Chapter 7
Blood. So much of it. There were smears of blood on the walls like they were spread by hand. The Grim Reaper stared at them and wondered how many lives it must have taken. How many of those lives he had walked past on the road, or bumped into on the street, or shared a laugh with about a joke.
In the back of his mind, he heard Starchaser fly in, the metal jets on his arm helping him angle himself as he zoomed into the scene. He carried Knight with him on his back, explaining why he was gasping and panting already. The hero hissed as the stench reached her nostrils.
WE OF TH E DEAT HE ATERS ALWAYS RI SE AG AIN
Over and over and over and over and over again. Getting bigger and messier. The blood getting darker as they layered the words again and again.
“Knight, try to avoid the Greek fire as you enter. Tell your operator to take as many pictures as they can. Mary’s called in the poison patrol and the forensics.” Starchaser took the lead immediately. “Pads, go patrol. See if there’s anything more around.”
Sirius turned his head towards James in surprise. Oh. Starchaser thought Sirius couldn’t cope with this. The blood, the hands that smeared them. He opened his mouth to try to protest and then closed it.
Because James was right. He couldn’t handle this. He didn’t have it in him.
A conversation from what felt like centuries ago crawled back up to him. Sirius with his hair shorter way back in highschool, his uniform unkept and his red tie loose around his neck. Two friends sitting next to him on the edge of the campus walls all sharing a smoke.
Peter coughs out as he smokes a cigarette for the first time. He doesn’t normally smoke but to see his only two friends go off on smoke breaks in between classes and in the middle of the night and come back with seven new inside jokes makes him determined to take back his right to sit among them.
Padfoot had to admit, he missed the certain privacy those smoke breaks held. He brought the cigarette close to his mouth and took a puff.
“Since when did you paint your nails black?” Pete asked.
“Since right now.” He replied carelessly, too busy in the relaxation in his body as he let out a puff of smoke.
Years later, he would smoke with all kinds of people, his hero mate Marlene McKinnon, his favourite mentor Minerva McGonagall, men he met in bars and friends he made in trenches.
Years later, he would be hurt in a way that would leave him to be commanded to never smoke again. His lungs too badly bruised and beaten.
But at the moment he was smoking in between classes on his high school’s walls with two of his only friends as a way to piss off his parents.
The sun shines brightly on the three as they sit relaxed watching the cloudless sky infinitely wrapped above them. The spot was perfect with the trees near the school building concealing them from the teachers’ view. It wasn’t very easy to climb, involving them having to soundlessly grip the side gates of the school and lift themselves up to reach the high walls where they would have to balance themselves walking carefully until they reached the point where they could be hidden perfectly.
It was also the spot the three would use to hop off of on school nights past curfew to hit the district and find new ways to ruin the prep school’s reputation. Sirius would always climb up and feel himself smile as he saw his friend waiting for him, always there before him somehow under the shadow of the trees.
Sirius’s legs bounced one after the other repeatedly until his friend reached his hand to grip his leg above the spot of his knee, as if pointedly avoiding his thigh.
“Stop being so jittery. The point of smoking is to relax, moron.” A voice he would later begin to forget snapped at him.
Butterflies gathered in his stomach. He felt like he could feel the boy’s large hand through his jeans on his leg.
“My mom would kill me if she knew I was smoking.” Pete laughed nervously.
“There’s kids out there doing worse shit.” His friend said, snuffing out his previous cigarette and taking out his lighter to light a new one.
“Wouldn’t your parents be upset about this?” Peter asked.
“Eh. My dad already knows, we smoked together once.” He casually answers.
“Smoking? With your father?” Peter’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“My dad and uncle smoke the pipe, but I would never share a smoke with them.” Sirius hopped in on the conversation.
“So they’re ok with you smoking while skipping class?” Peter asked.
“Absolutely not. They would completely ignore me when I bring up the pipe and lose their heads about it.” He had said.
“Your family’s just a bunch of freaks. Why would they punish you for doing what they’re doing?” Remus had asked half-heartedly, his hand reaching back to Sirius’s leg again when he moved them without knowing.
“I started smoking to piss them off. My mum found my stash last time I was at home and freaked out thinking it was my dad. I chickened out of telling her it was me.” Sirius remembered.
His mind wasn’t really on the conversation though. Remus’s hand was on his thigh this time, squeezing it gently as if to give reassurance. Heat rose to his face as he pretended not to notice. Peter snuffed out his cigarette next to them with a cough, making them both miss the privacy of sitting here alone together. The bated breaths thinking something could happen at any moment. A glance that would last too long or laughter that would waiver into something else.
Instead there sat the three of them. Trying to pretend it was a normal day at school.
“You should get a job that’ll piss them off. The career counsellor's been begging us to hand in our career reports. You should just put a job they would fucking despise on there.” Remus suggested.
Sirius snorted.
“What would I put on there? Stripper?” He retorted.
“You’ll make a fairly decent stripper. But you’ll also get yelled at by the career counsellor.” Pete laughed.
“She says she’s supportive of every career and then disapproves of my lifelong dream of stripping for money! How does that make her a good counsellor?” He exclaimed overdramatically in a high-pitched voice.
The joke wasn’t even funny, albeit the three of them cackled like madmen.
“A hero maybe? You said your family hated the Hero Organisation.” Peter recommended after some thought.
“Do they?” Remus asked, surprised.
“Not for any good reason.” He grumbled, “My family’s not interested in development or whatever. They just hate the thought of people trying to do something about all the villains roaming around.”
“So they hate the police too? What about vigilantes?” Remus queried, overly curious in a way that made Sirius uncomfortable.
“Yes. Everybody who is not themselves.” He shut the lankier boy down in his eagerness to change the topic, “What would I have to do to research hero work here?”
The prep school had a decent-sized library but the hero-section had been kept under locks as a forbidden place under the new bitchy headmistress they had gotten.
“Nah. Hero work doesn’t suit you. You’d faint like a dramatic goth in black and white movies at the first sight of blood.” Peter sighed.
“Ouch?” Sirius said uncertainly, not sure where that thought process came from.
Did Pete really think Sirius Black was that sensitive over everything?
“True. Vigilantism would piss off your parents more but you can’t write that in your report. I don’t think either job would suit you.” Remus agreed.
“Excuse me?” Sirius flipped his head so hard his hair slapped Peter in the face.
“What? It’s the truth. You’d die of slipping and falling in a hero battle.”
Sirius felt blood rush to his ears. They’d all bantered easily but the way his friends had claimed hero work wasn’t something Sirius was capable of in genuinity dug a hole in his ego.
The next day he talked his way into the forbidden section to gather information. The next week Remus dropped out of the prep school. The next month Sirius handed in his flawless report and the next year he found himself on top of the world as he enrolled in one of the best hero training programmes.
The next many years later, he realised what his friends said was true. He wasn’t made for this hero training job. He wasn’t made to save the day with flashy powers or appear on the news after defeating another huge threat to the world.
He leaped from rooftop to rooftop in a haze. His ears were ringing from the blood pounding through it. Mary never came back to help him operate, which he didn’t notice until his mind was dragged out of his past and placed into the eerily silent present.
“Mary? Are you there?” He uttered carefully.
Grim Reaper hadn’t realised how long he’d been quiet until his voice had reached this certain awkwardness.
The area he was in felt oddly isolating despite the number of police cars stampeding into the district, the police officers instructing the civilians to head back into their homes and dorms but never informing them why, lest they cause a ruckus.
He felt a shiver run down his spine along with the sensation that someone was looking at him. He snapped around but he could only see the shadows warp around him.
“Moony get the fuck out of here.” He shot a shot in the dark, assuming the vigilante was hanging around.
A moment’s pause and nothing really seemed to change. The hero sighed and hoped that Lunaire, if he had been there, understood him and left.
He heard footsteps in the back of his earpiece and almost called out Mary’s name. But something made him pause.
That was not Mary.
“Hello Grim Reaper. A shame to not face you in person, but I do think a call would suffice for now.”
The voice of Agamemnon echoed in his earpiece as the air turned freezing cold again.