The Lestrange siblings had always been polar opposites in how they felt the world. At least, from the outside, it would appear simple: Rod was cold, unflinching, and he expressed even less than he felt; Rab was always burning, and every little thing he felt sparked and caught fire on its way to the surface, so that when he said things they came out ablaze. Rod deliberated; Rab yelled. It was their way of doing things, but underneath it all, there were two operating systems that were nearly identical, but the finishes were different. After all, Rod had all but raised Rab, and so his little brother had picked up so much more of him than he ever did their parents. Now, though, they’d grown so far apart that fundamentally, they were different people, and Rabastan knew so little about the one person he cared most about. If it hadn’t been evident before, it was now.
It hadn’t always been like this. When they were little, and all they had was each other - even the Rosiers couldn’t be there when the Lestrange manor fell quiet save for the chatter of two young boys doing everything in their power to fill up the silence in an effort to warm the chill of the house - they’d known each other so well. Rod knew Rab’s every mood as well as he knew his own, he knew that he pulled at his robes when he was anxious and that, if he didn’t intervene, he wouldn’t eat a bite the week leading up to a full moon. Rab knew Rod better than his older brother would ever know he knew him, he knew that he rarely wanted to talk about things but would, if pressed, and that like most of the Lestrange family he bottled things up until the cap flew off. I love yous were frequent, whether they were said out loud or in the particular way way Rab tried to make Rod after their father had been more harsh than usual.
Rab had never felt so helpless in his life - he’d seen Rod upset, he’d seen him angry, but he’d never heard or seen him like this. He kept everything so locked and tight, so quiet, and now… Rodolphus Lestrange was on his knees. It was jarring, but what was more jarring was the fact that this was his fault. All his incompetencies, all his softness and his inability to keep things under wraps. With every word, a little part of Rab’s chest sunk in. This is your fault. This is all your fault, and if you’d just tried a bit harder, if you’d just held together, none of this would be happening. There was an impulse, and immediate, crying impulse, to kneel down and hold Rod until he was alright again, but for maybe the first time in his life, Rab did nothing. He stood, and watched, and tried not to cry, and pulled on the edge of his robe.
Rab had tried harder than he knew how to be everything Rod needed. He’d failed him, though, and he lived with this weighing him down every single day: he failed when he was turned into a monster; he failed when he was sorted into Hufflepuff because he wasn’t strong enough, or bright enough, or even brave enough to end up anywhere else; he failed when he told his father to go fuck himself and when he told his mother he hated her; he failed when he let years pass without talking to Rod again; he was failing now. He was failing now. James Potter was dead, and yet he was mourning someone completely different; a good man was dead, and Rab was grieving one of the most evil people he knew.
“Rod,” he said, and Merlin, what could he ever say to make things okay again? What could he say to give him his brother back, to let them be friends again and be against the world together? No matter who else Rab leaned on, no matter how close others were in his heart, he had felt so entirely incomplete without Rod, and having to work with him made things infinitely worse. “Rod, I…” he couldn’t do this. He tried, he tried with every ounce of effort left in him not to cry, not to break down, but he didn’t know how - this had caught on fire just like everything else he did, and it was threatening to burn him alive. Desperately, he wiped the tears from his eyes, because this was exactly what was wrong with him. If he just had control, - “Rod, what… no.”
Once he started, just like always, he couldn’t stop. “No,” his throat ached. He wanted so badly to go home, to do just as he’d done when their mother died and to not speak a word to anyone for weeks. “I heard - do you think I couldn’t hear that? No, I can’t just… why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Rab’s voice was thick with tears, and with each second that passed he became more and more upset, some noxious cocktail of hurt and guilt replacing his blood. “What the fuck does that mean, huh? What are you supposed to do? Am I that much of a burden to you, Rod? You don’t know the half of - of what it’s been like, okay? You know what, I don’t even fucking care, okay, why don’t you stay in here and tell the ghost of our mother how horribly disappointed you are in me, and you can scream till you lose your bloody voice - I’m going to that service. Alone.” As usual, he’d let things twist and burn until they were disfigured, and even the moment after he said it, he knew he hadn’t meant to say it, not like that. Eyes and cheeks red and legs shaky, he turned on his heels, leaving the mausoleum behind. He didn’t need Rod, and yet, he needed him. He needed him so desperately that each step hurt more and more, and he wanted to turn around more and more with each passing second, but - well, there were other things he had to do. James Potter, a good man, was dead.
This was a mistake. This had all been a terrible mistake, just as Rodolphus had known it would be. But there was also that small part of him, the one he kept so carefully concealed from the rest of the world, that hoped the opportunity he had been given would present itself. After all that had been said and done between the pair of brothers, above all else, he just wanted to be near Rabastan. And not just in the manner of the appearances they had kept the last five years, or in the way that others often expected two people of their likeness to be. For so long, they were all each other had, in ways that nobody else could ever be, or begin to comprehend. As much as he tried to tell himself otherwise, the longing and necessity for the presence of Rabastan had only amplified with the time and distance that their lives and respective paths had placed between them.
At his parting words, Rodolphus fell into his default pattern of contemplative indifference, although not out of a lack of words to say. The complete opposite had been true. But where could he even begin? How would he even begin to address the immense misunderstandings that had festering between the pair of them over the last five years? His response was one of habit and self-preservation, and nothing more. He did nothing but watch with profound longing as Rab quickly widened the distance between the two of them. As he stood there, frozen in place, his mind raced trying to process everything the youngest Lestrange sibling had just said, wholly overwhelmed by pungent sting of his words. There was a certain irony about all of this; in any other circumstances, Rod would have, at the very least, applauded the assertiveness of his younger brother. He hardly felt anything of the sort now, though. If he would have looked back, even for a moment, he would have seen Rodolphus, in a frantic and pitiful emotional state that he had only reached once before, the circumstances of which were not unlike the scenario they now found themselves in.
“Rab! RAB!” With hoarse throat and cracking voice, he called out for his brother, who was continuing to head back to the funeral service, with no signs of stopping. He felt his knees starting to buckle from beneath him, and hot tears forming in his eyes before he could even think to wipe them away. The laboured breathing had returned to him once again, with such an increased intensity that he was sure would render him unconscious in a matter of moments. Whether it was the remnants of his previous outburst or another notion entirely, something within Rod had snapped. What little strength still remained left in that moment, and the only response he could muster was to collapse upon the hardened ground. “Please… please don’t leave. Not like this, not again. I… I need you.”
