The Chain|Regulus Black

Brotherhood

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Delilah had her last course of therapy with the Healer who came to Hogwarts twice a week. Not that he'd say it out loud, but a part of him despised the Healer. Despised the way he comforted Delilah when she cried, he hated the simplest things, like how he said her name like he was hers. But of course, she was okay, she was healing and to see her heal, the Slytherin would compromise everything. Regulus stood outside the classroom, waiting for it to be over so he could tell her how pleased of her he was.

How utterly proud he was of her for facing those nasty demons lurking, who still lurked in fact, but Delilah took no notice of them. They dropped poison into her ears and strangled her in the dead of night when her thoughts were their most violent because even her nightmares had nightmares. But it would be okay. It would always be okay when her fingers stretched out and the warmth of Regulus seeped through.

The thoughts would never leave her, but they were easier to face head-on in the battle that waged inside her head. Her mother told her to be grateful, when she was growing up, they had the muggle world wars, but she wanted to scoff. Because Delilah's generation had a whole invasion against their minds, one they had no time to prepare for.

Mental Health; the silent killer.

Wandering into the courtyard, the March air nipped at his cheeks, cooling the constant fever he had (maybe it was just his guilt that boiled him). Looking up at the moon, he wondered what it would be like millions of miles away, to be someone other than himself to escape this all. Delilah would come with him of course.

"Brother?" Sirius appeared behind the stone archways cautiously approaching his brother. "You'll catch your death out here." The eldest brother smiled, offering his sibling a cigarette which he took dubiously, Sirius shook his head in a sly grin. Regulus treated his brother like a rabid animal, everything was to be done with caution. With care.

"Afraid I've already caught it." They stood side by side, staring up at the stars. Brotherhood was messy, it would always catch you when you least expect it, they were two sides of the same coin, yet refused to believe they were cast of the same iron. Oddly enough, their reluctance came from their shame of the other.

Never had two brothers been more alike, rebelling at heart with everything they had, loving so deeply and fighting so brutally. Their brotherhood wasn't just messy, it was catastrophic.

"How's mother?" Sirius inquired into the silence, the smoke surrounding them as thick as their estrangement. Regulus scoffed.

"You don't have to pretend to care. You left that to me when you ran away. Remember?"

"I did not run from you Regulus. I never ran from you." Regulus stiffened at his brother's words because that was not what it felt like. How Sirius could speak such words with ease was beyond him, because Regulus remembered Sirius's screams that night.

How his mother took scissors to his hair, tore down his room, threatening to burn everything he loved to the ground, threatening that Regulus would be next in line.

Sirius had picked his curls up from the floor, but it wasn't as simple as growing back hair. He wished it was. That night his mother stripped away a part of him that Sirius would never get back, she tore his identity from him like one takes a label off a jar.

Warburga Black deprived her son of something till this today he does not have, or he'll ever have again. Hope. Sirius found, he could not afford to hope for things, he couldn't not pray at night or cry into Moony's arms that things would be okay.

Shame and abomination were words the Black brothers were familiar with, that pang of degradation was as common as an old friend.

"I stood there, with tears in my eyes and I begged you to stay. And do you remember, with the callousness of which you turned to me, told me you loved me and walked out the door? Do you remember shaking your head as you stepped into the arms of Potter? Do you remember because from where I am standing, it seems as if you've fabricated this and painted yourself as some sort of tragic hero."