#sirius is having the exact same flashbacks btw

[florsial]

Regulus cries more often than not. It's something he's picked up on during the war. When he felt like there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, when he felt as if he couldn't differentiate between the nightmares to reality. He doesn't sleep because of it, he just spends his nights crying. Walburga told him he sounded like a wailing baby. She doesn't look at him.

But James notices he cries more after the cave. Mornings, afternoons, nights. He can hear it from his room. When he eats breakfast. When he slips under the blankets. During meetings. It rings in his ears. In Sirius' too, he can tell.

They don't do anything about it in the beginning. James didn't want to be overbearing, so he just let Regulus be, let him cry it all out. But it seemed as if there wasn't a bottom in the endless pit. Regulus just kept crying. Crying. And when he isn't, he just stares off. It isn't much better than the wailing.

One day, it gets too much. When he hears Regulus crying, he walks into the younger's room and starts to cry as well when he sees Regulus doing nothing but just sitting at the end of his bed. His face was in his hands and crying, wailing, again and again.

"I'm sorry, I-I'm sorry..." James says repeatedly. He doesn't know how, but he finds himself kneeling in front of Regulus, his face buried in the younger's knees. They are both crying. He's apologizing and Regulus is wailing without words.

It's almost comforting. The two of them acting like a complete mess together. Sobbing in each other presence. Holding onto each other for dear life because they don't know when it will slip from their grasp during the war. It's so comforting that James doesn't realize when they've stopped crying until his weak and broken repeating of, "I'm sorry" is finally stopped by Regulus carding his fingers into his curly and whispering, "I'm sorry too."

They both feel lighter after that.