I think that I loved you from that first bright moment when I saw you sitting on the train; so normal and so simple with your chestnut hair and easy smile. That normality was almost a physical shock after the deep and dark complexities of my family. But even then, never quite a child, I was afraid of trust and when you smiled, I turned away. I still wonder, all these years later, what would have been different if I had returned that sweet smile.

I don’t say any of this when I set the heavy goblet on your desk; lost in your brown eyes, I do not dare. You smiled, oh, how I love the range of emotion you can express with a smile. I, a man of sneers and smirks, could never match you there. I see regret in your eyes too, and apprehension.

-maybe you should go now. I have work I need to do.

Are you afraid that I would hurt you? I have hurt people before, I won’t lie. Are you afraid of betraying the often too delicate feelings of those both recently departed and long cold? They never really had any hold on you but your love, and there is plenty of that.

You step around your desk, your slender shoulders bowed by the years I too have felt all too keenly. I reach for your hand- my touch makes you tremble. Please Remus, I want to whisper, but I feel awkward in this clumsy role of pursuer. It is not my way to plead.

-you should leave now. I need…

What is it you need? Do you even know? I think sometimes that I need you, but is that just because I have been alone for far too long? Now you find yourself truly alone for the first time. Do you fear that pain of loss; does it make you push everyone away? Or do you just simply loathe me the way so many others have and do, me, and the ways I have never bothered to change or make excuses for? It would be your way, to mask feelings with this careful, blank politeness. Even with them, you never lowered your mask, too afraid, I think, to find that there really is a beast lurking below.

But I do not fear monsters. I have met the worst of them lurking behind human eyes. I have seen what my own hands are capable of, and that, my dear wolfling, has frightened me far more than any fang you could show.

-what are you thinking?! I could never tell what you were thinking.

I hear the distress in your voice and frown with regret. Old habits die hard, my friend. Somewhat like you, I have never lived where openness was not a liability, a weakness to be frowned upon. And in my world, the weak do not fare well. But, I would tell you everything, if you wanted, I say aloud. I can see your surprise, your despair. I know that hopelessness. It is the cruel turn of fate that drives men to live out their worst nightmare, to crawl on their knees before evil and to hate with their whole being the terms traitor and spy even when becoming such was the best thing they ever could have done.

Then you surprise me and you kiss me. There is a hardness in that kiss, a forbiddingness, a finality. You reach for the door.

-leave, Severus. leave until I can trust you not to hurt me anymore, until I can trust myself not to hurt you. until I can look at you without hearing insults and curses and fighting in my head.

I stare at you and see the mingled tears and determination in your deep brown eyes. It may be the hardest thing I will do, but I walk away from you then, and behind me I can hear your weeping.