“I mean…” Sirius trailed off, still looking down at the pictures as well. “I don’t know if he would have told us, but he certainly never said anything to me about it either way. Funny. Always assumed he was the one of us worst at keeping things to himself.”
It used to be, that in all the old family photographs, Sirius could see himself–– as he was and as he had been, through the resemblance of cheekbones or sunken in eyes or an artistocratic sneer or a generally defeated air. In these pictures of Alphard, though, he saw who he might one day be. How a sense of freedom and adventure might look splayed across similar features, off basking in the sun of Monte Carlo with his arm around someone he cared about–– because clearly, Alphard cared about this man, whoever he was and whyever they were traveling together. It didn’t make one ounce of difference to Sirius what the nature of their relationship was.
At the end of the day, he was just glad to see that his uncle had had someone in his corner, someone that he’d chosen to have there and kept to himself, away from the fray and out of the limelight. That meant ––if it could be assumed to follow the patterns that Sirius himself had drummed out since childhood–– that if it was a secret, it must have been something very good. In the Black family, miseries were shared like currency. But good things? Those were hoarded, tucked away where no harm could befall them. Where they wouldn’t have to be shared. Where they couldn’t be so easily lost or taken away.
“No, I don’t think I’ll be on the verge of running out anytime soon,” Sirius said, his voice low and marked, at the very frayed edges, by the first rumblings of a dark chuckle. He’d been raised around money, but somehow that made it more awkward to talk about–– not less. There was always ‘enough’ to go around, so things like prices and bills and budgeting and mortgages were vocabulary of another class. During the few months he’d had to go without, Sirius had actually learned about all that (not that he had a lot of liquid capital to work with). It was a strange, sobering and somewhat uncomfortable thought to think that he would have to go through another round of adjustments.
He just…didn’t know what to do with it, honestly, and on a deeper level he was also trying to keep his hopes down in case some loophole did prove fruitful and it all got taken away from him again. Sirius didn’t want to need the money; he didn’t want to get soft, to learn to lean on it again. That was a tall order for someone with such poor impulse control, though, about to be living on his own for the first time and with very, very many ideas about how he’d like to spend it all.
“I don’t think I’ll stay with the Potters either,” he mused quietly. “Not after graduation next year, at least. I don’t want to live…here, though. This was his place. I want one of my own. If I sell this off ––or even if I don’t, I guess–– I should have enough to buy an apartment in the city. Or even just rent one, in the long term. So I don’t have to be tied down to just one place forever.” A year ago, this would have been a pipe dream–– a daydream doodled in the margins of his mind, a scandal if he ever voiced it to his parents. Now, though, it wasn’t only possible. It was practical.
“You can do anything you want to do,” Sirius pointed out, more firmly than inspiringly. It wasn’t something he was trying to gently lead his brother toward seeing so much as something he was just…informing him off, hoping he’d wake up and realize it all at once. “And why you’d want to stay–– I honestly can’t wrap my head around. I can’t. And I won’t.” He paused for a few minutes, brow furrowed, grey eyes cast down toward the floor. He could see dust particles floating in the light streaming in through the window, like they were caught in slow motion. “I don’t think you know what you want.”
Unlike Sirius’ feelings of renewed kinship with Alphard because of the photographs, Regulus had never felt more alienated from a member of his family. Well, aside from the little matter of Sirius leaving, but that was neither here nor there. Keeping such a thing from the family, leading a double life. The Blacks were raised to believe that outsiders were always Others. They alone could be trusted and relied upon. But apparently even Blacks had their secrets, and second lives.
Regulus did not know the specifics of Sirius’ new found fortune. There were a great many things that he had learned about the family, but the exact net worth of everything? It was difficult to pin down, and something that his father and uncle were reluctant to reveal. No doubt it was part of a ploy, revealing the extent of the dealings piece by piece rather than all at once. Knowledge was power, and the Blacks had always hoarded power. Regulus could only control as much as he knew, and his ignorance meant that Orion and Cygnus could retain complete control.
And even knowing this, he couldn’t find it within himself to resent his family. He was relieved, if anything, viewing it not as a noose, but a safety net.
“Sounds like you should sell it then,” he tried to sound cold, callous like he didn’t care that his former favoured uncle’s house would be sold.
“There has always been much that you have not understood.” Two brothers, who knew so much about one another, who at one time could even anticipate what the other would say or how they would react, and yet understood so little. Sirius might not understand the loyalty Regulus felt, but then Regulus had never understood how Sirius could so easily shuck the shackles or responsibility and duty, how he could walk away from so much opportunity. “It is different for me. They are different.”
“And you do?” He asked, a challenge that he didn’t feel. Regulus knew what he wanted... didn’t he? To lead the family, to maintain the glory of the Black name. It was what he had always wanted. That hadn’t changed... had it?
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