Delivered, Read, Ignored

He was 16 when she sat him down. The air was stale, thick with the scent of bergamot and the sickly rot of dying flowers. His mother's nails--long, sharp--tapped against the porcelain teacup in her grip, slow and methodical, like a heartbeat. Her finger curled around the handle as though she wanted to snap it off.

"You will marry well," she told him, her voice smooth as silk stretched too thin. It was not a hope. Not a wish. It was law, and he was to obey.

Regulus had learned early that silence was survival. So he nodded, hands folded neatly in his lap. The pressure of his own fingers dug into his palm, nails biting into flesh, a quiet little pain to keep himself grounded.

Walburga Black did not raise weak sons. She raised heirs. She carved them from cold stone, scraped away the softness, left only the jagged edges of obedience and expectation.

She studied him, the way a butcher sizes up a piece of meat before the knife comes down. "And you will not be like him."

Him. Sirius. His name had been stripped from the walls, from the records, from their mother's lips. He was a stain. A failure. A sickness that Regulus was meant to be a cure for.

Walburga's mouth twisted into disgust. "I know what you are, Regulus."

The room shrank. His heartbeat stuttered, a sick thud against his ribs. He kept his face still, composed, but she say right through him. She always saw through him.

She tilted her head, a vulture sizing up carrion. "You think love will save you?" she sneered, the word itself--love--was a joke. "Love is a transaction. A power to wield. And you--"

She reached forward so suddenly that he flinched, she only grabbed his wrist, her grip iron-tight, fingernails digging half-moons into his pale skin. "You wouldn't even know how to use it properly."

Regulus swallowed, his throat raw. He said nothing. He never said anything.

She yanked him forward, so close that he could smell the tea on her breath, sharp and bitter; like her. "With a man?" the words like venom. "That isn't love. That is corruption. That is filth. That is whoring yourself out for something that will never be real. You think being with a man will solve all your problems. That fucking some guy will solve all your petty problems. Spoiler alert, it won't."

Her nails dragged across the sensitive skin of his writs, leaving red trails behind. "
Vous me détestez." She whispered, almost gentle. "Sirius était une honte... Mais tu--tu es une erreur."

The words settled like ice in his stomach, colder than her fingers. A mistake. Not just because of this. Because of everything. Because of what he was before, when they called him 'daughter' and dressed him in silks that never fit, when she told him to sit with the other girls and he never understood why it felt like a cage. he had failed at being the perfect daughter, and now she would not let him fail at being the perfect son. She could twist their rules only so far before she snapped them in two.

She had been disappointed when he was a girl. A failure of a daughter. Too rigid, too sharp-edged, unwilling to bow his head the way she wanted. She had tried to make him soft, to mold him into something palatable—an elegant creature with gentle smiles and downcast eyes, something to be displayed and bartered off. But Regulus had never been that. He had never been her.

So she had stripped it from him, ripped his girlhood away with bared teeth and cold hands, snarling that he had wasted it, that he had been wrong even at that. “You couldn’t be a proper daughter,” she hissed at him once, voice sickly sweet. “So you will be a proper son. You will not embarrass me again.”

Walburga had decided for him. If he would not be a perfect girl, then he would be a perfect boy. Strong. Silent. Dutiful. His gender a weapon to wield against him. A leash to keep him bound. The slap came fast and sharp. The force of it snapped his head to the side, sent his ears ringing. He didn’t make a sound. If he made a sound, she’d hit him again. If he cried, if he showed weakness, it would be worse.

His cheek burned. Her wedding ring had caught the edge of his skin, left a stinging welt in its wake. Regulus focused on the pain. It was grounding. It was better than listening to her words, better than acknowledging that some part of him had believed her.

“Fix yourself,” she ordered, standing, smoothing her skirts as though he had dirtied the air around her. “You will marry well. You will be a proper son.”

She turned her back on him, leaving him in the suffocating silence.

Regulus sat there for a long time, his face burning, his skin raw where her nails had scraped him. He let the pain sink into his bones, let it swallow him whole. It was easier, sometimes, to let himself drown in it.

He was still drowning when the memory spat him back out, all at once, too fast, too sharp. His hands were gripping the counter. His breath was uneven. The coffee shop around him hadn’t changed. The couple was still laughing. The world hadn’t stopped turning for him.

He forced himself to exhale, to unclench his fists, to press the memory back down where it belonged. Deep, deep, deeper.

His phone buzzed.

But then his fingers moved before he could stop them.