Regulus Black (locketdestroyer) wrote in fourteenshades, @ 2014-08-07 16:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | regulus black, x-sirius black |
Who: Regulus and Sirius
Where: Random field
When: Thursday evening
Summary: After a raw confrontation, a truce is reached between two brothers.
Rating: Low, some angst
The sun was beginning to dip over the treeline. Regulus paid it little mind as he wove through the air, dipping, diving, and dodging past imaginary Chasers and bludgers. He was getting better at flying on a broomstick, but he was still learning and building endurance. After a botched feint maneuver and near tree branch collision, Regulus decided he had had enough. He landed and then let gravity pull him down to a soft grassy bed. The Black was not the sort to enjoy dirt, but right then and there, he was content to ignore the ground and alternate between gazing up at the dusky sky and the back of his eyelids.
Regulus knew that his newfound appreciation for the outdoors would fade, but after being holed up in one cabin for a week, his appreciation for wide open spaces was at its zenith. It was peaceful.
Or, it was until he heard the sound of soft footsteps nearby.
Sirius had taken to wandering. Resting often didn’t work out so well for him, so when things began to settle down for the evening, he made some excuse to slip away from friends and he wandered. His feet were beginning to get used to the winding paths that he took. He found quiet places where he wouldn’t be bothered and sometimes when he was away from the chatter of company the thoughts in his mind fell to a dull roar as well.
Day by day he seemed to be improving physically. He hadn’t been there long, but he was already beginning to put on a bit of weight. He was looking healthier even though he was still thin and his complexion was still pallid. With his hands in his pockets, Sirius was looking up at the sky as the sun faded, leaving behind only a blush against the heavens.
His senses didn’t let the presence of another surpass his notice, however, and his gaze was drawn to the ground. Even though the light of day was fading, he knew the figure there immediately. It had been years since he’d actually set eyes on his little brother. He was a little older than when Sirius had last seen him, probably close to the time that he died back in reality. For Regulus, maybe he’d seen Sirius a few months or a year ago, but for Sirius...it had been nearly nine years. He paused, but he didn’t know what to say. This picture was too familiar. Less than a week ago he’d been doing the same thing in the garden he arrived in...lying on the ground, taking it all in.
Closing a majority of the distance, Sirius dropped down easily to the ground, resting his arms on his knees as he looked up to the darkening sky, silent next to his brother for a long moment even as the first stars began to shine, “I never was one much for stargazing. Maybe it was a rebellion thing, looking up and only seeing names of our relatives instead of what’s really out there…”
Some habits died hard. His grip closed around his wand the instant that he saw the figure come closer, then clenched more when a face came into sight and the realisation sank in. He wasn’t looking at a younger version of his father or his uncle… he was looking at his older brother. Sirius’s handsome features were still there, but even in the dimming light he could tell they were drawn in and different in ways that couldn’t be chalked up to age.
In that moment of silence, Regulus hardly thought to keep from studying his older brother’s appearance. It was only when Sirius broke it that he remembered himself and shifted his gaze back to the horizon. “I can’t help but wonder if they’re real, or merely an illusion of the magic,” Regulus murmured.
Of all the things to say, Regulus never imagined that those would be the first words spoken directly to Sirius since he ran off to the Potters. In his imagination, there had been more bitterness, more contempt.
He was keenly aware of his brother’s eyes lingering on him. He knew that he was vastly different than Regulus had ever seen him, but it made him feel raw and peeled apart. He remained still though, quiet and barely moving more than steady, even breaths, “Good point, but at that point we can make a small leap into existential questions about whether or not we’re really here or if we’re illusions of the magic and that’s not something I really want to delve into yet,” he ran a hand through his hair, but left it there for a moment, gripping the long strands. The sharp pain made him feel very real, and it grounded him for a moment.
They had seen one another off and on over the years, passing through the corridors at school. Sirius had thought about saying something, but Regulus had always been so hell bent on being the perfect son. He’d been over this in his mind a thousand times, convincing himself that Regulus wouldn’t listen, trying to absolve himself from the guilt that had eaten away at his insides for more than a decade.
“What do you want from me, Regulus?” The question was abrupt, but it didn’t hold any sort of malice. He did his best to make it sound idly curious, not as achingly desperate as he suddenly felt. Still, he’d never been one to beat around the bush and fret over pleasantries. Sirius looked over at his younger brother, his grey eyes as penetrating and unyielding as steel, but his gaze wasn’t cold or calculating, “I mean…do you want anything from me?” The fact of the matter was that Sirius had no idea how to talk to his brother. It wasn’t like talking to James or Remus. Regulus was his blood brother, but they’d always been such opposites. Sirius felt as unsure now as he had when he was sixteen, standing outside that bedroom door with his hand poised for a knock that had never happened.
Regulus could never be as blunt as Sirius. The questions carved into a raw place that made him draw his knees up to his chest, as if he needed something to hold or hide against. He could feel his brother’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to meet them. Those questions could be interpreted in so many ways, some of which could have helped him evade giving a forthright answer, but he knew exactly what his brother was asking.
A long moment crawled by before he settled on a response and admitted, “I don’t know if you can give me what I want.”
It was a vague answer, but to Regulus, the very admission of wanting something from Sirius made him vulnerable. He shouldn’t have wanted anything to do with Sirius, but he did.
“I don’t know either,” Sirius confessed, finally peeling his eyes away to look off in the distance at the sky and all its infinite, fathomless space. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, an old habit, and sat there for a minute without saying anything at all.
Family had never meant the same thing to Sirius that it had to the rest of his relatives. He had always erred on the side of desiring unconditional love and affection as markers of relation instead of irrefutable blood ties that bound him to the rest of the Blacks whether he liked it or not. He’d felt alone until he got to Hogwarts with the father who was stand-offish and the mother who was consistently disappointed in his every move...the brother who wanted to be everything he wasn’t and couldn’t take a joke. He’d only connected with the feeling behind the word “family” when he’d taken up with James, Remus, and Peter.
Still, he knew what it was to be vulnerable. He knew that just saying those words, Regulus opened himself up for the possibility of Sirius throwing those words back in his face and ripping him apart. He knew because that’s what the Black family was good at...finding weakness and using it against one another. He wouldn’t do that, though, so he gave Regulus something back. Vulnerability for vulnerability. Equal footing, even if it was on a slippery slope, “I know I’ve never been anything a Black should be. I know that Mother burned my name off the family tapestry the day I left, but you were - you are - still my little brother.”
“But that’s just it- you left,” Regulus spat back, a surge of anger swelling before he could quell it. His wand crackled with the outburst. “And then with you gone I had to -” He stopped himself before more was exposed. He had already said enough. He didn’t need to add to the heap of baring.
The Mark on his arm was covered by a long sleeve (as it always was, no matter how badly the summer beat down on the village) even if it did not make a wink of difference. Everyone, save for perhaps a few from before his time, already knew that he had it. Regulus could not explain why he felt compelled to keep it concealed.
“I’m not little,” he muttered, ignoring how small that made him sound. The Slytherin in him was willing to sound like a petulant child in order to redirect the vein of focus.
It felt like a physical slap, those six words that Regulus spoke and then the ones that shortly followed. Sirius looked back over to his brother finally, barely daring to even breathe. He was sure of what would follow if he’d just speak the words. Sirius left, and Regulus was left to the influences of their parents, and he had to step up where Sirius wouldn’t.
His throat felt tight enough that it ached, and the pit in his stomach that had been stewing with guilt all these years just bubbled over, spilling that toxicity into his very bloodstream. He protested to being called little, and maybe Sirius deserved that too. Maybe he’d lost the right all those years ago to call Regulus brother at all, but Sirius had to believe that Regulus didn’t know the whole story.
“Did you know she locked me away in my room during the summers?” He turned his eyes back out to the now darkened night sky and purposefully ignored the way that his voice broke, “Not all the time, obviously, but when she was angry - really angry - Mother just...locked my room so she wouldn’t have to see me. That’s why I didn’t come out of my room much after I started going to school...the main reason anyway. She’d come in and try to tell me what a big mistake I was making by treating innocent people with a little respect, and I...I told her all about the Muggleborns at school and how friendly I was with them. It infuriated her. You remember what a temper she had.”
Sirius closed his eyes, thinking back to that last night, to all the mistakes he’d made and the life he’d left behind, “That summer - that night - Mother came up to have one of her little chats with me and she told me that I was no longer going to be a disappointment to the family. That I would align myself with Voldemort or face the consequences. I refused. It was the angriest I’d ever seen her, and that was saying something. She cursed me. I’d never felt pain like that before.” He paused a long moment, clearing his throat, “After her anger subsided and she left, I packed my bags. I left because I wasn’t safe anymore in that house. I was never going to let her hurt me again, but you...you were perfect. You were everything they wanted, so I thought you’d be safe. I left, Regulus, but you pretended I didn’t exist anymore so I figured that was that.”
“You’re lying,” whispered Regulus.
He had been told that something entirely different had transpired the night that Sirius ran away - and he still believed it. He had to believe it.
“Mother wouldn’t do that,” Regulus said, gaining conviction and volume. He was desperately scraping up and clutching onto every last reassurance and justification his parents had given him when Sirius’s name was scorched off the Tapestry. He couldn’t believe Sirius.
“You despised your family and your responsibility to continue the line. You were the one who drove us away, hated me, and then ran off to be with your new Mudblood-loving family.” That was the bedrock of everything that Regulus had believed, but it was beginning to fracture even as the hateful words were driven out.
Sirius was letting Regulus vent, clenching his jaw up until he reached the last, but he couldn’t hold it in anymore and his temper exploded without warning, “WAKE UP, REGULUS!” The words were a harsh bark of sound, those grey eyes now focused and narrowed as his heart beat too rapidly in his chest.
He pushed himself up off the ground with a strength he didn’t think he had, “You don’t say that word to me.” He shook his head, pacing back and forth in front of his brother, “That word that you use with all your ignorance and hatred to describe the selfless, loving people who took me in and gave me a home when I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t deny that I had a part in it, Regulus. A part, but so did the rest of you.”
His words were practically a snarl, “Father, who couldn’t be bothered to put a foot down or show that he ever cared about us. Mother, who was more suited to spite and hatefulness than nurturing. And you. You who actively tried to be everything that I wasn’t. Who looked at me with the same contempt that Mother did because you wanted to be her perfect son. You despised me and the very air that I breathed, and don’t you dare patronize me and tell me that you didn’t. I never blamed you for that because you believed them and all the bullshite that they had to say about purity. I wasn’t going to drag you through the mud with me kicking and screaming if you didn’t want to see the reality around you, but you were blind to what was going on in that house, Regulus. You didn’t see.” His thin chest heaved with the effort to put air through his lungs, and his head was buzzing. He was fracturing a little, bit by bit.
Regulus’s vision started to cloud and blur. Lowering his head to his knees, he wordlessly wiped his face dry on his trousers. The familiarity of that rage, so alike to their Mother’s spontaneous bouts of fury, was the final blow to his conviction. Sirius’s temper frightened him - but there was something that terrified him more than being struck with a fist or a curse. The truth.
He wanted to dispute everything, to protest that it was Sirius who had made his childhood miserable and their parents unhappy and dysfunctional, that Sirius had been cruel to him and to Kreacher, that everything would have been fine if he had just kept his head down and his mouth closed, but something thicker than molasses kept his throat hoarse and lips sealed. The truth.
Regulus couldn’t deny that he had wanted to be everything that Sirius wasn’t, that he had wanted Mother love and Father’s approval. He had believed everything they told him without questioning it. He had believed them when they told him he was their only son. He had believed them when they told him that they were proud to see their son branded with the skull and snake.
“What do you want from me?” Regulus managed in a small, tight voice.
Sirius clenched and unclenched his trembling hand, trying to breathe deeply and evenly. It wasn’t an easy task. His temper had always been that way, quick to ignite with a slow, continuous fade. He didn’t like that he’d exploded at Regulus like that, but it seemed to have gotten through. That, he guessed, was the important part.
“I just want a chance,” he croaked, his throat raw from the venomous words he’d spewed before. It felt like the very air around him was charged and crackling, but maybe that was just the build up emotions that seemed to want to fight their way out of him. He knew what he was asking for, and he knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it was the only thing he really knew for certain, the simplest way to however this might end.
“Nothing more, nothing less. Just a chance to salvage whatever we can of...this,” he wasn’t really sure whether to call it family or a relationship. They’d never really tried with one another. It had always just been two opposing forces, and it had destroyed whatever they might have had back in reality, but Sirius was smart enough to know that this place was the only time he’d ever get to attempt reconciling with his brother. That way he could at least say that he’d tried.
A chance to salvage… something. Regulus didn’t know what to call it either. Sirius had always been his brother, but more for lack of a better term. What a brother meant beyond someone who had entered the world the same way as you, he had not the faintest. But he knew that this village, this rare fluke to live outside the constraints of their fates, would be his only opportunity to discover the other bonds that tied a family together.
Regulus dragged in a shuddery breath, exhaled with a deliberate slowness, and tried to regain some sense of composure. His usual graceful movements were no where to be seen as he pushed palms against the grass and stood. He was slighter than Sirius. That much hadn’t changed.
“If we can somehow forgive each other.. I want that too,” he allowed, extending a hand in offerance of a mutual effort. “A chance.”
Sirius looked down to the little brother that he had always been bigger than. He was so young...and Sirius knew that Regulus had never really gotten the opportunity to know that. Growing up in their household meant growing up fast, never really getting to be a kid or do things that other kids did. Growing up in the midst of war meant that even after school, there was no chance to breathe. They just had to pick sides and hope for the best. When he was Regulus’ age he had no idea what was waiting for him. He had no idea that he was still really just a kid, even if he hadn’t felt like one.
He nodded softly, feeling strange about the coolness of this exchange, but it was fitting somehow. Sirius reached out and took his brother’s hand in his own, a firm, brief shake of agreement, “We’ll...keep in touch. See how it goes. I’m manager of the Blue Cow now, if you ever want to come by.”
Unsure of what to do with his hands once they were free, Regulus shoved them in his pockets. He was thankful that was that - brief but firm. Hugging was not a familiar concept to the young Black.
“The pub, correct?” Regulus asked, feigning ignorance. Sirius could not and would not know that he had experienced his first taste of liquor in that pub… and subsequently made a fool of himself in front of Helena Ravenclaw. Perhaps one day he would tell his brother the story, but it was not that day. “I work in the Apothecary,” he told Sirius, and hesitated to add, “I have an apprenticeship with Severus.”
“That’s the one,” Sirius agreed, though he thought there was something more there than Regulus was really saying. He’d only barely started to settle into his life there. It was a little overwhelming, but he was glad to have a job. That, at least, would help to occupy his hands and keep him from being idle.
He nodded when Regulus said he had a job at the Apothecary. That was fine and good, except that he followed it as being the apprentice of a boy that Sirius had once nearly killed, “Sniv--” He cleared his throat, “Snape? Right…well, do you...enjoy the work, at least?” It was hard, and it left a bad taste in his mouth, but he tried not to completely discredit the bloke he’d once known for the sake of this truce with his brother.
Regulus frowned. He knew the detestable name that Sirius almost slipped out. It was only for the sake of their budding truce that he swallowed back his reproach and nodded.
“It’s challenging, and there’s no shortage of demand for potions in the village, but it makes the work all the more satisfying when it’s done,” he replied with more enthusiasm than he normally cared to show, even if it was already significantly curbed. “Snape is teaching me how to brew the Wolfsbane potion. It is critical that more than one person can prepare it… people are known to disappear without rhyme, reason, or notice.” Regulus doubted that he needed to elaborate on why for his brother; he must have known about Lupin’s condition.
If it wasn’t for the good points that Regulus was making, Sirius’ jaw would have remained clenched and locked. He knew that he was making a good contribution, though, and Regulus did seem to enjoy it so he supposed that he could try to be ok with that smarmy git being his brother’s mentor. He had to wonder how old Snape was here. If he was still the same greasy haired kid that he’d known before or if he was older than Sirius or even Remus.
The mention of the potion that was undoubtedly for Remus did give Sirius pause for a moment. He remained still and quiet, assessing Regulus and what his expression might give away about how much he knew. If he was making the potion, however, he had to be well aware of the recipient, but Sirius was careful with his words, “That’s good...about the Wolfsbane. As many people as possible should probably know to be on the safe side. There’s only so much that we can do,” he nodded thoughtfully, thinking back to the many nights that he and his friends had roamed the Hogwarts grounds. A werewolf and three animagi...a strange sort of pack, but a pack no less, “Thank you. For learning it for him.” It couldn’t have been an easy thing for Regulus, making that potion for a man that Sirius had chosen as a brother.
It was strange to hear his brother thank him for something. Caught off-guard, Regulus gave a wordless nod. It was not solely for Lupin’s sake that he was learning to brew the potion, but he knew better than to tell his brother that. Lupin had, for a brief period, been his Professor at the castle. Regulus wrestled with a begrudging respect for the man, but it wasn’t for his sake that he was learning how to brew the Wolfsbane. In his eyes, it was for the rest of the village’s sake.
“I should probably head home,” Regulus finally said, something he had been putting off this whole time. He summoned his broomstick and caught it mid-air. “I have to be up early for Quidditch practice.” It was not without a touch of bashfulness that he disclosed such information to his brother; Regulus had never played the sport in school or shown interest in it when they were boys.
Regulus was trying new things -- or, rather, opening himself up to experiences that he would never have a chance to take up if he went back.
A little surprised by the information that he was given, Sirius regarded his little brother closely for a moment, “Yeah. I should be going too. We’ll…” he trailed off for a moment, taking a deep, steadying breath before he continued, “get together soon. Or something.” He managed a reserved smile, taking a few small steps backwards before turning back towards the village and calling over his shoulder, “Goodnight, brother.”
Or something. Regulus had no idea what to expect, but he found himself welcoming rather than dreading the idea of spending more time with his brother.
“Goodnight, Sirius.” Regulus would watch his brother’s back retreat for a few moments before he flew home.