i face death.

anne carson sentence starters :  accepting

                  Regulus looks up from his Arithmancy homework to squint at Severus.   ‘  Are you— are you talking about what happened last year?  ’   Regulus had been only a fourth year, told next to nothing about the lofty lives of those older than him, so he doesn’t know exactly what happened that night with Potter & Sirius—– but he knows something happened, and that his brother had been profoundly changed by whatever it was.

                  He knew they were on opposing sides of this WAR, of course----- Sirius had been burned off their family tree for a few years now, and he made no secret of his allegiance to Albus Dumbledore... But somehow the facts of Sirius resisting the Death Eaters & Regulus being one hadn’t really connected in his mind  ( until now )  and he was caught utterly unprepared.

                  This wasn’t even supposed to be a dangerous assignment. They were stealing--- redistributing--- school records, for Merlin’s sake ;  there was no reason for the Aurors to have shown up as they were now, a whole group of them split up & flinging jinxes.

                  ‘  Sirius!  ’   Regulus shouted, deflecting a CURSE easily and firing off his own :  Conjunctivitis, incapacitating but not permanently damaging.   ‘  What are you doing here?  ’

credence remembered little other than   P A I N   so much of it even that it blurred days together ; time passed differently when one seemed to be dying. each intake of breath had felt like an eternity and each heartbeat had been stretched until it was as if each took a single day. days became weeks, and weeks became months. how strange it was, to live life like a dead man. he wondered if he had ever lived to begin with ; had he not always stood by the sidelines as life passed before his eyes. always held back by his ma or   G O D   himself.  life, however, had come back to him. slowly he had regained control over his limbs, over his thoughts even. but it still hurt and more often than not did credence think of simply ending. suicide would mean eternal damnation, but even   H E L L   itself sounded better than going on like this. he did everything as if he was living in a haze ; seeing the world pass him by from behind a veil of some sorts, unable to communicate with the people around him. strangers passed him, shoved him aside as if he was  N O T H I N G . it was the truth of course, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. it took him a heartbeat ( and if that heartbeat took a second or an hour this time he didn’t know ) before he realised that he was being called. strange it was, for someone to show interest in him after all this time alone and it took him every ounce of willpower not to  R U N. he didn’t reply, he stood like a wounded animal gazing into the eyes of a predator, waiting for the sharp pain of teeth sinking in the tender flesh of his neck, ripping at veins and muscles until he was sure to die.     

                  Regulus stopped where he was on the subway steps, staring down at the Obscurial.

                  The Obscurial stared back at him.

                  The boy didn’t move ;  he seemed FROZEN, eyes wide & shoulders hunched as if attempting to disappear into the concrete beneath him. He looked thin----- scrawny. Unhealthy so, and more afraid than he had any reason to be. Regulus felt bile rise up in his mouth. He was not supposed to be here.

                  Regulus had never intended to actually find the Obscurus. New York City was purportedly huge ;  surely it was vast enough that he & his quarry could spend a month in the same borough and never meet, especially if he took pains to avoid the specific locations Lord Grindelwald recommended he search  ( Pike Street, Lower Manhattan, the Woolworth building.... ) . He’d imagined, disembarking his passenger ship, that he could move through the city quickly and be gone within the week without encountering any of the Dark Lord’s MISTAKES.

                  ------ But here one was standing in front of him. Regulus barely noticed the rush of crowds still swarming past them into the tube ;  the boy’s dark eyes caught him, pinned him where he stood----- and unwittingly Regulus spoke again.   ‘  You.  ’