Sirius,

I know it's long overdue and not nearly enough, but I'm sorry for everything. It seems like the coward's way out to put it in a letter, but I'm not sure you'd talk to me if I asked, so I'm putting it here.

I know it's too late for us to ever see eye-to-eye. I know you're set in your beliefs and I'm set in mine. But we were brothers once, and that still means something to me. It's the whole reason I went after Remus in the first place. I wanted to get under your skin, and I wanted to get close to you, and it was the only way I thought I knew how.

I don't care what Narcissa says about you or whether Mum has blasted you off the family tree. If you ever change your mind about any of it, I'll be here for you.

Your brother,

Regulus

xx

The letter comes in the night. It's not until Sirius hears the owl tapping on James's bedroom window that he realizes he's fallen asleep on top of the covers in James's bed, one hand still on James's waist. "Five more minutes," James mumbles as Sirius sits up bolt-fast and reaches to unlatch the window.

"You can go back to sleep, dummy. It's—" Sirius checks his watch "—three in the morning. There's no need for you to get up."

But James does get up with a monumental sigh, heaving himself upright just as Sirius is tearing open the scrap of parchment attached to the owl's leg. He already knows whom it's from: he'd know his brother's owl anywhere.

"Who's writing to you at three in the morning?"

"Regulus," says Sirius. He scans the thing so fast that he doesn't absorb any of it and has to go back to the beginning.

"Come back to bed. The letter will still be there in the morning."

Sirius hesitates, then glances up at James. "You're not pissed at me for falling asleep in your bed?"

"It's too late at night to get pissed," James grunts, flopping back down onto the mattress. "Just get in."

"Like, under the blankets, or—?"

"Do it already before I change my mind."

Sirius does it already, scooting as far away from the wall and James as he possibly can without falling off the edge of the bed. "About earlier—"

"I'm not having this conversation with you, not now. It's sleep time. Go to sleep."

But Sirius can't sleep. He lies awake and listens to James breathe and feels—angry. He feels angry.

What the hell right does Regulus have to send him a letter like that? He wanted to "get close" to Sirius, so he slept with Sirius's boyfriend? He'll take Sirius back, but only if Sirius changes his mind?—and what's that even supposed to mean? That Sirius has to accept that his brother is a Death Eater now if he wants to have a relationship with him? Does Regulus expect Sirius to disavow all his blood traitor and Mudblood friends just to be a Black again? After everything that the Blacks, that Regulus, have put Sirius through—

"You're thinking too loud," James announces. "Stop it."

Shit—Sirius thought he'd fallen back asleep. "It's okay. It's my problem, not yours."

"Your problems are my problems." James heaves another giant sigh and rolls over so that he's facing Sirius, not the wall. James's cheek is littered with bright red lines wherever there were creases in the pillowcase. "Isn't that what you want? Don't you want me back in your orbit?"

"Of course I do, but not… I don't want to burden you. I'm trying to be better than… that."

"It's not your problems that are a burden. The only time you've ever 'burdened' me was when you tried to drag me into your half-cocked solution to your Remus and Regulus problem last month."

"And you've got everybody on your side now, haven't you? My parents—my girlfriend—"

Stung, Sirius mutters, "I don't want there to be any sides, and even if there have to be, the most important people—you and Remus and even Peter—obviously aren't on mine."

James resolutely closes his eyes. "Don't let Mum or Dad or Lily hear you say that. You know, I thought this whole—metamorphosis you've gone through has been teaching you that there's no such thing as more or less important people."

"It doesn't mean I can't have best friends," says Sirius. "It just means that, out of the best friends I have, different ones fill different—purposes, I guess you could say."

"And you learned that from my mum and dad, did you?"

"And you don't like that?"

"I never said that."

"Yeah, but you're acting like you don't. So is Remus. You know, I would have thought that the people I hurt would want me to learn how to do better from now on."

James opens his eyes again and positively glares at Sirius. "Well, maybe Moony has a point. Not all of us have had the opportunity to recover from what you did to us."

"I didn't do anything to him."

"But you did something to me, and I didn't get to run away from it. I've had to live with it. I'm living with it every second."

And Sirius gets an idea. It's probably a terrible idea, mind you, but it's an idea all the same, the kind that occurs to you when it's three in the bloody morning and you're under attack and you just want to prove that you're not a monster—maybe to somebody else, maybe to yourself, maybe because you think that other people forgiving you will be enough when you can't forgive yourself. He doesn't know. All he knows is that James is talking like he hates him, and Sirius doesn't know how to live with that.

"James, how much did you learn in Defense Against the Dark Arts while I was suspended about Legilimency?"

James's eyes narrow further; his eyebrows furrow; the cheek of his that's facing up, the one that's creased pink from the pillowcase, starts to redden even further. "Where is this coming from?"

"I know you covered it. You and Lily sent me your notes."

"Yeah, but where is this coming from?"

"Just answer the question."

James frowns deeper. "I know the incantation, but Boletta was very careful to only let us use it on each other in limited ways—you know, like, to focus on an image that the other person is deliberately picturing. We weren't supposed to use it to try to uncover anything… hidden."

Sirius sits up in bed and reaches for James's wand on the nightstand. As he does, his knee brushes against James's body; Sirius flinches away, trying to minimize contact, trying to be respectful. "Did she teach you the theory?"

"Yeah, she taught us the theory, but—" Sirius passes James's wand over to him. James accepts it, looking suspicious. "You want me to Legilimens you?"

"I want you to Legilimens me," Sirius confirms. "I want you to understand. I want you to know—to see for yourself—how much I…"

By this time, James is wide awake. "You can't be serious. This is a bad idea. This is a god-fucking-awful idea. You do know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

"It's not like you'll necessarily be able to control what comes up if I… and I might not be able to feel how it feels. I don't have any practice at that. I might only be able to see what you see."

"Well, try," says Sirius. He shakes his long hair out of his face and leans his weight on his hands on top of the mattress. "I'm ready to go if you are."

James tells him, "You know, this is only going to make things worse if I get an eyeful of you sleeping with Remus or some shit like that."

"Well, the good news is that you probably only have enough practice to see what I want you to see, right? And I'm not going to be thinking about—that—on purpose."

James's hand is shaking as he raises the wand. "If I see something you don't want me to see—"

"There's no piece of me that's off-limits to you," Sirius says quietly.

James is right, of course: Sirius knows as well as James does how much they absolutely should not be doing this. If this goes south—

He concentrates as hard as he can on the most useful memory he can think of: showing up on James's doorstep two summers ago, fresh off of Regulus's betrayal. He thinks about how grateful he felt to James for taking him in—how guilty he felt for taking advantage of him and yet how good it felt to be someplace safe, someplace where he would be accepted. He remembers—

"Legilimens," whispers James.

Sirius closes his eyes, thinking it'll help him focus, but it turns out that there's no point to this: he's got no control whatsoever over the images that start flashing beneath his eyelids. Tears are streaming down a twelve-year-old Remus's face in the Hospital Wing the first night he wakes up to find Sirius, James, and Peter there—Mum is screaming as Sirius hurtles between Regulus and the pot of boiling water Mum is hurling at him—Regulus is laughing through the blood in his teeth and Sirius's fists pound over and over into his face—"You're with Remus—" James is protesting where Sirius has him backed up against the headboard of his bed at Hogwarts "—I'm with Lily—you've never had feelings like this for me, never—"

Not this, Sirius begs himself. Anything but this.

"Maybe I should have done," Sirius is murmuring. "Maybe I shouldn't have tried to turn Remus into something he wasn't. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed you toward Lily. Maybe this—" and now, oh god oh god, he's pushing his knee between James's thighs "—is what I should have been looking for all along."

James is moaning. "We can't. We can't. It's too late. We—holy shit, Pads—"

And Sirius can't stop the scene from playing out, can't scrub the image out of his brain or James's, but he—

—narrows his mind onto how much seeing this unfold again, with everything he's done and everything he's ruined and everything he's learned informing his emotions, utterly horrifies him. He didn't just hurt Remus: he betrayed James, who only ever tried to help Sirius, who only ever protected him, who only ever loved him so much more than Sirius deserved—

Sirius's eyelids go black. He's afraid to open his eyes, but he makes himself do it. When he does, James looks—

He looks destroyed, and it's all Sirius's fault.

"Fuck. Fuck. James, I'm so sorry. I'm a monster. I—"

"Is that really how you see yourself?" James murmurs.

This is not the reaction Sirius was expecting. "What?"

"Those memories, they felt—it felt like there was—I've never felt that much pain, not in my own life. Is that really how it felt when he cheated on you?"

"I… James, you're not supposed to see that again and feel sorry for me."

"Thought you wanted me to understand."

"Yeah, but—"

"I thought I had it bad when you wouldn't leave Remus for me, but I guess I never… the way I felt didn't reach…"

Shit. "You're saying I loved him more than you loved me? Because that's not—"

"No," pants James. "I just didn't know… how much more it hurts for someone to break a promise than it does for them never to make it in the first place. I can't believe I tried to get you to do the same thing to Remus as he and Regulus did to you. I…"

"James…"

James is bright-eyed and wrecked. He gingerly reaches around Sirius to lay his wand back on the nightstand, then takes that same hand and settles it on Sirius's shoulder.

It's not romantic. It's not really affectionate in any way. It's more like—James is clinging to Sirius for support, looking between his eyes, searching for—

"What did Regulus want?"

Sirius blinks. "What?"

"You said he's the one who wrote to you. What did he want?"

"To… apologize, I think, but he did a pretty shitty job of it."

"Write him back," says James.

"But—"

"I saw, before that… other memory took over—with the pot of water with your mum," James breathes. "You shouldn't give up on anybody you love that much. Don't give up on him, and I—and I won't give up on you. Deal?"

He feels like he's living in some kind of bizarro alternate universe. "You do realize he's a Death Eater, right? He can't be saved. He doesn't even want to be saved."

James shrugs. "There's still a chance, isn't there? If he loves you enough to sleep with your boyfriend…"

"Prongs, you're not making any sense."

"I'm making perfect sense. Write him back. Tell him you'll be there if he changes his mind."

Sirius has to laugh: James doesn't know it, but he's just told Sirius to say the exact thing to Regulus that Regulus said to him. "I'll figure out what to say to him in the morning. I should sleep. We both should."

"Three A.M. Right," says James. "Are you… do you still want to share?"

It takes Sirius a second to realize that James is talking about the bed. "Do you still want to, now that you're awake?"

"I'm just afraid it's going to feel like I've lost you again if you leave," James admits. "I'm not hitting on you or anything. I think I… I didn't know it until tonight, but I think what happened in November stamped all the sexual attraction to you out of me."

"Okay. I can stay," Sirius murmurs. "I can stay."

They get back under the covers. They don't sleep, but they face each other with their eyes shut, and James's hands are warm where they lie a centimeter from Sirius's, and it's enough.