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In the deepest part of the darkness within him, in the Blackest part that lies inside him, Sirius wishes with all of his heart to tear them apart.
He'd use his bare hands if he has to, he doesn't care.
He just wants to feel them scream, see them fall on their knees before him, cry and beg and plead.
He just wants them to hurt and bleed, just the way he's been hurting for years and years and years.
But he knows that if he gives in, if he gets up right at this very moment, walks down the stairs and sees them gathered there, straight and proud and Black, even in the face of the death and destruction they've wrought ; he'll kill them where they stand.
And if he kills them, he is done and they will have won. Every single one.
And so he counts to ten and he drinks his fathers' firewhiskey until his vision blurs, as he tells himself it's just whiskey burn and they do not define him.
(He takes another sip, tells himself that he'll never cry for them again and tries to swallow his lies. He almost chokes this time.)
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He remembers a night when he was five and he's walking down the street with his mother and it's just the two of them, he can't remember why.
He remembers pausing underneath the streetlights, fascinated by the spotlight, marked yellow against the black night.
He remembers watching his shadow grow, impossibly tall for a body so small and smiling at the wonder of it all.
And his mother was holding his hand as she led him home, through the darkness and the light and the shadow.
She led him home, to the only place he'd ever known, filled with all the things he'd one day own and he knew this because she told him so.
They're almost at the door and he stops once more and she lets his hand go, and suddenly he's all alone.
And she's outside of that beam of light, just out of sight and as he stiffens in shock, he hears her laugh. And when he starts to cry he tells himself it's only because he's afraid of the dark.
(Really though, he's afraid of his mother and his father, afraid of his family and their dark arts and most of all, afraid that they'll leave him alone and defenceless against the dark.)
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He remembers a time when he was ten and dreamed in red and gold even though, even then.
He hates them, hates everything about them, hates their history and tradition and Muggle-born hysteria.
Hates the lies, hates the society parties (death eater parties) that go on late into the night, hates their slow burning demise as they fall, one by one out of his diamond sky.
He had stars in his eyes at five.
They filled his vision, filled his head.
At five and six and seven there were stars still there, burning bright inside his sky, inside his mind.
At eight, they began to break, began to fall from the sky, and began to fall from his mind.
At nine they began to die and he stopped believing their lies, stopping wanting to live their lives.
He hates his uncles, hates their wives, hates their pomp and propaganda and talk of pureblood ties, of pureblood lines.
He learns to despise and spurn and scorn, silently, quietly inside.
He learns to stand tall at his parents side, stay sharp and dark and Black and bright.
He learns to lie and he learns to bide his time.
Alone in bed, in the privacy of his head, he dreams of hope and truth, of wrongs he knows and rights he hasn't been shown, of darkness turning into light.
He dreams of red and gold, things that can never be sold, dreams of red and gold, even then.
(He's got a plan for a new world order, that he'll be right at the front of, a dream of total freedom from purity and persecution, exile or execution.)
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He remembers a time when he was fifteen and believed he had the whole world at his feet.
He knows better, learned the truth at seventeen, but some small part of him refuses to concede and admit defeat.
His cousin leaves him to baby-sit her daughter, Nymphadora. Times are dangerous she says, and we'll only be gone the day and if you can't trust family, well, who can you trust?
And then she seems to realise the utter ridiculousness of that statement, given the family that they both once shared and shakes her head.
Something must have shown on his face, because she folds him into her warm embrace, kisses the top of his head and tells him she loves him, that he's not like them, he's all she's got and they're going to be okay.
He believes her, sees it in her eyes and he decides, right then and there, that he's leaving home and starts to map out his escape to a better place.
He whispers his grand plans into Dora's soft baby curls as she sleeps on his lap in front of the fire, red and gold lighting up the room and driving away the grey gloom.
(But the fog will roll back, it always rolls back and thick clouds crowd his mind, but its okay, it's fine even though he feels like he's stumbling along totally blind.)
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He remembers himself at twenty.
Three years out of Hogwarts and tired of fighting against the tide. He was born a Black wasn't he?
He's got to be bad, got to be mad and he'd scream if it wasn't so fucking sad.
They wouldn't let him become an Auror- too volatile, too unstable, too reckless.
Too bad, too Black. In his bleaker moments, drowning in an empty bottle, he's a child again, begging for his brother to relent. (His other brother, not James). He wants to knock on their door, fling himself at their feet, concede defeat and beg to be let in.
It's cold out here and it's getting colder every day and he's not sure how much of this he can take, now that James has Lily, and Lily has James and there's a baby on the way. He doesn't think of Peter, and Remus is still away.
He's wild is he? He's bad is he? He's mad is he? He's fucking Black, isn't he?
Fuck the lot of them. He'll show them, and so he does-- drinking and smoking and fighting and fucking while he's digging his waiting grave. He meets Marlene in a grimy bar, lips red (eyes dark and downcast) and on a parallel path. And then she's dead and he wishes it was him and he stays in bed and waits for the end.
(And then Remus is back, with a slap in the face, raging and red and unchanged. I leave you alone, just once and you're nearly fucking dead! He saved his life, made him bold again, saved his friends, made them red and gold again.)
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Now he is twenty five and he has lost everything that was good and great in his life.
James dead, Lily dead, Remus shattered and the Order is in tatters. Everything that once mattered, dead and gone, broken and lost.
He thinks of Peter, of the sewers that are too good for him, of the Prewetts and the McKinnons, who died for him. He thinks of his first family, looking down and wonders if he's made them proud, hates them still, more fervently now. He thinks of Peter and he dreams of a slow and painful end. Of treachery and death.
He hallucinates and waxes, wanes as night fades to day and back again. He dreams of red and gold, of dark and bright, of black and white, of fragmented wholes and wounded souls of red and gold. Of tattered threads, of red, of gold.
(It goes down easier some nights. When the moon is bright and high in the sky and all that is dark is illuminated by light. He sees the stars between his prison bars and throws his head back and laughs.)
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