Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh.
- 'The Curtain' by Hayden Carruth
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.
- 'Against Winter' by Charles Simic
Sirius Black is mad with betrayal.
He felt it like barbed wire around his soul, like his only heat source gone out in the freezing cold. The wards had been broken and that meant only one thing. Pettigrew had turned.
The RAT! Merlin, he had TRUSTED him! He was the one who-
He was the one to-
Why-
They're dead, they're dead, deaddeadDEAD-
Sirius Black is mad with grief.
He hands over his precious goddaughter to Hagrid, trusted in this man when he couldn't trust-
(himself?)
(Or was it-)
He hunts.
Sirius Black is mad with rage.
He was so close, he was so-
He's gone. In fact, the entire street is too.
(maybe this time he didn't fail?)
He comforts in the warm (alive) feeling of his bond with his goddaughter.
It's all he has left now.
Sirius Black is mad with denial.
He is arrested by the same aurors he served with, under, over.
(maybe this time he deserves it)
(they don't KNOW-)
He is sentenced to Azkaban with no trial.
Sirius Black is mad with despair.
It's all he can feel these days.
(they sweep by their cells, suckingsuckingsucking)
He huddles in a corner of his cell, shuddering and seizing through another round.
He doesn't think he would have made it half as long without their bond, warming him when nothing else can.
He feels the bond break.
.
.
.
Sirius Black is mad.