Chapter 72: Bonds Of Blood
{A/N: Here's Another Update....}
My Thanks To All My Readers And Reviewers...Enjoy-S.S.
{"So we can take the world back from the heart-attacked...One maniac at a time we will take it back...Hey Youngblood, doesn't it feel like our time is running out...I'm going to change you like a remix...Then I'll raise you like a phoenix...Wearing all vintage misery...No I think it looked a little better on me...I'm going to change you like a remix...Then I'll raise you like a phoenix..."}The Phoenix, Fall Out Boy
High Cliff, Icy Mountain Range, Unknown World...
Regulus stared out over the vast snow filled dessert unsure as to why Arcturus had bothered to bring him to such a place. The younger Snape seemed amused by his obvious inquisition but kept his face neutral. The winds had begun to blow the top layers of fresh snow fall about as they stood on top of a snow covered cliff in relative silence for a few moments. The warmth from the firewhiskey had been enough to stave off the chill that would have filled the older Snape twin but it would only be a matter of time before it lost it's effects and standing in a plan black t-shirt and denim jeans had not been enough to keep it a bay.
"What's the point of this little trip again?" asked Regulus breaking the silence due to his restless nature.
"We've come to pay our respects." replied Arcturus whom had not been effected in the least by the cold as he stood with a rather ghastly expression filed across his scared sallow pale face.
"Pay our respects?" asked Regulus in confusion. "Pay our respects to who?"
"Whom dear brother..." replied Arcturus as he sighed. "You truly do not know do you?"
"If I did I wouldn't need to ask questions." replied Regulus not in the least pleased to be kept in the dark with anything pertaining to their little outing.
Arcturus smiled for the first time since their arrival. It appeared Regulus had not been any more willing to suffer fools than he had, just one more similar trait to illustrate the bond they shared had with their late father.
"I don't suppose anyone's told you how he died." began Arcturus.
Regulus gave his younger twin brother his full attention.
Sensing this, the younger Snape twin continued his rather tragic tale.
"Our father had been gravely injured by the despot known as Voldemort and his pet serpent...I was unfortunately privy to the entire ordeal, but frozen via our father's magic, as it turned out he had no idea that I had even existed and mistook me for being you at the time...when they left his magic failed to keep hold of me and I brought him here...to the very place where I was raised so far from the home he shared with you and mother in North America." explained the dark wizard. "I tried rather unsuccessfully to restore him and had been forced to watch every last moment of his apparent suffering until he died in this icy wasteland two months after the war's conclusion."
"T-Two months?" questioned Regulus unsure he could fathom what his father and younger brother must have gone through. "He survived two months after being attacked by Voldemort's fucking snake?"
"While our father suffered, the wizarding world condemned him...erased his accomplishments and ignored his contributions to saving the sorry hides of each and everyone of those Potter worshipers...Potter the very child whom he saved many a time was propped up as the hero of the wizarding world while it was our father whom had suffered for so long, that contributed to the war's end at the cost of his own life." continued Arcturus balling his black gloved fists.
Regulus had been caught off guard by what he was being told.
"So that there is no doubt of my words..." began Arcturus as he stood face to face with his elder brother transferring the tragic memories of that terrible time directly into the clueless Snape's mind.
The onset of Arcturus' memories of Severus Snape's tragic fate and the message he had meant for his eldest born son had reached him for the first time in years.
{"M-My son..."} he had said, as the poison destroyed the rest of him and the cold, which had prolonged his life had become bitter and unsustainable. {"M-My son..."}
Regulus had dropped to his knees amid the icy snow shaken by the images of his late father's final moments. Tears streamed down his own pale cheeks as he balled his own fists reflecting on the pain his father endured and the memory of the last time he had seen Severus Snape live.
For Nineteen years, the eldest son of Severus Snape carried the anger and confusion from that final night he had been in the presence of the former Headmaster of Hogwarts, unsure of what to make of the man he called father in the wake of the admission of how he came to be and now...all he could think about was how endlessly the broken wizard suffered and whom had profited from his misery.
The anger had returned but it had not been directed at the dying man in the images that flashed before his very eyes.
"So...this...this is how...he..." Regulus struggled to keep a hold on his warring emotions. "S-She...she never knew..."
Arctrus looked at his brother in confusion for a few moments.
"Our mother." explained Regulus. "She never knew that you survived...she never even knew that he had...I had to watch her give up on life waiting for him to return only to find out he couldn't."
As Arcturus had done for him in sharing the final moments with their long suffering father, Regulus shared his final moments with their equally long suffering mother.
He knew Arcturus had never met Elaine Prince and the attachment would not be as strong as with their father due to the time he spent with him but he felt his younger brother deserved to know what happened to the woman that had birthed them into the world.
"She loved him, possibly more than he ever deserved." explained Regulus. "So much so...that she never gave up on him...even at the end."
Arcturus seemed to have been just as affected by the loss of his mother as he had the loss of their father. The images of the beautiful and relatively hopeful woman dancing in the confines of the hospital with her eldest born son, mistaking him for her long dead husband.
"They deserved better." he said stepping away from Regulus and turning his attention to the snow.
"Yes." agreed Regulus not moving from where he had been on his knees in the snow. "They did."
Arcturus turned his attention back to his elder brother.
"It seems you have a choice to make." he said. "Join me in avenging our father's name...and ensuring that the wizarding world along with that fraud Harry Potter know their place...or you can continue on as you've always done...but I warn you brother or not I will no longer tolerate you hindering in my plans."
Regulus said nothing as Arcturus turned his attention back to the snow.
"For whatever it is worth to you brother...I am glad that we have finally found each other." said the dark wizard before disapparating away from the icy region and leaving Regulus behind to ponder his next move.
Regulus kneeled in silence as the images of his father's final moments continued to reply in his mind. He did in deed have a choice to make as it were and it seemed destiny could no longer be ignored in favor of folly.