Word Count: 1,103
Challenge/Competition: Write a Romance Competition
Prompts: Regulus Black/Hestia Jones, light
Warnings: Implications of depression, alcohol abuse/reliance
Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Harry Potter, it's all JKR's.
For so long, his insides are glass. He pushes himself apart from everyone - afraid to pierce, afraid to shatter, afraid to ruin. All that he touches falls to pieces. Something about him just isn't right, and it runs right through to his bones.
It starts with the swelling betrayal constantly marring Sirius' face, becomes the lovely Dahlia and her frowns when he speaks of Death Eater admiration. He grows and so does his obsession, and his fanatical ramblings on blood purity and the Dark Lord are met with stiff postures and judgement even by those of his own house.
He doesn't understand. He is a good Slytherin - a good son. He can't shake the dark cloud that hovers over his mind, and it swallows him. He slips into the dark mark and its lifestyle before he is even an adult. He was born for it, he tells himself. And his insides pierce him while he rips others to shreds, but it is admired. So he breathes a sigh of relief, and he starts to enjoy the kill.
His ruinous nature makes him one of the best, so he finally feels like he belongs. It's okay for him to just be him, finally. It's okay to shatter things - it's good.
Until her.
All smiles and glossy dark locks, she starts to pull the dark cloud from over his head. She is the light that he's never known, and he feels more crazy than he's ever felt. Voices gnaw at the back of his mind - dontruindontruindontruin, but it is all he's ever known.
His jagged edges push her away so many times, but she is almost immune to them. It's as though she holds him up to the sun and sees straight through, right to the goodness right in his very core - so confused by who he is supposed to be and who he wants to be and who he truly is.
She is always there to catch his tears. It is always messy. Hestia is never afraid to tell the truth, she is never afraid of him like everybody else. Somehow she loves him despite the shadows that live inside of him, and loving her is easier than breathing for him.
But there is always the nights when he is screaming at her to leave him alone, to never talk to him, to stop telling him what he is and what he is not because it's just too much and she's just too good and he doesn't want to pull her into his darkness.
Too extremist for his parents, too Slytherin for Sirius, too fanatical for his ex-friends, he doesn't have anybody. And sometimes, he feels like maybe he doesn't deserve them - especially her. Regulus has never been able to live in the grey or the half-measures. Everything is so full, intense, passionate... obsessive. She is the same, but in the truly good way. Hestia fixes, she brightens, she sees. Regulus ruins, he darkens, he covers his eyes.
The war becomes full-force and they sit on opposite sides of the fence. Her eyes stream with the tears of exhaustion and stress and inability to take the push and pull any longer - she wants him out of the Death Eaters. And for a moment, he thinks he will do it because he cannot deny her anything.
But he can't. He doesn't know where to belong when he is not smothered by darkness, even if Hestia brings that crack of light. So he cries too - because he's sorry, because he doesn't want to be like this, because he doesn't know how to be anything else but evil.
She disappears. He thinks that his body might just cave in on him, as though she took his heart with her. In every face he kills he sees her, telling her that he doesn't have to be ruinous, that he can be good - that he is good. She haunts his dreams.
Suddenly, he feels like that same little boy who was met with rejection after rejection. The shards of glass now grow in his mind, too, and peace becomes a foreign concept to him. So he just embraces the mark - he ruins everything he's told to and everything that comes into his path, and he barely realises that he's ruining himself too.
Alcohol becomes his comfort, it floods his veins almost always and eventually allows him to pass out just long enough to forget himself. He's never liked a feeling as much as loving her, until this. And so he drinks and he drinks. He shrinks. Pallid-skinned and red-eyed, a Death Eater machine. It almost works… almost.
He is at a battle and he sees her. She tends to a wounded, smiling over them and whispering soothing words while wiping at their cuts. They catch eyes and he goes rigid. He doesn't know whether to run towards her or run away. But he finds himself in front of her because he might not see her again, and his selfishness will not allow him to pass up on this opportunity.
Hestia looks different - somewhat hardened by all of this war, he thinks. Her features are sharper and her expression wearier, but she is still his Hestia. Her face contorts into a mixture of anger and sadness as he stares at her, but she then surprises him with an embrace. She doesn't cry, and neither does he. It is different. He doesn't know what to think.
She drags him away from the battle, because some days she is allowed to be selfish, she tells him. Her face crumples and she almost breaks down but she does not - she is strong. He always knew that, but she never saw it. She tells him he's just eighteen and too young to be so bloody broken, that this is a war and they just have to live through it, that he had a choice and he didn't choose her so he has to accept it.
Her truthfulness and the passion in her eyes is so refreshing. He can't accept it. He can't leave her, can't imagine a life that doesn't involve the security of her hand in his. Not now - not anymore. 'I'll leave them,' he says, it tumbles out of his mouth before he's even processed that that is his decision.
Narrowing her eyes, her grip on his hand tightens. She believes him. She kisses him, a confirmation of his decision. 'I love you. We can be happy in the shades of grey.' And he really nearly believes her.