InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "His Noodly Appendage"

Regulus Black (toilandhazard) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2012-11-05 17:41:00

Entry tags:

ch: unwind: narcissa black, ch: unwind: regulus black, p: annalisa, p: kaitlin

Who: Regulus & Narcissa^unwind
What: Walking around the island
When: The afternoonish?
Where: Around the island

Regulus was uneasy. He knew his brother's temper well enough despite not having been around him since he ran away. He knew better than to stay close by or go somewhere where he'd run into his brother, which meant going around on the island. Before that, of course, he'd made a point to say he was going to be there so Sirius could avoid him. Hopefully avoidance would be his choice instead of hunting him down.

There were a lot of things that he could have told Sirius and he could have tried admitting that he'd been wrong about certain things, but he couldn't. Not to his Sirius. Apparently he could to another Sirius...but that Sirius was much more calm and much less rude to him about things. That Sirius said he loved him. No matter how vehemently Regulus would deny it, that was the one thing he'd wanted to hear for years, but it still didn't feel real and he still couldn't return the sentiment. The words got stuck in his throat and his fingers refused to write them. Not when he was certain the moment he said them, Sirius would retract his statement.

It also didn't help that he was certain his parents would show up any minute now and then he'd have to be on his best behaviour all over again and even if he'd made progress, it would be destroyed because they would expect him to be the same and he would be the same. He wasn't brave like Sirius and he wasn't reckless like Sirius. He didn't know how to exist without his family around.

Narcissa understood him more than most of the others. She knew what it was like. They'd both been set for unwinding from the beginning and yet they both never were unwound...at least, he'd survived so far. He still had another year to go before he was really safe and hopefully with a wife and child they wouldn't give him up so easily. Perhaps his first child would be a girl and then they couldn't unwind him because they'd still need an heir. Yes. Perhaps that would happen. He would be okay with that.

Everything here felt so much more complicated than before. He was virtually alone...with just Narcissa. There were no parents to look after them and no one to make sure they did as they were supposed to...but that didn't mean they shouldn't.

He was properly layered...because he didn't like the idea of getting sunburn. He'd put suncream on his face all the same to be safe. At least the shade was a comfortable temperature.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he looked over at Narcissa and smiled a little. "Are you alright? Yesterday was...unfortunate."

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willtolive
2012-11-07 02:28 am UTC (link)

"But it's more complicated than that," Narcissa finished for him. "I know." She knew all too well. She wanted her beliefs about unwinding to fit into a tidy little understandable box with clear boundaries of where she agreed and where she disagreed, but they didn't. They were all over the place. She would defend hers and Regulus's right to make choices to avoid being unwound in one breath, and get incredibly angry with someone criticizing the practice of unwinding in the next. Nothing about it was simple.

And it had made it really hard to be here, because no one understood her and her beliefs seemed to be constantly under siege. She felt much calmer now that Regulus was here, even though her beliefs were still just as confusing and she was just as besieged as before (if not moreso). Loyalties, in her mind, made everything simpler. Because ultimately it didn't matter what she thought about unwinding; her dedication to her family took precedence over everything else.

"If anything," she said, "I feel that my choice proves it is possible to survive unwinding without throwing away the people you care about. It's possible to come back. But they had reasons other than survival for what they did. Selfish reasons." Surviving was selfish too, but far less selfish than throwing a hissy fit over not being able to marry who you wanted or needing to protect someone that they had chosen more than their family. "And even if they stayed, they would have sat back and allowed us to go through with being unwound. It only became problematic for them when it was their selfish choices and their lives on the line."

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toilandhazard
2012-11-07 02:42 am UTC (link)

The more time Regulus spent with Narcissa, the better he felt...but the more conflicted everything really seemed. He'd thought about it before, acknowledged that his feelings were probably selfishly driven, but then he'd ignored them. He ignored them because he was sure that he'd go mad if he thought about it too much. What use would he be if he turned mad, if he turned into his mother. He didn't want to be bitter and angry all the time. It seemed he'd already started on that path, though.

Being called the same as a murderer wasn't fair as far as he was concerned. In other worlds, he did torture people and harm them and he probably was a murderer...but in this world he wasn't. That was the way he saw it. He didn't think he or Narcissa should be judged for familial loyalty and for their own sacrifices, but on the other side, he understood why Sirius was hurt. This world was forcing him to see everything for the conflicted mess it was.

"Sirius said he was happy at the idea that I got to live...but I don't think either of them realise why we were okay with it before. I was fine..." Until your story about unwinding and then I was terrified. But he wouldn't bring that up. Ever since then, it was something to be feared. Still, if he'd been asked to do it, he would have gone with his head held high and dealt with it because his family was important. "They wouldn't have missed us." Which may not have been true, but with the way things were these days, that's how it felt.

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