Fic: Survival Value
Jan. 17th, 2016 11:59 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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shimotsuki
Title: Survival Value
Rating & Warnings: PG / no warnings
Word Count: 1590 words
Prompt(s): #17, ‘Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.’ —C.S Lewis; and #44, Masquerade
Summary: Remus spends Hallowe’en with Greyback’s pack, and makes a few discoveries in spite of himself.
Notes: This is the kernel of one of the two remaining chapters I still need to flesh out for the HBP part of Kaleidoscope. (It's getting there!) Matthias Malkin is an OC who appears elsewhere in that series, but this story stands alone.
Also: What a wonderful event this has been! It's great to see so many participants, old and new. Lots more Remus/Tonks love in the world now. :)
Survival Value
Remus woke early, hungry and shivering, huddled under the two shabby blankets that were never quite enough against the damp grey chill of dawn.
He rubbed a hand over his face and extricated himself creakily from his bedroll, folding the blankets into a tidy pile. He straightened his rumpled clothing and pulled on his boots. Then he crept, as quietly as muscles still a little stiff from the last transformation would allow, across what had been the living room of the derelict house he now called home, stepping carefully around eight or ten sleeping werewolves. This was the driest room in the house—the roof over the bedrooms upstairs tended to leak in a heavy rain—so this was where they slept.
Once outside, Remus picked up a pair of plastic buckets that sat near the ashes of the cooking fire and went down to fill them in the river. It wasn’t raining today (small mercies), but the sky was thick with clouds. Sunrise was nothing but a faint reddish glow to the southeast.
He hauled the heavy buckets back up the short slope, managing not to slosh very much water over his shabby robes or leaky boots in the process, and set them in their usual place. Then he stood for a moment, nudging with his foot at a charred stick of firewood that had fallen out of the half of an oil drum they used as a fireplace. Normally, when he was the first one up, he would take one of the precious hoard of stolen matches and a handful of kindling and work to get the fire started for the day. It was his habit to make himself as useful as possible around the camp—that was infinitely preferable to spending his days stealing things from the town that sat a few miles down the river.
Today, though, he just couldn’t stay in the camp any longer. He couldn’t face the prospect of the thin veneer of small talk that did nothing to conceal the hostility and suspicion with which almost everyone still regarded him, even after three months. Even at this end of the camp, furthest away from Greyback’s inner circle.
Not today.
To the rest of the pack, today was a handful of days after the October moon.
To Remus, who had a calendar and a lunar chart pasted inside the cover of the Muggle notebook he kept in his rucksack, today was Hallowe’en.
~ * ~
Remus found a spot along the river, upstream from the camp, where he could settle among the spreading roots of an enormous oak, lean back against the trunk, and watch the swirling current. He pulled an apple and a chunk of stale bread from his pocket and ate them slowly, not because he had any actual appetite, but because it was the only way to pacify the sharp pains that were starting to gnaw at his stomach. When he had finished, he tossed the apple core into the water and watched it bob along until the a bend in the river hid it from view. Then he settled his muffler more securely around his neck, pulled his sleeves down over his hands, and huddled into his robes.
Leaves and sticks and bits of bark floated past, fetching up against rocks or sliding into tiny whirlpools. The sound of the rushing water gave him something to listen to that wasn’t inside his own head.
That was why he was here.
~ * ~
After a time, Remus realised that he had caught up one end of his muffler in his hands and was slowly, mindlessly smoothing his fingers over the rough lumpy wool.
Nymphadora’s muffler. The one she had made for him.
He frowned, and made himself tuck it back under the collar of his robes.
He had to stop this.
~ * ~
“Oi. Lupin.”
Remus blinked and looked up. Matthias Malkin was coming along the path from the camp with a few rabbit snares slung over one shoulder.
“Hullo, Malkin,” he said. The voice inside his head snarled: Am I to have no peace? Not even today? But he smiled, blandly, and reached into his pocket again for a scrap of cloth in which he’d tied up a useful bit of fishing line, complete with a hook and an only slightly bedraggled lure, that he’d untangled from a bush along the river a few weeks ago. “Thought I’d come out here and see if I could catch something.”
Malkin stood for a moment, looking down at Remus. Then he dropped his snares in a heap along the path and folded his tall frame into another pocket among the roots of the oak.
Remus liked Malkin well enough. He was reserved, but not hostile. He did venture forth on occasion to “find”—the local euphemism for “steal”—things in town, but he was more likely to spend his days snaring rabbits or birds in the wood. And he seemed just as interested in keeping his distance from Greyback as Remus certainly was.
Remus had even hoped, in the beginning, that Malkin might become his first ally in the pack. But it had proved much more difficult than he had expected to get Malkin alone, so that he could try to get some sense of the younger man’s perspective on Death Eaters and the coming conflict. All of which made the present moment an invaluable opportunity to try to make some manner of progress on his actual mission for the Order.
If only it hadn’t been today.
Remus wrapped the scrap of cloth around his hand and wound the end of the fishing line around that. With his other hand he tossed the hook and lure into the river, letting it drift downstream. He thought, for a moment, of long summer days spent fishing with his father when he was very small, but then he gave his head a small sharp shake. Focus, Lupin. The job at hand was to start a conversation with Malkin.
But Malkin got there first.
“You knew the Potters, didn’t you,” he said. “The ones the Dark Lord killed.”
Remus froze, and the Hallowe’en images he had been trying so hard all week to suppress began to unroll across his memory, after all. Finding out—only after the fireworks had started all up and down the country—that James and Lily were dead, that Sirius had gone after Peter. Staring in horror at the ruins of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow that used to be filled to bursting with laughter—James’s and Lily’s, and Sirius’s, and Remus’s own (though not Peter’s, so much, toward the end, and they hadn’t noticed), and even baby Harry’s squeals. The funeral, with warm bright Lily lying so pale and cold, and restless James so still and quiet, and nothing could have been more wrong—
“Yes,” he said, his voice gone hoarse. “I did.”
“I thought so,” said Malkin, and there was actual sympathy in the dark-blue eyes. “I remember you and Potter being thick at Hogwarts.”
Remus pulled in the line and tossed the dripping lure out into the river again. It would, of course, work much better with an actual fishing rod.
“You’ve been different, since the moon,” said Malkin. “Keeping to yourself more.”
Remus looked up, sharply. Had Malkin been studying him, all the while he’d been studying Malkin?
“I know it was this time of year that the Dark Lord fell,” Malkin went on. “I was—wondering. If that was why.”
Remus eyed him carefully. Malkin had been a Slytherin, and he said “Dark Lord.” Was he a sympathiser?
“It’s difficult,” was all he said. “To lose good friends.”
Pain slammed at him, hard, in the gut, making him draw a harsh breath. But it wasn’t the pain he had been bracing for.
Because he suddenly understood, for the first time, that as much as he mourned for James and Lily—as acutely as he felt the fresh, raw, needless loss of Sirius—
—nothing hurt as much as missing Nymphadora.
And that was because she, at least, was not dead. She was in Hogsmeade, patrolling for dementors, carrying out surveillance missions for the Order.
If he went to her this very minute, and took her in his arms, she would be warm and eager, and she would kiss him—Merlin, he would taste her sweet kiss again, right now—
But instead, he had to live out the rest of his life knowing that he must never seek out what he wanted the most. Even though Nymphadora would give it to him in a heartbeat, if he asked her for it.
Because then she would be the one to pay for his selfishness. For the rest of her life.
“And that’s why you’re here,” said Malkin.
Remus blinked.
“Because you’ve nowhere else to go anymore. That’s what you told us when you came.” Malkin smiled, a little bitterly. “Most of us here can say that, you know. My father disowned me when I was bitten, about five years ago.” He looked out over the river. “I wouldn’t have chosen to follow Greyback, myself, but I didn’t have a lot of other options.”
Remus took a deep, slow breath. Pain or no pain, the Order needed him here, to do this.
“I’d be interested,” he said, “to think about other options.”
He pulled the fishing line in again. Still nothing.
But he cast the lure out once more, scattering drops of water that sparkled like diamonds in a sudden shaft of sunlight.
~ fin ~
.
shimotsukiTitle: Survival Value
Rating & Warnings: PG / no warnings
Word Count: 1590 words
Prompt(s): #17, ‘Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.’ —C.S Lewis; and #44, Masquerade
Summary: Remus spends Hallowe’en with Greyback’s pack, and makes a few discoveries in spite of himself.
Notes: This is the kernel of one of the two remaining chapters I still need to flesh out for the HBP part of Kaleidoscope. (It's getting there!) Matthias Malkin is an OC who appears elsewhere in that series, but this story stands alone.
Also: What a wonderful event this has been! It's great to see so many participants, old and new. Lots more Remus/Tonks love in the world now. :)
Remus woke early, hungry and shivering, huddled under the two shabby blankets that were never quite enough against the damp grey chill of dawn.
He rubbed a hand over his face and extricated himself creakily from his bedroll, folding the blankets into a tidy pile. He straightened his rumpled clothing and pulled on his boots. Then he crept, as quietly as muscles still a little stiff from the last transformation would allow, across what had been the living room of the derelict house he now called home, stepping carefully around eight or ten sleeping werewolves. This was the driest room in the house—the roof over the bedrooms upstairs tended to leak in a heavy rain—so this was where they slept.
Once outside, Remus picked up a pair of plastic buckets that sat near the ashes of the cooking fire and went down to fill them in the river. It wasn’t raining today (small mercies), but the sky was thick with clouds. Sunrise was nothing but a faint reddish glow to the southeast.
He hauled the heavy buckets back up the short slope, managing not to slosh very much water over his shabby robes or leaky boots in the process, and set them in their usual place. Then he stood for a moment, nudging with his foot at a charred stick of firewood that had fallen out of the half of an oil drum they used as a fireplace. Normally, when he was the first one up, he would take one of the precious hoard of stolen matches and a handful of kindling and work to get the fire started for the day. It was his habit to make himself as useful as possible around the camp—that was infinitely preferable to spending his days stealing things from the town that sat a few miles down the river.
Today, though, he just couldn’t stay in the camp any longer. He couldn’t face the prospect of the thin veneer of small talk that did nothing to conceal the hostility and suspicion with which almost everyone still regarded him, even after three months. Even at this end of the camp, furthest away from Greyback’s inner circle.
Not today.
To the rest of the pack, today was a handful of days after the October moon.
To Remus, who had a calendar and a lunar chart pasted inside the cover of the Muggle notebook he kept in his rucksack, today was Hallowe’en.
Remus found a spot along the river, upstream from the camp, where he could settle among the spreading roots of an enormous oak, lean back against the trunk, and watch the swirling current. He pulled an apple and a chunk of stale bread from his pocket and ate them slowly, not because he had any actual appetite, but because it was the only way to pacify the sharp pains that were starting to gnaw at his stomach. When he had finished, he tossed the apple core into the water and watched it bob along until the a bend in the river hid it from view. Then he settled his muffler more securely around his neck, pulled his sleeves down over his hands, and huddled into his robes.
Leaves and sticks and bits of bark floated past, fetching up against rocks or sliding into tiny whirlpools. The sound of the rushing water gave him something to listen to that wasn’t inside his own head.
That was why he was here.
After a time, Remus realised that he had caught up one end of his muffler in his hands and was slowly, mindlessly smoothing his fingers over the rough lumpy wool.
Nymphadora’s muffler. The one she had made for him.
He frowned, and made himself tuck it back under the collar of his robes.
He had to stop this.
“Oi. Lupin.”
Remus blinked and looked up. Matthias Malkin was coming along the path from the camp with a few rabbit snares slung over one shoulder.
“Hullo, Malkin,” he said. The voice inside his head snarled: Am I to have no peace? Not even today? But he smiled, blandly, and reached into his pocket again for a scrap of cloth in which he’d tied up a useful bit of fishing line, complete with a hook and an only slightly bedraggled lure, that he’d untangled from a bush along the river a few weeks ago. “Thought I’d come out here and see if I could catch something.”
Malkin stood for a moment, looking down at Remus. Then he dropped his snares in a heap along the path and folded his tall frame into another pocket among the roots of the oak.
Remus liked Malkin well enough. He was reserved, but not hostile. He did venture forth on occasion to “find”—the local euphemism for “steal”—things in town, but he was more likely to spend his days snaring rabbits or birds in the wood. And he seemed just as interested in keeping his distance from Greyback as Remus certainly was.
Remus had even hoped, in the beginning, that Malkin might become his first ally in the pack. But it had proved much more difficult than he had expected to get Malkin alone, so that he could try to get some sense of the younger man’s perspective on Death Eaters and the coming conflict. All of which made the present moment an invaluable opportunity to try to make some manner of progress on his actual mission for the Order.
If only it hadn’t been today.
Remus wrapped the scrap of cloth around his hand and wound the end of the fishing line around that. With his other hand he tossed the hook and lure into the river, letting it drift downstream. He thought, for a moment, of long summer days spent fishing with his father when he was very small, but then he gave his head a small sharp shake. Focus, Lupin. The job at hand was to start a conversation with Malkin.
But Malkin got there first.
“You knew the Potters, didn’t you,” he said. “The ones the Dark Lord killed.”
Remus froze, and the Hallowe’en images he had been trying so hard all week to suppress began to unroll across his memory, after all. Finding out—only after the fireworks had started all up and down the country—that James and Lily were dead, that Sirius had gone after Peter. Staring in horror at the ruins of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow that used to be filled to bursting with laughter—James’s and Lily’s, and Sirius’s, and Remus’s own (though not Peter’s, so much, toward the end, and they hadn’t noticed), and even baby Harry’s squeals. The funeral, with warm bright Lily lying so pale and cold, and restless James so still and quiet, and nothing could have been more wrong—
“Yes,” he said, his voice gone hoarse. “I did.”
“I thought so,” said Malkin, and there was actual sympathy in the dark-blue eyes. “I remember you and Potter being thick at Hogwarts.”
Remus pulled in the line and tossed the dripping lure out into the river again. It would, of course, work much better with an actual fishing rod.
“You’ve been different, since the moon,” said Malkin. “Keeping to yourself more.”
Remus looked up, sharply. Had Malkin been studying him, all the while he’d been studying Malkin?
“I know it was this time of year that the Dark Lord fell,” Malkin went on. “I was—wondering. If that was why.”
Remus eyed him carefully. Malkin had been a Slytherin, and he said “Dark Lord.” Was he a sympathiser?
“It’s difficult,” was all he said. “To lose good friends.”
Pain slammed at him, hard, in the gut, making him draw a harsh breath. But it wasn’t the pain he had been bracing for.
Because he suddenly understood, for the first time, that as much as he mourned for James and Lily—as acutely as he felt the fresh, raw, needless loss of Sirius—
—nothing hurt as much as missing Nymphadora.
And that was because she, at least, was not dead. She was in Hogsmeade, patrolling for dementors, carrying out surveillance missions for the Order.
If he went to her this very minute, and took her in his arms, she would be warm and eager, and she would kiss him—Merlin, he would taste her sweet kiss again, right now—
But instead, he had to live out the rest of his life knowing that he must never seek out what he wanted the most. Even though Nymphadora would give it to him in a heartbeat, if he asked her for it.
Because then she would be the one to pay for his selfishness. For the rest of her life.
“And that’s why you’re here,” said Malkin.
Remus blinked.
“Because you’ve nowhere else to go anymore. That’s what you told us when you came.” Malkin smiled, a little bitterly. “Most of us here can say that, you know. My father disowned me when I was bitten, about five years ago.” He looked out over the river. “I wouldn’t have chosen to follow Greyback, myself, but I didn’t have a lot of other options.”
Remus took a deep, slow breath. Pain or no pain, the Order needed him here, to do this.
“I’d be interested,” he said, “to think about other options.”
He pulled the fishing line in again. Still nothing.
But he cast the lure out once more, scattering drops of water that sparkled like diamonds in a sudden shaft of sunlight.
.
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-18 05:13 am (UTC)Now onto the story itself, I felt bad for Remus when he stumbled out of the building right after a full moon to make himself useful. It got worst when you mentioned that it was Halloween, God that hurt. And I love how Remus just wanted to sit by himself near the water, but Malkin came to speak to him.
And it was so polite of Remus to not tell him to go away, a lot more polite than I would have been in the same situation. And then it got to what is now my favorite line
"Because he suddenly understood, for the first time, that as much as he mourned for James and Lily—as acutely as he felt the fresh, raw, needless loss of Sirius—nothing hurt as much as missing Nymphadora."
Sigh, it shows how much he loves her and has finally accepted that, even while being a noble prat about it.
And the ending was great, looks like Remus has caught something, even if not on the lure. I cannot wait to see the rest of this chapter on Kaleidoscope. Have a wonderful evening.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-19 01:48 am (UTC)Very promising! But sad. Nice touch with the muffler.
As I always say after every Kaleidoscope update, more please!
:)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-20 04:26 am (UTC)Heh heh, I think Remus felt he had to be polite for the sake of his mission...but it will pay off eventually. (I'm happy you caught what I was trying to do with the ending, speaking of which.)
it shows how much he loves her and has finally accepted that, even while being a noble prat about it.
This is sort of a theme for the HBP part of Kaleidoscope -- Remus gradually realizing how hard it is to keep himself from giving in to Tonks. He will feel worse before he feels better. ;)
Thanks so much for the kind words -- I'm glad you're still following Kaleidoscope! I do have more chapters on my LJ than I have on FF.N. The FF.N ones are the final polished versions, but drafts of probably 85% of the rest of the chapters in Parts II and III are up on my LJ.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-20 04:28 am (UTC)This chapter will need a little more fleshing out before it's ready for FF.N (*cough* ran out of time *cough*), but at least I've got a framework for it now...
Thanks so much for the encouragement!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-20 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-04 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 05:18 am (UTC)(I really appreciate, too, how you make it not necessarily a given that Matthias must be a Voldemort supporter just because he was in Slytherin – a perspective that canon itself is sadly lacking.)
And then there's the fishing metaphor, subtly woven through – I didn't catch on until the end that that's what you were doing, paralleling the literal fishing with Remus' fishing for a foothold of connection and anti-Greyback sentiment within the pack.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 04:23 am (UTC)I've sort of written the HBP chapters from the middle out, so lately I've been filling in more of the beginning. Glad you liked Matthias here; I completely agree that we need more balanced views of Slytherins..and Matthias-as-Slytherin is also a plot point for some of my to-be-written postwar AUverse, heh.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:19 am (UTC)Man, it's gonna be AMAZING when your whole Kaleidoscope series is complete! What a legend – it'll be monumental to look at it all together.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 04:32 am (UTC)Ha! Definitely inevitable, especially for fics that are trying hard to be canon-compliant. I've definitely had, and seen, this kind of thing happen before!
Man, it's gonna be AMAZING when your whole Kaleidoscope series is complete!
Aw, that's so nice of you to say -- and I can only hope it's true. I was thinking about this recently when you posted about wanting to move away from character studies and toward plottier fics in your own writing; I'm very much afraid that Kaleidoscope, taken all together, will just be too much character study and will be hard to slog through (even if individual chapters read all right on their own). But so much of the series is plotted out by now that I think I'm better off just trying to finish it for what it is...
no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 02:33 am (UTC)What I'm thinking is that a chaptered story – clearly – has to be read in order, or it won't make sense. Whereas a "series" can refer to anything from "a succession of stories that also have to be read in order to make sense" to "a collection of one-shots that share themes and plot elements but also stand just fine on their own" to everything in between. And your Kaleidoscope stories, in addition to following a clear, overarching plot arc, *do* in fact also stand really well on their own. (Unlike, say, the chapters of my story, which I think would just leave people confused if read singly...) So presenting it as a "series" could offer the reader the option of reading the whole thing through as a "novel" OR picking and choosing in whatever order they want to read, depending on which of the stories happen to draw them in first?
???
I dunno, it just popped into my head. And like most ideas that pop into my head, it ended up taking a lot of words to describe. :-P
no subject
Date: 2016-03-26 03:35 am (UTC)Just wanted to say that I think you're absolutely right about the difference between a series and a chaptered fic. And because I knew I would be writing, and posting, Kaleidoscope out of order (as inspiration and event prompts struck), I've always thought of it as a series and have tried to make sure the installments stand alone.
But my ultimate plan was always to give each part (I, II, III) a final edit and (where necessary) rewrite once all the installments in that part had been written, partly to make sure all the pieces fit together, but also to remove the kinds of redundancies and inconsistencies that came from writing out of order. Which means that the stories/chapters probably end up slightly less stand-alone at the end of the process, i.e., once they make it onto FF.N.
But now your remarks are making me wonder if (at least for Parts II and III, where it's not already too late) I should be careful to maintain that stand-alone aspect of the chapters. Especially if it makes the whole series easier to swallow, overall. ;)
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts!
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 10:27 pm (UTC)So thank goodness for Matthias! It's good to see the wary beginning of their friendship - I like how Remus' brain snaps into action despite his inner turmoil, and how he weighs up what might suggest where Matthias' loyalties lie. He's a good spy! And my favourite part, aside from the neat use of the fishing metaphor, is how Matthias interrupts Remus' thoughts about Nymphadora with the timely "And that's why you're here." Ouch!
Will be looking forward to the rest but only when you have chance. :D
no subject
Date: 2016-12-26 04:27 am (UTC)Thanks for the kind words -- you've managed to comment on all the major things I wanted to do with this, so I'm reassured that it came through. (Now I just need to figure out how to expand this a little into an actual chapter. Oh, and time to do it, heh.)