Team: Falmouth Falcons
Main Prompt: Regulus/James
Option Prompts:
Train: Cheerful
Emotion: Guilt
Action: Tripping Over Something
Word Count: 2134
Remembering Hope
"What are you doing here?"
James blinked, turning away from the window. He'd been watching a rabbit hop through the snow, squinting through the glass as it blended in with the smooth sheet of snow that lay atop the lawn.
A crow flew overhead, diving down at the rabbit every down and again. James couldn't hear it from his spot at the window, but he imagined an awful caw followed each swoop. He wasn't sure why the crow was going after a cute little rabbit, but what did he know? Do crows eat rabbits?
Maybe the rabbit had done something to really tick the bird off.
In any case, at the sound of the familiar voice, he whipped around with an irritating surge of something he hadn't felt in a long time.
It was a feeling he could have sworn he'd squashed ages ago.
But then he saw him, and that pesky feeling didn't just kindle or char— it exploded, fireworks of feelings a lot like… well, he didn't want to acknowledge what it was, but it was bursting in his chest in a way that he hadn't thought he'd experience again.
"Regulus?" he breathed. It wasn't possible. It wasn't possible. He'd died, he'd died months ago, this couldn't be real.
"Hey Potter," Regulus grinned lazily, leaning against the door frame.
This couldn't be real, he thought again, the repetition all he could manage in his shock. But everything about Regulus was the same, from the dark circles beneath his eyes to the stray pieces of hair that fell over his forehead to the sly grin that made James's stomach flip.
"I— I don't understand," James replied in awe. Part of him wanted to run to him, to throw his arms around him and tangle his hands in his hair and pin him against the wall and— he shook his head. "How are you here? We heard you were— that is, I was told you'd, erm…"
"Died?" Regulus raised his eyebrows, his hands in his pockets. James couldn't understand how he could be so casual.
"Right," James whispered back. He was starting to feel dizzy. He stepped forward once, partially to bring himself closer to the first love of his life, but also simply because balance was quickly becoming too low of a priority to think about.
Regulus sighed, pushing away from the wall and taking a couple steps closer himself. James felt his throat tighten, every muscle in him twitching, aching, begging him to run forward. But he didn't. Something held him back.
"Regulus," he choked. "I'm— I'm so—"
"Don't," Regulus cut him off, shaking his head. "Every choice I made was my own. There's nothing for you to feel guilty over."
"I do though," James lamented, unable to hold back. "It eats at me, it hurts. Do you know how much I've missed you? How much guilt I've lived with every single day that I have to see Sirius or talk about the Death Eaters or attend Order meetings, or do something as mundane as butter a piece of goddamned toast? Everything I do is loaded with guilt these days."
"You shouldn't feel like that," Regulus shook his head with a pained grimace. "I never wanted that for you. I made my own mistakes, and what happened to me was a result of nothing more than my decisions."
"But you're here now," James pointed out, still trying to hold back from rushing to him.
"Yes," the former Death Eater agreed. "But it's not… it's not quite what you think."
James frowned, his patience thinning. Fuck it, he thought, and he hurried forward, eager to close the distance. Only a couple of steps away, however, his foot caught on a loose floorboard that'd stuck up on one end.
He cried out in shock as he fell, his arms instinctively out to catch himself as he fell toward Regulus. In the quickness of the moment, his heart soared as he fell toward him, his desperation for touch finally to be quelled.
But Regulus didn't catch him. James fell through him.
He landed in a heap on the ground, turning over in surprise and fear and anguish. Regulus stood over him, his own sorrow evident as he helplessly stared down at James.
"What just— what was that?" James demanded.
Regulus shrugged. He turned away, walking toward the window with ominously silent footsteps.
"Regulus!" James exclaimed.
The— what was he, a ghost? What was he doing at the Potter home if that were the case? Haunting him?— whatever he was, he glanced back at James, who still lay on the floor, and smiled sadly. "I'm sorry, James."
Sorry? He was sorry?
James was the one who'd given up on him. The one who'd let him walk away and join the Death Eaters. The one who'd left him alone to go off and die.
"Are you a ghost?" James whispered, pulling himself off the floor.
Regulus didn't answer at first. He looked out the window, his profile gloomily dark against the white of the snow behind the glass. "I'm not really anything at all, honestly."
"I don't understand." James frowned. Hesitantly, he moved closer.
"I guess I'm… I dunno, a memory?" Regulus mused, still staring outside. "It's your dream, James, you tell me."
"I'm… dreaming?" James furrowed his eyebrows, confused.
"Look around," Regulus instructed, gesturing a hand around the room. Only now did James realize it was entirely empty. Nothing but a dark wood floor, grey walls, and the large window. "How'd you get here? Do you remember deciding to visit your parents' old home? Or coming up to an entirely empty room?"
He didn't. James let this new revelation sink in, his devastation inexplicably building as he took in his surroundings. He looked back at Regulus, who watched him with a soft, concerned expression. "I miss you," he reiterated quietly.
"I know," Regulus replied with a small smile. "But you haven't been yourself, James."
"Maybe this is who I am now."
"It's not," the memory of Regulus Black countered. "This isn't you; you're not the James Potter I fell in love with."
"I don't know who I am," James snapped. "I'm stuck in a war, I lost the person I loved most in the world, no one even knows, and the world's slipping into this... this... darkness, this awful place of death and grief and I hate it."
He turned away, his feet carrying him to the opposite wall in a blur, and he sank against it until he hit the floor. "Godric, I spent so long wasting so much time," he muttered. Regulus left the window to sit on the floor in front of him and listen. "I pulled pranks, I spent most of my time in detention, I walked away from the best thing to ever happen to me only for him to wind up dead—"
"I told you, that wasn't your fault—"
"It was!" James yelled. "Voldemort's on the rise, you're dead, and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. I'm nineteen! I thought I'd be playing Quidditch at this point in my life, not fighting a bloody war. I've never felt so… so—" he broke off and dropped his head back, letting it hit the wall with a soft thud.
"Hopeless," Regulus finished for him in a whisper. James nodded in resignation.
"I really thought things would be different," he mumbled. "I thought my life would be different."
Regulus sighed. "Well it's not. This is your life. I'm dead, you're not playing Quidditch, and Voldemort is on the rise. But guess what?"
"What?"
"You're going to wake up," Regulus informed him softly, willing James to look him in the eyes. His gaze was intense, as though he thought he could burn the hope back into James with the heat of his stare. "You're going to wake up to fight another day, and then you're going to do it again. And again. Every day, you're going to wake up from dreams of guilt and grief and horror and you're going to feel hopeful again. Because these feelings are what make you human— you know who's devoid of humanity?"
"Voldemort?" James guessed.
"Voldemort!" Regulus affirmed. "That's why he'll lose. You're going to win because you, more than anyone else I've ever known, are capable of hope and love. You're the one who's cheerful when things go to shite, the one who believes in the right thing and hopes that good will win in the end. It's who you are, and it's who I fell in love with."
"You're not even real," James pointed out unnecessarily. But still, the effect of Dream Regulus's words still landed. He sat up straighter, eyebrows drawn together in thought. "What's the point, though? Hope, cheer, love… nice sentiments, sure, but when we're fighting for our lives, who's got time to worry about that crap?"
Regulus scoffed. "James, we fight for that crap. I died for that crap!"
"I don't know that," James argued. "I don't know how or why you died."
"Don't you?" Regulus raised his eyebrows. "This is your dream, Potter, I'm speaking your own thoughts. Anything I say, you already believe on a subconscious level."
"If this is my dream, I ought to be able to kiss you at least once." James crossed his arms.
"Maybe you will," Regulus said with a shrug. "Who's to say what'll happen? Maybe you'll kiss me here, maybe you'll wake up and miss me again, but you know what won't happen?"
"Pray tell."
"You won't give up," he said adamantly. "You'll fight. You'll wake up with hope, and you'll hold onto it until your dying breath, and you'll be the strong, upbeat, inspiring leader that I know you are."
James inhaled, long and slow, trying to breathe in every good feeling Dream Regulus claimed to believe he was capable of having. "I… I can try," he said unsurely.
"Look," Regulus said softly, resting a hand on James's knee. To his surprise, James could feel it. "Feel that? Because you wouldn't if you hadn't really hoped that you could."
James strained to find words, his eyes glued to the hand on his knee. It wasn't cold or deathly, like he'd feared it might have been. It was gentle and normal, and even through the cloth of his trousers he could feel its warmth.
He looked up at Regulus with wide eyes, the quiet flame of hope bursting into an inferno for the first time in longer than he could remember.
"I hate having to do all of this without you," he admitted.
"I know," Regulus smiled. "But don't think about death as the end of us— don't think of it as a goodbye. Life's full of moments, good and bad, and we could spend our time dwelling on the worst of it or we could remember the best parts so fondly and clearly that they don't feel so distant. Because they're not."
James's hand moved to rest over Regulus's, almost subconsciously.
Regulus squeezed his knee once and continued, "There's no end, not to life. Life is always happening, time is always moving. It's just not this straight line that comes to a halt when we die. It moves in circles, and zigzags, and scrambled twists, like a tangled ball of yarn."
"Didn't know you knit," James supplied in an attempt at humour.
Regulus snorted. "There's the idiot I love."
James grinned. "You're right. Er— I guess I'm right? We're right."
"Just remember the good," Regulus reaffirmed. "You're going to do amazing things, James Potter."
The good.
There was more than enough to remember.
Helping Regulus improve at Quidditch, so much so that Gryffindor lost the Cup to Slytherin that year.
Getting drunk in the kitchens on Firewhisky that James had snuck into the castle from Hogsmeade.
Snogging in that one clearing of theirs in the Forbidden Forest.
Pointing out the stars— "It's the heart of Leo," James whispered when he pulled away. "That's what your star is. The heart of the lion constellation." —and their first kiss that night in the Astronomy Tower.
Sneaking into passageways to hide from the world, to lose themselves in each other.
A letter, the last letter James received from Regulus. The one where he'd assured James that he was right about all the good in him.
James faced the memory of Regulus before him now, the one who crouched in front of him with an encouraging smile and who held a promise in his eyes of love and hope and everything James had tried to abandon.
"The good works for me," he said at last, smiling back and pulling Regulus toward him.
Dream or not, he'd enjoy himself.
And for the first time in a long time, he'd wake up with a smile.