cracked shells

Regulus runs until his feet collapse out from underneath him. He falls to the ground, hands and knees burning against the pavement as he wheezes, desperately trying to suck air back into his lungs. 

He can’t get up--if anything, his body is begging him to stop and lie down on the concrete, to sink into the soil and just let it rest. The eyes are pinning him down. They’ve followed him, even here. He can’t escape them, even after he’s run for what feels like hours, he can’t escape them.

He takes another deep breath, although it sounds more like a croaked choke than anything else. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he sees the dark dots stained into the concrete beneath him.

Somehow, he managed to steer himself to collapse in a nook carved into a building, just out of the path of the pedestrians walking across the street and more likely than not used as a back entrance for whichever building he’s stumble across. He raises his head and sees a few people glance in his direction, but their eyes peel away just as quickly as they came. His arms give out from underneath him at that, and he shifts to the side so that his back hits the wall hard and puts him into a sitting position.

He could’ve sworn he was being chased. He felt the presence when he left the bar. He felt it the entire time he was running; he still feels it now. Yet, nobody’s looking at him. For all he knows, he could be a ghost. It’s a nice thought. Regulus wouldn’t mind being a ghost. It would mean being invisible. He’d never feel another pair of eyes on him ever again. 

Breathing still isn’t coming to him easily. He hopes that goes away soon, but not as much as he wishes he could go back and undo everything that has happened. He squeezes his eyes shut, unable to help the tears that continue to roll down his face. He shoves his palms into his eyes, trying to wipe them away, but it’s no use. Harry. Regulus can’t get his face out of his mind. Harry Harry Harry. It’s like Harry’s standing right in front of him, a too-bright flashlight pointed directly at Regulus’ face as he stares and stares and stares. Harry. Regulus hopes he’s somewhere kinder now--it’s what he deserves.

His palms hurt. Admittedly, his right one more so than the left, but he can feel them stinging against his face as he presses them to his skin. When he can finally bring himself to tear them away from his face, he sees the red lines scratched along them. One glance down, and he finds the same situation with his kneecaps, though they’re noticeably more bloodied than his hands. 

Regulus can’t understand what happened. It replayed in his mind the entire time he was running, but he still can’t make sense of any of it. He thought it was a dream. He’d tried it that morning, hadn’t he? He tried so incredibly hard to show it to Harry, to make him proud, but nothing happened. Then Sam and Charlotte and the kitchen happened, and all of a sudden everything was burning and Regulus was stumbling towards the gateway out of hell. He brought it out with him. It leaked, somehow, out of that door, because it’s still pressed into his skin, corroding into his blood and carving eyes into his bones. Because he can feel them there, the eyes. He knows they’re there. Whenever he focuses too hard on the thought, his stomach tries to turn its continents up his throat. 

He barely notices when the sun sinks out of the sky. It’s only when he feels the door nudge against him that he shoots to his feet, staring wide-eyed at the tall man on the other side of the door before springing down the street. He only stops when he gets to the river. This time, he isn’t as out of breath as before. 

He’s always wondered how the water moves like that. He’s been alive for five years (even though he remembers hardly any of it), and he has no idea why it is the way it is. It’s magical to look at, how it molds into any shape and patiently cuts through stone over time. Harry taught Regulus about that. He said it was called erosion. 

A sharp pang cuts through Regulus’ chest. The vague urge to cry overcomes him once more. There’s nothing to stop him, so he does, right there in the middle of the sidewalk. The longer it goes on, the more Regulus begins to accept the fact that this all can’t be a dream. He’s been falling through it far too long. No amount of pinching his arm will make his reality fade away into his bed.

While the tears are still cutting down his face, Regulus ducks under the railing and slowly traverses his way down to the shore. The entire way down, he keeps wiping his face dry, sniffling to keep snot from dripping out of his nose. He should’ve gotten a tissue. If his nose starts bleeding again, he’ll have nothing to clean it up with. 

There are a few other people down there. He looks at them all properly once he isn’t fighting to stay on his feet. They’re all either passed out underneath one of the bridges or minding their own business. Regulus’ eyes don’t stay on them for long; instead, he stares at the water. He’s only come here once or twice, so it’s sheer luck that he remembered the path back. He’s tempted to stick his hand in the water, but Harry’s voice ringing in his head holds him back. It’ll be too cold. He can already feel the temperatures of the night seeping in through his clothing. It’s not like he was able to pack a jacket before he left, so he’s got nothing on other than his shirt, his pants, and his shoes. 

The cold only worsens from there. He doesn’t move from his spot by the water, but at some point, he’s had to wrap his arms around himself. The wind cuts against his back, and it’s so awfully different from the heat of the bar that it hardly feels like he’s still on Earth. Harry taught him about that, too. Plus the other planets, of course. He’d sung a song that helped Regulus remember. 

Regulus can’t think of the melody now, but it’ll come back to him. 

“Oi, kid!”

His head snaps towards his right, watching as a woman sitting underneath one of the bridges is now leaning towards him, one of her hands slightly raised. She waves him over, and Regulus’ feet have no choice but to comply. The ache of the tiredness in his muscles is far too deep for him to even attempt running away. 

There’s a small fire set out in front of where she’s sitting next to a sleeping woman, but even though Regulus’ fingers feel practically numb from the cold, he stays as far as possible as he can from the flames. Still, he can’t keep his eyes off of it. His fingers are itching to snap again, just to see if he can still do it. Just to see if that monster that came out of him at the bar is still there, if it’s still lurking beneath Regulus’ skin.

“I won’t bite,” she grins, watching as he approaches. He looks everywhere but at her face. Then, her voice softens slightly. “Are you all alone out here?”

He nods, eyes stuck back on the small flame. Just looking at it makes his arms itch. It would be beautiful if it wasn’t for everything else that comes with it. Regulus wonders if the women here know how dangerous it is. If they’ve seen it the way Regulus has and still accept it for what it is. 

“How old are you?”

“Five,” he mumbles. He doesn’t know when he’d turn six. He doesn’t know if it matters anymore. Harry’s the only one who would’ve cared to keep track.

“You cold?”

He shrugs, still looking at the open flame.

“You can go warm yourself up.”

At that, he does look at her. She’s still watching him, a vaguely concerned expression on her face. 

“By the fire. Just put your hands near it.” She leans towards it, taking her hands and holding them out in front of her, palms facing the fire. “Like this. Go on.”

Regulus hesitates, unwrapping his arms from around him. He stares at his palms, between the two different textures of skin, then at the flame. He can see her watching him out of the corner of his eye. Maybe she’ll look away from him if he puts his hands there. 

He hates the way that the warmth feels nice against his hands.

“Better?”

He nods simply. He wonders if his hands would burn if he put them into the flame now. Some distant part of his mind tells him that they would, but he doesn’t know if he believes it. He doesn’t know if he can believe much of anything it tells him anymore.

“I’m Dona.” She sniffles, then notions to the woman passed out on her shoulder. “This is El.”

Regulus’ eyes flicker between the two of them.

“What’s your name?”

He doesn’t want a lack of a response to make her upset. “Regulus.”

A small smile flickers onto her face. “That’s a nice name. You can stay the night here, if you’d like, but El and I are leaving early in the morning. Headed over to France, that is. Have you ever been? You’ve got that sort of look to you.”

Regulus doesn’t know what that means, but he shakes his head. 

“Shame,” she says, shrugging. “Maybe one day, then. I’m about to head off to sleep, but don’t worry about everybody else down here. Usually, we all just keep to our own, so you won’t get jumped in the middle of the night.”

He watches as she glances over to the woman next to her, brushing a piece of El’s hair out of her face and smiling softly before shifting to rest her head on hers. She closes her eyes, not looking towards Regulus again, and he welcomes the relief that comes with it.

He doesn’t know how long he stares at her. Even when he sits down next to the fire, his gaze sticks to the two women, watching how they breathe in sync. He’s glad Dona didn’t ask him to go with her. He doesn’t know what he would’ve said she did. Quite frankly, he’s not sure if he knows what exactly France is, much less if he’d have any reason to go there.

The idea of leaving the city behind feels wrong. It’s the only place he’s ever known, and it’s not as if he’d know his way around anywhere else. With his luck, he’d get lost and freeze to death by winter. And there it is again--the pushing of memories against the back of his head that bleed through just enough that he knows there’s such a thing as winter, yet he has no recollection of ever actually experiencing it. He rubs his hands across his face, trying to wipe the tiredness from his eyes. What else is there to do now? Just wait for someone to find him? 

Regulus is tempted to turn around and stare at the lake behind him instead, but he doesn’t have the energy for it. Instead, he lays on his side, still watching the fire slowly flickering in front of them as he curls his legs up towards his chest. His eyes move from the fire to his right hand, lain limply on the ground in front of him, and his thoughts flash back to his handprint burned into wood. He picks up his hand, turning it over and slowly moving his thumb and middle finger together. There’s a moment when the world around him halts and the fire suddenly stops flickering, but he sighs and lets his hand fall to the ground instead, and everything resumes.

He can’t see the stars from underneath the bridge. He hadn’t realized how often he’d look up at them, even through the crack in the curtains in his bed, but now that they’re gone, he can feel the weight of the absence sinking in his chest.

He closes his eyes, attempting to push his thoughts deep enough into his mind to where he can fall asleep. It barely works. They keep slipping through the cracks, pressing against the backs of his eyelids. He doesn’t notice he’s crying until the tears start to seep through the sleeve of his shirt. He tucks his face into the crook of his elbow, muffling his sobs so that Dona and El don’t wake. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do without Harry. He was Regulus’ one guiding light in the world. The one person who saw him for who he was and made an effort to really know him. And Regulus killed him. He never really deserved to have him in the first place. He should’ve just stayed away, ran when he had the first opportunity. Then Harry would still be alive, and Regulus wouldn’t be here wallowing in his own guilt.

The next thing he knows, he’s being shaken awake, Dona’s face slowly becoming clearer and clearer above him. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep, but now that he’s conscious, he can feel how heavily he’s breathing, how fast his heart is beating, the heavy sweat accumulated on his forehead. 

“Regulus?” She shakes him again. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re awake. It wasn’t real, you’re out of it now.”

He blinks, swallowing thickly and looking around to find El staring at him, a concerned frown on her face. His eyes flicker back to Dona, and she motions for him to breathe. He tries, but it just ends with him coughing.

The nightmare’s flooding back into his mind now, threatening to send him back into a fit of tears. There were so many eyes, all staring at him, ripping him into pieces. They dragged him out of his bed, carrying him away as he helplessly clawed at the ground for something to hold onto, but there was nothing there except Harry collapsed on the ground, staring lifelessly at him in front of the ruins of the only home he’s ever known. 

A sob breaks through Regulus' throat. They keep coming, one after the other, and he tries to curl in on himself, but Dona wraps her arms around him, running her hand up and down his back until his breathing slows down. 

Dona leans over and says something to El, but Regulus’ head is pounding so horribly that he can’t make out what any of the words mean. He has the vague urge to scratch at his ears, to just rip them off so he doesn’t have to deal with the influx of noise his brain is trying to process.

“Regulus?”

He tries to duck his head towards his knees, but a hand gently lifts his chin. He moves away from it and attempts to stand, but he does nothing but trip over his feet and end up on the ground again. He stares at Dona and El, the two of them knelt on the ground before him, but he refuses to look either one of them in the eye, instead staring at the spot between their shoulders. He needs them to turn away from him, to stop looking at him like that. He curls his hands into fists, pressing them close to his sides. He can’t hurt them, too. He can’t turn them into another pair of dead eyes--he can’t. 

Dona slowly moves towards him, but she stops as soon as she sees him back away. He shakes his head, and she nods slowly, moving backwards. “What do you need from us?” She asks softly.

He shakes his head again. 

Regulus watches out of the corner of his eyes as Dona turns to El. The other woman shakes her head and whispers something back to her, but Regulus is far too distracted to hear it. His eyes are stuck to something else now. The fire’s gone out. It’s dead. Nothing remains where it was except a few sticks and a small circle of stones. 

Dona looks away from El and back to him, shrugging off the other woman’s hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to come with us?”

“Dona.”

She gives El a pointed look.

Regulus lifts his head to stare at her. She looks back towards them, and he finches away as their eyes meet. He begins to stand, shaking his head as he walks backwards away from them. 

Dona rises to her feet, taking a tentative step towards him. “Regulus, we can help you.”

El places a hand on her shoulder, cutting in front of her path. “Dona, you’re pregnant , we can’t--”

Neither of them are looking at him anymore, instead focused on the other. Regulus turns on his heel and runs.

He hears a voice shouting his name behind him, and he almost makes it to the railing before there’s a hand on his shoulder, pulling him backwards and catching him before he’s able to fall down the small hill. His head snaps back to see El standing there, though she doesn’t look like she necessarily wants to be. She glances back at what Regulus assumes to be Dona and then back at him, lowering her voice. “Look, you don’t want to go with us, do you?”

Regulus is frozen, staring up at her light green eyes.

She raises a brow. “Do you?”

He shakes his head. He wants to run. He wants to keep running, to shake her off of his shoulders and keep going until his legs give out.

“Just convince her of that first, and then you can go,” El says, her eyes flickering across Regulus’ face. “Please.” She tentatively lets go of Regulus’ shoulders, stepping away awkwardly and glancing back at Dona for the second time, who Regulus can now see is staring at the two of them. El looks back at Regulus, and his feet start moving him towards Dona, though really it’s just a way to get out from underneath El’s gaze.

Dona’s bitting her lip when he gets there. Her eyes are tired, and it’s all the more reason for Regulus to refuse to look in them again. “Regulus?” she asks, bending down to get on his level. “Do you want to come with us? I promise we’ll--”

“No.” It’s a quiet answer, but he says it. Dona’s mouth softly closes, and she purses her lips.

“Are you sure? Do you have anywhere else to go?”

He nods, then looks back towards the city. Every part of his body is screaming at him to run.

He watches Dona glance up helplessly above her, then back towards Regulus. “We were going to take the train this afternoon, over by--”

He shakes his head, and Dona stops. He wants to go with them. The idea of her wanting him to come along with them so badly, of trying so hard to convince him would make his chest rise with joy if it had happened the week prior. But if it had happened a week prior, then the first words that would have come out of his mouth would have been if Harry could come, too. That’ll never be possible now, and it’ll always serve as a reminder. Regulus can’t kill them, too.

“I have somewhere,” he mumbles.

Dona sighs, looking at him as if she doesn’t believe it. “You do?”

He nods, biting back the bile threatening to rise up his throat. “I have a brother.” Had.

Her shoulders relax slightly. “Where is he?”

Regulus shrugs. “We had a fight. I have to go back before he gets worried.”

She watches him for another second, then slowly stands. “You know the way?”

He nods.

El walks over to Dona and wraps her hands around her arm, giving her a soft look. Dona meets her eyes and sighs, running a hand through her hair. “Right.” She looks back at Regulus. “I hope it goes well with him, then.”

Regulus barely nods his thanks before turning towards the railing. This time, when his walk slowly picks up into a run, no one’s there to pull him back. It shouldn’t sting when it doesn’t come. He ducks underneath the metal bar again and stares blankly at the procession of cars crossing back and forth along the street in front of him. At some point, a light turns red and his feet begin to carry him forward, but he hardly registers it.

That’s all he does that day. He walks through the city and passes people by, not quite looking at any of them. It’s what he does for the next day, and the next after that. He spends nights tucked into alleyways, huddled into a ball of his own warmth to keep from freezing. 

He often lays there, staring up at the sky when he doesn’t want to fall asleep. He hates the nightmares. They’re there like clockwork every time he tries to close his eyes, and they do nothing for him but draw attention and create nosebleeds. Even when his eyelids feel as though they’re carrying the weight of the sun, he holds them open with his fingers just to keep from falling asleep. It doesn’t always work, though, and on those nights, he always wakes up in a puddle of his own sweat, shivering from the cold around him.

His stomach hasn’t stopped screaming for food. He hadn’t realized it when he was at the bar, but it’s a lot harder to get than he thought. He’s been relying on scraps he’s been able to pick from dumpsters--specifically out from one behind a bagel shop near the edge of the city. They have to reset their supply every day, so they’ve always got fresh ones out, and Regulus risks the security a few times a week to stock up as much as he can. There’s not always a lot when he gets there; after all, there are dozens of people in the city in the same situation he is, and they’re a lot bigger.

He sees them, sometimes, when he’s walking about, that same look in their eyes that he sees reflected up at him in puddles when it rains. He sometimes wonders if the eyes follow them around, too, but he doubts it. As far as he knows, he’s the only one that’s been cursed the way he has.

He swore to himself that he’d never try it again a few days after the bridge, but as the weeks drag on and the temperature keeps dropping, it’s becoming harder and harder to resist. It’s November when he finally cracks. He’s pressed against a dumpster with a flimsy blanket covering his knees, and he can barely feel his face. He had a horrible day--he’s barely eaten anything and woke up with blood pouring down the side of his face. He overheard someone at a telephone booth mentioning something about snow, and now that he’s staring up at the sky, he can’t comprehend surviving the night if it does.

He wishes it hurts when the fire returns, but instead, it just sits there, in his open palm. There’s a different sort of pain that rakes through his mind at the sight of it, and just looking at the flame feels like it’s burning through his mind. It’s as if dozens of eyes simultaneously hone in on him, staring at him so intensely that soon enough, they’ll melt him down to his core. He doesn’t push it any further than that. He knows he wouldn’t be able to control it if it did--it’s either nothing or everything. Another part of him savors the moment, savors the pain. He should be reminded of it. He should have to feel the same pain he gave to them all, and this is his punishment. 

He pushes the blanket off of him with his other hand, kicking it into a small bundle and then slowly lowering the flame towards it. As soon as the blanket catches on fire, he slams his fist shut. He then scrapes his open palm against the ground as if it’ll get rid of the trace of what he just did. Still, the feeling lingers, itching up his arm, and it’s enough to send him to his feet and a few meters away, where he deposits his already mostly empty stomach onto the ground. He groans and wipes his mouth, staring at the small puddle of liquid on the ground. He turns around and watches as the blanket burns. His hands are shaking when he sits down again, and he holds them up against the fire. It sends a relief so great through his body that it hurts. 

When he falls asleep that night, the nightmares are worse than they ever have been. He wakes up so sharply that he manages to hit his head against the building he’s leaned next to. It sends spots of black dancing around his vision for such a long time that he hardly registers that it’s still night. The blanket’s no longer burning by then, but he has nothing to do but roll over and close his eyes again. He deserves the nightmares. There’s nothing he can do to stop them.

It becomes a habit. He draws on the fire every night, and every night he hates himself more because of it. He’s keeping himself alive with the thing that killed a dozen people. The thing that killed Harry. 

It’s the only reason he survives the winter.

When that year slips into the next, he decides he’s turned six. The fireworks mark the occasion, and he spends the night staring up at them, wondering just how far off the date actually is. He sure doesn’t feel six.

By the time it rolls around to spring, he’s gotten himself into a pattern. He wakes up near the bagel shop every morning, slipping around the back to find what they put in there the night before. No one’s out there checking for people before the sun has risen, so he can slip himself enough food to last for the day. He walks around the city for most of the day, trailing further and further away from the center. One of these days, he’s tempted to nick enough money off of someone to buy a train ticket and travel far away from it. He used to feel a sense of obligation to stay there, but slowly, over time, it’s grown into nothing but resentment. The city’s just one more thing that hates him, and the feeling is mutual. 

He’s only properly stolen something once--a toothbrush and toothpaste set from a store--but the urge only grows the more time he spends there. It’s hard to resist it when he sees booths with fresh fruit and clothes being set up everywhere across the city. He’s growing quickly enough that he needed to shed his old pair of clothes months ago, but the replacement also came from a dumpster, and it’s ripped in several different places. The only things he has that are perfectly reliable now are his shoes; he found the pair discarded in one of the small playgrounds around the city and took them before anyone could say otherwise. They’re a bit small on him, but far more comfortable than anything else he has. 

When summer hits, Regulus has no use for the flame anymore and he tucks it away into the back of his mind. It’s a day in early June when he steals something from the market. It’s just an apple, but as soon as he bites into it, it’s as if a chain reaction sets off in his mind and suddenly it’s as normal as breathing to just take something off of a stall and place it into his pocket. He gets caught quite a few times, but he always manages to slip away into some odd part of the city where they can’t easily follow him. All the time he’s spent memorizing the place finally has a purpose, and it’s all the more reason to keep going. 

By the end of July, it comes as easy as breathing to him. He can walk down the street and slip his fingers into pockets and purses, leaving their owners none the wiser. He knows it shouldn’t come so easily to him, but he hates the thought that it has something to do with whatever it is inside of him that produces the flame. He wants it to be his own talent, his own ability, so he ignores the part of him that reasons that it can’t be. 

The anniversary of the day arrives that August. He spends the entire day rotting away on the ground where he slept the night before. 

Even though time has passed, the nightmares haven’t gotten any better. They still plague his sleep, and he wakes most mornings with his throat raw. 

That day is one of the worst. He’d woken with his nose bleeding again, though that’s hardly rare, and barely wipes it away before a splitting headache cuts across his thoughts and he’s forced to lay motionless on the ground. Really, he’s thankful for it. It gives him a reason to stay there. Some distant part of him wants to find the bar again, to see what became of it a year after he burned it to ruins, but the pain that the thought brings him is too much for his mind to follow through with. His stomach twists over itself with the lack of food, yet he still doesn’t move. When tiny droplets of rain begin to fall over his face, all he can bring himself to do is close his eyes. As the rain picks up, he lays in the puddle it creates and hopes it’ll somehow swallow him into the ground. 

It’s almost disappointing when he opens his eyes the next day to find the sun shining low in the sky. It’s officially been more than a year without Harry. He still feels the same he did the day before, and the day before that. It’s wrong.

He picks himself up off the ground, running a hand through his hair to sort out the mess of his curls. His mind barely registers what his feet are doing until he’s stood in front of an ice cream shop. The one Harry took him to.

Regulus reaches into his pockets, pulling out a few coins. He’d taken them off of a man a few days ago at the park nearby.

The door opens with the faint ringing of the bell. The girl across the counter leans over it and frowns down at him, glancing at the closing door for a few seconds before looking back at him. “Where’re your parents?”

“Chocolate.” He points to the sign on the glass in front of him. When he shifts his eyes over to her, he finds her still staring at him in a mixture of concern and confusion. Regulus forces his mouth back open. “My dad’s walking around outside. He gave me these.” He digs into his pockets and conjures up the coins.

The girl blinks, her mouth falling open as she leans away from him. “Right. Um…” she glances behind her, then back at him. “That’ll be two shillings and five pence, then.”

He’s not sure if he identifies the coins properly, but he separates what he thinks the amount is and places it on the counter. She continues to stare at him as she picks up the coins,  only averting her eyes to count them. She ends up handing one back to him.

A few minutes later, he’s walking out of the shop with a chocolate ice cream cone in hand.

Regulus goes around to the side of the building and sits down against it. He licks up a thin path on his hand where a stream of ice cream was melting down it. It’s somehow better than he remembered it being. 

He leans his head against the warm stone wall, shutting his eyes and pretending that all is right in the world again, that Harry’s just inside and he’ll be out in a few minutes. 

Within the hour, he’s crossing the street, alone. He doesn’t look back, even if every part of his body wants to cling to it and never let go. He won’t go back there again. 

His feet take him to the train station. It feels wrong to actually pick somewhere to go, so he lets fate decide. When he steps foot inside the dimly lit building, dozens of people milling around, he decides that the first ticket he can steal off of someone is where he’ll go. He can’t spend another year in London, not with everything that hangs over the city. Maybe--just maybe--if he travels far enough away, the eyes will leave him behind. 

It’s right when he’s headed towards the bathroom that he sees his perfect opportunity: a rather unpleasant looking woman with short curly blonde hair rummaging around her purse and murmuring under her breath near the entrance, a ticket visibly sticking out of the corner of her pocket. He walks right past her, slipping the piece of paper into his sleeve as he heads into the bathroom and enters the first stall he finds. He shuts it, presses his back against it, then slides the paper out of his shirt. He reads the name on it carefully, feeling a sort of weight settle in his chest. 

Cokeworth.