Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Regulus Black’s earlier memory was when he was 3 years old. He was running home with his parents and brother from the park. He fell and scraped his knees badly. They were bloody and raw and stung so badly he sobbed. His father only shushed him and lifted him off the hot summer gravel and carried him home. Regulus thinks it was his mother who cleaned him up and Sirius who held his hand while the ointment was being applied.

That memory doesn’t mean anything now.

He remembers it often. Not because it’s happy or sweet, but because it’s the only time in his entire life he can definitively say someone looked at him and thought: This child is in pain. This child needs help.

He was three. Small. Soft. His skin is still new. His body was not yet peeling itself apart.

He’s 19 now and his skin still bleeds. But no one holds his hand anymore.

He wakes up at 11:47 a.m., and it’s already too late. Not for anything specific—just in that way where the day’s already sour before you’ve even moved. The light through his blinds is slanted and harsh. There’s something sticky in his throat.

He scratches at the back of his neck. Flakes of skin fall onto his sheets like dead snow. His psoriasis has been flaring again. He hasn't been moisturizing properly. The thought makes him hate himself. Again.

There’s no plan, not yet. Not really. Just a date. 19 days from now. 19 more mornings of this. Then nothing.

He tells himself he’s not being dramatic. He doesn’t cry. He’s past that. He used to cry all the time. In school, especially. After. During. When Sirius moved out. When Sirius stayed out. When their parents stopped pretending that things were truly fine.

When Regulus realized he wasn't anything special. Not clever enough for med school. Not strong enough to endure. Not charming or beautiful like Sirius. Not brave. Not even good at dying slowly.

He swings his legs out from the bed. His knees make this cracking sound. He’s too young to feel this old.

In the mirror, he looks worse than usual. Skin pale and inflamed, angry red blotches along his hairline and under his chin. He hasn't shaved. His eyes are ringed with a kind of purple-grey exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch anymore.

He picks up the cream. The expensive one. The one Sirius used to buy him before they stopped talking. He uncaps it. Puts it down. Walks away.

It’s too late. The day is already ruined.

When Regulus was 4 years old, his aunt Druella said he could be a model. Everyone told him he was a gorgeous child, and up until 3rd grade, he believed it. But then one day, one day in gym class it all changed. His psoriasis had been flaring up badly then. He just moved houses, and his parents hadn’t added in the water purifying salt into the system so it was not only a bad hair day, but a bad skin day as well. Regulus remembers it clearly, standing in a circle with his classmates and his gym teacher instructed them all to hold hands. The boy next to him grimaced and said he didn’t want to hold hands with him because Regulus was weird and gross.

That day Regulus began to realize there was something wrong with him.

The following summer he spent nearly every weekend at the dentist, filling in cavities.

He never told his parents or Sirius what the boy said. He just let it simmer and simmer and simmer…

Regulus walks to the kitchen like it hurts him. Not physically, not quite. It’s just that kind of ache that exists in the marrow of your bones, where you can't point to it but you know it's there. He opens the fridge. Stares. Closes it.

There’s a Post-it from his mum stuck on the front:

“Made dinner for you in the fridge. Reheat if you’re hungry. xx Mum”

He reads it three times. Then tears it off and tosses it in the bin.

He’s not angry at her. Not really. Not anymore. She’s trying now, which is worse in some ways. The worst thing about having a mother who starts trying when you’re already too far gone is that it doesn’t feel like love. It feels like guilt.

He drinks some tap water. It tastes like rust.

He wonders if Sirius even knows he isn’t feeling well.

Sirius doesn’t text anymore. They fought. Again. About nothing. Everything. Always. And then it stopped. Like the string between them snapped. Regulus doesn’t blame him. Sirius always knew how to run. Regulus only knows how to stay. Stay and rot. Stay and shrink.

He scratches at his chest absently through the cotton of his shirt and feels the flakes of skin like grains of salt. He’ll have to change again. His shirts get ruined so quickly now. Maybe he should shower again.

Try and look pretty for his death.

Yeah, he’ll do just that.

When Regulus is in 5th grade, his class’s teacher changes about 5 times. Their actual teacher was pregnant, and well, a lot of problems in the background that he didn’t care much about. His 3rd teacher read them a book. It was a thick chapter book, bright blue in colour. It was titled Wonder by R. J. Palacio. A children’s book really. The main character, August “Auggie” Pullman, is also 10 and in the 5th grade. The book went through multiple points of view and was generally very good, but what stood out to Regulus was that the main character, August, has Treacher Collins syndrome, which disfigured his face. The book went as anyone would expect: bullying, learning, growing up. But there was one chapter, in the point of view of August’s sister that stuck with him. Or not a chapter at least, but a line at the end of her point of view.

“... we’ve all spent so much time trying to make August think he’s normal that he actually thinks he is normal. And the problem is, he’s not”

Regulus’ day was ruined, year ruined, life ruined.

Because he saw himself in August Pullman. No, Regulus did not have Treacher Collins syndrome; he has psoriasis. But to 5th graders, it might as well be the same thing. That year was horrible. Or well, not completely horrible.

Because in 5th grade, Bartemius “Barty” Crouch Jr. moves from the city to their quiet suburb.

Regulus made a friend.

His first good friend who helped, who listened, who introduced Regulus to the combination of glycerin and rose water, vaseline, aloe vera and body scrubs.

For the first time in his life, Regulus’ skin didn’t feel too tight.

He opens Instagram. Scrolls. Regrets it instantly.

Everyone is doing things. In cities. In forests. In bedrooms with fairy lights and friends and Thai takeout. Everyone is shining and busy and endless.

Regulus cries in the summer before middle school. He tells Sirius everything, the things people say about his skin, hair, and the way he always smells like ointment and antiseptic. He tells Sirius he hates himself, that he thinks there’s something fundamentally wrong with him, that he wishes he could rip himself out of his own body and start again.

Sirius listens. Sort of. He hugs him. He says “fuck them,” like that’s supposed to solve anything. Like all the things Regulus said weren’t just facts, but insults to be shouted over.

Sirius tells him to ignore them.

Regulus can’t.

Regulus never learned how.

It’s 1:22 p.m. now and Regulus is sitting on the floor of his bedroom with his back against the bedframe. His laptop is open on his legs, but the screen’s dark because it hasn’t been touched in hours. The last thing he googled was “painless ways to—”

He closes the tab.

His phone buzzes. Just a calendar reminder.

19 DAYS LEFT :) it says, because he thought it would be funny at the time. A joke to himself. Except it’s not funny now. It just feels cold. He shuts his phone off and shoves it under a pillow. He doesn't want to die. That’s the fucked up part. If someone asked him, sincerely, Do you want to die? He’d say, “No.”

He just doesn’t want to keep living like this.

He scratches at his arms until the skin splits open again. Just a little. Tiny, crescent-shaped wounds from his nails. Like something feral has been trying to crawl out of him for years.

When Regulus was in 6th grade, a boy called him “crocodile hands”.

He went home and sobbed himself to sleep. He didn’t tell anyone about it. Never has, never will. His teachers all compare him to Sirius. Regulus tries not to sob about it every time someone says Sirius was better at whatever he did. But that was the downside of going to the same school as your sibling. He didn’t know why he expected it not to happen.

Because he and Sirius only had a 2-year gap? Oh, it didn’t matter. Not to adults. To adults, each sibling was a reflection of the other. But Regulus, oh Regulus, was nothing like Sirius.

But it gets better eventually. Middle school, that is. Because Regulus’ skin begins to get better with frequent care. He’d shower every morning, using the body scrub every other day, lather himself with the mixture of glycerin and rose water and use the vaseline and aleo vera in the particularly bad areas.

When Regulus was in 8th grade, he thought maybe things were finally going to be okay.

He had a routine. A system. He knew what soaps not to use, which shampoos made his scalp itch less, how long he could sit in the sun without the skin on his arms going red and raw. The worst of his skin was now just his feet, shoulder blade and the backs of his thighs. He had Barty. He had decent enough grades. He wasn’t happy, not really, but he could pretend better than before. And that used to count for something.

He started brushing his hair again. Let himself wear short sleeves sometimes. He let Barty take a photo of him once—just one, at some music festival thing that Barty’s cousin dragged them to. Regulus is in the background, drinking Sprite from a paper cup, laughing at something stupid. The camera didn’t even catch his face properly. But Barty sent it to him anyway and said, You look good here.

Regulus stared at that photo every night for a month. Sometimes he still does. It’s buried deep in his camera roll now, behind screenshots of psoriasis creams, old chemistry notes, a blurry photo of Sirius and James flipping off the camera, memes from Evan Rosier that never made him laugh.

He pulls it up now.

Zooms in.

He doesn’t look good. He looks like someone trying very hard not to disappear.

He scrolls past it.

The truth is: Regulus has spent more time thinking about dying than actually trying to.

Which sounds better than it is. It just means he’s gotten really good at fantasizing without follow-through. He’s tried, yeah. The pills last winter. The car thing two years ago. But something always goes wrong—or right, depending on how you look at it.

Someone finds him.

He throws up.

He flinches at the last second.

It’s humiliating, in its own way. To fail at dying, too.

Sometimes he wonders if the universe is laughing at him. If there’s some cosmic joke he’s not in on. Like—

Look at this boy. He can’t even end it properly.

Look at this boy. Crocodile hands. Crybaby. Flaky freak. Look at him.

In Regulus’ first year of High School, he meets Evan Rosier. Evan went to the other middle school in the area, the one that went from Kindergarten to 8th grade instead of the one Regulus went to, 6th to 8th.

Evan is in a friend group of a few people, Regulus feels too shy to talk to them. They’re all a very good-looking group of friends. So he sticks to Barty for every class he has.

Regulus moves in October of 9th grade. They move houses. A whole 20 minutes away from the school, and he shouldn’t be going there anymore, but Regulus breaks down and cries. First, he tries to convince his parents not to sell the house, but they do anyway and pack away their lives in cardboard boxes. But he and Sirius refuse to move schools, so through many loopholes in the school system, they manage to stay at the high school.

But it’s not the same because no one can come over, Regulus does not have a license like Sirius. There is only one car, Regulus is not allowed to use public transit even if Sirius is…

Then Regulus fails 9th-grade math.

It’s not a surprise. He’d been falling behind since the second week and stopped showing up somewhere around the middle. It wasn’t even that he didn’t try—he did, in that quiet, desperate way. The kind where you stare at the same equation for forty minutes, rereading the instructions like they’ll change. Like they’ll finally click.

They never did.

The day he gets the report card, he cries. His parents are disappointed and and he promises to do well in summer school in July. It’s only a month! Please mum it’s only a month I’m sorry! But his mother coldly says that he wasted a whole month of summer break for them. All Regulus can feel is shame.

Sirius on the other hand ruffles Regulus' hair, half-affection, half-pity, and says, “Math is for assholes anyway.”

But Sirius passed math. Sirius passed everything.

Regulus doesn’t want pity. He wants to not be the problem.

Summer school wasn’t that bad. It was fun. His science teacher is the one teaching them and somehow she’s better than the actual math teacher. Evan failed math as well. He giggles about his 45% and they study together. Evan was having some problems with his friend group. Something about Severus being an asshole and Mulciber being an even bigger asshole.

So they sit together in every class, laugh when school is done early because the air conditioning was not working and it was too hot to continue class. They hang out every day, have fun. His mother picks him up from Evan’s house every night after she returns from work at 5.

At the end, he and Evan passed with a 90% and created an unbreakable friendship.

That summer, Regulus thinks maybe he’s not broken. Just slow. Just cracked, not shattered.

He keeps the summer school report card. Folds it into quarters. Tucks it into a box he painted, containing old photos, old notes, things that used to mean something.

It still makes him smile sometimes. Just a little. Barely.

10th grade was okay.

But in February, there are whispers of a virus spreading around the globe.

By March, lockdowns start.

March 13, 2020, is the last day Regulus goes to school. He remembers clearly because he was having a bad earache but also having an amazing hair day. He remembers being picked up with Sirius after school. Sirius was in a bad mood for some reason, so he sat in the back while Regulus sat in the passenger seat. They stopped by the pharmacy to pick up some over-the-counter medication for his ear.

His mother came back as quickly as she went. She put the medication into his ear and Regulus spent the drive home with his head tilted to the side. Sirius and their mother argued the whole way home. The whole 20 minutes, which turned into 30 because rush hour started.

Sirius and their mother argue the whole drive home. About politics, mostly. About curfews, control, and news stations. Sirius is in one of his moods—volatile, self-righteous, brilliant and loud. Regulus hates it when he’s like this. Not because he disagrees. He doesn’t. He just… can’t keep up. Sirius argues like it’s oxygen. Regulus is just trying to breathe.

The medication drips deeper into his ear, warm and numbing. He rests his temple against the window. Watches the cars blur past in lines of red and white.

Their mother says something sharp. Sirius bites back harder. Regulus flinches. Not visibly, just enough that his breath catches. He hates loud voices. Raised voices. They always sound like something breaking. When they get home, Sirius slams the door behind him. Their mum says nothing. Regulus climbs the stairs in silence and goes to sleep with the oily warmth still stuck in his ear.

But lockdown?

Oh lockdown had been good for Regulus.

With the rise of skincare, haircare, he began to look better.

Yes, it was 2 years locked at home, but Regulus had never felt so good. He looked so good. Around the end of 2020, at dinner, he turned around and showed his parents his back. Clear, smooth skin. “Look! Look, I did it!”

His mother clapped. His father smiled. Sirius laughed and said, “Finally, lizard-boy’s evolving.”

And it should’ve felt like triumph. Like proof. Of effort, of endurance, of something. But Regulus just stood there, shirt twisted in his hand, spine bare and gleaming under the kitchen lights—and all he felt was… empty.

Because when the skin healed, the ache didn’t.

Maybe it was because of what Sirius said.

Maybe.

It’s 3:03 p.m. now, and he hasn’t eaten. His mouth tastes like something old and metallic. He knows he should drink more water, put on the cream, wash the sheets, brush his teeth, change his shirt. But he doesn’t move. The laptop’s screen saver glows dull and slow like a heartbeat, and Regulus watches the colors shift against his legs.

He opens Notes on his phone.

Scrolls.

Finds the draft titled “Letter”. It’s not really a letter. Just a collection of things he never said. Things he wants to explain. Things he’s not sure anyone will understand even if he did explain. He adds another line.

I’m sorry I couldn’t be someone you were proud of. I tried. I really did.

Then he stares at it until the letters blur.

Regulus meets his first partner at the beginning of 2021. He was in 11th grade, still 16, while his partner was 19. It didn’t feel that wrong. No, it didn’t. Regulus kept it a secret, but 3 months in, it started to get…

Odd.

There was something wrong, and Regulus did not understand what.

At the end of it all, it is 9 months later in November of 12th grade, when the lockdown ends that Regulus manages to break up with his partner. Barty holds him as he trembles, tries to make sense of what happened. No, Regulus’ partner never hit him or forced himself on him. It was the words that messed Regulus up.

9 months.

9 months was too long.

He never told anyone but Barty, Evan and people at school about it.

He wanted validation from them and they gave it. They all told him how fucked up it was. How he should have left earlier, how he should have told them so they could have maybe ran Regulus’ ex-partner over with a car or maybe a pickup truck.

Regulus’ trauma makes him popular at school, but his warm personality genuinely makes people stay. The fact that he was no longer the boy with flakes in his hair made it even better. Sirius was in his second year of university at that point, so there was no shadow to stand under. He makes a lot friends. People love him, hang out with him.

12th grade was good.

Real good.

(His hair began to fall out.)

Regulus got into all 6 universities he applied to.

(His eye bags get darker.)

He passes math for once.

(Sirius moves out for good and says he does not want anything to do with any of them)

Regulus becomes prom Prince, Barty prom King.

(He sobs his heart out every night and struggles to keep brushing his teeth every night)

Regulus graduates high school with honours.

(He, Evan and Barty are going to different schools)

Regulus grins widely in his graduation pictures.

(no one invites him to go out in the summer before university starts.

Regulus thought 12th grade was good.

It’s about 3:30 pm. Regulus put a clay face mask on and put warm oil in his hair. He stares down at his laptop, the list of 19 things to do in the 19 days before he dies is written on Google Docs of all things.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE

1. Clean my room

2. Get pretty(can be achieved over multiple days)

3. Draw or paint something for dad even if it sucks (will be achived over multiple days)

4. Go out to dinner with Mom and Dad as much as you can

5. Water the sunrise and sunset(can be different days)

6. Tell James “brother stealing” Potter to go fuck himself

7. Call Sirius

8. Give Evan my clothes and Barty my jewellery

9. Write a will

10. Watch the Hunger Games series with Dad

11. Dress up nice, go out to that nice Thai restaurant Sirius used to take me to alone, eat the Thai basil noodles, lemongrass chicken wantons, and mango chicken(bring home leftovers for mom and dad)

12. Have a sleepover in the backyard on the trampoline

13. Apologize to Mom for being so quiet all these years

14. Write letters to everyone. Leave them with the will.

15. Let Mom take a picture of me. A real one. No Filters. Just me.

16. Visit the park where Sirius and I used to play at

17. Drink coffee with Barty and Evan and actually talk about everything and nothing

18. Forgive Sirius

19. Spend an entire day doing absolutely nothing, guilt-free

The Grammarly extension on his browser underlines nearly every word in either red, yellow or blue. Regulus rolls his eyes and turns off the extension after only fixing the spelling but nothing else. The stupid extension couldn’t tell him how to word his thoughts.

Regulus shuts his laptop and goes to his bathroom, turning on the shower. He is methodical. He takes his time, shampooing twice, then keeping the conditioner in his hair for a few minutes before washing it out. Then he uses his favourite body scrub. It smells like peaches. It’s new. Regulus bought it in January. He never used it. It’s June now. But still, he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs.

He can see the water sort of turn brown. It’s not dirt. Obviously not. Regulus wasn’t a dirty person. It’s the psoriasis.

He looks away and then uses his body wash, squirting it onto a wash cloth and rubbing himself down. The body is technically for eczema, but Regulus likes it. It does not particularly smell like anything, but he always feels clean after using it. The product having no scent helps keep his skin from flaring.

Finally, he uses his face wash, which was from the same brand as the body wash. The entire brand was targeting people with eczema. It was actually rather nice, affordable. Not an expensive tropical treatment. He bought it all from Walmart. When Regulus steps out of the shower, the mirror is fogged up, and his skin feels raw but good.

He doesn’t towel off right away. He just stands there, dripping, breathing in the steam. There’s something quiet and sacred about this—like maybe he’s come back to himself, just a little. Like maybe for a second, he doesn’t hate the body he’s in.

He dries himself gently. Blotting, not rubbing. He gets the hyaluronic acid serum first. Using the dropper and putting a single drop on each cheek, nose and then his forehead. Making sure his hands are a little damp, he rubs it into his face, neck, then the excess into the backs of his hands. The nice woman at Sephora recommended it to him. He loves it. Perhaps the best thing created in his opinion. “Reggie?” His mother, with no concept of personal boundries, opens the bathroom door

But Regulus was used to this, and he had his towel wrapped around himself, so it was okay. “Yeah?”

His mother is dressed up nicely but looks tired and annoyed. “I need your body mist. The nice one. The green one”

Regulus barely bats an eye and picks up the Bath and Body Works spray called Guilty as Fig. His mom loves it. He said he could buy her one of her own, but she always refuses. “Are you going somewhere?” Regulus asks as she invades his bathroom while he picks up his moisturizer and rubs it into his face and neck before the serum can dry

“Your father told me last minute that there is a party we were invited to.” His mother huffs

“Oh… Do I have to—”

“No, of course not. You’d be bored out of your mind.”

Regulus can’t help but laugh a bit. His mom looks annoyed, but also can’t help but smile. She sprays the mist into the air and walks through it like it’s perfume, like she’s twenty again and not the mother of two sons who barely speak to each other. She pauses by the mirror and smooths down her hair with one hand. Her lipstick is too red. Her heels are too high. Regulus wonders if she’s trying too. “Do you want me to bring anything back for you?” She asks

“Uh… Cake?” He isn’t sure why he says it as a question

She grins, soft and surprised. “Cake it is,” she says, like it’s a promise, like she’ll bring him back something sweet and real and small enough to matter.

She leaves with the sound of heels on tile, the scent of figs and guilt lingering in the air.

And Regulus is alone again.

He sits on his bed in the towel for a long time, hair damp against his shoulders, the moisturizer on his face just beginning to feel tacky. He scrolls through his Google Doc again, re-reads his to-do list. Stares at the words like they might rearrange themselves into something more poetic. Something that makes sense. Something final.

They don’t.

His room smells like the candle Evan gave him for Christmas last year. “To soothe your dramatic little soul,” Evan had joked. It’s lavender and patchouli and something warm he can’t name. It’s been burning for an hour, and it’s already giving him a headache. He doesn’t blow it out.

Instead, he opens his drawer and pulls out the box. The one from eighth grade, the one he painted silver and black, filled with bits of his life—old notes from Barty, photo booth strips, the summer school report card, a dried flower from some forgotten occasion. The picture of him at the festival.

He looks at it again.

The cup of Sprite, the slight blur of his face, the way the sunlight hit his cheek like it was trying to give him a moment. He stares and stares and stares until he doesn’t feel anything anymore.

Not nostalgia. Not warmth. Not even grief.

Just the kind of silence you can’t speak through.

He puts the picture back.

Closes the box.

Slides it under the bed.

The sun has started to set now, a smear of pale orange across the sky outside his window. Regulus pulls on a soft old t-shirt—one of Sirius’s, from years ago, worn to the point of translucence—and crawls into bed. Not under the covers, just on top of them. Still a little damp. Still a little raw.

He sets an alarm for tomorrow. 9:00 am. 9:30 am. 10:00 a.m.

He’ll clean his room tomorrow. Try to get pretty.

He’ll pick one more thing from the list.

Try.

The window is cracked open, just slightly, and a warm breeze floats in. Somewhere outside, someone is laughing. Someone else is shouting. Life is happening. Fast and loud and completely unaware that Regulus Black is lying in bed, quietly counting down the days until he’s not in it anymore.

He lets the sound drift over him like static.

Nineteen more days.

Then quiet.

Real quiet.

The kind no one talks over.

The kind no one interrupts.

The kind no one notices.

And Regulus thinks, not for the first time:

Maybe the world will be better without me.

Or maybe the world will be the same.

And maybe that’s the worst part of all.

He turns to face the wall, skin itching beneath the cotton, the candle flickering beside him.

Eventually, the sun goes down.

And Regulus does not.

Not yet.