SHE'S ALL THAT ➭ SIRIUS BLACK ❨2❩ ✔︎

ACT FIVE, SCENE TWENTY SIX

FONTAINE MANOR

When Sage arrived home that evening, well past midnight, really, Sirius was waiting for her.

His first reaction was to hug her, pulling her into a bone-crushing embrace that allowed her to bawl into his chest without being seen.

"He's back. Voldemort's back. I felt it. I know it in my soul." She whimpered, so horribly vulnerable. "I'm going to die."

Sirius was quick to comfort her. "No, you're not going to die, baby. You're going to live a long and happy life, alright? We're going to have kids of our own. Harry'll have little brothers and sisters. You're going to live to be two hundred." He said lowly in her ear, breathy words rustling her hair.

She shoved away from him. "You don't get it. You don't feel this—this thing that I'll have on my body for the rest of my life." Yanking up the sleeve of her jumper, she gestured wildly to the Dark Mark. "Everything I did during the war was for nothing. The people I killed, the information I gathered, every secret I've had to keep. It means nothing, because he's back and we're all in danger again."

"How many people? How many did you kill?" He asked, not quite scared, just genuinely curious.

Sage looked at him with a strange, protective look in her eyes. "I stopped counting after twenty." She admitted honestly.

He just sighed and pulled her back in, one hand resting on the back of her head. "I love you, alright? I'll do whatever I can to keep you and Harry safe. I've got you. I'm not leaving you again." He promised.

☾

That night, after they'd gone to bed, she woke up screaming for the first time in months.

He'd opened his eyes to find her gouging at the Dark Mark on her arm, clawing at it with her fingernails so deeply that she'd drawn blood. The pain, it seemed, had gotten to her even as she slept, and in a half-awake state, she'd tried to scrape the snake off of her skin.

When he'd shaken her to a full state of consciousness, she seemed appalled at what she'd done, so shocked by the blood that soaked into the bedsheets that she'd locked herself in the bathroom for the rest of the night, too ashamed to ask for help with the healing.

It appeared that her cycle of shutting people out, especially those she loved most, had started all over again.

aw!