There were hands everywhere. Clawing and scratching his skin, along with a pain that seared through my entire body.
I knew I would die. This was always how it would end.
My lungs were bursting, they felt like they would pop. Everything hurt. It's getting harder to move. I tried to fight the inferni, I tried. I tried so hard, I.....tried. I can't fight them.
It's dark all around me. I don't like the dark. Sirius knows that. I want my brother.
"Sirius!" I gargle beneath the dark and murky water but it's too late. No-one can save me now. Not even James. My sweet perfect James. He loved me like the sun did the sky, he was my sun. And now I'll die and he'll never know why.
And then it hits me. I don't want to die. I never did. No, no, no.
"Please! Somebody help me!" I scream from the bottom of my soul, but it's no use. I can't be saved, I am to die.
'You're a fucking idot." Sirius' voice says in my mind.
'What?' I reply.
'Do you really think we would save you? No-one loves you Reggie. You're unlovable. No, in-fact you're pathetic. And that's how you will be remembered. Pathetic.'
I start to sob my tears mixing with the water around me. My vision blurs...My heart slows....My limbs stop moving. Finally....it's over. The pain will soon be over. I never wanted to die. As I feel my lungs finally collapse my last thought is James. My James.
I wake up, in a cold sweat, tears dripping down my face. I breathe in. Fuck. I thought these nightmares would've stopped by now.
I breathe in long and hard and exhale just like Pandora told me to when I get flashbacks like this. Despite this, I'm still shaking.
"Baby?" James' sleepy voice says.
I don't reply. I can't stop shaking. Even after defeating Voldemort and even after all these years I still am haunted by the memories. The memories of the boy whose fate it was to die. I am no longer him and haven't been him for a while and yet the memories are still mine.
"Another nightmare?" James' voice says cutting into my thoughts.
"Yeah..."
James sits up and wraps his arms around me as I start to cry into his shoulder.
"Don't worry, love. There is no universe where i didn't save you. Not a single one." he says comforting me.
I wrap my hands around his waist never wanting to let go. As long as I'm alive, I will never let go.
I was blessed enough to touch the sun and I knew it.
"Promise?" I sniffle looking into his eyes that even despite the darkness of the bedroom are still filled with an undeniable fire that I always get lost in.
"I'll always be here, my love." He says with a honey-like tone that is so genuine and pure that is James like it's beautiful.
Suddenly I realised I hadn't known love until I met James. I hadn't known how to love until I met James. He loved me like it was breathing. James had given me a love so deep it was sickening and all-consuming. James loved like how Apollo loved Hycanith.
I kissed him, crashing his lips with mine. James kissed me like a starved man, desperate and hungry. When really it was me who was starved, hungry for the sun.
My sun. And he would be mine forever.