AN: You can thank all the wonderful writers that are having fun with the Black family for this particular piece of work, since reading other people's perspectives of the lot of them really got me thinking... and then this happened! It was only written a few hours ago, so if you pick up any careless errors I've missed please let me know.
Reviews are very much loved so please drop me word or two when you're done!
Tastes like Salvation
In his last moments, as death quickly reveals itself as the inevitable consequence of this night rather than the far off thing that it had seemed only months ago, Regulus wishes.
He wishes that he hadn't allowed himself to be pulled by the tide onto the wrong side of this war.
He wishes he had had Sirius's courage. Wishes he had had friends like Sirius's to make Hufflepuff an appealing option when the sorting hat had offered it to him. Wishes he had not witnessed his parents rage when they found out his brother had been sorted into Gryffindor. Wishes his terror had not induced him to desperately plead with the sorting hat to be put into Slytherin.
Maybe… maybe things could have been different.
He wishes that he had not been the dutiful son.
He wishes away past cowardice.
He wishes his life away… every taunt that fell from his unwilling lips, every life dispatched by his unwilling hands, every opportunity for redemption that had slipped through his fingers.
Every opportunity but this one.
He does not wish this moment away. He does not wish his death away.
He wishes he could see the end of this war. Wishes he could live to see the Dark Lord defeated and stand with his brother and his mudblood… no, muggle born friends after the final battle has been fought and the side that he has defected to far too late has won.
He knows somehow that they will win. His brother and his friends and even him… wherever he will be then. He hopes that maybe Kreacher will live to witness this end.
This surety of their eventual success does not make this agony any easier to bear.
But it does make this moment the only moment he can remember that he does not regret.
Because he is helping them. Because what he is doing now will take them one step closer to that moment, even though they will most likely never know it.
Because for the first time in his life he is doing something that matters in a good way rather than in an evil way.
And even though he wishes he could see the look on his brother's face if he could have ever faced him again to tell him that he was on Sirius's side, he doesn't regret that he's drowning.
And just before all thought is blotted out by the all consuming pain that immediately precedes his death, he thinks he doesn't regret the slimy, foul water that floods his lungs and tastes like raw fish and decay. Because, he thinks; it tastes like salvation.