young & stupid
I hope I die before I get old.
He laughs.
That is what they will all remember, years later, telling the story over beers in hushed tones, watching their friends' faces contort in shock: how he stood there, in the wreckage, blood-spattered and surrounded by carnage. Laughing.
He had always known he would die young. Years and years ago, they had said it: Sirius would die young and stupid, living fast and dangerous, on motorcycles and cheap whiskey, pretty girls and long nights.
He laughs at the irony, the bitterness welling out of his throat, tasting like blood; blood and smoke. He laughs because he is still standing while James – his best friend, his brother - James, his partner in crime – James, the grown-up with the wife and the son – James is dead. He laughs because there is nothing to laugh about at all; nothing to do in this unfamiliar world without him.
And so he doesn't fight when the ministry comes to pick him up, doesn't stop laughing, because there is nothing more they can do to him. He doesn't care, not anymore. The twitchy little auror they leave to watch him can't do anything but stare, unnerved by the mirthless noise coming out of Black's lips, until he can't even do that anymore. He eyes his feet, trying to block out the sounds – for although he doesn't even realize he's watching them, the death throes of a soul are a terrible thing to see.
Sirius stops looking his age quickly in Azkaban. It is not the food, which is barely edible, or even the constant gloom that oozes throughout the place. It's his eyes. He's stopped laughing now, stopped eating, stopped washing; he's beyond giving a fuck about anything. Death could come, right now, and he wouldn't fight it. His eyes glint with a desperation far beyond his years; a wish for death that should never have graced his face.
On his best days he can cry, let himself try to understand that James is dead and gone. On the worst days he just stands and grinds his fist into the stone wall until the blood pools by his feet. On the worst days he finds he needs to punish himself. Because it isn't the guilt, or the grief or even the pain that breaks him. It's the jealousy.
"You bastard." His voice is raspier than he remembered; but then he doesn't even know his own face anymore. It's night now, he thinks. It's hard to tell. "You complete asshole, James Potter." He's sprawled on the floor, scarred, scabbed hands resting on his wasted legs. "It should have been me. You," he doesn't know when he started crying, but suddenly the words are hard to choke out. "You went and got yourself fucking killed and didn't even have the common decency to bring your best mate." He laughs, again, doesn't know the last time he laughed because something was funny, doesn't even understand that idea anymore.
"Fucking hell." He pushes his hair out of his face; doesn't think about how it's a habit he copied from James years and years ago, when they were just kids, cocky little bastards that thought they were immortal. "It should've been me."
Sometimes he doesn't know who he hates more: James or himself. Himself, he figures, for even thinking he could hate James. But he does. Sirius Black should have died fighting, he thinks, should have died with a curse on his lips, a last 'fuck you' to the world as he blasted some Death Eater into oblivion, should have died with his best friend, because that is what best friends do, isn't it? They do things together because it is always better than being alone. Sirius alone could never have pulled off those pranks; they were always Potter and Black, Sirius and James – but now he is just Sirius Black, felon, Sirius Black, traitor, and James Potter is dead.
He is going to die in this cell, and wish that he'd died pretty, wished that this fucking world had had the mercy to let him die while he still had faith that some things do not bend and do not break, that they would all live forever, that Lily and James would have had time, any time, really, to raise their son, that he'd have been the best, worst godfather of all time, that there would be time for all of them, time to spend these lives they'd barely started.
He'd give anything to have died believing he was still invincible.
new chapter of Wooden Words coming up tomorrow. Felt a sudden angsty Sirius kick that (I think) has blasted through my writer's block.