Regulus was dead.
He knew that.
He had come to terms with it.
There wasn’t a lot of room for denial when you were in the afterlife. Especially not after having been there for several years. Then again, time moved differently in his new plane of existence.
Nonetheless, Regulus Arcturus Black was dead.
So why the fuck was James Potter standing in front of him?
“Regulus?” The name came out of his mouth like a question. A question to which there was no right answer.
“No, no, no,” Regulus said, “you can’t be here. I’m dead. You’re not dead. You’re alive.”
“Not anymore, I guess.” James said. He looked sad. James Potter looked sad. The boy who Regulus had only ever known to be full of life and joy was dead and sad.
Regulus didn’t know what to do. He looked around. Everyone had said that the afterlife would be up in the clouds, surrounded in a comforting, warm light. It was, sometimes. Regulus’s theory was that the afterlife was based on your soul, and whatever was inside it. Things were different there. There wasn’t a need for outer beauty. People looked like they did in the physical realm, for the most part. He had guessed that it was for comfort purposes. Maybe he only saw what he wanted to see. Maybe he wasn’t ready to see through everyone. Maybe he wasn’t ready to see through himself.
James was different.
James was a dull, glowing light. A warm presence. A blanket of comfort and uncertainty. Regulus recognized him instantly.
“What happened to you?”
“I protected my family,” he said. “I don’t regret it. I just–Am I really dead? Oh, Merlin.”
“Don’t say that here. You’ll summon him.” Regulus joked. James smiled at him. “Your family. What happened to them?”
“Voldemort.” James said. He paused. “At my front door. I forgot my wand.”
“You faced him without a wand?” James must have been insane.
“Yeah,” James said, pride and sadness laced in his voice. “Yeah, I did. What about you? When he killed you, did you fight? Did you let him murder you, like the good Death Eater you were? Did you try to get away?”
James might have continued to list things that Regulus could’ve done if he didn’t interrupt.
“Voldemort didn’t kill me.”
James hesitated.
“What?”
“I did what you did,” Regulus said. “I did what I had to do to protect the people I care about.”
“What do you mean?” James asked. “What did you do?”
“I destroyed one of the horcruxes that was keeping him immortal,” Regulus said. “I died in the process.”
“You–” James paused. “Wait, no, what do you mean immortal?”
“He split his soul into pieces,” Regulus said. “The only way to kill him is to destroy all of them.”
“So, he isn’t–” James panicked. “No, no, he can’t still be alive. My son. My family–”
Regulus watched James spiral.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Regulus said. “Nothing.”
“He’s going to kill them!” James cried. “Lily and Harry, he’s going to kill them!”
“He probably already has, James.” Regulus said.
“No, shut up. Shut up, shut up–”
“Lily,” Regulus said. Her name tasted bitter. He didn’t deserve to hate her. He didn’t have the right. He didn’t even have anything against her. She was a good person. An incredible person, even. But she was also a reminder of everything that he would never have. “You love her?”
“What?” James looked at Regulus like he had lost it. “Of course, I love her. I mean, not like I thought I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“We broke up,” James said. “She’s got a girlfriend. We were still going to raise our kid together. All of us were. Everyone was helping. Fuck, he’s only a baby. He’s too young to die.”
“So are you.”
“It’s different,” James insisted. “I’m fighting–I was fighting a war. He’s not a part of any of that. He’s just a baby. He’s one year old.”
“The world is a bad place,” Regulus said. “He’d be happier here. Safer.”
“He deserves to grow up.”
“And we didn’t?”
A long silence followed.
“Do you really think they’re already dead?”
“Maybe,” Regulus said. “Maybe not. Time moves differently here. It could’ve been five seconds since you got here. Maybe Lily fought.”
“Of course she fought,” James said. “She’s not going down without a fight. I just hope she got out of there. Maybe they climbed out of a window.”
“Maybe,” Regulus said. He knew that wasn’t the case. He knew James was in denial. He knew what James needed to hear. “They could’ve run away.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t going to abandon my family, Regulus.”
“What a noble way to die.”
“I could say the same about you,” James said. “Everyone thought you were devoted to Voldemort the whole time. I thought–I can’t believe I thought so low of you.”
“That’s what I needed everyone to think,” Regulus said. “I was never upset with you.”
“You weren’t?” James asked.
“I knew exactly how you would react.”
“I was upset with you,” James said. “I hated you.”
The gentle warmth began to feel like more of a stinging burn.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Regulus said. “None of that matters anymore.”
“It does,” James argued. “We can’t ignore everything that happened in our lives just because they’re over.”
“We aren’t ignoring anything,” Regulus said, keeping his tone even and calm. “What happened during our lives isn’t relevant. Everything that we did, everything that we didn’t do, it doesn’t matter anymore. This is where we ended up. This is where we would’ve eventually been, no matter what happened. It doesn’t matter.”
“Then why did we do any of that?”
James almost sounded defeated. Regulus didn’t like that. James was never defeated. Even when he lost, he was always a winner. That was James. James was indefatigable and insurmountable.
“It matters to the people on earth,” Regulus said. “It will affect them, whether directly or indirectly. Our actions during the war were not insignificant. They simply don’t matter here.”
“What does matter here?” James asked.
“Nothing,” Regulus said. “Everything.”
“What?”
“What matters to you, James?”
“My family,” he said. Absolutely no hesitation. “My friends. You.”
You.
You?
Him?
Regulus?
“What?”
“Is that it? Whatever matters to me, that’s what matters?”
“Essentially.”
“Then, you. Nothing else matters.”
“James?”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t make us work,” James said. “I always thought, ‘in another life. I could love him in another lifetime. In a different universe.’ What’s stopping us now?”
“This isn’t another lifetime, James.” James stared at him. “This is death. This isn’t the beginning of anything. This is the end.”
“Says who?” James asked. “Are there rules that I’m not aware of? Is there a reason why we couldn’t take this as an opportunity to start over?”
“We wouldn’t be starting over, James.” Regulus said. James was smart. James was kind. But James never got it. “What happened has already happened. We can’t have a life together.”
“Maybe not, but we can have eternity together,” James said, “and isn’t that so much better?”
Regulus thought for a moment.
“You and me?”
“You and me,” James said. “Forever.”