FALLEN FROM GRACE ⍋ Regulus & Sirius Black

- Chapter 78 -

PRESERVE, AWAKEN, REFRESH,
———

My feet scuffed around the empty and echoing halls, aimlessly.

I felt almost in a daze.

I would be, if it wasn't for how my thoughts had repeatedly electrocuted me back into my body. Static shocks travelling through the woven threads of my nervous system, reminded me that I was still walking and breathing; despite how both staggered. I clung onto the feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a child with a blankie, when they did. Unable to ignore how it felt on my skin, rough and a reminder of mortality in all things loved and the permanence of loss.

Now that the feeling had been identified as freezing, I grappled at myself for any sign of warmth. I hoped it existed within the mangled parts of me that I clung onto, similarly to a blankie reaching its final days.

I searched for any comfort at all. Anything that could feed a fire within my chest and not starve it of oxygen.

But it was no use.

It was a feeling so cold it burnt every part of me that my mind could think to touch - even if my own hands couldn't. It's black and blue fingerprints leaving frozen indentations on the heat of my pink flesh. The frosted grooves of griefs touch created a sizzling sound that whispered throughout my body, reminiscent of a hum that inspired the imagery of something sweeter - if it wasn't for the fact I knew it was my own body being branded by the iron of sadness' sinister design, I may have fooled myself into believing the ache was hunger and soon I'd be satisfied. But instead I knew the scent of burning wasn't something my teeth could tear into and my tongue would not be tasting something other than the nickel of my own blood anytime soon.

My lungs felt as if they were pumped uncomfortably full with the January air. A sharp pain that reminded me I could be full of something I can't grasp at.

I've never felt so empty, that it's felt too heavy to carry.

Somethings missing.

There's something important that's so hauntingly misplaced inside me that I need to find. So important that in its absence, the cold burn of my insides is urgently collecting all that isn't, with ravenous and greedy hands.

My shuffling feet moved from the stone of the halls to the sinking of soggy grass and mud. The speckled rain would glisten upon the blades of green if there were sun in the sky, but the greyness above me robbed the rain of happy beauty. Everything just felt a bit too gloomy.

I found myself walking closer and closer, instinctively, towards the black lake. Somewhere in happier months, sunnier months, I gravitated towards. The smell of lake algae and dirt in the air and the sound of tapping raindrops upon the body of water, made my own lower to the ground; grounded.

A large sigh escaped my lips, my fingers finding their way around the cold and damp pebbles around me on the lake side, clutching at them with a strained grip.

"Ah!" A frustrated groan like scream attempted to break through my voice, but something held me back from screaming at full capacity.

None of this felt fair!

None of this!

A string of words fell from my mouth like a violent spew of last nights meal, just as my hands tightened around the pebbles and launched them into the lake.

The slapping sounds and disappointment of them immediately sinking without much of a dramatic splash, only fuelled the ache.

Barely being able to comprehend my next movements I aggressively scrambled from the floor in the same way I had gathered the pebbles with my strained, pink fingers. I launched more into the lake with such a force, I felt my muscles quiver at the aftermath. But I couldn't stop, as I inched closer and closer to the water edge with an animalistic rage and sadness.

The shock of my tights becoming soaked up to my ankles, brought me back into a less rageful body. I had stepped too close, stumbled too far and submerged my shoes into the lake. The freezing cold water of January sharply stung the skin under my thin layered tights.

I stared down at the muggy water pooling around black leather and fabric.  I could feel my skin prickle from the temperature. I could feel my bones slowly be restricted by how tightly my muscles shrunk around them. I could feel the squelch of the water struggling to find its way through the fabric of my tights and between my toes.

As if suddenly boiling, my jumper felt sweaty and itchy and overly claustrophobic. Creating bunches of my shirt beneath it uncomfortably and creased.

My tie felt as if it were tightening, the flash of green around my neck like a real snake in my peripheral vision.

The same fingers that threw the pebbles, manically started to rip off the constricting fabric around my arms and neck. Disregarding them with disgust behind me...

Before I submerged myself. Feeling the sting of the January water, dark and weighted, envelope every part of me.

Every follicle on my skin screamed at the shock of cold, making me feel parts of myself I haven't in months. Every centimetre of my goosebumped flesh woke up after weeks upon weeks of numbness. After weeks of trying to force myself to feel something, only successfully feeling a handful of feelings and parts of myself ... I could feel it all, the desperation in my body to stay alive. Interpreting the sting of discomfort as pain.

I came up to the surface quickly with a strong and equally as sharp as the water, gasp.

And then I laughed, my cheeks static with sudden blood flow. My heart thumping in my chest. My hair sodden to my face, sticky, mimicking how my white shirt clung to me almost invisible. My hands wading the water around me, feeling the powerful movement of the streams between the gaps in my fingers. My nose threatened to run and my eyelashes felt like tiny icicles weighing my wide eyed gaze down. My toes were almost completely numb, but the feeling of pins and needles pulsated through them.

Every part of me reminded me; I was alive and I couldn't ignore the body I was in forever and what it had been through, despite how I may not remember everything.