The Sixth Stage
Tonight is gonna be the loneliest
You’re still the oxygen I breathe
I see your face when I close my eyes
It’s torturous
Tonight is gonna be the loneliest
There’s a few lines that I have wrote
In case of death, that’s what I want
That’s what I want
Sirius exhales sharply, silent for what could be a moment or a minute. Then he bursts out laughing. “That's– that’s really funny Reg. I haven’t heard from you in… five? Six years? What were your last words to me? Shit, I can’t be bothered to remember. And now you call me just to taunt me with the one thing I want most in this life? And for what? A good old-fashioned giggle? Tell me, did you enjoy my panic-filled silence? Are Walburga and Orion sitting just behind you, are they laughing too?” Sirius is rambling, his brain not even catching on the fact to correct Regulus, not our mother but rather your. Because Walburga has never been Sirius’ mother.
“It was a good talk, brother. Nice hearing from you again.” Sirius scoffs. He lowers the phone from his ear to press that big red button and end the call, to edge Regulus and their crazy, dysfunctional family out of his life once more, but Regulus’ voice drifts up through the tinny phone speaker.
“Sirius, I’m not joking.” Sirius halts.
"For once in your life, will you stop treating life as if it’s one big game, or joke!” Regulus yells, and something in his voice makes Sirius look down in remorse. “Not everything is about you.” Regulus finishes, and the crack in the back of his throat feels like a slap across Sirius’ face.
He realises that no, this is not a joking matter. This is, for lack of better words, serious. Regulus sighs, clearing his throat as if he’s about to deliver a speech he’s practised in the mirror no less than a hundred times. Sirius listens silently, his stomach falling through the floor as Regulus explains.
"Mr. Kreacher was driving her back home from a meeting. They were crossing through an intersection, when a car came at them from the right side, where Mother was sitting in the back seat. She was killed instantly. Mr. Kreacher was badly injured as well. The police weren’t able to find anyone in the car that hit them. They think it was a targeted attack.” The rest of Regulus’ words are drowned out as a steady roar fills Sirius’ ears.
He only distantly hears Regulus give the details of the funeral, held Saturday at five, and suddenly everything comes back in crystal focus as he hears the man he once considered his brother say, “Father told me you weren’t to be invited, but I think you have just as much right to be there as any of us.”
There’s a slight pause, and then, as if admitting to some grievous crime, Regulus sighs, “I wish you would come. I want you there.”
There’s a long moment of thick silence where neither of them speak, and then another sigh and the tell-tale beep as Regulus hangs up and the connection is severed. Sirius goes into the recent calls tab and blocks his number.
Then, he sinks slowly to his knees on the floor, the knuckles on his left hand going white as he nearly crushes his cellphone in his grip.
His other hand fists into the carpet, and suddenly his vision is spinning, a kaleidoscope of colours floating behind his eyelids as he squeezes them shut, and a hand must be squeezing his trachea with the same force because he suddenly can’t breathe, and he’s sucking in lungfuls of air but they’re not working, and he hasn’t felt this way since fourteen years old, but he’s fighting back bile and the vomit edging its way up his throat, and it would have been easier to take if Regulus had just showed up at his flat and decked him in the face. There’s a pressure building at the back of his skull that makes him want to start throwing bricks, except his legs have stopped working and he can’t get up and he can’t breathe or–
A car horn sounds outside, and Sirius’ eyes fly open. Startled, he pushes to his feet, frowning at the carpet and wondering what the hell just happened. He blinks a few times, then notices the low battery warning blinking on his phone screen, and heads to his bedroom to plug it in.
His curtains are drawn shut, and the blankets are messy, and as he connects his charger it feels like someone just took a baseball bat to the back of his knees as they give out and he lets himself fall face-first onto his bed. He lies there for a few minutes, breathing in the smell of the cologne of the guy who was between his sheets last night, and then he gives in and crawls under the blankets.
He tells himself a nap will get his head back in order. A nap always helps.
~.~
Sirius doesn’t sleep. He lies on his side with the blankets cocooned around him and his gaze fixed on the far wall, trying to trace out the shapes on it and failing. He doesn’t notice the hours drifting by, and only gets up when swallowing starts feeling like shoving sandpaper down his throat. Sirius rolls over the blankets in one fluid motion, and heads to the kitchen, only detouring by the bathroom on the way there. His neighbour seems to be taking a shower, or just running the tap.
He couldn’t care less.
He makes his way into his kitchen, going robotically through the motions of opening the cabinet, pulling out a clean glass, and filling it from the tap.
He takes small, slow sips, gazing out at the city through the large picture window over his sink. The sun is setting, bathing everything in a sad glow. It was morning when Reg called him.
Sirius’ eyes drift down, settling onto the playground just next to the building. There’s a little kid on a swing, shouting something to his mother, who is pushing an even younger-looking kid on a spring rider.
The mother replies something back just as enthusiastically, and the kid on the swing laughs. The father stands nearby, and the parents both have dark hair, almost black, while the kids are both blonde, but even from up here Sirius can see the love etched into their features.
Even though his children look nothing like him, the father still loves them, and took time out of his busy Monday to bring them to the park for some fun. He probably looks at them and sees the wife he loves very much, to willingly spend time with her in this park with their two little monsters.
Sirius looks down at the glass in his hand, and hurls it against the wall. It shatters instantly, and he raises a hand to shield his face, glass shards bouncing off his palm.
With one glance up, the water dripping down the yellow wallpaper and staining it dark reveals nothing.
He goes back to bed.
He doesn’t sleep.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink.
He only drags himself out from between the covers a few times when his bladder screams at him, threatening to burst, and only because he would rather get up than go through the inconvenience of lying in a wet spot or having to get up and change the covers, both of which would ruin his sulking mood.
Not that he is in a sulking mood. He’s just… he doesn’t know what it is.
A slump.
A creative break.
Taking the time to reset his artist mind and come up with something new to draw, paint, to create.
Something.
Definitely anything other than grieving for a mother he never had enough or loved enough to grieve over. He wants to scream his vocal cords raw. He wants to cry until there’s nothing left of him but a shell. He does neither of those things.
On the first night, his phone begins buzzing incessantly, and he rolls over, silencing it with a few clicks, then shutting it off completely. He debates throwing it against the wall for good measure as well, but decides against it when he can’t even find the strength to lift his arm.
There’s no music, no background noise, not even the noise from outside finds its way in. There’s only the dull, deafening rumble of thunder in his ears, his brain, his lungs.
It feels as though someone is sitting on his chest. Every breath is a struggle, a fight with the air itself. Sirius is sure that if he should give up the weight on his ribs would multiply and increase until the floor collapsed under its weight and he would fall through four stories, right into the Earth herself.
He’s sure it wouldn’t stop there, and the weight would keep pressing him right through the crust, through the inner layers, right into the molten core of the world. Maybe that was hell, maybe this was hell, maybe it wasn’t even real.
Maybe he would wake up tomorrow and the world would be right again. But he didn’t sleep and he didn’t wake and the sun set and rose and the hours marched by and nothing changed.
On the afternoon of the third day, not that Sirius knows, as he hasn’t been keeping track, the hallucinations start. The dull ache in his stomach makes him wonder if he’s finally fit himself into a crevice between two worlds, and that’s why he can see his brother standing at the foot of his bed, looking twenty and ten at the same time.
But Regulus hasn’t been his brother for years, and as he blinks the image shifts and it’s his cousin Bellatrix leering at him, gasping for breath between her giggles. He closes his eyes, but this time it’s his mother, but she’s behind his eyelids, she’s in his head, looking through memories and sifting through, throwing most away as though it was garbage.
Stop! He wants to shout.
Those are mine.
But he can’t open his mouth and can’t find the strength to draw in enough oxygen, and he looks up to see his father with a fist around his throat.
Sirius starts choking, and his eyes fly open, and there’s a large black bird sitting on his dresser. It opens its beak, “Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” It screeches, but it is Walburga’s voice that comes out.
“Stop.” Sirius whimpers, not able to do anything more than pull the covers over his head and hide, like some silly, stupid child. His family members continue to jeer at him, taking turns coming up with crueller and crueller names and strikes as more cousins and aunts and uncles joined.
The bird cawed loudly, sounding as though it, too, were laughing. And suddenly James was there, frantic as he shoved the blankets off Sirius. Sirius gazes up at him, his face crystal clear and hanging right over the bed.
“Sirius! Sirius. Oh thank God you’re alive. I thought you were dead. At least let me know when you’re going through your feels so I can join you.” James laughs in relief, and Sirius’ gaze goes unfocused again and Regulus is standing on the other side of his bed, disappointment etched on his face.
It’s replaced with disgust as James takes Sirius by the hand. “Hey, Pads, you alright?” Regulus’ lips curl into a sneer, and he opens his mouth, those same, last ugly words he threw at Sirius the night he escaped forming on his tongue.
"No! Stop. Get away from me.” Sirius cries out, and James’ face goes pale as Sirius throws a hand out at his brother. “Padfoot, what’s going on?” James begs, and Sirius simply slumps back to the bed as his mother and father join his brother, identical looks on their faces.
“Just stop. I can’t do this anymore.” Sirius whispers, and the room begins spinning incoherently. Distantly, he can hear James speaking, and he can feel himself being shaken roughly, but he doesn’t turn his head, or react, or do anything except struggle to breathe.
Then there’s the sound of other people rushing into the room, and a panicked James is telling them something, and then Sirius briefly tries to fight with them as they lift him out of bed, but doesn’t manage to do so against two well-trained paramedics, and then he being laid onto a stretcher and carried out of the building.
He sees an ambulance, before realising he’s being carried towards it. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, just a few seconds, but when he opens his eyes again he’s being pushed through the halls of a hospital.
He blinks, slowly, as a nurse inserts an IV into his arm, and he sees the needle pierce his skin but doesn’t register the prick of pain he should be feeling.
He just shuts his eyes again as some of the throbbing in his head loosens. When he opens his eyes again, the world no longer feels like static and James is sitting in a plastic chair next to Sirius’ hospital bed. When he sees his best friend is awake, James visibly sags in relief.
"Thank God.” He breathes out, and then Sirius is getting crushed by a lovely hug. “I thought you up and died on me, you bloody prick.” James sniffled. “Not me.” Sirius choked out a laugh, and James stiffened, pulling back and looking him squarely in the eye. “What? Who? Are you alright?” “Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” Sirius attempts to pull a smile onto his face and promptly bursts into tears.
~.~
Sirius hadn’t stopped by the coffee shop in a few days.
Remus had gotten used to the routine of him bustling in every morning (or rather, afternoon), the easy conversations, the light laughs. He found himself looking up every time the little bell over the door jangled merrily to announce the arrival of a new person.
Each time, disappointment hit him like a brick to the face as he was greeted with any other array than shoulder-length black hair, piercing blue-grey eyes, and the familiar leather jacket.
Regulus had also disappeared from classes. There were no more sharp jibes, no more under-the-breath comments about the teachers, and no more secret smiles.
The quiet unsettled Remus.
Remus had to admit, he was worried. Even his neighbour had been silent for a few days.
He hopes they are all okay.