AU.
QL: Holyhead Harpies, round 10. Chaser 2: Write about a character's will.
Optional Prompts: (quote) If he's dead I'll kill him. —Chas, Emmerdale.; (dialogue) "Sure, let's all get matching tattoos and we can dance the polka."; and the image prompt which fanfic won't let me link (an image of a man kissing a woman's hand)
HSWW: Assignment 5, Career Advice: Task #1: Write about keeping an important secret.
…
Barty will admit to a tendency toward melodrama. It's something Regulus used to tease him about, when they were both young. Both naive. Both alive.
He knew when he joined the Death Eaters that it might require a lot from him. But he'd looked at Regulus, grey eyes bright with conviction, and thought, I would follow him anywhere. He'd looked at Regulus and thought, I would die for him, if he asked me to.
But he never imagined it would happen like this.
He never imagined it would start with Regulus waking him up in the dead of night, dropping a vial of pensieve memories into his sleepy grip, lifting his hand and pressing a kiss to his palm, and then vanishing into the fog.
He never imagined it would end with Barty sitting in a cell beneath Lestrange Manor, wandless and alone.
He'd been planning on a blaze of glory. Or living until they were old and grey.
But now Regulus is missing. Barty refused to believe that he was dead until he was kidnapped and taken to a cell. He still doesn't want to believe it. If Regulus is dead because of some stupid heroic quest, Barty will track him down and kill him again for daring to die on him. He can't be dead. He's just missing.
And nobody knows what happened except Barty.
..
The first memory he drops in to is hazy, candlelit. He's in Regulus' bedroom. Outside, it is storming, thunder shaking the sky, rain pelting the roof. On the edge of Regulus' bed sits Kreacher, the house-elf Regulus has always bizarrely favoured. Regulus kneels in front of the shaking elf.
"There was bad magic in that place, Master Regulus. Bad, bad magic."
"Drink, Kreacher," Regulus says, looking contemplative. Kreacher takes a long draft of the goblet he's clutching tightly between his palms.
"He did not wish for Kreacher to come back. But Master Regulus had ordered Kreacher to return."
Regulus smiles at the elf, but it's not quite genuine. It's shaky.
"Master Regulus?" Kreacher asks.
Regulus sighs.
"What could he be hiding?" Regulus asks. "What could be so important that he would have you die to keep it secret, even from a follower he does not doubt?"
"Kreacher does not know, Master Regulus. But Kreacher does know this: the locket was something alive but not. Something even Kreacher's magic could not recognize."
Regulus hums thoughtfully as the memory turns to wisps of white smoke.
…
Footsteps approach his cell and Barty raises his head with some effort.
He's tired.
Regulus has been missing for a week and Barty is assuming he's been discovered and killed, and clearly someone has decided Barty was in on it. So much for Regulus' grand plan to leave the memories with him. Of course they would assume Barty knows. They've made no secret of the fact that they're friends.
(They've only made a secret of exactly how friendly. No one knows that the second bedroom in their flat goes unused. No one knows that Barty can map the the scars and freckles and moles of Regulus' body better than his own. No one knows that Barty had loved him, loves him still, because even death can't stop him.
No one knows that the night Barty watched the memories he waited up until dawn broke, hoping against all odds that Regulus would walk through the door.
No one knows that when he finally let that hope die, Barty wept.)
So Barty is tired.
He looks up into the face of the Dark Lord, quite possibly the last face Regulus ever saw, and he is exhausted, and he is aching, and he thinks that this is what it means to be broken.
He wonders if he's going to die in this cell.
Then the Dark Lord asks, "Where is Regulus Black?" And everything Barty thinks he knows comes tumbling down.
…
The second memory starts with Kreacher screaming. There aren't even words to it: it's visceral, guttural, and raw.
Barty has never heard agony expressed so clearly.
Regulus is kneeling on the floor beside him, eyes frantic, face unsure. His hands are reaching out like he wants to touch but he's not sure he should.
"Kreacher, please," he begs. "How can I help you?"
Kreacher's eyes snap open. He stops screaming, and the silence rings in Barty's ears.
"Water," he finally croaks, his voice even more of a rasp than usual. Regulus scrambles to fill a glass and lift it to Kreacher's lips.
Kreacher drinks. He stops screaming. He looks at Regulus, bulbous eyes wide.
And then he starts talking, voice low and breaking, and he tells a story about a cave sealed by blood and a lake filled with the dead and a necklace that seemed to have a life of its own.
The memory fades away just where the first one started.
…
"Where is Regulus Black?" the Dark Lord says once more, and Barty stares at him. "Don't make me ask again," he hisses.
"How should I know?" Barty finally says. "I'm not his keeper."
Because Regulus gave him his secrets. Gave him everything he could, and then went to be a hero.
And Barty will do what he can to honour that. If the Dark Lord doesn't know where Regulus is, maybe that means he's still out there. Maybe that means he succeeded.
Maybe he isn't dead.
Maybe he is. Either way, he's given his secrets to Barty, and Barty will keep them. If he can do nothing else for Regulus, he will do this.
The Dark Lord's eyes narrow. "I am not in the mood for games," he says. "Do you think me a fool?"
Barty doesn't. He thinks a lot of things about the Dark Lord, not all of them good, but a fool has never been one of them.
It's why he's had Occlumency shields up since the minute he heard footsteps. Barty's Occlumency shields aren't like most, though. He'd been entirely self taught, and Regulus, who had learned from masters in the art, had been entirely baffled.
Because Barty's shields don't look like Occlumency at all. He learned to hide his thoughts from his father — but he'd also learned that any evidence that he was hiding anything would earn an even swifter punishment.
So Barty's shields don't keep a Legilimens out. They just keep them stuck on the surface, often unaware that there even is anything hidden deeper.
He tries not to laugh at the irony that his father's abuse may just save his life.
So he grips his shields tightly and dons a smirk like it's armour.
"Of course not, my Lord."
Barty feels a presence in his mind that isn't his, that doesn't belong.
He doesn't react to it.
"He's your friend," the Dark Lord says, even as Barty is making sure every memory he has of every kiss, every touch, every fuck is deeply hidden, buried under layers and layers of mundane memories.
"Sure," Barty says. "And my flatmate. But he's in and out and I haven't seen him in a while, so." He shrugs, deliberately cavalier.
"You don't seem to understand the situation. I know you have information I need. You will give it to me. Willingly, or not."
He pulls his wand free and points it at Barty.
But here's another thing Barty's son-of-a-bitch father was good for. Barty is no stranger to pain. His father was a big fan of the saying, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
All it did was teach Barty to hide from him.
All it did was make Barty even more mulishly stubborn.
Barty's made a lot of mistakes in the name of stubbornness in his life, but he's pretty sure this isn't one of them.
He's pretty sure he has the will to withstand torture.
He's also pretty sure he's about to find out if that's true.
…
The last memory is Regulus sitting alone in the second bedroom of their flat — the one that is nominally Regulus', although he never sleeps there. He's sitting at the small desk, staring down at a piece of parchment.
"I've done my research, Barty," he says, and Barty realizes with surprise that Regulus made this memory specifically for him. "I'm pretty sure its a Horcrux, and I need you to know in case I fail. I'm going after it. And I'm sorry." He sniffs.
"I'm sorry that this might mean losing you, because you were the best thing I never expected to happen to me and the only reason I am hesitating to give my life to this."
He looks up, staring into the room. Staring right where Barty is.
"But I have to," he says fiercely. His grey eyes are blazing with as much conviction as they ever have. "It makes him immortal, Barty. And he can't… I know I believed in him once, I know I'm the reason you're in this at all, but this isn't what I wanted, and… I've been complacent for too long. So I'm going after it. But you need to know. In case I fail. So that someone knows. Someone has to destroy it, Barty."
He sighs deeply.
"I love you," he says, voice soft and cracking. "I love you. I love you. And I need you to be free from him. Free from this life I dragged you into. Even if that means giving my own." He smiles, bitter and sad. "I'd give my life a hundred times if it meant a better life for you."
He takes a slightly shuddery breath. "I'm going to try to make it back to you. I promise you that. I'm going to try." He bites his lip, worries it between his teeth. "I love you," he says once more as the last memory fades to mist.
…
Barty bites his lip, holding a scream inside. He will not scream. He will not give the Dark Lord the pleasure.
Keeping in his secrets is for Regulus. Keeping in his screams is for himself.
He tells himself that he has the will for this. He had the will to tell his father to fuck off at seventeen and move out to live with the man he loved. He has the will for this.
And then the curse ends and Barty's limbs are trembling, shaking with the sudden loss of tension. His nerves can't cope with the abrupt loss of stimulus.
He takes a shuddering breath and pulls his head up to look at the Dark Lord, who is smirking at him faintly.
"Tell me what you know," he says.
Barty breathes heavily. "I don't. Know. Anything."
The Dark Lord shakes his head disapprovingly. "I can't abide liars, Crouch. You know this."
And then Barty is burning once more.
…
Barty goes to Kreacher.
Kreacher barely trusts him, and only because of his connection to Regulus, but when Barty calls him this time, he comes.
He stares at Barty with wide eyes.
"Kreacher," Barty says. "Where's Regulus?"
Kreacher's eyes begin to water.
"Master Regulus made Kreacher leave him," he says. "Kreacher does not know what happened."
Barty takes a breath, trying not to collapse. Trying not to fall apart.
"Did you find the Horcrux?" Barty asks.
Kreacher eyes him. "Master Regulus told you?"
Barty nods.
Kreacher eyes him, and then digs within the pillowcase he wears and pulls out a gleaming silver and emerald necklace. He holds it up and it catches the light.
Barty stares at it, this necklace which holds a piece of Voldemort's soul. It seems impossible.
"Kreacher cannot destroy it," the elf says. "Nothing will touch it."
Barty takes a breath.
He thinks about taking it, hiding it. But the thing is, Barty knows that wizards underestimate house-elves. Nobody ever suspects the house-elves.
"I'll do some looking," Barty says. "Keep an eye on that."
Kreacher scowls at him. "Obviously."
And then the elf disappears.
...
Maybe it's stupid to keep the secrets of a dead man.
Because it doesn't matter that Barty has a bit more hope than he did.
He knows how unlikely it is that Regulus is still alive.
But Kreacher has the locket. And somehow, some way, he'll make sure it's destroyed. At least they've accomplished this. Regulus has made the Dark Lord vulnerable.
Barty will not invalidate the progress Regulus lost his life for.
"You were one of my most loyal," the Dark Lord says. "Return to me, Crouch. Rejoin my faithful."
Barty grins, knowing it probably looks a bit manic. "Sure. Let's all get matching tattoos and we can dance the polka."
The Dark Lord's eyes narrow.
"You are a fool," he says. "And you will die for it."
And then he raises his wand.
Barty's lip is bloodied. He can taste the coppery tang, feel the sting, and he lets his attention fixate on that so that he's not thinking so much about the fire raging through his veins.
He will not scream.
If this is the last thing he does, he is determined to use every ounce of will in his body to not scream.
In the end, it is the last thing he does.
But as the world fades away, Barty smirks, his face bloodied and manic and containing no sanity.
At least this way he'll see Regulus again.