Sirius told himself to relax, because this was just talking, this was James and none of that should be the great emotional event that his mind wanted to make it into. And so he took a slow breath and nodded.
"You know before I went to Azkaban I never thought about dying." He started, "I mean I always knew it was a possibility with what we were doing, and life being what it was. But it never seemed like something that could happen to me. And even after Jamie and Lils went into hiding - it was still just a thought that could happen to other people, but not me. Not my family." He had dropped his gaze while he was speaking watching the set of James' mouth, the gentle slope of his neck.
"After Jamie and Lily..." He stopped then shaking his head. "When the brought me in, after the put me in a cell. It was all I could think about. I thought about killing Peter, what that would be like to do it myself. But more than that I thought about dying. I wished I'd been killed that night too, that they would have killed me instead of bringing me in. That Peter would have killed me. I wished every single day that I was in there that I would just die. Anything death held would have been better than that place, than knowing I'd lost everything." He took another slow breath, feeling those same feelings wrapping around him again. "Even thinking about it now brings it all back, that feeling. It's easier when I look at Peter, to remember all that hate, to hold on to those feelings of wanting to kill him, even actually doing it would be better than remembering that."