#doll regulus

Jegulus(ish) Microfic: 992 words || cw: minor themes of horror? (enchanted/cursed doll Reg)

Dust motes danced in the pale shafts of light that slipped through the cracks in the boards covering the windows. Their presence made for a welcome distraction, Regulus liked to make up wordless melodies for them to dance to, humming softly from his perch on the shelf near the back of the attic.

He didn't know how long he'd been there, only that it was getting harder to remember the sound of his father's voice. But maybe that was for the best, he'd never quite managed to live up to the expectations bestowed upon him before his mechanical heart had even had the chance to beat.

It shouldn't have mattered and yet it did. Regulus hadn't been given the capacity to care, not by design. But that didn't stop the curious ache in his chest that had less to do with the rats and their gnawing teeth, and more to do with the sense that even a broken doll like him deserved... Something. He wasn't entirely sure what.

As it was, he would have been grateful if someone shifted him closer to the window so he might feel the sun caress his cracked cheeks.

He'd been able to interact with the world around him once, a long time ago. Back when there had been people, laughter. Back when he'd been given beautiful clothes and his curls had been styled just so. Now, they were littered with cobwebs and he couldn't even lift a hand to brush the spiders away.

Now he was lucky if he could focus his influence enough to disturb the papers stacked on the desk by the door.

A floorboard creaked somewhere below him, probably just a rat on the prowl for some unfortunate morsel to nibble on. For a moment, just a moment, he let himself imagine his father had come back for him, that it had been a mistake, that he wasn't a failed prototype after all. That it was okay, that he could finally come home.

Home.

What a curious word.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, thud-thud-thudding closer, belonging to something much larger than any rat he'd ever seen. 'Please', he found himself thinking desperately. 'Someone, anyone... Just shift me into the light, that's all. I don't need anything more.'

There had been a time when it would have been enough, when he had been strong enough to be heard.

For the first time in longer than Regulus could remember, the door to the attic creaked open. The man was dressed in simple clothes, his hair sticking out in all sorts of odd, unruly angles. The frames sitting atop his nose gleamed in the fading light and when he swept his gaze across the room, Regulus found himself looking into rich hazel that was almost bronze. Almost gold.

"Oh. Hello there." The man's voice was light, warm, as he spoke to the doll on the shelf. "Aren't you just the prettiest thing?" His lips curved in a smile that made Regulus steel heart jolt and, for just a moment, he felt like he could mean something again.

"Find anything up there?"

The voice that called up the stairs was unwelcome, Regulus wanted to slam the door shut, to keep this lovely stranger all to himself. He felt the energy course through him, from him, almost enough—

The door barely even twitched.

"Nothing worth writing home about," the man called back and Regulus felt his heart sink when he turned away to scan the attic one more time.

'Wait.' He knew it was futile. 'I'm here. Don't go, don't leave me behind. I can be something. I can be enough...'

For a moment, when the stranger's lovely golden gaze snapped back to him, Regulus wondered if maybe he had been heard. He didn't need to breathe, but if he did, he would have held his breath.

"James, come on. We don't have all day."

The man, James, rolled his eyes in a good natured sort of way that felt warm—did everything this man do feel like that? Or was Regulus just so starved for warmth that anything just shy of hostile would have felt like it? He wasn't sure that it mattered. Either way, it would make for a lovely dream. Something new to hold onto when the loneliness grew so strong he felt like he might choke on it.

"Well, you heard him." James smiled apologetically, hesitating for just a moment longer, before he reached out and lifted Regulus off the shelf. "You don't mind, do you? It's just that something as lovely as you really shouldn't be left here to gather dust."

Regulus almost wept. He might not have been capable of producing tears, but that didn't mean he couldn't cry; an awful, silent thing that echoed inside him.

Cradled in James' arms, he let himself be carried down the narrow stair and through winding corridors that had once been grand, but had now succumbed to rust and ruin.

The man in the foyer looked up when James approached, a slight frown curving his lips when he saw Regulus. "Who's your friend?" His tone was curious, not cold, and Regulus felt the urge to turn his face and hide in the warmth that had claimed him.

"I found him upstairs." There was a sort of breathless quality to his voice as he held the doll out for the scarred man to get a closer look. Regulus wasn't sure what to make of the way the stranger's amber eyes widened when he took him in.

"He looks just like—"

"I know, Moony. I know."

Regulus didn't know why these men were looking at him as though he were something precious, he really wasn't. Years of solitude had proven that fact. But as he was carried away from the crumbling ruin that was Grimmauld Place and into the light of the sun, he felt for the first time in a long time, like things might be okay.

☆

Jegulus(ish) Microfic: 515 words

Part two of Somebody Shine a Light (Shatter Me), you can check out part one here: | 1 |

~☀︎~

James didn't know what to make of the doll. If he were asked, he'd say he took it because it reminded him of another doll—the one with silver eyes that Pandora kept on the armchair by the telly. Because it liked to watch movies with her, or so she claimed.

Really though, he'd taken it because he'd always felt a certain sense of responsibility towards lost, lonely things. Someone had to look out for them. It wasn't out of pity, though it broke his heart that something so beautiful could be abandoned for so long, but because James couldn't help but feel that things and places knew when they were loved.

It had been decades since Orion Black and his wife had disappeared, leaving nothing but a cluttered house and rumours that had become little more than stories, the kind that were told around a campfire with the express purpose of frightening one's friends. No one knew the full story, of course, but such was the nature of these things.

James was partial to the one where they'd fled in the dead of night after a sordid life of crime caught up to them. Remus, on the other hand, was much more practical and maintained that it was probably just the result of economic strain catching up with the couple that had forced them to seek out greener pastures abroad.

In the end, it didn't really matter.

All that mattered was the dare that had sent them over the threshold of a long abandoned place to see what dark relics they might find to prove once and for all what had really transpired at Grimmauld Place.

Peter had waited in the car, of course. He claimed that it was better for someone to keep a look out, just in case. After all, they were technically breaking and entering; even though the door had swung open for them without so much as a creak.

Despite the creeping sense of unease that had twisted his stomach and caused the hair at the base of his neck stand on end, it was exhilarating to step into the object of myth and mystery. To walk the crumbling halls and cavernous rooms, to breathe in a place that felt alive with history.

There had been no vault filled with stolen gold and priceless artifacts, nor did there seem to be any sign of dark rituals or pentagrams etched into the hardwood floors. It was almost disappointing—to think that the stories had been just that.

But then James had found the doll.

So, sure. If he were asked he'd say that he'd taken the doll because it reminded him of the one on Pandora's armchair. He couldn't begin to explain how those eyes—more grey than silver, more like the ocean in the middle of a storm, than a star—had seemed filled with a tentative hope that had almost broken his heart.

If James really was built to be a friend to the lost and the lonely, then let it begin and end with the doll he held tenderly in his hands.

~☀︎~

Since this idea has been haunting me since I posted part one, I've decided to flesh it out and turn it into a full size fic (I have no idea what that size will be yet, but I'm sure Reg will tell me as his story unfolds.)