THE DEATH EATER WITH GREY EYES

It was funny how the most insignificant details (and stereotypes) could tell you something about a person's character. Aristocratic features; he must be a pureblood. World-class wizard school slut; she's a Muggleborn trying to get ahead with...erm, favors.

Grey eyes meant you were a member, immediate or not, of the prestigious Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. Grey eyes meant you were only accepted in Slytherin, unless you had a certain charisma that so far only one, his older brother, had the nerve to possess.

And grey eyes under a Death Eater mask only confirmed what society thought about you. You were low. You were filthy rich and lower than dirt. It was fortunate that insignificant details could be forgotten with a decent amount of gold. But sometimes, you would just get sick of having to pay people off. You'd wonder, why? If that's who you are, shouldn't you be proud of it, at least? But what was to be proud of? Going out, hiding your face, killing defenseless children and laughing? Shoddy thing to be proud of, in his opinion.

Not if you were against Muggles and Muggleborns. Sadly, it wasn't coldhearted prejudice that caused the streets to call for immediate action. It was just the horrific way in which it was done.

They were Voldemort's allies, essentially. Save a few, it was only the method of carrying out a crazed madman's dreams that caused a furor.

Bellatrix Black, the worst of them all, didn't have grey eyes. She had black. Or really, really dark brown. Either way, they were unsettling and dark and filled with a manic glee that came from her favorite event, killing innocent Muggleborns and Muggles in a quest to purify the world of a stain so dark, so menacing...or not all that menacing at all, he thought.

Grey eyes meant you were practically expected to follow one certain path. Once you were born with grey eyes, there was no redemption.

He followed the path expected of him because he was a Slytherin with grey eyes. He didn't like it. He had never believed in it, really. All that pureblood supremacy nonsense was just that, nonsense. But, unfortunately, it was all he had to work with. Ever since Bellatrix had threatened him to try, just try, to land in Gryffindor (where he really wanted to be, because of Sirius) like the embarrassment known as the older child and see what happened, he had no real desire to fight the current. He had chosen. He was stuck in a life he had never wanted for himself.

No one seemed to notice his forte was healing charms, creation, instead of dark spells of death and destruction and terror. No one who truly mattered would have cared. It was too late for that.

He couldn't fight this battle and come out alive. He knew that, in the end, it would be too many lives laid down for the defeat of one inhuman soul. He knew his would be among the first rebellious life taken far too young. He didn't care for his own life much. He never had. It was the others that caused him to lose sleep at night.

He had something planned set for a week's time that would shake the Wizarding World and make the monster named Voldemort just a little more mortal. He had been planning this almost ever since he was recruited into the ranks. He had been ready, poised to commit the final act of treason, ever since the Dark Lord had mentioned he had required an elf.

Kreacher had come home and told all.

He knew then what needed to occur.

The Dark Mark had been burning for a minute now, maybe two, for their weekly rampage in an unsuspecting Muggle neighborhood.

This time next week, Voldemort would have killed him mercilessly if he hadn't died already. He yearned for death now. All this for stealing a Horcrux. For turning and standing with his enemies, whether they knew it or not.

He was a traitor. He was no coward. There was a difference.

Sirius would be proud, he was sure, had he been there to watch his brother refuse to take up the mantle of a murderer. The thought made him glad. Sirius would be proud of him. Maybe Sirius would have clapped him on the back like he had done when they were younger and say, "Good on you, Reg, let's do it again!" They always had done it again. Sirius to save his impressionable younger brother who he loved, Regulus to make his brother proud of him. And happy. Sirius, in those days, was rarely happy.

He had done it to be brave, fearless, and utterly free like Sirius was.

But he was deluding himself to think his brother would think to learn the truth. Sirius hated Kreacher almost as much as Kreacher hated Sirius. And with the careful instructions given to Kreacher never to tell the events that had transpired, Kreacher would never spill the tale.

All the world would see in the future was the forgotten Black, turned Dark and mysteriously vanished, even though they all really knew he was dead.

All his brother-the brother he wished so desperately that he could apologize to, make amends with, be a real brother to, have be proud of just one accomplishment-would see, if he ever came back to their childhood home and looked again in the green and silver room next to his own, was the cold, unfeeling Death Eater with grey eyes.

But he didn't care anymore. He knew, Kreacher would know, what he had done. He would be rewarded someday if there was a heaven, he liked to think, for doing what only one other man-not that he knew of it-had dared to do.

Defy.

For once, as he put on his Death Eater robes and mask for the last time, looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but the haunted resolve of a man knowing he was looking at Death in the eye on the last leg of the hardest race run, and willing to greet it as a friend cheering him at the finish line, he was finally proud of himself.

He had, just like his brother, overcome the shadow of the grey eyes.

A/N: I've always loved the story of Regulus Black. I always thought of him as the Marauder-generation Draco Malfoy. The boy who didn't have a choice. I was reading another fanfiction, and they made a reference to a Death Eater with grey eyes, and that's what inspired me to write this. A one-shot leading up to his death, the last call to a Death Eater meeting he would ever receive, knowing full well he was fighting against them to his grave. Someone brave, and fearless, and (in the end) free.

No more Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. Just Regulus making a decision for himself for the first time in many, many years. His best decision.

He had, just like his brother, overcome the shadow of the grey eyes.

Please review!

I had a reviewer say this kinda had run-ons a LOT. I am the first to admit, yeah, it really does! Maybe this is just me...but if you've ever watched Big Bang Theory, how Sheldon has that monologue that evolves with the 'train of thought', how he just kind of rambles, literally thinking out loud, that's what I was going for there. I also tend to write like that (see previous sentence haha xD) because that's how I think all the time (pretty sure I have ADD. I do that when I'm speaking too; I just backtrack a lot and whatnot on myself). So, I see what you mean, but that was kind of my intention. :) Gah. Now I don't think I'm even making sense.

Any run-ons in this work are intentional. If there's any inner monologuing in my stories, they'll be like that.

There. Got it. :D

Thank you!