him!" he commanded.

Potter looked up, green eyes glazed with pain and exhaustion, and Snape looked back. Raised his wand. Made his choice, and threw his harshest curses.

Voldemort swayed before them, but he did not break.

In that instant, as hell erupted around them along with the Giants, Hagrid at their head, the cream of the survivors of the Wizard world, Dumbledore leading them, and magical creatures of the woods facing off against the maddened Death Eaters, Severus Snape learned the true depth of pain the human body could suffer without actually dying. Bones strained to breaking point, skin stretched, blood weeping through it. His mind turned on itself, the darkness within swallowing him down, leaving him more alone than he had ever been in his long lonely life.

Sanity had almost escaped him when he heard the werewolf's snarl. So close to him. As close as it had been that night twenty years before, the first time Black had tried to kill him, innocent as Lupin had been. Snape accepted that, now, in the last moments of his life.

"Yes," he thought, his mouth too filled with screams to hold words. "End it. Now. Please."

A streak of auburn fur leapt past him, so close he felt the coarse pelt brush his straining arm. Past him.

Directly at Voldemort.

The first snap of jaw to jugular was true. With a scream that drowned out the cries of the tortured and dying already filling the clearing, Voldemort flailed. Pushed fruitlessly at the weight of werewolf gnawing out his throat. Gurgled.

Fell.

A wave of dark energy pulsed around them. A shriek shook the earth. Despair and defeat pulsed, warping the very air. For a bare moment, the battle froze, all combatants staring at the spot where Voldemort fell. Then time began again. Binding spells flew up from all directions, capturing and destroying the shade of Voldemort. A few fled. A few more died. Most of the Death Eaters screamed like the damned they were and fell on their enemies, knowing it was a fight to the death, that there would be no mercy as there had been the first time. No one would believe the lies now.

The direct application of the curse ended with the life of the one throwing it, but Snape's muscles were still locked in agony, his body still trembled and he couldn't move. So when Draco Malfoy struggled free of the battle, stepping over his father's body, pausing only long enough to determine that Voldemort was indeed extremely dead, then strode overto him, Snape couldn't do anything to defend himself. His eyes clashed with Malfoy's gray, the insanity there instilled and nurtured by his father and furthered, to an extent, by Snape himself. Once more, he reaped what he had sown.

"Traitor," he hissed, and raising his wand he began to chant.

Agony began to hum through Snape's body again, but this time it was brute strength, not the exquisite application of prolonged torture that Voldemort had enjoyed. He would not last long under that punishment. His voice broke on a scream, as a large body threw itself against Draco, a fist coming out to shatter his wand against the rocks. Through watering eyes, he watched in shocked disbelief as Sirius Black broke Draco Malfoy's neck.

Snape was still trying to believe Black had saved his life when his mind said, "enough!" and he fainted dead away.

When he awoke in the infirmary at Hogwart's, a day had passed. The beds were filled with the wounded, and Poppy Pomfrey moved wearily among them, her own left arm bound tightly to her chest, bulky with bandages. He tried to rise, but his head swam and he quickly allowed himself to fall back to the bed, ignoring the pain rising throughout his body. Craning his neck as best he could, he looked for familiar faces. Lupin. Dumbledore. Potter. Black, even.

He refused to think why he looked for Lupin first.

Potter was in a corner close to the door. A bushy head on a cot next to his placed young Granger. Red heads scattered about them indicated the members of the Weasley family who survived. Snape skimmed over them, looking for brown. Gray. Black.

A soft hand touching his wrist nearly made him jump out of his skin, a reaction he regretted as soon as it hit, since his entire body seized and he couldn't hold back a hiss of pain.

"Relax, Severus," Poppy's low voice soothed him. He glared up at her.

"Dumbledore?" he tried to ask, choosing the safest to ask after. No sound came from his throat. His eyes widened.

She took advantage of his open mouth to pour one of his own healing potions down it. After he finished coughing, she put a finger over his lips. "You screamed your throat raw. Don't speak until it's healed. Tomorrow, at least."

So much for asking questions. Resigning himself to his usual status of outside observer, he settled back against the pillow and looked over the ward again. To his shock, Molly Weasley came right up to the side of his bed, picked up his hand, and squeezed it.

"Thank you, Professor Snape. Thank you for protecting Harry."

He couldn't very well tell her how little he'd enjoyed the task nor how long he'd been doing it, since he had no voice, so he simply glowered at her. It had no impact. On her, or any of the others who made their way to his side, ignoring his thunderous scowl to give him unwanted thanks. He didn't want to listen or talk to or see any of them. He only wanted to see Lupin.

The thought drowned his temper like a shock of ice water in the face. There was no denying it. He had to see Lupin. He had to apologize. He should never have let Lupin go without speaking to him. Should never have turned him away. He'd made the wrong choice.

Again.

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It was easy to slip out the next day, with Pomfrey busy at the other end of the ward. Others had left, as the potions and spells took effect and they healed. He felt fine, other than a residual soreness in his muscles and a slight cough. Summoning his robes to his hand, he slid from the bed and slipped from the room. When he arrived at Dumbledore's office, the Headmaster was waiting for him.

"May I leave now or is there anything of life and death importance we need to do or discuss?" Snape whispered, hissing much like the Slytherin he was in order to preserve his voice. Dumbledore gave him an amused look. He looked decades younger with the strain of the dark rebellion finally over.

"Only this." He handed Snape a small piece of parchment with a location on it. Snape looked from the quill-marks to Dumbledore's shrewd eyes.

"How --" he started to ask but then stopped. He didn't need to know how Dumbledore had known Snape wanted to find Lupin. He had, and no doubt had for some time, and for once he was doing his best to make it easy on Snape. Clutching the paper, he nodded. Turned. Walked from the room. Went down to his chambers, packed a very light bag, and Disapparated.

Reapparating in a garden at the foot of a walkway leading to a cottage, he paused. He hadn't the faintest idea what to say to Lupin when he saw him. The door opened, and the last face he ever wanted to see peered out.

"Well, don't just stand there, Snape. Get in here," Sirius Black called out to him.

Snape sighed. Seriously considered his options, which consisted of returning to Hogwart's, killing Black where he stood, or ignoring him while looking for Lupin, and chose the last one. The pull was stronger now, and he knew without knowing how that Lupin was in the room behind Black.

To his surprise, Black stepped out before he stepped in, waving a hand to the unseen Lupin. "Good luck, and yell if you need me." He gave Snape a serious look. "Hurt him and I'll chew you up and spit you out."

"Thank you for saving my life now get the bloody hell out of my way," Snape hissed all in one breath, through clenched teeth. Black had the cheek to grin at him.

"Call around in a few days," Lupin's calm voice settled the argument before it began. "Give my best to Harry."

Black's grin softened as he looked over at his friend. "See you at end of week. I'll send you an owl with all the news." Then with another challenging smirk at Snape, he sauntered off down the walk.

Snape stood, irresolute, in the doorway until Lupin said, "All the way in or all the way out, Severus. You're letting in the wind." Ignoring the slight sting of blush in his cheeks, blaming it on that very wind, Snape stepped carefully into the small cottage and equally carefully closed the door behind him.

Words tumbled through his head but he didn't know which ones to use first. Thank you for killing Voldemort. Thank you for saving my life. Forgive me for spilling your secret. Forgive me for betraying you. Damn you for betraying me. Damn you for choosing Black over me. Please let me hold you. Please hold me back.

He settled for leaning against the door. Folding his arms over his chest. Staring at Lupin. Whispering, "you look well."

"As do you," Lupin said almost as quietly. They stood there staring at one another until Snape began to feel very foolish. He almost gave up and turned to go. Then Lupin moved. Or perhaps Snape did. One way or the other, they found themselves nose to chest, and Snape closed his eyes, leaning into an embrace he hadn't expected, giving one he could no longer hold back.

It felt like coming home, and unlike any homecoming he'd ever had.

Without thought, words were tumbling out. Pain and need and hope and love unadmitted, squelched for so long together they were practically one emotion. Lupin made tiny comforting noises, his hands roaming over Snape, his face burrowing into the side of his neck, as Snape poured gibberish in his ear. Pleas, explanations, demands, questions, all jumbled up together until the words made no sense at all. To Snape.

Lupin seemed to understand every one of them. Perhaps because when they were all said and done, the one that came through clearest was "please."

Slender hands were warm against his skin as they peeled the robes from him. Gentle in his hair as they held his head still for a kiss that pulled his soul from him and at the same time restored it to light in a way it had never known. Strong around his back and demanding on his hips as they held him down for the wet heat of tongue and lips against him, and trembling as they held his body in place and straddled him.

The heat and grip were intense around him, making his head dizzy and his muscles contract until he arched up, nearly tossing Lupin off. A sound, a cross between a whine and a growl, came from Lupin's half-open mouth, and it arrowed through Snape like a knife. He had to move. Had to touch, take, surround himself with and surrender to this man who had bewitched him when he was still only a youth. Betrayal, fear, anger, none of it mattered when measured against the sheer depth of need he'd held down for so long.

His hand slid down Lupin's chest, fingers drawing runes in the sweat gleaming on his skin, dropping down to surround his erection and caress it. The sound changed, a hitch developing, then became a moan holding an echo of the howl Snape had last heard from the tower so long ago in the Forest. His hand tightened and Lupin bucked, hard, involuntary movements that drove him further onto Snape, intensifying both the heat and the hold. Soon, too soon, it was too much, and he yelped as he came. Sticky warm semen dripped over his knuckles, and it was too much for Snape, as well.

Rolling them together, haste laced with care, Snape held Lupin's shoulders flat against the floor and thrust into him at a strong pace, deliberate movements speeding too soon into desperate ones. Lupin lay puddled beneath him, his own climax making him relaxed and receptive, and all too quickly Snape found himself flying apart. Lupin's arms holding him safe, Lupin's voice whispering gently in his ear, and Lupin's mouth against his skin were the only anchors he had to the world.

When he stopped shaking, he found he'd slipped from Lupin's body, and they were cuddled side by side on the hearth rug, arms clasped tightly about one another. In those moments of intimacy they'd communicated more clearly than they had managed in the quarter century they'd known one another. There were still words to be said between them, most of them difficult, some painful, some healing. They would wait.

Severus Snape had made his choice. For the first time in his life, he was at peace with it.