A/N: So, I've had the title of this story and the vaguest idea of it in my head for a long time, but it wasn't until I started writing it that it really started flowing out. This was written for the Ravenclaw Secret Santa exchange over on Mugglenet Interactive, and it is Contron13542's Christmas present. So yeah…totally dedicated to you, it is yours, and I think you mentioned having a ffnet account…? Anyway, Merry Christmas Contron! Sorry to squeak the deadline…and sorry it isn't all that happy or fluffy…
There is nothing to warn about, really, because since it needed to be MNI appropriate, there's none of my usual swearing or anything. And I know Contron said that he could get behind most slash ships, but all the same I tried to curb as much of the Remus/Sirius urge as I could. I almost added a kiss scene, but I didn't. If you want me to edit it in, Contron, just let me know! This is your present, so I aim to please! :)
As for everyone else, review please? Holiday wishes to you all!
Disclaimer: I asked Santa, but I did not get ownership of the Harry Potter series for Christmas. I did get Sirius Black's wand though. I don't own any of these characters. JK Rowling is just kind enough to ignore we pitiful people who play in her sandbox. Title taken from the song "Defying Gravity", from the amazing and inspiring musical Wicked.
Too High a Cost
Sirius Black realized that there were far too many mistakes he'd made in his life. Far too many moments in which time stopped, froze the scenery all around him, even the breath in his chest, and then he realized—too late—that he had just made a colossal. Mistake.
He had been two, leaning over a bassinet, spying a weird, pudgy pink loaf. That's your brother, Sirius. You look after him now, educate him and lead by example in the proper ways of the heir of the House of Black. It's your duty, your responsibility, son. Family first. Always pure. He had nodded, pretending to be a big boy and understand all the big words, but he was really just staring at the baby, they called him, in the intricately woven bassinet. He looks funny, Sirius tells his parents. Andy's arms had been holding him up, and they squeeze him tighter, affectionately to onlookers, but Sirius can feel a hint of warning . It's because he's a baby, Sirius, Andy said. All babies look a little funny at first. Sirius carefully trails the tips of his fingers over his brother's sleeping cheek, surprised at the silky soft texture. Sirius leaned in closer. He gently pressed his lips against the baby's cheek. Andy had done that to him once, and it felt nice, so he thought the baby might like it as well, even if he was sleeping. It seemed like the right sort of thing to do. I'll take good care of you, Sirius whispered against the silky pudgy cheek. Then he heard Andy's soft groan, Mother shrieking, Father yelling, Bella jeering, Cissy cooing, Aunt Dru and Uncle Ciggy's shocked gasping.
Father smacked him sharply on the back of the head, almost causing him to wail before he remembered that Father hated that and it'd only make him more mad. Never do that again, Sirius. Boys do not kiss other boys, even if it is your brother. Boys don't touch other boys either. Love is weakness. Do you hear me, Sirius Orion?
He had been four, and Andy had told him that he shouldn't play tricks on Kreacher. It's mean, Sirius. Would you want him to play mean tricks on you? No? So be nice. If you want people to be nice to you, then you've got to be nice to them first. So Sirius offered Kreacher a biscuit. Sharing was nice, right? But Kreacher had held the offering by the tips of his creepy spindle fingers, dangling it instead of gripping it properly or eating it, as if he wasn't sure what to do with it, or whether the gesture was genuine. If Sirius could remember the incident properly later, he might have wondered what could have happened, if it had been a missed turning point. As it was, Sirius's father had discovered them, with Sirius insisting that Kreacher eat the biscuit. Father had snapped at Kreacher, and hit Sirius on the head again. He was becoming used to the sensation.
Servants are beneath your notice, do you hear me boy?
Sirius is silent for long moments, but his father hears him mumble, Kreacher is rotten anyway. A warm hand clasps his small shoulder. But through his shirt, the palm feels cold.
He had been six, and he had only just met and been talking to Heidi. Heidi had bouncy blonde curls her mum had pulled back into twin things she called pigtails and a button nose. Heidi was chewing bubblegum with a smacking sound and playing a game Sirius had never heard of before. I'm skipping rope, Heidi giggles, and giggling is annoying, but Sirius had been expecting it, because that's what girls did, even Andy, though Andy was really cool. Skipping rope looks boring, and yet fun at the same time. The skip rope has bright pink plastic handles, and the fibers are dyed blue, and it makes an odd swishing noise as it brushes the ground, accompanied by the slap of Heidi's shoes against cement as she jumps up and down, moving with the skip rope in an easily paced rhythm. The request is about to rise from his lips—Can I try? Heidi was astonished that he'd never so much as seen a skip rope before—when Number 12's door bangs open. Sirius almost thinks that it was Mother's scream of rage that had blasted the door off its hinges, but then he's grabbed violently by the scruff of his neck, and Heidi's crying, big fat tears rolling down rosy cheeks, and everything is confusion, his mother screaming in his ear the whole time, until he thinks that it's the only thing left in the world.
How dare you! How dare you besmirch the name of the House of Black, besmirch your pure blood! How dare you lower yourself to converse with a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?
I didn't, Sirius yells back, unable to think clearly, unable to do anything but react. I don't even know what a Muggle is!
He had been eight, and Andy had left. Eloped. Disowned. His parents and aunt and uncle had tossed a lot of words around, but the point that Sirius got was that Andy was gone, probably forever, she had left her family, and she hadn't even said goodbye. Sirius had to admit that most of the family was stupid, and he definitely wouldn't mind leaving Bella and most of the rest, but why did she have to leave Sirius too? What had he done that had made her hate him too?
Love was stupid, Sirius had decided. Family was supposed to come first.
He had been eleven, and he had sat in a compartment with a blood-traitor Potter and shared and ate sweets with him. He had smiled at the thought of not being in Slytherin. Well, he had thought defiantly, they all were rather slimy. And James was funny, made him laugh. And when the train came to a stop, he treacherously wished that they could be real friends, even if he was going to be a Slytherin.
The Sorting Hat was atop his head, and it had shocked him into stillness and everyone else into silence when it shouted out Gryffindor. Why, he whispered, the question in his mind never actually making it out past numb lips. Go on, boy. It's the road to destiny. Mine? I never said that. You aren't so big yet.
He had been twelve, and it was summer vacation after the most amazing year of his life, and Regulus hardly spoke a word to him. His stomach started feeling vaguely sick. It wasn't until Regulus had been Sorted into Slytherin that he had almost thrown up at last.
He had been almost thirteen, and Remus was crying, and he'd never seen the boy cry before, not ever, even when his arm had been wrapped stiff in bandages that one time, and there was even a lot of snot involved here. Remus was a werewolf. Dangerous. A monster, his parents would have called him. But he was curled up in fetal position, trying to shy away from him and James and Peter and sobbing into his pillow, convinced they would hate him forever. Remus had always been right before. They had teased him about being a bookworm and know-it-all. But Sirius's body was moving before his brain had caught up in comprehension, and he was lying down on the bed behind Remus and wrapping his arms around the suddenly frail-seeming body in a tight hug, and he was joined by James and Peter, all of them wordlessly hugging Remus, the words hanging in the air just the same:
We're not going anywhere.
Boys don't even touch other boys, his father screamed in the back of Sirius's head. Maybe Sirius didn't care.
He had been sixteen, and he had left. He had slammed the door on his mother screaming, his father yelling, and Regulus's silence, dragging his hastily packed trunk through a downpour of rain. He had stood on a shocked James's doorstep, dripping water all over the entryway, and wholly unable to prevent hot stinging tears from sliding down his cheeks. He had been bundled up to James's room, his parents still asleep, and just like he'd been unable to prevent the tears, he'd been unable to hold back the words that came tumbling out.
It's over. I'm gone. I'm done. I've left. I'm never going back to them. I'm dead to them, James.
That's okay. You don't need them. We'll be your family, Padfoot. You're my brother now.
And James's arms were warm as they wrapped around him, and his head was rested against James's shoulder, and he smelled like linen and warm sleepiness mingled with cold rain, and he cried until there were no tears left. James never breathed a word about it to anyone, ever.
Family was just a word. You needed feelings to make it actually mean something.
He had been eighteen when his little brother had sold his soul to the devil, signed away his life to death. Regulus, who had once looked like a weird pudgy pink loaf of bread, whose baby soft cheek he had kissed, and then sometimes done again in secret…
Don't do it, Reg. Don't make me watch you die. I can't—don't do this. To me or to yourself.
Regulus's eyes had been sad, with barely a spark of life. He knew it as well as Sirius did.
I'm sorry. But I have to do this, Sirius. He leaned in, and, to his brother's shock, though he understood the gesture immediately, he repeated what had been done for him. He kissed his brother's cheek, and mouthed against Sirius's skin: Family first.
It was the goodbye neither brother could quite bring themselves to say.
He had been twenty-one, standing in tattered ruins, with ghosts screaming in the daylight all around him. A heap of blood-stained robes sat in front of him, wand held unseeingly aloft. He could see a trickle of water at the bottom of the crater in the asphalt, see the scurrying of rats, and there was the pungent smell of the sewer.
James…Lily…Peter…Harry…Remus…Regulus…Andromeda…names and faces, flashing through his mind, like a warped picture slideshow…
All of them. Gone forever.
He threw back his head and laughed.
He was sitting in a cold, ice cube cell, and Sirius Black was timeless. He was staring straight through the first piece of paper he'd held in his hand in years, through the first picture he'd seen in years.
Hands were waving in the flashing Egyptian sun.
And rising in his chest, when he'd thought there would only ever be emptiness left, for what is like the first time, he feels…
"Too long I've been afraid of losing love, well I guess I've lost. If that's love, it comes at much too high a cost!"-Wicked