The Second Law - Deleted scene
Sometimes you just have to sacrifice your darlings on the altar of pacing, so the story of Sirius setting his house on fire didn't make it into the final edit. And besides ruining the pacing, I also felt it was a little ooc for Sirius to talk and share this much 😅 But I still like the story, so I'm posting the old version of the scene here, which also gives a little more background on Alphard and why Sirius hates hospitals so much.
This takes place at the end of chapter 13 of The Second Law, so if you haven't been reading the story, this will contain spoilers!
~*~
“See? Family can be good.”
You both chuckle at the absurdity of this situation.
“And you had your uncle, right?” you continue, when he still looks unconvinced. They must have been close if he left Sirius everything he owned.
Sirius’s face goes grim. “Yeah… But it didn’t last, did it? He died in this very hospital, actually… It was just supposed to be a routine operation. But the doctors fucked up.”
“Fuck. I’m so sorry…”
No wonder he pushes people away. Every time he gets attached, people either leave or turn out to be dickheads. And now he almost lost you...
“Must be tough to be back here.”
“Yeah, well…” He shrugs and sniffs. “They did an alright job with you.”
“Come here.” You hold out your arm until he gets the hint and leans down to kiss you. His lips are dry and chapped, but they are morphine for your soul. When you break apart, he clears his throat and straightens in his seat. “So…” He nods towards the door. “I take it Fabian is no longer obliged to go fuck himself?”
You grimace. “Nah… He’s just worried about me and chose a cunty way of going about it. He means well.” You shrug. “But he’s on probation, and if he says another thing about you…”
“Ah.” Sirius chuckles hollowly. “I reckoned that’s what you were fighting about.”
“He’s been listening to too many rumours. Can you believe he tried to sell me some story about you burning your house down?” You shake your head and laugh—you are getting the hang of doing it without moving your stomach muscles now. “How do people even come up with these things…”
“Oh. Erm…” Sirius squirms and looks down.
“What? It’s true?!”
“It, er... It might be.”
You sober up. You hadn’t meant to pull him into another depressing conversation. “Shit. What happened?”
Sirius looks at the ceiling. “God, it’s been so long.... And you’ve got to understand that my home wasn’t a happy home, not like yours.”
“I’ve gathered that.”
“Okay, so one day I’d got into some trouble at school. I don’t even remember what I did—something about some drawings I’d made in my Maths workbook, I think—but apparently my teacher didn’t think I was progressing like a 'normal child', whatever the fuck that means…” He takes a break as if steeling himself, but maybe he’s too tired to keep holding back, because the words begin spilling from him in unprecedented numbers. “My mother lost her temper when I got home, threatening to lock me up, move me abroad for school... all the usual shit. I talked back, and she became so enraged she went to my room. You see, I had this collection of little toy soldiers. I would spend half an hour every night setting them up in a circle around my bed. I slept better that way. But she gathered them all in a bag and threw them in the rubbish. I screamed and cried but there was no pleading with her. I went to my father, hoping he would make her return them, but he was so busy with his work, he hardly even answered me. Just kept poring over his files and documents like always. So later that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I went to his study and set fire to his filing cabinet, thinking that he should lose what was most precious to him too. I was eleven—I didn’t actually mean for anything besides his files to burn, but as you can probably guess, it got out of control quickly.”
He runs a shaking hand through his tangled hair.
You find his knee through the bed rail. “What did you do?”
“I went to wake up my brother.”
“…and your parents?”
“They woke up because of my brother’s crying. I...” He pulls in a breath, before looking at you with something between regret and a challenge in his eyes. “I don’t know if I would have gone to them.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Sirius...”
He looks down at your hand on his knee. “Do you hate me now?”
“No! You were young, and you were scared. I mean, every child must have had those thoughts at least once.”
“Yet I went through with them.”
“Well… Maybe you had more cause than most children.”
“Maybe... But I think I still have those things in me. The capacity to do something like that again if pushed. It scares me sometimes.”
“Have you? Acted on it since, I mean.”
“Well… I try to remove myself from the situation before it can get that far, but sometimes…”
The image of him sitting atop one of Carrow’s goons, grinding his face into shards of glass comes to your mind, but those fuckheads had it coming.
“There you have it, then. Sirius—you’re a good person that bad things have happened to. No person can see themselves free of dark thoughts. It’s what we choose to act on that matters.”
He seems to consider your words for a moment, but then he shakes his head and looks up to the ceiling again, fighting against the moisture pooling on the rims of his eyes.
“I don’t know how you can even stand to look at me right now.”
“Easy. You’re quite pleasant to look at.”
“Will you fucking just… It’s my fault you’re here!”
“No.” You try to take his hand, but he’s crossing his arms, so it’s too far away. “It’s Fenrir’s fault.”
“He only did it because of me!”
“No. I was the one the smash his car, right?”
“Again, because of me.”
“Yeah, alright, and because of that butterfly that flapped its wings in Bermuda!” You scoot further out on the bed in your effort to reach him—pain be damned. “Sirius—shit happened! But I don’t blame you! Not one bit. And you won’t get rid of me that easily.”
He closes his eyes, causing the tears to finally spill down his cheeks and into his beard. His whole body is wound tight, trembling, losing its battle against exhaustion and overwhelm.
“Come here…” You scratch at his elbow, which is the only part of his arm you can reach.
It takes a few tries, but eventually, he unlocks enough to put his hand in yours, and you tug at it, coaxing him down until you can nestle his head on your shoulder.
“I can’t believe you jumped in front of me like that…” he mumbles in a shaky voice. “Did you see he had a knife?”
You chuckle. “Honestly, no. But if I had, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
His sobs are silent. Tears soak the shoulder of your gown, and the neckline gets scrunched where he clutches it desperately, and you can’t do anything but kiss his hair and stroke his temple, even though you wish for nothing more than to scoop him into your arms and hold him until he believes that he is not alone. Believes that you don’t blame his teenage self for finding new protectors to replace those toy soldiers when he felt alone. That it’s not his fault that they weren’t worthy of the responsibility.
