Snape's mouth thinned to a grim, humourless line, his dark eyes glinting dully in the half-shadows, more mournful than malicious.
The words draped over them like the last threads of a torn shroud, and Snape felt them - not like a blow, but a slow, surgical incision along a rib he'd thought long since petrified. The old instinct stirred in him - the impulse to sneer, to lash out, to douse the room in sarcasm so thick it would smother the vulnerability bleeding out across the floor. Instead, he remained still, his hand tightening - infinitesimally - on the rough blanket he had wrapped around Lupin's shaking shoulders. The weight of him, brittle and spent, pressed against Snape's side like a dying star, all ruin and gravity.
No one is safe with me.
The irony was so rich it nearly choked him. Pot, meet kettle, he thought, with the grim amusement of a man attending his own funeral out of spite.
But he couldn't help his throat clamp bitterly at Lupin's cracked voice and the broken, repeated confession of loneliness - raw and far too relatable for comfort. Lupin's condition took away his dignity, comfort, even chances at a basic human companionship, and yet he bore it with that sickening humility, accepting solitude like some miserable penance rather than an injustice. Severus recognised it with cruel clarity, familiar enough with loneliness to spot the same wound bleeding out of someone else, and resented Lupin deeply for forcing him to witness it.
The universe truly had a twisted sense of humour, throwing them together in this decrepit shack, two men whose youths had been defined by isolation, poverty, and shame - each clawing at survival in different ways. Severus through spite and coldness, Remus through guilt and resignation. But that didn't mean Snape could stand to hear Lupin speak it out loud - acknowledging his exile from humanity as though it were justified. The idiot might believe he deserved this, but Snape knew better. He knew punishment, knew its shape and its weight, and this was beyond that. This was meaningless cruelty, a godless, random torment.
He could still feel Remus' fingers curled in his robes, a desperate plea for anchorage, the only stability Lupin was allowing himself to claim. The grip wasn't strong, not by a long shot, but it was there, tangible proof of the fragile trust forced upon Snape. He didn't pull away. Instead, his thin lips parted slightly, ready to retort, to scold Lupin for daring to accept his solitude so readily. But he found the words curiously absent.
Because Snape understood.
If survival were merit,
Severus thought grimly,
he would have been king of us all.
With a sharp inhale that bordered dangerously close to gentleness, Snape eased Lupin back slightly, one pale hand guiding him until he was half-resting against him, his posture rigid yet patient, like some bleak statue resigned to its martyrdom. It felt disturbingly like holding death itself, all sinew and bone, broken skin and tangled breath, but Snape held him regardless - brusque, uncomfortable, yet steady.
He let out a breath, low and contemptuous, but not at Lupin.
"Then it appears we both must settle for unsafe company." Snape murmured finally, voice low and bitterly amused, the words sliding softly into the quiet, charged air like smoke from a funeral pyre.
He watched over Lupin's exhausted features - the lines of brutal agony etched deep around his eyes and mouth, as he held the husk of a man he once despised (and perhaps still did in some festering part of himself). Snape knew he was no saviour, no hero - he was barely even human at times, himself - but for one long, uncharacteristically soft moment, he allowed himself to wonder how it would feel to ease the wretched burden Lupin carried.
Foolishness, surely. Utter nonsense. Yet the thought lingered.
He adjusted the blanket again, tucking it with clinical precision against Lupin' clavicle, as if neatness could stem the rot. His fingers brushed too long against fevered skin - a fleeting, traitorous gentleness - before retreating back into the safety of the folds of black cloth.
Snape settled back against the rough stone wall, eyes burning with a tiredness so old it had no name. And for the first time in a very long time, he did not think of himself as the most cursed man in the room.
"Rest, Remus." Snape added quietly, voice edged with a subtle kindness he would never admit to as he used his colleague's first name, sure he'd forget in the morning. "No harm will come to you here."
Not tonight, at least. And perhaps, for now, that was enough.
Severus waited in shadows so deep he could feel their weight on his skin, timing his breaths to match Remus' ragged, uneven ones. Only when the last faint shudders of pain finally ebbed away, when the wolf's madness faded like fog after the dawn, did he move. Then, silently, carefully - as though handling cracked porcelain - Severus lifted Lupin' limp form with a tenderness he'd vehemently deny if asked, cast a levitation spell on him and retreated to the quiet, candlelit solitude of his chambers, where he lay him on his bed, breaching the last fortress of his hard-won privacy.
There, going back and forth between shelves laden with jars of carefully labelled ingredients, he methodically applied oils and salves with precise, careful strokes - pale, elegant fingers tracing Remus' wounds gently, as if willing each bruise to fade beneath his touch.
