O Beija-Flor - Regulus Black (Complete)

LVII -

I HAVE DISAPPEARED FOR A WHILE, I KNOW. I'M SORRY. MY MENTAL HEALTH TOOK A VERY BIG DECLINE AND I WAS IN A VERY DEEP DEPRESSION FOR A WHILE, SO MY MEDS HAD TO BE CHANGED AND I DON'T REMEMBER MUCH. I TRIED TO KEEP ANSWERING COMMENTS AND KEEP MYSELF AWAKE, BUT IT WAS HARD TO AS MUCH AS MOVE IN BED, LET ALONE WRITE ANYTHING THAT WAS NOT SIMILAR TO MY OWN HEAD, SO I BELIEVE THIS CHAPTER WILL SHOW THAT.

DO BE AWARE OF THE LAST PART OF THE CHAPTER, IT'S NOT EXPLICIT, BUT IT WAS SOMEWHAT DARKER THAN I HAD IMAGINED DOING WHEN I STARTED WRITING THIS CHAPTER.

AS AN APOLOGY, THIS CHAPTER HAS MORE THAN 7000 WORDS.

Sirius had his first panic attack at thirteen as he talked to Professor McGonagall and he thought he was going to die and, after that, they attacked him randomly for the next four years until they turned constant in prison.

Sirius empathised with Cecilia a lot more than he had expected when Arthur asked him if it would be possible for Cecilia to stay with them once she got to England, because otherwise they would go back to the Burrow and they would figure something out. He had accepted it without hesitation; he heard about what had happened.

When she had gotten there, he hadn't thought that they would get along too well. He was as kind and welcoming as he could be to the lost girl with wide eyes and a lot of anger inside and she had clung to him quickly. He had understood her a lot better than he thought. He didn't know how it was the pain of losing a father, – his had been a horrible person and, though he was close to Mister Potter, he had never had another fatherly figure in his life – but he understood loss and he understood trauma.

Catching her alone in the kitchen in the middle of the night, writing and re-writing letters that he knew she never sent, seeing her running out the door as soon as the permission was given and chuckling when he saw Remus running behind her, already struggling; those moments made him remember that she wasn't a normal girl. Cecilia wasn't Ginny or Hermione, who had the support they needed if they needed (and with the war coming, they will need it), she was like he had felt when he was younger: alone.

He knew that he wasn't alone, logically.

He had Remus loving and caring for him; he had James by his side even when he was terribly wrong, trying his best to help him through so much because he knew a lot more than the others about where he came from and, once upon a time, he had Peter ready to talk through hours of the middle of the night. But, someday and somehow everything had gone wrong and Sirius ended up living through his worst nightmare.

Sirius always hated being alone.

But that was what happened to him.

He would never forget running to the Potter's house at full speed only to find his best friend – no, his brother's body at the front door made him fall to the ground, trying not to throw up as his stomach dropped. He didn't even have time to close his eyes. But Harry was crying and he needed to move fast. The nursery's door had been blown of the hinges and Lily's body was at the foot of the crib, completely still.

But Harry was crying and he needed to move fast.

Sirius threw up outside as soon as Hagrid took the baby away from him.

He would never forget the ire and fury that he felt when he saw the small rat on the shoulder of a young boy in the front picture of the newspaper. There was a day that Peter had been his confidant and the only one that he dared talk, because showing his emotions had always been so hard for him. Peter had been the one to tell him that he should talk to Remus. And to know that he betrayed all of them so coldly was paralysing. He stood 12 years alone in a cell, he had time to think – Peter had been the one to knock at the door, otherwise James wouldn't have opened it.