willing to drown
Across the deck, Regulus was as still and white as the poplar trees at Black manor. Evan ran desperate hands across Regulus’s shoulders, madly trying to shake him awake. Lily pushed Pandora and James out of the way to get a look at Regulus. Her fingers, pale and light, prodded at his skin, searching for a pulse.
“He’s still alive,” she said, and got to work.
James mumbled to himself, incoherently. His glasses were missing, knocked off by the rocking of the ship, and his eyes stared through Regulus. He reached out and brushed Regulus’s hair away from his face, casting gentle touches along his cold skin.
“It’s alright,” he said, “It’ll be alright, Reg. He’ll be alright, won’t he, Lily dear?”
Lily said nothing in response, air coming through her in great, labored spurts, her lungs struggling to pull in enough oxygen as she scrambled for tools.
“I’m here, Reg. I’m here for you when you wake up.”
“Reggie, c’mon.” Pandora cried.
“It can be just us again,” James continued, “It’s alright.”
“What are you doing?” Evan demanded of Lily, amidst the noise.
Lily was fussing with a thin pair of pliers, “I’m going to take the bullet out.”
“What if he starts bleeding again?”
“He will.”
“Won’t that kill him?”
“It might!” Lily shouted, “It might not! I need everyone to be quiet a minute.”
Tears absently slid down James’s face as he talked.
“You said you never let me go,” James pleaded, “You’re letting go. I can feel it. Don’t break your promise to me Reg, please.”
“James. Look at me.”
Lily’s tone was sharp and compelling. James did as he was told. Lily, her face set and strong, grabbed him by the chin and forced James to keep her stare.
“I can’t do my job with you blabbering,” Lily said, though not unkindly, “It’s going to be hard, but it is necessary. Regulus is one of us. And we always save our own, don’t we?”
James nodded, numbly.
“So you stop mumbling this minute and help me save him.”
Lily released him. James smoothed his hand over Regulus’s cheekbone one last time and turned his attention to Lily.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
Lily held up the pliers and swallowed hard.
“I need to hold him open.”
It was bloody work, fast and gruesome, but Lily had a steady hand and a loyal heart and she’d be damned if she didn’t give everything she had into saving Regulus. In hardly a few minutes, Lily had removed the bullet and stitched up Regulus’s shattered chest. She checked his pulse again, her brow pinched with uncertainty, kissed James on the cheek and left him be. Evan left not long after, cursing, to see if Dorcas had woken up as well.
James and Pandora, silent as angels, did not move a muscle.
Every so often, Regulus’s cheek would twitch or his eyes would flutter or a faint word would follow his breaths that shot James and Pandora to immediate attention. Every time, nothing would come from it.
“He must be cold,” Pandora said, “He was in the water for too long.”
She started to shrug off her coat, Regulus’s coat, but James stopped her.
“We’ll keep him warm.” He said plainly. Pandora did not disagree.
The sea cried below them.
“I’m sorry.”
James’s sudden apology was delivered fairly and unexpectedly.
Pandora blinked.
“Whatever for?”
“I took him from you,” James said quietly, “I took him from his friends, his home. It was wrong of me. It was selfish. And I’m sorry.”
“Why did you?” Pandora asked, “Take him, I mean.”
Why didn’t I? James thought was the better question.
In short, because Regulus was beautiful. He was proud and haughty in the picture Sirius had shown him; spine straight and chin lifted, his midnight hair cropped short and his eyes looking through the camera rather than at it. But there was also a certain sensitivity behind his gaze, a boyish charm in the way he slid his hands casually in his pockets, in the cigarette peeking through his curls from behind his right ear. There was a cruel sort of seduction in his half-smile, one that beckoned interest in exactly what he was so amused by.
To another length, it was also because Sirius loved and missed his brother so much. James had welcomed Sirius with open arms on Lady Lily. Anyone Remus cared for, James would certainly come to admire as well. This was true for Sirius, their love went beyond the barest of acquaintances, of course, but Sirius’s voice still broke when he spoke of Regulus. Sirius was simultaneously embarrassed and endeared by his own nostalgia, so James took the first step forward and began to ask after Regulus.
“Tell me about him.” he would say to Sirius, and Sirius would.
He would tell James about his shy little brother, about his biting wit and stern intelligence. He would tell James about how Regulus read books incessantly, constantly stuffed in a bay window or hidden in a closet with a candle, pouring over pages and pages of any literature he could get his hands on. He told him about how he and Regulus would sneak out of the house to hack at the poplar trees with short swords nicked from the armory, playfully jabbing at each other until they got too tired and sweaty to fight with much vigor.
He told James about the happiest days with his brother; the summer they spent the Rosier estate, stumbling around day-drunk through the orange grove, feet cut up with brambles and freckles blooming across their sunburned noses; the first time they had skipped the annual Christmas ball in favor of their own private party in the bell tower, complete with puckerish wine and Sirius’s old phonograph bleeding a grumbling song and a snowball fight; when Sirius had finally convinced Regulus to help him pierce his ears, as a birthday present, and Regulus hardly blinked shoving the needle in and Sirius admired his new studs in every mirror he passed.
He also told James about the less happy days; when their mother punished them both for the ear piercing stunt, when she broke one of Regulus’s fingers, when she cut Sirius’s hair, when she forbade either of them from leaving the manor for an entire year.
The long, cold year when they only had each other and the brighter years that followed.
James didn’t need a picture to be convinced of Regulus’s merit, of the place he had on James’s ship.
Of the place he had earned, unwittingly, in James’s heart. It was why they had collided as quickly as they did. There was not much left to say for hearts that already knew each other.
James could have said any of these things, but he didn’t need to. Pandora knew well enough. She smiled.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” she said, “I would have done the same.”
James looked up at her, “You would’ve?”
Pandora shrugged, “Sure. Reggie is my best friend.”
She cast her eyes back down at Regulus, a film of sadness coming over her, as if she had momentarily forgotten the state he was in. She laid a hand over his chest, closing her eyes.
“He has given up a lot, for my sake.” Pandora said lightly.
“The engagement?” James guessed.
Pandora sighed, “He told you about it, I presume.”
“He did.”
“My family is well off, but we are not that well off,” she explained, “I had an elder brother, Perseus. He was much older than I and more or less expected to take care of me until I was of age to marry. My sister Pasiphae had already been betrothed to a richer man, had children of her own and such. As had my other sister, Pylia. They were disinterested in me, which was more than fine really. Persy was my champion. We didn’t need anyone but each other.”
Pandora took a deep breath.
“I lived with him for most of my childhood. He had a house in the country, plenty of fresh air and woods to roam. He schooled me himself, fed me, clothed me, kept me company. He escorted me to all the important parties and galas we were forced to attend once in a while. He gave me space to make friends, encouraged my interests. He was never too busy to listen.”
“When he died, his partner Aaron had been staying with us for a few years. Aaron was kind enough, but young, too young to become a widower to me. Besides, Persy wouldn’t have wanted that for him. My mother had me sent home as soon as his funeral ended. I entered the very next marriage season and that was that.”
“Reggie and I have always gotten along. We saw each other as often as possible, our little pod of friends, but only Reggie would come out to the country to visit me. One summer, he managed to convince his mother to let him stay a whole month. Those were the greatest days of my life, that month with him.”
She exhaled, dreamily, letting the memory consume her.
“We swam in the lake. Got lost in the woods. When the days were cool, we picnicked by the stream, reading aloud to each other until we fell asleep. Though one time his arm tipped into the water, book and all, so we stopped bringing them soon after. We just fell asleep every time. When the nights got too warm to sleep inside we would spread a blanket out in the field and try to count every star in the sky. He would show me his namesake constellation, his and his brother’s.”
Her face was wet with grief.
“But every night, really without fail, when the breeze was still hot and the crickets started to sing…we would be doing the dinner dishes, Reggie and I, and Persy would turn on the record player. And every night we would dance, the four of us, in the kitchen. Reggie would spray the faucet at me and we would bounce around to one of Aaron’s silly disco records and Persy would try to whip everyone with his dish rag.”
Pandora smiled and sniffed. She wiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“He would end the night with a slow song. Reggie and I would hop off to play some more before it got dark. But through the little window above the sink, we could still see them dancing together, swaying to the most sappy song in existence. They loved each other very much. And Reggie and I could still hear the music and we danced together too, out in the field. And I loved him very much.”
She spread her fingers apart, still resting over Regulus’s heart.
“Reggie was there before Persy died. He was there after, and he became my champion. He was there when my mother paraded me around like a bird to her old friends. He was there when she told me I’d have to marry one of them. And he was there to tell my mother that he wanted to marry me, even though that meant he could never be with anyone else.”
“It meant that he could never have a love like Persy and Aaron did. Like how he told me he wanted. So I’ll always love him. For that and for so much more.”
James was crying too now. Regulus, willing to drown so others could swim.
Pandora reached over and took James by the hand.
“He wanted that with you, James. He wanted to slow dance with you under the stars.”
The sky warmed around them, their own little atmosphere, pink with affection. Energy pulsed from Pandora’s hand, from Regulus’s heart, from James’s soul. From the love they shared.
Muscle spun. Bone knitted together. Blood ran.
Regulus’s heart beat stronger now. His lungs expanded with fresh air.
His silver eyes opened.
James was the first thing he saw.