Sirius lets Marlene drive his motorbike, just the one time, and regrets it.

She keeps to the road, ignoring his instructions on how to activate the flying charms on the bike. She keeps to the road, weaving through muggle traffic to a symphony of blaring horns and shouted profanities.

Marlene doesn't need the charms to fly; the muggle machine underneath her is magic enough. She defies gravity and muggle traffic laws. The wind combs her hair back into his face, and he presses closer to her to keep the long strands of it from whipping into his eyes.

She whoops in exultation as she cuts off a lorry, her head tilted back so far she couldn't be paying mind to the road, and Sirius yells along with her, undecided if the cry was terror or exhilaration. His arms curl tighter around her as she takes a turn far too fast; the gravel crunches under the wheel and for a few moments he's just waiting for the bike to skid out from under them, to throw their bodies across the pavement and cheat some Death Eater out of the satisfaction. But she rights the bike as it miraculously manages through the turn and roars off onto the straightaway, the engine roaring as she accelerates past sanity, far far into madness.

He's reckless, but he's never enjoyed a ride like this before. Marlene is throwing everything she has (and everything he has, in truth) under the tyres of this motorbike, daring the world to catch her up. And he's just along for her mad ride.

He leaves her, windblown and strangely bright-eyed, in front of her shabby little block of flats in Liverpool. She grins at him as she goes, and there are grey lines streaming from the corner of her eyes back to her temples and into her hair where the wind forced tears, where her overdone makeup bled in defiance of gravity. She looks alive like she never has. Never again, he cautions her, leaning over the handlebars, you'll run her into a wall. And she grins brighter, not even trying to deny it, maybe even a little bit proud. You'll kill yourself someday, McKinnon, you're gonna jump one day and there's gonna be nothing to catch you, he mutters as he kicks the bike back to life.

Well, then, maybe I'll be growing wings, she sings back to him, reckless and alive and irreverent, as she climbs the concrete steps. And if not, better to jump than to fall!

It's the best ride of his life, the only one where he isn't steering. And, as he rides home through the clouds, he wonders if that's what love is like, sitting behind someone and holding tight because you know they're going to take you on some adventure, somewhere beautiful and dangerous you couldn't ever find on your own.

He shakes the thought off, tossing it from the bike somewhere over Leeds. It apparently grows wings, though, and finds its way back to him eventually, catches up to him as he stands alone under a grey sky in Stirling, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, next to Marlene's fresh grave. He lets it alight for a little while, long enough to admit 'maybe' and entertain a little of what might have been before it all hurts a little too much for Sirius Black and he shrugs it off and gets back on the bike.

He goes Marlene's way, weaving through muggle traffic at breakneck speeds, the irate horns and cursing like background music. She spurs him faster because he wants to show her what she showed him that one day, that one ride, because there's almost a moment when he can convince himself she's sitting behind him, her fingers dug into his hips, her laugh in his ears over the rush of the wind, but of course that smoke-and-perfume smell that sticks in his nose and dredges up all the painful, pretty memories is just exhaust and wishful thinking.

(Sirius doesn't really like the memory. He only knows it's beautiful because Azkaban steals it from him.)