Chapter 17: Bare One's SOUL
He hadn't thought about his brother in a long time. Certainly not in any meaningful way, at least. Perhaps it had come up briefly when he had told Harry about the family tapestry, but he knew that couldn't count. Not when all he had had to say—all he had allowed himself to say—had been more about pureblood bigotry than his brother.
His own little brother.
Perhaps he had been avoiding it. Just like how, even here and now, after everything—the void, dying… he still avoided looking over at the green-painted door that stood across from his own room.
"Explain," Sirius demanded, wholly focused on Kreacher and what secrets he might hold.
Kreacher shook his head, even though his eyes never left the floating glass case. "No. No, Master Regulus…" the house-elf's voice broke on the name, but he pressed on. "He said to never tells the family what happened. Never."
"then tell me," said Sans, stepping in before Sirius had a chance to angrily force out the answers he wanted. "this has something to do with the shouting that happened when we first met, yeah?"
A jerking nod, but Kreacher tried to protest. "But Master Regulus—"
"of course," Sans pressed on, "if sirius happens to eavesdrop on us, that's not you telling him."
The house-elf said nothing for a moment, and his eyes briefly flicked from the Horcrux to Sirius and back. Eventually, as if he couldn't bear to look at either, his gaze drifted to the floor between his feet.
Then, voice soft and sore with long-held grief, he began, "Kreacher was to help the Dark Lord and come right back home."
Silence.
"tell me," Sans repeated, low tone coaxing but patient. Setting the case back on the table, he sat down on the floor across from Kreacher and simply waited.
After a long moment, and in that unsteady way that meant he was trying to keep himself together, Kreacher continued his story. "The Dark Lord used Kreacher to hide the locket away, in a basin on an island in a cave. Made Kreacher to drink a hideous potion. The thirst—" His voice shook, but now that he had started, he wasn't going to stop. "Left Kreacher to die, but Master Regulus told to come right back home."
"So you did." Remus had joined them on the floor at some point, listening with rapt attention. "He… he saved your life."
The house-elf just nodded. "Kreacher tolds him what had been done, and Master Regulus…" A deep, steadying breath. "Master Regulus could not do nothing, not when he knew now the Dark Lord's weakness."
Sirius repeated the words without speaking, mouth making the shapes but seemingly incapable of sound. The implication that Regulus—Reggie, his little brother—had been willing to… willing to stand up for what was right, if only given a chance, was staggering. Part of him thought that Kreacher might be embellishing: trying to make the master he had cared so much for into more of a hero than he actually was… but then, given that this was his family they were talking about, Sirius doubted taking action against the self-styled Lord Voldemort would be viewed favorably.
The house-elf again fell silent, and so Sans prompted, "you went back."
A nod. "This time, Master Regulus drank the potion. It… it makes him so thirsty… Kreacher knows how badly. But the water in the lake isn't safe." Kreacher's voice began to sound nearly fevered, though it had dropped to a quiet whisper. "Master Regulus, no, please, in the water… so many hands, rotting and reaching and— and Kreacher was told to go, to leave, to take…"
"Inferi." Remus closed his eyes, mind filling in the blanks and drawing up what the scene must have been like. He could remember when he had first read about them, sitting in the Hogwarts library with a number of books from the Restricted Section stacked at his side. Just recalling the illustration he had seen in the book made him shiver in disgust.
Kreacher seemed either unwilling or unable—Sans was fairly sure it was the latter—to tell more. A heavy silence descended over the four of them.
Sirius had always thought his brother had died running away, fleeing from the choices he had made like… like a coward: weak and finally unable to bear the weight of his crimes.
But Regulus hadn't.
Merlin's beard, he never had been very good at figuring out how Slytherins think.
Flopping down to sit on the floor with the rest of them, Sirius let out a whooshing sigh that stirred the fake hair of Sans's glamour. A part of him idly noted that it was a fairly convincing bit of illusion, if not quite perfect. Another part of him recognized that that observation was a rather lame attempt to distract himself from what he had just learned.
"inferi… they're those— ah." There was a note of sudden understanding, pieces falling into place, and Sans paused to try and figure out a softer way to put it. Not having much luck, after a moment he just went with, "dead bodies, reanimated?"
This seemed to strike a chord with Sirius, who remarked, "That explains the yelling, then."
"Yelling?" Remus asked, before recalling what had been briefly mentioned of their first encounter with the house-elf. Trying to line up the same pieces his two friends clearly had, he got the distinct impression that he was missing something major. "But what— I mean, Sans, you mentioned something about a grudge… but what does that have to do with Inferi?"
The two shared a look: never a good sign. Remus resisted the urge to smack one of them. Or maybe both of them.
"well," Sans started, "i must've looked like the dead when he saw me."
Sirius smacked at him—keyword being 'at'—before shifting the conversation away from possible kinda-undead people and back to the house-elf, the house-elf's story, and the dark artifact. "Ignore that for a minute, because I just— Kreacher, this… that's really what happened?"
"Kreacher does not lie!"
With a look that was nearly as skeptical as a look could be, Sirius just waited in doubtful silence.
The house-elf had the decency to look a bit chagrined, ears folding down slightly, and he quietly appended, "Not about this."
On the family tapestry, right beside his own scorched-away name, a stitched skull stared down and mocked him: his own brother, dead and gone… and Sirius had scorned him for so long. It was unbelievable, that Regulus would have gone so far into the dark, yet not become lost in it. Not completely.
But he wanted to believe it. Merlin, he wanted to so badly.
A rush of guilt tugged at his already emotionally-sore heart: wondering how different things might have been if he had been there for his brother. Maybe, if he hadn't pushed him away with the rest of his family… Maybe Regulus wouldn't have even started down his dark path. Wouldn't have needed to. Looking back, the reasons Sirius had left them behind—left him behind—felt shallow.
And now, well. It was the least he could do, to try to finish the last thing his brother had begun.
He sighed, and his voice was so quiet he was likely the only one who could hear what he was even saying. "I thought… I wish… 'sorry' isn't enough, but I don't have much else for you, Reggie." Sirius closed his eyes for a second, then nodded once. "But at least we can finish off this locket for you."
Sans reached out with his blue magic again, popping open the glass case and carefully floating the Horcrux a good distance above where they all sat on the floor. "so should i take that as permission, or…?"
"Do it."
With a nod, the disguised skeleton once again turned his attention to puzzling out the best way to destroy the dark artifact without blasting a hole through the wall. Or sending a brilliantly white blast of magic out through an open window like some kind of glorified signal flare: he'd overheard some of the reactions to the blast he'd accidentally overpowered back at Hogwarts. Stuff like that was really noticeable, and he wasn't sure what all the Fidelius would (or could) keep hidden. Best not to risk it.
A flick of his wrist sent the locket spinning around to face him, and one crooked finger dragged out the wriggling tear of hideously stained SOUL into the visible spectrum. Maybe it had once been a rich shade of purple, back when it had been whole and new and so very young, but Sans could tell that all color had long since been drained away by oppressive black hatred. Overwhelming hatred. Even just brushing against the level of violence this SOUL had dealt sent icy shivers down his spine.
He gave it a tentative magic poke, knowing that even though it looked like it could disintegrate in a strong enough breeze, SOULs are not something that should ever be underestimated.
Trying to categorize the different enchantments he could feel under his magical grip, Sans tweaked a few of the larger strands that held the whole collection together. Abruptly, there was a slight snap in the magic, like a latch being forced undone.
With an ominous click, the locket flicked open.
"…those aren't pictures," Sans murmured, staring at the pair of crazed brown eyes peering out from where there should have been photos.
The eyes rapidly swiveled around, as if taking in the scene, before focusing with eerie intensity on Sans. Then hissed words filled the air: words in english overlaid by an inhuman, serpentine tongue.
"I have seen your heart," it whispered, rhythm steady, almost like it was chanting, "and it is mine."
That was the closest translation, anyway, and pretty much what the english voice had echoed. Sans wasn't the best at speaking serpent, but he had spent some time learning back in the Underground; there were all sorts of monsters, after all, and over the years Sans had met quite a lot of them.
The locket didn't seem to appreciate the lackluster response its spooky message had received—that was how Sans was interpreting the distinctly put-out magical twitch he felt, anyway. Then, with remarkable force, the enchantments on the locket lurched. The dark eyes suddenly stretched, pooling outward like a pair of uncomfortably large water drops about to fall. With a swirl of color, the eyes vanished, replaced by…
Another pair of dark eyes, but infinitely more familiar to Sans. Rosy cheeks and a mocking smile, brown hair cut short around their face: just as he remembered.
He froze, and distantly he thought he could hear a ringing laugh.
"You didn't solve anything, Sans." Chara spoke with the Horcrux's voice, hissing overtones and all, but it almost didn't matter. He just watched numbly as an immaterial hand formed, followed by the rest of their arm: the sleeve of the striped jumper was poisonously green.
Sans didn't technically need to breathe, but he would guess this was at least a little bit like drowning. He felt a hand rest on his shoulder, a voice call for his attention, but it seemed so very far away.
The distorted Chara grinned, twisted and cruel, and darkness leaked down their face from where brown eyes used to be.
"You should just give up."
He'd done so before. There wasn't any reason not to do so again. It was just… so much easier than trying and trying and trying only to fail them every time. To fail his brother.
"As if he'd ever forgive you!"
That gave him abrupt pause, because that thought was so completely at odds with everything Papyrus stood for. Everything. His brother was strong and brave and always—always—so painfully forgiving.
Papyrus would forgive him for giving up back then.
Even if Sans didn't deserve it, and that was always what hurt the most.
The Horcrux was already scrabbling to grab another spiritual foothold in Sans's head, trying to ferret out out all of his fears to fling back against him. It had already stolen those few phrases from the dark void, chosen specifically to weaken and tear and open a hole in the skeleton's SOUL to let the blackened fragment in… but it had miscalculated.
Badly.
Sans could feel the probing tendrils now that he knew what was going on, and he knew he would only have this brief moment of clarity to strike. He didn't have time for fancy magical finagling: to poke and pry the SOUL away from its bejeweled shell with a careful hand. There was going to be collateral damage.
With a veritable flood of blue magic, he pushed the trio of stunned witnesses away against the walls. Still unsettled—magically and emotionally—by the Horcrux rooting around in his head, Sans couldn't do much more than hope that he didn't overcharge the blast like he had in the forest.
As was, his magic was causing little flickers and distortions in his glamour. Sans was a bit too distracted to take note, but the illusion in the area around his left eye-socket was especially thin, leaving behind a black hole filled with flickering gold and blue.
A single Gaster Blaster materialized in the air above where he still held the locket suspended, pointed straight down.
It took and instant to charge, and, with a rush of air, it fired.
Stars, the screaming: long, drawn-out, and nearly mad.
The white light was concentrated—focused, thankfully, right where he had wanted it—and likely more than powerful enough to vaporize the possessed jewelry on its own. Just to be on the safe side, however, Sans twirled his magic into a very familiar pattern. Sparks of red and blue mixed into a streak of purple as karma tore apart the corrupted SOUL.
When he stopped the blast, all that was left was a toasty chain and the melted remains of half a locket; there wasn't even a slightest hint of the dark presence that had possessed it moments before.
There was also a sizable hole through the floor.
Remus was staring… and honestly, it didn't seem like he was capable of much else at the moment. In contrast, Sirius crawled over to the perfectly circular hole and peered through to the dining room below. Thankfully the huge table remained undamaged, though one of the chairs was now little more than dust and splinters in a slightly scorched circle on the floor.
"Merlin's beard," Sirius whispered, before leveling a somewhat peeved expression at Sans. "You know, I should probably be concerned that you just blasted a hole through my floor."
Sans blinked, still refocusing. "but…?"
"Well, I never did like this rug."
"then you're welcome, i guess."
Though Remus was still trying to process what he had just witnessed, he did his best to scrape his jaw off the floor and demand answers. "How—? What was—? Floating skull!? And you're just—?"
Or at least, to try to demand answers.
"gaster blaster," Sans provided. "the skull thingie's called a gaster blaster."
Remus took a deep breath to sort himself out. "While informative," he began, voice still a bit unsteady with barely contained confoundment, "that doesn't really tell me anything."
"exactly!"
"And don't think I've forgotten my earlier question! I fully intend to find out who—what—you are," Remus added; he didn't particularly care if Sans turned out not to be human, that'd be pretty hypocritical, but it certainly wasn't in his curious nature to just leave a puzzle unsolved.
"gee, how many times i gotta say it?— i'm just a nobody," Sans said, repeating an oft-used pun that Remus couldn't even appreciate yet.
As if to punctuate the complete contrast between that remark and the magical feat he had just performed, what was left of the locket dropped through the brand new hole and clattered noisily onto the dining room table below.
"Sure you are," deadpanned Remus, and it's quite possible no one had ever managed to pack that much skepticism into just three words before. It was pretty impressive, actually.
Author's Note:
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Undertale.
Sans used [Hyper Beam]! It was super effective!
By the way, if you like Regulus Black, I definitely recommend Harry Potter and the Deus Ex Machina by Karmic Acumen. It's got time travel and interesting ideas and cool magic and a whole lotta canon divergence… good stuff. Bit mean on Dumbledore, though, so heads up about that.
It's the month of spooky skeletons, guys! I hope you all have fun plans for Halloween, even if those plans consist of staying home and watching old so-bad-it's-good horror movies or something. That may or may not be my plan. You have a month to work it out.
Thanks for all the reviews and favorites and follows! This story's just passed 60,000 views and 500 favorites, and I just can't believe it! You guys are amazing! I hope you continue to enjoy!
See ya on the flipside, everyone!