Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He rides for three days, three nights.

On the third day, he turns back.

It’s a stupid decision, maybe. Possibly. James will likely be angry. Regulus stole his horse. He needs that.

This is a bad idea. He’s supposed to be going to Canada.

But Regulus can’t keep running. His heart is compass needle, pointing back, back, back towards that farm, like James is due north. The only direction left that Regulus can go.

I’m sorry, Sirius, he thinks, as his thighs burn from hours spent in the saddle, I tried. I really tried.

He rides for three days, three nights.

On the third day, he clings tight to Minnie as she jumps the familiar fence, and his heart swoops with joy as the barn comes into view. Regulus knows James will be angry—he knows. He knows James will be hurt, and suspicious, and confused. Regulus knows he won’t deserve forgiveness, but he’s going to beg for it anyway, and hope the man he’s in love with is a more benevolent god than the one he grew up with. He’s going to explain everything, all of it, every secret he’s kept locked away. At the end of it, James can decide if he wants him to stay. Regulus won’t fight if James tells him to go, and—

And the door to the barn is open.

Regulus draws up short, staring at it.

It’s not that it’s strange—James leaves the barn door open all the time, if he’s moving in and out. If the cow needs to graze, or the chickens want to roam. But there’s no rustle of movement, none of the cheerful whistling Regulus has grown used to hearing as James works. There’s no sound of footsteps, no clucking of hens, no low braying of the cow. No barking Padfoot.

It’s quiet. Nothing but smothered silence.

Regulus slides out of the saddle slowly, hand already settled on the handle of his gun. He guides Minnie to the side, loops her reins around a fencepost, pats her neck soothingly when she snorts.

“Shh, it’s alright, girl...”

Regulus moves towards the barn with a stone in his stomach. The smell hits him before he even steps through the door.

The chickens are dead. All of them, slaughtered, left in piles of bloody feathers on the floor. The cow too, whole barn stinking of blood and rot, maggots already crawling on her flesh. The dull drone of buzzing flies is the only thing to break the silence.

Regulus turns, and runs towards the cabin.

The door bursts open beneath his hands, hinges groaning, and Regulus careens forward face-first as some unseen force trips him. He manages to bring his arms up just in time to stop himself from breaking his nose, landing hard on his wrists, knees screaming with pain as he goes sprawling across the floor. When he looks back, wild with fear, he sees what tripped him.

Padfoot.

The dog is a crumpled heap of black fur. One eye is open, glassy, unseeing. The other is gone, blasted away along with an ear and half the dog’s skull. They must’ve used a shotgun. Regulus can see brain matter, bloody and raw. There are maggots crawling there, too.

He vomits onto the bloodstained floor.

If he could, he would bury it. Take the dog’s body out to the field, dig a proper grave. But he can’t, because there’s an envelope sitting on top of the table, addressed with a single name.

Regulus Arcturus Black.

Regulus rips it open, hands trembling, nose filled with the stench of decay. The note is short, simple, to the point. Regulus can hear his father’s sneering voice, curling all around the words.

If you wish to see your friend again, come home.

Regulus drops the letter, and he runs.

*  *  *

The train is familiar. Regulus grew up with trains—the clattering of the tracks, the smoke-belch of the engine. The banshee wail of the whistle. The inhuman speed.

He hates them.

Climbing aboard feels like crawling into the mouth of a yawning beast, each step down the hallway of the compartment taking him deeper into its open throat. He sits, skin crawling, knowing that he can do nothing but let the acid of this familiarity eat away at him. Regulus stares out the window, digested. By the time this iron monster drags its body down into the cloying heat of hell, his family will already know to expect his arrival. Word travels fast along the Continental United line.

It’s funny, Regulus thinks. The entire time he spent running, avoiding these tracks, knowing that to even set foot on board a train car would spell his doom. Nearly two months on horseback, skirting towns and settlements, drawing a bandana over his mouth and a hat down low on his forehead anytime he stopped for food, for water, for rest. He rode until it killed his horse, until it nearly killed him. All for a trip that can be made in two days by train.

There’s a man waiting for him at the San Antonio station. Sweat beads along Regulus’s forehead the moment he steps onto the platform, Texas air so thick and humid that it feels like stepping into a bowl of soup. The man isn’t one he recognizes, but he steps to Regulus’s side immediately, puts a hand on his elbow. Regulus doesn’t fight as he’s led to the beetle-shelled automobile waiting outside the station, shiny and new, the only one on the streets as they drive through the stifling heat.

It's been a year. One entire year since Regulus left, since he clawed his way out of this hellhole. And yet it’s as if no time has passed at all when they pull up in front of the manor, when they abandon the automobile to climb the broad steps. For a moment, Regulus is gripped with fear, certain that it’s all been a dream—that he tried to run, succumbed to heatstroke in some godforsaken ditch, had his body dragged back and prodded up the familiar staircase. That it was all just a hallucination. That nothing has changed at all.

James, he reminds himself, closing his eyes and feeling the cold water of that mountain creek, the soft press of fingers and lips. I’m doing this for James. If he has to crawl back into hell, so be it. Regulus is no longer the kind of man who will sacrifice somebody he loves in his stead.

He doesn’t want to be that kind of man anymore.

It’s cooler, inside the house. Thick walls block the sun, cast long shadows across the floor. Like stepping inside a crypt.

His mother is waiting in the foyer.

“Darling,” she breathes, the moment her eyes land on Regulus. Then she crosses the floor, in three quick steps, and backhands him across the face.

Regulus breathes. In, then out. His cheek stings where her wedding ring has sliced into his skin, sharp diamond a familiar sensation. He feels the slow trickle of blood from his cheekbone, like a teardrop.

“Mother,” he says, voice hollow.

Walburga Black tuts, draws a handkerchief from her pocket, and grabs his chin. She tilts his head forcefully, fingers gripping hard enough to leave marks, and dabs at the blood trickling steadily towards his neck. Regulus shuts his eyes. He doesn’t flinch.

“Your father is furious,” his mother says, words cold and clipped, “You have no idea the amount of trouble you’ve caused us. No idea.”

Regulus swallows, putting every ounce of effort he can into keeping his voice steady.

“Where is he, mother?”

Walburga’s hand tightens on his chin. When Regulus opens his eyes, he sees his mother’s lips pressed into a thin line, her own eyes glittering with disgust. She lets go of him abruptly, wiping her hands on her handkerchief as though she’s soiled them by touching his skin.

“Get cleaned up,” she tells him, tersely, “You’ll be joining us for dinner at 6 o’clock.”

“No—I want to see—”

“You’ll see him at dinner.” She spits the words, like a hissing cat. The bloody handkerchief is crumpled in her fist. Without looking at Regulus, she turns to the man still standing behind him, and lifts her chin.

“Avery, please escort my son to his room.”

With that, Regulus watches his mother turn and walk away.

*  *  *

It’s the first time in nearly a year that Regulus has taken a proper bath. He watches the dust and dirt slough off, leaving his skin shiny and scrubbed-pink; he sits in front of a mirror to shave; he brushes through his hair with a silver comb, instead of using his fingers. There’s cologne on the dressing table, a clean suit laid out on the bed. Avery stands outside the bedroom door the entire time, like they’re all just waiting for Regulus to change his mind and try to run away. Regulus grinds his teeth as he dresses. The clothes feel stiff, starched, all wrong against his skin.

But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because the moment Avery opens the dining room door and gestures him through, Regulus sees—

“James!”

He doesn’t mean to speak; the word just slips out, a choked exclamation, fighting past the lump in his throat. They’ve put James in a suit as well, broad shoulders wrapped in fine material that might make Regulus’s heart skip a beat in any other context, but only makes him feel sick in this one. He’s clean-shaven too, all the dirt scrubbed from the cracked lines of his palms, unruly curls cropped close to his skull. Regulus wants to cry. He wants to run across the room and kiss him.

James stands immediately, chair screeching back, silverware rattling as he shoves his palms flat against the table in his haste to rise. Their eyes meet, and Regulus can see the battling emotions of confusion, fear, relief—he drinks in the familiar features, the nut-brown skin and upturned eyes, the gentle mouth and broad nose, the neck that Regulus wants to wrap his arms around, and bury his face in, and cry I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over and over again, until his voice finally fails him.

“Sit down, please, Mr. Potter,” comes a silky voice from James’s left, “Dinner will be served shortly.”

All the blood in Regulus’s body turns to ice.

Tom.

He’s a handsome man. Or at least—Regulus thought he was, once. Square jaw, dark hair, dark eyes. Silken voice, smooth as butter, words that curl around your ears like a caress. Once, Regulus thought he was the only one who could understand—the only person whose eyes reflected back his same hunger, who shared his same thirst for knowledge. Once, he truly believed the things Tom said; that they could discover the secrets of the universe beneath a microscope, that they could unlock the codes of life, that no sacrifice was too great to make in the name of advancement, of achievement, of science.

Now, he just feels sick.

“I want to know what’s going on,” James demands, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, “You people have no right to keep me here—”

“James,” Regulus interrupts, fear spiking as he watches Tom’s eyes slide over to regard the man beside him. “Sit down.”

James turns back to him, eyes falling to the bruise on his cheek. Regulus shakes his head, once, eyes wide and pleading.

“Just sit down,” he says, again, words too loud in the stony silence of the room. He moves to his own seat at the table, pulling out the chair as if in demonstration, sitting down quickly before anyone else can stand. Avery stays behind him, in the doorway. James’s eyes flicker around the room, once, before he finally sits, staring at Regulus the entire time.

At the head of the table, Orion Black is already holding a glass of wine, glaring at James with an open look of disgust. To his left, Walburga sits, sniffing in disdain at the unseemly display that’s just taken place. To his right, Tom Riddle inclines his head towards Regulus, smiling.

“We’re so happy you could join us, Regulus,” he says, as if no disturbance has taken place at all. Regulus can feel James’s eyes on him—it’s the first time the other man has heard his full name.

“Tom,” Regulus nods, stiffly, folding his hand into a fist under the table. “Father.”

Orion snorts, taking a swig of his wine. Regulus supposes that’s the best he could hope for, from him. Orion might be seated at the head of the table, but they all know it’s Tom who’s been pulling the strings, ever since he swept into Texas with his death eaters and his message about God’s chosen. Orion might think he’s still in control, and Tom might let him believe it, but Regulus knows better.

He just wishes he’d figured it all out sooner.

A line of servants sweep in, carrying trays of food. Nobody speaks as they arrange the platters along the table, an opulent feast far in excess of anything the five of them will be able to eat. Regulus doubts he’ll even be able to swallow a single bite with the way his stomach is rioting inside his body.

“Reg,” James asks, once the servants have left and the doors have swung shut, “What’s going on?”

Walburga makes a small, disdainful sound in the back of her throat at the nickname. Despite himself, Regulus feels the creeping flush of shame.

He ignores the question, keeping his voice low as he asks,

“Are you alright? They haven’t hurt you in any way?”

James opens his mouth to answer, but it’s Tom who gets there first, still smiling that cold, amused smile as he drawls,

“Come now, Regulus, we would never want to hurt a…friend of yours, as it were. Mr. Potter here is only visiting to provide adequate motivation for you to return to the work you so abruptly abandoned.”

“Right,” Regulus answers, voice clipped, “Well, I’m here now. So you can let him go.”

“What?! I’m not leaving you—”

“Shut up, James.”

“My, my,” Tom’s eyes are glittering, delighted as they dart between Regulus and James, “You both are certainly…passionate.”

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

“James!” Regulus hisses, nails digging into his palm, “Shut up!”

James glares at him, but he ignores it, turning back to Tom.

“You have me,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady, “You don’t need him. Just let him go, and I—I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Tom tuts, patronizingly, voice sickening and saccharine. “Oh, Regulus,” he sighs, “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what we want. It’s about what He wants. This is so much bigger than any one man’s individual whims—you used to understand that. It disheartens me to see how you’ve changed.”

“He’s been led astray,” Walburga hisses, suddenly, eyes fixed on James, “By this—this—”

“Now, now,” Tom raises a hand, and she falls silent immediately. Regulus watches, stomach turning, wondering if his mother even realizes that she’s acting like a trained dog. Tom smiles at her, benevolent, and she watches him with the sort of fervent devotion usually reserved for a pastor’s sermons.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Tom says, voice deceptively gentle. “We are all, at times, led astray. But had it not been for your son’s unfortunate predisposition towards…this sin, in particular, we may never have found a way to bring him back into the fold. After all, it is thanks to Mr. Potter that young Regulus has come all this way to join us for dinner tonight, is it not?”

At the head of the table, Orion sighs, impatient.

“Move this along, Tom,” he grunts, taking another swig of his wine, “I’ve already got investors breathing down my neck about the delay, thanks to my useless excuse for a son—”

James slams his fist against the table, hatred burning in his eyes as he snarls,

“Don’t you talk about him that way!”

“Excuse me?!” Orion flushes bright red, furious, beginning to stand from his own chair, “I suggest you learn your place, young man! You’re nothing but a—”

“Enough, enough!” Tom raises his hands, and once more, the room falls silent. He smiles.

“Gentlemen, please. Let’s keep things civil, shall we?” He turns to Orion, inclining his head. “I can, of course, move this along, Mr. Black. Your wish is my command.”

Regulus stares down at the table, too ashamed to say anything as everyone retakes their seats. He can feel James’s eyes on him, searching, questioning. But he can’t bring himself to look up.

“Regulus,” Tom says, calmly, “I’m afraid that we will need you to stay here and complete your work. To ensure you remain sufficiently motivated, Mr. Potter will remain as a…guest, thanks to the generous hospitality of your parents. You’ll find that so long as you both cooperate, there will be no need for any unpleasantness. I daresay you’ll find the accommodations here much more comfortable than wherever it was you were staying—Avery, where did you say Crouch found them?”

At the door, Avery speaks for the first time.

“Montana, sir. Just outside of Butte.”

“Montana,” Tom repeats, rolling the syllables around on his tongue as though savoring them. He turns back to Regulus, smiling. “I daresay you’ll find the accommodations here much more comfortable than Montana.”

Regulus meets his gaze, chin jutting forward slightly.

“And when I finish my work?” he asks, stomach twisting with guilt, “You’ll let him go?”

Tom inclines his head. “Of course. We should have no reason to keep him.”

Regulus nods, once. “Deal.”

“No!” James bursts out, palms braced once more against the table, “I’m not letting you people take him and—and torture him, or whatever it is that you do! I’ve seen your arm, Reg—I knew you were running from something—”

Tom laughs, loud and sharp, cutting James off. His smile grows, stretching into something more sharklike.

“What we do?” he asks, sounding horribly amused. “My dear man, there isn’t anything that we do to Regulus.”

Please, Regulus thinks, not like this.

But Tom turns to him, like he can read his mind, like he can see how badly Regulus doesn’t want to have this conversation, written all over his face.

“Would you like to tell him, Regulus?” he asks, “Or shall I?”

James glances between the two of them, clearly confused. I’m sorry, Regulus thinks, desperately, I was going to tell you—I was. Just not like this. Please, not like this.

But he can’t make the words leave his lips. When he stays silent, Tom opens his mouth to speak.

“You see, Mr. Potter,” he drawls, settling in with a wineglass in hand, “Or—James. Can I call you James?”

James glares at him, like he’s trying to snap his neck with his eyes.

“James,” Tom says, smiling, “Many people don’t know this, but Regulus Black here is one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. A prodigy, truly. The youngest man to become a doctor this side of the Mississippi.”

Regulus breathes, in, out. He stares at the food going cold on the table. Nobody’s eating. Nobody’s even moved to touch it.

“And of course, like any proud man of science, he was unwilling to accept that the Fever was an act of God. Like Noah’s flood—a purge, a cleansing of the unworthy from those chosen.”

“Fever’s a disease,” James grunts, through gritted teeth, “Ain’t got nothing to do with any god.”

Tom’s smile is patronizing. He speaks slowly, as though talking to a child.

“And when has any disease been known to raise the dead back to life? What more proof could any man demand that this is God’s hand, moving among us?”

Beside Regulus, Walburga is nodding, enraptured. Orion looks bored, as he usually does in any conversation that doesn’t revolve around money. Regulus thinks his father may be the only person who has ever been immune to Tom’s silver tongue, his snakeskin sermons and sheep’s clothing. Once he starts talking like this, invoking God and miracles and telling you that you’re chosen, it’s so hard to hear anything but sincerity. His eyes even shimmer with a fervent light, like he truly believes the things he’s saying.

“But Regulus Black doubted, just the same as Thomas. And just the same as Thomas, God gave him proof.”

“Don’t,” Regulus croaks, forcing the word out. His nails bite into his palms, threatening to draw blood. Tom turns to him.

“Did you want to tell this part of the story, Regulus?”

James is looking at him. Regulus can feel those eyes, but he can’t turn to meet them.

“Please,” he says. Pathetic.

Tom grins.

“Regulus’s older brother, you see,” he continues, in that smooth, slithering voice, “Was a bit of a daredevil. A thrill-seeker. A do-gooder. When the Fever broke out in town, rather than letting God’s will run its course, he tried to interfere.”

Regulus shuts his eyes. Sirius, he thinks, Sirius. Always so good at sneaking out.

“He came back with a bite.”

Regulus remembers it. The fear that ate him from the inside out, staring down at the bleeding wound on his brother’s arm.

“But God works in mysterious ways,” Tom says, spreading his hands, “And in this case, the mystery was that Sirius Black didn’t die.”

Across the table, James stiffens, staring at Tom in incredulity.

“That’s right,” Tom nods, pleased with the obvious reaction, “There it was: a sign from God, clear as day. The Black family had been chosen, blessed with this unique opportunity.”

“I don’t understand.” James turns to Regulus, eyes wide and searching, “Your brother was—immune? To the Fever?”

“He was chosen,” Tom repeats, mouth curling downwards, “And then he refused to share the gift that he had been so generously granted.”

“I wanted to find a cure,” Regulus whispers, barely able to meet James’s gaze, “I thought—if he was immune, the answer might be in Sirius’s blood. But he—” Regulus swallows, tries to pull himself together. He remembers their arguments, the fights that had them snarling and snapping and spinning in circles, every time.

I don’t understand why you won’t at least let me try! This could help so many people—

Oh, bullshit, Reg! Don’t act like this is about helping people! You just want to be the one to make the discovery, to make sure it’s your name in somebody’s fucking history book!

So what?! What’s wrong with that?! This is groundbreaking science, Sirius—it would change everything—

You see? I knew it! It’s always the fucking science with you—it's like you get these blinders on, you don’t care about anything except your stupid ‘discoveries’—

Why does it matter what I care about?! This would help people—

Not in our parents’ hands, it wouldn’t! Not with them listening to that fucking cult leader! Jesus, Reg, are you really so naïve? What the fuck do you think they want to use it for?!

Regulus shakes his head, words rasping from his throat.

“He wouldn’t let me.”

“Selfish,” Tom tuts, shaking his head. Regulus can’t stop the shame that crawls up his throat. He thought the exact same thing, once.

“But Regulus,” Tom turns to him, abruptly, eyes pinning him, nails through the wrists, “Regulus understood. He heard the call of God’s message. He took up the mantle, where his brother would not.”

It wasn’t like that, Regulus wants to say, It wasn’t about God, it wasn’t...

Except part of it was, wasn’t it? Part of it was Tom’s voice in his ear, whispering, goading, asking why Regulus would have been blessed with this knowledge, this curiosity, this talent, if not for a reason. Whispering that Regulus was better, was smarter, was not the same as all these people who crawled like rats over the surface of the earth, content in their fetid ignorance. Regulus was destined for more. Regulus was destined for discovery. Regulus was destined for greatness. If he only chose to try, he could outshine even Sirius. You are made for more than living in your brother’s shadow.

“I don’t understand,” James says, again.

“Tell him, Regulus,” says Tom.

Regulus swallows.

“I got bitten,” Regulus tells him, “On purpose.”

He can’t look at James’s face. Instead, he drops his eyes to his arm, to the mark he knows lies just under his sleeve. Twisted out of shape, now, and hardly recognizable—sliced open and sewn shut and hardened by the lump of scar tissue where the needle went in, over and over and over again. But Regulus knows what it used to be. He still remembers the feel of those teeth.

“I was immune, too.”

“Chosen,” Tom proclaims, “And this time, Regulus did not ignore God’s message.”

“I wanted to find a cure,” Regulus repeats, weakly, voice hardly a whisper. Like saying it enough times can somehow make it true—can somehow go back in time and make it something selfless, something noble, instead of what it actually was.

Greed. Pride. Willful ignorance, taking his parents’ money and using the laboratory they built and letting Tom Riddle whisper in his ear, like he didn’t know what all of them would do with a cure the moment he succeeded in making one.

You just want to be the one to make the discovery, to make sure it’s your name in somebody’s fucking history book!

Sirius was right, all along.

Regulus should have listened to him. Just once in his life, he should have listened.

“So you see, Mr. Potter,” Tom says, inclining his wineglass towards Regulus in a mocking toast, “It is not a question of what we do to Regulus. The only one doing anything to Regulus is Regulus himself.”

It’s true. All of it—true. The leather gag that Regulus placed into his own mouth, the restraints that he strapped himself into. The syringe that he filled himself, that he placed into his assistant’s hand. His own blood, drawn himself, studied for hours under a microscope. Tweaking the formula, watching to see how his body would react. Strapping himself into that chair, placing that gag in his mouth, over and over and over. His own hands. Never anyone’s but his own.

“No,” James shakes his head, brow furrowed, eyes lost, “That—that doesn’t make any sense. He ran away.” His eyes find Regulus from across the table, trapping him, pupils pleading for answers. “I saw you, Reg. You were half-dead when I found you.”

Regulus opens his mouth, but it’s Tom who responds first, waving a hand carelessly in the air.

“Yes, well. We all stray from the light sometimes, do we not?”

He’s smiling again, but it isn’t quite so smooth this time—there’s a tightness around his eyes, a stiffness to it that lets Regulus know he hasn’t been forgiven for this particular infraction quite yet.

“But now,” Tom says, gaze sharp across the table, “Regulus is going to finish the work that he started. Isn’t that right, Doctor Black?”

Regulus’s eyes slide to the left, to where James is sitting, stiff and uncomfortable and confused in his finely tailored suit.

“Yes,” Regulus says, as his nails break through the skin of his palm, drawing tiny crescents of blood. “I am.”

*  *  *

They’re keeping James in Sirius’s old room. Small mercies—maybe there really is a god out there somewhere. Regulus thinks it’s meant to be some sort of sick taunt, two men standing guard in the hallway with guns on their hips, the only thing keeping him and James from each other a few short feet of distance.

But what Regulus’s parents don’t know is that there’s a small ridge of stone, just three fingers’ width, jutting out below the window in his room. What his parents don’t know is that he and Sirius used to creep along the wall and climb through the windows into each other’s rooms on the nights that their mother locked their doors, keeping quiet and always making sure to return to their own bedrooms before sunrise lest their secret be discovered.

That was all a long time ago, of course, and Regulus is considerably larger now than he was as a boy. But the creeping kudzu vines that have slowly been eating the western wall of the manor provide handholds to grip, and Regulus clenches his teeth and edges along the wall, determined to reach the window just a few feet away.

He taps on the glass once, twice. James is there in a heartbeat, and the window slides open, and then Regulus is wrapped in his arms, and he’s clinging so hard that he knows it must hurt—it must—but he can’t stop, couldn’t untwist his fingers from James’s shirt even if he wanted to.

“James—” he gasps, “I—”

James grabs his face, grips his jaw, pulls him into a brutal kiss that knocks their teeth together and rips the breath right out of Regulus’s lungs. They’re pushing at each other, trying to get closer, stumbling and off-balance. James crushes him back against the wall, kissing him like it’s the last thing that either of them are ever going to do. When they finally break apart, Regulus is panting. James presses their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut, breathing just as hard.

“I’m so fucking mad at you, Reg,” he gasps, and Regulus nods, wordlessly, and then they’re kissing again.

“Minnie?” James asks, when they break apart again. Regulus shakes his head.

“I had to sell her, James—I'm sorry, I’m so sorry, I needed money for the train tickets—”

James presses his eyes shut, again, drawing in a shuddering breath.

“They killed Padfoot.”

His voice is raw. The words scatter, like they’re flinching away from his tongue.

“I know,” Regulus whispers.

James swallows, once, and then pushes away from him abruptly, turning to pace across the room. He keeps his voice low, but it still shakes with anger as he hisses,

“We need to get out of here, Reg. I don’t care what it is that your fucked-up family wants, I’m not going to be held prisoner here while you—you—”

“I’m sorry,” Regulus whispers, helplessly. James glares at him.

“We’ll use the sheets,” he says, moving over towards the bed, “Go out that window—help me make a rope—”

“No!”

Regulus nearly shouts, and has to remind himself at the last second to keep quiet. He moves over towards the bed, grabbing James’s hands.

“You can’t try to leave, James. They’ll kill you.”

James huffs, disbelieving, glare sharpening. “They left the window unlocked, Reg,” he grits out, “If you think I’m just gonna stay here, you’re a fool.”

“Just—look outside,” Regulus whispers, heart sinking, “Just look.”

James huffs again, shaking his head, but he moves over to the open window to look down over the grounds. At first, he’s just squinting into darkness—but Regulus sees the moment his eyes catch sight of something, brow furrowing, hands braced against the windowpane as he leans forward.

“Guards?” James whispers, staring out, “They’ve got patrols or something?”

Regulus shakes his head. “Not guards.”

James looks again.

It’s faint, but if Regulus listens closely he can hear it. The telltale shuffling gait, the quiet groans. Who knows how many, at this point. Regulus doesn’t want to guess.

James recoils, pulling away from the window like it’s bitten him. When he turns to Regulus, his face is a twisted mix of emotion—confusion, horror, shock.

“Fevered?” he gasps, forgetting for a moment to whisper. Regulus lifts a finger to his lips, glancing pointedly towards the door.

James shakes his head, still backing away. “What the fuck, Reg,” he whispers, reaching up to tug fingers through his hair only to realize that he can’t, with how short it’s been cut. “What the fuck?”

“They use them,” Regulus whispers, “It’s why they want a cure.”

James turns to him, eyes hardening.

“I think you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

Regulus nods, swallowing. This is what he came here to do. Still—it feels as though there’s a rock lodged somewhere in his esophagus, like he’s slowly suffocating. He leans back against the wall, letting it support his weight, and wraps his arms around his stomach.

“They let them out at night,” Regulus whispers, “To roam the grounds. Easier than hiring guards. The fences around the property keep them in. The doors to the manor keep them out. And in the morning, they use animals to round them up—release a pig, let them chase it, corral them all back into the...storage facility where they’re kept.

“It started as an experiment. A way to see if they could even make...use of the Fevered. My father sees them as a potential source of free labor. My mother thinks they’re the damned, that god’s chosen have a right to do with them what they see fit. Tom...he plays into their delusions because it serves him to ingratiate himself to them. For now.”

“For now?” James asks, frowning. Regulus nods.

“Tom wants an army,” he whispers, “He knows that if he holds the cure, the secret to immunity...well. Who could stop him? If he doesn’t have to fear the Fevered, he and all his followers could use them, control them, set them on anyone who gets in their way. The church of the death eaters won’t just be some fringe religious sect that people roll their eyes at anymore. They’ll be...Tom will be the most powerful man in the country. In the world. The master of death itself.”

“And you knew?” James asks, staring at Regulus like he doesn’t recognize him. “You knew, and you still...”

“No, I didn’t—” Regulus breaks off, searching for words. I didn’t know, he wants to insist, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.

“I didn’t want to know,” he whispers, looking away. “I was so...enraptured, caught up in the discovery of my immunity that I didn’t...Sirius tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. I was too focused. I wanted to be the first person to discover the cure.”

James doesn’t say anything. Regulus is too scared to look up—too afraid of what he might see. His own guilt, his own shame, reflected in the judgment of another man’s eyes.

“Tom wanted to test on Sirius, too. It would have made things faster, if more than one of us with immunity was willing...but Sirius wouldn’t let him. He kept trying to talk me out of it, made it very clear to both Tom and my parents that he didn’t approve of what we were doing. And he was always—he kept sneaking out, slipping off into town...Tom became convinced that he was meeting with someone, that he was going to sell out our secrets—or, worse, let somebody else use his immunity to try and find a cure.

“But Sirius always came back. He always came back for me. He started trying to convince me to run away, insisting that what Tom and I were doing was...was evil. I thought he was just jealous that I was finally—”

Regulus breaks off, swallowing the lump in his throat. Finally the favorite. Finally doing something for myself. Finally outshining him.

“I told him he was wrong. The only person I was testing on was myself—how could that be evil? Sure, we were using rats, testing the formula on them once we discovered that they could carry the Fever same as humans. But a few dead rats was nothing in the name of scientific advancement. And of course, eventually, we would need to move on to human testing—but we were still in the early stages. We wouldn’t be infecting anybody until we had the first iterations of a working cure. That’s what Tom and I agreed on. And I—believed him. I wanted to believe.”

When Regulus risks a glance up, James has locked his emotions behind a stony wall. He listens to Regulus talk, blank-faced, eyes revealing nothing about what any of this makes him think.

“But Sirius didn’t trust Tom,” Regulus’s voice breaks on his brother’s name, “And he was right. One day he took me out to an old barn on the far edge of the grounds, a building that hadn’t been used in ages. He dragged me to the window, and he forced me to look inside.”

Regulus can still remember it like it was yesterday. The furtive way Sirius’s eyes darted about, the way he hurried them across the grounds, shoving Regulus forward as the sun set. Look, he’d insisted, iron grip locked around Regulus’s wrist, Look, quick!

“And I saw them.”

Bodies. So many bodies. Upright and decaying, shuffling aimlessly around the empty barn, eyes devoid of life.

“Tom had been conducting his own tests, behind my back.”

Do you see now, Reggie? Don’t you see?

“On people.”

Regulus scrubs a hand over his face, trying to erase the image of Sirius’s earnest face from his mind. The hope in his brother’s eyes, that Regulus might finally—finally—see the light.

“I should have left,” he whispers, “The moment that he showed me. I should’ve left.”

The stone mask on James’s face cracks, incredulity bleeding through as he hisses,

“You didn’t?!”

Regulus laughs, bitterly, under his breath. Shakes his head.

“I went to Tom,” he says, “And asked what he was doing. Demanded answers. I told myself it was because I wanted to hold him accountable, but really—” he sucks in a breath, releases it. “Really, I think I was looking for an excuse. Anything, so that I could continue my work in naïve ignorance.”

His lips twist, against his will, into a sour, brittle smile.

“And Tom gave me one. Of course he did—said that all the people he’d tested on were volunteers. Said that they knew the risk, and agreed anyway. He’d promised them money, see, with the help of my father. One tiny little injection, and they could walk away with enough cash to feed their family for a month.”

James makes a small, disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “That’s—”

“Evil,” Regulus cuts him off, “I know.” He presses his eyes shut. “I knew, even though I didn’t want to. But...I ignored it. I told myself that they were informed volunteers, that it was all just the underbelly of scientific progress. I told Sirius that I was going to stay.”

He looks up, and meets James’s gaze. In his chest, his heart is rotting like an apple, decaying around its core.

“My brother looked at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

James shakes his head, and there’s pain in his eyes. The same way there was in Sirius’s.

“Why?” he asks, a broken whisper, “I don’t understand how you...why, Reg?”

Regulus smiles, sadly.

“I tried to tell you, James,” he whispers, “I was never a very good person.”

Something shifts in James’s eyes, then, but Regulus doesn’t wait to see it. He looks down at his arms, still wrapped around his stomach.

“Sirius couldn’t stay, after that. I think...I think he’d been planning to go for a while. I think the only reason he stuck around as long as he did was for me.”

Regulus runs a thumb along his forearm, over the mark beneath his sleeve. Scar tissue has knotted beneath the skin of the repeated injection site, leaving a hard lump beneath the already-twisted mark on top.

“He told me, the night he was running away. He told me to follow, once I was ready. That he would find me, wherever I went.”

You’ll realize. You’re a good person—you're not like them. You’ll realize one day, and when that day comes, you run, Reggie.

You run, and you keep on running.

It’s getting to the part that’s harder to talk about. The part where just saying the words feels like digging into gums, like pulling out teeth. Regulus closes his eyes, and keeps them shut.

“But Tom found out,” he says, and it’s no longer an effort to keep his voice low. The words are barely a whisper. “He found out, somehow, that Sirius was planning to leave that night. And Tom started his new...experiment. Let the Fevered he’d been hiding out to roam.”

Behind his closed eyes, he’s back at his window. He’s looking out, watching Sirius’s dark form moving across the grass. Watching the swarm of figures that seem to pour out of nowhere, drawn to the body-heat of life like moths to a flame.

“They...there were so many of them. I couldn’t even see—they surrounded him, and they just—I could hear them just—”

“Reg,” James breathes, horrified. Regulus shakes his head.

“I ran downstairs,” he says, feeling those pounding steps under his feet, the frantic adrenaline rush as he sprinted towards the door, “I tried—I thought if I could just get out there in time, that maybe...”

He pauses. Takes a breath. Presses fingers into the lump on his arm. Swallows down the lump in his throat.

“But it was too late. Tom was there, with my mother, my father—they wouldn’t let me. They kept saying it wouldn’t make a difference, that Sirius had already stopped screaming.”

Regulus breathes. In, out.

“By the time the sun rose, we couldn’t even recognize the body. They lured the Fevered back into the barn, and it was just....scraps. The kind of mess you’d see on a butcher’s table. They gave me his gun, and the blood was still wet...”

“Reg.”

The word is soft, quiet. Regulus opens his eyes, and James is looking at him, and he doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve softness, or quiet. Regulus doesn’t deserve anything from James, and least of all kindness.

Still, James opens his arms, and Regulus is across the room before he can stop himself, collapsing into them.

“You can’t run,” he chokes out, clinging to James so hard his fingers ache. “The only reason I got away is because they weren’t expecting it, but they’re expecting it now, James, and—and even if you made it past the gates, they’d hunt you down, they’d find you, like they found me, and—I can’t—you can’t—”

“Okay, Reg,” James whispers, stroking his hair, “Okay. I won’t try to run. I’m not going anywhere.”

Regulus swallows, hard, and pulls back just enough to look into James’s eyes.

“I’m going to protect you,” he insists, digging thumbs into shoulders, noses so close they nearly touch. “I’ll give them what they want, James, and I’ll make sure they let you go. No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them. I swear, I won’t let them.”

James shakes his head, and drags Regulus back to his chest, and doesn’t say anything at all.

*  *  *

“This is Maria,” Tom says. Regulus nearly drops the vial in his hand.

“No,” he shakes his head, backing away, despite knowing that there’s nowhere to go.

“She’s a volunteer.”

“Tom, I said—”

Regulus breaks off, glancing at the girl. She can’t be older than seventeen, hair a black curtain, eyes dark and wary. She glances between Tom and Regulus, clearly apprehensive. Tom’s got one hand on her shoulder.

“Can I speak to you privately, for a moment?” Regulus asks, gritting his teeth and setting the vial back in its tray. Tom squeezes Maria’s shoulder, gesturing towards the door.

“Wait outside for a moment, dear,” he tells her, voice sure and smooth. The girl darts one last look around the room, then steps outside, arms crossed protectively over her chest. Tom shuts the door to the lab behind her.

“Well?”

“I told you,” Regulus hisses, immediately, “I’m not ready yet.”

“I think you are.”

“It’s not consistent yet—we don’t know how it might affect a human—”

“Which is exactly why we need to start testing on something other than rats, Doctor Black.” There’s a mocking twist to the word when Tom says it, always. Patronizing. Doctor, like Regulus is still a child despite his years of education.

Regulus shakes his head. “I’m not ready.”

“It’s been nearly ten weeks, Regulus.”

“Science like this takes time—it's incredibly precise, you can’t just rush—”

“My patience is wearing thin.” Tom isn’t smiling anymore. His eyes are the brown-black of beetle shells. “I am not a fool, Regulus. Don’t try to act as if you were starting from scratch. It was I, after all, who oversaw the preservation of your research in your absence.”

Regulus swallows. It’s true—the day after he agreed to continue his work, Tom led him down to the familiar lab, built off a back wing of the manor. All of his previous research—his notes, his equations, even some samples—was exactly as he’d left it. There was even additional work; tests and experiments run in his absence, notes from other doctors that Tom had sought out and worked with. Regulus didn’t ask what happened to those doctors, once they realized they couldn’t give Tom what he wanted.

So it’s true. He’s been making progress—rapid progress. And though Regulus hates himself for it, he can’t deny the old, familiar thrill each time he moves a step closer, can’t hold himself back entirely from the frenzy of learning, of knowing, of discovering. What he’s doing in this lab could alter medicine as they know it, forever. He could become one of the most important names in scientific history, spoken about years down the line in the same breath as Darwin or Newton or Pasteur.

But that’s not why he’s doing it. It’s not. Regulus knows now, in a way he couldn’t let himself know before, that this sort of advancement comes with a price. And it isn’t a price he’d be willing to pay any longer, if it weren’t for James.

James.

James, who once spent days roaming under a sky so big it could swallow you, and now spends his days confined to a single room. James, whose dog was shot right in front of him, who was torn from the land where his wife and child are buried. James, who still holds Regulus at night, who strokes his hair, even with seeds of resentment blooming in the backs of his eyes. James, who doesn’t deserve any of this. James, who shouldn’t be here at all.

“Perhaps,” Tom says, as if he can read Regulus’s mind, “The problem is simply that you lack...the proper motivation? I’m sure we could—”

“No.”

Regulus flattens his voice, his face. Uncurls his hands from the fists they’ve created.

Tom smiles.

“Well, then,” he steps toward the door, brows raised, “I suppose I should bring our volunteer back in.”

That night, after Regulus has watched Maria convulse in her restraints and writhe and sweat and succumb to the Fever—after he has timed how long it took for the illness to stop her heart, how long it took to bring her back, after he has taken blood samples and carefully stored them for testing, to try and figure out what went wrong—that night, he creeps along the ledge to James’s window. He grips the vines beneath his fingers, and imagines letting go—imagines allowing himself to fall backwards, to stare up at the sky as he waits for the bodies shuffling below to notice him, to converge and tear him apart the way they did Sirius. He could feel what his brother felt.

But James would still be stuck in that room. There’s a reason, Regulus reminds himself, that he’s doing this.

James is waiting for him at the window, the way he always does. He pulls Regulus inside, into his arms, breathing in deep.

“They let you out today?” Regulus mumbles, into his shirt. He can feel James nodding against the top of his head.

“Got to take a lovely stroll around the manor,” he says dryly, pulling back, “Really admire the décor.”

Regulus hates this. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated anything as much as he hates this.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he says. He says it every night. James nods. He nods every night. He lifts a hand, strokes a thumb gently over Regulus’s cheek, drinking in his features like a man dying of thirst. It makes Regulus want to shove a hand down his own throat and rip out his stomach.

“We, um.” James’s thumb is still rough, calloused from years spent on a farm. “We’ve started testing on—on people.”

James stills. He stares at Regulus for a moment, then steps back and scrubs both hands across his face.

“Fuck, Reg.”

Regulus watches him, cataloguing the disgust, the horror, the frustration. He deserves it. He deserves this.

“Her name was Maria,” he says.

James stares at him. The silence curls around the space between them, a snake twisted in the branches of a tree.

“I don’t understand what you want me to say,” James tells him, finally. Regulus sucks in a breath.

“I just—” he breaks off, searching for an answer. I just needed to tell someone. I needed to say it. I needed you to stop touching me like I—like I’m not—

“I thought you should know,” he says, finally, “You deserve to know that I’m—what I—”

“Reg.”

“You look at me like that and it’s—I just don’t want you to think that I’m—”

“Reg.”

“I killed someone today, James,” Regulus says. He needs James to understand this. He needs to know that James understands this. “I injected her with an underdeveloped vaccine, and I infected her with the Fever, and I knew it would kill her. And I timed—I timed it, and then I—”

“Stop.”

“I’m not a good person, James.”

Regulus knows that he’s babbling, now—that he’s hardly coherent, that his voice is cracking, that he’s barely managing to keep quiet. But he just needs—he needs James to understand. He needs James to understand. He needs James to know now, to understand now, because he can’t keep balancing on the edge of this knife, waiting for the day that James finally looks at him and sees him for who he is.

“I’m not a good person, and I just—you look at me and it’s—I don’t deserve—it isn’t fair—I’m the reason—”

“Reg.”

James is there again. Regulus is in his arms, again. Chin to shoulder. Face to neck. He killed someone today, and now James is holding him, and Regulus feels like his whole body is one big stain. One spreading, bloody thing.

He’s crying. He doesn’t deserve this, but he can’t let go.

“Shh,” James says, hugging him closer, holding him tighter. “I know. I know.”

“You don’t—you—”

“Reg,” James says, and his voice is weary, defeated. The voice of a man who’s spent weeks locked in a house full of people who look at him like he isn’t worth the dirt on the bottom of their shoes. The voice of a man who knows what it’s like for the world to kick you while you’re down.

“Reg,” he whispers, sounding more exhausted than anything, “You’re not the first bad person I’ve loved.”

*  *  *

The drinking starts one week after Maria.

It’s not fair, Regulus knows. Not fair to James, who’s barely allowed to leave that fucking prison of a room, who no doubt waits for him, every night, standing at the window like a ghost. Not fair that Regulus gets to run, gets to escape the tomb he’s created in that godforsaken lab and wander through the swampy heat of the San Antonio sun, down to Dolorosa street, where all the sinners gather to spend their money and forget that the devil lies in wait to judge them the moment they set foot outside the sporting district come sunrise.

Sirius used to come here. Used to sneak out, then come back sweat-plastered and glowing, invigorated. Regulus never asked him what he was doing, and he never shared. He always did his best to hide it, but it was inevitable that their parents would find out—and then came the fights, and the locks on the doors, and the sermons they were dragged to, the church where their mother would grip their shoulders and force them down into the pews, listening to the pastors sing about hell and God and sin. Sirius was debasing himself,  Walburga shrieked, muddying the Black family name by rolling in the muck with the pigs.

Orion would stand by, arms folded, a stoic picture of disapproval. And then, once their mother had shouted herself hoarse, he would take his sons into his office, shut the door, and explain to them how the world was meant to work. All men, he would say, fall into sin. The sporting district was one of life’s necessary evils, a place for men to purge their base instincts before returning to polite society. Better to fuck a whore than to tarnish the reputation of a respectable woman, after all.

Below the line of their father’s desk, Regulus watched his brother’s hands curl into fists on his knees. But Sirius smiled, and laughed, a mean, slimy echo of their father’s oily smirk. Orion told Sirius to keep a low profile, to ensure that he wasn’t dragging the family name into any sort of disrepute. Then he clapped his eldest son on the shoulder, a red-blooded American man.

Regulus did not get the same sort of speech about purging base instincts when he was discovered in the pantry, on his knees in front of the new kitchen boy. After that, Orion began to rethink his leniency towards sin, accompanying their mother when she dragged her sons to church—just in time for Tom to arrive in San Antonio with his death eaters, preaching about damnation and redemption and God’s chosen.

Regulus supposes that it was all only a matter of time, after that.

Now, though, nobody tries to stop him from leaving the house in the evenings. They must know where he’s going—Regulus knows they send Avery to follow him, trailing him through the streets. But they all know he won’t be running away again, not with James locked away in his proverbial tower. And apparently Regulus’s family has given up on all pretense of saving his immortal soul—after all, they’ve already made him a murderer in pursuit of their precious cure. So they let him run as far as he can—down to Dolorosa, into the Vaudeville saloon, all the way to the bottom of a bottle. James waits at the window, and Regulus runs until the sun rises. Then he scrapes himself off the barstool, and returns to that house, and continues his work.

Regulus has been going to the sporting district for one week, four days, when he realizes that Avery isn’t the only person following him.

He ignores it at first. Doesn’t think anything of the man with the scarred face and rust-tanned skin who seems to appear in every saloon that Regulus frequents, sitting at corner tables or the end of the bar and nursing glasses of cheap whiskey like it’s something worth savoring. He’s odd-looking, crooked mouth and crooked nose and eyes too far apart. Regulus wouldn’t pay him any attention, except for the fact that there’s a sharpness to his gaze that feels out of place in a bar where everyone else is doing their best to get glazey-eyed and far away, like he’s the only man in all the haze of cigar-smoke who isn’t trying to run. The only one who knows exactly where he is, and knows that it’s exactly where he wants to be.

Regulus starts to switch up saloons. He moves around, doesn’t stick to the same place. And still, every night without fail, the scarred man appears before Regulus can get halfway through a bottle, sharp-eyed and watching even on the nights when Regulus manages to shake Avery off.

Two weeks pass. Regulus watches five people die in the chair he used to strap himself into. On the nights he works up the nerve to go to James, all he can see is the blood on his own hands, the way it drags across his lover’s skin each time they touch. On the nights he runs away, the scarred man materializes across the bar, stalking him like a wolf.

And then, one night, the stool beside Regulus drags back. When he looks up, the scarred man is sitting down, shooting him a crooked smile, eyes just as sharp as always.

“Let me get your next drink,” he says.

Regulus stares at him, and doesn’t say anything. This isn’t his first drink of the night—his mind already feels foggy.

The man doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of response. He just catches the bartender’s eye, nodding towards Regulus’s empty glass.

“Daniel—otro, por favor.”

The bartender, an older gentleman with a salt-and-pepper beard, gives the scarred man an exasperated look.

“Es un problema, Remus. Uno de esos cabrones adinerados.” He shakes his head, reaching for the whiskey. “Encuentra a otro chico bonito.”

“Ah, Daniel,” the crooked smile grows, “Ya sabes cómo me encanta un cabrón rico.”

The bartender shakes his head, muttering something under his breath, and reaches over to refill Regulus’s glass. Regulus looks down at the amber liquid, blinking. Then he turns to the man beside him.

“No…habla español,” he says, awkwardly. The bartender snorts, moving away. The man beside him grins.

“I know,” he says, lifting his own glass to clink it against Regulus’s, “Name’s Remus. What’s yours?”

Regulus shakes his head, taking a sip of his drink. The whiskey burns going down. Everything in San Antonio burns going down.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.”

Regulus rolls his eyes. “Fuck off,” he mutters, hunching his shoulders and turning back to his glass. Whatever Remus is looking for, he’s not going to get it from Regulus.

Still, he can feel the other man’s eyes on him, just as sharp as ever. After a moment, Remus leans in, that crooked smile still stretched across his face.

“Mind if I call you Reggie, then?”

Regulus freezes, every muscle in his body suddenly tense. The only person who’s ever called him Reggie is—

“What the fuck d’you want?” he spits, nearly knocking over his glass as he jerks away. Remus reaches out, grabbing it before it can spill and slinging an arm around Regulus’s shoulders in the same motion. His wiry arms are stronger than they look; he holds Regulus with an iron grip, keeping him trapped at his stool.

“Careful, Regulus,” he murmurs, voice low, “You haven’t quite lost your shadow tonight.”

Adrenaline burns the liquor-haze from Regulus’s blood, setting his heart pounding. When he glances over his shoulder, sure enough, Avery is loitering in a back corner of the saloon, seemingly immersed in a card game and yet positioned so that he has a perfect line of sight on Regulus.

“I’m here to help you, Regulus,” Remus murmurs, still in that same low voice, “But we’ve got to play this right, okay? Don’t want your shadow getting the wrong idea.”

Regulus grips his drink so hard that his knuckles go white.

“Who are you?”

“I’m…a friend of your brother.”

All the air has caught fire inside his lungs. Regulus is going to suffocate.

“I know that you ran away, Regulus. And I know you didn’t want to come back. You don’t want to be working in that lab anymore, do you?”

Regulus forces himself to breathe. In, out.

“This is a trick,” he whispers, half to himself, “You’re—this is some kind of test, isn’t it? Or—”

“It’s not a trick,” Remus mutters, grip tightening on his shoulder, “Regulus, listen to me very carefully. This may be the only chance we get. I need you to trust me.”

“How do I—”

“The Colt,” Remus whispers, moving so that his lips brush against Regulus’s ear. If Avery’s watching, Regulus knows what this will look like. His stomach is a mess of nerves, every hair standing on end.

“You’re the one that scratched his name on that gun,” Remus continues, ignoring the disapproving look that the bartender shoots him. “You were angry that he wouldn’t let you use it. When he got mad at you, you told him that you were just making sure everyone would know it was his gun, since he was so opposed to sharing.”

“How do you—”

“I told you,” Remus huffs, “I’m a friend of your brother’s. Now, I need you trust me. Can you do that?”

Regulus swallows. His mind still feels foggy from the whiskey, but he can’t think—he doesn’t know how anyone could know that story. Not unless Sirius told them himself. And if Remus really was a friend of his brother’s…maybe he knows something. Maybe he knows why Sirius kept sneaking out, knows what he was planning, how he meant to run away…

“Yes,” Regulus whispers. Remus nods.

“I’m gonna help you up,” he murmurs, moving his arm from Regulus’s shoulders to his waist, “Stumble a little, like you’re drunk—but not too drunk. I don’t want your bodyguard swooping in to save the day.”

Regulus nods, leaning against Remus as he stands, swaying unsteadily. Like a naïve boy, letting a man pick him up in a bar in the one goddamn place in the world where anything goes. The bartender shakes his head as Remus guides Regulus towards the doors, dragging him out into the cool night air.

“Come on,” he whispers, “Follow me.”

Remus guides them through the sporting district like he’s got a map of the streets painted on the back of his hand, ducking down alleys and twisting through streets, a route so tangled that within five minutes Regulus has no idea where they are. He follows blindly, letting Remus lead him, wondering if he’s making the biggest mistake of his life—if he’s going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere, or beaten bloody and crawling back to his parents’ doorstep.

But then Remus pauses, tugging him back against a grimy brick wall, panting slightly.

“I think we’ve lost him,” he whispers, ducking his head around the corner to check. Regulus nods, numbly, heart pounding. Remus shoots him a grin, all teeth, and then mutters,

“C’mon, then.”

Remus takes his hand, and pulls him around another corner, and guides them up the front steps of a two-story building. He knocks on the door, then steps back, waiting. It only takes a moment for it to swing open.

The woman in front of them is clad in a severe dress, high-necked and broad-shouldered, cinched tightly at the waist. Her lips and cheeks are tinted with rouge, sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

“Lupin,” she says, then raises a brow at Regulus. “Who’s your friend?”

“Can we just get the usual room, Ms. Porter?”

The woman sighs, shaking her head. “S’pose I don’t want to know,” she mutters, extending a palm. Remus smiles, digging into his pocket and pulling out a handful of money, which he presses into the woman’s palm. She curls her fingers around his hand as he does, holding him in place for a moment.

“You tell him that I’m gonna start raising the rent if he intends to stay much longer. Thought I was supposed to have both of you out of my hair three months ago.”

“Plans change, Fannie,” Remus shrugs, still smiling, “But trust me—he’ll be moving on soon. And until then, of course, he’ll be happy to compensate you fairly for your troubles.”

The woman sniffs, eyeing Remus shrewdly.

“And you,” she says, “I want you to take another look at some of my girls. Della’s been having some troubles, and that doctor in town is a brute who charges an arm and a leg just for his discretion.”

“Tell Della I can see her tomorrow,” Remus calls over his shoulder, dragging Regulus past the threshold. He grins, winking back at the woman, “I’m afraid I’ll have my hands full tonight.”

With that, he pulls Regulus towards a staircase, guiding him to the upper floor of the house. From below, Regulus can hear the sounds of squealing laughter and piano music, the clinking of glasses. As they move upstairs, walking down a dimly lit hallway, the sounds coming from behind the closed doors they pass make it very clear just what sort of establishment Remus has brought him to.

“I…” Regulus falters, overwhelmed by the muffled moaning and high-pitched gasps that leak from the rooms they pass, “Where are we…”

“Shh,” Remus hisses, pulling him all the way to the very end of the hall, stopping in front of the last door on the left. “Just trust me.”

He knocks on this door, too—a pattern, three short raps, then two long. Regulus waits, confused and tipsy and on edge, shifting back and forth as his heart pounds in his chest.

Then the door swings open, and Regulus looks up and finds himself staring at a ghost.

He blinks.

He blinks again.

I’m dead, he thinks, Oh god, I’m dead, and James is never getting out.

Then the ghost drags him forward, and Regulus trips, and his brother is pulling him into a hug so tight that it crushes all the breath from his lungs.

“Reg,” he half-laughs, half-sobs, “Oh my god, Reggie!”

“Sirius?”

Regulus is clinging to him, clinging so tight that he thinks he might break his fingers, and Sirius is flesh and blood and warm and whole and not in pieces—he was in pieces—

“You—you—you’re dead, you’re dead, I saw—”

“Reggie—Reg, it’s—”

“No, you—you died, you’re dead, you’re dead—”

“Reg!”

Sirius grabs his face, hands firm against his jaw, fingers curling around the back of his neck. Regulus can’t breathe—he’s gasping, chest heaving, sucking in shallow breaths.

“Reg, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me, I’m okay—just calm down, just breathe, come on—”

“Fuck!”

Regulus pushes, as hard as he can, and watches Sirius stumble back. And then—he’s hitting him, as hard as he can, fists colliding with his arms, his shoulders, his chest—any part of his brother that he can reach.

“You died! You died, you bastard—you fucking—died—”

“Whoa, hey, hey!”

Someone’s grabbing his arms—Remus, fucking Remus, and Regulus is going to kill him—going to kill both of them—

“It’s okay—Remus, it’s okay, let him go—”

“No me dijiste que tu hermano está bien pinche loco!”

Sirius laughs, breathlessly.

“Está bien, mi amor—I’ve got it.”

Remus huffs, but then his arms are gone—Regulus stumbles forward, and Sirius is there, sweeping him into a hug so tight he can hardly move.

“Let me—fucking—go—”

“Reggie. Hey. Hey, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, Reg—I’m so sorry.”

Regulus doesn’t know why he’s crying. He doesn’t know why his body won’t listen to him—why he’s trying to fight, but all he can do it slump against his brother’s chest, tears soaking the material of his shirt as he sobs. Sirius hugs him tight, leaning his head against the top of Regulus’s.

“I’m sorry, Reggie,” he murmurs, “I’m so sorry.”

Regulus feels like a little kid. Like he’s just a kid, and it was all a nightmare, and his brother is here now.

His brother is here.

“You—” he sniffs, wiping his snotty nose against his brother’s shirt, “You owe me a fucking explanation, you prick.”

Sirius laughs, and squeezes him tighter.

“I know.”

“You died,” Regulus repeats, pulling back to scrub at the tears on his cheeks with one fist. “I saw…I watched it happen, Sirius. They gave me your gun, and the blood was still…”

Sirius grimaces, lifting one hand to tug through his hair, a familiar gesture. Behind him, Remus has moved to lean against the wall, watching Regulus with a wary look on his face.

“It was faked, Reg.”

“Faked.” Regulus’s voice is flat, disbelieving. “Well it was pretty fucking convincing, Sirius.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just—I needed them to believe it was real. It was the only way they wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Regulus shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. He can feel a headache coming on, a slow pounding against his temples growing more and more insistent.

“Explain,” he orders, voice rough.

And Sirius does.

Sirius explains how, after the groundbreaking discovery of his immunity to the Fever, he sought out someone who could help him. He explains how he met Dr. Remus Lupin after asking around at the brothels—he charged a fair price, Miss Porter told him, not an extortionist like some of the others that she’d hired to treat her girls.

So Sirius went to Lupin. Found him working in a local coroner’s office. Spent some time figuring out whether he was trustworthy, and then—once Sirius was certain he was—explained why he needed Lupin’s help.

Regulus listens, thinking about all those nights that Sirius snuck out. About Tom’s growing paranoia, his certainty that Sirius was out there selling the secrets wrapped up in his blood.

In the end, Tom was right. The entire time that Regulus spent trying to find a cure—Sirius was trying, too. Every argument they had, every time Regulus accused him of being selfish, of failing to think of the greater good…It wasn’t that Sirius didn’t care.

He just knew better than to let such power fall into their parents’ hands.

Into Tom’s hands.

Regulus has never felt like such a fool.

“You never told me,” Regulus mumbles, sitting down heavily on the bed that lies against one wall of the room. He feels dizzy, like the floor is moving beneath his feet. Sirius sits beside him, reaching out to take his hand.

“I couldn’t…trust you, Reggie. You were so…wrapped up in it. Remus and I—we didn’t have a lab, didn’t have all the latest equipment that mother and father could buy. And you just—you wanted it fast. You were so focused on cracking the code, you didn’t…”

He trails off, helplessly, staring at Regulus with wide, beseeching eyes. Regulus knows that it’s the truth—he does. He understands why his brother couldn’t trust him.

That doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“You were planning to leave, the whole time.”

Sirius swallows, nods.

“Yes.”

“But you waited.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sirius glances at Remus, once, who’s still leaning against the wall. Then he turns back to Regulus, squeezing his hand.

“I thought I could change your mind.”

Regulus shuts his eyes.

“Your…death,” he grits out, “Was that…was that meant to change my mind?”

“No,” Sirius responds, immediately, “No, Reg, that wasn’t—I swear, I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t. It was just…” he blows out a breath, tugs a hand through his hair. “Tom was too suspicious. I knew he wouldn’t just…let me leave. And I couldn’t have them looking for me once I was gone. I needed…I needed all of you to believe that I was dead.”

“Mission accomplished,” Regulus mutters, folding his arms over his chest. Sirius winces like a kicked dog.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again.

“How did you do it?”

Sirius glances at Remus, hesitating. The other man raises a brow, inclining his head slightly as if to say go ahead.

“Remus stole a body,” Sirius says, voice dropping low, “From the morgue. One similar enough to be…mistaken for me. Once the Fevered were through with it. A little pig’s blood, and they thought it was fresh meat.”

The headache is getting worse. Regulus presses the heels of his hands against his temples, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he grits out, “They would’ve attacked you, too.”

“Not if they can’t smell us.”

Regulus blinks. Sits up.

“…what?”

“Remus figured it out,” Sirius says, nodding towards Lupin, “S’why they don’t attack each other. They only want fresh meat—won’t go after anything that doesn’t smell alive.”

Regulus nods, slowly. That…makes sense. He’d been so focused on finding a cure, something to eradicate the Fever or neutralize it entirely, that he’d never stopped to think about what sorts of measures might render the Fevered harmless in lieu of stopping the disease itself.

“So you…how did you…?”

“Formaldehyde,” Remus says, stepping forward from the wall. He leans against the bedpost nearest to Sirius, explaining, “It’s got a strong enough scent to hide behind—at least, for a few minutes. Once you start sweating, breathing hard…well. It’s not perfect. But it was enough to sneak past them, especially when they were distracted.”

Regulus stares straight ahead, studying the peeling wallpaper, trying to process. Sirius isn’t dead. Sirius was never dead. Sirius was never in any real danger. The body they scraped off the ground in pieces wasn’t even his.

“You left the gun on purpose,” he says, flatly.

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet, for a bit. Regulus thinks about the fact that his brother didn’t trust him. The fact that Sirius never told him any of this.

Then he thinks about everything he did to make Sirius distrust him in the first place.

Finally, Regulus drops his hands to his knees, trying to ignore the headache that continues to press like fists behind his skull.

“Why are you still here?” he asks. Sirius blinks, as if he’s thrown by the question.

“Because…you’re here,” he says, as though it’s obvious. Regulus shakes his head.

“I don’t understand.”

“I—” Sirius breaks off, taking a breath just to blow it back out. He sighs, heavily, and then says,

“Remus and I were going to leave. That was the plan—Remus knows some people, people with equipment we can use, people we can trust. We were supposed to leave, to go meet them, but then…”

“I ran away,” Regulus breathes, as it begins to dawn on him.

Sirius nods.

“You ran away.”

“Then…you…?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Reggie,” Sirius murmurs, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “This entire goddamn year.” He laughs, wearily, shaking his head. “You’re a lot better at hiding than I gave you credit for.”

“I was in Montana,” Regulus mumbles, dazed.

“Montana?” Sirius frowns, muttering half to himself, “Thought you’d go east…”

Regulus shakes his head. “You told me to stay away from the cities.”

A strange look flits over his brother’s face, a mix of guilt and pride. He swallows, hard, before saying,

“Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”

Regulus nods back. He doesn’t know where the lump in his throat has come from.

“Right, well,” Sirius clears his throat, wiping the back of one hand across his eyes, “I’ve been looking, following any lead I could get. Remus—he’s been here, holding down the fort. Keeping an eye on Tom, as much as he could. When he found out they’d caught you, brought you back…he sent word to me. I came as fast as I could, but then we had to figure out how we were going to contact you…” Sirius laughs, a little ruefully, shaking his head. “Any other time I’d yell at you for picking up a drinking problem, Reg, but…well. Guess it worked out in our favor.”

“I don’t have a drinking problem,” Regulus mutters, kicking at the bed post with one foot. Sirius rolls his eyes.

“Well, you’re sure trying hard to develop one.” He knocks his shoulder into Regulus’s, smiling. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter—what matters is that you’re here. We’ve got horses stabled a few blocks south; if we leave now, we should be able to make it out of the city before dawn. Our contacts are waiting at—”

“What?” Regulus jerks away, shaking his head. “No, Sirius, I—I can’t leave.”

His brother’s face falls, immediately, disappointment and weary resignment. Behind Sirius, Remus has gone stoney, glaring at Regulus like he can’t believe what he’s just said.

“Reg, I…” Sirius swallows, reaching out to grab his shoulder, “When you ran away, I thought…you’re not still…”

“No—no, you don’t understand, it’s not—”

Regulus breaks off, swallowing hard. He glances between his brother and Remus, feeling suddenly trapped, like one of the frogs they used to pin down in medical school. There’s a sharp-edged scalpel, sliding cleanly down his stomach, peeling back layers of skin and fat to reveal everything hidden inside.

“I met someone,” he says, forcing the words out, “In Montana. Someone who saved my life.”

Sirius is frowning, now, clearly confused. Remus still looks angry, though the glare isn’t quite as intense as before.

Regulus turns away from both of them, staring down at his own hands as he forces himself to speak.

“It’s why I was there. I was hiding with…him. With James. He—he didn’t know who I was. Didn’t know where I came from. But he let me stay anyway, because—because he’s a good man, and—”

Fuck. Regulus lifts a hand, scrubbing fiercely at his eyes, cursing the tears that threaten to choke him. Sirius and Remus don’t say anything—just wait, listening, for him to finish.

“And when I thought I’d been found, I ran away. I ran and left him behind, and they—they got him. They still have him. They’re holding him prisoner, Sirius, and if I don’t go back—if I don’t do what they want—”

“Okay—hey, Reg, it’s okay—”

Regulus presses a fist to his mouth, folding forward into his brother’s arm. Sirius hugs him, rubbing a hand soothingly over his back, and Regulus tries to stop himself from shaking as he thinks of James.

James, who he ran from.

James, who he’s still running from.

James, who deserves someone better.

“Okay,” Sirius says, firmly, pulling back just enough to grab Regulus’s face, pressing their foreheads together. “Reggie, listen. Listen to me.”

“I have to, Sirius—I have to do what they say, I can’t let them—”

“Hey! Hey,” Sirius wraps one hand around the back of his neck, squeezing tight, “We’re not gonna leave him, Reg, okay?”

“Sirius,” Remus murmurs, from somewhere behind him.

“We won’t leave him,” Sirius repeats, though Regulus isn’t sure whether it’s for his benefit or for Lupin. Still, Remus falls silent, and Sirius takes a deep breath.

“Here’s what we’ll do, Reg,” he says, slowly, like he’s working out the words as he says them. “First, you’re gonna tell me exactly where they’re keeping him…”

*  *  *

Regulus stands at the window, watching the sun set. Soon, August will end, and the stifling summer heat will begin its slow fade into autumn. Of course, that doesn’t mean all that much in San Antonio—the sun beats relentlessly here, even into late October. Still, as Regulus watches the sun sink below the horizon, he knows the night is already starting to bring the cool promise of winter’s breath. No season lasts forever. Not even in Texas.

Avery leered at him when he decided to stay in tonight, retiring to his room after another dinner seated across from parents who can barely stand to look at him. But Avery’s been leering ever since this morning, when Regulus stumbled out of the brothel with Remus’s arm around his waist, shirt half-unbuttoned, hair mussed. It didn’t take much effort to act ashamed, allowing Avery to drag him back to the manor like a dog with its tail between its legs. It’s one thing to follow a man out of a sporting district saloon at night with three glasses of whiskey in his belly. It’s another to follow him out of a brothel in the light of day, to look around at the sneering faces beneath the harsh sunlight that tell him exactly what they think he’s been doing, and exactly what they think of him for it, even without any words.

“Guess loyalty has never been your strong suit, eh?” Avery muttered, as he shoved Regulus up the manor steps. Regulus didn’t say anything, though something burned in his chest, acidic.

By the time he made it to the lab, Tom had another volunteer waiting.

The sun slides below the horizon.

Regulus lights a cigarette, listening for the familiar faint groans, the quiet sound of shuffling feet. He chain-smokes, drinking in ash like whiskey, knowing that James must be waiting, at the window, as he does every night. He wonders if the other man is looking, if he’s watching the shadowy movement of the bodies below. Wonders if he notices two figures different from the rest, darting with sure, quick movements, in and out of the thin moonlight.

Regulus isn’t sure how much time passes.

He doesn’t start moving until he hears screams.

Once it begins, it’s quick. The problem, see, with using the Fevered like some sort of twisted guard dogs, is that there’s no one left with a functioning brain to watch the doors. Nobody left to actually recognize friend from foe, dead from undead. No one to stop Sirius and Remus, doused in the smell of formaldehyde, from picking the unwatched locks, from letting the doors to the manor swing open.

The Fevered wander, aimless. Drawn to the scent of fresh meat like moths to a flame.

Regulus hears gunshots, footsteps, shouting. It’s not long before he hears Avery yelling, called away to the slaughterhouse that now lies downstairs, all hands on deck as they try to secure the doors and put down the Fevered and protect God’s chosen from the wrath of the damned.

Now, Regulus thinks, the moment he hears Avery’s footsteps pounding downstairs, growing fainter and fainter, until there’s nothing but silence in the hallway outside. He draws out the lockpicks that Remus gave him, setting to work on the door. It takes a few tries—he tries to remember exactly what Remus showed him, exactly how to move his trembling hands. By the time he hears the telltale click, the screaming downstairs has only grown louder.

They don’t have much time.

Regulus sucks in a breath, lunging towards the door to Sirius’s old room.

“James?!” he calls out desperately, frantically. There’s the sound of footsteps—then, voice muffled from behind the door,

“Reg?!”

Regulus half-laughs, half-sobs, crouching in front of the door to begin work on the lock immediately.

“I’m going to get you out,” he croaks, doing his best to keep his hands steady, “Just—just hang on—”

“Reg? What’s going on?! I heard shouting—what—”

The door swings open, and Regulus throws himself into James’s arms with enough force that he nearly knocks both of them over. James sways back a step, bracing himself, gripping Regulus by the shoulders.

“Reg—what—?”

“We’re leaving,” Regulus gasps, breathlessly, “We’re getting out, James, right now.”

“What?! How—”

“No time—no time, come on—”

Regulus tears the bottle of formaldehyde out of his pocket, another gift from Remus. He opens it slowly, careful not to spill a single drop.

“Come here, come here…”

James wrinkles his nose in disgust, staring down at the bottle.

“What is that?! It smells—”

“I know,” Regulus chants, as he begins to dab the clear liquid on James’s throat, his wrists, the pulse points of his neck. James winces, eyes watering, hissing,

“It stings—”

“I know, I’m sorry, just trust me, I need you to trust me….”

Regulus feels hysterical, half-mad. This is insane. What they’re doing is insane. There’s no way this plan will work—it’s half-baked, rushed, thrown together in a single sleepless night, no time to rest—

“Hey.”

James has his hand. James is holding Regulus’s free hand in both of his, an anchor, a warm, grounding weight.

“I trust you, Reg,” he says.

Regulus swallows. Breathes. Nods.

“Okay,” he tips the bottle, begins to dab formaldehyde on his own skin, “Okay. We’re getting out, James. I’m getting you out.”

The screams grow louder once they creep downstairs. The front door to the manor is open wide, bodies crowding into the foyer, and on the ground—

“Jesus,” James gasps, sharp and sudden.

Avery is a bloody mess, a torn-up pulp of bone and meat, half-screaming, half-sobbing, hands twitching uselessly as the Fevered dig hungry hands into the cavern of his ribcage, the ropes of his intestines.

“Come on,” Regulus hisses, tugging on James’s hand, “We’ve go to go, James, we’ve go to—”

They go. Regulus guides them down the twisting hallways of the manor, running towards the lab. It’s in a back wing of the manor, with an exit on the opposite side of the doors that Remus and Sirius opened. The yard should be mostly clear by now, and if they can just make it to the gate—

“In here,” Regulus gasps, shoving open the familiar door. They run past caged, squealing rats, past vials and microscopes, past pages of notes, past that godforsaken chair, and the door is right there, and—

“Stop!”

Regulus turns.

Tom is there.

Tom is there, with an arm wrapped around James’s throat. Tom is there, with a syringe in his other hand, needle positioned just above the skin of James’s neck.

“I thought you might come this way,” he says.

Regulus sags back against a table, like all the exhaustion from a night without sleep has chosen this moment to finally catch up with him. He braces himself to stay standing, arms scattering neat pages of notes.

“Let him go.”

Tom smiles.

“I can’t do that, Regulus.”

“We don’t have time for this, Tom—the Fevered are here, your little experiment’s backfired, if we don’t get out now—”

“The Fevered will be rounded up soon. It’s unfortunate that they made it inside the manor, but we’ve prepared for this possibility.”

Regulus scoffs, though his eyes remain locked on the needle at James’s neck.

“Avery didn’t seem very prepared when we saw him on our way out.”

Tom shrugs, nonchalant.

“Well, of course, to lure an animal into a trap you need bait.”

Regulus feels sick. He thinks of Avery, twitching on the ground, surrounded by Fevered…

“You can go ahead and run, Regulus,” Tom tells him, smile stretching, teeth bared. “But we both know what’ll happen if I stick this needle in his neck.”

Regulus curls one hand into a fist. He looks away from the needle, into earth-turned eyes.

“You do that, Tom,” Regulus says, flicking open the lighter in his fist, “And I will burn all of this to the ground.”

The flame hovers like a beacon over months’-worth of notes, of research. Dry paper, Texas heat. All it would take is one flick of his wrist.

“You wouldn’t,” Tom says.

He’s still smiling, but it’s no longer the eel-slip oil-slick of a man who’s just called checkmate. Instead, it’s a brittle thing, a branch about to snap. In his pupils, Regulus can see the glowing dance of the flame.

“I will,” he says, white-knuckled fist around the lighter.

“You think I don’t know you, Regulus?” Tom sneers, tightening the arm around James’s neck. “You want me to believe that you would destroy months of research, world-altering scientific progress? That you would throw away the chance to make a name for yourself, the one thing you’ve always wanted? That you would give the opportunity to change the entire world?”

Regulus breathes in, out. There’s something else flickering there in Tom’s eyes, along with the flame.

Fear.

“I think,” Regulus says, hands steady, voice cold, “That you don’t know a single goddamn thing about what I would do.”

He drops the lighter.

An entire year’s worth of research goes up in flames.

“NO!”

Tom lunges forward, instinctively—in the same moment, James twists, shoving him away. The syringe shatters on the ground, leaving nothing but broken glass and a spreading stain.

“NO!” Tom roars, rushing towards the burning notes, wrestling out of his jacket to try and smother the flame. But the fire’s already crept along the table, reaching curious fingers towards the alcohol used for sterilization, hungry and searching and searing heat.

“James!” Regulus shouts, breathing in smoke for the second time that night. And James is there, crashing into him, hands on shoulders, pushing him towards the door—

“Go, go, go!”

They run.

They run, and they leave the manor behind. They run, and they leave Tom’s furious howls, and the acrid scent of fire and smoke. They run, and they leave the Fevered, and the blood, and the stench of Avery’s dying breaths.

They run, and they keep on running.