Chapter Text
Regulus wakes slowly. He’s surprised to be waking up at all. He’d been so certain that his time had finally come, he’d been more than ready. Hadn’t he?
Everything feels distant and distorted, and Regulus isn’t altogether certain what’s real and what isn’t. He’s floating, drifting towards consciousness, but he tries to cling to the gentle darkness instead.
It’s quiet here. Peaceful, almost. And he’s got the vague impression that will all change the moment he wakes up.
He does everything he can to stay there in the black void. Wills himself to slip away again, go further into the peaceful nothingness, where he doesn’t hurt and he isn’t afraid and nothing matters because he is nothing, because why should he be worried or upset if nothing is real and he can simply rest here, floating in the dark, forever? Memories are nothing but a blur, and whatever reality may be, he’s sure that he’d prefer to stay here.
A sound begins to filter through the darkness. Lilting, almost comforting- nothing more than white noise, because Regulus won’t let it be anything else. He doesn’t want anything. Doesn’t need anything. He’s just… floating.
Despite his best efforts, Regulus continues floating towards the surface. Thoughts and sensations gradually begin to return. His chest aches the way it used to after one of Mother’s stronger punishments. His throat feels like it’s on fire, his lungs struggling to function through the residual echoes of agony he’d experienced while he was - what? what had happened, anyways? He doesn’t know and right now, he doesn’t particularly care. He feels- safe, in a way he hasn’t since he was a very small child, a sensation he recognizes but also doesn’t, like it’s been so long since he felt it that he’s begun to forget it. Maybe that’s just the feeling of being safe, he thinks groggily, because he does feel safe. Safe and warm, warm in a way that Regulus Black, the Regulus Black who’d learned to cloak his mind with occlumency when he was just a boy, the Dark Lord’s prodigy, the ice to Sirius’ fire, has no business being.
He slowly becomes aware that he’s lying somewhere soft, that he’s atop something that’s providing the blissful warmth, that a deep yet blessedly dull ache courses through his entire body instead of blood. His mind continues to clear, thankfully moving more slowly than he would’ve thought was possible, and sound begins to register again. A lowered voice is speaking somewhere close by. Regulus’ mind is too exhausted and distant to comprehend the words being said. It’s nice, though. The voice. It’s gentle. It’s shaking, which is annoying, but Regulus will allow it because he’s so tired that getting upset about the pathetic way the voice is wobbling and cracking would take too much energy.
He vaguely wonders who it is, the voice at once painfully familiar and not, but he gives up puzzling over it after a few minutes. He’s just too tired to care. Safe, he thinks again. Warm. The sensations are so foreign he might’ve been uncomfortable if he were more cognizant. The darkness is still growing lighter, shade by shade. It's shifted from deepest black, the impossible emptiness of the abyss, a soul-crushing, awe-inspiring lack of life and light, to a color that wouldn't be amiss as the shade of someone's hair or the ink on a page. Regulus wishes it would stop changing. He doesn't want to return to the real world. He's too tired. Why can't he just rest here?
Someone is holding his hand. That is his hand, yes? His body feels distant and numb, mind still drifting somewhere faraway, but he eventually concludes yes, that must be his hand, he can just about recognize the ghostly sensation of fingers wrapped around his own.
So Regulus is in pain, a lot of pain, but he’s alive and he’s breathing and someone is holding his hand and they’re shaking and Regulus has the strange urge to comfort them, but he’s so tired that the best he can offer them is a weak twitch of his fingers. They’re still babbling on. They might be crying. Regulus hates crying, as a rule- it’s embarrassing, it’s pointless and only reflects poorly on the person who does it, but somehow he isn’t angry at whoever is crying now. They don’t sound like a pathetic twat, they sound genuinely overcome with emotion which, while humiliating and indicative of a weak nature, is not as grave an offense as the cardinal sin that is whining and complaint.
Oh, Regulus notes distantly, as the darkness continues to grow lighter, the pain is getting worse. His entire body is on fire, he can’t breathe, he doesn’t want to wake up but he’s too tired to keep struggling against the surge of returning consciousness. Everything hurts.
The voice flits through his awareness again. Something in Regulus softens as whoever is speaking, whoever he’s moderately confident is currently holding him like he’s something precious, continues mumbling. He draws closer to the surface of the void and this time he doesn’t fight it. He doesn't want to go back, he doesn't want to leave this comfortable darkness, but he's beginning to think he doesn't have a choice. The darkness has bled into something like crows' wings. Regulus can hardly breathe through the pain - and isn't that something, realizing that he's still breathing, his distant body is continuing to function even as his mind lingers somewhere else, somewhere safer, somewhere he wishes he could stay.
More words. Lilting, stumbling. Whoever is holding him, Regulus thinks they might be singing. Talking, too, but there's a certain rhythm, a rise and fall, that sounds like singing.
He thinks the voice is masculine, and as his awareness improves his heart begins thumping with something like warmth whenever the man speaks. The hands -yes, they’re definitely hands, he recognizes that now, the sensation of long, elegant fingers and warm palms- wrapped around his own now limp one return the squeeze he'd managed what feels like an eternity ago, and Regulus slowly begins to catch some of the words that familiar voice is saying. It feels closer now. More real. Almost like something he can touch, and it doesn't make sense because nothing outside of this darkness makes sense right now but the words feel tangible.
“I’m here, Reggie. I’m right here.”
He sounds hoarse and grief-stricken, he sounds terrified, he sounds like he cares and it hits Regulus then - Sirius. Sirius is here.
Sirius is holding his hand. Sirius is holding him. Sirius is here, and Sirius is speaking so gently and his magic is roiling protectively around them, creating the inexplicable sense of safety that Regulus had been so puzzled by.
But no, that can't be true. Sirius can't be here, because Sirius left. Sirius abandoned him, he chose Pettigrew and Lupin, he chose Potter instead of Regulus, and he didn’t even look back.
He didn't even look back.
"I'll never leave you again. Whatever happened, we're going to get through it together, okay? Just like we always have."
Regulus is far away from his body, but still he feels his heart stutter in his chest. Sirius. He'd know his brother anywhere, he'd recognize the tremble in his voice when he's scared, he'd recognize the rasp of emotion that Sirius never bothers hiding - regardless of how often Mother tried to beat that weakness out of him he doesn't even try to hide it, not when it's Regulus, not when it's the two of them- even if he were dead. Regulus doesn't think there is any distance, any amount of hurt or time or change, that would make it so he didn't know his brothers' voice.
Sirius- Sirius is definitely here, wherever here is. Gods, Sirius. Sirius is here. With Regulus. Holding him, speaking with unbearable gentleness, pushing the hair from his forehead with hands that tremble so violently the quiet, almost aware part of Regulus' mind is vaguely concerned. Sirius is here. Sirius is weeping.
I must be dying, Regulus thinks distantly, and can’t muster much of an emotional response to this realization. He’s been waiting to die since he was a child, expecting it to take him in the night or jump out from the corner and drag him away, for as long as he can remember. He’d grown accustomed to death’s company before he ever went to Hogwarts, made peace with the fact that a long life just wasn’t in the cards for him before his thirteenth birthday, so it’s not exactly a surprise and he’s certainly not frightened. He doesn’t feel much of anything at the moment, but he’s vaguely glad Sirius is here.
Sirius is here.
Regulus' fingers twitch again, desperate to feel Sirius' hand, desperate to somehow communicate that he's here, too, even if he's dying he's here, Sirius, he knows you're here. The deepest shade of gray begins to darken again, and Regulus knows his time is nearly up. He's slipping. The voice falters, but when it comes again it's so full of love that Regulus' heart might've given out even if he weren't already dying.
"Me and you against the world, Reg. Me and you against the world."
Sirius is really here.
Regulus doesn’t know how or why his brother is here, doesn’t know what happened or where Mother is or what he did to finally push her this far, to finally push her into hurting him so badly that he’s dying and Sirius is here, but he knows without a doubt that this is her doing, she's the one who did this, and Regulus thinks he ought to be frightened, ought to be angry or at least sad that his Mother has killed him but it doesn’t matter because for the first time in years- in what might have been an eternity- he feels safe. The sluggishness of his thoughts, the pain coursing through his entire body, the effort it takes to even hold onto the outline of comprehension, the vaguest form of understanding - none of it matters because his brother is here. Sirius is here, and Regulus is dying and he’s on fire, he’s drowning, he doesn’t know what’s happening because he can’t even think right, his thoughts keep melting and slipping away from him no matter how desperately he tries to grasp them but he doesn’t have to worry about a thing because his brother is here. He doesn’t have to fight anymore. He doesn’t have to be scared.
Sirius is here, and he still loves Regulus because he’s here, he’s weeping, he’s holding Regulus like he used to, like it’s still the two of them against the world. Sirius is here, and Regulus loves him more than anything, and it doesn’t matter if he dies because this- this is more than he allowed himself to imagine he’d ever have from his brother again. The pain doesn’t matter. The heaviness on his chest when he tries to breathe doesn’t matter, so he lets the air escape his stuttering lungs in a sigh that feels like surrender. The fear, the regret, the helpless anger, the longing for something more, doesn't matter. If Sirius is here, none of it matters.
Regulus’ mind begins to slow again, the dark slowly stealing more and more of him, growing deeper and deeper, cycling through shades until it hits that impossible lack of anything, and he isn’t afraid, he isn’t sad, Sirius is here so Regulus stops fighting. His thoughts fade away entirely, and he lets them go. His fingers go limp. His breathing begins to slow, no longer the desperate rasp of pain, just laboured inhales and weak exhales that shudder through his chest like gentle breeze. Sirius is here, and so Regulus is not alone. He relaxes, allowing the soft comfort of oblivion to swallow him again.
Sirius is here.