mymelodramaticjournal

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Wolfstar after a night out in Muggle London. cw drugs

Sirius’ favourite colour is amber, like Firewhiskey, or the way Remus’ eyes glare violently under the shitty chip shop fluorescents, like muggle streetlights, blinking in and out. Sirius can never be certain if they’re about to tell him to stay or to go. Green, he prays as he hurtles towards them, tires spinning out on the wet asphalt, it’s too late for the breaks, I can’t slow this down, green, green, green or I’m gone.

Remus shoves a chip in his mouth watching Sirius with those liquor soaked beamers, slumped down in the plastic chair, lids heavy. He is sweat-sheened from the heat of the club they’d just crawled out of, his jaw grinding relentless circles, clenching and unclenching, chewing docilely on his food so he won’t gnaw through his own tongue.

Carry on and you’ll dislocate something, Sirius wants to say, just to make Remus hear him, hate him, but he can’t feel his gums.

Remus had sniffed something, probably K, because Sirius could still see those fucking irises like an egyptian honeytrap, like hanging off the edge of the world. Sirius, on the other hand, knew his eyes were blown black because he’d stared in the dingy club bathroom mirror for an eternity at his own blissed-out smile certain there were chunks of flesh in his teeth. That he had a head full of blood soaked bones and he didn’t know what he’d caught with them but he just couldn’t stop looking. Eyes all pupil from the bomb he’d dropped an hour ago. He reckoned Remus hated that this was all he was getting when Sirius got so much of him, that this was all Sirius could be. Black, endless, bottomless Black.

Sirius can be found in each shining thing, because that’s what he’s made of. Eyes sometimes black, sometimes grey, always gleaming like a polished mirror. Something beautiful that invites you to look but does not allow you to see. Dazzling, blinding, brilliant, really. What a clever little trick. What do you see? Just yourself staring back? How much do you hate it? What do you want me to be?

Sirius doesn’t think drugs make this bit better. In fact, he thinks they make it worse. There’s this knowing, seeing on a different plain. Here, in this dimension that is all colour and light and heat, all the things they can’t say, questions that gut, lose their sharp edges. Sirius doesn’t wonder, he just sees. Both of them sit, and stare, and it all makes sense. Aware that they’re waiting for the penny to drop, but they’re so far fucked, so dazed watching it spin, in a trance, out their fucking heads but also so unbearably here, that they don’t look to see how it lands. Schrödinger’s fucking come down. They’re both wound up, up, watching the colours flicker by, spinning out, even though they know it won’t last. Know it’s been tossed, know everything I see you I see everything my bones are bright white and there’s no edge to me and there’s nothing we can’t be if you just don’t look down don’t look don’t look don’t look. Just keep your eyes on me.

Uncertainty never looked so pretty.

When they wake up tomorrow they won’t remember, but there will be an ache. Pressing on a bruise that hasn’t formed yet, softening the flesh so it can make its home faster under your skin. Preemptive pain, empathy for the version of you that knows how it stings. Why do I feel like I’ve just woken up from a dream where you hurt me real bad but I don’t know how? What have I forgotten, why am I tender, why am I scared of your hands?

All Sirius can do is stare ahead, waiting for something, a change in colour, for the fucking bulbs to explode. But Remus furrows his brow and just looks weary, and then suddenly really fucking wounded, disturbed, those copper penny eyes spinning, always seeing too much. Flinches like he’s crawling out of his skin, just realised where he is, who he’s with, what they’re on the edge of, and shoves back from the table and pushes out the door. Sirius watches, he doesn’t go far, but he did leave, taking the answers with him. Lights up a smoke on the corner across the road from the shop. All the neon glare from the city’s insomniac kaleidoscope shatters through the rain smattered window, and Sirius loses him to the light.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

new little project whilst i put off all my others !!! <3333

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Silvery scars arch over the curve of Remus’ wide shoulder blades, marred, freckled skin shifting over bone. Two prominent grooves tear over each protruding incline, so deep they must have shown white once. Sirius traces a finger over each silken mark. Follows the slope down the length of his back, hands finding the valley of his spine. Walking his fingers back up each and every notch of it until they spread out, find those two great slashes again, hands planting themselves gently over the shifting muscle, as though if he pressed too hard he could still reach right through, inside, touch the very tender edges of Remus’ soul.

‘They always go back in wrong. Sometimes it takes a bit of pushing.’ Remus supplies, barely a murmur. Painfully indifferent, shatteringly tender.

To someone else, someone perhaps not so used to being fed love off of a knife’s edge, or licking their wounds clean, finding something achingly beautiful about the way it stings, it might have look like a vague attempt to remove one’s skin. A brutal rendering of flesh from bone.

Sirius saw, though. He knew.

His fingers resume their delicate ministrations, unable, it seems, to withhold their fervour. As though they were made to touch, to map, to worship.

It looked like something had stolen Remus’ wings. Carved them right down to the root. Now his skin flames under Sirius’ hands, naked. Exposed. Almost human. The only evidence they were ever there are the two shimmering gashes that adorn his back, and the way Remus almost seems to glow. The way Sirius is certain his fingers leave behind iridescent rivulets, like light just pours out from Remus’ skin as it meets Sirius’ own.

‘Loup ailé, où l'ont-ils emmené?’ Sirius hums, stroking lines that leave stars in their wake. ‘Loup sans ailes, comment voles-tu?’ He drags his lax mouth across the surface, presses the words to his skin, feeling each ridge, each bewitching dip as though they were tattooed on his lips. He couldn’t help but feel grateful for whatever divine thing had caused this, exposed one more inch of Remus, left such a beautiful creature down here with him. To be learnt by Sirius’ hands. To be confirmed by Sirius’ eyes. To be seen by him alone.

Do you miss the sky? Sirius wants to ask. But he feels he knows the answer as the two of them hang there, suspended in space, two shining things that fell to earth. Best heard by each other in the dark, whispering hours. Best seen by human eyes at night. Sirius doesn’t miss the sky - not with the same bruising longing he feels now, the need to catch the moonlight that spills through his fingers, filling him up, the starlight that pours from his eyes.

Almost blinded by reverence, by the glimmering, heavenly thing beneath his palms, all Sirius knows, can be certain of, real and warm and mostly whole, is Remus.

Winged wolf, where have they taken them? Wingless wolf, how do you fly?

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Some time after Regulus’ death, James is sent on a mission to retrieve the Mirror of Erised for the Order. His team manages to get to it and secures it. Just as they’re about to move it, James stands in front of the mirror, and sees himself with Regulus at his side, alive and well. They’re embracing each other and smiling at him sadly. James breaks down on the spot, cannot make himself move. Eventually, he is dragged away from the mirror.

“The mirror shows the most desperate desire of a person’s heart, a vision that has been known to drive men mad.”

Incredible @mymelodramaticjournal wrote a short story based on this idea! Go read it now!

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Regulus Black/James Potter Characters: James Potter, Regulus Black, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Alice Longbottom, Frank Longbottom Additional Tags: Mirror of Erised (Harry Potter), Angst Summary:

'Some time after Regulus’ death, James is sent on a mission to retrieve the Mirror of Erised for the Order.'

He feels his heart, the bloody battered thing that rolls around in his chest, beat with it. The want. As real and warm as the sun that slips through the trees, laying hands on his skin. He has been so cold until this moment, now it’s like he’ll never know a bitter winter again. This, this is the endless summer.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

hiya babe, pls tell me you'll be posting what i assume is a WIP on ao3 soon. you're brilliant and i'm simply obsessed w these tidbits <3

ahhh thanks for the love that’s so nice to hear!!

yes i hope to be updating more regularly in the next few weeks after exam season releases it’s choke hold on me!!

hopefully there are enough ramblings on here to keep you going until then <3

[mymelodramaticjournal]

The first time James had flown a broom he’d fallen off and broken his arm.

He’d never been a natural at, well, anything really. The only thing he’d ever taken to was trying. It was his fifth birthday, and he remembers tearing open the wrapping paper, finding exactly what he wanted inside. It had seemed so big to him then, so new. His dad had taken him out into the garden, held his hands as he tried to balance, beamed proudly at him when he stopped wobbling so dangerously.

James remembers thinking, this is it. This is why there’s magic. For this. The way Dad’s looking at me like I’m made of it.

‘Good, James,’ He’d praised, guiding James’ tiny hands to clamp around the handle. ‘Ok Champ, now lean forward a little.’

A little, he’d said. James, unfortunately, had always been a bit too much. Always pushed a bit too hard. Especially when it came to the things he loved. Eager and bruising and naïve.

He’d shot forward suddenly, panicked, let go. He had leant, just too far, losing his balance; in his terror his hands had gone for his dad. It was the first time James had ever found him just out of reach.

He remembers the sound it made when he landed. Felt it in his baby teeth. The crack rocked through his body, all his other bones groaning in sympathy. It stupefied him into silence for a second, frozen in a heap on the grass. Bottom lip wobbling, eyes collecting tears. Then he’d cried like it could tear the pain from his limbs.

‘Effie!’ Fleamont had called over his shoulder, rushing to James’ side. Pulled the boy into his lap, cradled him close. Taken his arm in careful hands. James had wailed louder. ‘Merlin James, let me see.’

‘Sorry,’ he managed through the tears. Sorry I didn’t do it right. Sorry I’m not magic.

Monty’s hand found his hair, soothing, gentle. ‘Oh Love, it’s alright, it’s okay, it was an accident.’

James had thought accident was a stupid word, even at five. Probably because his favourite word in the world at the time had been: why? Like a broken record, his Mum used to say. Why this, and why that, so desperate to know, to be sure. Everything had a reason if you looked for it. Accidents had their causes. This time it had been him.

‘It hurts,’ He’d whined, because he didn’t know how to lie. He’d get better at it with time.

‘I know. Mummy’s coming, just a minute. I need you to be brave for me for just one more minute. Can you do that James? Can you be brave?’

James hadn’t meant to take that question so ardently to heart. But he’d never felt pain like it, and in that moment thought, yes. If being brave would make it stop hurting, then brave was what he would become. If brave was pretending like it didn’t hurt at all, then that is what he would do.

He’d nodded gravely, a fierce little thing even then, mind all made up. It made his father smile. It all hurt a bit less, then.

His Mum had come and healed his arm, her magic wrapping itself around him, warm, familiar, collecting all the little bits of him up and putting them back together. Cooed softly at him, told him yes, you were brave, what a brave boy, and his tears dried.

Then she’d told him he couldn’t fly again for two weeks. Why not? he’d asked, his favourite why of them all, bottom lip jutting out in defiance, despite the way his chest was still hitching. He already missed the weightless rush of it - of flying, of being good, James, despite how badly coming back down to earth had stung. He never really seemed to learn that way. Found it difficult to not see the things that hurt him as things he loved really, just wrong. Too hard, too much. His fault.

His mother, unaware of the ways in which his soft brain was being reshaped by every touch, every fall, every question, the crucial answers, gave him a long, exasperated look. Fought to hide her smile. Caught up in her fondness, she didn’t give him a reason.

Can you be brave? His father had asked. Almost pleaded in his panic. Not knowing how James had wrapped his little hands around it, held on for dear life.

Yes. I can. I will. Yes.

He’s been trying to keep that promise his whole life.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini, Dean Thomas, Ginny Weasley, George Weasley Additional Tags: Hogwarts Eighth Year, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, Angst Summary:

He supposed if he found himself caught in the gaze of someone who was not desperate for peace or progress or answers they might see the way he was eroding under the weight. Would praise how quickly he took on his new role. Not only the Boy Who Lived, but the boy who fought to continue living despite his losses. People had always looked to Harry, found comfort in how he appeared to them. Saviour, protector, Marauder. Now he had to be a survivor.

Really he was just a ghost. Three weeks after the battle he began to haunt the halls of Grimmauld Place.

**********

Harry agrees to return for eighth year in the hope that the familiarity of Hogwarts, his life there, will bury him gently beneath his suffering. Hopes that if people see him as a beacon of survival, of promise, they won't find what's lurking beneath, rotting, faceless, dispensable. A solder without a war, a puppet with severed strings. A child without a home.

Draco, without anything left to lose, does what he's never been able to stop himself from doing when it comes to Harry Potter: he looks.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Ok, I just spent an hour reading all of the snippets you have posted! I am in love with your writing style. I see that most of these snippets come from a WIP, is that correct? Do you plan to post it? I would love to follow you on ao3 so that I can get a notification when (and if) that happens. Of course, no pressure at all, I am just being curious! But all in all, I just wanted to say I think you're incredibly talented and your take on Jegulus is just pure gold!

Oh my god!!! This is honestly so nice; I appreciate your feedback so much. Truly feeling the love so thank you!

As far as my WIP's I have about a million on the go - any scenes I come up with I just sort of chuck on here so I feel I'm making some kind of progress!

I have never posted on AO3 before, but your lovely comments really inspired me :) I uploaded my most recent post on there just so there's something to find and linked it in my tumblr bio if that interests you!

Again, thank you for making my day with your comments! And as ever, prompts and messages are always welcome so let me know what you think / want to see! <3

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Regulus removes his memories of James, because even the best Occlumens could not conceal a love that formidable. He intends to return to them. He does not make it. He leaves a letter to guarantee their destruction. Harry finds it twenty years too late.

‘No,’ This couldn’t be right. ‘No.’

Hundreds of glass vials.

Mountains of memories.

Harry stood in front of the shimmering cabinet, the glow bathing the dark, dank basement of Grimmauld Place in a halo of light, refracting off of each shining surface, blinding. They looked wrong, unlike the others Harry had seen. Usually a cool white, iridescent, like tiny pools of trickling moonlight. These were warm, burning, blazing. Like being very close to a living star. Trying to catch it in your bare palms. He’d never seen memories so bright.

A letter sat on the handles on the cabinet. Coated in a fine layer of dust and addressed to nobody. Harry picked it up, slipped it open, eyes running over the elegant scrawl. An air or resignation to it. An edge of desperation.

Sirius,

I suppose I am dead. I cannot find it in myself to be surprised. Know that to me it was worth it.

I find assurance in the thought it will be you who discovers this, as you are not corrupted by sympathy for me. I trust you will do what is necessary. I have made my peace with the aftermath of my performance. This is to ensure my reasoning cannot be misinterpreted as an uncharacteristic outburst of courage or selflessness. Both peculiarities, as you well know, I do not possess.

Mother has a temper to match the Dark Lord’s wrath. Neither of them can learn of my plan, nor the reason for its conception. It is not safe to love him as loudly as he compels me to whilst they rifle through my mind in tandem. One cannot conceal an ocean of aching this vast, nor truly alter a mind forged so fiercely by longing. So here lies the graveyard of my love, each glass tombstone inscribed with another reason as to why I have made my choice. I endeavour to resurrect these memories, restore them to the waiting walls of my mind, or to join them in death. If you have discovered them, I have at least succeeded in the latter. Know it likely did not hurt. Removing them has left me hollow. I cannot feel even the sun upon my skin.

My intentions are entirely self-serving, and I harbour no shame about this. Though, for the first and final time, our interests line up faultlessly. So, I ask of you only this: do not let him know. Allow him to believe whatever falsity has been shared. If not for me, for him. He must live if there is to be hope in this world. Him and the child.

Destroy the memories. Set the house aflame. Do whatever you must. Look after him, Sirius. Despite our hatred, keep my heart safe.

Your brother,

Regulus.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Sleep is like a short death. Just echoes and echoes and echoes. Both evade Harry. He cannot stop running, cannot close his eyes. He’s been awake his whole life, on the edge of something, ready, waiting. Not the Boy Who Lived, just a boy who cannot die. Not even for a moment, no matter how hard he tries. He wonders where he will find himself first when he finally lays his head down: in a bed or a casket. Wonders which will be more peaceful. Which strangers arms will welcome him more warmly when they wrap him in rest. Wonders if he’ll even notice the difference, and if he’d find it in himself to care.

He’s a soldier without a war. A puppet with severed strings. Whatever frail chords once held him up are now groaning under the weight of his flagging body, so desperate for the splendour of rest. So gutted by the longing for the peace others have been granted by his suffering. Harry did die, and he chose to come back. Now he can’t shut his eyes for fear of not wanting to open them again. Seeing what little he’s left with if he did. The ugly bones of it all. The skeletons of his success. Each one shaped awfully like someone he used to know.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

The Cupboard under the Stairs

Nostalgia is a disease, historically. No really, check the mortality bills from times of war; cause of death: nostalgia. Killed by a sickness that softens the mind and rots the soul. Nostalgia is the longing for a home you cannot return to, or perhaps one you’ve never known. Nostalgia is the ache for a time that you cannot reach because it no longer exists- in fact, it never existed at all. Only ever existed in your warped, pinked memories. 

Nostalgia is poking a festering bruise to see how many pretty colours it can turn. Nostalgia forgets the details and forgives everything. 

Harry feels it rock through him now, the ache, as he stands in the hallway of 4 Privet Drive. As he stares at his cupboard, the one under the stairs. As he fights the urge to try and climb inside it. 

It had taken Harry two months after the battle to owl Dudley. 

Dudley, 

Things are safer here. Going back to school but have some stuff to sort. Let me know when.

Give Alf a treat or he’ll bite. 

-Harry.

They’re in Guernsey Aug. 25-31. Come then. I won’t be here. Your owl did bite me. It’s worse than the other one.  Don’t send it again or they might see.

-D.

That’s how Harry found himself here, on a sickly hot day at the end of an even hotter summer, hands twitching by his sides, longing to reach out. 

He’d already done the room upstairs. Empty, newly painted a fresh white. As though something had tainted its walls just by sleeping inside it. Harry had never even touched it, barely breathed in there, honestly. But they had to repaint it just to be sure nothing of him clung to the space, that traces of him could never be found anywhere here. Harry was like a very bad dream you try to scrub out of your hair the next day. He'd waited idly at the threshold of the room for the tell-tale pop of house-elf apparition, as though pretending not to care might make it come. The hinges groaned, after, as he shut the door on the resounding silence. 

Now he faced the cupboard. 

Open it. Get in. Shut the door behind you. What if it’s different too? Don’t open it. Don’t find out. Have to know, have to know, have to-

Harry opened the door. 

A hoover. A tub of white emulsion - for the room upstairs, he supposed. Shelves laden with cleaning products and random containers and a whole lot of rubbish. Nothing important at all. 

He tried his best not to be offended.

Well, he thought, desperate, if I just move some stuff out of the way there will still be room for me. 

Harry started with the shelves. All purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner, glass cleaner- he wondered, who did the cleaning now? 

Then the boxes. Boxes of nothing, of rubbish. Screws, random electrical wires, replacement light bulbs. Spares. Stuff you didn’t know what to do with so you just shoved it in the cupboard under the stairs so no one had to see it. 

Piles and piles of shit and shit, a cupboard full of nothing meaningful at all. But it mattered to Harry, it mattered, it had to. 

‘Fucking hell, stop, stop stop stop,’ he did, when he realised he’d just been launching things into the corridor, and now the useless shit was all over the carpet. 

He’d made a mess. 

Fuck. 

‘Fucking shit.’ Harry didn’t want to get in the cupboard anymore, he wanted to get out of this fucking place. Away from the ugly furniture and the ugly carpet and the fucking rubbish that didn’t mean anything to anyone. But he needed something from in there, something that, despite appearances, wasn’t rubbish at all. 

Breaths coming short and putting as little of his body in the space as possible, he reached deep into the cupboard, down the side where it slanted to meet the floor, and felt for the join in the skirting board. Just behind it, where he’d left it, a folded up sheet of paper, so worn it barely held together as he pulled it from behind the wood. 

They hadn’t found it, didn’t know it existed here in the cupboard, the only proof that he ever had. It was the only thing he had at all, really, of his own. This was Harry's, and he wouldn’t let them have it. 

Before he left he set the things back on the shelf. He wondered if the magic of the floating charm would linger. He didn’t think he wanted it to, if he wanted anything of his left here. He shut the door on the cupboard of useless, meaningless shit, and was surprised to find himself, after all of that, on the outside, and not in there along with it. He locked it for good measure and regarded it one last time. It’s very small, he thought suddenly, horrifically, and made himself leave it behind. 

In a bizarre attempt at defiance, Harry smashed one of Aunt Petunia's decorative china plates, watched the shards skid across the kitchen linoleum. Felt truly underwhelmed, if slightly tetchy at the sight of the mess on the pristine floor. Reparoed it, put it back, and apparated. 

Grimmauld Place greeted him the way he assumed an aloof, disinterested relative might. Offering an old, cold hand for you to shake, but never hold. He supposed he had Walburga Black to thank for that, her cloying presence seeming to be the very glue fastening the wallpaper to the walls.

The difference between the two houses jarred him so severely he almost ended up on the floor in the entryway. Instead he leaned, back pressed against the stupidly sentient wallpaper and tried to remember how to feel his fingers. He stared up at the ceiling that seemed to go up for miles and miles and felt truly and utterly unmoored. 

He took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, didn’t put them back on. He left a trail of clothes in his wake on the way up to the bedroom, creating as much mess as he dared. It didn’t matter anyway, it was always gone when he woke up. As if by magic. By the time he got to bed all that remained were his boxers and the sheet of paper held tightly in his fist. He shoved it blindly into his bedside table, out of sight but not forgotten, and crawled between the sheets of the bed that belonged to his dead godfather. It was early afternoon but no sun made it past the curtains, and in the dark and without his glasses Harry could pretend that the walls weren’t so far away. He dare not make a sound, not for fear of discovery, but fear of the noise trailing out into the cavernous room. Skittering off the sides and coming back to haunt him. 

He lay awake, breathing softly despite the weight of his heart, and considered if the definition of a cupboard depended on its size or what, exactly, you were trying to conceal inside it.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

Jegulus Post-Dark-Mark-Reveal Angst

Apologise, the voice in his head demanded, say it was a mistake. 

Lie if you must.

Apologise, so that I can forgive you, came softer still. 

Because oh, how James bled to. 

But Regulus did not open his mouth. Instead, he met James’ gaze, his glacial eyes cold and unrepentant, and said nothing. 

James felt the fury melting from his face, his eyes growing round with horror. Regulus was giving up. Regulus had betrayed his promise. Regulus had chosen not to speak, and in doing so, doomed them both to die. 

James’ anger slammed back into him with enough force to kill all the hope he’d held still in his heart. 

‘Get out.’ He whispered with such wrath, the likes of which he’d never before known. 

Regulus flinched at the venom in James’ quiet order, as though he’d missed the words entirely and instead could hear the humming under James’ skin. The way the rage sang along his bones as it broke them, and the quiet creaking of James' skeleton as it rearranged itself, his ribs hardening around his heart. 

Regulus' eyes flickered across the older boy's face in almost imperceptible panic. Searching.

He cannot find me, James realised. I’m lost. 

A sick satisfaction reared its head in response to that, a serpent rising up to bare its bloody fangs to its twin, a twisted shadow against a left forearm. Satisfaction at the prospect of Regulus being disgusted by the thing that stood before him, reformed, unrecognisable. Never had the two boys looked more alike.

Good, James thought viciously. Let him see what I’ve become, what ugly thing loving him has turned me into. How it feels when I look upon him now, stood paralysed, unwilling to speak, and can no longer find anything of the boy I once loved.

Look at me, the part of James that still wished to be seen begged. 

Blaring, deafening silence met his wordless plea. His misery beat numbly in response. 

Once a naked flame, bruised lips, now cold blooded, poisoned tongued.

Look at us. Look at what you’ve done.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

If James Potter was the Sun, then Regulus Black was Icarus.

Regulus would douse himself in molten wax, let it melt his skin from his bones, plaster feathers to the raw flesh, a mockery of wings, if it meant he could fly. If he could climb into the sky, if he could just get closer. He ached to bask in the suns brilliance, blinding, but Regulus had never been able to look away. He longed to taste its heat on his tongue, feel the fingers of its flame grace his cheeks.

He’d always been so cold.

But it would all fall apart the moment he got too close. The moment he forgot he had no place up in the heavens, and the wax would melt, the wings would crumble, and he’d go hurtling towards the sea.

And as he plummets to his death all he can think is how much colder the water will feel now he knows the warmth of the sun.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

More Jegulus Pain

tw: gore, blood, death 

There was something dead across the room. James knew it was dead the way part of you always knows. Because of the unnatural, impossible stillness. A statue that’s failed to catch the likeness of a living thing in its brittle marble. Looks human, except it doesn't. Sunken, purpled holes where the eyes should have been, unfocused, not changing with the light, but draining it out of the room, sucking it into its nothingness. 

Pale. He’d never noticed the way you could almost see the blood thrumming under the skin before, but now it’s gone there’s a violent silence where the beating should have been. Probably bled to death, James thought, judging by the colour. It looked cold, tightened like it might already be decaying. The next time it would move with life would be when the maggots came to devour it from the inside out, wriggling and pulsing against thin flesh like a ghostly heartbeat. 

None of the softness of a living sleeping thing. Just a body that had been drained of life, hard, unfeeling, devolved past the point of recognition. 

James didn’t want to look at it anymore. 

His shaking fingers reached out for it but met with cool, sharp glass, the burn of the contact not even making him blink. The corpse raised a slack hand in return. 

Because it wasn’t a window that allowed him to look upon this dead thing. It was a mirror. 

James fluttered his fingers and the creature waved back. Bared his teeth and it smiled in reply.  Looked into his own eyes, the ones he’d had his whole life, and failed to see anything there at all. 

Whatever ancient star that made up this soul had blinked out like a light. Now there were just frail tethers holding his flagging body here, the cosmic strings snapping one by one under his weight. 

Because how does a boy live when separated from his soul, a body work when the brain won’t start. 

How does a lion live without its heart?

[mymelodramaticjournal]

James’ Unsent Letters

There are days when I try to think of the last time I called to you, but I can’t remember what for. It was probably to point out something so insignificant, or to get you to look at me. I don’t know if you turned, or what you looked like when you did. I can’t fucking remember when I last called you, Reg, because I didn’t think it would be the final time I could.

Of course, it’s not the last time I said your name, but it was the last time you answered.

I cry out to you. But you never, ever come.

Regulus.

In my nightmares I forget your face. In my dreams I’m burned by your touch. And when I’m awake no one can hear me calling.

I’m scared I’ll forget it all, all the little flashes of us. I hope if you remember anything, it’s that in every moment we had, all the love in the world was yours.

And I’ll try to hold on to them too. The times I called, and you turned, and I knew. The only seconds I ever stopped wondering, who will ever love me?

But who will ever love me now you’re gone? When I’ve forgotten how to say your name right, and you don’t recognise my voice. When I don’t know how long your hairs gotten, how it feels in my hands anymore. And you won’t have learnt of the way my face looks when i’m screaming your name, won’t know that it’s me, still, after all this time, because you don’t turn to answer.

Because whenever it was, and whatever for, that was the last time. And I can’t remember.

[mymelodramaticjournal]

James would master the darkest of magics, let it devour his soul, watch it grow twisted and charred inside him as he burnt it all down, everything, just to go back. Not to the beginning, not to do it all over again, not even to fix it, so that they could have had longer.

James would give it all over for just another minute. Maybe less. Just another moment of him. James wouldn’t even need to be looking him in the eye. It could just be watching him from across a clearing before he’d noticed James was there, staring at the side of his face as he gazed at some far off thing, painfully and quietly peaceful in his unawareness. Violently whole. Something small, private, insignificant, irreplicable, just for James. Another little secret.

He didn’t want for some big solution. Just something, anything more. Because that couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be all they’d had.

James had gotten a handful of months of the eighteen years Regulus had been here. And he’d give up every future moment, become something unrecognisable, corrupted by a darkness he’d gone to war to stop, just to steal one more whisper of time. One more look at Reg.

Because James wasn’t good or strong or better than that. He was just human, and now he was alone. What did it matter if what was left of his mangled soul rotted and died if he could see the other half of it again. He didn’t have much use for it now anyway.