The Death of R.A.B.
Regulus Arcturus Black
1979
The horcrux was safe, and Kreature could finally destroy it. Voldemort couldn’t live forever anymore. Sirius had always found Kreature foul, but Regulus loved him. Kreature had become a dear friend, and trusted confident. Despite Walburga and Orion being Kreature’s masters, Regulus had always had a stronger relationship with him. Orion and Walburga didn’t ask questions, didn’t make requests, only orders and demands. Regulus asked though, and Kreature eventually asked questions in return. In the end, all they had was each other. Or at least, at Regulus’ end.
That was likely what was happening now.
Regulus knew the difference between near-death and dying by now. Enough close calls, enough agony, terror and torment to haunt anyone for a lifetime. At least Regulus wouldn’t have a lifetime to be haunted by.
I wish I could say I fought.
What a sad thought. A pathetic, tragic thought. Because Regulus didn’t fight, not really, not enough to be real. When two bone hands dripping with rotting flesh had snagged Regulus’ ankle in a death grip, pulling his feet out from under him. Confusion and panic ensued as his head cracked on the ground before he could get a hand on his wand. He writhed at first, screamed, pulled, spit,and tore; tried with everything he had to breathe. Managing, for a moment, to stay at the surface, he struggled against hands of death and decay as water began to fill his lungs. It burned in his chest, contradicting the icey feeling swallowing him up as the water engulfed him. It’s pathetic though, that the moment Regulus’ head was fully submerged, the fight bubbled out of him. Regulus breathed in deeply one last time, filling his lungs with that burning cold water, he gave up. Going limp and lifeless before he’d even died. There was no one left to fight for anyway.
Kreature would live long after Regulus and his parents. Kreature would find new masters, find a new place, forget Regulus hopefully, and Kreature didn’t truly care for Regulus anyway. I mean, he couldn’t. It wasn’t the same. Kreature had to care, he was obligated. Regulus was certain that, given the chance, Kreature would have nothing to do with him, and Regulus would be happy for him.
His parents and brother weren’t even worth considering here. Orion and Walburga Black weren’t capable of love, the evidence for this was insurmountable.
Sirius, well. Sirius hated him by now. It would only put them both in danger to reach out anyway.
His friends? Regulus refused to endanger them by reaching out. Regulus was in regular and direct contact with Voldemort, and despite what many Death Eaters believed, the closer you were to him, the more likely you were to die a very long and painful death, as Regulus was now. Best they believe he hates them. Best they believe he betrayed them.
It had been a long and meticulously planned endeavour. Regulus knew his friends were fiercely loyal people. It had taken months, nearly a year in some cases, of manipulation and cruelty. A slow distancing of contact, subtle distasteful comments that grew very slowly harsher, deliberate explosive arguments, a single fist fight, a handful of hexes, possibly a life, and an icey knife’s blade cutting each connection harshly at its root later, and Regulus was out of his friend’s lives. He was still their friend, even if they weren’t his, but they’d never know that, and it was better that way. Regulus had broken each and every one of their hearts in such a life shattering and irreparable way that most of them didn’t speak anymore, but Regulus would never know that. But they were better off this way, they were safe that way. They’d be alive that way. They could live long after this war, have lives, real lives that revolved around something other than these horrors. They would live now, and that was all Regulus needed.
And so, Regulus watched, letting go as the last bubbles left his lips and he was pulled further and further towards the ocean floor. There was red in the water, blood from where his head had cracked on the rocks, and his hair was floating up and around his head and looking like his bleeding shadow was trailing behind him. Watching the light of the surface dim as it drew away from him, Regulus truly relaxed for the first time in many long, awful years. Years that had slowly peeled away layers of his soul, body, and mind until he felt like he wasn’t truly a person anymore. It felt so good to know it would all be over, that no one would have to hurt like he did anymore.
Maybe it was fitting that he was to become nothing but a lifeless husk in death, doing the bidding of those he despised. Regulus had spent much of his life as such, it was only fitting that this fate followed him to the unfortunately watery grave.
Merlin Regulus had hated water-related experiences as long as he could remember: being wet, or swimming, or rain. His friends had called him a grumpy, prudish, black cat any time it rained. He loathed the accuracy of this claim.
He found it peaceful now though. Oh, the irony. Regulus Black, enjoying a plunge in the ocean, his lifeless body likely remaining there until the end of time? Evan, Barry and Dorcas might have actually died themselves if they’d found out. Laughed themselves straight to the grave. Walked in willingly at the simple absurdity and impossibility of Regulus enjoying the ocean. Pandora would have simply said “I told you so.” She tended to know these things.
He missed them all, had for so long. Regulus would never live to understand how much they missed him.
Regulus missed James too. Merlin, he missed him so bad.
No, absolutely not. James Potter does not get to occupy Reglus’ thoughts. He refuses, wholeheartedly refuses, to have James Potter in his dying thoughts.
Get yourself together Regulus, die with at least a scrap of dignity left please. Think about literally anything else.
That’s when Regulus remembers he’s being touched. He’s been touched so rarely these past few years by human hands, other living souls, and he will never be touched by one again. The hands that hold him in a vice grip now are boney and rigid, digging into his flesh, some of the hands still covered in bits of muscle & sinew, others covered in bits of seaweed and coral. There were so many hands now that he was up to his waist in bones.
These particular inferi are said to be made of the dead bodies of Voldomort’s victims, both personal and of the general war effort. The many hundreds, maybe thousands who likely reached for their loved ones, screaming in fear and agony, in a last desperate attempt to save, or protect, or flee, were likely reaching for their loved ones in death as they reached for Regulus in this moment.
Regulus wondered who the inferi thought he was, who he would see as one of them.
James. He’d see James.
But James wouldn’t have seen him, he would have seen Lily Evans. And that was fine, Regulus was fine with that. This was very fine. Regulus had made his peace with the fact that James Potter did not love him, that in the end, he chose Lily. James wanted to fight for the order, he’d wanted children, a family, he’d wanted someone soft, all things Regulus could never be for him.
Regulus could never be that, Regulus had never been that. James deserved better, James needed better, and that had been why Regulus left. It was the right choice in the end, James had been safer without him as well. James Potter didn’t need the Black family curse following him around, or Regulus’ copious connections and life debts which had been intertwined with Voldemort before Regulus had ever even spoken to James Potter. It was very clear James Potter did not want or need Regulus Black. And Regulus was fine with this.
This was fine.
Regulus was at peace with, and constantly in agony and turmoil because, he is hopelessly in love with someone he could never have, who would never need him, who he could never be enough for, and never truly meet the needs of.
How pathetically cliche of him. Dying while thinking of the person he loved, the only person he’d ever had the chance to truly fall in love with, the person Regulus felt a deeper connection with than anyone on this planet yet. Regulus will not die a cliche.
Or will he?
Who was there left to prove something to, himself? His family was gone, as were his friends, and everyone he’d ever cared for. No one was here to see him.
No one was here to see him.
Regulus felt an overwhelming sense of peace and calm wash over him, something he never thought he would be able to feel. No one would see his last moments, there would be no consequences for his thoughts or feelings, and he didn’t have to protect himself from anything because nothing would come afterwards. Oh. It was a feeling so freeing, that if Regulus was on dry land, his face would be dripping with a steady stream of tears, and if he had been able to breathe he would have been violently crying, breath hitching, and shaking with each shaky breath. He could do none of this though, so instead, Regulus looked up to the surface.
He had left a light above his head while he’d been in the cave which was still there. Regulus how quickly it would fizzle out after he died. It was still there now, making the surface ripple and flicker, like handmade stained glass. It looked a bit like the sun, and reminded him of James. Regulus had to be around the stage of oxygen deprivation that resulted in delirium now, because as he looked up he could’ve sworn he felt like James was smiling down at him. His smile, oh Merlin what he would’ve given to see it again. At least now he would be able to keep smiling a long, long time. Thinking about his smile, Regulus could not escape these cliches, inevitable I suppose.
Regulus had long ago learned that he could not get over how pathetically besotted he would forever be with James Potter. Regulus had tried for a long time, both before his relationship with James and afterwards, to strangle his feelings into submission. The feelings were as frustratingly persistent as James, refusing to dissolve. Regulus’ feelings for James seemed to shine bright through all the little cracks in the walls he tried to build around his heart. Regulus spent an unbelievably obnoxious amount of time patching up the cracks that appeared in the wall, shoving his feelings back behind it, cutting off James' light in order to just keep moving, keep living and getting through the day to day. It hurt his soul to exist so far from James sometimes. There’s nothing left to do now though, no living left to do, and nowhere to go, so Regulus let himself feel for a little while.
Regulus let the walls around his heart crumble and fall away as he fell from the surface, now in a sea of bone and rot up to his neck, held in a hundred vice grips of the long gone who he was certain to join, because nothing mattered now, and he could finally go.
As Regulus gazed at the dazzling sparkle of rippling light from the surface in far the distance, he spent the last few shameful minutes of his pitiful and nearly useless life pretending that the boney hand on his chest near his heart, the one digging finger bones into his skin and making him bleed, was the hand of James Potter. Pretending that James’ hand was warm and soft on his chest, and feeling the beat of Regulus’ heart as it slowed to a stop.