Disclaimer: None of it's mine.
A/N: Got bored waiting for The Key to get darker, so I've given up on that fic altogether, I'm toying with the idea of using the plot for a Harry/Ginny fic instead, Ami's just too irritating. So yes, the wish for darkness must be satiated, and so I give you Sirius angst, or rather depressed adult Sirius reflects on dramatic, angsty teenage Sirius. No pairings, all about Sirius and Andromeda and Sirius and Tonks, and pairings with that would just be icky… First chapter's short, but you know me and first chapters.
Ruby Knife
Chapter One
It was the room Sirius had spent his childhood in. After twenty years it had not changed, the same heavy black curtains hung from the four poster bed, the same portrait of a long dead relative sneering down on him.
He went over to the desk and opened one of the drawers.
It was exactly where he had left it.
In the back left hand corner of the top drawer.
A small dagger with a silver hilt engraved with a pattern of several snakes winding all over it like ivy, each with glittering ruby eyes. Twenty years since he had last held that knife.
He took the knife from the drawer and sat on the bed, closing the black velvet curtains around him. Should he take it, should he not?
He looked at the long scar right across his palm, it had just healed over and was dotted all along with bumps of dried blood. He lifted the blade to his palm and carefully, slowly, opened up the wound. Immediately tiny beads of bright blood sprang to the surface in the wake of the sharp blade. The droplets multiplied and melded together to form one bright, shining line across Sirius's pale palm. He looked closely at his bleeding hand and at the point of the silver knife.
No, he would not take it with him, he would no longer have use for it.
He crawled to the end of the bed with the knife in his right hand, parting the heavy curtains with his bleeding left, leaving a mark that shimmered darkly on the velvet. He walked over to the desk and opened the top drawer, placing the knife right at the back, in the corner before sliding the drawer shut.
There was a knock on the door, Sirius dropped the silver knife into the drawer with a clatter. The door opened a crack and Tonks's cheerful face poked into the room "Meeting's about to start" she said "you coming?"
Sirius mumbled an affirmative before sliding the drawer shut.
Tonks pushed the door so that it swung fully open, she was leaning against the door frame. As Sirius walked past her she said "I'm impressed"
"With what?"
"You didn't try to find reasons why you shouldn't go. Could it be that you're developing a tolerance to Order meetings?"
Sirius shook his head "I've simply given up hope that I will ever manage to get out of one."
Another dull meeting unfolded. Sirius sat at the end of the long dining room table, Remus sat to his right and Tonks beside him. Tonks was giving some kind of report on possible victims of the imperius curse within the ministry. But Sirius wasn't really listening, rather, he was thinking about how very much she looked like her mother. Andromeda; if it weren't for her Sirius would have taken a far more decisive action with that knife when he was fifteen.
His mother had been screaming at him, he no longer recalled what had triggered this particular incident, but it was all the same as ever, he was an embarrassment to wizardkind, and his existence befouled the name of Black.
"How a cowardly traitorous fool like you was ever sprung from my womb is beyond comprehension"
And then came the comparisons with his brother.
"Regulus has always upheld the pride of our family name, he understands what it means to be a Black"
And then finally she turned away and walked from the room, but not before one last venomous jab.
"I just don't know where I went so wrong with you."
Sirius's memory went blank there, and when it resurfaced again he was in his room, once more enclosed by black velvet with his knife in his hands. But not alone this time, no, Andromeda was before him, cross legged on the dark bedspread.
"What are you going to do Sirius? Slit your wrists? Don't be a fool" her eyes would not leave his face and he could feel her gaze burning even though he had no yet raised his eyes from studying the silver blade.
"But that's all I can be, An'. That's all I am." His voice was void of all emotion as he examined carefully the engravings on the bejewelled hilt, despite the fact that he knew them as intricately as he knew the smooth pink scars that criss-crossed his palm.
"Oh Sirius, you don't really believe that?"
He stared into the dark secrets of the serpents' ruby eyes. Andromeda sighed and continued.
"I thought better of you than that. But if you're really going to take your own life just to prove your point … maybe she was right about you"
"My point?" a peculiarly hollow humour darkened his words "You think that there's a point to any of this?"
"Of course there is, why do you ever do anything, Sirius, other than to prove a point. You're just trying to prove that even though everyone at school just sees handsome, popular Sirius Black, it's all a sham, because in reality your mind is as dark as our proud ancestors' name" her words were laced with a fair measure of sarcasm "and in reality your world is crumbling, and it was never very stable in the first place."
"I don't have to listen to this shit"
"No, but you should."
"Go away, An'."
"No."
She'd just sat there. All night, watching him. Making sure he didn't do anything stupid.
Oh An', I never did thank you.
And now. Now he had no Andromeda, only himself and his memories. He couldn't even cut to get out of himself anymore. He was too old and to disillusioned to still believe he let out pain as blood. Without teenage angst to drown out logic he knew that he couldn't bleed his problems out. So he just sat, bathing in melancholy like hot water, surrounding him. And if he wallowed too deeply in his miserable bath the dirty water would drown him.
He did try to drown himself in the bath once. Stupidly, he thought it would be easy. Easier and quicker then drawing then slitting his wrists. He had made a few slices across his pale and bony wrist when he was fifteen, but had never quite had the courage to draw the blade down his arm, the long way, the fatal way. And he thought drowning himself would be easier. He'd just slip his head under the water, and take a couple of breaths. Then everything would go dark. Simple. But of course it didn't quite work like that. He sank under the dirty water, and tried to take a breath. But that whole human-response natural-will-to-live thing had kicked in and he hadn't managed to do it. That should have made him realise that he didn't want to die. He actually had something to live for purely in the fact that the status of being alive was preferable to being dead. But of course, depressed fifteen year olds don't really have that kind of perspective on life, he had just become more miserable with the realisation that he wasn't actually capable of commiting suicide. It was quite ironic really.
Twelve years in Azkaban had quashed the will to live, but now his responsibilities kept him alive. He wasn't so bloody self-centered that he'd do that to Harry. And anyway, he wasn't that melodramatic anymore either. Logic told him to stay alive. Harry needed him, the Order might require him sometime. What would he really gain from death? How could a person gain anything from death? When he was younger the idea of suicide had held some kind of romantic mystique, like death was something beautiful, just like the slits in his skin were beautiful. He strangely missed that idealistic view of death. But he'd seen death now, and knew it was anything but beautiful, anything but tranquil.
The meeting was coming to a close. People were drifting away from the table, Molly was telling people to stay for tea and Tonks was bidding him goodbye, Remus doing the same. He said something to them without really knowing what, some appropriate response as taught to him by years of being a human in human society.
They all filtered away, to their own homes or into the kitchen or other parts of the house. But for some reason Sirius couldn't be bothered moving, and stayed staring at the wooden table, trying to remember what he had forgotten, whatever it was.
Like? Review? Am I being too emo? Well it's obviously supposed to be pretty emo but am I falling into the trap of emo cleshe's, I'm somewhat paranoid about that. Please tell me so I can fix.