YOUTH ━━ s. black

[ 115 ] seven centuries ago, bridget & ares

      Sirius heard a panicked Everest sprinting into the room and he stopped pacing about. Everest halted on her steps and took in Scarlet's appearance, unconscious underneath the meds she received. A million Healers around her.

"Black, hey, look at me, can you hear me?" Everest asked, gliding closer. Sirius didn't hear her clearly, at all, her voice fading and then ringing at the back of his mind, coiling around him like a snake.

      Sirius was shaking visibly, lips trembling and hands clenched by his side, he hadn't once looked up from his blood-stained hands, her blood. Everest was worried to say the least. Sirius was pale as a ghost, if not even paler. Skin like chalk. Mouth drawn tight.

      A gasp left her lips, pained and soft. She slapped a palm over her mouth and Sirius could not stand there— he could not bring himself to stand in the room where Scarlet was not conscious. Everest deciphered it and grabbed onto his elbow to pull him out.

A familiar hollow glaze slotted over her emerald eyes like film, and she dragged him into the boys' bathroom. A few odd looks were thrown at her on the way in, and she seethed, "what are you looking at?" So enraged, that nobody questioned it.

       In fact, when she entered the bathroom with Sirius, still gripping his arm, the other boys using the toilets left instantly upon her unkind threats.

      Sirius finally came to senses to realise Everest was helping him wash his hands, slowly rubbing the blood away from his incredibly trembling hands, she was struggling to keep his hands underneath the water from how much they shook.

"Scarlet likes to walk away, I know she does," he softly uttered, suddenly, shaken up as Everest paid close attention to him.

"What are you walking about?"

"When she's upset or mad, she walks away... I was so busy trying to blame Remus, trying to pin this entire thing on him because I liked having all the answers to my questions that I didn't realise she left... I was attacking Remus and I didn't make sure she was by my side and when I turned around... she's gone."

"Don't do that," Everest scolded firmly, letting his hands go after drying them. "Stop trying to find a way to blame yourself."

      It was true — Sirius always found a way to pin the blame on himself somehow. It was his solution to every difficult situation (mostly involving himself and Scarlet). Sirius' face had warped into a pinboard and the darts thrown had pierced it, time and time again. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

"Black," Everest regarded her with a softness he was not familiar with, she placed her hands on his shoulders, "please, talk to me— tell me what happened."

"They burnt the fucking house down with her in it." He answered harshly.

"How did you know?" Everest asked, watching him leaning against the wall with eyes squeezed shut, "I've been losing my head, bothering every investigator in the country— how did you know where she was?"

"Kaz led me," Sirius answered.

"The crow?" She raised a brow in disbelief.

"Yes."

"And the bruises on her body?" Everest asked with concern, littering her wide eyes. Oh God, please, no. "They couldn't have been from the fire, right?"

Sirius exhaled in pain, pursing his lips as he locked eyes with the girl, "I think you know, Chasseur," he saw as Everest nodded, expressionless, like a porcelain doll, "why don't you sit down, and then we can both go in together after they heal her."