Summary: At first Sirius doesn't know why he did it. Maybe it was the thought of that cave being his brother's final resting place; maybe it was something else entirely.
Warnings: Angst, depression, language, incest, (necrophilia?) I was going to rate this T because it's honestly not very explicit, but then I thought a little harder about what was so 'not explicit' and went, yeah, some people might be disturbed by that. Thus the M rating.
Story Notes: You know that one cool chick on The Walking Dead who keeps those armless zombies chained up on leashes? You can blame her for this disturbing little work.
Extra Notes: This was extremely rushed and I'm not too happy with the final product. So don't be surprised if this disappears one day and is re-uploaded later with slightly less…suckiness. I might change the title, too, sometime…I don't know.
/it/
"What is it, Master Sirius?" asks Kreacher that night. Sirius, sweating and panting from all the evening's events, snaps the door to Regulus's bedroom shut quickly when he hears the elf's voice. Startled, he squints down the dark hallway and sees the little creature shuffling towards him.
"What have you brought home?" he croaks. "What have you put in Master Regulus's bedroom?"
"Nothing, Kreacher," insists Sirius dryly. "I was just going through some things. Cleaning."
"Master is a liar," says Kreacher dolefully. He comes lurching down the hall and stops next to Sirius. He bites at his hand while he stares around Sirius's legs. "Kreacher heard talking. What was Master talking to? Does it ever talk back?"
"No," Sirius says. "There's nothing in there. Kreacher, go away."
Kreacher doesn't leave. Instead he sways a little, and cocks his head, as though contemplating a way to get through the bedroom door.
"Kreacher. Do not bother me anymore. Go downstairs and do not come up to this floor ever again without my permission."
Kreacher growls, showing dull, rotten teeth. He does not disobey Sirius's order directly, however, and angrily stumbles off to the stairs, leaving Sirius to sigh with relief.
He is just leaning, sagging almost, against the door when suddenly the weight of someone's whole body is thrown up against the other side. Sirius jumps up straight and stumbles to the other side of the hall.
"Jesus Christ," he mutters, heart racing.
Has it really woken up so soon?
Now Sirius can hear scratching, clawing at the door, and he bites his lip, wondering what to do about it.
This was a terrible idea, Sirius can't even explain to himself why he did it. He closes his eyes bitterly and sits down in the hall. This is exactly the sort of reckless behavior Dumbledore was talking about, and it enrages Sirius to think the old fuck might have had a point. He has not only risked his life to get to that cave, but he is continually risking it now. He doesn't know how that thing will react to a new environment.
And what about Remus? Sirius can keep his secret hidden from the rest of the Order, they never go anywhere but the basement, but how can he hide this from Remus, who is due back from the Underworld in a matter of days? He can place a silencing charm on Regulus's door, but still, what about later in the summer, when the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione will arrive? One of the kids will surely stumble in on his hiding place eventually.
The noises quiet down.
"Fuck," groans Sirius, standing up. His spine pops in several place, punishing him for not immediately going to bed and resting. He grips his wand tightly.
After one paranoid glance to his left and to his right, Sirius slowly opens the bedroom door, unsure of what he will find. He prepares himself for an attack.
When he enters the room, he turns the light on, and then sees that it has crawled to the bed, and is lying halfway underneath as though hiding.
Cautiously, Sirius approaches it, wand raised, and ready to knock it out again should he need to.
The corpse looks different now that the light shines on it for the first time. Sirius kneels down and slowly leans closer, the tip of his wand alight. He has to double-check, make absolutely sure that he's brought home the right body. It was so dark and hectic in that cave, and he had been in such a rush…but no, looking closely now there is no doubt.
The dark mark still sits stenciled on its left forearm, but even without it, Sirius knows for sure this was Regulus. Hollowed out grey eyes stare back at him from the darkness under the bed, occasionally disappearing entirely behind clips of dirty black bangs. Its filthy hands scratch spastically at the wooden floor, almost like a nervous tic. Slowly, ever so slowly, Sirius reaches forward into the shadows and grabs one, pulling it into the light. Regulus's onyx ring is still on the pale hand, partially melded into a deep wound that runs the length of its index finger. Its skin feels deathly cold to the touch, and very soft, like a cloth that has sat in water too long.
The inferi twitches and shakes in his grasp. Gritting his teeth, Sirius pulls harder. He wants a better look at its whole body. It allows itself to be tugged, scraping and sliding over the splintering wood, a few inches before its face hits the light and it thrashes. It bites him.
"FUCK!" Sirius pulls back and, on reflex, lashes out with his wand, blasting the corpse back with a sickening thud. Its outstretched arm lies at a broken angle.
Sirius looks at his wrist. It didn't manage to break the skin. He looks back under the bed when he hears a low whine coming from deep in its throat. A pained sound.
"I'm sorry I hurt you," Sirius says. His voice is flat, emotionless. He does not believe it can understand him.
The inferi does not fight him the second time he drags it out from its hiding place beneath the bed. With cold detachment, he notes the hole in its shoulder where his spell hit. Dead skin has been blasted away. There's no blood, but the edges of the wound are black, charred, and Sirius thinks he can see a bit of collarbone through the hole.
Sirius wonders if he should dress this thing in clothes, if only to spare himself the discomfort of having to see how its sharp hipbones threaten to break through its taut skin. The flesh over its joints pulls with an audible stretching sound when it moves. Sirius wonders if this severe emaciation was something that happened post-mortem, or if Regulus had been this painfully thin while he was still alive.
Before Sirius can examine any further, the corpse staggers to its knees. Its broken arm hangs limply at its side, but with its good hand it reaches out to Sirius, grabbing his wrist. It lurchingly yanks itself towards him, wheezing noises escaping its battered throat. Sirius scrambles wildly back.
"Off," he commands, trying to push the thing away. "Let go," he pries off its dead hand with a discomforting snap, and it falls forward into his lap. With a disgustingly wet sound, it latches onto the back of Sirius's hand with its mouth. Sirius cries out but can't quite snatch the extremity away. He gropes for his wand, which has fallen somewhere behind him.
And yet it's not quite biting him, he realizes, but doing something else. When Sirius finally manages to free himself, panting hoarsely, the inferi falls with a thud to the floor, crushing its mutilated arm even further. As Sirius stands up, wand at the ready, he sees it looking up at him as though dejected. It whines.
A red jet of light emits from Sirius's wand, stunning it. The body sinks down, inanimate.
Sirius's head is spinning. "What the fuck have I done?" he hisses.
"No, mother," says Sirius for what he feels must be the hundredth time. "He's not the same. You don't want to see him."
"How dare you keep him from me," she screams, clawing at the sides of her rotting portrait. "My son is here, my son is alive! Bring him down here to see me!"
Sirius almost tells her that Regulus is most certainly not alive, but he stops himself. He doesn't want to say the words out loud, because it's something he himself has also been diligently ignoring. Instead he whispers, "He would not recognize you, Mother. He doesn't know me when we're together."
"He would," she screeches. "I'm his mother, he loves me! He would kill you, you worthless Blood-Traitor, if he knew you were keeping him from me!"
"I'm his brother," Sirius says quietly, more to himself than to his dead mother's painting.
"You are no brother to Regulus," she spits. "He has no reason to love you."
"I brought him home," says Sirius simply. He doesn't know why she can't understand what a good thing he's done. Regulus's body, dead and decaying in such a terrifying, dark place…Sirius has rescued what's left of him from that horror, and all Walburga Black can do is yell?
"He has never loved you!" her cark face stretches as she speaks, threatening to snap. "Oh the things he used to say about you. How he hated you!"
Sirius shakes his head and starts working to pull the curtains back over her picture. "Not true," he mutters. "Not true…"
Oh, mother if you only knew.
/him/
He doesn't wake up for almost two days. Sirius is both concerned and sickeningly optimistic that a second stunner might have been enough to finally kill him, but eventually he hears movements from behind the door again. Scratching, shuffling, something that sounds unsettlingly like crying.
He has only three days before Remus arrives, and brings with him an entire Order meeting. Sirius is still unsure of what to do. Is it worth hiding him?
There is little research or information on inferi, and Sirius does not know if they need to eat at all or not. He thinks not, but brings some food with him to Regulus's room anyway. Fresh strawberries, white chocolate candies, and pomegranate tea, all favorites of his brother when he was little.
Sirius enters the room and is again immediately disturbed by the sickening angle at which he holds his dislocated arm.
"Down," Sirius barks, setting the food carefully on the bed and raising his wand. He had started shuffling to Sirius, dragging his feet more than lifting them, but upon seeing the wand, a flicker of recognition crosses his face, and he immediately throws himself down.
Still a little uneasy, Sirius kneels on the ground next to him. "Maybe I can fix this," he grabs him by the broken arm before he can crawl away under the bed again. "Episky."
It takes several tries, but the arm eventually reattaches itself properly. Sirius watches as he carefully tries to move it again. Satisfied, Sirius turns to grab some of the food from the bed, but before he can, he is set upon.
Again it's not quite biting, Sirius can barely feel teeth scraping along his jaw and neck. It's more a strange combination of licking and sucking accompanied by small, disquieted noises. He pushes his face into Sirius's chest, grabbing at him with his cold hands. Sirius feels chilled.
"Fuck," he stutters. "Stop it, off!" he throws out his arms and manages to free himself. Sirius watches in amazement as he skids on the floor a ways before staggering to his knees again. Momentarily confused, he looks around until his eyes fall onto Sirius once more and begins to craw to him. Sirius grabs him by the hair to keep his mouth away, but his hands manage to find Sirius's sleeve, and tug clumsily. He is unable to properly grip with his fingers.
"Here," Sirius reaches behind him for a strawberry. "Try mauling this instead."
"Don't you touch those curtains, you filthy mudblood-lover, I'm not done speaking to you!"
"I'm done speaking with you, Mother," Sirius tugs futilely on the fraying drapes. They're so dusty and moth-eaten that his fingers slip.
"I want to see my son," she shrieks.
"You son is dead!" Sirius screams.
"No he's not, you've got him up there, I know you have!"
Sirius screams in frustration and pulls harder. "Shut up," he says over and over again. "Regulus is dead."
"He was dead," Walburga insists. "He was. You killed him, but now he's back. Bring him to me and leave us alone, you've done enough damage!"
Sirius lets go of the curtains and stands directly facing his mother. "I didn't kill him," he cries. "I fucking loved him, more than you and that old bastard ever did!"
"You left him to rot while you went off to play Gryffindor with those mudblood friends of yours. Oh you should have heard the things he said about you! How he wished you were dead, that you didn't have an ounce of loyalty in you, how he so regretted giving himself to you of all people, when all you did was throw him to the side for that Potter boy!"
Sirius's eyes widen. "He told you?" he sputters in disbelief. "Regulus would never have told you!"
"He didn't have to," she hisses. "I know everything that goes on in my house, Sirius Black, and you, are an unwelcome, sick, little blood-traitor rapist who can't stop dishonoring his family even after they're dead!"
"Mistress is right," croaks Kreacher from the kitchen entryway. "Master continues to torment us. He has brought back Master Regulus for what devious purpose, Kreacher does not know."
"Shut up," Sirius warns. "Both of you, I'm in no mood! I don't care what you think of me, I loved my brother and I didn't mean to hurt him."
Kreacher ambles closer and closer. "Master Regulus was a good boy, he did not deserve what Master Sirius did to him."
"You tricked my little Regulus into loving you, you selfish, vile creature," says Walburga, her voice a low drone. "And then you left without a word. You used him!"
Something snaps in Sirius at those words. His wand slashes up, and a strip of fire ignites across his mother's chest. She screams as the canvas around her begins to peel and fall away.
Kreacher's eyes widen in disbelief, but he has little time to react before Sirius has whirled around to face him. He points his wand directly at Kreacher's chest and hisses a spell that tears him open. The elf doesn't even have time to scream. Sirius sinks slowly to his hands and knees, exhausted. Behind him, his mother's portrait and the curtains burn out until only a pile of hot ashes remains. A small river of blood runs down the hallway, pooling around Sirius's hands.
/regulus/
Sirius finally realizes what it is that Regulus has been doing; he has been trying to kiss him.
"Little brother," Sirius whispers quietly as he looks into Regulus's dead eyes. He has only a few hours, three at most, before Remus comes home and brings the entire Order with him.
Regulus tries to approach Sirius where he stands in the doorway, but cannot. Sirius has him leashed to the bedpost. Regulus tugs at the rope around his throat and reaches clumsily out for Sirius with his long, skeletal arms.
"I brought you something," Sirius holds out a small, framed picture. "It was your absolute favorite, Regulus, you used to even bring it to Hogwarts with you."
In the photo there is only Sirius and Regulus. It was originally a family portrait, but after Sirius's fateful sorting, both of their parents had walked stubbornly out of the frame, refusing to be within the same picture as their oldest son. Sirius has the uncomfortable feeling that at some point in time, his own picture self had walked out as well, leaving Regulus all alone.
That doesn't matter now, though, and Sirius tries not to think of Regulus spending the last years of his life staring sadly at a disheartened photo of himself looking small, vulnerable, and completely isolated. What is important now is showing Regulus that look, Sirius had come back.
Regulus makes a strange coughing sound as he leans forward to look, forgetting again that he is tied up. The rope cuts into his neck, but still he throws himself forward with all his might.
Sirius wishes Regulus could still smile, because he thinks that's what he would be doing right now if he were able. Regulus stares at the photo from as many different angles as he can manage. The Sirius inside the frame has his arms tight around his brother, and leans down every few moments to kiss his cheek or nuzzle his neck.
"Here," says Sirius slowly. He sets down the picture. Regulus's eyes follow it longingly. Sirius walks up to his brother.
When Regulus notices his movements, and starts frantically clawing at him again, Sirius raises his wand. "No," he says.
Regulus again recognizes the instrument that has several times hurt him and slowly sinks to the ground. Sirius sits next to him and unties him with shaking hands. He glances up at the clock nervously.
Regulus cannot help himself. He pushes at his brother again, keening. His frantic movements fall somewhere between touching and scratching, hugging and mindlessly attacking.
"Stop, stop, stop," Sirius says, but realizes he cannot get Regulus to respond to him. He sighs and allows himself to be bowled over.
"I missed you," he murmurs. "You stupid little thing, I missed you."
Regulus simply cannot hold still. His skin is so cold Sirius can feel it through his clothing. He doesn't shiver, though; in fact, he wants more of it. Deftly he unclasps his robes and opens them. Regulus sinks against him immediately and Sirius encloses him with the cloth like a blanket, as though it might warm his dead body. At the very least, it holds him close.
"I loved you so much, Regulus, you know that?" Sirius says, Regulus's hair falling in his face, tickling his eyes. Sirius is crying. "And I hurt you so badly…but you were so brave at the end. You were such a good boy."
The phrase good boy seems to trigger something in what's left of Regulus's brain. He slows down and sits on Sirius's lap, looking down at him. Sirius's chest, arms and face are marked all over with deep red marks and scratches, but he looks up at Regulus with nothing short of adoration. Regulus leans down slowly, his balance a bit off so he has to steady himself, and gently he presses his cold lips to Sirius's. Finally, Sirius threads a hand through Regulus's matted hair and kisses him back.
"I miss you so much," Sirius whines. "So, so fucking much."
Regulus reattaches his mouth to Sirius's neck and slowly ruts his body against him. Sirius places a hand at his lower back and thrusts up to meet him.
Regulus's body is on autopilot, like a very prolonged death spasm, and he knows exactly what to do for Sirius to get him there. Sirius comes with a silent cry and several more tears escape from his eyes. Regulus seems to know Sirius is done and falls heavily onto his chest, tucking his head under Sirius's chin.
"Always such a good boy," Sirius whispers into Regulus's hair, and for the briefest of instances, Regulus's uncontrollable twitches and jerks stop and he is peacefully still before they start up again.
"Someday, Regulus, I promise we'll be happy together, okay?" Sirius sits up with Regulus in his lap and gently kisses his cheek. "Can you be good and wait for me patiently? I won't leave you alone very long."
Regulus paws at Sirius's shoulders, trying desperately to hug him. Sirius snakes an arm around his head and grips his chin. "I love you so very much, my little one," he says before kissing Regulus one more time. "I will never forgive myself for how much I've hurt you."
The clock on the wall begins to chime the hour, and Sirius's heart begins to race.
Another raspy noise scrapes its way out of Regulus's throat, but this time it's obvious he is trying to say something.
"Thank you," says Sirius, feeling as though one of the many weights in his chest has dissipated.
With all his strength, Sirius tightens his grip on Regulus's chin and yanks his arm back around. There is a loud crunch and all the twitching and jerking stops. Regulus falls completely limp against him, a gentle pressure on his chest. Regulus's head lands on his shoulder, stretched and pulled almost free of his broken neck.
Now that it is done, Sirius finds himself with a million and one more things he feels he should have said.
/gone/
-tenkuroi