Dear Reggie,
It may sound selfish but Iām glad I made it out. The thought of what more could have happened if I stayed scares me. It really scares me reg. maybe I would have made a different decision in another life, but not this one. it couldnāt be this one. Iām only sorry for how it went down. How I let you drift away from me into some stranger, except not a stranger, because a stranger doesnāt hold your life in their hands and your memories in their heart. I could see it every time I saw you walking down the hall, this supposedly empty vessel, instead filled with another life that I longed to forget but couldnāt. Because how can you forget your origin? the first place you knew, the longest, the most memorable. the thing is you canāt. I hope you know that. I hope you know that even though I didnāt show it, I never stopped thinking about youānever stopped loving you. because Reggie leaving you would be leaving myself. itās impossible. itās impossible because I couldnāt even consider myself me anymore. Iād be nothing.
I'm sorry. You're probably wondering why the fuck Iām writing to you now after all this time, in the climax of a war. you probably wonāt reach this part, with how Iāve started this. itās shit, I know. maybe you burned the letter the moment you received it and I wouldnāt blame you. but if you did and you have I want you to know donāt be a stranger Reggie. I know weāve chosen different sides of this war, that we could never get along on that topic. But I wantāneedāyou to know that if you ever showed up on my doorstep Iād welcome you with open armsāhave been ready to for the past 5 years ago. the only difference is this time Iām making sure you know before itās too late. I know you may think it already is, but itās not reg. itās never too late, especially at how young we are.
If we canāt fix this abomination of a mess weāve made in this life, I hope in the next we have the opportunity to do better. I hope we get what we may never be capable of having in this one.
Your brother, Sirius
Ā
Regulus wants to scream, cry, smile, rip the letter to shreds until it is nothing but dust particles he becomes envious of for how gracefully and freely they can simply float far far away. He hates Sirius, he does. Nobody can make him as angry and hateful as Sirius. But despite that, he wants a Sirius hug. A Sirius hug might not solve any problems right nowāit may even cause moreābut he wants one. He desperately tries to remember the way Sirius' hugs felt when they were young. When his touch didnāt scald and tear and sink. He remembers the way his small arms seemed to swallow him whole, like a blanket leading to another world rather than a monster, shoving him down a dark hole towards rot and pain and sorrow. The way his head rested against Siriusās neck because at that time Regulus was shorter. He had always been shorter. When did he get taller? He doesnāt remember. Maybe they werenāt talking. He wishes now they were. He wishes he could have watched that happen, could say he knew his brother over that period of time, rather than reuniting with some acquaintance and realizing something meaningless is different about them.
No matter how long he simply sits there and keeps imagining his body shrunk with Sirius' arms and body holding him up, it does nothing to make that cross from intangible to real.