He survived

Regulus was so sure he was done feeling pain, but of course he ended up here. He had found himself playing the hero and decided to try and break the Horcrux. He managed to survive and the Horcrux is broken, and so is Regulus' arm.

He has blood covering his arms, his own blood, can you fucking believe that?

He walks out of the cave and crumples to the ground. There is no one around so Regulus is royally fucked. Pathetically he thinks about Sirius. He hasn't talked to his brother in three years. Sirius had left to go live with his best friend, James Potter when Sirius was sixteen and Regulus was fifteen. Regulus fucking hates James Potter. James Potter ruined everything good in Regulus' life, he took Regulus' brother, he managed to become friends with Remus Lupin, who Regulus admittedly wanted to be friends with. And worst of all, he stole Regulus' heart. Regulus hates that he developed a crush on the person he hates the most, but that sort of Regulus' thing, isn't it? Ending up in situations that don't end well.

Regulus holds his right arm, the arm that's broken, and wants to scream. He wans to scream because of the pain, he wants to scream because he is covered in blood, he wants to scream because his friends could be dying right now, he wants to scream because he misses his brother. But he doesn't. He doesn't scream he just sits there with his eyes shut tight and holding his arm. In all honesty Regulus thinks that if he died right there, would anyone care? Yes, a voice in the back of his head says, he can't tell who the voice belongs to but, it's a voice. Pandora would care, the voice says. Of course, Pandora, how could he forget about Pandora? Fuck he needs to get back to Pandora.

Pandora has been stressing about the war for weeks so Regulus assumes that him disappearing for hours would not help her anxiety. Whoops. So, for Pandora he stands up, for Pandora he walks, and he walks, and walks. He walks until he makes it to Sirius' flat. How did he know where Sirius lived? He's a stalker that's how. No, not really but Barty is insane and does stalk people. So, Barty had figured out where Sirius lived in a day. Regulus had stupidly memorized Sirius' address. He knocked on the door with his left arm, the one that isn't broken and hoped that Sirius would answer the door.

Regulus felt tears start to prickle in his eyes when the door hadn't opened after ten seconds. Sirius had taught him a stupid door knocking rule where if someone didn't answer the door after ten seconds they probably wouldn't answer. Fuck that rule. Regulus knocked again. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six- The door opened. The door opened and Sirius was there, Sirius was right in front of him. His long hair still was shoulder length, that never changed. But he looks... Happy? Of course, Sirius is happy, Regulus hadn't been in his life, a voice said in his head. But this wasn't the other voice in his head, no this was a different voice. This voice was rude, and cruel. This voice was his mothers.

Regulus was quickly snapped out of his thoughts because he was dragged into Sirius' house. He's sat on the couch in seconds, and the voice he had missed so much yelled across the flat. "Remus! Remus, hurry please!" In record time Remus had run into the living room. No literally, Regulus has never seen someone not in one place on second and in it the next.

Remus stood there with his mouth open and said. "Holy shit" He shook his head then said. "Okay, okay, Sirius, my love calm down, everything's going to be fine, okay? I'm going to get some bandages, and we'll call Marlene. She's training to be a medi-witch after all" He gave a reassuring smile to Sirius and left down the hall he had come in from. You could hear the cabinets opening.

Sirius turned back to Regulus and said in a tone that was a mix between angry, and worried. "Regulus what the fuck did you do?"

Regulus looked at Sirius with a deadpan expression "I played tag"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Right now, is not the time to be an ass. What happened?"

Regulus bit the inside of his cheek and said in almost a whisper "It's a long story but to sum it up, I uhm tried to break a Horcrux, I did but uhm as you can see, I didn't manage to make it out unscathed" He shifted in his seat, trying extremely hard to hold Sirius' gaze.

Sirius looked extremely confused but sighed and said. "You know? We can talk about the, uhm what did you call it? Crux-a-Hux, yeah that we'll talk about that once you're arm is healed, and you aren't in bloody clothes"

Regulus tried very hard not to laugh. Crux-a-Hux? He managed not to laugh but he couldn't help the small smile that appeared on his face "yeah, yeah the Crux-a-Hux"

Sirius nodded then stood up. "I'm going to get you some clean clothes to change into after your arm is fixed, and you've showered. Oh, shit I still got to let Marls know to come. I'll be back just, uh make yourself at home" He smiled at Regulus and then turned down the hall Remus had went down a couple minutes ago but definitely went into a different room based on his footsteps.

Regulus sighed and slumped down into the couch. He shut his eyes and tried to move his arm in a position that wouldn't hurt but, that was practically impossible. He was able to rest for a couple minutes until he heard footsteps, it was Remus. He was carrying a wet rag, some antiseptic, and his wand.

Remus walked over and set down the stuff on the coffee table. "Hi, sorry I took so long, I forgot what helps with cuts. I originally thought I could do it with my wand, but I forgot how to do the spell, so then I grabbed some antiseptic and a rag to help clean the wound until Marlene gets here" He gave Regulus a smile and grabbed the rag. "Sorry, this might hurt but it'll help, promise" Regulus nodded and closed his eyes. Surely, he couldn't hurt worse than breaking an arm.

Remus dabbed the deep cut wounds on Regulus' arm with a rag and then placed it back down on the coffee table. His voice sounded very impressed when he said. "I'm surprised you didn't flinch"

Regulus opened his eyes and looked at Remus, then down at his arms. Remus had wiped away some of the blood of Regulus' arms and had dabbed the cuts on Regulus arms. He looked back at Remus and said. "In all honesty I was waiting for you to do it"

Remus laughed and after he had finished laughing there was a smile that stuck on his face. "You surprise me every time I see you Regulus Black. Seriously last time I spoke to you it was in school because Sirius stormed over to you in the great hall because he had heard you became a prefect. You had called him dramatic and said all you did was look pretty. Me, James and Peter teased him so much after that." Remus turned around and grabbed the antiseptic. "If you don't flinch at this, I will be extremely surprised"

Regulus relaxed again and closed his eyes. The antiseptic did sting a bit but then went away. Regulus thinks he magically developed a strong pain tolerance after breaking his arm. Thats cool? Regulus opened his eyes once he was sure Remus was done. Remus arched an eyebrow as if saying 'did it hurt?' and Regulus tilted his head from side-to-side. This made Remus laugh. It felt strange to Regulus. The only person he's able to make laugh was Barty, and he was drunk, like extremely drunk.

Sirius popped his head into the living room, then fully walked in with a suspicious look on his face. He was carrying a dark green sweater, and some black sweatpants. He set down the clothes on the arm of the armchair and sat down next to Regulus

Sirius turned to Regulus and Remus. "I heard laughing, it was Remus's laugh. Why did he laugh? Am I missing something?" This made Remus laugh again, but even harder

It took Remus a minute to calm down. Within that minute Regulus and Sirius looked at each other, Sirius was extremely confused, but Regulus found this situation absolutely hilarious. He had to bite the inside of his cheek, so he didn't smile. Once Remus had stopped laughing, he said. "Oh Godric, that was hilarious"

Regulus looked at him, his face was neutral, and his tone had no emotion in it "I think you just laugh at the small things because the only humor I found in that situation was Sirius confused" At this Sirius scoffed and Remus chuckled. "It's the little things" Regulus rolled his eyes, but he didn't have any heat behind it A couple moments later Marlene budged through the door and Regulus jumped. She didn't even stop; it was one fell swoop into the door and then she kneeled down on the ground by Regulus and grabbed her wand. She had gently grabbed his arm and said "Liberacorpus" It was the spell to fix broken bones. Regulus only knows this because he listened to Barty talk about all the different broken bone healing spells for two hours. There were three bone healing spells. Liberacorpus. Liberacorpus is a counter-jinx to the jinx Levicorpus was a spell Severus had made that hangs people in the air by their ankles. Another one is Skele-Gro, it means to grow bones. It's actually a spell made by Linfred of Stinchecombe, in the twelfth century. The last one was Brackium Emendo, it's a counter-curse that heals bones and also removes them. How did Barty know so much about bone healing spells? Regulus has no idea. Marlene then stood up and grabbed the wet rag on the coffee table and wiped the remaining blood off his arm. After she had done that Regulus thanked her and grabbed the clothes Sirius had given him, got shown where the bathroom was and took a shower. When he got out it was dark outside, and Sirius was practically asleep on the couch when Regulus walked into the living room. From the sounds of Regulus' footsteps Sirius opened his eyes. Sirius stood up and said. "I know our relationship is weird, but we can talk about that later. What matters now is that your safe and healed. It's dark outside now so I suggest getting some rest. You can sleep on the couch if you'd like. I know its not the best but this is a one bedroom flat so take it or leave it" He smiled at Regulus and waited for him to say something. Regulus wanted to hug Sirius so bad. It's been something he wanted to do since he arrived on Sirius' doorstep a couple hours ago. Instead, he nodded and watched as Sirius laid some blankets down on the couch and placed pillows that leaned against the arm rests of the couch. Sirius said goodnight and walked into the room Regulus assumed was his and Remus's room. He laid down on the couch and fell asleep quickly. His arm wasn't hurting anymore, he was clean, and he was with his brother. But it wasn't the same as before. Would it ever be?