[title text here]

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Hand on the cold brass knob, letting the heavy door fall softly shut behind him. Footsteps echoing dully through the open corridors. His knuckles against thick wood, dreamlike, hardly feeling the quick raps — soft, too soft, he berates himself, you must display presence from the very first moment, Mother has told you again and again —

And then the door opens and all the awful details dig into his skin with their horrible, painful reality.

She is, of course, just as he remembers: all dark lace, perfectly-lacquered fingernails, heels that barely miss making her taller than him. Her smile is deceptively warm, her eyes forever frigid. Her hair is ink-black, accented by silvery streaks, and it’s panic-inducingly reminiscent of the barest sliver of moonlight shining through a small crack in the rock, illuminating the basin and the locket and the lake and its terrible, terrible secret.

He wants to vomit.

“Regulus.” A greeting.

“Mother.” An acceptable response.

“My good boy.” There’s a smile on her painted lips, but her eyes don’t soften. They never do. “Come — give your mother a hug.”

Regulus can barely stand any sort of touch, let alone this. But that doesn’t matter. There are certain sacrifices that one must make for family. He steps forward, stiffly; stands complacent as she wraps her arms around him, and they feel like iron bars imbued with lightning, but he stays still. The idea that he could just say no to seeing her like he did to Orion was always laughable, but that doesn’t stop him from missing it.

Mother releases him, steps back, guides him to an ornate chair. She sits across from him.

“How have you been, cheri?” She only ever calls him that when she’s angry with him.

“I’ve been well.” His tone is the perfect balance between gracious and polite. “And you?”

“Sit up straight,” she says sharply, instead of answering. “You weren’t raised by mudbloods.”

Regulus knows that his posture is already flawless, but he makes a show of shifting his shoulders back anyway. It simply wouldn’t do to be disobedient.

“Since you so kindly asked,” Mother resumes, “I’ll admit I’ve been a bit fretful these past few days.”

It’s a dare: go on, ask me why.

“Oh?”

“You see, cheri—” She stands gracefully, gliding across the floor to stand behind his chair. “After the death of our only son, our pride and joy, your father and I were simply wrecked. So imagine our delight to find ourselves in the position to see our darling again. We waited, thinking it would be any minute now that he would knock on the door. And…” He holds in a flinch as her crimson nails stroke lightly across his cheek. “He didn’t come.” Her fingers slide under his jaw, lifting his chin as she leans around the back of the chair so he can meet her eyes.

“Why didn’t he come, Regulus?” she asks softly.

Regulus doesn’t answer. He can’t, his breath won’t unstick.

“Go on then, love,” she purrs. “You can tell me.”

His gaze flicks downward, pulse pounding chokingly in his throat. “I — I was afraid.”

Mother drops her hand then as she stands, rising to her full height, towering over him. “You were. Afraid.”

Panic catches hard in Regulus’s chest, burning bright white and spiky, as he realizes his mistake. He ducks his head. “I—”

“What have I told you about fear, Regulus?” Her eyes are walls of solid ice and her voice is just as hard.

He stays silent, too busy staring unseeingly at her pointy shoes as the breaths come quick, quick, quick and he fights hard to keep them contained.

She raises her hand suddenly and he automatically tenses, but then she drops her arm just as quickly.

“Oh, never mind,” she says, sounding warmer than Regulus has ever known her to be. Slowly he raises his eyes, head still tilted downward, peering through his lashes.

She’s smiling, and it’s got the same tensely uncomfortable air of misplaced serenity as a raging storm transforming into a perfectly cheerful blue sky in the blink of an eye. It’s untrustworthy weather.

“Fortunately for you, I am willing to forgive your transgression.” There’s a pause that sounds remarkably like the word “if”. Dread wraps cold fingers around Regulus’s heart.

“Thank you, Mother,” he says numbly. Mother nods approvingly.

“Of course. For my son, my heir, who will bring more glory to the Noble And Most Ancient House Of Black than ever before.”

Regulus stares at her blankly. “Er… pardon?”

She laughs lightly, moving to stand in front of him. “Oh, darling. Surely you understand the unique opportunity we have been given? We wasted all our energy trying to make ourselves kings in the land of the living, desperate to create something lasting in a temporary world. But this?” She sweeps an arm out in a broad, all-encompassing gesture. “This is eternal. We can be eternal. With your help, we will make this place our kingdom… forever.”

She’s grinning now, showing gleaming rows of perfect teeth. Suddenly Regulus feels as though his soul is taking a step back and for the first time in eighteen years, he sees her clearly.

“You’re delusional,” he says. It’s an observation, a realization.

Mother’s brilliant smile leeches out of her face, leaving it steely and hateful. “What. Did. You. Say,” she snaps.

What did I tell you about fear, Regulus?

Something within Regulus teeters, and he lets it drop and shatter, scattering what’s left of her chains on him. He stands up, stretches his arms out to his sides, feeling like he could reach any corner of the world if he wanted to.

“I said you’re delusional, Mother.” He spits the word out at her feet like it’s something vile.

Her eyes bulge insanely.

“How — DARE — you,” she hisses. “After all I’ve done for you — all I’ve sacrificed—”

“Sacrifice?” Regulus snaps. A laugh, breathy and incredulous, escapes his throat. “You ruined me. You used me like I was — like I was nothing more than a lump of clay with which you could do as you pleased.”

“It is not my fault you’re weak, Regulus.”

“It’s your fault you looked at children and saw chess pieces. It’s your fault I can’t stand my own reflection. It’s your fault I’m fucking broken.”

Regulus should stop. He should have stopped before he raised his voice, although he can’t even remember where the crescendo started. He should have never opened his mouth, he should have just gone along with whatever batshit ideas Mother thought up, because now everything within him is screaming mistake mistake mistake. But then he realizes that the voices in his head — they’re her. All of them.

Except one.

He focuses on that one and the rest grows muddy, fading into a dull whine.

“You treated me like I wasn’t even human,” Regulus breathes. “Like I wasn’t even your son.”

His mother scoffs. “An ungrateful little brat like you doesn’t deserve to be my son.”

The words hang between them, eighteen years of ill effects tainting the air like poison. Regulus takes the time to look at her, really look at her: sees the contempt filling her eyes, leaving no room for love or compassion or anything a parent is supposed to feel. The flawlessly elegant mask has cracked; it’s plain to see that there’s nothing behind it but decay.

And this is the woman Regulus called Mother.

“You know what?” Regulus says slowly, mostly to himself as realization dawns. “You… may be right. I believe this is goodbye, then.”

“Traitor,” Walburga spits. The look in her eyes gives Regulus the irrational urge to check his robes to make sure they aren’t smoking. “I can’t believe you would do this to me! Your brother—”

“Doesn’t exist here.” He downs the churning cocktail of suppressed fury, adrenaline, and sleep deprivation to meet her eyes. “Compare us all you want, I don’t give a damn because he doesn’t exist here.”

“Perhaps you should start giving a damn, then. I was a powerful ally, but this betrayal will turn me into a dangerous enemy.”

“What are you going to do?” Regulus asks lowly, deadly and challenging. “Kill me? That’s been done, and it was far worse than you could ever be.”

“The end of life does not mean the end of pain, Regulus. It only means you can hurt forever without reprieve.”

“Is that a threat?”

“More of a reminder, really.” A smirk, cruel and loveless. Indicative of everything he spent eighteen years refusing to acknowledge. She’s certain she’s won.

He leans in very close.

“Then I gladly invite you to fucking try,” he whispers. And then he turns on his heel and stalks towards the door.

“You’ll regret this,” Walburga hisses behind him. “Mark my words, Regulus Arcturus Black, you WILL regret this.”

“Yeah?” he calls over his shoulder. “Take a bloody number.”

——————————————————————————

It’s not really a surprise when Regulus ends up standing in front of the Second Chance. Maybe it should have been. Maybe he’s lost the ability to have a proper emotional reaction. He certainly feels numb.

He doesn’t remember getting to the bar. He remembers shutting his mother’s door, then time rushed and blurred like a final exhale, and then his eyes were suddenly fixed on the shabby wooden sign with its uneven letters and crooked alignment. Strangely, it seems to move on its own, swinging gently, evenly, despite the lack of a breeze. The rusted hinges sing with the rhythm; it should be irritating, but it’s strangely soothing somehow. It’s high-pitched without being shrill. Like the mewling of a newborn kitten. Cats are nice, the way they seem to stare endlessly, their round eyes full of human intelligence with inhuman affectation, but never ask irritating questions. Sirius always asked a lot of irritating questions, seemed to revel in being a massive pain. Mother asked a lot of questions, too, but with less glee and more threat. Neither of them liked cats.

Regulus blinks hard. How long has he been staring at the stupid sign?

Bloody hell, he’s losing it.

The inside of the Second Chance is, unsurprisingly, just as depressing as the last time Regulus was here. The tables are still ugly, stained, and heavily scuffed. The people sitting at them are still nearly silent. The air is still thick, heavy with stale misery. The place is still covered in dust — doesn’t anyone ever clean?

He sneezes, the sound standing starkly against the muffled background noise of the library-quiet space. No one takes any notice.

Regulus isn’t entirely sure what draws him towards the bar, but the bartender — Fortuna, he recalls — looks positively delighted when he does, even putting down her cleaning rag to give him her full attention.

“Just look at you!” She’s grinning at him like they’re old friends. “I don’t think I got a good gander before. That’s quite the striking pair of silver suns you got there, hm?”

Regulus looks up, slightly surprised at the attempted small talk. “Pardon?”

“Your eyes, dear.” She smiles, crinkling her own eyes at the corners. “They’re beautiful.”

It’s clear from her tone that she thinks she’s giving him a compliment, but truthfully, Regulus has never been never particularly fond of his eyes. He’s never really gotten compliments on them, either — while Walburga’s are frostily beautiful, like razor-sharp icicles, and Sirius’s are lively and brimming with mischief and wit, Regulus’s eyes have always seemed dull to him; all stone and steel and not much else.

“Oh,” he replies awkwardly. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, love.”

Regulus ducks his head.

“So, what are you looking for, then?” asks Fortuna.

He blinks. “Er… a drink?”

“You’re a funny one, aren’t you! Just like your uncle.” She laughs, but it isn’t cold or unkind. “No, I mean beyond that. Everyone comes looking for something. It’s always different. Sometimes unexpected.”

Regulus raises an eyebrow. “You mean people come into bars for reasons other than surrendering all self-respect to a bottle of old fruit?”

Fortuna laughs again. Then she looks at him curiously, and the intensity in her June-blue eyes once again makes him want to squirm.

“I don’t think that’s what you want here, is it?” She pauses, considering something. “I don’t think you know what you’re looking for.”

An inexplicable wave of annoyance washes over Regulus, prickling at his skin.

“You’re absolutely right,” he says tightly. “I suppose I must have been momentarily possessed by some brain-dead alcoholic, because I simply cannot fathom why I would willingly set foot in a filthy, common pub like this of my own volition.”

He stalks out, passing all the shadowy drunks with their stooped spines. Their faceless forms blur into a streaky grey smear and none of them look up. Of course. They’re all too absorbed in their miserable wallowing to even twitch. How wholly and completely pathetic.

“That’s a good fire,” Fortuna’s voice says, right next to his ear. “Don’t let it go out.”

Startled, Regulus whirls around but there’s no one beside him. Fortuna is right where he left her, cheerfully using a faded rag to swipe at the eternally dusty bar. The patrons still sit, catatonic, in their worn chairs. All of it makes Regulus want to scream.

Everything hurts.

Regulus’s ribs ache from the mirth that bounced around them like a rubber ball thrown by a rowdy child. His head feels tight, strained, and it pounds with a barely unidentifiable rhythm, like an old folk song that’s both familiar and strange. But it’s his pride that hurts most of all. Exploding with hysterical shrieks of unchecked emotion — and in a public place, no less. He was, is, truly a disgrace to his family name. Mother would be furious.

And to make matters worse, he ambles on and makes wry jabs at his uncle like — like they’re old mates. And then he asks Alphard what’s wrong with him.

Mother might cry, too, while she’s at it; cry for the disappointment that is her youngest — her only son. Regulus would join her if he could find a way to allow the tears past his eyelids.

So Alphard talks of the theoretical as if it isn’t carefully prying open Regulus’s psyche, and Regulus does his best to pretend that everything that just happened was nothing more than a dream.

It’s eerie being around Alphard, he thinks – with his tall frame and long black hair, he looks like an older, bearded version of Sirius, but nearly everything else about him, from his elegant clothing to his rigid posture, screams traditional Black family member. And on top of that, he’s showing Regulus more kindness than any other relative ever has – enough to be warrant suspicion.

Regulus wants to resent Alphard, but should it be because he reminds him of Sirius, or because he reminds him of everyone who isn’t Sirius? Or is Alphard even deserving of resentment at all?

And then, of course, there’s the whole Fortuna thing. This new, afterlife Alphard, who grins crookedly and flirts with bartenders and solves problems in ways other than completely ignoring and/or throwing large sums of money at them, is so hard to reconcile with the sullen, guarded, miserable man Regulus knew. The man who blatantly favored Sirius and never passed up a chance to drink is now deliberately avoiding alcohol with Regulus and possibly even trying to help him.

It is, quite frankly, surreal as hell.

“How did you feel when you first arrived here?”

Regulus wills his features blank – not that they have far to go. Learning not to show a glimpse of your cards before you know your opponent’s hand has been a lifelong lesson, and honestly, at this point, he barely has any idea how many cards Alphard is holding. Or even what game they’re playing.

“Tired.” His voice is flat and his tone coolly pleasant, just like Mother taught.

(Exhaustion is a safe cop-out because it is not an emotion. It is not weakness.)

Alphard stares at him – hard, prickly, uncomfortable. Regulus resists the childish urge to squirm in his seat. They’re engaged in a dance, the two of them; a careful waltz of half-smiles and clever turn of phrase, where every step, every quarter-turn, is calculated to the most minuscule detail.

Regulus knows this dance well, has known all the moves by heart for as long as he can remember. He knows how to deal with relatives and family friends. They’re all of the same sort, and they all twirl to the same tuneless drone. But Alphard… despite his tailored robes and his perfect speech and mannerisms and his love of fine wines, there’s always been something decidedly off about him. On the outside, he’s the perfect Black, but on the inside… well, Regulus has very little idea, which is part of the problem. Alphard is not only different (whatever that may mean), but he’s quite good at hiding exactly how he’s different. Which makes him a wild card.

Which makes him unpredictable -- dangerous.

Which is precisely why Regulus is so caught off guard when his uncle looks him dead in the eye and says –

“Drop the act.”

He says it so simply. Like it’s so easy. Like it makes all the sense in the world, like it makes any fucking sense whatsoever.

“Wh… what?”

“Regulus.” He’s leaning forward, elbows and forearms resting on the table – an egregious social sin, according to Mother – and his dark eyes, fathomless and unreadable, are still boring into Regulus’s soul. “Drop the act. This isn’t a family reunion. It’s just the two of us.”

“I see no difference.”

There’s no noticeable change in Alphard’s expression, but he leans back, and Regulus thinks he glimpses a split-second flash of something in his eyes – hurt? But then the moment passes and his eyes harden back into cool, carefully guarded pools of obsidian.

“That is… most unfortunate, Regulus.” His tone is slightly clipped — tight, sore.

Regulus just shrugs in response, moving to stir his tea. Alphard’s eyes narrow, he takes a breath, and Regulus prepares himself.

“If I’m honest with you, will you be honest with me?” Alphard asks quickly.

It’s an outburst, plain and simple — Regulus has spent enough time around Sirius to know what one looks like. He revisits his analysis of Alphard’s unpredictability — strike that, rewrite insanity.

“Depends,” he says after a time. “Honesty is… difficult, no?”

“How so?”

“To judge.” Another pause. “To stick with.”

It’s all chess, really: in a world where information is the most valuable — and dangerous — currency, how much is one willing to divulge? Give too little and the adversary may grow suspicious, leading to mistrust. Give too much, and… well. Anyone who’s been burned before can understand the stakes.

“I see,” Alphard says darkly, beginning to look rather irritated. “Tell me, nephew, is there anyone you trust?”

Funny he should mention that. There are many people Regulus trusts to behave in certain ways — Alphard to be shifty, Mother to be volatile, Sirius to be a fucking dumbass, always. Father to pull a disappearing act at opportune times. Aunt Druella to laugh too loud after not enough wine and Uncle Cygnus to press his lips tightly together at the mention of Andromeda’s romantic decisions. The entire family on a broader scale to be… well, to put it mildly, entirely dysfunctional.

But Regulus knows what Alphard means, and the answer would have to be no. Everyone wants something, and most people would do anything to get it, even if it means knives in the backs of their closest friends. If there’s anything of which Regulus is certain, it’s that relationships, no matter how strong, are dust in the face of desire.

“No,” he says simply, because there really isn’t anyone he trusts implicitly. Not even himself.

(Especially not himself.)

Alphard looks like he can’t decide whether to be angry or disappointed. Regulus knows the feeling.

———————————————————————————————

Months pass and there’s an uneasy rhythm to his undeath. Pace the flat until he wants to tear his hair out, and then wander the common area until the smothering crowds make him want to die all over again. Sometimes he draws what he sees, sometimes he just sits in the shadows and wonders what it would be like to be someone else; anyone but himself. It’s not the greatest existence, but at least the night terrors stop. Somewhat.

And then the whole thing is completely disrupted by two little slips of parchment.

The first one is surprisingly easy. It’s quite the innocuous little thing: just a scrap, really, adorned with neat but modest handwriting. It’s barely the size of two fingers, stuck neatly to his door one afternoon. A curt message, written in small, tidy script:

Orion Black has arrived.

And an apartment number.

Regulus should go visit, like Alphard did for him. That would be the proper thing to do, the expected thing.

He doesn’t go.

Instead, he succumbs to the paralysis creeping through his limbs and does nothing. Then he doesn’t step foot outside his apartment for the next two weeks, dizzy from anxiety and wrongdoing and Mother’s voice shrieking in his mind and… some strange, heady rush. The freedom of imperfection is both unfamiliar and oddly exhilarating and Merlin, is this what Sirius was always on about?

They had always been such a stellar duo: Regulus, the ice-cold marble statue of a perfect son; and the numbness that kept him from shattering into dust. But there is something — more than just something — to be said for… whatever this is. It feels… good. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt like that.