When Sirius was around five his father got him a dog, that was back when they hadn’t really realised Sirius was not going to be the ideal Black, but still long enough for them to realise the importance of leverage with their children.
Sirius was clearly too young to question Orion’s motives and just went along with it, daring to hope that maybe his father was going to be nice for a while again.
When Sirius was seven and refused to learn French in his free time his father had his dog killed.
Now, Sirius mostly thinks about how his animagus looks like his dog.
However, sometimes late at night very briefly, when he’s sleep dazed and has let his guard down, does he think about how he’d loved the dog so much that it made him physically sick.
Sirius would hold the leash extra tight while walking him because of the pit in his stomach and the voice telling him if he let go the dog would leave and get hit by oncoming traffic, get lost, or fall into a ditch.
When the dog refused to eat he’d cry himself to sleep worried he’d be dead the next morning.
The constant anxiety of having to care about anyone being alive was exhausting because he didn’t have any practice with it.
He didn’t really care if his parents lived or not. And he hadn’t met Regulus enough to want him alive either.
In said sleep-dazed thoughts he’d realise how much he hated loving things. It made him sick to his stomach like it was the worst feeling in the world.
He’d let the people that loved him do anything close to killing him without a single question in his mind.
James could put a knife in his back and Sirius would say thank you. Anything they did to him was acceptable.
Anything anyone done to them wasn’t.
That’s why he was constantly trapped in the middle of these confines, the ones where he wanted to vomit until he passed out because if they died he would die and the ones where he wanted to throw himself off of a building because he couldn’t stop this.
Maybe that’s what the Aurors saw when they arrested him, for their murders.
Relief that it was finally over and everything he was worried would go wrong had gone wrong.
Now that they’d died he didn’t have anything to be worried about nor did he have anything to fight for.
It was the first fight he had with Remus before they got together. About how he didn’t want to be with Remus, because it would crush Sirius’ soul and he wouldn’t be able to take it.
Remus fit perfectly and it made him feel ill. He hated that he could imagine him staying forever and he hated it even more than he wanted it.
Family would never be a part of his equation.
He s hours at the night begging, to a god he was sure didn't exist when he didn't have anyone to love, to keep Remus safe and alive.
Having nightmares about having everything taken away from him when he couldn't do anything about it, about James betraying them and hurting Remus while Sirius can't stop him.
Bile crawls up his throat.
Remus breaks all of those parts of him that he’s spent so long building up and it’s completely terrifying.
Remus has a chokehold on him and one day he's going to suffocate.
Eventually, when he starts believing that Remus was the spy he was ready to forgive him, ready to join the other side for him, beg James and Lily to join them too.
Except when he brings it up, the look of hurt flashing across Remus' eyes, the hurt the betrayal, the sentiment doesn't transfer.
And he can feel himself choking as Remus leaves him, safe and sound.
