You died still a boy and you like to think that made you a man.
Cissy was your cousin, five, six, years older than you, and she liked to think that made her wise. It didn't. Maybe relative to you it did, because, Merlin, you were a sotted fool, weren't you? Pledging first your allegiance and then taking it back, taking it away once you realized what that expression "getting your hands dirty" really meant. Was it that you found it wrong, the idea of taking lives, or was it simply that you couldn't stomach it? Weak nerves and weak hands, and you never were as steady with your charms and hexes as your brother was (rest his soul, or go ahead, spit on his grave).
You liked the pretty things. You liked the things you felt you were expected to want. Your parents loved you for it, though perhaps out of simple virtue that you were not Sirius. You weren't Sirius.
That's what she said to you. You were sixteen and still a boy, long in the leg but still skinny and angry. "You aren't Sirius," she hissed against your mouth, and call it misplaced naivete, but you tried so hard not to understand what she was saying. You tried to be proud, you tried to say, "Mercifully so," with the right haughty blend of malice and malaise, but you failed, you were still a boy and she was a woman.
Did you want her then? Probably. She was such a pretty thing, and she still is now, though age has hardened her. You wouldn't like her as much now - you liked your diamonds freshly mined and still stinking of the earth they were taken from, not frozen over with time and use.
You two could have made quite the pair - sullenness wore you both well, the two of you half-enamoured with ideas but never their execution. That's why she married Lucius. Lucius and his cane, his black gloves and his obvious executioner's smile, sharp as the curve of a silver blade.
Is that why you did what you did? Sixteen years old and you pushed your skinny body against her own and thought you could take what you wanted. And you did. You pressed your mouth to hers, your mouth so unlike her husband's, a mouth young and inexperienced but not nervous, never nervous, but neither sure. She did not kiss you back, but she did not push you away. She took you in, an acceptance with a catch, but you didn't know what it was she wanted from you and you never bothered to ask. You never bothered to check these things, these people, you signed your name to, and you never would learn.
Sixteen years old and the Dark Mark had long been burned into your arm; you scraped your hands down her pale arms and made her know what your tongue against hers felt like. Eighteen years old and you were digging your own grave and then lying in it.
You never did find out what she wanted from you. You think - sixteen years old and in the foyer of your mother's house - you might have made her gasp.
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timeasmymeasure
narcissa/regulus - to heirs male of one's body
Date: 2010-11-24 07:42 am (UTC)Cissy was your cousin, five, six, years older than you, and she liked to think that made her wise. It didn't. Maybe relative to you it did, because, Merlin, you were a sotted fool, weren't you? Pledging first your allegiance and then taking it back, taking it away once you realized what that expression "getting your hands dirty" really meant. Was it that you found it wrong, the idea of taking lives, or was it simply that you couldn't stomach it? Weak nerves and weak hands, and you never were as steady with your charms and hexes as your brother was (rest his soul, or go ahead, spit on his grave).
You liked the pretty things. You liked the things you felt you were expected to want. Your parents loved you for it, though perhaps out of simple virtue that you were not Sirius. You weren't Sirius.
That's what she said to you. You were sixteen and still a boy, long in the leg but still skinny and angry. "You aren't Sirius," she hissed against your mouth, and call it misplaced naivete, but you tried so hard not to understand what she was saying. You tried to be proud, you tried to say, "Mercifully so," with the right haughty blend of malice and malaise, but you failed, you were still a boy and she was a woman.
Did you want her then? Probably. She was such a pretty thing, and she still is now, though age has hardened her. You wouldn't like her as much now - you liked your diamonds freshly mined and still stinking of the earth they were taken from, not frozen over with time and use.
You two could have made quite the pair - sullenness wore you both well, the two of you half-enamoured with ideas but never their execution. That's why she married Lucius. Lucius and his cane, his black gloves and his obvious executioner's smile, sharp as the curve of a silver blade.
Is that why you did what you did? Sixteen years old and you pushed your skinny body against her own and thought you could take what you wanted. And you did. You pressed your mouth to hers, your mouth so unlike her husband's, a mouth young and inexperienced but not nervous, never nervous, but neither sure. She did not kiss you back, but she did not push you away. She took you in, an acceptance with a catch, but you didn't know what it was she wanted from you and you never bothered to ask. You never bothered to check these things, these people, you signed your name to, and you never would learn.
Sixteen years old and the Dark Mark had long been burned into your arm; you scraped your hands down her pale arms and made her know what your tongue against hers felt like. Eighteen years old and you were digging your own grave and then lying in it.
You never did find out what she wanted from you. You think - sixteen years old and in the foyer of your mother's house - you might have made her gasp.