A/N: Sorry this took me so long - things have been a little ridiculous on my end. I also was grasping at straws for this chapter until the second half suddenly hit me. xD Best read following chapter 3 of Seirios Aster's fic, Some Nights, Feel Like Falling Down.

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Slow Cheetah

"Waking up dead inside of my head will never never do, there is no med... No medicine to take." ~ Red Hot Chili Peppers

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SIrius Orion Black felt like he'd chewed a pound of cotton recently, or perhaps had eaten a pillow, all while standing next to the amp at a rock concert for a several hour performance. Dull, bleary blue eyes looked out from under the pillow that had somehow made it over his face, and he winced. Blinds drawn or not, there was still far too much light in the world for the Eldest and Moste Hungover Black. Parting his lips slightly a few times in an attempt to remove his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth, he slowly rolled over, trying to get his bearings.

Well, that's the ceiling ... Alright, and that's a wall over off in that blurry space over there he was pretty sure ... Which meant that the floor was likely somewhere beneath him. Ok, we're getting somewhere. Maybe possibly. It felt like his brain had decided to die inside of his skull and had started to rot without his consent. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten in this state, but he felt a good deal worse than he normally did upon waking. Just imagine, he thought to himself, a few more hangovers like this and I might give up the drink altogether. His laughter at the absurd notion was cut short by a pained hiss - Merlin, everything hurt. Not to be punny, but siriusly; he'd never felt so bad after a drinking binge before, and he could only assume that was what had happened, since he had no recollection of the previous night. As far as he knew, he'd passed out after Moony had dragged his sorry arse home from St. Mungo's and he had blissfully slept the rest of the day and night away.

"That's only after you decided to suicidally provoke your cousin into a stacked duel," he grunted to himself as he forced his body upright and gagged a little from the nausea that hit him suddenly. Mercifully, however, it passed quickly. "Though to be fair, you didn't know it was stacked going into it." The thought gave him little comfort, because on some level he knew that there were days it wouldn't have mattered - he would have walked headlong into that alleyway fully knowing the odds. However, logically that couldn't be all that transpired because he was in his room, and he did distinctly recall being stationed on the couch when he returned to his flat.

Pressing his hand to his forehead, Sirius Orion Black peered between his fingers, half glaring half squinting at the window as if it were purposely going out of its way to blind him with nausea. Or maybe just blindness. But either way. Looking around, he was surprised to see a glass of water on his nightstand. Had he had the foresight to put that there? No, Moony must have - wait, but the werewolf had put him on the couch right? So, why would have put water on the nightstand in his bedroom ...?

To be fair, Remus wouldn't have allowed him to consume alcohol the day before, having just come back from the hospital, and he found it hard to believe anything but booze had put him in his current wretched state ... So it was very likely he had woken up at some point, binged, and then collapsed again ... Which still didn't explain where the water had come from, or where whatever he'd binged on had appeared from either. Last he checked, he'd finished his last bottle of Firewhiskey the morning before.

He decided he didn't care, instead picking up the mysterious glass and downing its contents, in one fell gulp. Incidentally it was in fact water rather than some cruel joke of vodka or another clear liquor that tricked his hazy brain into believing it was something to quench his currently insatiable thirst. Sighing, as the water did little to help how he felt, the brunet turned his legs and pulled the quilt off of himself. Odd; normally when he wandered into his room in a drunken stupor, he tended to just collapse on his bed. But he was under the blanket. Hmm.

Well whatever.

Maybe Moony did it.

Keeping his hand on his head, he stumbled into the bathroom to get rid of what liquid his body did process before his hypothalamus became confused and decided to cease function until it had things sorted out. Normally a good plan in most cases, all things considered, but that didn't make him feel better right now. Groaning, he exited the washroom and made his way slowly across the bedroom ... And noticed that he was tripping and falling far less than normal. Taking his hand down for a moment so he could look around, squinting, he realized that there was a crucial aesthetic of his apartment missing. Copious amounts of empty bottles.

When he'd lived with Remus, the Longbottoms, and Dorcus, between Alice and Remus things mostly stayed organized and reasonably clean since no one wanted to tangle with Alice when she got out her frying pan ... But, without that strict hand to keep him in check things tended for the most part to just ... Land where they landed, so to speak. And, since normally an empty bottle meant that he was piss drunk, said empty bottle tended to end up on the floor. Which garnered quite a few bottles of the empty variety being strewn about in a sort of festive, if dangerous, manner.

However, the ones that he had been collecting in his bedroom (since that was normally where the collapsing happened after the aforementioned drinking binges) seemed to have mysteriously disappeared between today and yesterday. Which, to be fair, was once again probably Remus, since his mate did like things clean and in their place and all of that rot, but ... Well if he was going to do it at all, then why wouldn't he have done it yesterday morning while he was waiting for Sirius to get ready to go to Diagon Alley? The only time he could've done it that Sirius wouldn't have known about was when the Moste Disinherited and Apparently Sheep-like Black of the family had been sleeping off the medication from St. Mungo's. But that didn't make sense, because unless he was stone cold unconscious, he had a quick trigger finger, and tended to wake up if there was magic cast nearby him. A learned survival instinct or something like that. Either way, the werewolf knew that, and if he wanted to avoid getting his face hexed off as well as keep Sirius asleep, as he no doubt did, then there was no way he would have risked a spell or two, even from the next room over.

Shuffling into the living room, he once again decided he didn't care; he didn't have the functioning brain cells for this right now. Reaching into the pantry blindly and pulling out a mostly eaten box of cereal, Sirius reflexively side-stepping the space in front of the fridge where an armed Dorcas used to take up a nightly vigilance to deter any sleep-eating that went on while living with a certain werewolf. However, the kangaroo was nowhere in sight he had to remind himself, and neither was there a wand or a kitchen knife for him to be threatened with, so it was safe to open the fridge and pull out the half gallon carton of milk that had been there for a while and he wasn't entirely certain was still good. A smell test told him that it was probably alright, and after putting cereal into a bowl and retrieving a spoon, he doused the breakfast food in the questionable liquid from the carton before pulling over the bag of sugar that was still sitting on the counter from the last time he'd had tea, pouring a generous helping of the sweet granules on as well. Stirring it with the spoon absently, he went to sit down on the couch.

The entire time this was going on, his hands were shaking slightly, though whether it was from the particularly brutal Crucio Bellatrix had cast on him the day before or from the fact that he didn't have alcohol in his system at present was anyone's guess. Sirius had become rather accustomed to ignoring this development though, and he hardly noticed when he lost half of the cereal on his spoon at each bite he picked up. That was mostly because he was staring at the opposite wall at the door that lead into the other room of the two bedroom apartment as he more or less mechanically ate. Absently, his mind drifted back to the altercation he'd had with his cousin ...

More specifically, the aftermath, and the face he was sure he'd seen.

"Sirius ..? You going somewhere?"

"FUCK!" the yell and the subsequent throw of the half empty cereal bowl, which emptied its contents all over the coffee table and the rug beneath it was complete reflex. So was slowly curling up in the corner of the couch and hugging himself. Blue eyes closed a few moments afterwards, and he let out a shuddering breath. His body was still having a mild tremor fit, and he was still upset from that Unforgivable Curse - or at least, that's what he told himself as he felt a tear slide down his face, and then another.

"Dammit Reg ..." he'd meant for it to be another yell, but it came out more along the lines of a pathetic whisper that he would die if anyone heard. But that face - he had seen his brother. He had. Sirius might have been passing out from pain and going out of his mind at the time but ... Something had saved him. For a moment, he had thought it was divine providence - God watches out for fools, children, and drunks, right? Well Sirius had at least two of the three down pat, and all of them depending on who you asked, so he should've had divine providence coming out of his arse on the daily ... But that seemed far too coincidental for it to have happened right when it had. A second later, and Bella would have been over to him and he would've been gone forever. A second earlier and she would have dodged towards him and taken him anyway - so the building, just by happenstance, partially collapsed and set them apart at just the right moment?

It could have been coincidence ...

Or it could have been Regulus.

To be fair it was also just as likely to be a one eyed, one horned flying purple people eater ...

But Sirius hadn't seen a one eyed, one horned flying purple whatever-the-fuck. He'd seen his brother. Leaning over him with that concerned expression he often donned when he found his older brother after their mother had had one of her fits. Normally it was followed up by working a few illusion charms to hide the bruises before their father got home, if their father happened to be coming home that evening, or before Sirius went out to visit James or something. The last thing he wanted was anyone to see evidence of his already speculatively horrible home life.

It was a look he'd seen a million times, and prior to a few months ago thought he'd see a million and one more, so it was fair to think that his pain hazed brain assumed that's what he should be seeing, and dubbed it in but ... It had been so real. And there had been that light ... Reg had always been the one to check Sirius over for internal injuries like a concussion if he didn't know what had happened to his brother when he came across an injured Sirius ...

The pieces just fit together too neatly for it to be anything else. Except maybe a grieving one-and-twenty year old that was rationalizing to try and get over the premature demise of his only sibling, but we're not counting that possibility. I'll probably never know though; I mean, it's not like anyone believes me anyway, he thought to himself gloomily, watching the milk drip off of the wooden table and onto the floor, cornflakes thrown around haphazardly. No one would ever believe me unless I had proof ... but he couldn't be arsed to do all of that; no no, he'd rather sit around his flat all day on a Sunday and drink himself stupid. Which shouldn't have been hard since he was already naturally pretty stupid to being with.

I should be the dead one; Reg would at least be doing something with his life, the miserable thought crossed his mind, and he knew if he allowed it to continue, it would only get worse as time went on. That settled it. He couldn't sit here; he owed his brother that much. He had to do something - acting like he was dead himself would never, never do. And he knew that if he didn't at least try to figure out what happened, and if someone had interfered, whether it was his younger brother or not, it would eat at him. And no medication, of the alchy-variety or otherwise, was going to get rid of that feeling.

As he promised himself that if he remained idle there was no medicine he could take to make himself feel content, he dragged himself up off of the couch. He needed to wash his face off and clean up that cereal bowl ... And then he needed to go back there. Back to the scene to see if he could find any proof; even just a small scrap of evidence either way would be enough ...

It was an hour later or so when slowly, the brunet looked around the alleyway. He wasn't even sure why he was here. Even if he had seen what he thought he had seen in his pain hazed stupor there wouldn't be any evidence. It wasn't like even if Reg had been injured or something he'd be able to tell the difference between his brother's blood and whatever of his own was spattered against the cobblestones. He wasn't particularly surprised when he arrived to see that the area was roped off; honestly he was mostly surprised that no one had started questioning him wildly the second he'd been conscious and out and about that day. Remus had warned him that they, and by 'they' he of course meant the Ministry and Wizard Cops, were going to, most likely in much the same way they had a few months earlier, come after him when he'd found out his brother had been murdered. Which is to say accusing him of a conspiracy, of course.

At a sudden voice behind him, Sirius jumped a mile. Damned startle reflex was still overactive it seemed. Turning around quickly, he saw who it was and immediately let out a breath, muttering something about being scared half to death.

"I knew you'd be here," a certain werwewolf said as he took a few more steps forward. "I mean, of course the tracking spell I put on you to make sure you didn't end up wandering into Hogsmeade in your drunkenness and harassing Madame Rosmerta helped." Sirius couldn't help the small smile that crossed his face at the statement; it was true, he tended to hit on Madame Rosmerta when he got a little drink into him in Hogsmeade ... Even when they thought he was barking mad, leave it to his friends to try and cheer him up - and usually succeed. "But I knew you'd come back here eventually." Sirius' brow furrowed; Remus seemed ... well, a good deal more concerned than someone should have been considering Sirius was literally just wandering around in an alleyway to try and sate his curiosity. Or grief. Whichever.

"Moony-?" the dog animagus stopped however when the werewolf held up a hand to interrupt him, and Sirius tilted his head slightly inquisitively, but remained silent as directed.

"My turn to ask a question first. What are you doing here?" All the werewolf needed to see was the brunet look down. It was rather obvious, wasn't it? What with the way he had woken up in the hospital screaming for his brother, insisting that he had seen the boy here ... "I'm not mad at you for what you did, challenging Bellatrix, no matter how stupid it was, I'm not going to call you crazy. But Sirius, I am worried about you. Please stop obsessing over this." Blue eyes narrowed slightly. Obsessing? He had just seen it yesterday and he came back; it wasn't like he had been harping on it for weeks and had come back a million times to go over it with a fine toothed comb.

"All I'm doing is checking on a hunch; it's not the end of the world Moony," Sirius responded a little curtly with a roll of the eyes. Insane delusions or not what he was currently doing was harmless, and he didn't like the label of being an obsessive when he wasn't being one.

"Yes, alone and right after you were attacked and nearly abducted by Death Eaters. Please ..." Remus sighed, talking over whatever retort Sirius had started to make before shaking his head a little and looking down with a small smile. "Just shut up and go home, Pads." the command was issued from the werewolf in that indulgent tone he always said it with. Normally Sirius did as directed when someone like Remus or Lily said something in that tone using those words, because normally it was for his own good or at least wasn't a big deal, but ... This time he couldn't. He couldn't drop it; everyone thought he was right barmy, his friends included, and it was ironically driving him insane. He didn't care how unhinged it sounded; the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Regulus was alive. He had to be.

"No really - Moony, I'm telling you!" he didn't mean to raise his voice, but he was starting to get really irritated, especially at the dismissal he was getting. Even if he thought Sirius was a crazy obsessive, wouldn't it be better to help him find something that proved one way or the other that there was no one else besides the four dueling in the alleyway or something? (1) "It was him; Reggie, he was here!" He could see that sad, exasperated look on his friend's face, and it only served to edge the brunet slightly closer to actually being angry. And then, the werewolf made a suggestion that sent him over the moon.

"Pads ... Maybe it might do you some good to go and stay with Lily and Prongs; or maybe you could stay at the Hollow for a bit. I'm sure they'd have you -" Running off to James' family and abandoning his brother like that ... That had been his first colossal mistake concerning Regulus. He wasn't about to repeat it again.

"Remus I am not having a goddamned mental break down, and fuck you for saying so!" he practically roared. He was ready to tear his own hear out in frustration. For once he hadn't been drunk, or otherwise inebriated in any way - he knew what he'd seen. It had been Reg, plain and simple, clear as day. Admittedly a pain hazed, partially cloudy day, but a day none the less! Upon reflection he'd realize how completely ludicrous it sounded, but it seemed perfectly logical in his mind at the moment, and the medication or lack thereof was making him far more belligerent than normal. It thereby wasn't really helping this situation any.

"Listen, Sirius," the werewolf, for all of his infinite patience and quietness, was starting to lose it a bit, "all I'm suggesting is that you should take some down time - go on holiday, something for a change of scenery; maybe move out of the apartment -" Sirius threw his hands in the air at this suggestion.

"What, so he can NEVER find me again!? You think I should just run away to James' parents away from my family problems all over again!? Fat lot of good that did anyone last time; that's when Regulus started hanging around my bitch of a cousin! So now what - I'm supposed to leave the last place he knew where to find me and just -"

"Padfoot, LISTEN TO YOURSELF!" The sudden volume of the tawny haired male's voice sufficiently cowed Sirius for the moment, increased startle reflex from the Cruciatus kicking back in. "Listen, I'm sorry to be the one to remind you, but your brother is DEAD. He isn't coming back - do you hear me? Mate, you need to accept that and move on already; look at what this is doing to you! You drink until you pass out more often than not, and Prongs told me that if you're on time to work it's a bleeding miracle. Hell, you wouldn't have even remembered Peter's birthday if Lily hadn't suggested that day trip yesterday. We're all worried about ... you ... " The dark haired male stood there staring at his friend, completely stock still, which made Remus trail off slightly.

Normally when Sirius was angry, he yelled, he made a scene; stomped his feet, shook, something. But this time ... It was like it all came full circle, and he just stared at Remus, eyes slightly wide, jaw set, teeth and hands clenched. Then, one of those hands came up to chest level between them, not quickly, not violently. Slowly. Coldly. Absolutely. It unfurled from its fist, and the Eldest and Moste Disowned son of the Black family said five words that neither of them ever thought he would utter.

"Remus, give me your key." There was a long, deafening silence following those words, as if time had stopped. Like all of the air had been removed from the space between them, but as long as neither of them made any moves or tried to speak, it would be alright. And it was; until the tawny haired male broke the silence, shaking his head in shocked disbelief.

"... Padfoot, what are you saying-?"

"You're a smart lad; read between the lines." Funny, he was too angry and his judgement was too clouded to remember why saying that line seemed familiar to him, or Sirius would have seen that this was quickly becoming another of those shameful moments he drank to forget about. "I think we need to spend some time apart, Moony."

"Pads, you don't mean tha-" Sirius wasn't hearing it. In that moment, at that exact second, he did mean it. He meant every syllable - every sound, every letter. They had argued before, over his brother in fact, about six months ago; last time it had caused the werewolf to move out of the current apartment. This time, there were less words exchanged, but it was worse. And he didn't want to hear an argument to try and get him to change his mind. He was adamant.

"Remus. Key. Now." The interruption was terse and the addressee stopped speaking immediately. Gold-brown eyes watched Sirius for a long moment before, without breaking eye contact, he reached into his pocket and slowly removed the key that was in question. Even when they had had that slight explosion at each other after Regulus' funeral and Remus had moved out of the apartment, Sirius hadn't made him give his key back - he hadn't even asked for it.

The movement was slow as Remus held it out to the brunet that was glaring harshly at him, and even more slow as he placed the piece of cut metal into the brunet's hand. True, it wouldn't keep the werewolf out of the apartment unless he changed the wards that stopped apparition in and out for certain individuals and allowed it for others, but ... The gesture of what this meant was more than enough to ensure that one of his oldest friends would never again enter the apartment without request or permission.

Remus stood and looked at him for a very long time after Sirius closed his hand around the key before he put his hands in his coat pockets, and from one withdrew his wand. Blue eyes watched him intently, and as the werewolf raised said wand to leave, he paused. And Sirius was certain he was imagining the glisten in the other male's eyes as he looked at them.

"I ..." Remus voice wavered and he stopped, closing his mouth slowly, and he didn't finish the thought aloud. As soon as he flicked his wrist to leave, Sirius regretted what he'd done, but before he could call after him and tell him to stop, there was a loud bang. The key fell out of Sirius' hand onto the cobblestones, as he looked at the spot where the werewolf had just been standing. He was alone; now he had exactly what he wanted ... So why did he just want to sit down on the cobbles, put his head in his hands, and cry? Slowly, Sirius put a hand to his face, covering it and pressing at his eyes with his fingers. He couldn't help the shaky, wretched little laugh that escaped him as his breath hitched.

"Sirius ..? You going somewhere?"

No - but everyone else is. And it's all my fault.

The End ...?

Footnotes:

1 - No Sirius, because as far as Remus is concerned that is only indulging your psychosis, and that is usually not a good idea.