"Careful you don't fall down, please," Remus said. His voice echoed slightly off the beautifully tiled ceiling.

Remus was sitting on the low stone base that ran along the walls under the arcade in Bethesda Terrace. It was cool and shaded in the arcade compared to the heat of the summer afternoon under the sunlight. 

Tina had kept checking on them throughout the morning and once the creatures were all cared for in the briefcase, and Newt was still in the surgery with the mediwizards and muggle doctors who had been called in to assist as professional experts, she suggested that Remus take Bradley to the city to explore and distract both their minds. "They're saying it's going to be awhile," she said, and she gave Remus some money and told them to go and have fun, kissing Bradley on the head before they left.

There was so much to see, he'd realized, the moment they'd stepped out of the underground - which, apparently, New Yorkers called a subway - and Remus had felt really very overwhelmed. The buildings were tall, stacked up higher than they were back home, even in London, and everything felt much more compact in New York, he realized, probably because of the looming giants that seemed to go on forever. Bradley knew the City better than Remus could ever hope to - having visited it frequently with Tina.

They'd stopped in a book shop, where Bradley had bought some comics that he didn't have yet and Remus got a small guidebook to help him and Bradley navigate the City, since he'd never been to New York. The book told the history of all kinds of different things and he really enjoyed reading through it as they rode the subway about, Bradley holding onto the rails to balance and laughing when the train took off and the velocity made it hard to balance. "Look at me!" he called as he waved his arms around. "No hands!"

"Hold onto that railing before you fall down!" Remus said quickly, "Newt and Tina would kill me if I came back with you all busted up!"

Bradley laughed. "Mum does this all the time with me."

They'd already been to the Empire State Building and taken in a breath taking view of the whole skyline from above. Bradley had begged for quarters to put into the big silver viewing boxes, aiming it at his favorite places to visit for Remus to see. The book had talked about the history of the building and how they'd made it, with photographs of workers sitting at terrifying heights on narrow iron beams, the entire world below their feet as they ate sandwiches from metal lunch boxes as though they didn't have a care in the world.

They'd walked through Times Square and seen large billboards and signs that seemed to fill up the entire world. Anything that you could imagine was on advertisement there, and Remus had felt overwhelmed by the speeding motorcars going every which way, punctuated by red traffic lights and trilling pedestrian signals that sent herds of people crossing all at once in a great mass of humanity, passing by one another in seemingly endless patterns.

The theater district was all lights and posters for plays and marquees being changed out by men balancing on tall ladders as they plucked individual letters from the boards and replaced them with new messages.

The narrow boulevard had led Bradley and Remus to Bradley's favorite part of the city, and he'd pulled Remus along, excitedly, when Central Park had finally come into view, the mouth of the park marked by large stone pillars and metal gates. "Come on!" Bradley had called with excitement.

They'd seen loads of amazing things in the park - passed by all sorts of people of every nation, every race. There were men in business suits and women pushing prams, there were kids running with kites over the grass and old women walking dogs. There were people on bicycles and roller skates, and there was a man making balloons shaped like animals to a cluster of children that surrounded him shouting and clapping. There were people performing - people sitting and drawing and talking and playing chess and dancing and taking photographs and throwing frisbee disks back and forth. There were picnicking lovers and a couple having a row under a tree not too far away. There were guys wearing construction vests and pushing one another as they laughed and an old woman knitting on a bench. The diversity made Remus's head spin.

He'd found the Bethesda Terrace in the book and wanted to go and see the statue in the fountain. It reminded him of Eros in the fountain in Piccadilly, but the history meant a lot more to him, and he knew the moment he'd read it in the book that he had to see it. He could see it from where he sat in the arcade, peering out between the columns - one of which Bradley was climbing on, hugging the stone and stepping carefully around the base of it, humming as he played. The fountain's water caught the sun, seeming to dance as it fell in cascades around the bronze angel that stood at the pinnacle staring down from her perch, watching over all humanity, as though trying to give them a gift from heaven.

Healing, through Remus, or understanding, perhaps.

The Lady of the Waters. Designed in 1868 and installed in 1873. Emma Stubbins (1815-1882). 

"Look at me, Remus," called Bradley. He had managed to shimmy a couple feet up from the ground.

"Hey don't do that," Remus said.

"Why not?"

"Because it's disrespectful. Come here."

Bradley jumped down and ran over and sat next to Remus. "I was just playing."

"Yeah, I know, but you can't just climb on stuff. See how there's cracks in the walls and stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Beautiful things fall into disrepair when people don't take care of them properly - as a result of people being disrespectful of the work others have done before them. You understand?"

Bradley nodded, "Yeah, I guess." 

"Imagine how beautiful this place was before it started falling apart?" Remus looked up at the ceiling, his finger holding his place in the guidebook, eyes traveling over the ornate tiling, which worked in geometric patterns all over the inside of the arcade. Bits were missing or broken here and there and along one wall someone had taken spray paint and made brightly colored graffiti that marred the architecture. There were places where people had etched messages into the stone walls and the pretty tiles that made what looked like ornate stained glass windows made of stone were damaged and some had been plucked out of their settings, leaving gaps in the design work. 

Bradley asked, "It's very old in here, huh?"

"Yeah, it's pretty old. For America it's very old."

Bradley looked around.

"You see that statue out there?" Remus pointed at the angel.

"Yeah," Bradley answered.

Remus showed him the guidebook. "It was made by this woman right here. Her name was Emma." 

Bradley looked at the yellowed photograph of a woman with her arms crossed and an expression that looked... something like concern. "Why's she yellow?"

"It's just an old picture is all," Remus answered. "It's called sepia."

"Sepia," murmured Bradley. "Was she really sepia?"

"No, just the photo was. But listen... Remember this morning when you were really excited about Wolverine because he's like you?" 

"Yeah," Bradley nodded. 

"Well this woman, she was like me."

"How?" Bradley looked up at Remus.

"She was married to another woman, an actress named Charlotte Cushman."

"You're not married to a woman," Bradley said, "You're married to Sirius Black."

"Yes I am, exactly." Remus said. He took a deep breath and stared at Emma Stebbins's picture. "She was gay, like me, and she was an artist and she was so good that she was recognized by New York City and given the opportunity to make that statue right there. She was so good in fact, that she was the very first woman ever to be given the chance to do a commissioned piece for the City - ever. Back then, women didn't get to do stuff like that, so Emma Stebbins not only defied the stereotype for women, but also for gay people like me. Those are things that are still fought against, even to this day. It is still impressive, what she did, even over a hundred years later." 

"That's cool," Bradley looked up at the statue as though he was just noticing it was there and Remus saw the appreciation in his face now that Remus had said that.

"Bradley, my point is this," Remus said, putting his arm around Bradley, "Sometimes, it's very, very easy to let the people around us define who we are and what we are capable of doing. It's easy to let people's standards limit us or tell us that we're not good enough... not good enough because of something they see when they look at us. The world will say 'you can't do that' because you're poor, or a woman, or because your skin is one color or another, or you follow this or that religion, or you're queer, or - or a werewolf..." Remus looked Bradley very carefully in the eyes. "They're liars."

Bradley stared at Remus, enraptured by his words, his eyes wide.

"You can do anything. It doesn't matter what you are." Remus paused and he pointed up at the angel again, looking down over them. "See that there?"

"Yeah."

"That's proof."

Bradley nodded.

"That angel... this place..." Remus looked around. "People don't value this stuff, these truths, what this whole thing represents. You know what Bethesda is, Bradley?"

"No?"

"Bethesda is the name of a place in the Christian Bible. It was a pool in a city called Jerusalem, where all the sick people went. There was a legend that the water of the pool would be stirred up by an angel and when the pool stirred up, the first people in the water would be healed of their maladies. Now, of course, that legend was just that - a legend - it was something that people believed in because they needed something to hope in..." Remus paused. "In reality, that water stirred because it was over a - a sort of geyser, where hot air was released through cracks in the earth and it caused the water to stir. A natural phenomenon that people back then couldn't explain, so they gave it supernatural explanations. There were probably minerals or something that was released that caused some of the healings, especially of like skin conditions and stuff, so that's probably where it started the legend, logically."

"That's cool," Bradley said. 

"Yeah... So there's a story in the Bible, though, where Jesus is at the pool and there's a man who was poor and lame and he was ostracized by everyone. He wasn't even respected enough by society to have anyone that would help him get to the pool or anything. He'd been there years and years, long enough people recognized him there as the guy that had been there the longest. I think it said it was like forty years and nobody helped him because they didn't think he was worth anything."

Bradley frowned. 

"But the thing is when Jesus came to the pool - He saw the man and he chose that man to be the man that he healed that day. He chose to go to the one that society counted worthless." Remus paused. "Do you know what that means?"

Bradley thought about it a minute, staring at the angel, then he said, slowly, "He felt bad for the man."

"Yeah. Because in God's eyes - we're all equal... and in God's eyes we deserve to all be treated equally and treated well. We all deserve to be loved and cared for. And anyone that says anything different is a liar. That's what that angel is representing, see. See how the angel looks down at everyone that passes by and her expression does not change - she does not see people and look at any one of them differently - there's no look of disgust or disappointment or judgement. That's what Emma Stebbins was representing with that statue. She defied the standards of society with a representation of God looking on the people and seeing us equally worthy of mercy and compassion."

Bradley turned and looked up at Remus. "That's really nice."

"It really is."

"That's why it's like Wolverine," Bradley said, "Because even people the world doesn't expect can be heroes."

"That's right," Remus agreed, nodding.

Bradley smiled, "I wanna go see it better." He got up and ran out from the arch way into the sun, his arms spread wide as he laughed, pretending he was flying as he dipped and swooped around the courtyard between the two grand staircases. 

Remus watched him, rubbed his knees, and finally stood up, following after Bradley.

"I wish Sirius was here," he whispered, looking around at all the broken down beauty and graffiti that surrounded him. This place was beautiful despite - and possibly even because of - it's brokenness... and that, he thought, was exactly like his husband.