~ can't breathe whenever you're gone, now i'm haunted ~
The storm that night seemes to echo the raging tempest inside Rhiannon Clark's own head, lightning crackling through the dark sky with a vengeance so palpable it almost makes the witch jump out of her skin. The sound of rain hitting the pavement below her apartment grows louder as the door is flung open.
"Reg?" Rhiannon breathes, in utter shock at the boy heaving in her doorway.
"Rhi, " Regulus Black shakes back the watery strands of hair that hung in his face, panting in exhaustion as he pushes past her into the house with an urgency she's never seen before, "We don't have much time."
"What do you mean?" A sick feeling of suspicion starts to creep into her stomach. Regulus leans against the table, the water from his robes dripping onto the dark hardwood floors beneath them. He's dressed in an inky black reminiscent of the robes associated with the skull and snake burned onto her left forearm. It's then that she realizes that Regulus isn't wearing his mask.
"You know what I mean." Regulus's grey eyes chill her to the bone, and the pale porcelain of his skin is suddenly stark against the dark room around them.
Something violently lurches in Rhiannon's stomach at his words, and she gasps, "No—"
"Kreacher has the original." Regulus swallows, deeply, and Rhiannon sees his impassive expression crack just a sliver, and anxiety flashes deeply in his gaze, "It's only a matter of time before he realizes what happened."
"You promised." Rhiannon chokes out. The world seems to spin around her as she grips the edge of a table, gasping, "You promised you wouldn't — what — why — "
"I had no choice." Regulus steps closer to her, but Rhiannon immediately flinches away at his touch, "You don't understand — the amount of lives he's planning to take—"
"So you barter away yours?!" Rhiannon cries, stepping back, "Are you insane?!"
"This is not a life, Rhiannon!" The boom of Regulus's scream echoes throughout the room, making her jump backward as though his words have burned her. And maybe they have, as the blood in her veins feels as though it's simmering with rage.
"What have you done?" She whispers, slumping into a chair as her voice cracks,.
Regulus's shoulders slump with a kind of defeat that's so unlike himself, the polar opposite of the proud, haughty look he usually wears. His face is gaunt, cheekbones sharp and cheeks hollow as she's ever seen them, but it makes him look devastatingly, tragically beautiful. An angel sent to his own death by defying a master who could vanish them all into a dark hell with a snap of his bony fingers. Rhiannon can scarcely breathe when he starts speaking, "I can't pretend to be blind to what the Dark Lord has forced us into anymore. These people — these muggle-borns — they've done nothing to us other than exist. He wants us to fall at his feet as he slaughters all of them and I just — I can't do it. I can't do what he's going to ask of me, of us. I don't want to be a pawn in his bloody game."
"So you're destroying the locket." The words don't even feel like they come out of Rhiannon's own mouth, "To what end?"
"To his." Regulus looks at her with a fire in his eyes that seems to make them burn from within, "One horcrux down means one more piece of him is gone. He'll eventually weaken and fall if the Chosen one arises like the prophecy foretells."
"And what if he doesn't?" Rhiannon demands, her voice rising higher as her hazel eyes flash with anger, "What if your brilliant plan doesn't work?"
There's a sudden silence between them, a moment where the tension in the air is so thick and heavy with grief that Rhiannon feels might choke her, suffocate her lungs and crush her windpipe with the weight of a thousand earths. Regulus finally sighs, "Then I want you to disappear before he can find you."
"You can't—" Rhiannon's voice cracks, and every muscle in her heart seems to splinter as she gasps, "Regulus, please — you can't do this — "
"It's already been done." Regulus's expression is pensive, contemplative almost. The tone of his voice is devoid of all emotion, making Rhiannon realize how disillusioned he must be, how much of his soul has been darkened by the blood forced on their hands, "I have a few days if I'm lucky."
"I hate you." Rhiannon croaks out, the tears now freely falling down her face. She's shaking, her hands trembling from the intensity of the pain that's eating into her like a parasite.
Regulus smiles, a sad, defeated smile that's so unlike the beautiful expression that usually enraptures his face in a way that makes her breath stop. He gently reaches forward, cupping her cheek in a tender way that makes something inside Rhiannon shatter to bits. A single tear runs down his cheek, "I know."
With his words, it feels like a chasm opens in Rhiannon's chest, and she screams, sobbing so violently that Regulus tightly wraps his arms around her as he too cries. The tempest swallows both of them whole, swirling around their entwined embrace until it feels like they're both suffocated in sorrow. And when he finally lets go, sniffling as the red bleeds into his eyes, Rhiannon fights to cling to him, desperate to hold onto what tangible bits of Regulus she can still feel, "I can't." She chokes, barely able to get the air back into her lungs, "I can't leave you here to die."
"You must." Regulus says, in a thick voice, as he presses his lips to her forehead, "The target on your back will be larger than mine."
"Why?" Rhiannon cries, looking up as hazel locks with silver, "Why are you doing this to yourself?"
Regulus looks down at her with a mixture of adoration and resignation, a painful combination that she feels just as deeply, "Because no one else should be forced to be where we were."
Their lips meet in an angry, grief-stricken collision that steals all the breath out of Rhiannon's lungs as she gasps, clinging to him with a renewed vigour. Regulus's arms wrap around her waist and back as he presses himself so close to her that it feels as though they're trying to merge into one. His touch feels like fire, burning his fingerprints into her soul while hers brands him all the same. He tastes of salt, whiskey and caramel and Rhiannon realizes that he must have drank to work up the courage to defy their master. The same nerve that she once swore would get them killed, only death has decided to claim him instead.
"I hope you know." Regulus chokes out, as their foreheads touch, their breaths mingling in the small space before them, "That the greatest privilege in my life has been to love you, Rhiannon Clark."
"I think you've ruined me." Rhiannon breathes, shivering as the tears trickle down her cheeks in the silent afterglow, "I — I don't think I'll ever love anyone the way I've loved you."
The world is not worthy of him, Rhiannon decides, when Regulus eventually leaves, walking off into the dark, calamitous night after he mutters a final, "I love you" against her lips. The ghost of his touch stays tattooed onto her skin for what feels like eons, a measure of the sacrifice he's made for the greater good. And when the news of his death finally reaches her a week later at a secluded villa on the Spanish coast, Rhiannon Clark's world caves in on itself all over again as a piece of her heart buries itself with Regulus Black.
this was an old fic idea i had in 2020 that got published on quotev before i deleted it out of anxiety. i'm probably never going to actually end up writing this, but i hope you love rhiannon & regulus as much as i do.