★ He never touched another soul. He only ever loved you. And the night you left was the night he meant to ask you to stay forever.
Warning : this fic contains lying besties, silent boyfriends, unsaid proposals, and two years’ worth of rotting what-ifs. read only if you’re cool with having your chest cracked open like a glow stick and left leaking regret on the floor. no dialogues js inner turmoild , procced if u wanna be left weeping at 2 am in the morning this fic is written entierly from regulus pov.
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Two years.
It had been two years since you walked away, and still Regulus carried the weight of that night like an anchor chained to his chest. He remembered it with painful clarity—the sharpness of your voice, the betrayal burning in your eyes, the finality in the way you turned from him. He had stood there frozen, heart thundering in his throat, and said nothing. Nothing.
Because Lucius Malfoy had already won.
Lucius had been his closest friend once, sharp and cunning in ways that mirrored Regulus himself. But beneath that smooth exterior had always been envy. Envy that Regulus had chosen you. Envy that you had chosen him in return. To Lucius, love was a game of power, something to manipulate and control. To Regulus, it had been everything. And that was precisely why Lucius had struck where it would wound the deepest—convincing you that Regulus had betrayed you, that his loyalty had fractured.
You hadn’t questioned it. You hadn’t asked him. And maybe that was what cut the deepest—your silence had answered his.
The truth was simple, brutal: Regulus had never touched another soul. His hands had only ever held yours, his lips had only ever known the shape of your name. He had been marked already, the weight of the Dark Lord’s brand searing into his skin, yet in your love he had found a fragile kind of salvation. You were the only part of his world that was pure. And he had let you believe he’d destroyed it.
That night—the night you left—was supposed to be different. He had carried a ring in his pocket for weeks, turning it over in his palm whenever the fear became too much, whenever the shadows closed in too tightly. Silver, simple, understated—like him. It was never about grandeur. It was about a promise. A vow he had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times, words he wanted etched into eternity: be mine, always. Through fire, through curse, through darkness. Just mine.
But instead of falling to one knee, he had watched you walk away, the ring burning in his pocket like molten lead. The proposal became a secret, a vow swallowed by silence, and his silence became the crime you could never forgive.
For months afterward, he would wake in the middle of the night, reaching across cold sheets, half-expecting you to still be there. His thumb would twist the empty space where your hand should’ve been, a nervous tic that betrayed him every time the walls closed in. Even in the echoing halls of Grimmauld Place, he thought he heard your laughter lingering in corners, soft and distant, haunting him like a ghost.
And still, he told no one. Not about Lucius’ betrayal, not about the ring, not about the love that still hollowed him out from the inside. To the world, Regulus Black became colder, sharper, a boy turning into a weapon forged by shadows. But beneath that mask, he was bleeding.
The tragedy was not that Lucius lied. The tragedy was that Regulus let him. He let the silence stretch until it became permanent. He let you carry the weight of anger instead of dragging you into his own darkness. He thought he was sparing you—shielding you from the stain of his choices. But in truth, he was only sparing himself from the terror of watching you choose to stay or leave with full knowledge of who he really was.
Now, with the Mark burning against his arm and his time running out, he still carried that ring. Hidden away, tarnished now, but untouched. A symbol of everything he lost, everything he could never reclaim.
And the truth remained carved into him more permanently than any curse:
Regulus Black never cheated. He never strayed. He had only ever loved you.
The night you left was the night he was meant to ask you to stay forever.
And that was the night his silence damned him.
You didn’t owe me anything.
But you stayed.
You listened,
you made the pain quieter
without asking for anything in return.
You were just kind.
And somehow,
your kindness became the safest place I knew.
I didn’t plan to feel this.
Didn’t want to complicate something so pure.
But healing beside you
blurred all my lines.
Now I smile at you like nothing’s changed,
while my heart folds itself smaller,
trying to hide how much it aches
just to stay close.
You were just kind.
And I…
I fell for you quietly.
I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.
We were supposed to be just friends.
But I let my heart slip past the boundaries I promised to stay within.
Now here we are — strangers to each other,
With memories too heavy to hold but too beautiful to forget.
You're the person I never meant to fall for.
You're everything I never wanted to lose.
I wish I could go back,
Back to before I crossed that line —
When I could still speak to you without the pain in my chest,
When silence between us was comfortable, not heavy.
I ruined everything.
I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you — but I did.
And now I carry the weight of what could have been,
Of the words left unspoken,
Of the moments that slipped through my fingers.
I wonder if you ever think about me,
If you ever miss me the way I miss you.
Maybe in another life, we could have gotten it right.
But in this one,
All I can do is wish you happiness from afar
And hope that somehow,
A piece of me still lingers in your heart —
The way you will always linger in mine.
Not sure who wrote this, but it felt like a piece of my heart put into words.
