Chapter Text
Once upon a time there was a tale, a legend sailors told each other and anyone, who wanted to listen. On an island, once very three thousand years you could find a flower, Lion’s Hope, which could bring back a soul back from heaven’s gate. Half-dead men and women standing up from their death beds looking three decades younger. The island was named Fear na gréine, where a woman lived. A woman in desperate need of a miracle flower.
She was aging you see, normally a married gal in a happy marriage wouldn’t care. But she did. Her marriage was falling apart. Her husband, Orion, will eventually cheat on her or already did. Cheating could lead to being left on the streets to fetch for herself. She couldn’t take it anymore. Those weren’t only her thoughts, she had to endure being told over and over how she owed her husband. How taking on the Black name saved her. How she is nothing without him. It was true, to some extent. In those times a woman alone with a child in her belly and a second one near her knees wouldn’t be able to survive. There wasn’t much hope left for her. So she listned to the sailors and she tried to find it. To find a magic flower she really tried. And one day she found it.
In a Kingdom, the Black family lived in, ruled a king with a queen on his side. After many years of trying queen was pregnant until eight month everything seemed to be fine. But all of the sudden the queen started to bleed, she was getting sicker and sicker. No healer could help her, so the search began. The search for a magical flower. After a few years it was found, that meant Walburga could no longer get younger. That meant she was doomed, Lion’s Hope heals the half-dead, but when you use it only to get younger… it gets tricky. It keeps you younger for a while, but then you are even older than you were at the beginning. And the vicious circle continues, until you turn to dust or get so old that you forget about the plant altogether.
Queen was saved and she gave birth to the prettiest boy in the world, with long hair, really long red hair. He was named Regulus after a star, after lion’s heart. Now Lion’s hope was no longer a plant, now its powers were contained in boy’s hair. And kingdom seemed to be much more peaceful than before.
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But it’s not one of this happy tales, it’s a story of heartbreak and hope. A story of brothers and lovers. One person and one person only wasn’t happy at all happy about the miraculous recovery. Walburga wanted the power of the flower all for herself. So she sneaked into the royal palace, she saw the hair and she sang the song. She got younger, cutting source of the magic didn’t seem to work, so she took the boy. And hid him in the tallest tower she could find, in the middle of a deep, dark forest. Now there was Sirius, Walburga, Orion and Regulus. The kids weren’t related by the water of the womb, but by the blood they shed to keep each other safe from their parents. And blood runs thicker than water, but both feel the same when your eyes are closed. They really believed they had the same parents.
Only way to climb the tower was by using Regulus’ hair. There used to be a staircase, but it was only for emergencies, kids were never supposed to know. Everyday younger boy’s long, long, long hair were brushed by his parents singing a song. It felt like love but it wasn’t.
Every year on 16th of July you could see the lanterns in the sky, little suns. And every year a promise was repeated.
One day we will go see them up close, Reggie.
You promise?
I promise.
And from those hushed words a plan was made. A plan to escape, a plan to go outside, to leave the cursed tower, to leave the place of lashes and bruises, the place of secret stashes full of stolen food, the place of hidden laughs and silenced complaints.
You ready?
Yeah, go!
Sirius was supposed to go first, climb down his brother’s hair. Regulus was supossed to be next, but he never came down. That was three years ago.