Chapter Text
Regulus left him immediately upon arrival at King’s Cross Station. He didn’t even glance back once their parents disappeared into the crowd, only adjusted the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder and muttered, “You know I can’t walk with you.” His voice was quiet, raw with something Sirius almost mistook for shame.
Sirius wanted to answer, to reassure him, to tell him that he understood — but his tongue felt like lead in his mouth. The echo of his father’s curse still burned across his ribs, every breath making the welted skin flare with pain. The crack of it was still ringing in his ears, phantom sound bleeding into the real noise of the station. And underneath it all, louder than anything, was Walburga’s voice.
Cold, sharp, triumphant. She had followed him here in spirit if not in body, each word seared into his mind: worthless sub, failure, stain on the family name. It was as though she were hissing it into his ear even now, drowning out the thunder of trains and the hiss of steam.
The platform was a blur of movement: children darting between trunks and owls, parents calling last-minute instructions, Prefects shouting to gather first-years. The shrill whistle of the Express split the air, and the smell of soot and hot metal clung to everything — acrid, heavy, suffocating. Sirius’s ears rang so loudly he thought for a moment he might collapse right there on the stones. His knees wobbled, threatening to give way.
Regulus hesitated only long enough to flick his eyes toward Sirius’s hands, still trembling uncontrollably at his sides. The fingers twitched like live wires, his nails biting into the flesh of his palms in a useless attempt to still them. For one brief second their gazes met, and Sirius caught the guilt written across his brother’s expression — raw, unguarded, gone in an instant. Then Regulus broke it off sharply, shoulders hunching, and melted into the throng without another word.
And then he was gone. Swallowed by the smoke and the press of the crowd, leaving Sirius to stand alone, ribs aching, head buzzing, hands shaking as though the curse still had its claws in him.
They had grown closer once again over the summer, strange as it was, as they both dealt with their parents’ madness. Sirius had taken the brunt of the punishments, as he always did, and this summer his mother had been especially violent, preparing him like livestock for the dom with whom they had struck a marriage alliance just months before. He had learned quickly that “preparation” was only another word for torment.
Because of her violent outbursts, Sirius had often found himself injured — blood dripping from split lips, bruises blooming purple and yellow across his ribs, his skin laced with cuts from her wand or from the edge of a thrown ornament. And it was always Regulus who came to him in the aftermath. The younger boy would slip into his room quietly, carrying little scraps of salve or stolen bandages, trying in vain to patch him up before the next punishment came. Sometimes Sirius was so far gone that it was pointless, his body pulled under too deep. The beatings almost always dragged him down so far that he couldn’t hope to climb back up alone, not safely, not without being ripped apart. And so, along with the first aid, Regulus would sit with him. Hours, sometimes, coaxing him back, voice low, hands trembling but steady against Sirius’s skin. The shame of it lingered long after: Sirius Black, once so proud, relying on his little Dom brother to drag him out of the darkness their parents had forced him into.
It had been more than embarrassing. It had been crushing. Especially when the memory of the previous year still weighed heavy on him. He was still recovering from the massive drop that had left him unable to finish his fifth year. Classes were impossible when your body refused to move, when your mind collapsed into silence. Impossible when everyone stared at you as though you were both fragile glass and dangerous curse. Catatonic, they had called him. Attention-seeking, some whispered. Sirius knew the truth — he had been broken. And not just by the spell.
He had betrayed his friends. He had lost the trust of the one person who mattered most. He had lost his dom. Sirius shook his head hard, trying to banish the image of Remus’s heartbroken expression — the way his voice cracked when he told him he should find someone else to take him down. The memory was a wound that refused to close, bleeding fresh every time Sirius thought of it. He swallowed against the sting in his throat. The pain had never lessened.
Forcing the thought away, he focused instead on the problem of his hands. They hadn’t stopped shaking since morning, when his mother had thrown the Crucio at him one last time before shoving him out of Grimmauld Place. The veins beneath his skin had gone swollen and dark, a reminder of how long she had held him under. He flexed his fingers experimentally — they twitched uncontrollably, useless. Sirius knew enough to recognize the nerve damage that could follow repeated torture. He had felt it creeping in the year before: the numbness at his fingertips, the freezing cold that clung no matter the season. He had thought maybe he could live with that. But this trembling? This visible evidence? It was harder to hide.
Although, who was there left to hide from? His friends didn’t care anymore what happened to him. And the professors would be easy enough to trick with a weak charm or a carefully timed smirk. All except Minnie. She saw too much. He’d have to be careful around her. As long as he could find some way to write despite the twitching, he might manage to get by.
The rest of him would be easier to disguise. The weight loss could be hidden under his robes. Bruises concealed beneath glamours. The dullness in his eyes dismissed as carelessness. His greatest fear now wasn’t discovery — it was collapse. Dropping publicly. Being exposed for what he really was.
He wondered briefly whether it was a blessing or a curse that his mother had arranged the deal with the Mulciber family. Perhaps it would mean someone else’s hand on the reins. Perhaps it would mean safety of a sort. Sirius had never been dommed by anyone but Remus, and he had never wanted to be. He was loud, brash, impossible. Nothing like the docile sub his mother demanded. But since spring he had felt… empty. Movements slow, thoughts sluggish. Each day like swimming through molasses. He did not crave being taken down anymore. He craved nothing at all. Maybe, despite the disgust he felt at the idea, Mulciber could at least bring him under in a way that would silence the buzzing.
He wasn’t sure it was even possible for him to be taken down consensually anymore. He had tried once, over the summer, after four days locked in the cellar without food. He had begged Regulus to try. His brother’s face had been pale, hands shaking as he coaxed, voice soft, trying to guide Sirius down. It had ended in sobbing, Sirius curled in a ball on the cellar floor, and Regulus swearing he would never try again. He had been too frightened of breaking what their parents hadn’t already destroyed.
Sirius dragged himself onto the train and found an empty compartment near the back. He slid inside quickly and shut the door behind him, as though the flimsy wood could hold back the world. The little room smelled faintly of dust and coal smoke. Sunlight filtered weakly through the smeared window, catching in suspended dust motes. Each rattle of the carriage made the floorboards vibrate under his boots. From beyond the walls came muffled chatter and laughter, voices rising and falling like waves. Inside, silence pressed in close, heavy and claustrophobic.
He took the chance to change into his robes, though his hands fumbled clumsily with the buttons, trembling so badly he had to redo them twice. When he finally collapsed onto the bench, the sleeves hung loose over his wrists, hiding the sharpness of bone and the twitching of his hands. A disguise. A thin one, but it was something.
The problem was his mind. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his mother’s face, wand raised, mouth twisted with rage. Worthless, filthy sub. You’ll never be good enough. He saw Remus, too — pale, heartbroken, voice shaking as he ended things. Sirius pressed his palms hard against his eyes, trying to force the images away. They remained burned into the backs of his eyelids.
He curled small in the corner of the seat, knees pulled tight to his chest. If anyone came in, he would look like a sulking child. Better that than broken. Better that than seen. His breaths dragged raggedly against his sore ribs, each exhale too loud in the stillness. His body screamed for rest, but his mind clung stubbornly to its torment.
Eventually, exhaustion won. Against his will, his eyes slid shut.
It wasn’t real sleep. Not the kind that brought peace or dreams. Instead, he dropped like a stone into a void — heavy, dark, mercifully empty.
-
When Sirius finally awoke, it was to the sound of voices just outside his compartment. Muffled through the wood of the door, but clear enough that his exhausted brain could still pick out each word.
He froze, body rigid, lungs barely daring to move.
“–haven’t seen him.” That was James. Confident, steady, the same tone he used when dismissing something ridiculous.
Sirius’s heart lurched painfully in his chest, pounding so loud he was sure they would hear it. His nails dug into the fabric of his sleeves, scraping shallow crescents into his forearms as he curled tighter against the seat. Every instinct screamed at him to cover his ears, to block them out, but fear rooted him in place. If they heard the rustle of movement inside, if they realized he was there…
“You don’t think Dumbledore would have actually expelled him, do you?” Peter’s voice, uncertain, carrying more worry than Sirius would have expected. The words twisted in his chest, a cruel mockery of comfort. Despite the disdain Sirius knew Peter must feel for him now, his lips twitched upwards weakly, almost involuntarily, at the faint trace of concern.
“No,” James said, firm. “I don’t think he would’ve done that. Surely not without telling us. And his things were never taken out of the dorms.”
“But then where would he have gone? He wasn’t in classes at all the last week of term.”
“Maybe suspension?”
The word lodged sharp in Sirius’s throat. Suspension. That was what everyone thought, wasn’t it? That he had been punished by the school for what he’d done, rather than broken by it. His chest squeezed tighter, breath catching, nails biting deeper into his arms. He tasted copper before he realized he had bitten down on his tongue, hard enough to draw blood, to keep himself from making a sound.
There was a pause, heavy with unspoken things, before one of them—he thought it was Peter again—asked quietly, “Remus looks okay, don’t you think? I thought he’d look worse.”
The name slammed into him like a blow. Sirius’s whole body went rigid, stomach twisting violently. He could imagine James’s face in response, the raised brows, the faint smile, the casual shrug.
“Yeah,” James said after a moment. “He doesn’t look nearly as bad as before the break. The summer must have done him some good.”
Relief and agony tangled in Sirius’s chest until he thought he might choke. Remus was okay. That was good. That was all he had ever wanted—for Remus to be free of him, to heal, to be whole again.
And yet the words stabbed deep, tearing him apart. The image of Remus, stronger, better, without him, left Sirius gasping for air, bile rising sharp in his throat.
Of course Remus was fine without him. Sirius’s life had collapsed, but Remus was better. Maybe he had found someone new over the summer—someone calm, someone gentle, someone who wasn’t a disaster every second of the day. Someone who could give him what Sirius never had been able to. Sirius had never been a good sub. Too loud, too wild, too hard to take down. Years of fighting the pull during his mother’s beatings had made his mind recoil even when he wanted to surrender. Remus had always deserved better. Sirius had been selfish, reckless, to ever think he could hold on to him.
Yes. At least something good had come of his betrayal. Remus was free now. Free to live his life and claim a pretty, obedient sub who wouldn’t ruin him.
The thought turned Sirius’s stomach. His whole body curled tighter, as though folding in on itself might ease the nausea clawing at his insides. His throat burned with the urge to cry out, to demand they stop speaking, but he bit his tongue harder, blood pooling bitter in his mouth.
He couldn’t listen anymore. He wouldn’t. Sirius forced the voices into static, shutting them out, pressing his forehead against his knees as if the pressure alone could drown the world away. He willed himself back into the merciful dark, into the only refuge he had left.
And this time, the drop into unconsciousness wasn’t just exhaustion — it was escape.