unspeakable | jegulus

icarus ascending on beautiful foolish arms

chapter title: amelia by joni mitchell

this chapter is 20k words long, sorry. i tried to cut it down but splitting it up just felt so wrong. settle in, grab a snack if you can stomach eating while you read this fic, and enjoy <3

if you'd like you can add:

'Thorns' by Alex G / 'Nettles' by Ethel Cain / 'The Ballad of the Costa Concordia' by Car Seat Headrest

to your queue :]

When he opened his eyes again, he was in hospital robes and wrapped  in bleached linens. His vision was normal, though he had a headache  behind his eyes. Regulus was asleep in an armchair beside him in a pool  of tepid white sunlight. His ordinarily meticulously clean, meticulously  styled hair was greasy, his clothes were rumpled and worn in, and his  chin was tucked in his collarbones. He didn't look like himself in the  slightest. He looked startlingly similar to Sirius like this, messy and  human as if for the very first time. Unpolished and strangely beautiful...  another boy entirely. A black curl hung limply over his eyes. James  watched him for a moment in silence before he spoke.

"It  must have been pretty bad, whatever I did, if you're wearing joggers."  His eyes flew open. James' voice was hoarse, and rough, worse than the  way he sounded when he'd been sleeping for a very long time. He sort of  sounded like he was sick. Regulus scrambled to his feet in a rush,  crawled into bed on top of him and held his head to his chest, right  over James' heart. "Woah, easy." James was startled at the sound of his  own voice. He didn't sound like himself. His throat hurt.

"If  you ever do this to me again, I'll never forgive you." James touched  his dirty hair. Regulus had shadows under his eyes and sparse dark hair  on his upper lip that James had never seen before. How long had he been  in this nondescript room, in this bed? Regulus was smaller than he'd  ever been before. Everything about him seemed stretched out and  shrunken, like he'd dissolved a little, like the corner of a sugar cube  against a tongue. No points. Misshapen and fragile. His thin hands made  fists in his clothes. "Never." His voice trembled. "James ..."

It took him a moment to realize that Regulus was trembling because he was crying.

"It's  okay." James soothed his hand through his hair, trying to blink the  sleep from his eyes. "You're okay." His hands had a new, constant little  tremor that seemed settled in his fingertips. His heart was beating  abnormally quickly.

"You can't say it's okay,   like you have any idea what is or isn't okay. You don't know what's been  going on." A sudden violence coloured him in sharp, jagged lines.  "You're such a prick." James touched his cheek, his chin. Did he usually  shave? How often did he have to shave? How hadn't he ever seen it? All  of his collected, perfect ease was gone. He looked ragged and rough. He  wasn't in proper robes, or even his muggle slacks, buttoned shirts, and  fitted sweaters. He was in James' clothes, the muggle clothes he usually  only wore to exercise. Loose-fitting joggers, a t-shirt that was too  big on his narrow frame, one of his jumpers with a deep hood to hide in.  "You have no idea what you did."

"How long was I...?"  James didn't even know enough about the state he'd been in to guess  whether he'd been sleeping. He felt like he'd been sleeping, but he was  sore all over the way he was when he'd exercised too much. He felt worn,  and exhausted. It was unsettling. He couldn't remember much of  anything. Time must have passed, a lot of it, based on how Regulus  looked, but he had no concept of how much of it had gone by. It was an  odd, unsettling feeling. He was sitting inside of his own body like an  uninvited and distant guest.

"Three days. You were  hallucinating. You weren't..." Regulus wiped his eyes, but the tears kept  coming. James brushed tears off of his cheek for him and Regulus deftly  avoided his touch. He was talking quickly. His voice was flat, nearly  emotionless, in direct opposition to the tears carving gleaming lines on  his pallid face. "I never get scared, but I was scared. You were seeing  things that weren't there. Spiders, and rats on the walls. Trees and  flowers. Birds. You thought you were in the woods. You thought you were  in your house, or my house, Grimmauld Place I mean. Some of the things  you saw were nice, like kittens. You found kittens in your room once,  under the bed. You were trying to show them to me, and your mother was  playing along but I couldn't stomach it. It was hard to talk to you when  you weren't really there. Well, you were still you, you still said the  things you normally would have said, but you were far away. It was you,  but you were on a different planet than me." His tears slowed, but his  eyes were still shiny, glassy and red. "You talked to me like I was  someone else. You didn't recognize me at all on the first day. Not  really. Sometimes you thought you were talking to me, but you didn't know,  if that makes sense. I could have been anyone else and you still would  have thought you were speaking to me. You thought I was Remus, Lily,  Sirius. Severus, Peter. Marlene McKinnon. Your mother. You thought I was  my mother once. That was strange. You've never looked at me  like that before. You really hate her. I don't think I understood how  much you hate her until you looked at me when you thought I was her."  Regulus smiled a little. His eyes were dry, and his voice was flat. He  seemed almost businesslike. Removed from emotion. It was as if he was a  soldier providing a report of activities to their superior after  scouting. After spying, something in the back of James' mind  hissed. "You kept getting confused. You wouldn't let anyone touch you at  all, ever. Your mother tried to touch your hair and you got very angry,  nearly violent. Most of the time you were calm, but there were moments  when you were sort of frightening. You were only really frightening when  you were scared. I heard about nice dreams, but some of the  things you saw seemed to disturb you. I don't know. You almost told your  mother about Antonia once. You were the way you are after your really  bad nightmares. You were frightening, then. No one could calm you. They  petrified you, and sedated you. When you woke up again you were having  nicer dreams. It was interesting, once I got past the horror of seeing  you that way. I got to see you in the masks you wear for so many  different people. Even the way your voice sounds changes when you're  talking to other people. When you thought I was Sirius you were a very  different boy than you are with me. You talked about me like I wasn't  even there, like you were talking to someone else about me." He put on a  voice, lower, posher. "'No, we can't start the song yet. We have to wait for Regulus, shut up, shut up. Be nice to him for me.'   As if you were talking to my brother. It was a living dream you were  stuck in for days. You kept walking into things because you just... you  weren't there. You weren't in the same world as me. You were somewhere  else. I wasn't even allowed to see you most of the time. I've been  sleeping in the hospital wing, in one of the beds in the main infirmary,  but they tried their best to only let me in here when you  were sleeping. They've been sedating you to force you to sleep, because  your insomnia persists otherwise. Your mother has been here practically  the whole time, but she had to go home today for a few hours to discuss  all of this with your father in person. I doubt they'll do it, but  there's been discussion of pulling you out of school entirely. I won't  allow that, and they can't force you to leave, because you're an adult,  but I think you should be aware it's under consideration. She left me  with you. I won't leave the hospital wing. They tried to make me go, and  go to classes, but I won't leave you alone. I can't. Sirius brought me  your clothes because I was still in mine on the second day, and they  were all covered with blood. He said you would be okay with it. I  don't..."