lone star
Regulus Black is seventeen when his life goes to shit.
It starts with a boy, as most things do. A boy with a wide grin and bright eyes, who he makes him feel like he's something lovable. It starts with soft kisses under streetlights and gentle hands with his hair, tugging out the knots. It starts with 'I love you's and shirts stained with blood, busted knuckles and toothy smiles and rushes of how do I deserve this.
It ends with a thin pink line and throwing up in the bathroom, his hair being held back by his own personal sun. It ends with running in the middle of the night, nothing but a couple hundred bucks and a bus ride to a friend's house in a different state. It ends with broken sobs of I think I'm a boy and wishing he was fucking dead so he'd never have to look himself in the mirror again, never have to see how this is going to ruin him.
He thinks he absolutely would be dead if it wasn't for Pandora. Fucking Pandora and everything she's ever done for Regulus, taking him in and caring for him like he's her brother.
He's a junior in high school, he can't handle a fucking baby alone. He can't do anything, absolutely anything, let alone raise a kid.
Oh, Saint Pandora. He owes her his entire life honestly. She was a senior rather than a junior and had been taking her classes online for the majority of high school. She helped him, with every little thing he needed it for.
Giving him a place to stay and food to eat? She's got it. Changing his name? Done. Getting his haircut decently so he didn't look like a child got a hold of him and scissors? Yeah, got that too. She was there to help him when he had Harry, looking exactly like James and nearly ripping his heart back in half again.
He hated looking at Harry at first. He's a fucking carbon copy of James, from the messy untamable hair to the dimples on his cheeks. He's James, through and through. The only thing 'Regulus' about him is his eyes, which Pandora loves to point out with soft coos. They're nothing special, really. He's just inherited the silver color, bits of blue and green all muddled up to create a big clash of gray identical to Reg's own.
Pandora helped him find a therapist, which God fuck he knows he needs. It takes three therapists to find one he's comfortable with, and another two months before she deems him clear for getting hormone therapy.
Pandora was so fucking ecstatic about it that she made him a cake for it, and let Harry eat nearly all of it.
She spoils him, and even Pandora admits this, grinning and pointing out more toys she'd like to get for Harry.
He enrolls in the same high school as Pandora, taking his classes online as well so she doesn't have to be alone with Harry all day. She also insisted he doesn't need to get a job, that the two can live off of Pandora’s inheritance from her mom and her dad's weekly allowances as long as she 'stays the fuck out of his hair'. He ignored it, getting a job at a small local bookshop.
Regulus graduates highschool in what's technically his junior year, a few months after his eighteenth birthday. There's a college in-state that he manages to gets into, and takes his classes in person now.
He's got a nice schedule set up now. Morning classes, Pandora’s house (which she has to remind him is both of theirs) so he can let Pandora do whatever she needs to, then his afternoon classes, and closing shift at the shop.
There, towards the end of his first year of college, he meets a boy named Remus, freakishly tall and oddly clumsy. He keeps knocking off books from shelves and can't seem to find the thin, square glasses he wears half the time. The owner tells him to work the register and it's just about the only place he manages to not knock stuff over.
At least he's good with his mouth.
He and Remus start up… something that they aren't sure how to label. It's not romantic on either end, which they make clear to each other. It's just a bit of fun when it's slow in the shop, right before closing. Remus is apparently half in love with a boy in one his physics class anyway, so that clears up that.
They're good at hiding it too. The owner, a small hunched woman named Ms. Figg, leaves about two hours before close, and the last hour before it is pretty slow. Not many people come in from nine to ten at night, so it gives them plenty of opportunities to use the loveseat in the breakroom.
They both go to the same college, but only see each other in passing. Regulus going to the studio for his art class, Remus heading to the English building for lit. He only has two friends in any of his classes (save for Pandora but she goes online), and other than that he's fairly alone. It's him, Harry, and Pandora against the absolutely ridiculous challenges he gets. News of his parents' deaths that puts him in bed for weeks, transphobia, everything he had to deal with while simply fucking existing as a trans guy and not fitting people's idea of how a trans guy should look.
It's not like he wants to keep his tits, it just takes him a while to find someone he trusts to cut them off. Long enough that Harry's second birthday is nearing, just two months away when he gets his top surgery done. He almost tears the stitching twice because he does have shit to do, recent surgery or not.
He heals eventually, plenty of time for Harry's birthday and Halloween. Harry wants to dress up as Lightning McQueen and Pandora even made his costume. He looked ecstatic in it, dancing around and knocking things over in the living room with the butt end of the car. Obviously the broken glass wasn't much fun to clean up, but it was worth it to see how happy he was in it.
November 3rd, shit goes south again.
It's his brother's birthday. He hasn't forgotten, and just over two years away won't make him forget.
It's his turn to go grocery shopping, so he packs Harry up in their car (just a small one for the three of them) and goes to the grocery store.
It's not too crowded on Tuesdays, especially this late in the evening. The shop was closed anyway, something about it being Mrs. Figg's anniversary or whatever. He's happy for her, thirty years she said, and he gets the night off so he isn't complaining.
It's a normal night. He thinks about writing Sirius, about telling him about Harry and Pandora and inviting him to visit. But he can't bring himself to do it, to tell him, to face what he's left behind. Especially if James comes, if James sees, if James blames himself for it all.
He's so caught up in his own thoughts that when he turns, he sees James barely five feet from him. Obviously, he's hallucinating, until James turns and picks up a box off the shelf.
He's still there.
He's real.
Regulus drops the jelly jar he's holding, flinching when the glass shatters and a little piece hits his calf. He can feel it and he knows its bleeding, he can feel the blood already trickling down his leg. Harry is screaming, making little fists and beating at the seat of the shopping cart, and the entire isle is staring at him and his screaming kid.
James is staring at him, wide eyes and open-mouthed. It's kind of comical, and Regulus would laugh like he used to, but he can't. He can't make any sound or movement, just stand there while the people around them start moving again. He and James don't move. They stay there, staring, and it seems like they're both unable to look away.
James takes a step forward, and Regulus bolts.
___________________
James Potter's life starts the day he meets the youngest Black.
You wouldn't expect the pair. James Potter, the loud-mouthed sports captain who can hardly keep it in his pants, and Sirius Black's younger fucking sister. They'd seem horrible together, honestly. Clashing personalities, one loud, one too quiet for her own good, they don't have anything in common.
Except, somehow, James fell for her. And God when he falls he trips and slams his face on the floor. It hurts, and it's always messy and rough and never clean, but it's love. That's what all love is. It's more than just affection or deeply caring for someone. It's being hurt and mad and pissed and doing stupid and insane things and every fucking thing under the sun. Love isn't clean, it's not something you just decide on one day.
Especially when you love a Black.
And he does love her, with his whole heart. He loves her shy laughs and her gentle kisses, like she's going to break James by loving or touching too hard. He loves every fucking bit of her, and it doesn't change any less when she calls him with shaking sobs and tells him that she's pregnant.
It doesn't change a Goddamn thing, and he wants to be there and be with her even with it. Except she- she just runs.
Middle of the night, only a text saying 'don't miss me.' and no response to any of his texts. She's just gone, and James doesn't know what's happened to her, to them.
Weeks later, there's a report on the news. Some girl got into a car accident, roughly around the time his girlfriend disappeared, the body too mangled to properly identify. They think it's her.
She's declared dead soon after.
James can't get out of bed.
She's fucking dead, and their kid is dead and James can't fucking breathe with the weight of it all pressing down. Sirius is just as bad. James doesn't see him for nearly two weeks, and when he does, fuck he looks horrible.
The first time they talk in nearly a month, it's a fight. It's a fight where James' nose gets broken and Sirius nearly sprains his ankle from James tripping him. And by the end of it they're crying and wiping the blood off each other.
They swap stories about her, and every time Sirius deems one of James' stories even slightly inappropriate he takes to punching him in the arm until he quits it. It makes him laugh a bit. He wants to talk about her, and who else to do it with besides her brother? It makes him feel better, about it all. Her death won't go away, definitely not anytime soon, but it makes his chest feel a bit lighter. That there's someone who's gonna miss her just as much.
About a month after her death, there's a gravestone placed in the local graveyard. Sirius and James had insisted that she shouldn't be placed in the family graveyard, that she hated them, and that she'd hate it. Thank fucking God, Andromeda had taken over for everything when her parents had said they didn’t want anything to do with her. She’d abandoned the family just the same as Sirius had, so to them she wasn’t part of it.
James visits the grave every month. He brings her favorite flowers, which are baby’s breath, and for her birthday- December 26th- he leaves a card and a single rose. He sits and tells her about how much he misses her, and their kid, even if they never got to be born. He forgives her, for running, because he understands. She must’ve been terrified, of her parents and her future and everything. James would’ve helped. She’d known because James had promised her and insisted and reassured every last one of her worries, but maybe not enough. He wouldn’t say he blames himself, but the blame has to go on someone. He makes the most sense.
He misses too much of school to graduate on time, so he attends summer school to get everything in order before August.
He gets accepted into three different colleges despite everything and chooses one in a small town out of state. Sirius chooses the same, still wanting to stick together in whatever comes next.
Two years, nothing much happens. James tries to see more people, move on, but he doesn’t think he can. He needs to see her again, to just- know. He wants to know why she left. Why she left him, why he wasn’t enough. Why he and whatever their kid turned out to be couldn’t be enough for her.
Every time the thought pops up in his brain he shakes it off with a frown. He won’t get that chance, ever. She’s dead, and nothing can bring her back.
It's Sirius' birthday. His 21st, so they decide to make a big deal about it. It’s not like they weren’t drinking well before now, but they still want to make a big deal out of him being able to legally. Sirius heads straight for the separate liquor store, being the only one old enough from all of their friends to buy anything, while James makes his way to the aisle full of snack cakes. Marlene and Dorcas had both offered to bake for their little party, and Sirius insisted they get other stuff instead.
Why they (whoever ‘they’ is) always put the bread and snack cakes in the same aisle, James doesn’t know. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? Why shouldn’t the snack cakes go with the chips or the candy? There should be enough isles for all of that. Condiments, peanut butter, jelly, honey, all that stuff. It should be in a single isle, not separated and spread out between two different ones. Really how does that even make sense?
The sound of glass shattering and a screaming child pull him from his thoughts. His eyes go wide as he catches sight of just who exactly dropped the jar, and suddenly he’s a kid again.
He’s eighteen, sharing drunken kisses behind their hands and linking pinkies like it’s going to stop the world. Like he can defeat everything that comes their way as long as she’s here, beside him.
He’s seventeen, laughing and kneeling as he declares to the world that one day, he’s going to marry his rose. His perfect rose who hates the nickname but can’t help but grin every time. He screams it like it’s the last thing he’ll ever say, and he means it.
He’s sixteen, parted lips and big grins, letting the feeling of kissing her sink in. He’s kissing his best friend’s sister. And all he can think about is how good it feels to finally kiss her, to have her kiss back. Oh, its so good.
But he isn’t. He isn’t eighteen, or seventeen, or sixteen.
He’s twenty, staring into the eyes of his dead girlfriend who’s very much not dead, and- well, very much not a girl.