proud of all my scars

[Regulus Black]

i can’t sleep cause it’s burning inside
like gasoline or a fire running wild
no more fear cause i’m getting closer now
so unreal but i like it anyhow

Sometimes he didn’t always know why he was angry, why he felt the way he did. All he knew was that he felt, and he could do little to control it. Regulus was getting frustrated lately with trying to balance his schoolwork and his darker business, not to mention the incessant harping of his mother and father telling him to treat his intended a certain way. He should get his intended flowers, he should have dinner with his intended, he should escort his intended to the Yule ball. Soon enough, Regulus didn’t even recognize Victoria anymore as his former friend or casual sex partner––no, she was this enigma, this intended, this fate that had shackled him to one spot and refused to let him move. He attempted to find some release in the petty games he played, for example, with the Sauveterres, but that only brought him some small gratification and really only further served to remind him of the fact that this freedom of his was terribly short-lived. In three years, after Victoria graduated from Hogwarts, she’d walk right from the castle and into his life, forever. And he desperately wanted to avoid it. But what was he to do? He’d known for years that this was bound to happen. He’d be kidding himself if he said he hadn’t ever thought about it. But now it was so much more real, and it was going to happen so much sooner than he’d thought. Twenty years old, he’d be. Only three years an adult. And of those three years, he’d have absolutely no time as a free adult. He was going to be sprung into work by his father, given multiple assignments courtesy of the Dark Lord, and then, married at the end of it all. Regulus sighed and kicked a small block of ice frozen to the side of the pitch. He was down here in the dead of night with a fat cigar and a bottle of firewhiskey, just he and his broom, and the moon and the stars. Regulus let out a puff of smoke and sat down in the snow, tilting his head up to admire the constellations. Sometimes Regulus could only find clarity in the night sky. Call him a pussy, because he was admittedly being one, but––but it brought him closer to his past, to the simplicity of it all, to his family and his pride and his sense of duty. Almost everyone in the Black family was named after a constellation. Regulus’s father had told him it was because the Blacks were kings of the sky. Each star had a story and so did each Black. They were born rulers, always had been and always would be. And they would be numerous, too, Orion had said. Like thousands of little stars in the sky. Regulus swigged some of his ale and thought about that for a while. Like thousands of little stars. He’d been thinking a lot about his family lately. About what they meant, about the family he was going to have to create in three years. The thought of it made his lip curl and he downed the rest of his whiskey, shivering a little as it roared down his throat.

“Goddamn it,” he said to the night air swirling around his face, reddening his nose and cheeks in spite of himself. “Goddamn it,” Regulus repeated, this time a little less forceful than the first. He felt anger well within him, festering as it had been for weeks. He took the firewhiskey bottle by its neck and slammed it against one of the posts surrounding the pitch, ignoring the glass shattering in the snow and the sound it made, reverberating into the blackness. It felt good to destroy something, he thought bitterly, taking a drag from his cigar. As if he hadn’t been causing enough destruction lately. His mind swept over his more recent failings––Andromeda, potions class, Quidditch. The list went on, too, to things of a more macabre nature. The little errands the Dark Lord sent him on, the people he had to track down, stalk... the Dark Lord had things planned that made even Regulus flinch, even though he couldn’t let him know his resolve was beginning to crumble. Regulus didn’t see it as that, anyhow. He was going through a strenuous time and he was focused on other things, that was all. He had to sort out his priorities. Right now, his only damned priority was himself and this fucking cigar, he thought with a dry bark of a laugh. He trudged along across the pitch and made his way to the middle of it, puffing on his cigar and staring up at the posts and the Keeper’s goals. He hated to look at it this way but he had finally come to accept that he was a failure of a captain. He was too busy working with the Dark Lord, too busy getting him information about... about the more recent developments. Regulus was too busy to do anything besides serve his Lord. And frankly, that was all he felt like doing anymore. Sure, it may have recently gotten darker than he had initially thought, but that was the price he paid for power. The one good thing about his little side job was that it gave him power, made him in control for once––he was the pilot of his destiny, and of the destinies that the Dark Lord had decided to assume control of. Regulus had a lot of responsibility, this much was true, and sometimes he wondered if he was strong enough to handle it but––but then he remembered, he was a Black, and the Blacks were kings of the sky. Kings may have had to do ugly things to protect their kingdom, but in the end, it was for the better. In the end, they struggled, they won some they lost some, but the important thing was that they did what was right by their kingdom. Was it not the same for Regulus? Had he not fulfilled the path his family name had bestowed on him? He was protecting his kingdom, the Dark Lord’s kingdom––and he had to do some ugly things but in the end, the kingdom would benefit. But all these metaphors of kings and queens made him think of Andromeda again, which always put Regulus in a sour mood. For every king needed a queen, and Victoria was not his queen. No, she––she would never be, he thought, balling his fists and sticking the cigar in his mouth. Andromeda was his queen, even if he wasn’t her king. Could it even work that way? Ha, Merlin, what the fuck was he even––he was being a damned pussy again, Regulus thought taking our his cigar and heaving it into a pile of snow, stamping it out with his foot. “Goddamn it.”

He was starting to boil again, he could tell––his stomach stiffened and his chest burned with a force stronger than whiskey. He felt so explosive, so enraged, and yet, and the same time, so numb. Maybe it was the Dark Lord’s effect on him. Whatever it was, it was confusing him and it hurt. Yes––yes, for Merlin’s sake, it hurt, and Regulus was tired of trying to pretend like he wasn’t in constant pain. Pain over the fact that he likely wouldn’t graduate because he was failing three fourths of his classes, pain over the fact that he had fucked his cousin on a stone bench in the garden of their childhood home, pain over the fact that she was flouncing all over the school pretending it hadn’t happened, pain over the fact that he––he had to––to two little––“DAMMIT!” he screamed, to the air, to the stars in the sky, to the damned kings of the bloody night. Sometimes Regulus didn’t even know if he believed in all that shit his father told him. But sometimes it was easier to. It was easier to just blindly accept every piece of fucking information that his fucking parents had ever fucking fed him, because that’s what Blacks did, the fucking kings of the night. They ate up the shit of whoever was in power and treated it like some goddamned delicacy. They were ass-kissing girl thingys who meant nothing, were kings of nothing. Kings of shit. Regulus grabbed his wand from his back pocket and began blasting at random piles of snow, grunting and shouting unrestrained, too upset to care if anyone saw or heard him. Regulus’s disillusionment with his family had began with the marriage. He couldn’t pretend it was anything else. Once he had started to question the fundamentals of his family and their values, he couldn’t stop. He began to question everything, to wonder at his entire way of living, and the conclusions he made were worse than what had made him consider making them in the first place. He may have exaggerated. He may have been wrong. But the fact was, Regulus had been raised in a world of extremist thinking and was now helping out perhaps one of the world’s most extremist people––Regulus was, consequentially, an extremist in almost every manner of thought. When he got on a roll with something, he was, well, extreme about it, and this was no exception. Breathless, he stopped shooting and closed his eyes for a moment. The frenzy lingered beneath his skin and threatened to rupture once more, even though he was weakly trying to quell it. He didn’t need any more detentions. Ha, fuck. Who even cared about that any more? Regulus was snapping. He was snapping and he would continue to snap until he was finished, god dammit. His eyes opened in a flash and just as he was about to blast another pile he noticed a faint crackling noise nearby, a sound like feet crunching in the snow. “Seriously?” he groaned. “I’m going fucking crazy out here and you actually think it’s a great idea to come over and interrupt me? Fuck you. Get out my face if you know what's good for you, asshole.” He didn’t even know who it was, or if it was actually coming over to interrupt him but Regulus was in an extremely dangerous, volatile place right now, and to him?

Everything was a threat.

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