"You is not to be touching any of Master Regulus's things."
"Right, well, I need to—ow!"
"I said you are not to be touching!"
"Yeah, I heard you—fuck you slap hard—if you want me to help him then I'm going to need to touch things. I also need to know where he keeps his potions."
"No one can go into Master Regulus's lab without his permission."
"I think maybe you can make an exception this time."
"No."
"You're very unpleasant, has anyone ever told you that?"
The voices swim around in Regulus's head as he struggles through the dark. They don't mean anything to him. He hears them but he can't think. Can't understand. Noise, noise, noise. That's all it is. They come in and out of focus, sometimes louder and sometimes quieter. But when he pushes, edges closer to the thinning of the dark, where the black becomes grey, and then almost a faint red, he starts to feel the pain again, and instantly falls back into the hole behind him. Letting it consume him.
"We have to take him to St Mungo's."
"NO! Master Regulus is being very clear that we cannot do that."
"He needs a healer."
"No!"
"Well he's fucking bleeding out and I don't know what to do, I'm not—I can't—"
Something in those words pokes at Regulus's flickering consciousness. Not the meaning, which is still lost on him, but the...sound. Breaking. Cracking. Splintering off. And he wants to fix it. Wants to pull it back together. Wants to hold all the pieces in his hands.
"Ok, alright, new plan. You're going to go get me whatever fucking healing potions he has—pain potions, blood replenishers, Skele-gro—whatever he has. And you're gonna get me towels and, I don't know, if there's a book of healing spells in this goddamn house that'd be really useful too. And I won't touch any of it except when I use it on Regulus okay? Deal?"
"Is a bad deal."
"Yeah well, we don't have a lot of options right now so it's bad deal or no deal."
"Fine."
"Fine."
It hurts. His whole body hurts. It started off soft but it keeps getting brighter and brighter and soon he thinks he's going to be on fire with it.
"God Reg," those words are quieter than the others. Soft. Followed by something gentle brushing against the back of his hand. And he understands them. He understands. But oh how it hurts.
He whimpers, unable to hold it in anymore, his body involuntarily contracting.
"Reg? Regulus?"
He tries to speak but it just comes out as a high pathetic whine. His eyes open and close, fighting with themselves. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
"Please," he can't remember what he did. "Please, I'm sorry, please." He tries to be good. So good and so quiet and so small. "Please stop. Please stop." To give them no reason to punish him.
Not that they need a reason.
"Hey no, I—I'm going to make it stop, I promise. I promise I'll make it stop okay?" the voice breaks again and Regulus squeezes his eyes shut, tears streaming down his face as he twitches and jerks and tries not to scream. Screaming always makes it worse. So does crying but he can't stop that at this point. Never could. He tried to tell Sirius but he didn't understand.
