꧁ʙᴏʀɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴜʀᴘʟᴇ꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 100

꧁✧✧✧꧂

𝕽egulus squints an eye open, slowly but surely adjusting to the dark.

He struggles to remember exactly when he nodded off, though he's hardly surprised. The combination of being thoroughly spent from their steamy act of love and Romie's toasty warmth and lulling aroma blanketing him from all angles was a coma waiting to happen. From the pitch black consumed by a palpable stillness, not a creature stirring, not even a little rat, Regulus estimates its the dead of night, dinner and the winding down hours in between skipped.

He briefly contemplates waking Romie to get something down her, but she might encourage, stop at nothing for him to do the same, which he's unsure he'd be able to do right now. The set aside crusts of her ritual morning toast would be a push. He couldn't eat. Not when his older brother believes he's the antithesis of quite nice. Bad. He believes he's bad, superbly fitting in to their family made up of stuck-up bigots.

Swallowing roughly, he carefully begins to push himself up, hand flattening between the blades of Romie's shoulders to minimise the disturbing movement of peeling her off his chest. Onto her back, in the space next to him, he rests her, removing his hand at the last second. Another second, or ten or thirty, he hangs fire, simply soaking in her sleeping figure. Unruly hair fanned over the pillow and swollen lips lightly parted to let out little snores, it's almost inconceivable to think of her savagery hours ago.

She looks so soft, so innocent like this. Yet her measures taken couldn't be further from that. For him. She defied, braved her friends and family, went against all that she's ever known, for him. Because her love for him outshines the hardship, the complexity, the unknown of what's to come. She loves him and he'll never know anything greater. Now that's superiority.

Not the blood that it feels like he's drowning in, corrupted from top to bottom, thick to thin, for the sake of corporal purity. It's like guzzling the gloopy, silvery blood belonging to a unicorn, being born to the Black family. Destined to be a star, prone to burning out. Trapped in the sky with no way out, the price to pay for such a glowing grandeur.

Sirius might've have physically escaped, but it's too ingrained, too entrenched in his soul, the dooming effects of this half life, cursed life. Regulus had thought Sirius somehow got lucky, cheated his way out. He thought wrong. The unsparing eyes that looked at him like they haven't known him a day in his life, the jarring voice that bellowed their opprobrium, had Black written all over. His principles may be vastly conflicting, yet his conduct is much of a muchness.

For as exceedingly much as Regulus is glad, gets a spiteful kick out of the fact that deep down Sirius is not the pick of the litter that he has for so long pretended he is, he can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for him. So much effort for so little change, a brutal kick to the teeth if there ever was one.

Regulus subconsciously runs his tongue over his own, as stilly as possible inching himself to the dipping edge of his side and stooping down, fishing fingers grasping a pair of warm pyjama pants from the trunk partially packed. He tugs them over his legs, biting his lip at how they cut off a noticeable inch or two above his ankles. They're not his. He doesn't bother going through the hassle of swapping them for a pair of his own, deciding since he's already half way, he may as well do the whole shebang.