Author's Note: As usual, an odd little middle-of-the-night fic, sparked by (if not technically inspired by) a few lines in a Coldplay song, and because I've wanted to write Sirius for a while anyway.
Black
Azkaban is black, black, and he laughs silently in the screaming quiet of it all, because he has a choice between laughter and tears, and his mind is too ravaged for tears just now. He laughs because he supposes they expect him to, now; and he is, he thinks ironically (while he can still grasp irony), a madman now—laughing over Peter (because he cannot weep)—over James and Lily, and Remus, who is not a traitor after all... His hands scrabble at the crumbling stone in the darkness, and he laughs against it; or perhaps he is sobbing now—he can only hear his breath heaving from his chest and it is the only warmth in this cold, black hell.
So, the last rational vestige of his mind murmurs, you're a Black after all, that's what they'll all be saying now; their blood's been rotten for generations and even Gryffindor couldn't save you. You never really escaped; that's what they'll say...
Night falls, but there is no change, so he does not quite understand how he knows this. Weakly, he feels his body shift and lessen, and the great black dog curls on the floor. Grief is duller to this mind, he thinks vaguely, and shifts his head from his paws.
It is night, and the Dementors never sleep, but Padfoot howls his grief to that blackness that night.
Reviews make Sirius...er...slightly less dead?