A/N: Sorry it's a little short this time; this chapter is below my normal word count quota, (which is normally set at a strict 3.5k for these collaborative fics) but I wanted to get it posted as soon as possible to give Seirios as much of the weekend to update as possible. Think of it this way; sacrificing a little bit of length for more frequent updates. Or something. Yeah.

Best read following Chapter 5 of Seirios Aster's Some Nights, titled "Sinking Like a Stone".

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Porcelain

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"Porcelain ... Are you wasting away in your skin? Are you missing the love of your kin? Drifting and floating and fading away ... " ~Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Surprisingly, the eldest Black Sheep of the family was not drunk out of his mind. Even more surprising may have been his lack of effort in that endeavor; in fact, he still had seventy five percent of the bottle Frank and Alice had so generously bestowed upon him, and that was the only booze he had in the apartment, and more than enough to get him well on his way to tipsy, if not completely sloshed. No, he was instead alternating between nips of that and actual glasses of water, something nearly goddamned unprecedented in the past few months. Nothing solid since the few mouthfuls of corn flakes he'd managed to put away that morning before having his explosive fit which ended in his cleaning the table, carpeting, and nearby furniture to avoid the possibility of that gross moldy smell the milk would have made if it had soaked into the fabric and spoiled ...

Stormy gray blue eyes were looking over something he had gotten from his father at the funeral; something that he hadn't really wanted to take, and at the time had felt obligated to, so he had. After all, he'd been estranged from the man for years - the only reason he had seen him was Reg's death, and wasn't that a morbid thought? Pretty much the only reason he had see his old man in god only knew how long was because a mutually close relative had died, and they were paying their last respects. Though to be fair, if Orion or Walaburga had crossed over, no matter how much he would have protested the idea of attending any sort of last rites while they were living, he still would have sucked it up and gone when the time came. He was still their son, after all, and whether he was disinherited or not, and whether they had hated him or not, and no matter what an absolute joy his home life had been, he could at least handle sending them off properly and not being a complete pratt about it.

But anyway, the S.O.B., pun intended (1), was currently sitting on his couch, bottle of Dragon Barrel Brandy and accompanying glass of water sitting on the coffee table where previously that day there had been a festive explosion of cereal and milk. On his lap was a photo album; it wasn't very big, and there weren't many pages - if it held 100 pictures front to back that was probably a lot. However, those hundred or so pictures were enough that Sirius didn't feel the need to move from where he was seated for several hours, so clearly that was saying something.

It was mostly filled with pictures from his childhood, but there were some older ones too. Apparently his parents, or at the very least his father since his mother was likely too unhinged at the time to be brought out of the house, had attended his graduation - Sirius had had no idea, but there were a few pictures, plain as day, from that occasion. He watched himself crossing the platform in those god-awful dress robes, shaking Albus Dumbledore's hand - distinctly, the dark haired wizard remembered that entertained twinkle in the man's eye when they had looked at each other for a moment. To be fair, he and the other Mauraders had brought a good deal of excitement to the school in the year's since their group's founding. It was probably an oddly bittersweet occasion for the man; on the one hand, he was finally going to be rid of the group of troublemakers - but on the other, how often was it you had two students in the same year actually competing for how many detentions they could get, and not only that, but also seeing who could set the record for most detentions in their career at Hogwarts.

Honestly, Sirius had the sneaking suspicion that Peter and Remus had been in a competition of sorts of their own, and possibly may have been in cahoots with Lily besides. See which one of them could talk he and James into doing the most stupid things and getting a detention for it. And the dog and the stag had walked straight into their competition blissfully unaware that they were the victims of any foul play - honestly he still didn't know if it were true or not; he and James had sat down over drinks one night and talked about it, but they both seemed to understand that that wasn't just something you asked directly. No no, it was only acceptable to find out if they got someone to spill the beans accidentally without outside provocation. Not that either of them was probably capable of talking one of those three in circles - or rather, neither he nor James could be arsed to try talking circles around them, whether success was plausible or not. Shaking his head, he couldn't help smiling; even when he'd been depressed all afternoon, with no sign of digging himself out of the ever-deepening pit, leave it to his friends to get him to crack a smile - and usually succeed.

Turning the page, he sucked in a breath. This was a photo from when Regulus graduated. He'd gone to that ceremony; the brunet hadn't told anyone, and he hadn't made a big scene - he didn't even think James, Peter, or Remus knew he had ended up there. It had been through a lot of turmoil that he'd eventually decided to go. And even more turmoil when he hadn't even approached Regulus that day; his brother hadn't even known he'd gone. Sure, Sirius had wanted it that way or it wouldn't have been that way, but ... Well, he'd never told him ... That at least their family had produced someone who wasn't a complete fuck up at life. Not someone that wasn't completely fucked up in his own special way, since of course there was really no way to dodge that genetic bullet, what with their parents being second cousins and all of the inherent inbreeding in the old wizarding families and everything, but ... For what he had working against him, it had seemed like Regulus had really managed to make the best of it. Unlike him, who was wasting away in his own skin, as was evidenced as he took in another mouthful of the alcohol this time. Setting the bottle back on the table and watching his brother walk across the stage, he almost touched the image, but then decided against it since that was only likely to irritate the picture of his brother, who was just accepting his diploma from the headmaster the same way Sirius had taken his own in the earlier photograph.

Sirius ...? You going somewhere?

Bringing up a hand and rubbing at his eyes slowly, he almost shut the album. Why was he doing this to himself? Why had he purposely gone spelunking under his bed to unearth the footlocker that he kept most of his more valuable, sentimental items in, and then taken it to his couch to subject himself to the torment of reviewing the images over and over again for what he was realizing slowly was the majority of the day? If he stopped and thought about it, of course he knew why he'd dug it out. Not that it was something he would admit even to himself, but ... He knew he missed his family. As bat shit absolutely off their nut insane they all were for the most part ... When he had been away staying with James' family in the Hollow, every now and again he would feel homesick. Completely insane, he knew, but the feeling was there ... At the time he'd had no idea how he could possibly missing them; it wasn't like any of them had ever been loving, except maybe Reg ... His father meant well but was a work-a-holic, and he had it far worse than Sirius did with the bottle now, and his mother ... He knew she was literally mentally unstable; that's why it was so likely that he himself was out of his gourd - it ran in the family. Probably something to do with those inbred genetics.

Not that it was like looking at this silly book of pictures and being by himself and lonely in his flat would change anything - now that he'd chased off one of his best mates, he didn't know what to do. The brunet wasn't having a breakdown, but he was on the verge now that what he'd done had started to set in. He had been mad at Remus, sure - but really he had been mad at himself, though he didn't want to admit it, and likely wouldn't aloud even if he was badgered into it. And he hadn't want to admit that what Remus was saying was perfectly reasonable - perfectly sane.

Which meant that Sirius was completely insane for believing so desperately in something that not only went against all odds, but was probably the most implausible option. Most would probably say that it wasn't even an option to begin with, to be honest. So, why was he so desperately clinging to the idea, even though he himself knew that it was little better than a flight of fancy - why had he managed to convince himself so strongly that it was true, even if deep down he was also trying to tell himself that there was no way it could be? Well, it was probably a heaping helping of guilt, a proportionate amount of displaced grieving, and a sprinkling of twisted, distorted hope that really was a cover for the other two options. Sirius Black knew all of this, and yet somehow, some way .. He still had himself thinking that there was a possibility he wasn't crazy. A possibility that his brother was alive. A possibility that maybe the teenager hadn't died thinking the worst of his older brother - not that Sirius could have blamed him, of course...

The hearings after Reg's death hadn't been easy on Sirius either. Absently staring at the corner of the table as his mind wandered off in thought, it wasn't hard to remember how much the Ministry wanted to pin his brother's death on him. How much they were sure that he had had something to do with the death of his only sibling - and honestly, they almost had. The only reason they hadn't, he was sure, was because they couldn't feed him truth serum to get a confession one way or the other out of him. Honestly he wished they had - then they sure as hell would have gotten a surprise, and not just from having another untimely death on their hands. It would have been nice for someone else to get a shock like that; he hadn't seen his brother in months, only to have him turn up dead. And, to top it all of, he was prime suspect number one in the investigation ...

Finishing the third glass of water he'd downed that afternoon while sitting there, he decided that something even slightly more nutritious would probably be more suitable than more of the same ... But really the only thing he had in the fridge was Bubble Juice (2) because it had been on sale by the jug the last time he'd wandered into the outside world looking for something one could classify as groceries, and on his budget it was a deal he couldn't just walk by. As he stumbled up from the couch, not because he was drunk or anything, simply because he had been crosslegged and now one of those legs was asleep, he reflected that it made him a little leery to have in the house, considering his rather inconvenient, rather deadly allergy to Veritaserum. As long as he didn't look at it when imbibing it though, everything seemed to go alright. Wandering into the kitchen and retrieving the jug he was currently a third of the way through or so (he didn't often put liquid in his system that wasn't of the alcoholic variety, so what he'd purchased was definitively lasting him a long time), he unceremoniously filled his currently empty glass with that instead before re-capping it and sticking the juice back into the fridge. Closing the door, he wryly considered that of course it would be just his luck that someone would sneak into his flat, empty out the open bottle he had sitting in the fridge, and fill it with the real deal, so that the next time he was innocently getting a drink, he'd end up in the same boat as his brother-

Bang Bang Bang!

Was that ... was that someone knocking on his door? Brow furrowing, moppy black hair that was nowhere near as messy as his best friend's swished as Sirius' head snapped up, staring at the threshold that was across the room from him. Had he really just heard that? Was someone really knocking on his door? Glancing out the window, he saw that it was dark; the middle of the night in fact, judging by how black the sky was and the time of year it happened to be.

"... Just shut up and ignore your hallucinations, Pads," he muttered to himself, taking another drink. There was no way anyone was knocking on his door, not at ... Well, whatever hour this was in the day. If no one had been to check on him already, then he was sure he wasn't going to get a visit from any of his friends or co-workers to make sure he was still breathing that day. So who could it possibly be? The muggle post wasn't set to come until tomorrow, and it was too late in the day even if there was a scheduled delivery today ... So there was literally no one else he could think of harassing him at this time of night.

And yet, there it was

Bang! Bang! Ba-Bang-Bang! ... Bang! Bang!

Really? Knocking like that on top of everything else? He was sure he was hallucinating now - so he might as well just go and look and put himself out of his suspense-filled misery. Sighing, he looked towards the other side of the apartment cautiously, drink still in one hand before he set it down on the table ... Now, the intelligent thing to do would have been to get his wand, in case he was, you know, under attack or this was another kidnapping attempt or something ... It didn't help that there was no way to look on the other side of the door to see who it was. To be fair, that was mostly because literally no one except his friends, who were pretty much all Order members, knew where he lived, so no one but them would ever come calling ...

Sirius was so disoriented by this unexpected visit, however, that none of thse things occurred to him. Instead, he just rather unceremoniously opened the threshold and just sort of ... stopped ... And stared. There was a lot of staring. Because he was pretty sure he had gone completely and utterly barking mad, no pun intended.

"Re ... Reg ... ..."

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The End ...?

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Footnotes:

1 - S.O.B. ... Sirius Orion Black ... ... eh, eh? Yeah I went there xD

2 - this is the juice that bears an extremely strong resemblance Veritaserum; Harry mistakes a phial of Veritaserum in Snape's cabinet for Bubble Juice in one of the books.