A home is a place full of people who love you, where you feel safe enough to laugh, to cry, to love, to talk, to connect, to need, to want, to live. Regulus never had that. He had a house, a building to return to, which was more than most, he’d thought. He let his room get messy as he got older. Safety to feel was guaranteed if it was messy, his mum wouldn’t go in if it was messy. She hated mess.
Regulus never allowed a childhood, not really. He had passions, things he craved to pursue, to create and show his mum, sure, but he was never allowed to. Art, he had dropped some paint on the rug once, it was bound to happen, and the paint was locked away, never to be out again. Music, he kept playing the same thing over and over, restarting as he messed up, redoing it again out of pride when he got it right, and soon he would be sent upstairs for being too loud, too annoying, too present. Dance, he had begged and begged for lessons, for them to send him somewhere other than home and school, so he could be impressive, but of course they were too expensive for such an uncoordinated child, he hadn't a hope in hell of ever being talented. Everywhere that drew Regulus in, he was shut out of. Being a child, messy and uncoordinated and idiotic, was the worst thing he could be. So he grew out of it.
He hadn’t had many friends, not ones who really liked him. He was different, strange, they could tell before he had even had the chance to decide what he wanted to be. This person was shoved onto him, and he had accepted it, because he didn't know who he was without the one they had created. He didn’t get the chance to find out, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Not if they could tell he was destined to be an outcast. So, he bent to society's standards they’d created for him. The one thing they couldn’t stop him from having was his love of books. Not allowed to be loud, books were the one version of creativity he could have. No one, absolutely no one, could take that from him. Even if he wasn't supposed to spend hours reading, even if he wasn't supposed to become immersed and believe in it after 8 years old, even if he wasn’t supposed to steal a torch to read under the covers at night, he wouldn’t let it be taken from him.
His mother had a love for books, too. Luckily for him, it’s the one thing they could bond over. And this was heaven. She knew so much, had so many of them for him, he began to worship her. He would fight anyone who said something bad about her, he would protect her and love her fiercely, because he had finally gotten that motherly affection he craved.
He loved it, and it lasted. Until suddenly he was too loud. So many times he had been hyperventilating from sobbing, sometimes for no reason at all, and he needed a mother. Love. And he got told that dramatics and crocodile tears would do nothing for him, that he would never get the comfort he needed because all this noise was unnecessary. He’d ask if he was loved, if she still loved him. He could barely hear the response over his ever flowing tears, his head fuzzy and full of static as he became fuller and fuller of never ending sadness he would carry with him for the rest of his life, but her response was so loud, and he held it close. “I love you, but I don’t like you right now.”
I love you because I have to. Because I’m a mother, and I’m supposed to. I’d prefer any other child. Why are you so needy? Why are you so childish? So loud? So messy? So alive?
So, Regulus had never really had a home. He’d had a house, and a woman who raised him, a brother who tried to save him, and a father amongst it all. He had escapes. As he got older, he’d found people who did like him. Who got him out of that house from time to time. Who made the skies a little brighter, and encouraged and loved him. As much as he doubted it sometimes, he knew deep down that they loved him.
He had a relationship at 13. They’d spoken about running away together, he told him about his mother, and his childhood, and in turn he was told about his home life. It was equal, until it wasn’t. Regulus got into a particularly bad fight with his mother, and then his brother. He shut down again, he refused to talk, he pretended everything was fine. Because it was. Crocodile tears get you nowhere, dramatics get you nowhere, don’t be too loud, you can’t talk about it, you’re already different enough, stop thinking about it, stop pushing, stop asking. He had reached his limit, and then everything he had told before was thrown at him, ripping him to shreds, pulling apart his trust and ruining it for anyone else.
It ended with him sobbing, covering his nose and mouth to prevent making noise, and passing out from not being able to breathe properly. Out cold on his bedroom floor, wishing he was dead already, that whatever god up there could be merciful for once and kill him. Maybe he should just take matters into his own hands, he thought. It was the 3rd time he’d ever had such a thought with a degree of seriousness. Once when he was 9, again at 12, and now at 13. The first 2 times his brother had saved him from it, made him smile when he thought he never would again. However, Sirius wasn’t here this time. He didn’t tell anyone what happened, he couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t think about them without being unable to move, or breathe. He couldn’t be saved.
He ended up blacking out for about a year. He wouldn’t leave his bed unless he absolutely had to. He couldn’t move. He felt entirely weighed down, like his world had crashed around him and he was stuck underneath a wall, slowly crushing him. But he didn’t remember that, all he remembered was one day he was praying for death and the next he was back at school, sitting alone. It was the middle of term, and someone had started talking to him in the hallway. About something he enjoyed. And there was no hint of sarcasm or snark in the other, just genuine passion for this thing too.
Regulus was scared to let himself get too close. He’d never admit it, but he had such a strong connection to this person. Like a soulmate, but not in the romantic sense. He wanted to be with this person all the time, to hang out with them and their friends, to do all the things he had missed out on in childhood. He kept his distance to these new people, being with them but never too present in the moment. He sat with them at breaks, but kept a book firmly in his hands. Many times he had caught himself looking at them all, so loving of each other, so happy, and felt as if he was about to cry. He never did, though, because crocodile tears got you nowhere, they’d only love you as much as they’d have to, and emotions were far too loud. He had waited, every time, until he got home to sob into his fist.
After a while it got easier to join in, to let them care about him, and let himself care about them. He grew so close to the person from the hallway. That summer, he was out almost every day, spending time with them. It was the escape he needed, the life he craved. He felt healed, loved, cared for. And it would all be undone when he got home.
His mother was always stressed as he got older. Stressed meant snappy, and Regulus being out all day meant she would be snappy at him. She’d ask him why he didn’t tidy up, why he didn’t make her a drink when she got in, why he didn’t offer her something to eat. It was all up to him, as Sirius was the disappointment and therefore apparently incapable of doing these things. And he didn’t want to make it any easier on Regulus, no, of course not. Because Regulus was doing better, Regulus always got better grades, was apparently mummy’s fucking favourite. He’d gladly give that title up, being the favourite was absolute bullshit. The expectations he was held to, he’d end up killing himself to get to them. It was worse when Sirius left. Naturally, with one son leaving, the other gets added pressure. To not disgrace the family name further, to fix it. To be so golden, so amazing, that no one would talk about the son that left, but rather the one that stayed and was so impressive. Regulus was spiteful, resentful. He had that idea first.
The escapes weren’t enough, soon. His friend found another, and they were everything Regulus was, and wasn’t, and less, and more. They weren’t too loud, too quiet, too much, too little, they had more in common, they had things to show each other. He hated being jealous, but he hated being replaced a little more. He was reading into things too much, he realised after the whole ordeal. He wasn’t being replaced, they had flaws, but he still resented them even after the fight. He had started shutting down again, feeling like he was losing his only friends, and sped up the process. Until they called him out, told him to stop being so dramatic, that not everything is the end of the world.
Crocodile tears get you nowhere, they'll only love you as much as they have to, you need to be extraordinary to earn people’s care.
Regulus was 16, and wondering if anyone would miss him. He thought about it, not for long, for a few days. He reflected on his childhood, what of it he could remember. I love you, but I don’t like you right now. It’s easier when you’re older to make choices. Informed, smart choices. Unless you were never allowed to make the stupid ones, the messy ones, the loud ones, the ones that ended with you laughing your head off, the ones that ended with you sobbing until you were dehydrated. Yes, he had made stupid decisions like that, but he wasn’t allowed to, they all ended the same, with pain and disappointment.
Never once did he make his mother proud. Never once was something he did good enough. He wasn’t extraordinary like he needed to be. He was never loved by her purely because she loved him. He was never liked by her. So, to save her the inconvenience, Regulus tidied his room. He didn’t need to be safe anymore, he didn’t need somewhere to feel anymore.
It was an easy decision, really, he had thought while the crocodile tears filled his eyes. He let them fall. He chose something clean, the tears would just be proof that he really was there.
The last thing he did before, was make sure she’d know he was really there.
I know I will be dead long before you read this, but I want you to know it was I who decided that. I was not messy in my departure, I hope that makes you proud of me. I was not everything you needed me to be, and for that I am truly sorry. I found myself wondering God before this. Who would give a child to a mother who never wanted him? Who would give a mother like that the trust? I have so many questions for you, ones that I will never get answered, and I have made my peace with that. I hope you have no questions, because you won’t get any answers either, and it’d be a shame if we both had to live in such a way. Such confusion, such pain. I loved you, but I never did like you. Please don’t shed any crocodile tears for me, I don’t want a headache in whatever afterlife awaits.
-R.A.B