Summary: A tremor has developed in J.J.’s fingers since Otabek last saw him. As if conscious of how he must look, J.J. grips the frame of the doorway tighter. His knuckles are deathly white in the morning sun. The rest of him is pale, too. For all that he remembers, Otabek has never seen this side of J.J. before. He knows Jean-Jacques as a tad too confident. When one is patchwork of growth plates and bruises, it is inevitable that one must admire boys with words a size too big, as if they know down to their bones that they are meant for something greater.
I used to burn for you, Otabek thinks.
(A character study on Otabek’s reaction to his placement at the Grand Prix Finals.)
You brushed past Kenjirou, Hayato, Taichi, Satori, Reon, and Eita. You did not look back for whole kilometers.
Finally, you stopped. The rest followed. That was the problem.
Rating: G
Words: ~1200
Characters: Ushijima Wakatoshi, Semi Eita, mentions of others
Warnings: Eita’s potty mouth, very small insect mention.
Summary: In which Shiratorizawa runs home when they play a bad set, and Wakatoshi runs, metaphorically, for longer than he should. For Shiratori Weekend - Day 1: Favorite Swan.
Read on: AO3
“Infinity times infinity.”
“Infinity times infinity times infinity.”
“Infinity times infinity times infinity times infinity.”
“Let there be light, let there be light, let me be right…”
--
You watch the steam curl between the curves of your fingers, documenting its longevity (or lack thereof) in the chilly spring morning. The sky is the color of mountains. If you wanted to, you could blot out the moon with your pinkie.
It’s one of those mornings. It starts slow, graceful even. It’s more than you can ask for, for this kind of anticlimax. You’re not sure if you’re grateful for the reprieve.
You turn your phone over in your hands. You could say you’re sick, or that you’ve familial extenuating circumstances, whatever that means. In the end, you settle for a simple, “Don’t worry, I’ll be at practice,” and you hang up before Reon can respond.
--
The run back from Regionals was a quiet interrupted only by the sound of their sneakers against the pavement. It was also one of the only times the others bothered keeping up with you. As they ran, their pace sped up until they were near flying, maybe to burn off the sluggish movements in the endgame. There was sweat dripping from Satori’s face and for once, he looked straight ahead—no distractions here.
You brushed past Kenjirou, Hayato, Taichi, Satori, Reon, and Eita. You did not look back for whole kilometers.
Finally, you stopped. The rest followed. That was the problem.
“That’s enough,” you said, breaths coming fast and harsh. A stitch had formed in your side. “Walk.”
Tsutomu burst into tears. You pretended not to notice, because you didn’t know how to answer something like, “But I proved I’m worthy of being the ace right? Ushijima-san!”
--
The tea has gone cold, which is apt. Or maybe your hands are cold, which is also apt. You look at nothing in particular and just walk. You suppose you shouldn’t have wandered out of your house wearing your school uniform if you were planning to ditch because an elderly woman shoots you a disapproving look as you go. Yet. It’s not as if you could have predicted this outcome. Such is the natural progression of events. First, a loss, then the stages of acceptance wherein it’s healthy to be surprised at even your own actions, your own reluctance. And humans by nature avoid—
You step out of the way of an oncoming bee and sink into the grass of the park. You watch the bee buzz away. It’s early, just enough that you have the place to yourself for the most part. Every so often, you hear snatches of voices on the breeze. Some of the grass has begun to go to seed prematurely and it tickles at the insides of your elbows.
Your father used to take you here. When you were young enough to be carried on his shoulders, he would sneak you from your bed in the middle of the night. “We’re going on an adventure,” he’d say, scooping you up in one arm and an astronomy text in the other. And you were always the slow starter. You were slow to wake up. You’d spend the walk there nodding off into his shoulder. But you stayed—stay—awake, long into the night. Like testing waters, he’d said. You only grew more alert as the moon rose and as the horizon began to lighten, you packed away the telescope and woke him up.
You are still a slow starter; you suspect that will never change. But you pick up the next call after three beats and say, “I’ll be at practice.”
“Fuck practice,” Eita says. Terse. “I want you here. Now.”
09:45:23. “You’re supposed to be in class.”
A lowering of volume which somehow conveys I’m in the bathroom you tool, worry, fear, and anger all at once, “Don’t avoid the question. We just lost—we’re looking for our captain the day after an important match and he’s disappeared on a whim.”
“It wasn’t a whim.” You’re not sure on the specifics, but this much is true. “I’m thinking.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Eita scoffs. “You can still make it to English if you show up now.”
“I don’t like English.” But you recognize the information for what it is and you don’t want to drag this conversation on, either. You’re aware your absence is tearing at something that binds Eita to the team. (To you. And that’s something to examine later, too, when you’re not here, in this place.) You say, “I need to think about what to say.”
The line goes silent so long you think Eita’s hung up. Then, “Think quicker,” and a beep.
You look at the blank screen. You’ve always been a slow starter in waking up, in conversations, in game. The words are slow to come now, too. You could say, I’m proud, but this is the first year you haven’t been to Nationals since middle school. You could say, I’m glad we made it this far, but there is an unshakable feeling in your limbs (muscle memory) that says you should’ve made it further. You were going to win Nationals this year. It’s a hard goal to retract even if you’ve felt it slipping away since that first near-perfect year. You’re not sure what the significance of winning together is beyond wanting it so badly you ache and maybe that’s why you’re lying in the field, letting clovers stain your uniform.
You close your eyes when the sun migrates to your patch of grass.
You’re proud, you think, but not proud enough. Just as you understand, empirically, how statistically unlikely it is that you’ve made it to the finals for five years and how far-fetched it is to expect to make it past that for all those cases.
It must be different for you, an Eita-like voice supplies. You’re already scouted, you’re on the under-eighteen Japanese team.
“It’s not,” you say aloud, warmth that’s not all from the spring curling in your stomach. You sit up, fish your phone from between a patch of overgrown grass stalks.
You’ve a few apologies to make.
--
Because the first run home is no different than the second or third run home but this team is different than the last and the next. Losing is losing. Because when Kenjirou brushed by Tsutomu, he elbowed him in the ribs for his outburst and Hayato choked on his own spit laughing and Satori’s cheeks puffed out as he tried to keep himself from meeting the same fate. Later, when any reasonable person should have been asleep, Taichi sent them all pictures of Satori’s face, red hair plastered to his sweaty cheeks.
--
Then again, maybe you don’t need to say anything at all. Maybe showing up is the message. Maybe you should take the bus with everyone today, or invite them all back to your house for dinner. Or maybe you should stop thinking and just feel. Here are the facts: a loss, an end, perhaps a beginning.
You dislike being redundant, so you delete your messages.
You are a slow starter, but so you’ve always been. It’s one of those mornings when the moon’s slow to fade and the grass is cool and dry and you know, it will be alright.
It is a slow, quiet, unexpected thing, like snow in October. They sit on opposite ends of the bench and somehow the cold surface of the arena walls makes them seem closer than they really are. The same way you’d ice a bruise, Wakatoshi thinks as he says, “I want to win nationals.”
Oikawa lets the ball fall from his taped fingers. “So do I, stupid.”
And the truth, “We’re different.”
It lasts just as long as October snow. Oikawa casts a disparaging look Wakatoshi’s way before heading after the ball and out of the arena. He doesn’t look back.
She came to you in a study of white and black and red. Her arms were full of amaryllises and roses and poppies, like a Dutch still-life. “I’m going to help you, Jack,” she said. As she spoke, the flowers breezed past her bare arms, into the air. “Do you want me to do that?”
“Help?” Something stuttered to a stop or maybe a start in your chest. “I don’t need help.”
“Oh, Jack,” she laughed. “Come walk with me. I wanna show you something.”
Rating: T
Words: ~3400
Characters: Jack Vessalius, Arthur Barma, Miranda Barma, Oswald Baskerville. Mystery woman.
Summary: Oswald isn’t sure if he believes in the supernatural. Yet the fact remains that Jack Vessalius has been haunting his dreams for weeks—and despite their collective knowledge of dream psychology, it seems as if Jack is there to stay.
(Modern AU in world not quite our own. Alternatively, “A Study of Two Men Fumbling Around in the Dark.”)
Find Part One, or read it on ao3
He reminds you of the color brown.
Arthur usually likes habit. He likes knowing where the world has left off. He likes being able to predict it; he has never been able to remember his place in movies, in books, in his own life. Still, you go from knowing nothing about him to everything about him. This should disturb you, but you’ve made peace with your own dearth of information to offer.
You notice Arthur has a beautiful mind, kind and gentle. You suspect everyone has a beautiful mind if you’ve got a careful eye and know where to look. With Arthur, it is the people in his dreams who give him away—people who love each other and live vibrantly, with Arthur a pale shade moving amongst them, careful to keep the attention on others, always.
Well, until you. You make sure to pay as much attention as possible to Arthur Collins. You search up his etymology and the next time you meet, you tell him you’ve figured him out, which is the truth. Then you say, “Are you named after Arthur Pendragon? I read the myth a long time ago and loved it ever since,” which is not true. Or false, either, but—
“It’s only my English name. I have a Mongolian name too,” Arthur says, ducking his head just the slightest bit. He’s too tall to be going about being embarrassed and it only makes the gesture more awkward, so you lean in, attentive as always. “Khunbish. We don’t have last names, but I looked it up once and… I think my dad’s name is supposed to go before mine. Toddkhunslen Khunbish.”
You note that his voice drops when he speaks about the other half of his heritage, as if he’s waiting for someone to point out that he doesn’t exactly look it with his red hair and height—or sound it for being so unsure of the pronunciation of his own name. You are overcome with a rush of sympathy and you still and allow it to make you heady. “You had no one to teach you. It’s alright, you see?”
A few seconds of breathlessness later, he does, breath warm and lips flush against your neck.
--
Die Luft ging durch die Felder
Die Ähren wogten sacht
Es rauschten leis die Wälder
So sternklar war die Nacht
--
part two: your name is jack
--
Your name is Jack and they don’t quite trust you with big-names like Pollock’s drip paintings, but you’re glad you’ve been kept from the newest restoration project. You’ve never understood the emotion behind abstraction anyway—the most you’ve ever been able to give is a carefully reworded analysis straight from your intern-days.
Your new project suits your tastes better. You busy yourself with recreating the artist’s brushstrokes. Between each swipe, you catalogue the colors of the room. The greens, blues, yellows, and finally, the reds. Where the sunlight illuminates them, the paint splatters along the wall are harshly contoured, but faded. It’s a mindless task. Your thoughts are free to wander with alarming frequency to your dreams. By the time you finish reassuring yourself of the shape and shade of the peeling-wallpaper, the fickle lights on the ceiling, the steam along the edges of your cafeteria-issued plastic cup of amber-tinted tea, you count fifty digressions in your inner narrative—indicative of a near-abnormal level of interest. Then you realize that to accept your abilities without some amount of disbelief is just as abnormal.
Choosing between two evils has a ring to it.
You pause, brush hovering in mid-air, a drop of grey-blue collecting at the end of its fibers. Something’s not right. Everything you mix today is three to five shades off and if you were anyone else, you would be feeling the beginnings of frustration. However, you are [ well… ] and you only quirk a smile at the faded paint upon the canvas, at the purposefully almost-unnoticeable strip of blank canvas that you’ve left near one of the tamped corners.
The grey-blue paint drips to the floor—which has been coated in plastic wrap for this very purpose—with gravity it doesn’t deserve. You spare it a glance before rinsing your brushes. You leave the plastic wrap in place. No one ever goes into the storerooms of the museum, and you’re sure Miranda will understand, after a little persuasion.
--
It started seven years ago. You were a senior in college and you were living on a combination of energy drinks and your roommate’s cooking. You hadn’t slept in two days, so you didn’t find it odd that you had the strangest dream that night.
You were seated above everything in the city on a skyscraper and the world below you was frozen. Frozen cars in rush hour and frozen people hailing taxis and frozen street vendors jostling for attention. Their frozen breaths, white and pale and sad, hung in the air. There was rain, too, the drops suspended so that the slightest movement would cause you to brush against them. You thought about jumping to see if you would be frozen, too, in tandem with the world at last.
Everything was all in grey except for her.
She came to you in a study of white and black and red. Her arms were full of amaryllises and roses and poppies, like a Dutch still-life. “I’m going to help you, Jack,” she said. As she spoke, the flowers breezed past her bare arms, into the air. “Do you want me to do that?”
“Help?” Something stuttered to a stop or maybe a start in your chest. “I don’t need help.”
“Oh, Jack,” she laughed. “Come walk with me. I wanna show you something.”
As she spoke, the flowers spilling from her arms knit themselves into a tightrope between your skyscraper and the next. In one fluid motion, she began walking on the rope, her feet seeking each step out without hesitation. You watched, frozen like the world, feeling the cold at last.
Halfway across the sky, she turned to you and whispered, “Follow me,” and you tried to hear the colors that always came with sound but you heard only her voice echoing below in the valley of frost and ashes.
“I can’t,” you said. “I’ll die.”
She said, “You’ll miss something beautiful if you don’t. Do you have anything you can call beautiful, Jack?”
The rain began to fall, freezing as it went. You shivered. She looked at you and you thought, maybe if she saw you, you would be alive, too.
But you’d written your dissertation on the Aphrodite of Knidos, documenting its curves and sensuality with grey-tinged words. You’d forgone its influence on later art for the way you imagined Praxiteles and the man who stained it with his semen decades later must have loved the implacable marble figure. You thought of the way in which you must pronounce its name, of the hues with which you should associate it so that you too would believe it.
You said, “The Aphrodite of Knidos.”
Your statement was followed by colorless slaughter. “You don’t think she’s beautiful at all. Don’t you hear yourself? You hate her.” The girl sighs. She runs her hands along the clouds, tilting her head back like one in prayer. “Let me show you something beautiful.”
“I can’t walk across that tightrope.”
From the street came the sound of car horns rediscovering their voices. Ten thousand black umbrellas burst open simultaneously. She looked back at you through it all, the petals fluttering around her feet.
“It’s time for me to go, then,” she said. And the tightrope disintegrated into hailstones and she fell…
You stood, cold and entranced and alone.
You screamed because you could not look away.
She laughed as she materialized in front of you. “Hey, Jack. Do you like this dream?”
You stared at the miles and miles of steel and glass and concrete below.
“If you really don’t know, I’ll just have to make it so you can, later,” she said. She cupped your face with winter-dry hands. The hail-rain seemed to have not touched her at all. “I’ll leave you a present before I go. How about it? Try not to look too closely at what’s there. Just feel it.”
The hailstones had buried your shoes in a thin layer of ice. The clouds were burgeoning still, their fringes tinged purple and green and angry yellow. The last of the flowers had vanished.
“Failing already? Well, don’t overthink it. I’ll see you later, maybe.”
And she was gone.
You woke up crying and the dream after that, you found yourself in someone else’s mind.
--
Miranda calls you half an hour later. Her voice, angry and spread over your bad reception is oddly thin. She tells you that you have one more day to finish your latest project, and that she’s tired of holding her breath waiting for you to just barely hit your deadlines.
“But I hit them, don’t I?” you laugh.
“You’ll give me a nervous breakdown,” she says. Behind your eyes you see an image of her poisonous-red nails digging into the back of her chair. “You better make it up to me.”
The call ends.
You catch sight of your reflection in the mirror and look away, quickly, but not quickly enough.
--
On the way to the dream-subway, you tell Arthur a story. You lilt your voice in the way your mother used to when she wove her old French fairy tales.
“There’s a person,” you say.
“A person? Who?” Arthur asks.
“Who knows? Maybe no one.” You make sure you walk along all the cobblestone edges along the sidewalk where the trees grow. Arthur’s gaze trails after you. The colors around you intensify. You know this means Arthur is feeling some strong emotion, so you pause on the railing along the next stone staircase, allowing it time to seep into your voice. “The person doesn’t know either.”
“How can they not know?”
You consider this for a moment.
“Maybe they will stop existing the moment they do. Theirs is a volatile existence. You must close doors softly around them because they won’t know if they should be annoyed or worried, and the two emotions will cancel out and leave them feeling nothing.” You look at the sky, no closer than it was when you were standing on the pavement. You spread you fingers out and pretend you have the power to bring it all crashing down. “Should I keep talking?”
“Ah—I’m sorry—yes.”
You laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Arthur. It’s just a silly little story.”
“No, if you want to tell me, I want to hear it… Jack.”
Here, between the skyscrapers and food stands and storefronts of the city, there is no wind. The voices of the inhabitants reach you, but you are not included in their conversation. You are alright with this, and so is Arthur, so long as you can go on walking amongst them. You breathe in the coffee-tinted scent of roasted peanuts and freshly sliced mangoes and wonder why you’re bothering now and realize it’s because it’s yet another Arthur-emotion, this love of the world.
What a gentle soul. You’ll try to be poetic for him.
“This person is like that with everything. But humans can’t live without meaning, so eventually, they began assigning importance to rituals, hobbies, and other people. They became well liked wherever they went. But late at night, they remembered they were still empty. Where their fond recollections of the day would be, they found only blanks. When they fell asleep at all, they didn’t dream.
“This person believed they were deeply troubled about that. They grew up in a normal family, and they keep in touch with their parents even now. Yet, they never felt anything toward their parents, even if they knew conceptually they should love them.
“One day, they had a strange dream. Their first dream. They were sitting on the edge of a skyscraper, halfway between jumping off to see what it would be like and clinging to the edge for dear life. But whatever they did, they couldn’t move at all. Maybe because everything else had stopped moving, they could only stand there, not quite frozen unlike the world around them.”
You pause, relishing in the weightlessness of your limbs. You run across the entirety of the railing before hopping off and landing on the ground where you spin around till you are dizzy and must lean against the cool brown brick of the next apartment building.
You sing-song, “Ever since, they dream about different people, or they’re in someone else’s dream. Wherever they went, they felt that person’s strongest emotions. They’d dream that dream for a while, and then they’d transfer to some else’s head. That’s all pretty silly, don’t you think?”
Arthur pauses on his way to you, arms outstretched. You can’t read the expression on his face—for once—but you don’t need to.
“Jack,” he says. “So—“
“Don’t take it so seriously,” you whisper. You close the distance between the both of you and brush back a stray hair from his forehead. “I’m about to leave, after all. I can always tell when it’s about to happen. I turn translucent like this. Like stained-glass.”
He says, “You mean, I’ll wake up?”
You smile. You don’t tell him you’ve lost count of how many people’s dreams you’ve seen, of how the only way to switch dreams is to help the dreamers with something they’ve never been able to resolve. You don’t tell him sometimes you draw it out and see (and feel) what it’s like to want something so badly your skin itches. You don’t tell him these dreams—they’re the only place where you’re sure you can feel anything at all. And you don’t tell him his problem has always been feeling like he has nothing inside him worth listening to. Which is a little funny, given he’s into making short films.
Well, it’s not like you’ve done him any favors, not when you didn’t mean any of it.
Did you?
(It’s love. But not quite. Admiration.)
“Goodbye, Arthur Collins.”
--
You buy Miranda a bottle of red wine with the favor the grocer owes you.
She drinks it straight from the bottle because today she’s tired, has been worn thin as the blue-grey smoke trailing from the cigarette in her hand by that irrational impatience which burns in her purple veins. She tucks her red hair around her neck and unwinds her scarf and drapes herself against the back of the sofa. You’re sure you’re meant to look away, made uncomfortable by the pronounced curves of her body, but instead, you smile and think of the cloying scent of decaying flowers that follows her wherever she goes.
“Jack,” she says, “the wine is too thin.”
That’s another thing. She lives in excess—the dim-lit rooms of her apartment, the heavy furniture, the myrrh and frankincense candles flickering on the counters. You think she would get drunk if you weren’t there, creating the need for her to keep control in front of someone who she sees as inferior, but isn’t.
You tuck the knowledge that your presence keeps her on edge into your smile. “I can buy you another, if you like.”
Miranda quirks an eyebrow. She hasn’t caught it, then. Her eyes are locked on her distorted reflection in her wine-glass. “No. Stay here.”
You oblige her.
Soon enough, she slinks over to you, her hands pulling her skirt up her hips. She sits on your lap and traces your features with her sharp red nails, her eyes never leaving yours. She rolls her hips over your cock and you want to vomit. It’s not like she wants you. You’re not her type. You’re just nearby and you’re not easily taken in and she wants you to want her so she can savor being able to tell you no. It’s not like you want her. She’s filthy, filthy, filthy, and her hands are too soft, too much like those goodnight caresses of your forehead from forever ago. But you keep your gaze steady. It’s not like you want anyone, but it’s not like you mind. Arthur, others—they liked to touch you, too. Sometimes you pretend their bodies pass through yours like smoke (whether you are composed of smoke or they are or you’re all smoke doesn’t matter).
“Miranda,” you say, “you’re beautiful.”
“You aren’t hard,” she says. A thin trickle of wine dribbles down her chin. She wipes it off with a finger and trails its residue across your neck.
“Sorry,” you answer. You smile at her as if she’s your friend. Your best friend. “I’m very tired. I did have to take off from work, as angry as it made you.”
“You knew it would make me angry,” she whispers. She licks your ear. She bites down on your neck and mouths her next words against your skin. You feel nothing. “You’ve been bad, and I think I need more than wine to make me happy again.”
You know too well by now to let her set the price but one look at her face shows you that you’ve no choice. You wait; she’ll tell you when she wants you to know.
She doesn’t disappoint you. She’s always been impatient that way. If your situations were reversed, you’d have waited longer. Maybe you’d have made her drink more wine, to loosen her tongue. Then you’d have acquiesced to her demands for a few lingering moments, cupped her breasts and pressed your lips to her neck and scraped your teeth against her clavicle. Slid your fingers up her thighs and pulled away at the last moment. Worm a few extra secrets out of her. That way, she’d think she won this game. Only, you’d take the victory away from her right as she’s about to taste it.
You can’t say much good of Miranda (she’s bad at this game), but her face does scrunch up in the funniest way when she’s been thwarted. But you suppose you owe her this, for how indelicate you’ve been about the whole work situation.
Miranda gives a low soft laugh. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?”
No.
“You’re no fun.”
Aren’t you?
“I’ll just have to tell you, if you insist on being boring.” Still, she waits for your eyes to meet hers before she traces your lips with her fingers and continues. “He was in one of my lectures. He sat towards the back and stared out the window the whole time.” Her lips pull into a grimace of a smile. “I want him.”
“For what?”
Miranda unhooks her arms from your neck and slides to sit down beside you. She pushes her hair behind her shoulders (like a Renaissance portrait—Miranda has always thought of herself as an artist). “Aren’t you going to ask me who I want?”
“Does that matter?”
People are all the same.
Miranda throws her head back and laughs. “This is why I like you, Jack. You’re so terrible you make me feel like a saint.” But she knows by now you won’t fall for the bait and a beat later, she continues. “His name is Oswald Konig. I want him to model for me.”
--
If Arthur is the color brown, Oswald is the snow on top of faraway mountains. If Arthur is brick buildings and passerbys, Oswald is the pull of the tides. If Arthur is afraid of you, Oswald is wary and that’s never mixed well with your brand of psychosis.
Nonetheless, when you see him in your dreams (his dreams) tonight, you smile, wave, and say hello. You’ve found a boat moored in the distance. Its name is painted in illegible flaking black paint and its hull is the kind of red you will never be able to mix—so vivid you can see it from the hills around Oswald’s house. When Oswald says and points, “There,” you don’t argue.
You take in the way his surroundings seem to bend toward him when he moves. You are not an exception to the rule, you realize, as you continue following him to the shoreline.
and we carved our names into the trees - [ haikyuu!! ]
“So, about after,” Noya says, his words wrapped clumsily around his mouthful of ice cream. He peers up at Asahi. Some way or another, they’ve stopped walking, and Asahi has both hands wrapped around his torso like his breath’s going to run away from him. Noya frowns, swallows, and steps closer in rapid succession.
“About after?” Asahi asks. A strand of hair’s escaped from his bun. Noya is almost certain he’s using it as an excuse to look at the ground.
“After graduation. Are you really planning to stay?”
It isn’t exactly an answer. “I am not a coward, am I?”
“Not really.” The wind carries the sound of wind-chimes and summer. Noya slurps the last vestiges of ice cream from his cone and pokes Asahi, gently, with the pointy end (hey what was that for). “You’re being brave in your way, aren’t you?”
Characters: Oswald Baskerville, Jack Vessalius, Levi Baskerville, mentions of Lacie Baskerville
Summary: Oswald isn’t sure if he believes in the supernatural. Yet the fact remains that Jack Vessalius has been haunting his dreams for weeks—and despite their collective knowledge of dream psychology, it seems as if Jack is there to stay.
(Modern AU in world not quite our own. Alternatively, "A Study of Two Men Fumbling Around in the Dark.")
Part One: In which Oswald ruminates, Levi (not really) illuminates, and Jack (in the strangest way) adjudicates.
You are seated in a room whose walls seem to press in closer every time you blink. You are worried you will be here so long the air becomes too dense to breathe, so you try to regulate your breaths—not so much as to conserve the oxygen as to convince yourself that you do in fact deserve to leave.
“Not so fast, Oswald,” Levi says as you make to stand up. He waggles a finger too close to your face. You sit back down, feeling as if you have just lost at his game. “We haven’t talked about your dreams at all. How do you expect me to help you if you give me nothing to help?”
You wonder if you should tell him you don’t want to think about it; you just want the problem to go away and that’s why you made the first appointment. But you remember you’ve been waiting for it to go away for weeks. Your mouth goes dry, so you take a sip of the water his assistant has all but shoved at you. “Dr. Giles.”
“Call me Levi,” he insists, again.
“Dr. Giles,” you repeat. You take another sip of water. It does nothing to ease your words past your throat. You take a deep breath and try again, but the sounds that pour from your lips sound nothing like the truth. “I have a lecture at four. I’ll see you next week.”
--
Es war, als hätt' der Himmel
Die Erde still geküsst
Dass sie im Blütenschimmer
Von ihm nun träumen müsst
--
part one: your name is oswald
--
Your name is Oswald Konig. You are in law school. You have absolutely no use for your philosophy B.A., but you leave the certificate up on your wall so it doesn’t look so empty. You think of yourself as being quite honest despite your reserve about looking at anyone too long—
(as if they can read the shadows under your eyes)
—so you peel the inutile thing off your wall at least once a week as a sign of acquiescence to the purposelessness of your higher education.
Your roommate does not appreciate your honesty. He shows his concern by closing the doors softly, like folding origami. “Are you alright?”
“It doesn’t look right,” you say.
Arthur Barma, your roommate, sighs. “You know, Oswald, I think you should come with me to the film club once in a while. Shutting yourself out isn’t working, is it?”
He means well but even his kindness is heavy-handed. You take a sip of your tea and lean back against the wall. Somehow the winter has seeped through—a reminder that this world is thinner than you think—and you try not to catalogue the way the chill sweeps along your spine.
“Um—did I bother you?” Arthur asks. “I didn’t mean to.”
You close your eyes.
“No.”
--
Your name is Oswald Konig. You take four sleeping pills before bed, pausing before each one to forget the quiet scrape of medicine against your throat. You think about music notes sometimes—your eyes shut, thumb over the hollow of your curved fingers. You never do get to unpacking your Walkman or your sheet music but you like having the boxes around to remind you that this silence is self-imposed.
Levi, the school psychologist, would say you’re taking control of what factors you can, but Levi is there to assure your school you won’t crumble under the combined pressure of functioning and the bar exam. He seems to think the best way to accomplish this is to pick you apart for his malicious pleasure. But you do acknowledge he’d do a better job if you weren’t so adamant about keeping the peculiarities of your dreams to yourself.
You get the glass from the windowsill.
You swallow. The water is ice-cold, soothing, and it stops your thoughts.
As you stuff the cup between the books on your windowsill, you close your eyes.
(soon
soon
too
soon)
Your name is Oswald Konig. For the past two weeks, there has been an intruder in your dreams.
--
Jack Vessalius is waiting for you in Sablier. His legs are crossed. His fingers splayed across the tiles of the roof, neck arched back, face pointing towards the sun like an obscene flower. You’re no longer surprised, but it’s your old house, so the breath catches in your throat anyway.
“Oh! I was wondering when you’d come,” Jack says. He doesn’t look at you. A small blessing. “It’s been a few days.”
You sit down in the garden—not shriveled as you remember it, but speckled with so many dandelions it can pass for winter. The stalks are as green as Jack’s eyes—you take it as natural dream logic.
But you are past responding.
Jack sounds aghast. “Don’t tell me you tried to go without sleep?”
Faintly amused, you think you weren’t planning to.
“Hey, don’t ignore me! It’s bad for you, especially with how you’re a student. Jeeze, listen to me would you? Isn’t it midterm season for you?”
You lie down and watch the clouds. Your alarm will sound at six o’ clock sharp. You can cope with eight more hours of this.
As soon as you think the thought, you realize you’ve just jinxed yourself. Your suspicions are confirmed when an unwelcome mass settles itself against your chest and you find yourself blinking up at Jack Vessalius—who beams at you.
You close your eyes again.
You’ve read that animals sometimes play dead to shake off their predators.
“Hey Oswald.” Jack pokes your cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m here either so let’s get along. It would make the time go faster. Besides, we could figure out if you can do anything to the dream. Maybe you can come up with a theme park or something.”
You get the feeling he is only trying because you don’t want him to; because he expects that you’ll never give in. That’s enough to make you turn away to face the dirt path. Levi is like this too, and you haven’t figured out how to deal with him, either.
The truth is, ever since Jack showed up in your dreams last week and stayed there, you’ve been torn between questioning him until you solved the mystery and staying awake until he just went away. You rationalize by reasoning since your subconscious provided him his personality, you’ll figure out what he’s up to sooner or later…with or without his presence.
(why sablier?)
“I’m not getting up until you talk to me,” Jack says. “I’m pretty strong, you know.”
You take the bait. “Get off me.”
Jack rolls off so that you lay side by side, shoulders touching, his features crinkling upward in a smile of frightful proportions. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Yes it was.
“So dramatic,” Jack says, eyes half-lidded as he squints at the sky. “Come on, this isn’t so bad. We could work out why we’re both stuck seeing each other in our dreams. Besides, you need to contribute to this since this is apparently your hometown, and I’ve no idea where we are.”
You look away too late, having already realized you were looking.
“Don’t you want me out of your head?”
You’re joking.
“Playing dirty, Vessalius?” You shift your neck so that the stitch in your spine pops. You are so much older than seventeen, when you were here last. Sablier goes on existing regardless. Of course. “You found a way in, so find your own way out.”
For the first time, you see irritation flicker across Jack’s face. “I tried already. You weren’t paying attention.”
A pause.
“Look,” Jack says, “you can’t deny that you know this place better than I do. And you’re charming, but I’d rather spend my nights in my own dreams. I know we’ve both figured out this isn’t a one-time thing.”
You frown. You begin to see the irony in trusting this complete stranger to do more for your psyche than certified psychologist Levi Giles.
Perhaps Jack does, too. He holds his hand out to pull you upright even as he hesitates. “It is your dream we’re working with. And I do want to help you, Oswald. I’m not even sure with what, yet.”
(dandelions, salt-tinged air, no air, wine mulled with stolen herbs, the sun always warming)
You want to leave.
“Yes,” you say.
--
But you don’t get around to figuring out immediately.
“Let’s do a trust exercise,” Jack says the next time you meet. He has what you can begin to tell is his usual grin plastered on.
You don’t trust either of you to catch the other, but Jack waves it off with his usual flippancy. Jack, you learn, likes word games—anything from ridiculous childhood riddles to the Saturday crossword. He does them with his feet propped up on the nearest convenient object, his pencil dangling dangerously from his lips. When he can’t think of a word, he thumbs through the dandelions, scattering the seeds one by one. You raise an eyebrow and wait.
“What’s your favorite color?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” you say.
The far off road glimmers in the sunlight. You know there is no water in the dips of tire-worn track, but you keep an eye on the false puddles regardless.
“Mine is red,” Jack says, and this is how you learn he’s an art restorer and his greatest ambition is to restore Papyrus 55001—though you’re not sure why he throws back his head and laughs when you take his word for it. “A shade darker than vermillion. The shade of what they think is Van Eyck’s turban in the self-portrait. I’ve never been able to mix it myself.”
--
Your house is eggshell blue, the paint bunched together in the cracks. Neither of you try going inside, but when Jack dozes off after hours spent exploring the meadow you thought you’d forgotten, you place your hands between the latticework of the windows. It does not fit—your fingers spilling onto the woodwork. Still, the gesture is familiar enough for you to think of Lacie without your usual automatic shut-down.
You are seven years late, your reflection tells you. Six inches too tall.
Bemused, you turn your betrayal around in your head for days.
--
You’re not sure what to do when you finish scouring the meadow for any sign of exit. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for. But Jack laughs and pulls you to the house. You have just enough time to think about saying no.
“It’s locked,” Jack says, bewildered. “Oswald, you’ve locked yourself out of your own dream.”
You blink. When you try the doorknob yourself, it does not budge.
“That’s alright,” Jack decides. He swings a leg onto a window-ledge and uses the cracks where the wood has worn through to pull himself up. You stare at him, and he meets your gaze with eyes fairly glittering with mirth. If he feels unease, he hides it well. “We’ll just go through the chimney.”
“…Thank you,” you mutter.
“What was that?” He’s in the process of pulling himself over the roof. Despite yourself, you hover below him. The action is more familiar than it should be, but you have no time to dwell on it because in the next instant—
“Aha! I knew I’d make it. My specialty is climbing trees, you know.” He has his hands on his hips in some kind of Peter Pan pose. It fits him, oddly; he smiles far too easily at you. Has one too many surprises up his sleeves in a way that can’t be unplanned. “Well, don’t leave me alone up here. Aren’t you going to climb up?”
You step back, the tension leaving your shoulders.
Jack is too used to your silence to stumble. He tucks his ponytail into his collar and walks over to the chimney. Arms held out like a child, he perches on the chimney. He doesn’t seem to understand the drop is enough to break his limbs. “You’re so lazy, Oswald. But if you really want, I’ll open the door for you.”
You are sure lazy isn’t the word for it. “Try self-preserving,” you sigh. “If we can’t get in, we might as well leave it and look somewhere else. I can see the road from here.”
You register that Jack is looking at you, eyes slit in the sunlight. He seems to find whatever he’s looking for in your gaze, because he slips to the edge of the roof and uses the latticework to haul himself down.A relieved breath pushes past your lips. You weren’t aware—
Well, that would make more sense then.
“Lead the way then, Mr. Oswald,” Jack snickers, patting him free of dust. “If you’re so excited.”
You start walking so you have an excuse to turn away from him, more amused than you want to let on. You’ve been around Jack long enough to know he won’t let it go if he realized you ever thought of him as…well, entertaining.
But, you promise yourself, as only slightly more so than the grass billowing in the wind.
--
“You missed our appointment,” Levi says. He doesn’t even pretend to be put out anymore. You’ve seen most of his tricks already. “I was worried.”
You lift an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
“I’ve gotten attached to you,” he adds helpfully. Then he perks up. “By the way, I have to evaluate your mental health. Your professors are getting worried now that it’s getting closer to the anniversary of the event. They’ve sent word you’re inattentive in class.”
“I’m not,” you say.
Levi plunges on, fiddling with his bangs like he’s bored by this all—no matter how interested he says he is. “I have a theory it has to do with those dreams you mentioned as well. What makes this all so interesting, of course, is that these dreams began seven years after her death. Well, that may have to do with some subconscious connections… You may have associated the memory with seemingly unrelated triggers. Possibly, stress may be part of the problem. It would induce an accelerated heart-rate that your subconscious may mistake as fear.”
You don’t think before you say, “I’m not afraid of Jack.”
Levi leers, leaning forward. You’ve made a mistake; you’ve given him a point he can push at until it gives. “Jack? Is that who you’re dreaming of?”
“No.” Even. Dismissive.
Levi doesn’t believe it for a second. If anything, he only smiles wider. “Tell me about Jack.”
You pretend to check the clock and tap your feet slightly. It’s a good indicator of being in a rush. “I have to go. I promised to help Professor Arnofini—“
“You won’t get away with that this time,” Levi says. His teeth are sharp. Too sharp. He presses his lips together for another unsettling grin when he notices you looking. “I checked your schedule. You’re free for the rest of the day.”
“I don’t have to tell you,” you ground out.
“No, you don’t.” He laughs as if you’ve just told a joke. “But it’s the least you can do for lying to my face twice. Your generation doesn’t have much respect for your elders, eh?”
You twitch before making yourself sit still. Bolting out of the room and slamming the door, no matter how satisfying it may be, will only result in more sessions. And clearly Levi isn’t willing to let you go until he picks apart your head. For a moment, your eyes dart to his practicing degree. You do not know of anyone who would think to give it to him.
“You’ll feel better,” Levi offers. He’s tucked his smile away behind his hand so you don’t have to look at it. You wonder if he knows the effect is still the same: you know it is there. Levi gives you a shrewd look from beneath his pale lashes. “I have to ask, however, if you really do want to feel better.”
Why wouldn’t you? It is not as if you enjoy remembering. It is not as if you like spending an hour longer in traffic so you can avoid the sea staring back.
(you always fall for the bait)
“He keeps showing up in my dreams,” you say instead, gaze trained on the crease between Levi’s eyebrows. You’ve learned to gauge your apparently mental stability by its depth. “I started seeing him on December 21st. He’s shown up every day since.”
With undisguised curiosity, “What about him, then? You said he didn’t scare you, but until now you’ve acted like you were at least uneasy about his presence. Did something change?”
You’ve said too much. The blank whiteness of the walls does nothing to soothe the guilt weighing down the oxygen in your lungs. You know you are being irrational—you owe nothing to Jack, who is nothing but a scrambled brainwave—but you like keeping your word the few times you can. You try to ameliorate the feeling by staring Levi down, but there’s something so strange and wrong about his eyes you end up looking away.
Admittance?
“Your sister is only part of the problem, Oswald.” Levi twirls himself around, once, in his chair. His hand drops from his lips and he comes to a stop with the barest hint of amusement tucked into the corner of his mouth. “Maybe it’s a sexuality crisis. If he’s shown up so many times, he must be your type.”
You consider this for a moment. It is almost too neat of a solution. Even if Jack doesn’t scare you, he puts you on guard. He says too much and gives away too little. It unnerves you. You should know more about him, if he is part of your dream. You shouldn’t think about him as someone separate—as someone real. Nor should you remember the dreams half so well.
Levi is still looking at you, unblinking.
Answers, you decide, are better than sleepless speculation. Faltering now and then, “I don’t think so. It seems more as if he is a real person.”
“Real?”
You frown, hoping that Levi will figure it out on his own. Talking like this is taking its toll. “The first time I saw him, I answered all his questions without thinking. I thought as he was part of my dream, it didn’t matter.”
Levi doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but everything about him suggests he would like to. “Go on, Oswald.”
“The next time I saw him, I figured out he never knew anything I didn’t tell him,” you say at last. Yes, there is a finality lurking in the words. You have been stalling on admitting that. “It seems strange.”
Marble-blue eyes slit. The movement is followed by raucous laughter as Levi tilts back in his chair and places his feet upon the table—his mirth so uncontainable it shakes his entire frame.
You wait.
“Alright,” Levi says, still trying to catch his breath, “alright. You’re a very observant boy aren’t you? I’ll let you go today if you really want—ahahaha—“
So you don’t bother with saying goodbye.
--
There is nothing you hate more than playing the fool, and the train ride to campus gives you enough time to mull over your part. You make a brief stop at the library and pick up a third of its selection of psychology. They are heavy books, but it seems oddly fitting that your arms are shaking by the time you’re back at your dorm.
--
“What’s the real life connection?”
Jack pushes himself into a sitting position, his expression hidden by his loose hair. You’re miles from your old house now, and there is nothing to find but a forest that is no longer mysterious and the last dregs of summer dragging their heels across the scattered wildflowers. “What do you mean by real life connection? Isn’t this just a dream?”
The scenery is faded at odd corners—pretty in the same way Jack is when he wants to be. You take note of the similarity and file it away for later. “Freud,” you tell him. You are hoping you don’t have to ask. “After adolescence, dreams increase in complexity. Rather than wish fulfillment, dreams incorporate conscious and subconscious thoughts and real life experiences.”
Jack catches on, too quickly. “So what am I?”
Yes.
“I think I’m real,” Jack muses. He shakes the hair from his eyes and takes in the tight set of your jaw with something akin to ruefulness. “I already told you I don’t know how I ended up in your dreams every night, but I’ve figured out a few things since then.” He searches out your gaze and holds it. Then, as if it isn’t enough, he shifts closer. “Do you want to stop, Oswald?”
Stop looking for the reason why this is happening? Stop talking? Stop existing?
Jack already knows (how frightening that he does) of one subject about which you are clueless, so you ignore the question. “I read that saying someone’s name more often will—“
“—suggest that they ought to like you. Or trust you.” For the first time, Jack Vessalius is visibly rattled. His smile dangles from his lips, head tilted to the side in a gesture that should suggest polite concern. It strikes you that you have never seen him sit still, with his arms tucked to his sides, knees to his chin. “You think I’m—“
Because you have to know, “Are you?”
Something behind Jack’s face has shattered and slipped razor-sharp shards through his voice. “I’ve never—I don’t want to.”
You watch him push his bangs from his eyes with uncertain hands. You can’t look away.
“Os,” Jack says. Nothing about his reaction lines up with what you know of him—you can hear the plea and you want to claw it from your ears. “Do you believe me?”
(are you human?)
The fairs at Sablier used to sell sea glass in blown-glass bottles with ink-stains forever trailing their fingers up the sides. There were strings of lights winding through the trees, all the way down to the sea. At night, they were nigh indistinguishable from the fireflies.
“Lacie liked going to the festivals,” you tell Jack. Even three turns of the road from the ocean, the wind is briny and cool. You breathe. “One year she thought she could steal a boat for a trip out to Reveille. It wasn’t far—maybe just two miles. No one would have known. They were all by the stalls and the corn-maze.”
All but drowned by the leaves stirring, “Lacie is?”
“My sister.” You pause, but your throat does not dry. Neither does Jack stop looking at you. You grimace, wary of his continued reassurance. “I didn’t agree with her. I thought it was reckless. She told me she would do it anyway, with or without me. But I was scared.”
“Lacie didn’t come back, did she?” Jack asks. His brow is furrowed. No blame in his features. You want to shake him for his decision.
“She never seemed to care about her life much.”
(tellme—)
“But you did,” Jack says, sad in a way you don’t warrant, mournful, maybe for you. His eyes so bright you spot your reflection peering back. Not your fault. “You did care about her, you see?”
--
You stop taking the pills. You soak them in hydrogen peroxide until you can grind them in the kitchen drain. Arthur makes no comment but he leaves phrases of encouragement around your half-conversations for you to stumble upon and think about later.
At night, you do not hesitate to close your eyes, your pillow separating you from the perpetually cold wall.
a tide before the flickering sun - [ pandora hearts ]
“You looked pretty convinced when I told you,” Oz says. “Does the big bad Elliot believe in fairies? That’s cute. I used to think there were fairies too. Ada and I looked for fairy rings all the time. When I was ten, I got Uncle Oscar to burn a circle in the ground and I made Gil step in it. His face—“
Chapter: 1. Prelude
Rating: T
Words: ~1100
Characters: Elliot Nightray, Oz Vessalius
Summary: A foray into the woods goes wrong when Elliot steps into a fairy ring and vanishes into thin air. When "thin air" turns out to be a synonym for another world...well...things get tricky.
(A modern-day eldritch AU.)
a/n: for geta, to geta, by danni. happy late (ish) birthday.
i paint you a picture
but it never looks right
cause i fill in the shadows
and block out the light
;;;
“I swear it’s right around the bend—we can’t miss it—“
Elliot scoffs. “I’ll believe it if I see it. Anyway, how’d you even find it? No one’s supposed to come out here.”
Oz stops in his tracks. His breath is barely visible against the sugar-powder snow. “I was exploring with Gil. Besides, Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, you’re here too.”
Elliot shoves his hands into his pockets with more force than necessary, flushing. “I’m here to prove a point. We’re not even near any hot springs, so I don’t see how there can be anything that hasn’t frozen over.”
“You looked pretty convinced when I told you,” Oz says. “Does the big bad Elliot believe in fairies? That’s cute. I used to think there were fairies too. Ada and I looked for fairy rings all the time. When I was ten, I got Uncle Oscar to burn a circle in the ground and I made Gil step in it. His face—“
“I don’t know why Gil still talks to you,” Elliot says, flinching away despite himself. Just because he didn’t like what Oz had to say didn’t mean it wasn’t true; more often than not, he hears the strangest things—soft sounds like bare feet over moss. Sometimes a song from the gloam. Oz would never let him hear the end of it if he knew. “And I don’t know why I talk to you either. All you ever do is bully my brother and drag me along to find—oh, I don’t know. God damn fairy rings.”
It seems as if Oz has been waiting for this. “The Magical Zoology Club was your idea.”
“It was your sister’s idea, you idiot. I was dragged into it because you were convinced I had some sort of—some sort of—affair with her.” Elliot clears his throat as if to rid himself of the aftertaste of his less than triumphant freshman year at Saint Lutwidge’s. Then, because he doesn’t quite succeed, he throws a handful of snow in Oz’s direction.
Oz yelps. “Hey! That wasn’t fair—I wasn’t ready!”
Elliot tries very hard not to laugh and barely succeeds. “Come on already, Vessalius. Take me to your stupid fairy ring.”
“You’re serious?”
“Do it before I change my mind,” Elliot mumbles, his flush creeping to his ears. “You wouldn’t stop talking about it, but I’m sure I can find some other way to stop you.”
Oz beams. He stretches his arms over his head and does some sort of caveman impersonation, kicking up snow as he skips down the forest trail. Elliot casts a glance back, in the direction of Lutwidge. They’re far enough into the woods so that he can see the tallest tower with its sea-foam-green old copper roof. The sight ought to be comforting, yet they are far enough so that the maples and oaks and occasional evergreens tread the threshold of inviting and foreboding—the way back and the guard against it. When the sun sets, each patch of snow will look like the next. Besides, curfew is in two hours.
“Aren’t you coming, Elliot?” Oz asks. He’s still fairly bubbling with excitement—paused mid-skip, green eyes glittering.
(Ice on pine needles.)
Elliot makes himself walk down the path.
“Yeah.”
;;;
“Oz.”
“Hm.”
“We’ve been walking for an hour.”
“Hm.”
Elliot sighs and tries to stop watching the second hand chase the minute hand toward four o’clock. They’ve barely time to walk back to Lutwidge before dark, let alone find whatever place Oz keeps going on about. “You said it was just around the bend.”
Oz looks at him apologetically. “I really thought it was. I’d get it if you want to go back. I wanted to show it to you.”
“Right,” Elliot says, somehow keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. Oz picks up so easily on things like that. “So let’s go back. We should have been back in the dorm building already—“
Oz lets out a whoop of delight. “I see it! Look, it’s right there!”
And so it was. There are leaves of grass curling out of the snow at Elliot’s feet. Further away, they gather around clusters of foxgloves and bone-white birches and a creek lounging against the wildflowers. The first traces of orange spill across the horizon, but their warm goes undiluted by the November air. It is summer, Elliot realizes, in the way summer almost never smells or looks. Or sounds; there are no birds, no crickets.
The grass and wildflowers stretches on for as far as Elliot can see. It’s as if the forest’s been divided evenly into two seasons. It’s odd, he thinks, considering he’s never heard anything about this place. He’s certain a boarding school choke-full of stir-crazy teenagers would have found the place by now. Instead, there’s only Oz and Gil, who only found the place yesterday.
There is a voice coming from somewhere in the oasis—the same voice that weaves through so many of his dreams. Elliot makes to touch a bluebell. Oz wrestles his hand away. “Hey, Elliot,” he says. “I think maybe we shouldn’t do that.”
Elliot looks at his hand—pink from the cold, white where Oz grips it too tightly. “You’re being ridiculous.” He makes himself sound like he believes it. “It’s not like anything’s going to happen. It’s a fucking bluebell.”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. It’s different from yesterday.”
“I won’t step in a fairy ring if that’s what you’re worried about,” Elliot says, brushing Oz’s hand off and stepping into the grass. The bluebells offer no warning tolls—ridiculous, he tells himself—he’s so spooked by everything nowadays. “I’m here already, so I might as well take a closer look. Nothing happened to you and Gil.”
Oz grins at him, all signs of nervousness gone. “I can’t believe you didn’t fall for that,” he complains. “Normally I’d have you by now.”
Oh come on. Elliot turns around to face Oz. Anger, always so ready to jump to his throat, laces into his voice. “Was that what it was, Vessalius? You know I’ve been jumpy. I can’t believe you’d actually—“
“Elliot! An actual fairy ring!” Oz says, at the same time Elliot’s heel brushes past one of the red toadstools and sinks into the grass within.
“It’s only fungi growing out,” Elliot starts. But he never gets to finish his sentence, because that’s when it happens.
There is no flash of light, no eddy of smoke. Elliot stands half-in, half-out the circle of toadstools in one second. In the next, he is gone.
If he closes his eyes, he can almost will a hole in the terra-cotta-tiled roof, through the plaster. He can imagine the rain rushing through, torrential, effacing.
“Look at me,” Remus says.
Sirius can’t help it; he does, turning, upsetting the neat pile of cloves in the process. October is etched in the scar from Remus’ neck to his collarbones. November is gathering under his eyes. “If you’re going to ask,” Sirius breathes, still looking, not thinking, “you can sod off, too.”
Rating: T
Words: ~1400
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin.
Summary: Of potpourri and other tepid superstitions.
Sirius thinks the trend started with Caradoc Dearborn—the local source of tepid superstitions—but really (simply because this is the least obvious choice), it started with Moody. This is what he ends up saying when Remus shows up at the door, and the scent of clove swirls around them in eddies of slightly smoke-tinged air—a hastily done drying spell, Sirius hurries to assure Remus, and perhaps most of his apartment is covered with various not-quite-dried stalks—no, no, everything’s quite alright—
“Your apartment is a mess,” Remus says.
“I’m thinking of adding something tangy. Maybe clementine.”
“You’re waiting for me to ask, aren’t you?”
“I might be.”
“If I must,” Remus says. “Why potpourri?”
Easy. “Moody. Do you like it?”
Remus sniffs. “Bit strong, isn’t it?”
“It’s just been dried.”
This could mean anything: Remus shakes his head and drapes himself over the sofa. Sirius follows.
Outside, the rain falls to a beat of three, whispering against the floors of the apartment in a way that’s almost suggestive of spring. The loose yarns of Mrs. Potter’s well-intended-but-fast-fading flying rug lazily sample the air. Sirius takes a sip from his day-old (or maybe week-old) tea, straight from the kettle, and tries very hard to not to notice autumn creeping into the light, the leaves, the eaves—they are splayed carefully, with their shoulders just touching.
They’ve both pine needles and cloves and clementine peels and star anise and half-dried coreopsis in their sleeves—brontide in their throats.
“Have you just shut yourself in here lately?”
“I kept the windows open.”
“Padfoot.”
“I did. Sometimes I even stuck my head out.” Pause. Scatter crumpled greying clementine peels across Remus’s chest. Pause to stop smiling—it’s no longer appropriate. Resume. “Bathsheba brought the lot.”
“Hasn’t Prongs been to see you?”
“He said too much. I told him not to bother. I told him to sod off.”
“Missions?”
“Haven’t been owled or patronused. Why, are you here to—?”
“No, I’m not.”
The star anises smell foul—they’re mildew-ridden and the rain only encourages their odor. Sirius starts pushing the spices from the sofa and realizes the majority of them are trapped under his and Remus’ legs.
His arm settles back at his side.
“Sirius,” Remus says.
If he closes his eyes, he can almost will a hole in the terra-cotta-tiled roof, through the plaster. He can imagine the rain rushing through, torrential, effacing.
“Look at me,” Remus says.
Sirius can’t help it; he does, turning, upsetting the neat pile of cloves in the process. October is etched in the scar from Remus’ neck to his collarbones. November is gathering under his eyes. “If you’re going to ask,” Sirius breathes, still looking, not thinking, “you can sod off, too.”
Remus shifts closer. “The pot-pourri?”
More bitterly than he means, “Some of us have to keep ourselves busy.”
“I’ve kept you waiting.”
Before he can stop himself, he’s clutching at Remus’ collar, at the place where his shirt creases and bunches together, at his shoulders, this isn’t Hogwarts, “What did you do? See his name in The Prophet? Did it make you think of me? Now you care, now you remember I’m still around now that he’s—“
“I’m sorry,” Remus says.
Sirius releases him like he’s been scalded. “He was never my brother.”
“Oh, Padfoot.”
Arms around his torso. He doesn’t want to know which one of them is shivering.
“Just go. If you’re only going to—just go.”
“You don’t mean that,” against his neck, perhaps read off his pulse because of course he doesn’t, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sirius laughs and wonders if Remus knows it is precisely because this isn’t funny. “Neither am I.”
“Listen to me,” Remus says. “You can’t stay in your apartment forever. You don’t need to mourn by abandoning your life, Sirius.”
The rain stops. It’s too late. The window is open—has been open this whole time—and the potpourri bowl is overflowing with slightly revolting brownish water. Fascinated, Sirius lifts himself up on his elbow to watch the water creep past the brim, the ruined curtains ghosting in the wind. Bathsheba has been gone a long while, with his apology to James. He pictures the man hunched over his desk. James would do that. He would cross out all the words he thinks Sirius can’t handle—
Distractions: the ticking of the clock, just out of sync with the water spilling from the potpourri bowl, the overpowering smell of cloves and star anise and citrus and coreopsis, the old cinnamon tea on the counter, his blue-grey shadow flickering across Remus’ new scar.
Think of the details. Count. Sirius finds July lingering by the corners of Remus’ lips, waiting. August in his eyes.
And forget, “You don’t have a right to say this to me.”
Remus opens his mouth.
“Oh yes,” Sirius says, determinedly leaving July right where it is, “You disappear for months, Wormtail finally finds you in working in Scotland of all places, thin as a bowtruckle he said, you disappear again, you could have asked us, any of us, we would have helped you, I would—I owled you, sent you patronuses, you never showed up at meetings—we’d hear reports from Dumbledore, top secret missions. I thought, maybe—Prongs said he sent you money you wouldn’t take—and now you’re here, telling me not to throw my life away. Well. Isn’t that just fucking brilliant?
“Are you surprised? You think you can let yourself in, drag up all the things I’m trying not to remember, thank you very much, and you think—you think I’ll let you get off on your hypocritical martyrdom? You think what you’re doing is the right thing? You’re every bit as bad. How many times have I seen you since July? Have you even written me? Do you count the pieces of printing paper? Or do you only count the ripped pieces of printing paper with graphite smudges?”
Pause. Inhale, clementine and rain.
“Where is your life? Why do you get to leave it behind whenever you want?”
“If you’re done.”
“I’m not done.” But he does lower his voice. “What are you mourning?”
Remus pushes the hair from his forehead, frowning. “My unemployment, for one.”
“Prongs sent you money.”
“Did he tell you that I took as much as I could?”
“He told me you barely took enough to cover a week of expenses, thanked him very much, and sent his owl back with the rest.”
“I can’t live off my friends, Padfoot. Surely you know that.”
Sirius scoffs. “I don’t see what the problem is. You’d do the same for us if you could.”
“Call it a poor man’s dignity.”
“What if I called it lunacy?”
“You could be right. But you could be wrong. I’ve come to realize a few things about myself since Hogwarts—and I’ve learned if I must accept undue charity in order to survive, I’ll take it where I must and make do on my own for the rest.” Remus turns away from him so that he’s facing the cushions. His eyes are shut.
“That doesn’t explain why you can’t show up once in a while.” Sirius swallows. The aftertaste of the cinnamon tea has begun to inch its way into his throat, where it rasps against the clove-tinged air. Caradoc Dearborn read somewhere that the fragrance of certain spices could ward off misfortune—a better alternative than constant vigilance, he said. Sirius feels somewhat betrayed. “You were avoiding us.”
“So were you.”
“And now we’re here.”
Remus tucks his head under Sirius’ chin. His collar is just a little damp, from walking through the rain. “It has to end sometime.”
Sirius can hear the remnants of the storm trickling off the terra-cotta-tiles. It’s unusual, he thinks, for it to thunder so late in the year—but stranger things have happened; he presses his ear against Remus’ and listens for the ocean and finds a heartbeat.
“Just today,” he promises, finding July at last, October and early November, tracing them with his mouth. “Just today, Remus.”
Remus smiles, even if he doesn’t appear to realize it. “And tomorrow?”
The hydrangeas offset Glen’s eyes just right. Jack tucks a cluster behind Glen’s ear, something in him thrilling along recklessly. And the words slip past his lips like dew from the tips of the petals. “Do you ever think about dying?”
“Sometimes,” Glen answers, and makes no move to brush the flowers away.
“Does it not frighten you?”
“No.”
“Yet you would not welcome it.” A breeze stirs the petals against Glen’s cheeks. Who is silent, his fingers tracing wistful melodies on the grass—and Jack smiles like one enraptured. “And neither would I. I’ve only you left. Only you.”
(Of the Dreaded Pudding and the Prank, among other things. Otherwise known as how Remus Lupin mastered the Patronus Charm.)
Rating: T
Words: ~6000
Characters: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, James Potter
blood laughs in our veins,
amidst this tangle of vines.
(may banners, rimbaud)
recommended listening music: fool's gold, by the middle east.
;;;;;;;
-
"You can go first.”
"How generous.”
The year is 1977. The subject is Defense Against the Dark Arts. The class is of the Patronus Charm. The students speaking are Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, and the latter has gallantly offered to step down from his would-be-astonishing demonstration of his mastery of everything, ha ha. The former is suffering from expectation.
Sirius leans against their desk, twirling his wand idly. “Just give it a go.”
Remus has exactly one memory of what it was like to be human, when his bones were his, not alien things that reach back home to the moon every time it’s full. It is a good memory. He’s wedged between his mum and his dad in the back of a cab and it’s pouring. The tires weave trails through the rain that disappear within milliseconds. It’s his first time in London and it’s just like a happenstance of the rain.
His mum is singing something soft and muggle. She pulls him close.
He doesn’t want to explain this to Sirius, so he says, “Expecto Patronum,” already knowing that nothing will happen. When it really doesn’t, he lets out a sigh.
-
But like most things, it really starts with James’s thrice-accursed hair poking into Sirius’s ear.
Sirius—he’s a bit touchy about his ears—lets out a strangled noise and swats at James. Unfortunately, this isn’t the cleverest thing he has ever done. The both of them are under the invisibility cloak and on some sort of Gryffindor initiation that they will no doubt inflict on some hapless first years when they become slightly less hapless second years. Filch is hot on their trails, and Merlin, the bloody book will not stop screaming—
“Ouch! That was my ear you—“
“Shh,” Sirius hisses, and shoves James towards the nearest open door.
Wonderful, lovely, stupid James ignores him. Between wheezes: “Of all the books in the forbidden section, we get the one that screams bloody murder.”
If it weren’t so dark, Sirius would roll his eyes. He makes do with wadding up whatever’s in his reach of James’s cloak and stuffing it in the book’s mouth. It makes a muffled sound of protest. But then again, that could’ve easily been James.
“That’s the one we’re supposed to get you sod—that’s the point. It screams. Quick, in here.” Sirius pulls the door shut behind them. The both of them are breathing heavily. Sirius can feel the book squirming in his hands. His bangs and the invisibility cloak are plastered to his forehead by sweat. Sirius shrugs the cloak to the ground and breathes in, James suddenly visible beside him.
“Longbottom,” James says, sprawling over the floor and letting out a groan. The screaming book is still attached to his Hogwarts crest. Sirius lies down beside him. “Longarsehole. He knew Filch would hear. And Merlin’s beard, get this thing off.”
“I don’t think so. It likes you, don’t be cruel.”
“You are an anus.”
“Thanks, mate, that really made me want to lend you a hand. Literally.”
“It’s eating my bloody robes! Sirius, this isn’t funny—“
And James rolls over on top of him and he’s heavy enough for all the air to squeeze out from Sirius’s lungs so Sirius sticks his elbow into James’s ribs and then both of them are rolling and there is a hole in James’s cloak and at some point, the book is knocked unconscious, and James gets him in a headlock and they’ve probably failed the initiation anyway—
“Potter is a rotter. Potter is a rotter, a rotter, rotten rotting rotter—“
“Shut it, you’re the one who said Filch might catch us—“
“Wait, James.”
Sirius pushes James off with difficulty and stands up. The cool surface is a mirror. It has dark spots here and there. There are runes around the edges. Sirius recognizes some from the covers of the books in Grimmauld Place, yet the lighting, or perhaps the unconscious book, has spilled warmth over their foreboding nature. Perhaps it’s because the mirror’s smoothness has depth, as if his hand could slip into the glass.
Or maybe it’s because Regulus is reaching back. Regulus who’s in France and who smiles and waves from his couch, a cup of hot cocoa in his hands. Who pats the cushion next to him as if they’re ten and nine again, creating more and more elaborate orders for Kreacher to get past their mother’s rules.
He starts, eyebrows knit, something with too many sharp angles caught in his throat. Regulus isn’t in France—he’s sitting in the Gryffindor common room, a scarlet and gold tie ‘round his throat. Behind him sits Remus and Peter, both of whom turn and smile at him, too. Well, him and James. And maybe they’re all in on this—Regulus must have flooed here. Secretly, oh yes, he’d want to see Sirius and then he’d realize Gryffindor wasn’t so bad after all—Gryffindor is marvelous! Sirius could—could—
Sirius’s hand brushes against the glass. Hot blooded and shivering like this, he’s not made of the same material as the room he sees.
“Do you see what I’m seeing?” James is saying.
Sirius grins. Their mother isn’t going to be happy about this, but she’s never happy about anything, really. “Yeah. Merlin. And his sodding balls. I can’t believe it—I didn’t know he had it in him.”
“Had it in him? You mean in me? You sure know how what a mate needs to hear, eh, Black?”
“In you?”
“I mean, look at me! I’m Head Boy. And I’ve got that broom I’ve been wanting—and look, I’m Quidditch Captain too. And that food looks good—blimey, we skipped dinner for this initiation, didn’t we—“
Ice-tempered glass in his veins. Sirius seizes James by the shoulders and pushes him closer to the mirror. “No, it’s—it’s my brother, he’s in the common room. Don’t you see him? He looks just like me, almost.”
James shakes his head. “Sorry, mate. I see myself getting the last turkey leg. I guess it shows different things to different people.” He knocks on the glass. “Weird.”
“I ‘spose.” Sirius shrugs like it will cast off the meaning. Still, his reflection sits down beside Reg and steals a sip from his hot cocoa and the both of them are grinning like madcaps, not quite mirror images, and he’s seeing it, surely it must be true. And this too: James can’t even try out for the quidditch team yet and Regulus hasn’t been sorted. Yet. “What if this thing shows us the future?”
“Then I’m going to have a good one.” James peers at his reflection. “I look real good.”
There is a shrill sound. The book is screaming again. Sirius looks at James, who looks back at him. “Bloody hell,” Sirius says.
They start running.
-
“You’re thinking too hard.”
The air around them is thick with silver smoke. Remus’s hands are shaking. Sirius won’t stop looking at him—Sirius is still (unnaturally so), his head cocked to the side as if listening for a far-off sound.
“I know,” Sirius continues as if he’d said something, grey eyes trying to meet his own, “I’m not one to talk. But I can tell you are, see, even if I haven’t given it a go yet.”
“Expecto Patronum,” Remus says, and points his wand right at Sirius’s nose.
Sirius sneezes.
-
Regulus is sorted into Slytherin. Everyone claps. Sirius, too, out of instinct, even if he glares at his traitorous hands for hours after dinner. Even if long after darkness paints silence along the corridors, he slips from the second year dormitory with James’s cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Past the Fat Lady and the library to the oaken door with its rusty hinges, his bare feet freezing in the chill air.
For a moment, he pauses with his hand hovering over the handle, the rest of him invisible. Then he slips into the room, drawing James’s cloak tighter around himself. Here, the floor has a heartbeat. It presses against his soles and numbs them so that he drifts to the mirror and rests his palm against the glass as if in a dream. Like in a story, Sirius considers looking away but it’s too late—and there he is again, Regulus, in his Gryffindor robes, hot cocoa in hand. Bathsheba perches on a nearby cushion; upon closer inspection, the ornate script of the letter in her beak is their parents’ signatures, with love. Regulus is saying something to the Sirius within the glass, and something in his stomach twists.
“I thought you’d be here,” Remus says, and melts into view from the shadows.
Sirius watches him, but Remus doesn’t come closer.
“James kept talking about a mirror that shows you the future. I was curious.”
“He told you what I saw?”
“Not really.” Remus leans against the wall, out of sight of the mirror. He pushes the door shut with a click. “He said you kept brooding about it. Then I saw your brother at the sorting and I followed you here.”
“You’re awful smart.”
Remus ducks his head so that it’s obscured in the shadows of the doorway. “I just put two and two together. Do you—I mean—do you mind that I did?”
“No,” Sirius answers, surprised. “’Course not.”
They stand in silence, the both of them suffering from a collective shiver that passes through the room. Then, as if choreographed, they move closer, meeting by the window where the moonlight trickles in, where they can’t see their not-futures reflected in the mirror. They sit down on top of James’s cloak, too-long legs and cold knuckles.
“Did you see your future?”
“My future?” Remus echoes.
“I guess I don’t have another word for it. So, did you?”
Remus leans against the wall. He does this funny laugh. Sirius feels like he has just been told a secret. “Yeah.”
“What did you see?” The icicles hanging from the glass-roof cast shimmery shadows along the glass-floor—a vow of silence.
Sirius feels the pause rather than hearing it. He hears the furrow between Remus’s brows.
“My mum, healthy.”
“Oh.”
One, two. Three. Four. Five.
But he loses count by fifty, so he has no idea when Remus begins to drift off for minutes at a time. It is during one of these intervals that Sirius finally whispers, “I see Reg. Only he isn’t a Slytherin—he’s a Gryffindor. And we’re sat on the couch by the fireplace, the one with the odd-looking stain on the back. And he’s drinking hot cocoa—well, he’s trying, only I keep stealing it from him and he lets me do it—and Bathsheba’s just gotten us a letter from our parents.”
Remus mumbles something against the wall. Sirius waits until his breathing evens again before continuing.
“But, the best thing is, there are presents against the wall and it looks an awful lot like Christmas. Blimey, we’ve had Christmas last year, but see—see, it doesn’t feel like it until your owl’s flying everywhere with like a hundred presents.” He catches sight of his shadow and its wildly gesticulating arms. He lowers his voice. “And—and—they got me a broom. A Shooting Star, I think. Then Regulus says something to me in the mirror and even if I can’t hear, me—the one in the mirror—can, and I feel so, so—“
He looks at Remus who sleeps just as anyone else does. Who has secrets Sirius has yet to discover. Soon, he promises himself, and wonders if Remus is trying to figure him out, too.
“You better well be asleep. Merlin—I’m so, so bloody jealous. It’s stupid—this is so stupid.” Sirius sniffs. It’s disgusting. He’s got snot down his chin and his breath keeps hitching and when he wipes at his face with his sleeve, he only makes it worse. “Shit,” he says. “Shit. You can’t switch houses, can you? That fucking idiot—that fucking—stupid fucking idiot—“
If Remus hears, he gives no sign of having done so.
-
“Maybe you can tickle the dementors away,” Sirius suggests, after the lesson. He’s flushed with whatever it is idiots are flushed with (blood?) and his hair has caught static from all the magic. Every so often, he tries to work up enough static to zap Peter, who eventually slips away to lunch after a particularly nasty zap. But of course, Sirius has just managed a whole translucent fog—another part of the injustice Remus has come to associate with him. “Eh, Moony?”
Remus, who’s only managed his fair share of wisps, considers kicking him. Instead, he slings his backpack across his shoulders and squeezes past the Gobstones Club to History of Magic where, at least, Sirius can’t follow him even if he wanted to.
-
But you see, James goes extra mad around Christmas. He gets up early and decks himself in the most outrageous shades of red and green he can scavenge from their trunks.
Peter is the one who suffers most for James’s energy. Well, excluding James himself, that is. The both of them are in a pudding eating contest that’s sickening to watch—which means the entire Gryffindor table has crowded around them, along with assorted Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and, Sirius suspects, some incognito Slytherins.
James burps.
“I reckon he’s about done,” Remus says. “He’s starting to look like the Fat Friar.”
“That’s unkind,” Sirius says. “He’s only just about as wide as Slughorn.”
James burps again. His skin is greener than anything Sirius has ever seen. Still, he goes on shoveling spoonfuls of pudding into his mouth.
“I think he’s in a trance,” Alice says. “Potter, are you alright?”
James burps in response.
Peter looks up from his pile of empty dessert cups and wipes the whipped cream from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“That,” James says thickly, forcing his shaking hand to his mouth, “is the point, Petey-boy.”
Remus rolls his eyes. “You’re both going to be sick. Alright, you can stop this now.”
James polishes off his current cup of pudding between loud belches. “I’ll never surrender,” he manages—and the crowd cheers and moves in closer and Sirius, who is torn between awe and disgust, slings an arm around James and Peter and cackles when they both turn even greener—if possible.
“You are sick,” Peter groans. He lobs a spoonful of pudding at James’s face, who’s either too tired to dodge or going all out in his teenage grossness. “Sick! Ugh, I don’t even remember what it feels like to ever want to eat pudding. You sick, sick—”
“Sick winner,” James says, because when his competitive side is provoked, he goes even madder and licks what he can reach of the pudding on his face. He looks rather menacing, even if his burps are too loud to be healthy. “I win.”
Alice shoots them all—James and Peter with their faces and sleeves plastered with chocolate pudding and Sirius and Remus sitting on the side and all the onlookers—a look of exasperated amusement. “Break it up, everyone—the show’s over. Go back to your common rooms or I’ll have to get McGonagall.”
“C’mon Alice,” Sirius says, batting his eyelashes, “for me?”
“Especially not you, Black,” Alice says. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about last year. You’d best remember I can give you detentions now, eh?”
So the crowd dissipates with scattered grumbling and a series of bench legs scraping against the ground and Sirius leans in closer to James and Peter and Remus and says, “Being Head Girl’s ruined her sense of humor.”
“She wasn’t a prefect before, was she?” James asks.
“Nah, she was at least as bad as us. But now she’s old, her glory days are past and all that.”
“Frank doesn’t think she’s old.”
“Frank’s in looooveeeeeeee,” says Peter.
“Frank is a lowly fourth year, unworthy of her affections.”
“You’re a third year, James.”
“Thanks, Remus, I really didn’t know that.”
Sirius scrutinizes the empty dessert cups on the table. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to the kitchens.”
“Let’s not,” Peter says. He’s still faintly green. It’s not a good color on him. “I’ll puke on all your robes. All of them—it’s a promise.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” James says. “Let’s go to the mirror. Pete hasn’t seen it yet, have you? It shows you the future. It’s wicked.”
“The future?” Peter says, dubious.
“Mate. The future. The future.”
Remus looks at Sirius just long enough for him to meet his gaze. Sirius looks away and proves his nonchalance by fishing a string of grapes from a platter and leading the way to the mirror, smacking his lips loudly to make Peter cringe—even if they’re doing it wrong. This sort of thing is more effective after hours, when they aren’t allowed. James, he wants to say, see, in the dark, it could at least be true.
-
A conversation he overhears the next morning, when they think he is sleeping:
“You’ve been moping since. What’s with you?”
“Almost Christmas break, Prongs. Gotta do it now, yeah?”
“Don’t.”
“Come off it, you were just telling me to lighten up.”
“That was two days ago, when I didn’t think your grand game plan was to be as obnoxious as humanly possible—or Merlin knows what you are, Pads, you sure don’t act human—to him until he says more than five syllables to you—you, you are an idiot, you are.”
“It’s Christmas.”
“It’s the fucking fifteenth, Chrissake.”
“Details, Wormy! Who fucking cares? And he’s going back tomorrow. So. It’s fucking Christmas.”
“Padfoot, just shut up.”
“Fuck, Wormmmyyy.”
“What it is, Sirius, is you being an arse.”
“I only said sorry about a million times, you know. What else am I supposed to do? And anyway, you weren’t like this two months ago—you—you—Snape’s fine, shouldn’t you be more worried about, you know, your actual fucking mates?”
“I am. That’s why we’re telling you to take that fucking foot out of your fucking mouth you fucking wanker.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you both.”
Remus hears the door slamming, followed by the creaking protest of springs sagging under the weight of people who are going to pretend they’re good at pretending nothing’s happened. He pulls the covers over his head and counts one, two, three, us liars, we thought we were being clever.
-
Peter, as it turns out, sees himself as an auror. Sirius snorts unkindly. James slaps him. Remus sneaks a grape from the trellis entwined around Sirius’s fingers.
James says, “Mate, it’s the future. It’s fixed. Don’t worry ‘bout it.”
Sirius says nothing then and, in a fit of sullenness, says nothing for the rest of the day. At night, he drops the now barren vine into James’s trunk in exchange for the invisibility cloak—which he shrugs on before anyone can tell him to just fucking sleep, he can never explain why the bloody hell he can’t well leave something alone when it’s night and there’s a point to prove, anyway. But he’s taken in by gravity—a tricky thing. It pools in all the places you try not to store your thoughts.
He says, “Remus?”
“Sorry.” Remus needn’t have said it aloud.
“Why’d you come here this time?”
“I fell asleep the last time.”
“Liar.”
He hears the breath hitching its way past Remus’s throat. “You knew?”
“I guessed.” The mirror keeps up with the times. Regulus is the Gryffindor seeker. He holds the snitch high in his fist and James tousles his hair.
“Sorry.” Remus peels himself from the wall and stands in front of the mirror, where he laughs the same odd little laugh he did the year before. “You can Obliviate me, as long as you don’t end up permanently frying my mind.”
“You’re fine.”
“Thanks.”
“Your mum isn’t sick, is she?”
The air between them has a swampy viscosity.
“You should apologize to Pete,” Remus finally says. His tone is even but Sirius can see the tension even under the two layers of cardigans so he goes on watching Remus’s expression decide on studied calmness. The color all drained from him like this, it makes Sirius want say sorry, not to Pete even if he’s sorry for that, too, even if he’s not sure for what—so he doesn’t—the formula is a secret for a secret, right? But he waits and Remus says nothing and he’s hoping from foot to foot from the cold.
Fucking hell, Remus saw him cry.
“Alright,” Sirius says. “Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t’ve fucking asked.”
And Remus, quiet and sure: “No. You shouldn’t have.”
-
Remember this: as if he doesn’t know his reflection is cursed, by third year, Sirius Black is fluent in the way his elbows press close to his body and he has a moment where he understands what it feels like to be Snape—to want to skin Sirius alive with his bare hands. As if his secrets aren’t taut things tamping down his bones. As if it he has very many secrets left to keep, and maybe one day—
Remember in fourth year, it is Peter who finally says, “Let’s not go this year.”
And it is James who responds first. “Why not? I thought it was tradition by now.”
“It’s not really the future, is it?”
“’Course it is. I made the team, didn’t I? Aren’t I good on the pitch?”
“That’s different,” Peter says.
“Why’s it any different from what you saw? You’re plenty smart enough to be an auror. Sirius, you think so too, don’t you?”
Sirius, who’s learning kindness, says, “You know I do. Don’t forget you nicked the lacewings.”
“Lacewings?” Remus’s mouth isn’t supposed to open on its own like this. (Maybe he already knows then, that one year later, they’ll all be sitting on the same bunks telling him about the Animagus transformation.) “What do you need lacewings for?”
“Alright, Black, shut it.”
“Well, if Moony wants to know—“
“He doesn’t,” James says, “do you, Moony? Anyway, Pete, it’s not like we need a mirror to tell us what we can do. If we really want something, like really want it, we gotta work for it, yeah?”
And Pete. “It’s whatever. We’ll go if you want to.”
“I don’t want to go,” Sirius says. He tips his head back off the edge of his bed and something in his neck pops into place audibly. Remus was listening for the click. “It’s a sham.”
“Is not.”
“It is.”
James looks at Peter. Sirius looks at the dead air between their bunks. Remus tries not to rest his gaze on any of them for too long—it is entirely likely they cannot withstand such close scrutiny.
“I already knew, I guess, that I couldn’t be an auror.”
“Merlin—fuck—yes, you can Pete—you don’t need a bloody mirror to tell you that.”
“You could,” Remus says. “We all think so.”
“Fuck,” James says. “Merlin. Fuck. Sometimes Sirius says stupid things. That’s why we don’t always listen to him.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Peter asks. “Didn’t you mean it?”
When Sirius says nothing, James pushes the pillows stacked at the edge of his bed to the floor. This is movement, at last. Something breaks. They all watch Sirius slip from his bunk and sink into the pillows. Then, Peter. Maybe James. Remus doesn’t remember the order, but soon they’re all looking at the quidditch posters and spitballs and gunk on the ceiling with the floor against the backs of their heads, necks arced over the scattered pillows, voices flush against skin. There is nothing to watch. Everything is unthinkable. Parchment with fragile illuminations in glass displays—not for touching, mind, says Madame Pince.
Tomorrow, they leave for James’s house. Remus has never been; he has a letter in his trunk from his parents with their thanks on which he plans to conduct a study on the growth of mold.
Someone laughs.
They all laugh.
This is it.
-
“I thought we promised not to come here again.” He walks closer. If he keeps his eyes trained on Remus’s back, he won’t be able to make out their reflections. Yet perhaps it’s already too much, knowing they’re there. “Happy Christmas.”
This time, it is Sirius slipping from the shadows. Their map sticks out from a pair of jeans he’s nicked from James’s that can occasionally be flattered into offering a racy rendition of God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs. Somewhere on its surface—the map’s, not the vaguely brackish jeans’—Remus Lupin’s footsteps trail to the door and Sirius Black near leaves a smudge he’s moving so fast to stop him—
“Let me leave,” Remus says peaceably.
“I don’t think so,” Sirius says. “Come on, Moony.”
And Remus quirks an eyebrow like he’s waiting to hear why he should come on, but Sirius can’t find his response. So he fills up the doorway with his arms and legs and cloak. He’s looking down at Remus and trying very hard not to laugh—because that would be very inappropriate, damn it, he feels himself cracking—the corner of his lips twitch; it isn’t his fault the furrow of Remus’s brows curve like a joke and the important thing is, it would fill the silence, wouldn’t it?
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it isn’t.” He stalls for time by knocking iambs against the doorframe. Well, he doesn’t really know what iambs are, but he has to call this something. “Moony, can’t you—?”
“Can’t I what, Padfoot?”
“Forget about it,” Sirius says and right away realizes no, this isn’t what he means. He can tell by the way Remus shrinks away it’s exactly the worst possible thing to say. Any moment now, any moment Remus will push past him, but really, it’s Christmas, it can’t—and that isn’t what he means either: “I mean, he’s fine, yeah?”
“Who’s fine?”
“Snivellus.”
“Fuck you,” Remus says. He smiles, almost kindly. “Let me through.”
Sirius presses his forearms against the door, his left foot tapping against the tiled floor. “No. Wait, alright?”
A sigh. “I’m waiting.”
“Okay,” Sirius says, and rakes a hand through his hair shakily, because once is enough isn’t it—if he ends up crying he’ll have to, he’ll have to—oh, he doesn’t know, “okay. Good. I mean, I said this before, but I’m sorry. I didn’t think—“
“You didn’t think a full-fledged werewolf would try to tear out the throat of a human boy just because you’ve decided he’s too gross to be in any way appetizing to even a monster.”
“Merlin, no, Remus, I mean—“
“I know what you mean,” Remus says. He leans against the wall. He seems to be mulling over something he’s trying very hard not to allow himself to feel. Sirius barely keeps himself from leaning closer. And why not? He’s already fucking forgotten how to breathe.
-
In five minutes or so, a flood of students will make their way to the Christmas Feast. There will be the ever dreaded pudding. Sirius is likely an apparition—here in this room no one ever goes to, when he should be being insufferable with James, who will no doubt tear the castle apart looking for him sooner or later—Remus is almost sure it means something.
“You don’t,” Sirius says. “You don’t know what I mean. Don’t you see? It’s just, it’s Christmas, you know.”
“I know,” Remus finds himself saying. “I heard you talking with James and Pete this morning.”
“Oh,” Sirius says, shifting uncomfortably. It’s suddenly very hard to look at him. Remus wishes he can just pretend to be asleep again. “Then is it alright? I don’t think I can stand it. So, please.”
“Please what, Sirius?”
Sirius’s knuckles are winter white against the door. “Talk to me, I ‘spose. I never used to think we talked much—we’d just sit there, and mostly I’d say something crazy and won’t realize it until you finally tell me. The funny thing is, I started saying crazy things to get you to tell me that I’m crazy. Isn’t that odd? Well, anyway, the thing is, James would just go along with whatever I’ve just spouted and Peter would throw a pillow at me.”
"You want me to tell you that you’re crazy.”
“Oh yeah,” Sirius says. Remus realizes with a start that he’s—oh, bollocks, if he even allows himself to think the adjective he’ll have to sacrifice whatever remains of his dignity to the Giant Squid. “If that’s what you want to say. But the point is, you’d be saying something, right?”
Two weeks past the full moon, he’s feeling cruel enough to just plop down to the floor. So he does, pulling his cardigan tighter around him, looking straight ahead.
"Okay,” Sirius tells him. His voice is all sorts of tiny—claustrophobic, even. “I’ll wait.”
Remus doesn’t want to know for how long.
-
At eight, the feast is officially over.
At eight ten, Peter will look for the map in James’s trunk and find a handful of squeaking ice mice because the map is in Sirius’s pocket and Sirius was feeling generous at three thirty, when he tiptoed to Hogsmeade under the invisibility cloak.
On the seventh chime of nine, Remus takes out his Defense homework and starts on his essay, resting the tip of his quill against his lower lip, smudging moonlight along the raised veins of his hands. Something about the way he’s sitting suddenly makes sense.
Sirius runs his thumb along the jamb. “Do you see the moon?”
Probably against his better judgment, Remus says, “No. My back’s to the window.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Alright, Sirius.”
“No, really—“ Sirius peels himself from the doorway and sinks down next to Remus and the action is so familiar he feels better immediately, which is just a little ironic, “—in the Mirror. Does it have anything to do with the moon?”
“What, so you can tell Snape?”
He’s never paid attention to silence before; that it can trickle through his skin to his bones gives it undue solemnity—lining the bones and weighing them down. He can feel Remus watching. Sirius wonders if maybe he’s burned all out anger because when he tries to kindle something, anything, he fails.
(But remember, fires breathe; and he’s just about run out of that, too.)
“I’m sorry,” Remus says. He sounds like he means it, and that makes it all the worse. “You can sit down, if you want. I won’t run away.”
This, Sirius thinks, is his only victory. It’s entirely irrelevant, but he stands up a little straighter. “You don’t have to be sorry. Write your essay. Sometimes I think—“ Remus is giving him a very strange look. There’s a hiss from the back of the room, and the floating lanterns all come on, and the back-glow is light enough to make him blink “—sometimes I still think I’m about to start throwing around mudblood and blood traitor because that’s who I am, the arse from first year who hadn’t any idea what anything was, and lately I feel I’ll never get past that.”
“Of course you have.”
Like it’s certain.
For all he knows, maybe, maybe because Remus’s quill is bleeding ink through his sleeve—it is. He feels his mouth twist. “But I should be all fine now, shouldn’t I? All that rot Mummy dear fed me—Reg, that little swot—I even miss Father and I hardly even know him. That’s wrong, isn’t it? That I finally have something good happen to me—finally I’ve got this chance put it all behind me, and I see them in the hallways and everything comes undone again.”
In a perfect world—in the mirror world—his brothers are James and Regulus and Peter and all of them wear horrid overalls as they degnome Mrs. Potter’s garden. There’s this bush in the back with lovely white flowers that sing of the strangest things—like the nature of Remus Lupins and their near illegible letters from all over the world.
(One thing at a time, Sirius.)
“Are you—?”
“I’m fine. Look, I didn’t come here to make you feel sorry for me. I’m the one who’s sorry anyway. And you’re wrong—I do understand, you see? You could have mauled Snape—less than he deserves, honestly, greasy git—“
Sirius swears that’s almost a smile, though he can’t make out why it’s there for the life of him. “I could have killed him.”
“You couldn’t’ve,” Sirius says. It’s very important that Remus gets this. “James was there.”
“He won’t always be.”
“Of course—“
-
Remus plucks the pen from his shirt-cuff. His fingers come away stained, but he rakes them through his hair anyway. “Let’s talk about something else,” he says. “Come on. Teach me how to do a bloody Patronus Charm.”
And Sirius does laugh. Then, he pauses as if he can’t quite make the connection between the harsh sound and his throat. “Isn’t it because the memory you’re using isn’t strong enough?”
Behind Sirius, his reflection is still, very still. Involuntarily, he thinks of the Black Lake right before a stray leaf brushes by its surface. “That’s why I came here.”
“You didn’t tell me you figured it out, that it shows us what we want.”
All remnants of mirth have slipped from Sirius’s face. Remus can’t decide if it makes him look older or younger. But he is tired of looking up at Sirius, so he looks at the floor instead, and addresses the crack between tiles fifty four and fifty five, “Neither did you.”
“So what do you want, Moony?”
“Too much,” Remus offers.
“Brilliant,” Sirius says, and sits down beside him. The cold floor between them only serves to exaggerate the proximity of warmth; Remus doesn’t have to look to know that Sirius’s head is cocked to the side, like it always is when he’s just about to figure something out. “What if you thought about an actual memory, then?”
Remus tries to resist the urge to inch away. He’s almost certain the action would be a hint of some sort. “I tried that, too.”
“Then try another memory.”
“It was my happiest memory.”
“If you really think so, then you don’t know yourself very well, do you?” Remus looks at him, sharply. Sirius is lying on his back, angling a lazy smile to the ceiling. From the corner of his eyes, Remus catches sight of his reflection standing in the moonlight. He doesn’t think he could bear it if this—lunacy, lunacy—seeps into his patronus, too. “When you get the right memory, you’d know. Anyway, it’s not only about being happy. It’s supposed to make you feel like that’s not the end of it—there’s more to come. Get it?”
“Thanks,” Remus says, meaning it.
Something hefty has settled at the bottom of his stomach. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling. He pulls his wand from his pocket and skims his thumb over the notch by the tip, for luck. His reflection waves at his James, at Peter, at Padfoot who somehow manages to jump from the middle of the stone steps to the grass below. The full moon beaming overhead. Remus can feel his laughter echo in his bones. Third year in Defense they all lined up in front of a cupboard and Remus was smart enough to know the source of his fear. Here, he finds the same constants.
Remus has ten memories of what it’s like to not dread the full moon. He doesn’t want to explain this to Sirius, but then again, maybe he already knows—Sirius’s head’s cocked to the side, still, the same lopsided smile.
Maybe someday it will change, he thinks, and bears it, and says, “Expecto patronum.”
The back of his neck is warm from words he can no longer hear but he knows, with his pulse between their chests—and later Reim will stand up and wipe away Sharon’s tears—see, he thinks, you are just fine.
There is something encapsulated in his lungs and, once past his lips, it plays back distorted, perhaps a side-effect of the abyss, perhaps the truth. But he does know:
His fingers come away wet.
He’s never had trouble reading sadness.
He has two sugar cubes hiding in his pockets.
And somehow he manages to press them into Reim’s hands.
He tells you about the Sagrada Familia and looks at the ceiling when he tries to pronounce Antoni Gaudi and you try to feel guilty about your inattention but really, you’re paying him too much attention and you can think of about fifty better uses for his everything than shivering in the premature cold, three paces ahead of you.
You don’t like beginnings, see. You don’t like endings much either, and you drum your fingers and feet and hands to the middle and he says, alright, Sirius, alright, I get it already.
Rating: T
Words: ~700
Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin
A/N: I don't know what I wrote, but you should listen to "A Philosophical Question" by Aesthesys as you read it.
x.
He says: Sirius?
You try to remember what it is you wanted to tell him about.
i.
At some point, you decide he’s serialized like all his favorite books. He takes you to libraries with ceilings so high you feel your stomach clench; and you catalog his phalanges as a performance piece—his mouth dripping epics in dead tongues—the verbs nonsensical—the exposition long forgotten—but always, the way he presses against you is nonfiction.
ix.
You like it when he calls you mad.
iii.
You can’t help it.
iv.
He tells you about the Sagrada Familia and looks at the ceiling when he tries to pronounce Antoni Gaudi and you try to feel guilty about your inattention but really, you’re paying him too much attention and you can think of about fifty better uses for his everything than shivering in the premature cold, three paces ahead of you.
You don’t like beginnings, see. You don’t like endings much either, and you drum your fingers and feet and hands to the middle and he says, alright, Sirius, alright, I get it already.
vi.
The point of it is, he’s the only one who knows how to shelf things properly. And it’s like five in the morning and you’re going with your shitty metaphor—the one where Remus is serialized nonfiction and when he puts himself all back in place, you won’t ever be able to find him again. And, and if you fill up all the margins with bawdy jokes and cartoonized genitalia he can’t possibly go through with this plan of slipping away one missing sock at a time.
You feel that this is no less than he deserves. He has claimed all the blankets and shelves and has the world’s largest collection of the right things to say and has the audacity to be surprised you try to tether him with inanity, with take-out boxes and surprise trips to the sea.
You near stick your hands down his trousers in the mornings when you’re both awake and brave enough to cave to fear and sleepy enough to pretend to have forgotten how to doubt.
You want to take him apart.
You want to hate him.
You want to tell him you bet he’d be great at dying, given his self-imposed obscurity. You almost ask him to teach you how to do it.
You want to be on CONSTANT VIGILANCE around him.
Well, you are, but you doubt you can say this to Moody without a snort or two or three.
ii.
You read him in the wrong order.
v.
You wonder what he’d do if you cut all the elbow patches from his cardigans, if you dog-eared all his books, if you carpeted his floor with dirty socks, if you slap your fingerprints and handprints and well, all of you in bright red paint on his wall, if you tell him you’ve found your constellation in his freckles and, Remus, you’d really like it if he took your cock in his mouth, the way his tongue slips over half-empty bottles of brandy, it’s criminal.
But at night you drink weak tea in mugs big as quaffles and snuff out fags in the dregs. You hang them on the knobs of his cabinets for him to pick up and it’s a puzzle, where has he been today, can he still talk, can he still walk, can he still hold things without breaking them?
You use his marmalade knife the day he has a cold and end up snotting on James for the rest of the week.
vii.
After raids, you’ve got this game you play at the pub. Scotch all around, jazz in the background, smoke thick with words creeping ‘round the corners. The objective is to pluck them from the air. Try your hand at juxtaposition. Come on, you, any word will do—just not yours.
You say: Two shots, please.
He says: My cat ate the grindylow.
You say: Merlin’s anus.
You both laugh.
You are twenty and you never get over the feeling you’re going to drop something around him.
viii.
Nine down is “perioeci.”
xi.
So watch him, Moody says.
Your laughter is an avian thing that claws at your lungs.
On Halloween, you come downstairs wearing Fred’s sweater. It still fits. This is expected. The sweater is exactly like your own, sans the “F” emblazoned on its front. There are lint balls along the arms. This, too, is expected.
Your mum pales when she catches sight of you. Her wand clatters to the floor and the suds in the sink fizz out. The clamor draws Ginny out of her room, lips framed around scathing words that never make it past her freckled throat.
“George?” your mum asks, breathless, hesitant.
You grin. “It’s Fred. Honestly woman, you call yourself our mother.”
Dimly, Regulus hears himself ask, “Have I been brave, Kreacher?”
A take on the last day and a half of the brief life of Regulus Black—who died a Death Eater, was discovered to be a hero, but should have been remembered as a boy.
Rating: T
Words: 4,005
Characters: Regulus Black, Kreacher, Walburga Black, Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius Black, Mulciber, mentions of Orion Black
A/N: Both the title of this one-shot and the lines of poetry from the beginning come from the poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne.
Recommended listening music: Leave it Alone, by Broken Bells.
Major, major thanks to Alyssa for putting up with my gross sobbing, and Pam for wading through the unedited version.
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move.
-
October, 1979
Sirius shows up for the funeral in the sharp twist of Walburga’s lips, in the bruises under Regulus’s eyes.
No one else seems to notice. He isn’t expected. After all, he was disinherited and this is no place for him. Regulus is inclined to agree, but Sirius—he’s been gone for two years—he hasn’t been gone for so long. Surely, surely—
A movement from his right notifies him that his mother’s reaching for her wand. The speeches are over; it is time to pay tribute to the dead. As Regulus raises his wand with the rest, he tries and fails to seek out Orion from among the constellations. The bright wand-light all around him drowns out even the depth of the night and with it, the stars. He swallows the lump in his throat and sends his light travelling after the rest. And for a moment, they all watch the silvery orbs of light drift into the sky. Then it’s over and all sound comes rushing back as they crowd into line to lay their white carnations by his father’s grave.
They are last in line. It might be downright symbolic.
(Neither of them look for very long at the man in the coffin. Soon, they won’t have time to regret this; as they lay down their carnations, a stone lid creeps up around the man—the man’s body, Regulus thinks angrily, now he can’t see the lights, what’s the point of this if he can’t see the lights and they can’t guide him to wherever he’s supposed to go?)
Regulus offers his arm to his mother and she takes it and their eyes meet.
His mother is not a beautiful woman. She is striking for all the wrong reasons—lips misshapen in folds left behind by sharp words, nose thin and long and beaklike. She has his grey eyes and jet black hair and looks every bit as worn as Regulus feels and her features have no grace with which to carry it; the harrowed expression lingers at the forefront of her face and ages her by centuries. The folds of her face intensify as she looks at him. He wonders who she sees.
One by one, the guests disapparate. They are sepulchral in their black cloaks and black robes and the loud pops of apparation ring discordant in the empty woods. And then they really are empty—all the guests have gone.
Finally, she asks, “Do you know what this means?”
“I’m the head of our family now,” Regulus replies. “I’m the oldest living male of our surname.”
She squeezes his arm. Gently or not, he doesn’t know. He hasn’t ever been able to tell.
A breeze passes through the trees. The susurration of the leaves nearly drowns out her next words.
“You look exhausted.”
Neither of them have cried yet—nor will they, in the official version of their lives.
“So do you, Mother. We should head back.”
His mother’s lips twist. The hollows of her cheeks deepen. She looks at him and tries to tell him something through her gaze and he doesn’t quite catch it.
“It’s cold,” he says.
So they go.
-
When he was little, Regulus thought his father was larger than life. Part of it might have been all the things he knew, or the way his presence filled a room.
Regulus wonders if his father ever felt small, or if this thin papery feeling came from his mother. He doubts it. Grimmauld Place hadn’t enough space for the two of them. Restricted space suits Regulus well, he’s slim and quick eyed and only ever sometimes quick to speak, and maybe it’s because whatever dimension his parents passed on was all spent on Sirius.
(Really, lots of things were given to Sirius—birthright and bravery and a fierce and precise sort of cruelty. The last time they spoke Sirius was too angry to get out more than a few coherent words in a row, but he managed to choke out an “I hate you.”)
When he was little—Regulus stops the thought and analyzes its facets—maybe Regulus is still little.
-
Grimmauld Place 12 had three house elves, and there used to be one for the mistress and one for the master, one for Sirius and Regulus. Now there is only Kreacher. (Two got too old and so his mother added them to the collection by the door. She left no blood behind. She didn’t leave a body, either. When Bella gets bored during her visits, she makes Kreacher dust them.)
Kreacher isn’t back yet. Regulus calls for him to brew some tea and hears his voice stir up the dust from in-between the floorboards. He wonders where it all comes from. His mother hardly leaves her room anymore. Neither does Regulus, when he’s not out doing the Dark Lord’s bidding. And there is the rest of his life laid out for him. He supposes the Dark Lord is invincible and in time, he’ll win this war and the next and the next. Regulus imagines living the rest of his life watching his voice stir dust from the cracks in the floor.
“You’re behaving strangely,” his mother tells him. She’s watching him with her grey eyes and her thin lips tuck into hollows so deep their corners disappear entirely.
“I’ll make the tea,” Regulus says. “Would you like chrysanthemum or Darjeeling?”
His mother goes on scrutinizing him. “Neither. Leave it to Kreacher when he returns.”
“Mother, are you angry?”
The words don’t make sense together until he hears the silence that follows. Regulus is the warlock with the hairy heart, except his heart is still safely enclosed within his ribcage. It’s a good thing he won’t be alive to see the damage it sustained to so as to make it beat so heavily.
There’s a hand at the dip between his shoulder-blades. It’s no steadier than his own.
“I’m not angry,” his mother says. “It was for the Dark Lord. You swore your loyalty to him.”
“But Father—“ Regulus takes a deep breath before continuing, softer now. “Father died while I was gone. I volunteered Kreacher for it without asking either of you.”
“You said you understood. You’re the head of this family now, Regulus.”
That’s the problem, Regulus thinks. The problem is he always thinks he understands but then he doesn’t, not really. Not when it comes to anything important. Because he hasn’t thought about doing anything with his time during the day, before the mark on his arm writhes and burns. Because he still wishes he could be as strong as Bellatrix. Because he when the Dark Lord asked for a house elf, Regulus volunteered Kreacher. He’s not sure if this new vicelike fear he’s nurturing makes up for any of it.
“Do you understand?” his mother asks him.
“I do,” he says. “I just thought—“
He doesn’t know what he thought. Neither does she.
“What did you think?”
“Are you angry?” he asks again.
Walburga looks like Sirius when she smirks. “I’m not angry. I’m grieving. But you need to understand, Regulus. The Black family name is yours to carry on. You can bring our family to new heights, yet you can tarnish it, too.”
The dust swirls around their feet. Kreacher’s usually around to clean it up. Kreacher has been gone two days. If his father hadn’t died, the dust would still be undisturbed. If Kreacher doesn’t come back (but of course he will, Regulus ordered him to come back) perhaps it will even fill up this empty house.
“I understand, Mother,” Regulus says.
-
When he was little, he researched. His namesake (little king, and ironically enough, heart of the lion), the true source of the dust that collects between the floorboards (our cells, us, us, us).
Because he may still be little, he still researches. Frightful witches and wizards (Morgan le Fray, Elizabeth Bathory, Grindelwald, this new Dark Lord they serve) and their raisons d’être (greater good, why should we hide from muggles, eternal life, not in that order).
He has a bookshelf in his room. It is disorganized. Old letters stick out at odd angles between the dog-eared pages of the books. There’s an odd quill sticking out here and there. An uneaten chocolate frog from two Christmases ago. It is the only disorganized thing in Regulus’s room, and he has read through all its messy books.
“Kreacher, will you bring me a book from the library?” It’s spirit hour, he can’t sleep, his mother is sleeping.
There is silence. Kreacher isn’t back. Regulus slips out his room and slides down the bannister because the stairs creak and the Persian rug at the end of the staircase is thick enough for him to land on it soundlessly. This is another product of research; even if it isn’t his own, it might as well be, now. He sits down at the foot of the stairs and considers spending the night there. The walls of Grimmauld Place are enchanted to keep sound from leaking in and spilling out, but he can see the sparse trail of streetlights leading into the night.
I have exited the official version of my life, Regulus knows. His eyes remain dry anyway as he spends spirit hour eagle-sprawled over the rug.
-
Traveling during spirit hour ensures a safe return, he’s read, but it’s just a silly old myth. When he stands up, his neck pops. Then he crackles his knuckles and his pops his elbows and he can’t pop anything else so he leaves his joints as is: feeling slightly out of place, perhaps in another’s body. He ghosts to the library anyway and sits in the chair closest to the fire.
Regulus has never researched himself. There are no books on his veins or his slightly out of place bones. Usually you start with books, when you want to research something. Books with works cited inked in the back that lead you to more books. He looks at the green veins in his hands and traces them up to the crook of his elbow where it disappears until the bare sketch in the shadows under his left eye. There are no words written in his blood—blood is for runes, for old dark magic. His veins offer him no answers.
(What ties eternal life, the greater good, and muggles together? Why does he have to know? Better not, it’s too late, Death Eaters can’t just resign on whim—)
He pulls out books on Grindelwald, muggle and wizard conflicts—he catches sight of something red in the mantelpiece mirror and flinches, but it’s only the curtains—on magic so dark it encroaches on your bones. Perhaps flame searing through the wick and fashioning new features, soot-stained, the wrong colors.
Kreacher stumbles into the library at nearly six to find Regulus leafing through Secrets of the Darkest Arts, his face thin and wan in the firelight.
-
There are any number of things he can’t voice. There are any number of things are dangerous, even if they’re only thought. Tongues slip. But there was screaming, and pale fleshy limbs, and all of it was nauseating. A shade of green so sickly he shivers when sunlight streams through leaves.
(“Listen, cousin,” said Bella.
“I don’t want to,” Regulus said. Corpses strewn before them. The Dark Mark was curling itself into shape in the sky.
“You will listen. They deserved it. They’re filthy. They’re weak. It’s the natural order of things. Sooner or later, the muggles will face a problem they can’t solve because they’re so ignorant, you see? We’re helping them in the long run.”
“You tortured—“
Bellatrix threw back her head and laughed a long, breathless laugh. The veins in her neck were purple, nearly black. “I’m collecting my due. They’ve been very wicked. They can’t even thank me for helping them. I don’t think they even wanted to open the door for me.”
“Of course they didn’t—“
“It’s just for fun, Reg. Lighten up. I’m making a report to the Dark Lord tonight. Shall I tell him of your…hesitation?”)
Horcrux, Regulus allows himself to think.
-
Kreacher is limping. His skin is ashen and his eyes can’t seem to focus. He sways where he stands. When he speaks, his voice is almost indistinguishable from the crackling of the fire.
“Master? May Kreacher sit?”
Regulus says, “Yes, of course. I’ll get you some water.”
-
They apparate into the cave. Regulus is already dead. Which is hard to grasp when his heart’s hammering away in his chest and his breath is white in the morning air. Kreacher’s hand is cold as ice and twice as brittle. There is a cut on Kreacher’s hand, made by the Dark Lord. Regulus lets go of it to run his hands along the stone wall of the cave. The air smells of salt. He hasn’t been to the ocean for a long time. The air also smells of skulking shadows. He can hardly see a thing, but he can hear the lake lapping against the stones.
“Is it here?” Regulus asks. There’s a notch, almost, in the magic of the place. “Lumos.” The wandlight doesn’t do much good, but it’s familiar.
“Master please—“
“It is,” Regulus continues. He reaches up and feels the chain—damp and heavy in his hand. He pulls. There’s a gurgle from the lake. Then, a boat emerges. Regulus half-expects the Inferi to start crawling out in search of the source of that noise; he can see the ripples traveling from shore, endlessly. He breathes in, brine and undead. He is dead, too, he reminds himself, it doesn’t matter if he steps into the boat—
“Master musn’t,” Kreacher croaks. His breathing is sharp and it echoes off the cavern walls for what seems like miles. “Master can still turn back. What will the Mistress say if Master doesn’t return? Her heart will break. Master musn’t do this.”
Regulus steps into the boat. It rocks from side to side. He clutches at the prow to steady himself. His fingers brush over the engraving of a skull. The boat is shaped like a leaf, veins and all. There are things in the lake, pale shapes, the Inferi. He is still alive. He can feel the grain of the prow against his palms. No, he is already dead. It’s been decided from the moment he first thought of betraying the Dark Lord—tongues slip and Occlumency can only do so much. Maybe if his mental barriers hold up, he has a year, five years, a decade, before the Dark Lord returns to the cave with another house elf (not Kreacher, no) and finds Regulus’s magic embedded in the walls.
Horcruxes, Regulus reminds himself. The locket around his neck is his mother’s. It feels heavier than it should. Soul splitting. Murder. Kreacher’s brittle hands. He must remember why he’s here: if witches and wizards are obligated to rule over muggles because they know better, he must do what he can because he knows of the locket. The horcrux. Bellatrix asking, isn’t this fun? Green light from their wands.
He murmurs, “Mother’s just a small part of this, Kreacher. You’re a good elf. You’re a good friend. You tried to keep me from the island, didn’t you? You could have apparated me there.”
“Kreacher tried,” the elf chokes out. Tears are running down his sunken cheeks. “Master, please, Mistress is waking up now. What is Kreacher telling Mistress when he goes back?”
“She’ll think I’m on another raid,” Regulus says feverishly. “She won’t know. Kreacher, I have to do this. I’m already here. This is an order—get on the boat. Quickly.”
“Master—Master always thinks of the loopholes,” Kreacher whispers. And Kreacher does get on the boat. He does it quickly, too quickly. The boat is tipping again, but somehow Regulus knows it won’t tip over. He’s not so sure if that will hold true for the return trip. It’s a good thing, then, perhaps, that he won’t ever have to know.
“Kreacher is begging Master to go back.”
Regulus imagines white fingers caressing the hull of the boat. There are no paddles. It glides along the water’s surface with barely a ripple. If he listens hard enough, he can hear the mist trailing behind them. “I want to go back, but I can’t.”
“Master can. Kreacher can apparate him. Mistress will be wondering where Master is. Master, Master’s father—“
“Stop trying to convince me to go back. Please.”
“Kreacher promised Mistress to keep Master safe.”
Regulus thinks he understands at last. “My orders take precedence, though, don’t they?”
Kreacher’s silence is answer enough.
The boat drifts to the island, mist curling around it as it goes.
-
Mulciber likes to tell him about all the different things people do before they die. Mulciber likes to tell everyone. He’s a good story-teller. He has a velvety voice and frames the most grotesque of recounts with measured pauses and inflections that can draw anyone in. Sometimes he acts it out with exaggerated gestures and sound effects, things that’d make anything funny. Regulus stands to the back of the crowd around him and tries not to listen. But Mulciber has him hook line and sinker, and he knows it.
“So he stares at me all, all quizzical like, and goes, ‘But you handsome, charming, brilliant, bloody fantastic with the ladies—(there’s a good humored get on with it, Mulciber)—chap, I can’t die. I—(Mulciber lies across the wooden table and makes his eyes go wide. They all laugh because they’re in a pub and anyone can hear them, and somehow that makes it alright)—have it down here, see?”
Regulus pretends he’s sipping his firewhiskey as Mulciber mimes taking something out of his pocket.
“I’ve got a dentertist appointment today, and, and a golpher game. It, it doesn’t say it anywhere on here that I’m going to die. I’ll, I’ll let you flip through—“
“That’s a load of dung, Mulciber,” Regulus says, later.
Mulciber laughs and meets his eyes. “How would you know? You weren’t there, you big ole Mumsie’s boy. Always sitting at home, eh? There’s our little Reggie.”
His words are followed by a smattering of snorts and gripes. Regulus looks away.
-
Kreacher stares at him with eyes pale as smoke. Regulus considers telling him to look away and decides against it.
They’ve arrived at the island. It’s beautiful in the way shattered glass on the sidewalk makes you stop and stare, in the way blood curls around lifeless bony wrists. It is a mass of crystals too uneven to be anything but natural, and too isolated to be anything but unnatural. They remind him of bones. The boat nestles between two jutting crystals, a ribcage. Regulus uses one to pull himself onto the island.
He looks back. “It has to be drunk, doesn’t it?”
“Kreacher could drink it,” Kreacher says quietly.
“You won’t.”
He climbs to the center of the island. The basin has an undertone of lavender. The cup is a curved shell. Already knowing it will do nothing, he reaches for the potion at the bottom and his hand presses against a barrier. Regulus grits his teeth. Kreacher watches him go through all the counterjinxes he knows, sweat beading on his forehead. After he runs out, he moves onto things like reducto and impotent Fiendfyre that burns itself out within seconds, golden chimeras feasting on each other. The crystal flashes red and grey and blue and nothing changes anyway, when he tries to empty out the contents of the basin with his cupped hands—the barrier is still there—he laughs, perhaps recklessly. Being dead, it appears, is a long way away from wishing to be in pain.
Regulus exhales. “You won’t tell anyone,” he orders Kreacher. “Not Mother. Not anyone.”
“Kreacher—Kreacher won’t, if Master orders him,” Kreacher promises. “Master—“
“No, listen to me,” Regulus says. There is more sharpness in him than he suspected. His slightly out of place everything has grated against his ligaments and sharpened them into cruel angles. They crowd into the cavities in his lungs and creep into his throat. “You won’t tell anyone. If anyone asks, I just walked out the door and ordered you not to follow. Do you understand? You can answer this question.”
“Kreacher understands,” Kreacher tells him.
Kreacher’s hands are caught on the folds of his robes. He shakes them off as he paces around the basin. “Good. And when I drink this potion, I will hallucinate, won’t I? I’ll relive all the things I never wanted to remember. But you will force me to finish it all—this is an order. I don’t care if you have to shove my head into the basin and drown me in the potion—as long as I finish it.” Kreacher watches him as one would a ghost. Maybe he’s beginning to understand, too. Regulus’s hands are shaking again. He buries them in his sleeves, where Kreacher can’t see. “After that, after I’ve finished the potion, take the locket from the basin and replace it with the one around my neck. You need to hide the locket, the one from the basin, from Mother. You need to find some way to destroy it—any way at all—you must destroy it.”
“Mistress’s heart,” Kreacher says. His voice snags on something lodged in his throat. Regulus does not stop to examine what it could be. “This could kill her.”
“I’m not done,” Regulus chocks out, “I’m sorry, Kreacher. I can’t stop—I’m sorry. You must not help me. If I faint, slap me awake. Anything. You must make sure I finish the potion. And then you must switch the lockets. After that, you’ll apparate back to Grimmauld Place, without me, no matter what happens to me. After I drink the potion, you aren’t to help me in any way. Mother—she should be up by then, she likes tea in the mornings—tell her I walked out of the house without a word. Tell her you think I might be on a raid. She’ll like that. She’ll accept that.”
“Is,” Kreacher starts, his voice thick. The thing lodged in his throat, it could be his words. “Is that all, Master?”
Regulus has more to say. He has so much more to say. Stop stalling, he tries to tell himself, but his mouth refuses to listen. It works wordlessly until he wrenches himself away from Kreacher, towards the basin.
“Yes. It is.” Regulus peers at the potion, at its myriad of colors. And he clasps his locket—his mother’s locket—in one clammy palm.
His name means heart of the lion.
He dips the seashell into the basin and brings it to his lips.
-
Mulciber has never told him about anyone drowning. It is a funny thing, really, the way he breathes water like it could be air, like if he closes his eyes just so, he could be lying on his back in a field of grass. There are winter-white hands on his arms. They are cool to the touch. He wonders how he could have ever been afraid of the shapes in the water.
Regulus wants to see Mulciber act this out. He wants to see if he can somehow pull off having all these hands gently carrying him into the lake. Hands like the tide.
Bellatrix will laugh, her head tossed back.
Sirius will learn of his death from the paper. Sirius has always read the paper, even if makes him stir-crazy. He even does the crossword.
Somewhere in London, Walburga sits up in her dressing gown and calls for a cup of tea, her voice stirring up dust from between the floorboards.
Dimly, Regulus hears himself ask, “Have I been brave, Kreacher?”
The answer comes from far away. From all around him. From crystals in hues he can’t describe, beautiful as bones at the muddy bottom of a lake. Bones growing like pond lilies.
She wakes up in Alice’s body. She wakes up and waits for someone to come and tries not to pray it will be him. She hears praying can jinx luck.
She wakes up with a letter in hand. Sometimes Alice finds and holds bits and pieces of the puzzle of this tower in her arms as she sleeps.
(The letter is fifteen words long. It reads: Dear Brother, I leave the world to you. Dear Jack, I leave you my song.)
Alyss is good at saving her luck; she hears laughter from the stairs. It must be Jack. Glen has forgotten how to laugh. Levi is a fading memory. She clutches the letter to her chest as he knocks, Alice’s rabbit heart dancing wildly in her chest.
“Come in,” she says, casting the letter into the fireplace where it curls in on itself like a leaf.
