Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace

This fic is an AU, basically my exploration of what Sirius would have felt and done after he was shut up in Azkaban.

I'm in prison now. It's really quite unbearable with all these things around me—I'm on the verge of madness…and it seems as if the whole world thinks I deserve it. There is no sympathy, for the first time in my life, I know that those who deem themselves virtuous have hearts of stone. Shutting me—no, us—in this cold hell of hells is the cruellest punishment ever. Voldemort, that lovely old man, he killed instead and set souls flying across Flanders fields, racing out, out of the world towards Sleep. Not that it was right either, in fact, neither sides are rightly right. Humankind has not the sense to realize that evil should never be rewarded with evil, that is their bane.

I've realized, over these six months, that ignorance and unkindness are what leads to the constant sufferings of human beings—besides the destruction of all our human hopes, but that is what we are born with and cannot help until we accept that all our despair is due to being us. I'm not so angry over how I, an innocent man, am being shut up, behind bars; I am, instead, far angrier over the coldness with which man treats his fellows. But enough of that, it doesn't help, this raging. I am worried, I fear and am most certain that I shall lose my mind—I will, everyone in this hellhole becomes mad sooner or later. I won't have it, no, not I! This is my Pride, being mad is something I do not know (for I have never tried it), for all I hate the world, for all I disdain it, I am still myself, still human, still unwilling to give them the satisfaction that I have gone mad. I won't.

Neither shall I rot in here, I'm not going to experience the most human (humane?) despair of having all I treasured turn to dust. Still, all beautiful things fade for all that is, the world and everything that seems real is nothing. There is neither darkness nor light, just a great emptiness, so why am I still this way? I don't want to think about it.

Now, I wonder—against my will—how the world outside is. I close my eyes, I am feeling a lot of pain which sounds ridiculous after what I've just declared, but it's true. I feel a lot of pain and am truly, truly heartbroken in a mad, perverse way. I am wondering why I ever did this to myself. Why couldn't I just have left the Potters alone, not insisted on making Pettigrew the secret-keeper? If that were the case, I could have continued living merry in self-deception. It's not so bad. I would never have understood—seen—things as I do now, but what of it? I would've been able to stand outside of the prison, shudder at it and be happy believing firmly in the faulty dynamics of good and evil. But no, I had to meddle with it—why couldn't I just have not cared? Or else not thought?—and now, and now, I am in here. Alone and in Hell.

Do I care about Harry? That orphaned godson of mine? No, I'm afraid I don't, or else perhaps I do, out of duty. The little mite has lost his parents, yet, with or without them, he's going to grow up firmly believing in what I once did. He's not going to know. He'll feel sad, be in misery (aren't we all) always, but he won't know it. He'll go about looking for ways to feel happy, he'll believe in the beauty of things and life. Is this the evil of living? For after all this, everything falls apart.

Now, I only have time for selfishness. There isn't much time at all and I must think of myself only. I don't know what I'm thinking anymore. Perhaps I have gone mad.

So what shall I do? Nothing? And go mad? Or shall I do something? I can list plenty of examples…of famous escapes, yet, nothing can be done. There is no escape—at least not physical—and neither do I want to put in effort only to be placed in another (albeit larger) prison. I've come to an understanding of the world, of humans, and I don't love them. No—I do love them, but they afford only pain. I've had enough pain.

The dementors come, the dementors go, and they sense everything. What are they? I do not know and do not wish to know. Very tall, very grey things. They make no noise and are silent. They're not really the cause of misery although people love to fool themselves by pushing the blame onto them, I wish they wouldn't. After all, like I said above, misery is part of being human. And if we weren't human as we are now, there would be no misery, dementors or no.

And now, finally, death isn't cruel... ...I hope to disappear forever.

I knot my bedsheets neatly—I've always believed in doing things properly. I swing them around them lamp hanging over the cell and then catch a glimpse of myself in the shiny, reflective glass. I haven't aged much, haven't changed much outwardly and I'm pleased. As ridiculous as it sounds, I'll be young eternally in the eyes of history, and at the same time I'll be gone—O, sweet teenage defiance!—I smile at the prisoner in the cell next to mine. A small parting gesture, to Bellatrix no less. I am calm, I am not happy, I am not despairing. I do not expect an afterlife, just dispersal and disappearance from all this.

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,

Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;

With shield of proof shield me from out the press

Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!

O make in me those civil wars to cease!—

I will good tribute pay if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,

A rosy garland, and a weary head;

And if these things, as being thine in right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Epilogue

The next day in a damp,black street corner somewhere in London:

"Ey, wontcha know it? That convic' in the prison... ...he's dead. He hanged himself."

"Bloody coward, he gotbetter than he deserved."

Note: In this fic, I made the assumption that wizards are atheist. No offence to anyone out there.

The poem is by Sir Philip Sidney an Elizabethan knight and courtier, it's called "Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot Of Peace". It's the poem most relevant to the fic, anyway, I feel that it suits it.