I wish I could enjoy remadora too but god that man does not care about tonks at all 💀
HE DOES !!! he cares so much 😖
the issue with remus is that his insecurities and his fears of hurting those around him always win. like in wolfstar fics when he pushes sirius away because he doesn't want him to know about his lycanthropy, doesn't want to bring that hardship into sirius' life, it's exactly that.
remus cares so so much about tonks but his insecurities overshadow that and does that excuse what he does? absolutely not, no. but it doesn't negate his care and love for her at all.
he practically begs the woman he loves not to be with him. this man who has lost everything is begging someone he loves not to choose him, to choose someone else, to have a better life than the one he can give her and to not come close because he can't bear the thought of losing her. so he pushes her away. he tells her over and over that they can't do this and although, yes, that hurts tonks, it's not that he doesn't care it's that he truly - through all his insecurities and though having been socialised as lesser - can't see why she wants him.
which is why i love that scene in the hospital wing and why i love remadora fics because we get to see tonks' reaction and that's a wake up call for remus. because he's going through this thinking "it's fine, she'll realise eventually. she'll see soon enough that this is for the best" but she doesn't. and when she lays it all bare for him he lunges for it because oh, ohhhh how he loves her and maybe his love for her doesn't need to be stronger than his hatred for himself, maybe he just needs to be able to feel both simultaneously.
and then the pregnancy happens and it's not just them - it's a child. it's their child. and everything come creeping back because god this man has lost families over and over, they're in the middle of a war (and look how that ended for jily) and he knowsss he's going to be a threat for her.
and this time it's his love for her winning. this time it's his love and care winning like it did in the hospital wing but it's so embedded into his insecurity now because of course it is. he can't escape who he is.
so he leaves. and he comes back. and that's a dick move but it was never because he didn't care, but because he knows she could do better. because he knows her worth and not his own and he wants her to have everything she could possibly have in life because he loves her, and he's okay loving her from a distance if it means she's safe.
like,,, his actions and his way about it are wrong. but they're so understandable through his mind and he's trying so so hard to understand that he deserves to be loved to, trying so so hard to protect her that he doesn't even recognise that he's doing the exact opposite.
he cared about her so much but when you're brought up in a world that never showed you care, when you learn not to care about yourself because there's nothing better, and when everything you've ever cared about ends up dead and gone?
how do you let yourself care with proximity? how do you let yourself even entertain the idea that you are not a risk and you can love and be loved?
so the care presents itself with distance and isolation, which is awful and it hurts tonks so much, but he truly believes he's doing the right thing for the person he loves which is so tragic.
that's the tragedy of remus, i think. that he has so much care and love inside of him but he was never taught how to handle that. he had a few years of it with the marauders and it ends badly, he has so much of this inside of him but he's never been taught how to hold it properly and UGH. so tragic.
but he cared, so much. in his own way, he cared so so much about her
