My name is Sirius Black.
There's a voice in my head that tells me that that's true. Over and over again it tells me, insists upon it. I've built a wall around the place I keep that name, made out of cement and barbed wire. It's wearing down. Some part of me knows that eventually it will fall, would recognize that eventually it will fall if I let myself take any moment to think about what time means.
Other voices try to remind me about time. They speak of things like forever, and eternity, stretching out before me, filled with bodies and pain and soul splitting isolation. They tell me that I'll never die. They tell me that I'll always be here with them, that I have always been here with them. They bring things with them, dragged beaten pups along behind. Words, and movement, and memory. Has there ever been anything but this? Have I always been here? And I despair.
But then that voice, familiar somehow, whispers.
"Your name is Sirius Black."
And that name . . .
There are things attached to it. Fleeting things that brush my eyes and I reach for them. Blood and soft kisses and an anguished cry calling out that name and an energy that fills me with a need to destroy and to create.
Sirius Black.
Bile rises in my throat, but there's a boy beside me with tousled black hair and glasses that glint with some unseen light source in front of his hazel eyes.
I struggle to speak.
"Your eyes . . . " I choke out, "Your eyes are different."
I don't know where the thought comes from. I only know that it's true. He laughs and it is so familiar.
"You're thinking of Harry," the boy says, then his face sobers. "Keep thinking of him, Sirius. Remember Harry."
I do remember Harry. A tiny baby drooling quietly in my arms. A shock of black hair, fist in mouth, dark green eyes that captivate me. I'm in that room, his baby smell of whole milk and talcum powder filling my nostrils, making my eyes water. I want to sneeze. I want to raise my head and look around the familiar place with its hard wood floors shining below a roaring fireplace and red brick walls. I can almost see it. I want to look up and see faces, but those green eyes have a vice grip on my lungs. I can feel a presence, then, behind me, a warm touch of slender fingers on my elbow, a soft breath on my neck, trembling with laughter. I feel my shoulders ease, my face relax. It was all a dream. I want to turn and see him. Then it's all gone.
A name is ripped from my throat before I can register it in my disintegrating mind. It rolls off my tongue like lightning into a snowstorm, bringing a shining instant of clarity.
"Hold on, Sirius. Hold on," It's a woman's voice this time. Hold on to what? I hear her. Where is she?
I clamp the wall down around it, around the memory of the baby and a name spoken, but unknown. I can't see his face, just the fingers on my arm, his breath tingling on my skin.
I want to weep. I try to weep, but there's only silence upon silence in this silent place. I feel my hands trying to close on something precious, but the silence is deafening. I retreat into those green eyes and that touch, backing away into the furthest corner of my mind as a piercing cry pierces the silence.
"Bloodtraitor," itdripsfromthewallslikevengeance. "Sinofmyflesh."
Someone slaps my face, and from deep inside my mind I watch my body contort with a detached interest.
"Shame," there's spittle on my face I notice, "You shame me," and from behind my wall, the words almost don't hurt me. Almost.
I slide down the wall with my back against it, trying to prop it up, to protect the precious things I'm hoarding here: green eyes, and kisses and breath on the nape of my neck and my name.
"You're mine," that vicious voice says, "My son. You'll never get away. You're mine forever now." And I begin, again, to disappear into despair.
And then, so softly, as if struggling to me through time, I hear that whisper.
"You're name is Sirius Black."