“Hello Reggie,” Sirius said with a smile. Clenching down on his fists to stop them from shaking.
He didn’t receive a response but that was okay. When it was just the two of them he didn’t need one. They didn’t need words in the same ways others did.
“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to visit,” Sirius said suddenly feeling bashful. James was right, he should have come sooner. He hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t thought it was right. Yet here he was, maybe he was always going to come and it had just taken him time to get there. Too long it seemed, the air was off. It wasn’t the way he imagined it and it was all his fault if he was being honest.
“I brought lemon cakes, they were your favourites. I’m not sure if they still are but hopefully you don’t hate them,” He hated the way his voice sounded. As if he was talking to a stranger, not his blood, not his brother, not his little star. He didn’t know how to do this. How to be this way.
Sirius felt his nerves wrack through him, he hadn’t planned to be like this. So defective, avoiding the issue at hand. There was so much to say yet all the words had left him. It was like he was experiencing it all behind a veil. He could see his goal in sight but it was just too clouded. A bit blurred, just enough of a mess that he couldn’t understand how to get there.
“Fuck I’m sorry,” Sirius fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a cigarette. He had been trying to quit recently, prolong his health and what not but desperate times call for desperate measures.
It had been seven years since he had lived with his brother and four since they had last talked in person. It felt awkward in a way it had never been. He didn’t know what to do in this instance anymore. Was he supposed to cry?
He had felt like crying before coming, but he couldn’t. Something about Regulus made him want to shut off his emotions. When he was younger it used to be because he wanted to protect Regulus from dealing with his emotions, as unpredictable as they were. Their mother had been a constant swirl, unstable and hard to deal with on her good days. Sirius had thought stability was the better approach. It had taken a few years for him to realise that that had probably done more harm than good.
Now, shutting off his emotions when it came to Regulus was the only way he could cope. There was too much buried there. Years of words unsaid, words that would never be said. Could never be said because Sirius didn’t know what they were. He didn’t know what he was doing or why he was even doing this.
No one had asked him to come. Narcissa had actually told him to stay away. Told him that he wasn’t welcome, she blamed him. Sirius didn’t think that was unfair of her to be honest. He blamed himself most nights. He looked over every action he had taken since the moment Regulus had been born. He wasn’t sure how to look at it.
He couldn’t pinpoint a moment, the moment where it had all gone wrong. Had it been when he ran away? Or had it been when Regulus said and it was when he saw James as his brother? Or maybe there wasn’t a specific moment in mind.
Maybe they were always meant to be this. Like their stars, always observable, always in distance. Just never reaching.
Fuck, now Sirius was truly crying. Crying into the night air, with no one to hear him but his little brother. Not that Regulus would do anything. Before Regulus was anything he was a stubborn little shit. He wouldn’t say anything until he was damn ready. Which meant Sirius could be stood there forever and Regulus would stay perfectly still.
“I wouldn’t be here if wasn’t for that letter, fuck you for guilting me into coming here.” Sirius said, feeling anger. “I don’t know why you wrote it? Who writes letters anymore? Too scared to say it to my face, little Reggie?”
Sirius scoffed, throwing his cigarette on the ground. If Regulus wasn’t such a silent idiot Sirius would be getting a lecture on the environment.
“Not like you ever cared about the environment,” Sirius muttered, tapping his foot against the ground and looking around to see if anyone was watching there.
There was an old man holding a bouquet, Sirius had seen him the last time he and Regulus had tried to meet up. Sirius had only made it halfway before turning around and leaving. He hadn’t bothered with an explanation because none was asked for.
“I don’t see why you bothered pretending to care,” Sirius shouted now, not caring who heard him. “You were just doing it to convince your stupid little girlfriend that you weren’t the heartless freak we both know you were. I don’t care if you claim she wasn’t, she was the only person bothered by your pathetic self. You may look more like our father but let’s be honest you were our mother on the inside. Fake as fake can be,”
Still no response, Sirius felt his anger build. He felt the scream coming out of him rather than heard it. It was raw, from the deepest parts of the soul, unlike anything he had done before. He felt it gone on for ages, running his throat into the ground and taking everything out of him.
It felt like forever before he stopped, before he was too tired to go on. He couldn’t help it before he crashed down to the ground. Sitting down on the grass below him he couldn’t help but notice how soft it was. How Regulus, ever prim and proper, probably loved it.
That’s probably why he picked it. Not that Sirius had cared about the location. He only wanted to talk. To understand, to do something other than drink until he couldn’t remember how he got the bottle in the first place.
“We could make a deal you know,” Sirius said with a pitiful face, he didn’t know what he was doing. Regulus had long made it clear that the only thing he had ever wanted was Sirius, but now that bridge had long been burned it seemed. But still that Sirius would try, because who wouldn’t? Regulus would never ask him to try, Sirius didn’t think he was capable of it. But he had to try, he had to because he was the older brother. It was his job. It was the one thing he was good at. Trying.
“I’ll give you anything you want, you don’t even have to speak, just come with me,” Sirius pleaded, the tears running freely from his eyes now. He didn’t even bother to wipe them away, not that or the snot. Despite how disgusted it made the both of them. “It’ll be like the old days, we can do anything we want. Just like we dreamed of. We can run away to a castle in Germany or Italy if you want somewhere warm. Or better yet we’ll build our own and no one will bother us there.”
Sirius did his best to smile but it felt wrong. Like somehow had grabbed his face and painted it on. He couldn't hold it for long. Although that may be because he was tired. He had spent the entire night preparing himself to come. Remus had offered to join him, so had James but it was actually Peter who had helped him the most.
Peter who had looked at him once and saw that he couldn’t handle the attention. Who understood that James and Remus had wanted to help him. But knew that Sirius had to do this on his own. That he was the only to move forward with it all.
Which was why Sirius had come alone, because it was fair. Had he come with the others Regulus would never talk to them. Despite the potential for them all to be close, Sirius knew the truth. Regulus would never see them as ‘theirs’ they would always be ‘Sirius’ friends’. Too marked by him for Regulus to feel he had any right. Perhaps, when he was younger he would have felt the same way. Possessive, not wanting to share. Too scared to risk being replaced, or being the one who didn’t belong. But not anymore, now he would gladly let Regulus steal everything he had, if only because he would have to steal it from Sirius to do so.
He was always considerate like that. Too unwilling to impose on anyone else. Not wanting to be the brightest star, not even on the nights when only he should be visible. The true heart of the lion it seemed. The only person who could break Sirius and put him back together again when he felt like it. Or more accurately he wouldn’t even realise what he was doing.
No, Regulus was a force of nature. Wild and unpredictable in his own way. Only a few trained enough to understand him. Once Sirius considered himself an expert. But they wouldn’t be here if he was. They wouldn’t be like this if he was. He would have solved it all.
“Why did you do it?” Sirius asked. He remembered getting the phone call. It had been days after. There had been screaming and shouting, he didn’t understand why he was so late to know. There had been more when he realised that no one thought to tell him.
No one thought he would care it seemed.
It was a fair assessment to him. He had left the family with Regulus in it. He was just the star who found his way into a new constellation. Why should he have been the first to know? When had he been the first to know anything in such a long time?
Sirius hadn’t believed it. He thought it was a joke, a prank, some sick karma against him. He thought that perhaps there was something sinister at play.
It had been so out of character for Regulus that he hadn’t expected it to happen.
Water.
A cruel taunt to them both. A childhood dream, to swim, to race boats and do all the things the other children had been allowed to. But Blacks didn’t disgrace themselves in public pools.
Sirius had promised that he would wait for Regulus so they could learn together. But the first summer he snuck over to the Potters there was a big lake. Everyone was in it and Sirius Black was not one to be left out. So he had learned. Forced himself to do so in an hour.
He had come back to Regulus apologetic. Only noticing on his way back that he had broken their oh so sacred promise. He had tried to make amends, to tell Regulus it was better that way now. To tell him that he would be able to teach him now.
It didn’t matter though, not to Regulus. He didn’t care about the situations or the circumstances. All he saw was a broken promise. Another way in which their lives had been drifting apart.
Maybe that had been the beginning of the end. Or perhaps it was merely the end of the beginning. The moment where it should have been clear, where Sirius should have noticed that it was gone. It was gone and it was never coming back.
“I would have come if you called you know,” Sirius said, all the fight had left him and it felt like his mouth was just saying his thoughts. Not the words he had rehearsed on the way there, not the carefully practised speech he had wanted to get through for it all to be over. No, now he said what he could because what was the point of hiding anymore. Of letting everything hide inside him. What was the point of any of it?
“I wouldn’t have cared. I didn’t mean what I said last time,” Sirius insisted “All it would have taken was one phone call, I promise,”
Sirius felt his words were hollow. Would he have come? Would he have even answered the phone once he saw who it was? Maybe that was the issue, Regulus could have called a thousand times and Sirius would not answer even once. It didn’t matter if it was true but it was how Regulus had felt and it was how they were now.
“I guess you don’t care,” Sirius said with a sigh, he forced himself to rise. It was beginning to rain and he promised Remus he would be home soon. “This isn’t the end of us though. I want you to know that I understand, I understand why you did it. I’ve thought about it myself enough times. I don’t blame you, if I didn’t have enough to keep going for I would have done the same. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, I wish I could have been more,”
Sirius looked at the pristine gravestone in front of him. It was a bright white, Sirius would have expected black but he supposed the white was more fitting. Regulus had always been pale, it made sense for his grave to match. There was an array of flowers there, a bouquet of white lilies from Narcissa he assumed and a mismatched from Pandora. He didn’t have to guess that one. She was the only person who would have bothered.
Sirius hadn’t brought any, he didn’t think it was right. Regulus was the one who thought of things like that. The cakes were good, but soon they would be left to the elements or someone more in need and there would be no proof that Sirius cared. Or at least cared enough to bring flowers it seemed. Sirius lived off the assumption that he would be enough, that he could be enough.
It didn’t seem that he was though.
Otherwise why would Regulus walk into the ocean? Walk in an wait to be washed ashore? Why would he do that when he had a brother who was enough for him?
Sirius would never know the answer. The letter he had left didn’t contain the most important answer. Nothing more than a simple goodbye and a signature.
Had he been waiting for someone to look for him? To find him before he did it?
It didn’t matter, he guessed. None of it mattered, he supposed. Regulus was gone and Sirius would never be able to let go of what could have been. An eternal game he would always lose.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Sirius said firmly, “Every day,”
He pressed his fingers to his lips then to the name on the gravestone before turning away. The words were already imprinted on his mind, he didn’t have to look to know what it said.
Here lies Regulus Black, Beloved Friend
An honest reminder that he hadn’t been enough.