Chapter Text
There was a photograph on the mantelpiece that Regulus had memorized so thoroughly he could have painted it from memory alone.
It was taken during a winter solstice celebration, back when they were young enough that the formality of the pack hadn’t yet calcified into something cold and somewhat political. Sirius was seven or maybe eight, his dark curls escaping whatever their mother had tried to put in it to tame them, his mouth split into a grin so wide it looked almost painful. He was holding Regulus, round-cheeked and solemn, above his head like a trophy and Regulus had one small fist buried in Sirius’ hair and was laughing.
Regulus didn’t remember the moment. But he had studied that photograph for years, trying to reconstruct the memory with the picture. The way Sirius’ arms were shaking with effort, the way Regulus’ head was thrown back, even the stiff, formal backdrop of the Black pack’s territory seemed, like it could never extinguish their light.
But joy in the Black household was a dangerous thing. It’s not like it was non existent though.
Walburga, for example, smiled with great precision at the correct moments. She was always "happy" at mating ceremonies, pack alliances or at the joyous announcement that some pure blood omega is bringing yet another child to the world.
As for their father Orion, he laughed occasionally, the deep rumbling sound of a man who had learned that controlled displays of warmth consolidated loyalty better than coldness alone. The Black pack performed happiness the way they performed everything else. With calculation, with purpose and with a clear understanding that emotions were to be controlled, not indulged.
But Sirius never understood this.
He was joyous the same way some people are breathtakingly beautiful — obliviously and without any apparent awareness of how inconvenient it was for everyone around them.
He laughed loudly too often. He made friends with wolves from lesser packs. Ha acted like bloodlines were simply a boring detail rather than the entire hierarchy of their society. He questioned. He pushed. He took up space in a family that had decided, generations before his birth, exactly how much space each of its members was permitted.
And because Sirius was joyous, and because joy was dangerous, Regulus was the one who paid attention.
But he didn’t pay attention out of survival instinct. Mostly it was because Regulus loved his brother like very small planets love very bright stars ; helplessly, gravitationally, with a constant low awareness that the brightness was both his guiding light and the source of the danger.
“There are other packs,” Sirius told him once.
They were twelve and ten, lying in the tall grass at the far edge of their territory, far enough from the house that the sound of their parents’ voices had dissolved into the general noise of wind and birdsong.
Sirius was staring at the sky with the expression he always got when he was about to say something that would get him into trouble.
“I know,” Regulus said.
“No, I mean- good packs. Packs where the alpha doesn’t treat omegas like- like livestock. Like they’re broodmares.” Sirius turned his head to look at him. “I’ve heard about them. They exist.”
Regulus picked a piece of grass and started methodically tugging at it. “Mother would say that’s a fantasy told to rebellious young wolves to make them discontent.”
“Mother would say that.” Sirius grinned. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
This was the thing about Sirius that was the most dangerous and that Regulus liked the most. Sirius had the absolutely unshakeable belief that the world had better things coming for him. Better than what he’d already been given.
But it wasn’t naivety tho. Regulus had watched his brother understand exactly what their pack was, exactly what it expected of them and exactly what it would take from them. Sirius knew. He simply refused this reality with breathtaking stubbornness. He refused to accept that knowing what his future was supposed to be made it inevitable and impossible to change.
“One day,” Sirius said, “we’ll leave. We’ll go somewhere else and make our own pack. A proper one. Where everyone can choose. Where omegas aren’t sold off without any say.”
“You’ve been saying that since you were eight.”
“I’ve meant it since I was eight.”
Regulus looked at the sky. A hawk was turning lazy circles high above them, so high it was nearly nothing but a dark dot in the blue sky. And he let himself think of a pack that would let everyone chose for themselves. He thought about pups who grew up without learning to be careful with their happiness. Who grew up in a safe and loving environment.
“That would be great,” he said quietly, a shy and hopeful smile on his lips.
Sirius reached over and knocked his shoulder with his. “We’ll go together. When the time is right.”
When the time is right...
Regulus said nothing, and ripped his pieces of grass into smaller and smaller pieces, as he watched the hawk disappear.
⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚
Sirius presented on a Tuesday in October, three weeks before his sixteenth birthday.
Regulus knew before anyone could tell him. He just felt it, the same way he felt most things concerning his brother. There was a shift in the atmosphere of the house an undetectable change in the pressure of the air, a heavy silence that preceded something significant.
He was in his room doing French Grammar exercises when he heard his mother’s voice drop into the register she used for private calculations, and he set down his pen and felt a chill down his spine.
When Sirius came to find him two hours later, Regulus already had his face arranged into something neutral.
“Well,” Sirius said, closing the door behind him.
“You’re an omega,” Regulus said. It wasn’t a question.
Sirius leaned against the door. He was trying to look unconcerned and he almost managed it. “They’re going to find me a husband.”
“I know.”
“Someone old, wealthy and important and- and suffocating.” His voice had gone flat in the way it did when he was leaving out something important. “Mother’s already making lists of suitable alphas. I just know it, she had that look in her eyes when she came into my room, y’know.”
Regulus thought about the lists. His mother’s handwriting, neat and deliberate, moving down a page. Names. Ages. Pack affiliations. His brother’s future being fully organized into boxes that Sirius was never meant to fit in.
“Sirius,” he said carefully.
“I have to go.” Sirius met his eyes. “You know I do. I can’t- I won’t survive it, Reg. Being mated to someone who- “ He stopped, his voice had cracked. And after breathing in and out, he tried again. “My first heat is coming. I can feel it, it’s right around the corner. It’s like something’s building inside me... When it comes, I have to be gone already.”
The room was very quiet.
Regulus looked at his brother. At his bright grey eyes, his clenched jaw, his hands that were slightly too still, he knew that Sirius was holding himself together by force of will alone and he understood with a clarity that felt like breaking something cleanly in half, that this was the moment they had always been moving toward.
“Take me with you,” Regulus said.
The words came out before he could stop them, and he watched Sirius’ face do something complicated and terrible.
“Reg- “
“I can help. I can carry things, I can-"
“You haven’t even presented yet.” Sirius crossed the room and sat beside him on the bed, and took his face in both hands the way he used to do when Regulus was very small and frightened by thunderstorms. “You can’t turn yet. You can’t run if you need to. And if they catch us- if they catch you- “
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” Sirius’ voice cracked on the words. “I care, Regulus. I care more than-" his voice cracked. "But I can’t take you with me. Not now. Not like this.”
Regulus wanted to argue. He had arguments ready, he always had arguments ready, after all he was the one in this family who had learned how to make the best.
But he looked at his brother’s face and understood that this was one of the arguments he was not meant to win. And that winning would, in some way he couldn’t quite articulate, be the worst possible outcome for the both of them.
“Then go,” he said instead. His voice was steady. He was proud of how steady it was. “Go far. Go somewhere they won’t look. Go make your pack reality.”
“I’m coming back for you.” Sirius’ hands tightened. “As soon as you present, as soon as you’re old enough to run- “
“I know.”
“Reg. I’m coming back.”
“I know, Sirius.” Regulus covered his brother’s hands with his own. “But go first. Please go. The life they want for you- “ He had to pause, had to breathe through the thing tightening in his chest. “It would kill you. I know you better than I know myself and I know what it would do to you, I can’t watch that happen. I refuse to watch that. So please. go.” He managed something that was almost a smile. “I’m a grown-up now, I’ll be fine.”
Sirius made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob, a mix of both really.
He pulled Regulus into a hug so tight it was almost painful, his face pressed into Regulus’ hair while Regulus held onto his brother with everything he had.
“I love you,” Sirius said into his hair. “I love you so much, my reggie.
“I know.” Regulus closed his eyes. “I love you too. Now go.”
He listened to his brother leave in the early hours of the morning.
He didn’t go to the window. He laid in his bed with Sirius’ old hoodie pressed against his face and he listened, used to hear his brother existing somewhere near him, only to be met with the absence of hyperactive footsteps and the absence of breathing. Truly that absence was so much more noticeable than what he had anticipated.
His wolf, not yet fully awakened, stirred somewhere deep in him and whined.
Go after him, it said, Go after him, he’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s-
“I know,” Regulus whispered to the dark.
The house was very quiet.
Somewhere outside, a wolf was running.