Fic: "Of Heroes", for anemonesque
Title: Of Heroes
Author: wanderlight
Recipient: anemonesque
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Regulus, Sirius (appearances by Narcissa, Bellatrix, Andromeda, Remus, and James)
Warnings: None
Summary: Regulus has always wanted to do great things, and perhaps he could have, in some other time and place - but this is not that time, or that place, and this is not that story.
Author's Notes: We really know very little about Regulus Black: he's nothing more than one line in the novels, a name on a tapestry. My intention here was to create a Regulus with backstory, motivations, history; I hope I've succeeded in that, and I hope you enjoy this fic. Thank you to S and A, who went above and beyond the normal call of beta duty, and also to J, who worked on this in its early stages.
Of Heroes
I.
"I want to be a hero when I grow up," Regulus announces. Six years old, at ease and cuddling in cousin Narcissa's arms.
Andromeda smiles, standing on tiptoe to slip Grimm's Fairy Tales onto the shelf. Regulus doesn't yet know that Andromeda doesn't tell the real versions, bloodstained and uncensored, when she reads to him. His head still spins with swords and honour, damsels in distress and happy endings.
"You can't be a hero," says Sirius, sitting crossed-legged on the rich green carpet. He's got a nasty burn across his arm, a failed attempt at taking a book from the North wall of the library. No-one's allowed to touch that wall. Mother wouldn't let the house-elves heal his burn. "You can be an Auror or a Cursebreaker or a dragon-tamer, but not a hero. Father said so himself."
"Didn't," Regulus says petulantly, and squirms a little as Narcissa's long fingers smooth over the collar of his shirt. He doesn't want to be fussed over like a porcelain doll. It's no help that when he looks in the mirror he sees one staring back at him, pale skin and thin bones and dark glossy hair.
"Did, he told me so," Sirius insists, and slips into an uncanny performance of Father's grave timbre. "There is no good and evil these days, Sirius. No heroes, just proper wizards doing the right thing."
Sirius and the cousins listen and "learn the proper ways" some evenings in Father's study, watching as distantly-related Blacks discuss Important Affairs over brandy glasses. He's only two years younger than Sirius, but no matter how well-behaved, Mother won't let him in. Sometimes Bella deigns to tell him about it, but Regulus doesn't understand her ugly words. His tutor laughed when he asked why some people had muddy blood.
(How is he ever supposed to find out if no one will tell him anything?)
"Well then I'll be -"
"You'll be exactly what the Dark Lord tells you to be," Bellatrix says imperiously from the doorway. She must've been there for a while, listening, but no one objects. At sixteen she's got years on all of them, and "worldly experience" on top of that.
Andromeda turns slowly, face blank, but Regulus can see her hand tremble on the bookshelf. She takes Bella's arm and drags her from the study, muttering under her breath, but Bella merely laughs.
The rest are left to puzzle out the meaning of something they're not yet old enough to understand.
II.
Sirius has his back is to the door: he's throwing shirts from his bureau into the gold-gilded trunk across the room, with limited success. When Regulus steps through the doorway, Sirius says without turning, "Well, I'm off to hero school."
It's been a running joke since Regulus was young, told over dinner tables, that the littlest Black harbours dreams of slaying villains. When they laugh, they aren't laughing with him.
"I hate you," Regulus says, but there's no venom in it. He picks his way across the room, avoiding tripping on a half-empty bag of Galleons, a pile of old socks, Sirius' old wand (snapped in half when he fell from a tree). "How did you know it was me?"
Sirius turns, and there's warmth in his grin. "I always know."
I'll miss you, Regulus wants to say, but his mouth isn't obeying him. Instead he picks up the shirts that land on the floor, tucking them into the trunk and folding with neat lines, in silence. Finally, he says, "Bella told me, she and Cissa will protect you once you get to Slytherin."
Sirius snorts, shaking his head. "Yeah, Bella's full of it. If you haven't learned that by now you're stupid." His expression softens.
"Look. You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine."
Oh, Sirius will be fine, he has no doubt. But the two of them have shared the same silver and dust and hiding places for years. Sometimes that's the only thing that makes it tolerable, when Mother has one of her spells and no one talks to anyone else for days. And with Sirius gone, well.
"I want you to watch out for Bella," Sirius says abruptly. "When you're around her."
"At least Bella tells me about things," Regulus snaps back.
"Things you don't need to know." Sirius closes the distance between them in two strides, catches Regulus' chin and forces Regulus to look him in the eye. "Listen to me, Regulus. I - don't like the idea of you being around her all the time. She's nasty, Reg. You don't want to learn anything from her."
Regulus shrugs and looks away. "She's marrying Lestrange next month anyhow."
Sirius drops his hand and steps back. "Yeah. Still."
"Besides, you're leaving me." He wants to bite back the words, knows they sound petulant, silly, childish, but he can't help it. "You're leaving me, you can't tell me what to do, you -"
"Hey," Sirius says, "hey." His voice is frank, and it might be gentle, if Sirius were the type of boy to be so (which he isn't). "I'll be back for Christmas, Reg. I promise I will. Don't tie up any house-elves without me."
Regulus scrubs at his eyes with a starched sleeve and tries to smile. That's as much of an I'll miss you, too, as he'll ever get from Sirius.
-
But when the winter hols come, Sirius goes to James Potter's (a grand concession on Mother's part). Regulus makes the house-elves check his post twice a day, but no letters ever come.
Christmas day is spent by the fireside, and Bellatrix and Narcissa spread the family tree out on the carpet, pointing to names with long, delicate fingers and telling Regulus stories about the valour and honour of his ancestors. He suspects that Andromeda would have some very different stories to tell him. But Andromeda's gone now, no one's allowed to talk about her any more, and Sirius isn't here, either.
Regulus places a present wrapped in gold-gilded paper on the tapestry to cover up Sirius' name, but it doesn't help him forget. Not really.
III.
Regulus manages to walk down the length of the Great Hall without throwing up.
He perches carefully on the stool, settles the Sorting Hat over his head. From under the tatty brim he catches a glimpse of Cissa's blonde head, Sirius' dark one at the opposite end of the room. Sirius has his arm around James Potter's shoulders. Sirius isn't looking at him.
This is his chance. I don't want Slytherin, Regulus thinks determinedly. Please, Sirius says -
Not Slytherin? The voice echoes inside his mind. It sounds old, a little careworn around the edges. When it speaks, there's a note of bemusement. A Black, and not Slytherin?
Regulus bites his lip and closes his eyes. Sirius told him all you needed to do was talk to the hat and it would place you where you really wanted to go, no tricks about it. You put Sirius in Gryffindor, Hat.
Hmm-m, so I did, the hat says. But you're no Sirius. Is this what you want, young Mister Black? Or is it what Sirius wants?
Frantically, Regulus shuffles through his mind. I - me. Yes. The, the Gryffindors seem nice, Sirius says (Sirius, who had spent most of his summer after first year talking about James Potter, and hadn't even come home for half of the second), and I've asked around.
You'd want to be another Gryffindor, then? There's a rising tide of whispers in the Hall, building to a roar, did the Hat say that out loud? Regulus peeks out from under the brim; he can just barely see Cissa. There's a tiny frown in between her eyes, but she's looking right at the Hat, right at Regulus. He loves his seventeen-year-old cousin rather more than he loves Mother.
Mother, and Father, they'll rage and scream and send him Howlers for weeks, like they did after Sirius' sorting, but certainly he and Sirius can stand up to them together? If he made the right choice?
Whatever you think the right choice is, the Hat says, in the voice people use when there's something they aren't telling him, and then it falls silent.
He can see Sirius, too, over at the Gryffindor table, laughing with James Potter and disregarding the Sorting entirely. Regulus bites his lip and waits, and waits, and waits, and feels less sure by the second -
"Slytherin," the Hat says finally, so quietly that no one catches on the first time round. "Slytherin."
IV.
Even Hogwarts can't protect a fifteen-year-old prodigal from the side effects of a war no one's calling a war.
It's dusk, but still scorching at this time of year. Regulus is making his rounds, Prefect duty; he turns the corner, keeping close to the castle's stone wall.
He cuffs his shirtsleeves at the elbow, examining the pale skin, unbroken and blue-veined. Turns over memories in his mind: earlier this afternoon, something dark and winding on Severus' sallow skin as he fumbled down his shirt-sleeve, the whispered words Voldemort and Phoenix between Severus and MacNair in the common room, stopping the moment he entered.
"- can't tell Moony what to do, Sirius, you should know that by now."
Reflexively, Regulus draws back around the corner, melting into the long shadows cast by the setting sun. He's always been rather good at disappearing: those days when Mother wasn't well and ... taught him that.
The next voice - he hears it only when he and Sirius meet accidentally in corridors, these days. Stilted phrases tripping over one another. Oh, sorry, how are you, fine thanks, millions of little words and non-words keeping the venom and the anger at bay, locking it all behind the floodgates. But Regulus doubts he could ever forget Sirius' voice; it threads through his earliest memories and ties them all together.
"Fuck Voldemort, fuck Dumbledore, I don't want Remus to be part of this."
Peering through the thick foliage, he makes out the broad lines of Sirius' shoulders. He's sitting companionably close to Potter on the steps of the front entrance. Unusual: Potter's usually hanging off the redhead these days, handing out smiles like gifts, and Sirius spends most of his time with the whip-thin Lupin. Not that Regulus keeps track.
"James," he mutters, dropping his head into his hands, and growls - an unrefined sound which never would have left his lips when he lived at home. "Dumbledore has no right to ask this. Remus doesn't owe the Wizarding World a single bloody thing, not when they treat the -"
"Ssh, you're -"
"I wasn't going to say anything, thanks. I think I know better than to."
"After you learned your lesson at the Willow, Pads?" In that statement there's venom, decided but dormant. Undertones of hot anger buried under layers of dirt.
A silence falls. In the language of the Blacks, that sort of silence means that a line's been crossed, and apparently Potter's learnt this. When he finally speaks, it's subdued and apologetic. "Sorry."
"Yeah. Well."
Regulus suspects it's all wrapped up in that air of mystery around Lupin, his monthly absences, easy evasions; the cold look Severus gets in his eyes these days when Lupin's name is mentioned, the strange nicknames the four have for each other - everything Regulus knows so well but is only allowed to look, don't touch, like the porcelain figurines behind the glass panelling in Mother's parlour. He still sees a porcelain doll when he looks into the mirror.
"He's going to do it anyway. Death Eaters'd come after him anyway, you know why. Sirius, look at me. Look at me. The Order's the right thing to do. Only thing we can do."
Order. Regulus takes an involuntary half-step forward, leaves grating against his cheeks. Severus' clipped tone comes to mind - it's not exactly safe to show ourselves, MacNair, not with the Order of the Phoenix prancing around.
"Is it the right thing? Don't tell me you haven't heard what Dearborn did that day at the docks?" Sirius unfolds and rises, walking through the open Entrance doors, and Potter follows.
The voices are fading, and he follows silently, pulled by an invisible line. He doesn't allow himself to consider jealousy: he's got friends of his own, connections through necessity and bloodlines.
"Yeah, I heard about it." Silence, and footsteps. "I'm not saying that's right, but what the Order's trying to do is. We're fighting the good fight."
That tone of voice, conviction and righteousness and compassion all wrapped up in one boyish timbre, is what Regulus really hates about Potter. Because when Potter says something in that voice, people listen. He's right, he knows he's right, and he sounds something like a hero.
The Gryffindors are always the heroes, aren't they, red and gold and bravery and goodness. If Potter's the hero, Regulus wonders, and Potter's everything he's not, then what does that make him?
Regulus steals down a side path which short-cuts him to an entrance to the Dungeons and allows himself a smile. He likes slotting the information together to finish a puzzle. This is how it is: polarised, either the Order of the Phoenix, or whatever's meant by those strange curving marks on the inside of Severus' arm.
He doesn't allow himself to wonder what would happen if the Order of the Phoenix approached him.
V.
Regulus walks down the corridor with Severus, watching the orange-hued flicker of bracketed torches on granite walls and attempting to come up with a subtle way to introduce a question about the Order of the Phoenix.
He wants to know, he needs to know, he senses that it's all wrapped up in right and wrong and valiant deeds. But he's not sure how to begin, and the silence, punctuated only by the click of his heels on the stone, is oppressive.
"I've been meaning to ask," he says, finally, and Severus turns his head to the right slightly, so that Regulus can make out the sharp, jagged cut of his profile. "About what you were -"
But Severus isn't looking at him; he stiffens, and turns towards the figure at the end of the hall. It's tall, confident, leaning against the wall with arms folded in front of chest. Utterly out of place.
"What are you doing here, Black?" says Severus acridly.
"Taking a stroll to banish the bogeymen from dark corners, Snape," Sirius replies, a smirk creeping across his face. "And oh, look, I've found one, lucky me. Get out of here, please. I want to talk to my brother."
"I hardly think that -"
"Severus," Regulus says quickly, shaking his head. "I'll speak with you later."
With a scowl and a backwards look, Severus turns on his heel and goes, robe flapping behind him - but at least he goes, and Regulus is alone with his brother for the first time in months.
A few inches taller, Regulus decides. The pronounced sharpness in his cheekbones says, I've grown up when you weren't looking. Unconsciously, Regulus raises a hand to his own cheek. As pale as Sirius', with the same underlying bone structure. Of the same blood.
Sirius straightens, unfolding his arms and taking a few steps down the corridor. His stance has lost all of its threat, but Regulus sees the familiar worry line between his brows, the one which always appeared when he realised he'd slipped up and didn't know how to fix it.
(Oh Merlin I broke the vase and she's going to come home any minute and what do I do. Regulus remembers whispering to Mother that night, Sirius broke the vase, and earning a rare smile of pride for his troubles; that made him feel only a little bit guilty when she locked Sirius up in his room for a week.)
"I wanted to say," Sirius says as he stops, rocking back on his heels. For once, he looks a little hesitant. Almost unsure. "I wanted to say. You - Reg, you shouldn't be spending time with the likes of Snape." Sirius gestures helplessly with open palms, an almost-friendly gesture of peace.
But Regulus knows better. "You left, Sirius," he says coldly, looking his brother straight in the eye and not wavering, ignoring the other voices in his mind, "you left. You can't tell me what to do." It's the conversation they've been skirting around for years, and Regulus has mapped out every possible route in his mind. They all end in train wrecks.
"I'm still your brother, Regulus."
"Not any more, you aren't. Potter's, now, maybe, or Lupin's -"
A change comes over Sirius' face, a quick flicker of warmth that would go unnoticed by most people. But Regulus knows that face as well as he knows his own, and suddenly a dozen tiny out-of-place wonderings and suspicions click-click-click together.
Regulus smiles. "Though Merlin knows what you are to Lupin," he says, slowly and deliberately. "Or what he means to you." He pauses, holding Sirius' eyes to say that yes, that's exactly what he means - and suddenly he has all the power. For once.
Sirius' brows snap together. "Don't," he snarls, aggressive now. "Don't you dare."
There's a change in the atmosphere, one that always heralded a fight, or fists; back when they still shared the same room, hid away from watchful gazes in the same closets, breathed the same dust. But when Regulus widens those innocent eyes now, it means something completely different.
"Don't what?"
"We're friends," Sirius says. "Friends. But you wouldn't know anything about that?"
"I have friends." (He hasn't really, though, not since Narcissa finished school. She and her friends would always look out for him, like mother hens for their wayward chick.)
"Oh?"
"And I have family, Sirius." I didn't leave them for my friends. "I have Mother and Father and Narcissa and - Bella - and generations of Blacks, and all you have are Potter and Lupin and Pettigrew."
"Don't need anything else," Sirius says (but what he really means is don't need you). "Not an ancient bloodline, not any soulless puppets, not a family that rejects everything that doesn't fit."
"They rejected you because you're a failure, Sirius. You left me and you left us because of you, and because you failed and you couldn't deal with it! Because you weren't good enough!"
"Maybe, you deserve it after all," Sirius says abruptly. Something ugly twists in his expression, something at home on Father's face perhaps, but never on Sirius', never on the features fitted best for wicked smiles. "Maybe you should spend all your time around baby Death Eaters, Regulus. You seem to belong there."
Regulus hasn't heard the term Death Eaters, but he's not going to tell Sirius that. "I know about the Order of the Phoenix," he parries, tilting his chin a little in challenge.
"Good," Sirius spits, "then you'll know that it's not for the likes of you, you bastard, you're nowhere near good enough for us."
He opens his mouth with a retort, but Sirius is already walking away down the corridor, not looking back, and Regulus is left with the vague feeling that the world just shifted on its axis and no one bothered to tell him.
VI.
He waits for any sort of contact from either side for two years, as he slowly pieces together the puzzle of just what, exactly, the world is becoming. It happens a week after he steps off the Hogwarts Express for the last time. Really, he's been expecting it: Father and Mother have been hinting for weeks. "Doing his duty", "representing the family" - no mistaking what it means, no mistaking what his options are. (It's not for the likes of you.)
"Master Regulus, Cousin Bellatrix is here to see you." The house-elf bows, deferentially, and backs out of the room.
A sick feeling rises in his stomach as Regulus descends the staircase, trailing one hand on the polished banister. His eyes linger on the portraits hung on the walls: ancestors through the centuries, staring down at him, judging him.
Those imperious Blacks in their silver-gold frames, he knows what kind of people they were. He knows what kind of person Sirius is, too. It's just himself that he's never really been sure of. And how is he supposed to know, when his mind is a mess of contradictions, bloodlines, lines of loyalty?
But here is Bellatrix, seated in the parlour as if she owns it. The light catches on an ornate diamond on her ring-finger. Regulus feels a vague jolt of sympathy for the husband; Rodolphus truly has no idea what he's gotten himself into.
Neither does Regulus, for that matter.
"I know what you're here for," he says abruptly when he enters, allowing the door to close with a musty thud behind him. "It's about the Death Eaters."
It feels good to finally get something right, to see Bellatrix's eyes widen in surprise for a moment, and flash with something that could almost be pride. "Why, yes it is, Regulus," she says, and her face smoothes itself back to its usual heavy-lidded indifference. "Then I assume you've made your decision?"
Regulus doesn't say anything.
Bellatrix pauses for a second, then tilts her head slightly. Somehow she manages to look down on him, even though he's standing in front of her, arms crossed. "I remember, when you were little - you said you wanted to do great things. Voldemort does them, things you've only dreamed of; they're not just fairytales."
"You must have heard something about them." Lestrange smiles as if he's sharing a secret.
"I haven't," Regulus replies, and it's got a bit of truth. He's never heard the words "Death Eaters", but for the one time it slipped off of Sirius' tongue. Whispers in dinner parlours and smokescreen phrases in newspapers are all he's got to work with.
They impart feelings - paranoia, terror - but not much information, these vagaries. He knows that there was a "backlash to the latest efforts of our Aurors", read it in the Prophet; everyone knows that it was the Death Eaters who the papers were talking about. But no one ever knows exactly what happened. The Ministry isn't telling them.
Maybe he can find out.
"What I have heard," Regulus replies, choosing his words with care, "is that you're committing crimes, and destined for Azkaban."
"I think that you've been talking to the wrong people." Bella leans back into her chair. "Come with me Friday evening, and I'll take you somewhere, somewhere where you can speak with the right ones."
He knows what Sirius would say, but he isn't Sirius. Won't define himself by Sirius. And yes, he might think sometimes, late at night, about finding one of those mysterious Order of the Phoenix members, saying, I want in, but none of them have ever approached him. Besides, he can't be sure until he has all of the information, can he? Hasn't he always been shut out, not allowed to know, isn't this a chance to finally find out for himself?
And so Regulus nods. He can always get out of it later on, can't he?
VII.
There is blood on his hands.
A lot of blood.
He's no stranger to it (shattered wineglass stems and a weak constitution in childhood), but this is the first time Regulus has touched another person's. He's killed before. He hasn't done this, whatever twisted thing it is.
This is no Avada Kedavra, no flash of green light leading to a sudden end. This is a naked woman splayed out in a grassy field, a blood-red dusk, her face and chest a mess of skewed skin cut down to bone. She's breathing, but shallowly, and the screams stopped a long time ago. She's in shock. Merlin, he's in shock; his mind stopped screaming at him to get the hell out the moment he saw the woman's blood on Rabastan's lips.
Regulus' fingers are vise-like on the blade, some sort of ceremonial dagger. There are jewels embedded in the hilt - shimmering emeralds and opals, colours obscured by the rivulets of red running across them.
"Don't stop," says Bellatrix from off to his left. Long hair fanned out on Rodolphus' lap, she's sprawled on the grass. Enjoying the show, now that she's had her turn, the red smears on her hands evidence of it. They've left streaks on her pale robes, on Rodolphus' cheeks, his waist. "Go ahead, Regulus. You always said you wanted to do great things."
And it's that simple phrase that makes the bile rise in his throat. A portkey drawing him back to childhood. No time for regrets: there are hands on his shoulders gently pushing him down onto his knees.
Rabastan's whisper is soft and lazy in his ear. The words are no spell he's ever heard before (though he has his guesses). The syllables crackle in the air, dissipate. And he's left alone, staring at the curve of the woman's shoulder.
Perhaps this is a test - an initiation, one he can't afford to fail. A you say you're ready, but are you really? Torture is an art form to the Death Eaters, but Regulus' hands are trembling. If it's an initiation he doesn't care. He's seen enough of this puzzle by now to know it's one he never wants to solve.
He thinks he might not have a choice.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird trills a few innocent notes, and Regulus can't help himself. It's just so ironic: the laughter tumbles out of him, frenzied, he chokes on it but he can't stop. And if there are tears running down his face - well, there's no one there to see, as he bends over the body and drives in the knife.
VIII.
"When did you start answering the door, Cissa?"
Regulus wishes back the words as he steps inside. He hadn't meant it to sound so accusatory; it seems like all his mind does these days is lay blame. The ornate door closes with a heavy thud behind him, and Regulus can't help but send a cursory glance over his shoulder as he steps inside.
"I was up, waiting for Lucius," Narcissa says, leading the way past curving banisters and gilded portraits, into the parlour. "He was - out, tonight." When she smiles the porcelain-perfect curl is the same, but there are faint lines around her mouth now, and they stand out more to Regulus than the growing curve of her stomach does.
"That..." Regulus says, trailing off. "Was what I wanted to talk to you about." He sits on the edge of the chair, tracing the whisper-thin patterns on the silver tea set with his eyes. Mother taught him well, though. There may be a tempest of thought inside his mind, blood across daggers and screams of children, but he is still, hands folded neatly on his knees.
"Tea?"
"No, thank you." After a pause, Regulus looks up. "Cissa, do you know what Lucius does? When he goes out, nights like this?"
Narcissa crosses her legs, raises an eyebrow. "I'd think that you have a better idea of what they do than I would."
"Mmm." Regulus rubs the heel of his palm across his eyes. "Yesterday we killed a woman."
Narcissa doesn't say anything. Regulus knows that her contribution to all of this is pouring tea, meeting the right people. Seeing that those people do their jobs, delivering messages. She's never liked being a warrior, not like Bella; Lucius knows this, Lucius coddles her. Once, Regulus didn't like to be coddled - now he wishes someone cared enough to do so.
"It wasn't just Avada, either, Cissa. It was - there was a knife. There was - it was some sort of ritual." Regulus smiles a caricature of a smile. "Or perhaps Bella just likes killing; perhaps they just like killing." He stops skirting around the issue and says what he means: "I can't do it any longer."
"Regulus," she says slowly. "Look at me."
"You're saving the Wizarding world," she says, a fervent note entering her voice, "you know that. If we're diluted any further by these Muggle ideals, if we lose any more Wizarding culture; purebloods, we're like an island in the middle of an ocean and the water level's rising. You're doing what needs to be done."
But Regulus can't help think that she sounds more like a puppet than a prophet.
He believed that a little at the beginning - enough, anyhow. Believed it a little less the first time he said Avada Kedavra, and now, the words are nothing more than empty rhetoric falling flat. They're worn out, crumbled to ash.
Not for Narcissa, though, and so what he says is, "Even if that's so, I'm sorry. I can't do it, and - I don't know what to do."
She doesn't ask, why didn't you tell your mother and father this, why didn't you tell Bella, because she knows that answer as well as he does, and she knows what he's really asking for: a way out. But she tries anyhow. "If it's the sacrifice you don't like, tell them that. I'm sure that Lucius would -"
"That's not a choice and you know it."
Narcissa swallows and reaches out across the table, smoothing her palms across Regulus' (he hasn't realized they were shaking). They remain like that for a second, and it's almost as if she absorbs all of his pain and uncertainty and doubt. That much, at least, is still the same as it was in childhood.
Once he's stilled and quieted, she begins to speak, gentle but firm. "You are fine, Regulus. This was... every man has his moment of self-doubt, but he picks himself up again and continues on his path. You'll continue on as you have been, and - I'll have a word with Lucius about you, and those tortures."
"- no, I -"
"This isn't something you can stop once it's set in motion," she says, intense, and he knows what it really means: this isn't something they let you out of. "You'll continue on as you have been, and I'll have a word with Lucius about those tortures. And you'll come around for dinner more often, won't you?"
"All right," he whispers, but it's not.
Narcissa might have been able to make things all right, before. But if he'd had any give left in him, any compromise, he wouldn't have come here.
IX.
Sirius lives on the fifth floor of an upper-class Muggle apartment complex, room number fifty-six. Regulus doesn't know this because Sirius told him; he knows because he asked a few people who owed him favours and found out - even though Sirius wouldn't do the same for him, even though they haven't spoken in months. It takes Regulus two minutes to climb the five flights of stairs.
His hand hesitates over the knocker only for a moment, then: five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty. Well, there's no guarantee that he's home; there's no guarantee that he would open the door for Regulus, even. He's beginning to wonder why he even bothered.
The door is flung open, and there is a wand trained on his chest.
"Siriu- Regulus?" Lupin steps back. "Regulus Black?"
"I'm not here for you, Lupin, you can drop the wand," Regulus says, raising an eyebrow. "And if Potter and Pettigrew are in there behind you, I'm not here for them, either. This is my brother's apartment; where is he?"
Lupin keeps the wand on him, of course, and he doesn't invite Regulus in (steps outside and closes the door behind him, in fact). "Haven't you been told? For all I know, you put him there."
Something tightens in Regulus' chest. "Where?"
"Sirius is in St. Mungo's," Lupin says in a low, measured tone.
"He's - all right?"
"He's seeing hex afterimages and he's got a few nasty things that a wave of a wand can't immediately do away with, but yes, he'll be all right."
Regulus weighs pride against worry; pride loses. For good measure, he crosses his arms. "What happened?"
For a long moment, Lupin considers him, then runs a hand through his hair and drops his wand to his side. "We'd just come back from a job; we were tired, he went down the street to the supermarket to pick up a few things and met - met someone, on their way to check out a report of Death Eater activity a few blocks away."
Lupin stops, then, and gives him a level look. It doesn't take much to figure out what he's thinking, but Regulus meets Lupin's eyes anyhow. He's never been sure whether Sirius knows, or just suspects, but either way he's glad that robes have long sleeves.
"Sirius went, of course," Lupin continues, looking away, "because he has to be a bloody hero even when he's stumbling from exhaustion. He saved five people and then he landed himself in Mungo's. That's what happened."
Regulus isn't sure if he should leave a note - a message, maybe - but he's sure that he can't ask anything of Lupin.
Really, he wasn't quite sure of what he wanted of Sirius, either. Maybe to make it all better, like he did when they were younger and Regulus still followed him down hallways and up staircases and outside on adventures. But now he knows he can't have that.
"I don't know what you want," Lupin says, "but I don't think I can give it to you." He pauses. "I'll tell Sirius you were here."
It's not a statement; it's a question. "No," Regulus answers in a whisper, "thank you," and he's already on the stairs before Lupin shuts the door.
X.
And now, days later, Regulus sits on an ornate sofa before the embers of a fire. The final flames cast dancing shadows on the walls of the Grimmauld Place parlour, and the only sound amidst the layers of dust and ghosts is him, inhaling, exhaling. He is still, weary in every bone. But he sits up straight; he always does.
In hindsight everything is clearer. He should have listened, when Sirius first told him that Bellatrix was trouble, but he's not going to let himself think of Sirius now. He's not going to laugh at the irony, at how he promised months ago that he wouldn't define himself by who Sirius was, and ended up defining himself by who Sirius wasn't. Maybe Sirius is a hero, and Regulus isn't, and that's the end of the story.
Regulus watches the firelight glinting off the locket, death and fear and hope all dangling on a gold chain, suspended in the darkness, and thinks of heroes.
end.
Author: wanderlight
Recipient: anemonesque
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Regulus, Sirius (appearances by Narcissa, Bellatrix, Andromeda, Remus, and James)
Warnings: None
Summary: Regulus has always wanted to do great things, and perhaps he could have, in some other time and place - but this is not that time, or that place, and this is not that story.
Author's Notes: We really know very little about Regulus Black: he's nothing more than one line in the novels, a name on a tapestry. My intention here was to create a Regulus with backstory, motivations, history; I hope I've succeeded in that, and I hope you enjoy this fic. Thank you to S and A, who went above and beyond the normal call of beta duty, and also to J, who worked on this in its early stages.
Of Heroes
I.
"I want to be a hero when I grow up," Regulus announces. Six years old, at ease and cuddling in cousin Narcissa's arms.
Andromeda smiles, standing on tiptoe to slip Grimm's Fairy Tales onto the shelf. Regulus doesn't yet know that Andromeda doesn't tell the real versions, bloodstained and uncensored, when she reads to him. His head still spins with swords and honour, damsels in distress and happy endings.
"You can't be a hero," says Sirius, sitting crossed-legged on the rich green carpet. He's got a nasty burn across his arm, a failed attempt at taking a book from the North wall of the library. No-one's allowed to touch that wall. Mother wouldn't let the house-elves heal his burn. "You can be an Auror or a Cursebreaker or a dragon-tamer, but not a hero. Father said so himself."
"Didn't," Regulus says petulantly, and squirms a little as Narcissa's long fingers smooth over the collar of his shirt. He doesn't want to be fussed over like a porcelain doll. It's no help that when he looks in the mirror he sees one staring back at him, pale skin and thin bones and dark glossy hair.
"Did, he told me so," Sirius insists, and slips into an uncanny performance of Father's grave timbre. "There is no good and evil these days, Sirius. No heroes, just proper wizards doing the right thing."
Sirius and the cousins listen and "learn the proper ways" some evenings in Father's study, watching as distantly-related Blacks discuss Important Affairs over brandy glasses. He's only two years younger than Sirius, but no matter how well-behaved, Mother won't let him in. Sometimes Bella deigns to tell him about it, but Regulus doesn't understand her ugly words. His tutor laughed when he asked why some people had muddy blood.
(How is he ever supposed to find out if no one will tell him anything?)
"Well then I'll be -"
"You'll be exactly what the Dark Lord tells you to be," Bellatrix says imperiously from the doorway. She must've been there for a while, listening, but no one objects. At sixteen she's got years on all of them, and "worldly experience" on top of that.
Andromeda turns slowly, face blank, but Regulus can see her hand tremble on the bookshelf. She takes Bella's arm and drags her from the study, muttering under her breath, but Bella merely laughs.
The rest are left to puzzle out the meaning of something they're not yet old enough to understand.
II.
Sirius has his back is to the door: he's throwing shirts from his bureau into the gold-gilded trunk across the room, with limited success. When Regulus steps through the doorway, Sirius says without turning, "Well, I'm off to hero school."
It's been a running joke since Regulus was young, told over dinner tables, that the littlest Black harbours dreams of slaying villains. When they laugh, they aren't laughing with him.
"I hate you," Regulus says, but there's no venom in it. He picks his way across the room, avoiding tripping on a half-empty bag of Galleons, a pile of old socks, Sirius' old wand (snapped in half when he fell from a tree). "How did you know it was me?"
Sirius turns, and there's warmth in his grin. "I always know."
I'll miss you, Regulus wants to say, but his mouth isn't obeying him. Instead he picks up the shirts that land on the floor, tucking them into the trunk and folding with neat lines, in silence. Finally, he says, "Bella told me, she and Cissa will protect you once you get to Slytherin."
Sirius snorts, shaking his head. "Yeah, Bella's full of it. If you haven't learned that by now you're stupid." His expression softens.
"Look. You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine."
Oh, Sirius will be fine, he has no doubt. But the two of them have shared the same silver and dust and hiding places for years. Sometimes that's the only thing that makes it tolerable, when Mother has one of her spells and no one talks to anyone else for days. And with Sirius gone, well.
"I want you to watch out for Bella," Sirius says abruptly. "When you're around her."
"At least Bella tells me about things," Regulus snaps back.
"Things you don't need to know." Sirius closes the distance between them in two strides, catches Regulus' chin and forces Regulus to look him in the eye. "Listen to me, Regulus. I - don't like the idea of you being around her all the time. She's nasty, Reg. You don't want to learn anything from her."
Regulus shrugs and looks away. "She's marrying Lestrange next month anyhow."
Sirius drops his hand and steps back. "Yeah. Still."
"Besides, you're leaving me." He wants to bite back the words, knows they sound petulant, silly, childish, but he can't help it. "You're leaving me, you can't tell me what to do, you -"
"Hey," Sirius says, "hey." His voice is frank, and it might be gentle, if Sirius were the type of boy to be so (which he isn't). "I'll be back for Christmas, Reg. I promise I will. Don't tie up any house-elves without me."
Regulus scrubs at his eyes with a starched sleeve and tries to smile. That's as much of an I'll miss you, too, as he'll ever get from Sirius.
-
But when the winter hols come, Sirius goes to James Potter's (a grand concession on Mother's part). Regulus makes the house-elves check his post twice a day, but no letters ever come.
Christmas day is spent by the fireside, and Bellatrix and Narcissa spread the family tree out on the carpet, pointing to names with long, delicate fingers and telling Regulus stories about the valour and honour of his ancestors. He suspects that Andromeda would have some very different stories to tell him. But Andromeda's gone now, no one's allowed to talk about her any more, and Sirius isn't here, either.
Regulus places a present wrapped in gold-gilded paper on the tapestry to cover up Sirius' name, but it doesn't help him forget. Not really.
III.
Regulus manages to walk down the length of the Great Hall without throwing up.
He perches carefully on the stool, settles the Sorting Hat over his head. From under the tatty brim he catches a glimpse of Cissa's blonde head, Sirius' dark one at the opposite end of the room. Sirius has his arm around James Potter's shoulders. Sirius isn't looking at him.
This is his chance. I don't want Slytherin, Regulus thinks determinedly. Please, Sirius says -
Not Slytherin? The voice echoes inside his mind. It sounds old, a little careworn around the edges. When it speaks, there's a note of bemusement. A Black, and not Slytherin?
Regulus bites his lip and closes his eyes. Sirius told him all you needed to do was talk to the hat and it would place you where you really wanted to go, no tricks about it. You put Sirius in Gryffindor, Hat.
Hmm-m, so I did, the hat says. But you're no Sirius. Is this what you want, young Mister Black? Or is it what Sirius wants?
Frantically, Regulus shuffles through his mind. I - me. Yes. The, the Gryffindors seem nice, Sirius says (Sirius, who had spent most of his summer after first year talking about James Potter, and hadn't even come home for half of the second), and I've asked around.
You'd want to be another Gryffindor, then? There's a rising tide of whispers in the Hall, building to a roar, did the Hat say that out loud? Regulus peeks out from under the brim; he can just barely see Cissa. There's a tiny frown in between her eyes, but she's looking right at the Hat, right at Regulus. He loves his seventeen-year-old cousin rather more than he loves Mother.
Mother, and Father, they'll rage and scream and send him Howlers for weeks, like they did after Sirius' sorting, but certainly he and Sirius can stand up to them together? If he made the right choice?
Whatever you think the right choice is, the Hat says, in the voice people use when there's something they aren't telling him, and then it falls silent.
He can see Sirius, too, over at the Gryffindor table, laughing with James Potter and disregarding the Sorting entirely. Regulus bites his lip and waits, and waits, and waits, and feels less sure by the second -
"Slytherin," the Hat says finally, so quietly that no one catches on the first time round. "Slytherin."
IV.
Even Hogwarts can't protect a fifteen-year-old prodigal from the side effects of a war no one's calling a war.
It's dusk, but still scorching at this time of year. Regulus is making his rounds, Prefect duty; he turns the corner, keeping close to the castle's stone wall.
He cuffs his shirtsleeves at the elbow, examining the pale skin, unbroken and blue-veined. Turns over memories in his mind: earlier this afternoon, something dark and winding on Severus' sallow skin as he fumbled down his shirt-sleeve, the whispered words Voldemort and Phoenix between Severus and MacNair in the common room, stopping the moment he entered.
"- can't tell Moony what to do, Sirius, you should know that by now."
Reflexively, Regulus draws back around the corner, melting into the long shadows cast by the setting sun. He's always been rather good at disappearing: those days when Mother wasn't well and ... taught him that.
The next voice - he hears it only when he and Sirius meet accidentally in corridors, these days. Stilted phrases tripping over one another. Oh, sorry, how are you, fine thanks, millions of little words and non-words keeping the venom and the anger at bay, locking it all behind the floodgates. But Regulus doubts he could ever forget Sirius' voice; it threads through his earliest memories and ties them all together.
"Fuck Voldemort, fuck Dumbledore, I don't want Remus to be part of this."
Peering through the thick foliage, he makes out the broad lines of Sirius' shoulders. He's sitting companionably close to Potter on the steps of the front entrance. Unusual: Potter's usually hanging off the redhead these days, handing out smiles like gifts, and Sirius spends most of his time with the whip-thin Lupin. Not that Regulus keeps track.
"James," he mutters, dropping his head into his hands, and growls - an unrefined sound which never would have left his lips when he lived at home. "Dumbledore has no right to ask this. Remus doesn't owe the Wizarding World a single bloody thing, not when they treat the -"
"Ssh, you're -"
"I wasn't going to say anything, thanks. I think I know better than to."
"After you learned your lesson at the Willow, Pads?" In that statement there's venom, decided but dormant. Undertones of hot anger buried under layers of dirt.
A silence falls. In the language of the Blacks, that sort of silence means that a line's been crossed, and apparently Potter's learnt this. When he finally speaks, it's subdued and apologetic. "Sorry."
"Yeah. Well."
Regulus suspects it's all wrapped up in that air of mystery around Lupin, his monthly absences, easy evasions; the cold look Severus gets in his eyes these days when Lupin's name is mentioned, the strange nicknames the four have for each other - everything Regulus knows so well but is only allowed to look, don't touch, like the porcelain figurines behind the glass panelling in Mother's parlour. He still sees a porcelain doll when he looks into the mirror.
"He's going to do it anyway. Death Eaters'd come after him anyway, you know why. Sirius, look at me. Look at me. The Order's the right thing to do. Only thing we can do."
Order. Regulus takes an involuntary half-step forward, leaves grating against his cheeks. Severus' clipped tone comes to mind - it's not exactly safe to show ourselves, MacNair, not with the Order of the Phoenix prancing around.
"Is it the right thing? Don't tell me you haven't heard what Dearborn did that day at the docks?" Sirius unfolds and rises, walking through the open Entrance doors, and Potter follows.
The voices are fading, and he follows silently, pulled by an invisible line. He doesn't allow himself to consider jealousy: he's got friends of his own, connections through necessity and bloodlines.
"Yeah, I heard about it." Silence, and footsteps. "I'm not saying that's right, but what the Order's trying to do is. We're fighting the good fight."
That tone of voice, conviction and righteousness and compassion all wrapped up in one boyish timbre, is what Regulus really hates about Potter. Because when Potter says something in that voice, people listen. He's right, he knows he's right, and he sounds something like a hero.
The Gryffindors are always the heroes, aren't they, red and gold and bravery and goodness. If Potter's the hero, Regulus wonders, and Potter's everything he's not, then what does that make him?
Regulus steals down a side path which short-cuts him to an entrance to the Dungeons and allows himself a smile. He likes slotting the information together to finish a puzzle. This is how it is: polarised, either the Order of the Phoenix, or whatever's meant by those strange curving marks on the inside of Severus' arm.
He doesn't allow himself to wonder what would happen if the Order of the Phoenix approached him.
V.
Regulus walks down the corridor with Severus, watching the orange-hued flicker of bracketed torches on granite walls and attempting to come up with a subtle way to introduce a question about the Order of the Phoenix.
He wants to know, he needs to know, he senses that it's all wrapped up in right and wrong and valiant deeds. But he's not sure how to begin, and the silence, punctuated only by the click of his heels on the stone, is oppressive.
"I've been meaning to ask," he says, finally, and Severus turns his head to the right slightly, so that Regulus can make out the sharp, jagged cut of his profile. "About what you were -"
But Severus isn't looking at him; he stiffens, and turns towards the figure at the end of the hall. It's tall, confident, leaning against the wall with arms folded in front of chest. Utterly out of place.
"What are you doing here, Black?" says Severus acridly.
"Taking a stroll to banish the bogeymen from dark corners, Snape," Sirius replies, a smirk creeping across his face. "And oh, look, I've found one, lucky me. Get out of here, please. I want to talk to my brother."
"I hardly think that -"
"Severus," Regulus says quickly, shaking his head. "I'll speak with you later."
With a scowl and a backwards look, Severus turns on his heel and goes, robe flapping behind him - but at least he goes, and Regulus is alone with his brother for the first time in months.
A few inches taller, Regulus decides. The pronounced sharpness in his cheekbones says, I've grown up when you weren't looking. Unconsciously, Regulus raises a hand to his own cheek. As pale as Sirius', with the same underlying bone structure. Of the same blood.
Sirius straightens, unfolding his arms and taking a few steps down the corridor. His stance has lost all of its threat, but Regulus sees the familiar worry line between his brows, the one which always appeared when he realised he'd slipped up and didn't know how to fix it.
(Oh Merlin I broke the vase and she's going to come home any minute and what do I do. Regulus remembers whispering to Mother that night, Sirius broke the vase, and earning a rare smile of pride for his troubles; that made him feel only a little bit guilty when she locked Sirius up in his room for a week.)
"I wanted to say," Sirius says as he stops, rocking back on his heels. For once, he looks a little hesitant. Almost unsure. "I wanted to say. You - Reg, you shouldn't be spending time with the likes of Snape." Sirius gestures helplessly with open palms, an almost-friendly gesture of peace.
But Regulus knows better. "You left, Sirius," he says coldly, looking his brother straight in the eye and not wavering, ignoring the other voices in his mind, "you left. You can't tell me what to do." It's the conversation they've been skirting around for years, and Regulus has mapped out every possible route in his mind. They all end in train wrecks.
"I'm still your brother, Regulus."
"Not any more, you aren't. Potter's, now, maybe, or Lupin's -"
A change comes over Sirius' face, a quick flicker of warmth that would go unnoticed by most people. But Regulus knows that face as well as he knows his own, and suddenly a dozen tiny out-of-place wonderings and suspicions click-click-click together.
Regulus smiles. "Though Merlin knows what you are to Lupin," he says, slowly and deliberately. "Or what he means to you." He pauses, holding Sirius' eyes to say that yes, that's exactly what he means - and suddenly he has all the power. For once.
Sirius' brows snap together. "Don't," he snarls, aggressive now. "Don't you dare."
There's a change in the atmosphere, one that always heralded a fight, or fists; back when they still shared the same room, hid away from watchful gazes in the same closets, breathed the same dust. But when Regulus widens those innocent eyes now, it means something completely different.
"Don't what?"
"We're friends," Sirius says. "Friends. But you wouldn't know anything about that?"
"I have friends." (He hasn't really, though, not since Narcissa finished school. She and her friends would always look out for him, like mother hens for their wayward chick.)
"Oh?"
"And I have family, Sirius." I didn't leave them for my friends. "I have Mother and Father and Narcissa and - Bella - and generations of Blacks, and all you have are Potter and Lupin and Pettigrew."
"Don't need anything else," Sirius says (but what he really means is don't need you). "Not an ancient bloodline, not any soulless puppets, not a family that rejects everything that doesn't fit."
"They rejected you because you're a failure, Sirius. You left me and you left us because of you, and because you failed and you couldn't deal with it! Because you weren't good enough!"
"Maybe, you deserve it after all," Sirius says abruptly. Something ugly twists in his expression, something at home on Father's face perhaps, but never on Sirius', never on the features fitted best for wicked smiles. "Maybe you should spend all your time around baby Death Eaters, Regulus. You seem to belong there."
Regulus hasn't heard the term Death Eaters, but he's not going to tell Sirius that. "I know about the Order of the Phoenix," he parries, tilting his chin a little in challenge.
"Good," Sirius spits, "then you'll know that it's not for the likes of you, you bastard, you're nowhere near good enough for us."
He opens his mouth with a retort, but Sirius is already walking away down the corridor, not looking back, and Regulus is left with the vague feeling that the world just shifted on its axis and no one bothered to tell him.
VI.
He waits for any sort of contact from either side for two years, as he slowly pieces together the puzzle of just what, exactly, the world is becoming. It happens a week after he steps off the Hogwarts Express for the last time. Really, he's been expecting it: Father and Mother have been hinting for weeks. "Doing his duty", "representing the family" - no mistaking what it means, no mistaking what his options are. (It's not for the likes of you.)
"Master Regulus, Cousin Bellatrix is here to see you." The house-elf bows, deferentially, and backs out of the room.
A sick feeling rises in his stomach as Regulus descends the staircase, trailing one hand on the polished banister. His eyes linger on the portraits hung on the walls: ancestors through the centuries, staring down at him, judging him.
Those imperious Blacks in their silver-gold frames, he knows what kind of people they were. He knows what kind of person Sirius is, too. It's just himself that he's never really been sure of. And how is he supposed to know, when his mind is a mess of contradictions, bloodlines, lines of loyalty?
But here is Bellatrix, seated in the parlour as if she owns it. The light catches on an ornate diamond on her ring-finger. Regulus feels a vague jolt of sympathy for the husband; Rodolphus truly has no idea what he's gotten himself into.
Neither does Regulus, for that matter.
"I know what you're here for," he says abruptly when he enters, allowing the door to close with a musty thud behind him. "It's about the Death Eaters."
It feels good to finally get something right, to see Bellatrix's eyes widen in surprise for a moment, and flash with something that could almost be pride. "Why, yes it is, Regulus," she says, and her face smoothes itself back to its usual heavy-lidded indifference. "Then I assume you've made your decision?"
Regulus doesn't say anything.
Bellatrix pauses for a second, then tilts her head slightly. Somehow she manages to look down on him, even though he's standing in front of her, arms crossed. "I remember, when you were little - you said you wanted to do great things. Voldemort does them, things you've only dreamed of; they're not just fairytales."
"You must have heard something about them." Lestrange smiles as if he's sharing a secret.
"I haven't," Regulus replies, and it's got a bit of truth. He's never heard the words "Death Eaters", but for the one time it slipped off of Sirius' tongue. Whispers in dinner parlours and smokescreen phrases in newspapers are all he's got to work with.
They impart feelings - paranoia, terror - but not much information, these vagaries. He knows that there was a "backlash to the latest efforts of our Aurors", read it in the Prophet; everyone knows that it was the Death Eaters who the papers were talking about. But no one ever knows exactly what happened. The Ministry isn't telling them.
Maybe he can find out.
"What I have heard," Regulus replies, choosing his words with care, "is that you're committing crimes, and destined for Azkaban."
"I think that you've been talking to the wrong people." Bella leans back into her chair. "Come with me Friday evening, and I'll take you somewhere, somewhere where you can speak with the right ones."
He knows what Sirius would say, but he isn't Sirius. Won't define himself by Sirius. And yes, he might think sometimes, late at night, about finding one of those mysterious Order of the Phoenix members, saying, I want in, but none of them have ever approached him. Besides, he can't be sure until he has all of the information, can he? Hasn't he always been shut out, not allowed to know, isn't this a chance to finally find out for himself?
And so Regulus nods. He can always get out of it later on, can't he?
VII.
There is blood on his hands.
A lot of blood.
He's no stranger to it (shattered wineglass stems and a weak constitution in childhood), but this is the first time Regulus has touched another person's. He's killed before. He hasn't done this, whatever twisted thing it is.
This is no Avada Kedavra, no flash of green light leading to a sudden end. This is a naked woman splayed out in a grassy field, a blood-red dusk, her face and chest a mess of skewed skin cut down to bone. She's breathing, but shallowly, and the screams stopped a long time ago. She's in shock. Merlin, he's in shock; his mind stopped screaming at him to get the hell out the moment he saw the woman's blood on Rabastan's lips.
Regulus' fingers are vise-like on the blade, some sort of ceremonial dagger. There are jewels embedded in the hilt - shimmering emeralds and opals, colours obscured by the rivulets of red running across them.
"Don't stop," says Bellatrix from off to his left. Long hair fanned out on Rodolphus' lap, she's sprawled on the grass. Enjoying the show, now that she's had her turn, the red smears on her hands evidence of it. They've left streaks on her pale robes, on Rodolphus' cheeks, his waist. "Go ahead, Regulus. You always said you wanted to do great things."
And it's that simple phrase that makes the bile rise in his throat. A portkey drawing him back to childhood. No time for regrets: there are hands on his shoulders gently pushing him down onto his knees.
Rabastan's whisper is soft and lazy in his ear. The words are no spell he's ever heard before (though he has his guesses). The syllables crackle in the air, dissipate. And he's left alone, staring at the curve of the woman's shoulder.
Perhaps this is a test - an initiation, one he can't afford to fail. A you say you're ready, but are you really? Torture is an art form to the Death Eaters, but Regulus' hands are trembling. If it's an initiation he doesn't care. He's seen enough of this puzzle by now to know it's one he never wants to solve.
He thinks he might not have a choice.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird trills a few innocent notes, and Regulus can't help himself. It's just so ironic: the laughter tumbles out of him, frenzied, he chokes on it but he can't stop. And if there are tears running down his face - well, there's no one there to see, as he bends over the body and drives in the knife.
VIII.
"When did you start answering the door, Cissa?"
Regulus wishes back the words as he steps inside. He hadn't meant it to sound so accusatory; it seems like all his mind does these days is lay blame. The ornate door closes with a heavy thud behind him, and Regulus can't help but send a cursory glance over his shoulder as he steps inside.
"I was up, waiting for Lucius," Narcissa says, leading the way past curving banisters and gilded portraits, into the parlour. "He was - out, tonight." When she smiles the porcelain-perfect curl is the same, but there are faint lines around her mouth now, and they stand out more to Regulus than the growing curve of her stomach does.
"That..." Regulus says, trailing off. "Was what I wanted to talk to you about." He sits on the edge of the chair, tracing the whisper-thin patterns on the silver tea set with his eyes. Mother taught him well, though. There may be a tempest of thought inside his mind, blood across daggers and screams of children, but he is still, hands folded neatly on his knees.
"Tea?"
"No, thank you." After a pause, Regulus looks up. "Cissa, do you know what Lucius does? When he goes out, nights like this?"
Narcissa crosses her legs, raises an eyebrow. "I'd think that you have a better idea of what they do than I would."
"Mmm." Regulus rubs the heel of his palm across his eyes. "Yesterday we killed a woman."
Narcissa doesn't say anything. Regulus knows that her contribution to all of this is pouring tea, meeting the right people. Seeing that those people do their jobs, delivering messages. She's never liked being a warrior, not like Bella; Lucius knows this, Lucius coddles her. Once, Regulus didn't like to be coddled - now he wishes someone cared enough to do so.
"It wasn't just Avada, either, Cissa. It was - there was a knife. There was - it was some sort of ritual." Regulus smiles a caricature of a smile. "Or perhaps Bella just likes killing; perhaps they just like killing." He stops skirting around the issue and says what he means: "I can't do it any longer."
"Regulus," she says slowly. "Look at me."
"You're saving the Wizarding world," she says, a fervent note entering her voice, "you know that. If we're diluted any further by these Muggle ideals, if we lose any more Wizarding culture; purebloods, we're like an island in the middle of an ocean and the water level's rising. You're doing what needs to be done."
But Regulus can't help think that she sounds more like a puppet than a prophet.
He believed that a little at the beginning - enough, anyhow. Believed it a little less the first time he said Avada Kedavra, and now, the words are nothing more than empty rhetoric falling flat. They're worn out, crumbled to ash.
Not for Narcissa, though, and so what he says is, "Even if that's so, I'm sorry. I can't do it, and - I don't know what to do."
She doesn't ask, why didn't you tell your mother and father this, why didn't you tell Bella, because she knows that answer as well as he does, and she knows what he's really asking for: a way out. But she tries anyhow. "If it's the sacrifice you don't like, tell them that. I'm sure that Lucius would -"
"That's not a choice and you know it."
Narcissa swallows and reaches out across the table, smoothing her palms across Regulus' (he hasn't realized they were shaking). They remain like that for a second, and it's almost as if she absorbs all of his pain and uncertainty and doubt. That much, at least, is still the same as it was in childhood.
Once he's stilled and quieted, she begins to speak, gentle but firm. "You are fine, Regulus. This was... every man has his moment of self-doubt, but he picks himself up again and continues on his path. You'll continue on as you have been, and - I'll have a word with Lucius about you, and those tortures."
"- no, I -"
"This isn't something you can stop once it's set in motion," she says, intense, and he knows what it really means: this isn't something they let you out of. "You'll continue on as you have been, and I'll have a word with Lucius about those tortures. And you'll come around for dinner more often, won't you?"
"All right," he whispers, but it's not.
Narcissa might have been able to make things all right, before. But if he'd had any give left in him, any compromise, he wouldn't have come here.
IX.
Sirius lives on the fifth floor of an upper-class Muggle apartment complex, room number fifty-six. Regulus doesn't know this because Sirius told him; he knows because he asked a few people who owed him favours and found out - even though Sirius wouldn't do the same for him, even though they haven't spoken in months. It takes Regulus two minutes to climb the five flights of stairs.
His hand hesitates over the knocker only for a moment, then: five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty. Well, there's no guarantee that he's home; there's no guarantee that he would open the door for Regulus, even. He's beginning to wonder why he even bothered.
The door is flung open, and there is a wand trained on his chest.
"Siriu- Regulus?" Lupin steps back. "Regulus Black?"
"I'm not here for you, Lupin, you can drop the wand," Regulus says, raising an eyebrow. "And if Potter and Pettigrew are in there behind you, I'm not here for them, either. This is my brother's apartment; where is he?"
Lupin keeps the wand on him, of course, and he doesn't invite Regulus in (steps outside and closes the door behind him, in fact). "Haven't you been told? For all I know, you put him there."
Something tightens in Regulus' chest. "Where?"
"Sirius is in St. Mungo's," Lupin says in a low, measured tone.
"He's - all right?"
"He's seeing hex afterimages and he's got a few nasty things that a wave of a wand can't immediately do away with, but yes, he'll be all right."
Regulus weighs pride against worry; pride loses. For good measure, he crosses his arms. "What happened?"
For a long moment, Lupin considers him, then runs a hand through his hair and drops his wand to his side. "We'd just come back from a job; we were tired, he went down the street to the supermarket to pick up a few things and met - met someone, on their way to check out a report of Death Eater activity a few blocks away."
Lupin stops, then, and gives him a level look. It doesn't take much to figure out what he's thinking, but Regulus meets Lupin's eyes anyhow. He's never been sure whether Sirius knows, or just suspects, but either way he's glad that robes have long sleeves.
"Sirius went, of course," Lupin continues, looking away, "because he has to be a bloody hero even when he's stumbling from exhaustion. He saved five people and then he landed himself in Mungo's. That's what happened."
Regulus isn't sure if he should leave a note - a message, maybe - but he's sure that he can't ask anything of Lupin.
Really, he wasn't quite sure of what he wanted of Sirius, either. Maybe to make it all better, like he did when they were younger and Regulus still followed him down hallways and up staircases and outside on adventures. But now he knows he can't have that.
"I don't know what you want," Lupin says, "but I don't think I can give it to you." He pauses. "I'll tell Sirius you were here."
It's not a statement; it's a question. "No," Regulus answers in a whisper, "thank you," and he's already on the stairs before Lupin shuts the door.
X.
And now, days later, Regulus sits on an ornate sofa before the embers of a fire. The final flames cast dancing shadows on the walls of the Grimmauld Place parlour, and the only sound amidst the layers of dust and ghosts is him, inhaling, exhaling. He is still, weary in every bone. But he sits up straight; he always does.
In hindsight everything is clearer. He should have listened, when Sirius first told him that Bellatrix was trouble, but he's not going to let himself think of Sirius now. He's not going to laugh at the irony, at how he promised months ago that he wouldn't define himself by who Sirius was, and ended up defining himself by who Sirius wasn't. Maybe Sirius is a hero, and Regulus isn't, and that's the end of the story.
Regulus watches the firelight glinting off the locket, death and fear and hope all dangling on a gold chain, suspended in the darkness, and thinks of heroes.
end.