Chapter Text
He’d known a boy by the name of Regulus once.
Sometimes he thinks of that little boy.
What a stupid little boy he was.
Now, he was just another number. Two four six. Number two hundred and forty six to join the camp. Not the first, but definitely not the last.
A sharp noise cuts through the air, interrupting the kids who stand outside picking weeds. Crucio; a noise only the freak kids could pick up, one made to directly shock a part of their brains developed after the sickness. The screaming starts immediately, kids doubling over to clutch their ears.
He doubles over himself, pain exploding throughout his whole body, forcing him to the ground. He slams his head into the dirt, as if it could block out the noise despite the fact it feels as though it’s buried itself deep into his bones. It’s worse than it’s ever felt before, but none of the other kids seem to notice as much as he does.
He’d once known a boy by the name Regulus.
He used to know a lot of things.
But Regulus was different now – the whole world was.
He slams his head against the ground again, writhing, screaming; and he thinks about that little boy.
What a stupid little boy he still was.
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
Death did not come silently.
It was quiet, sure, but not silent; not like everyone made it out to be. There were signs, ones people did not dare look close enough to see.
The truth was, no one wanted to hear the creeping of death knocking at their door. They chose to ignore such a thing. They chose to ignore it until it was too late, and then they would scream and cry and rage about how death chose its victims in silence.
But death was not silent.
It started with the coughing.
Children began to cough in their classrooms, in their homes, at the parks and in the stores.
This was something that could be brushed off. Coughing was not deadly, it was not fatal. A kid could live with a common cold; a common cough.
The twitching came next. Like children could not contain the energy that thrummed inside of them. Like it begged to be released in some physical form. It caused children to be berated, to be sent outside the classrooms or smacked upside the head by parental figures.
The seizures came after.
Full body ones that wracked their bodies, bowing their spines and stiffening their limbs as they shook and shook and shook.
Regulus knew of all these symptoms; he had faced them himself.
He was one of the first. At least, in his neighborhood, in his school.
But he had not been the first to die.
That had been a girl he did not know well, an older one, maybe twelve or thirteen. She was playing at the park with the other older kids, and Regulus had sat and watched, perched on the swings. He’d been sickly for the past few weeks; sick enough that his parents had kept him bedridden for much of the time. Sick enough his teachers had reached out, and he’d watched his parents and the older woman huddle together, whispering in low voices about something he could only crane to try and hear.
“...an illness… few kids… he might…”
And that was the most he’d gotten from them before he was whisked home by his older brother, and kept there while his body seized and twitched and wracked with coughs. And his brother had been there, taking care of him as their parents avoided the very sight of him.
It had taken much begging to convince his brother he was well enough to step foot outside, and even more screaming and crying to get their parents to allow his release. And finally, he was out in the grass again, ignoring the ache beneath his skin like his bones were growing too large for his body and trying to expand out of him.
But the other kids did not want to play with him. They’d been warned against it; kept back by their parents and guided elsewhere in the park. So he’d sat on the swings instead, pushing back and forth with his little slippered feet. Instead, he watched the other kids play, aching, burning.
And it was then, as the older girl climbed up the slide instead of going down it, that he watched her stiffen, watched her limbs twitch and spasm before she fell over the side of it and onto the wood chipped ground. Her head knocked the bright yellow plastic on the way down, and she lay limp on the ground. That only lasted a minute, before her body began spasming once more, full bodied this time, contorting her small frame on the ground. Children ran screaming as her parents rushed for her- just as his brother rushed forward, snatching his hand up and tugging him away.
Not before the screams of the mother reached his ears.
“It was him! He spread that- that disease! He caused this!”
He did not know until later that week the girl had died.
Maybe before the seizures had even ceased her body.
A month later, he and his older brother crouched atop the stairs as a broadcast on the tv spoke in a low tone, their parents watching it with tight expressions.
“My fellow people,” President Riddle spoke, his voice smooth and his expression smoother. It was a man who his parents were rather well acquainted with – or that was what they bragged of, at least. It wasn't enough that their business was one of the top booming in the country, nor that they lived in a mansion enough to house a hundred people.
“As many of you know, there is a crisis within our nation. Trust in me when I tell you we are working quickly and efficiently to handle this outburst of illnesses arising within our beloved children.
“In the meantime, if your or a child you know of seems to be suffering from any of these symptoms, be sure to alert the authorities. We must handle these cases quickly, before we lose any more of our families.”
A woman's voice goes on to prattle out a list of symptoms, ones Regulus was personally acquainted with. Him nor his brother are able to do much more eaves dropping before they’re yanked up and tugged away by their servant, Kreacher.
His brother laid in his bed that night, holding him tight, whispering that everything would be alright. Regulus was a smart child; and perhaps a bit of a pessimistic one. He knew things were not just magically going to get better, because magic was not real.
He knew it was not the dead kids that the president seemed worried of, either.
It was the kids who survived who they truly feared.
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The day he was taken, it was cold.
Not just cold; freezing. The type of freeze that if the sky had dared to rain, it would frost the grounds and slick the roads with ice.
Perhaps that would have been better. Perhaps then the bus would have slid along the road and crashed, and Regulus never would have reached that godforsaken camp.
Instead, he was forced into a seat with four other children. As one of the youngest, at only eight year olds, an older girl held him in her lap. It was almost comforting, the way her arms circled tight around him. He did not know if it was to ground him or herself, but her thumb rubbed softly against his arm anyways, her chest wracking with shuddering breaths.
One of the boys in the seat across from him began to whine. It was a low whine, the one that came before a cry; but before he could get it fully out of him, a gun from one of the officers pacing the bus clipped his jaw. It shut him up rather quickly, and he melted down into the rundown seat beneath him, eyes wide, lip busted, pants wettened.
Regulus glanced around for his brother, but there was no sight of him. Small shudders wracked his body, and the girl's arms tightened on him as he stared out the windows, tracing the lines of rain that ran down it.
In just a month, the windows would be blacked out. Fortunately for him, they just hadn’t thought of it yet.
He had been taken the night before, along with the rest of the children on this bus. They’d been kept in some type of warehouse overnight, an unnaturally bright one, where they weren’t allowed to sleep. When his eyes would begin to close, he’d be kicked roughly awake.
Regulus was not new to the hands of adults being laid on him, but this was different. It was not like the punishing hands of his father, who claimed he needed to be disciplined; nor the scented hands of his mother, who said it was for his better good. These harsh hits were filled with more than just cruelty; they were born from the hatred of children they didn’t know and didn’t dare try to. Disgust curled their lips and lined their eyes as they spat down at them, stepping atop their fingers and nudging their legs.
He was lucky, really. He could have been one of the earlier kids sent off to the camps. It was his brother who had fought — when the programs began to blare about sick children and the need for rehabilitation, to keep him safe inside their home instead.
In reality, he thinks it was the shame that truly made his parents keep him hidden in the start. The shame of one of their children being part of the sickness. They didn’t want the president to know it was one of their own, that the rich, special people's kids could also grow ill like the poor, peasant ones.
His bare feet flexed against the seat in front of him, wiggling the numbness out of his toes; or attempting to. Hunger was causing his head to feel light, for his stomach to cramp. This hunger was also different then the one he’d face in his own house, when he was forced to skip supper as a punishment. Instead, it coiled and snapped in his gut from not having eaten in almost two days now, causing soft whimpers to escape his lips. The girl holding him shushed him harshly in his ears, but her thumb renewed its soft stroking against his bound hands.
It was clear when they’d begun to pull up to the location. They turned sharply off the main road, onto a bumpy, dirt one. One that jostled the kids who’d been able to doze off awake sharply.
Regulus craned to peer out the window as they pulled up to the camp, eyes widening slightly as the bus rocked to a stop outside a towering gate. The officers on the bus stood to full attention, speaking low into the radios clipped to their bullet proof vests. Regulus wondered who it was they were afraid would shoot at them— surely not the children, who cowered in the seats before them.
Whatever the officers said got the gates to open, and the bus rolled off again, slow as it pulled in only to lurch to a stop again once the gate slid shut behind them. They were all forced to sit impossibly still as it did close, and the girl's arms gave him a final squeeze. She would later be identified as a green; but they would still not see each other ever again, except from the corner of their eyes across the camp. Opposite sexes were strictly forbidden from interacting.
Their bus was not the first bus to enter the camp, that had come just under a year before. Their bus would also not be the last. That would come in three years, when the camp's occupancy would max out, and the cabins would be stuffed as full as they could possibly get.
“Up,” one of the officers barked, and the kids hesitantly began to rise. The girl behind him lowered him to his feet just before she was yanked out, her hands instantly bound behind her back before she was shoved forward towards the exit. Regulus wanted to follow, to cling onto the only familiarity he had, but it was clearly not his time to leave.
“You will exit the bus, single file. You will stand in a line, outside the bus, and wait to be led off to be tested. You will not speak, you will not run. Understood?” Another officer was saying from just outside the door of the bus. Regulus was pulled up and shoved into the line, forced to stumble off with the rest of them. The younger kids seemed to have mainly been walked out first, with Regulus surely the smallest of them all. The oldest ones, though, reached to at least twelve, maybe thirteen.
Those were the ones who had hatred burning deep in their eyes, refusing to bow their backs or fold in their shoulders as Regulus had done.
“Fuck you!” One of the older boys shouted. He was immediately met with a gun to his jaw, slamming him back. With his hands bound behind his back, he had no way of defending himself, and his shirt collar was grabbed as his body was all but dragged down the steps and he was shoved to the ground.
He’d pushed himself up onto his knees, and as though he’d felt him staring, glanced over to Regulus. He’d given what Regulus supposed could be a nod of encouragement, flashing him a smile and showing off his teeth that were coated in fresh blood. A girl next to him, her hands also bound behind her back, lowered to try her best to help him up.
When he’d raised, Regulus was still staring, still watching; unlike the officers, who’d immediately turned their attention to the kids still being loaded off.
But Regulus stared. He stared as the older boy whispered something to the girl, who grinned sharp, wild. He stared as the girl crept forward, leaning over to whisper up into the officer's ear who had nailed the other boy in the mouth.
He stared as the officer's eyes went blank, as he raised his gun to his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Chaos unfolded.
Screams sounded, and one of them might have been his own. The older boy looked around wildly, staring at the kids, not an ounce of fear on his face. It was only rage that showed there; rage and desperation and hope. A hope Regulus did not feel.
“Run!” He screamed over the shouts of the officers. “Run, damn it!”
The girl was tackled to the ground seconds before he was. Some of the kids listened, running for the gates, only to be cut off by more officers who poured out from all over.
“RUN!” The older boy was still screaming until a muzzle was forced over his face and his head was shoved into the ground.
“An orange! We have an orange!” The officer who’d tackled the girl was shouting. His knee was pressed just between her shoulder blades as he forced a muzzle over her face; but the girl had gone limp, eyes hooded, lips parted, her air long cut off as he kneeled atop her small frame.
Kids still ran, still screamed; but Regulus stayed frozen.
I have nowhere to run to, he wanted to tell the older boy, who still stared at him, the hope in his eyes faltering, replaced with a deeper rage, with a disappointment that may have been directed at Regulus himself. Don’t look at me like that, he wanted to plead, because the look reminded him of the ones his brother would toss him when he cowered down to their parents. I have nowhere to run to. Someone shoved him to the ground harshly, pushing him to the dirt as a shot somewhere was fired off.
A deep trickle of dread had begun to slide down his spine as he and the remaining kids were led off. He was only able to crane back one final time and catch a glimpse of the officers marking an orange X with spray paint on the back of the older kids' clothes.
With a little more walking, Regulus was presented with the sight of other children, children who’d already been sorted off. They were in five colors total– green, blue, yellow, red, and orange. The kids in green and blue uniforms were allowed to walk freely, nothing binding their hands or feet as they walked the camp to their duties. The kids in yellow, red, and orange had to trudge the camp through chains, struggling against the muddied ground and the biting cold.
The oranges were all muzzled.
He was trembling, either from the cold or fear or the pain of the ground on his bare feet as he trudged forward. He tried to catch a glimpse of the girl who’d held him on the bus, but he wasn't able to rise high enough on his little toes before he was shoved forward again roughly by an officer pacing the line of kids.
He’ll come for me, his mind repeated in a mantra. He would never let them send me off like this. He’ll come for me. Siri will come to save me. He always has.
And then, lifting his head up to peer around again, it was a different mantra repeating in his head.
Not a red. Not an orange. Not a red. Not an orange.
The kids from the bus were forced into a small, damp room, and one at a time were led off into another room. They clearly exited from a separate door, because Regulus did not get to see what came of them before another one was led back.
“Don’t be scared.”
Regulus glances over to the boy standing next to him, looking fierce. It was a dark skinned boy with hair lighter than Regulus had ever seen. He recognized him as the one who'd shoved Regulus to the ground outside when the gun had sounded. His name was scrawled on his shirt in dark marker that could have been sharpie; Evan Rosier.
“Don’t be scared. Don’t let them see it.”
Regulus swallows thickly, blinking back the sudden burning in his eyes. He hadn’t cried the whole way here, nor on the bus, nor when he’d been shoved into a warehouse. He hadn’t even cried when he was snatched off his porch before it all.
But tears burn hot in his eyes now, and he inhales harshly, lips parting. The boy, Evan, reaches back to entwine their fingers, keeping them hidden between Regulus’ pajamas and Evan’s puffer jacket.
“You look young,” he whispers, and Regulus rolls his lips together, trying to decide if he wanted to risk being hit by one of the watching officers for speaking.
“I’m… eight.”
Evan gives him another fierce look, squeezing his hand.
“I’m nine. That means I’ll look after you, okay?”
Evan was led off shortly after, shoved into the door, and Regulus was left alone again, trembling harshly against the bitter cold biting at his skin.
“You,” one of the officers nudged him with the toe of his steeled boot, making a face of disgust, and Regulus struggled to his aching feet, limping off into the room slowly.
The man waiting was a pudgy one, stout. He looked like a doctor, in a white jacket and a stethoscope around his neck; a rolling tray of tools sitting next to him. His eyes do a double take over Regulus before he grimaces.
“They just get younger and younger, huh? I’m doctor Slughorn, come have a seat.”
Regulus remained frozen at the door, staring at him blankly. The doctor was growing antsy- or annoyed.
“Come. Sit.” He repeats, pointing at the bed Regulus was used to in the hospitals.
“I’m not sick anymore,” he whispers. The man gives him a pitying glance.
“This is not about the disease anymore, boy. Not the one you’re worried about. Come and sit, before I have to grab an officer from outside. And they will not be as nice as I am.”
Regulus glances at the machine, and the man gives another pitying sigh.
“It’s just like a catscan. Have you ever broken a bone? Bumped your head?”
Regulus stays silent, inching closer a step and away from the door. The man gives him an encouraging nod. “I’m just going to take a peek inside your head, see what’s going on in there. Damn, didn’t they pre-classify you?” He cuts off his own words, his voice harshening back into annoyance as he flips through a paper he holds then scans over Regulus.
“Classify?” he repeats dumbly, and the man nods.
“Green? Yellow? Blue? Are you incredibly good at puzzles, and math? Greens have enhanced intelligence,” he continues on, waving a hand. Regulus shakes his head, trembles beginning in his body.
“Whats your name, boy?”
He stays silent, and the doctor's patience runs thin. “Name?”
“Regulus Black.”
“Good, okay Regulus, just come take a seat and I’ll take a look at your symptoms–”
“I don’t have any symptoms!”
The doctor begins his way over, and Regulus stumbles back, slamming into the door, shaking his head quickly.
What had the colors been? Green, blue, yellow, red, orange-
Orange, like the boy with the bloody mouth. Like all the muzzled children outside.
He’ll know, his mind cries as he fumbles blindly for the door handle behind him. He’ll know what you did to them.
He hadn’t been ready to run before, but he was now. He didn’t have time to turn for the door before the doctor's hand seized the back of his neck, his skin hot against the freezing of Regulus’ own.
He hadn’t cried before, not yet- but he did now. A sharp cry that bubbled off into tears as a tearing sensation sliced through his head, like it could split open and spill all the secrets he hid tight within.
Then there were flashes. Images sliding through his mind. He was a man, sitting at a table, staring down at a phone with his own multitude of messages going unresponded to. He was sitting on the couch, staring at the tv as the president spoke. He was drowning his sorrows in burning whiskey. He was staring down officers dressed in full uniform at his door, demanding his presence. He was pressing a needle into a kid who fussed and struggled against the very bed he tried to lure Regulus to, guilt bleeding into his thoughts but his own instincts to survive, to get away from these beastly kids and worse men, stronger than them.
Regulus falls to the ground, gasping in soft sobs, hands bracing against the cold tiles. Slughorn's hand doesn’t fall away, his eyes distant, his mouth open.
“I’m green,” he sobs, gulping in a breath of air, knuckling at his eyes. “I’m green, I’m green. Please, I’m green. Please, please”
I want my brother, I want my brother. He’ll come for me. He’ll protect me. He always has.
“You’re,” the man gasps out, blinking harshly a few times. His eyes seem to go in and out of focus as his hand finally drops away. “You’re green.”
“I’m green,” Regulus repeats, his sobbing ceasing to soft cries. Slughorn nods distantly, walking over to grab a spray paint and a bundle of clothes.
“You’re green,” Slughorn repeats, stronger than before. He prattles on about how this was truly the best outcome for Regulus, painting the green X over the clothes before handing them off to the young boy.
Regulus is led out of the room, and a creeping realization crawls over him.
He had his one chance to escape, and he’d missed it.
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The cabins they were assigned were rundown and poorly built; clearly they’d done them in haste in an attempt to hurry for the waves of children brought in constantly.
His cabin was capped after thirty children were stocked within it, crowded and with only the heat of their bodies to keep themselves warm against the bitter wind that slipped through the cracks of the cabin walls.
Evan was green, too. Regulus had seen him as he was shoved into the cabin, forty minutes before lights out. The older boy, who’d spotted him first, had run over, grinning down at him with a worn out expression and tired eyes that should never belong to a nine year old.
When lights went out, that meant no talking was allowed to go on. Evan, though, whispered down from his top bunk between the crack against the wall, trying to peer down at the smaller boy through it.
“I have a younger sister,” he was telling him softly, in a tone that could lull him to sleep if his body wasn’t vibrating with so much energy. “She’s the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet, very quiet, not shy but a little introverted. I had a mother, who liked to bake us cookies and read us bedtime stories. My dad was a dick,” he bites out, and Regulus loses a small snort at that, blinking at the word in surprise.
“What about you?” He asks. Regulus stiffens, running his fingers along the rough blankets beside him.
“My parents are dead,” he lies, perhaps because it is easier than speaking the truth. Evan is quiet for a moment, shifting atop him.
“Any siblings?"
Again, Regulus hesitates, breaths slow, fingers stilling.
“A brother,” he rasps out.
“We’ll find them again,” Evan says surely.
Regulus wants to agree, but he knows he’d never be able to find his brother. It would always be the other way around. It would always be his older brother finding him, saving him.
His brother would find him. He would.
If his brother was looking.
“He left late last night, Regulus. The maid saw him fleeing. He left you long behind.”
He curls up in his bed, hugging the blanket to his chest like he could hold everything that ached within. He ignored the feeling of his bones, of how they felt like they wished to stretch far beyond his skin and body and being, and hoped to keep them encased in.
He had no more time for crying. He had questions.
“What will they do with us?” He whispers up to Evan, rolling onto his back to stare at the uneven wood of the bunk above. Evan is quiet for a moment, and he wonders if the older boy fell asleep. Like another other boy in the room, whose soft sobs had quietly fallen into snores across from them.
“I don’t know,” he finally replies, voice heavy, leaden. “Maybe to test our brains, since they think something is wrong.”
“Do you think something is wrong?”
Again, he’s silent for a long time before replying.
“Something’s not right. But that doesn’t make us wrong. It doesn’t make us bad.”
Regulus picks at his skin, rolling his lips together, blinking blurrily at the wall. Sleep weighs heavy on his mind, catching up from the days of it lacking, but he doesn’t wish to sleep. His very being seems to vibrate with adrenaline.
That doesn’t make us bad.
But did it?
He thinks back to the girl outside, who with just one command had made that Officer kill himself.
He thinks back to himself, how with just one touch he’d made that man forget what his color was.
To his parents.
He thinks to his brother. Is that why he had left? Had he sensed a darkness in Regulus rising, and knew there was no saving him?
You could’ve taken me. I would have been good for you. I would have.
But maybe his brother was right to leave him behind. Maybe he would have done the same thing to his brother that he had done to his parents. Maybe it was a blessing his brother had left him behind; he could not have imagined what he would’ve done with himself if it had been his older brother instead.
“What will they do with us?” Regulus repeats, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing his knuckles to them. Evan sighs, tossing and turning in the bunk above.
“Maybe,” he says, voice softer, “they’ll just keep us here until they find a cure. That’s what my dad told me, when they were taking me and my sister away.”
Regulus is quiet, twisting his fingers together until they turn red. “Is your sister in this camp too?”
“No. She ran. I… told her to.”
“Ah.”
He doesn’t think there’s much else to say, but Evans voice cuts in again, stronger, filled with certainty.
“We’ll be alright. We’ll stick together, have each other. And when we get out, we’ll go wherever we want to. Do whatever we want to.”
His older brother had used to tell him that sometimes, just saying something could make it real enough to come into existence. Regulus didn’t know if he believed that— he didn’t know if it ever seemed possible to escape from this hell.
But Evan was right. They had each other. And for the next seven years, they continued to have each other. The way he spoke, with such surety, almost made Regulus believe what he said could be true. He just had to stick with him, to duck in his shadow and not be found out. They would be fine. He would be fine.
And he was fine, with Evan, for the next seven years.
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Seven years feels like a lifetime when all you do is live and breathe camp air.
Within the first two years of living in Azkaban, the camp facilitators started work on the factory. The rehabilitation had failed, or at least for the dangerous ones they claimed it did. They had hauled them all off in the middle of the night. But the improvements on their part did not stop there.
They decided they wanted the camp to be entirely self-sufficient. From that point on, it was the children who would be growing their own crops, serving out meals, fixing the uniforms and making more for those who would come.
The brick structure was when the real labor began. Day and night they’d have them digging out the far west of the camp, laying out the grounding and digging up all that blocked them. They didn’t trust them with the actual construction of it, though, perhaps with all the dangerous tools. So after they finished digging up the ground for their work, they began building it up. Week after week they watched it get built, floor by floor, until it towered above them.
Everyone speculated on what it would be used for — if scientists were returning and doing more experiments, if that was where the Reds, Yellows, and Oranges would be put if they ever returned. If that was where they were going to get put, if they decided to be rid of them once and for all like the others.
“We’re going to be okay, Regulus,” Evan told him one night, daring to be tucked in his bed beside him. “You hear me? We’re going to be okay together.”
But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay in the beginning, and it wasn’t okay now.
Finally, the factory was finished, and it wasn’t much later that work within it began. They had them polishing and lacing boots on some days, which was what they did then. There was no speaking in the factory — there was no speaking anywhere in the camp, actually, until you’re back in your cabin right before lights out.
The factory wasn’t much of a factory. It reminded Regulus of the warehouses he used to visit with his father, stuff that held things for all his capital businesses or whatever.
The camp controllers tried to keep things as simple as possible. They set up rows of tables, which was where the boys worked. There were at least a hundred of them working in the factory that morning, all in matching green uniforms. At least ten DEA officers patrolled the rows, guns slung over their backs or held loosely in their arms.
The cold weather from outside seeped in through the windows and walls, stiffening and numbing Regulus’ body. His fingers ached as they looped laces through boots for the DEA’s, no less unnerved as usual feeling their eyes press into his back and watch his every move.
He knew he wasn’t keeping up, not with Evan who worked swiftly beside him, nor with the other boys. He didn’t know if it was the fact they were actual greens, with enhanced intelligence, that made it so easy for them to work so swift and sharp, but he lacked the certain nimbleness they had of lacing boots. The sharp scent of shoe polish was making his head pound, and he felt heavy with sleep and bitter with frost. The work wasn’t exactly difficult– not like being out in the gardens or scrubbing washroom floors, but it was brain numbing. Evan called it busy-work, like the work they’d hand out in school to keep you consumed in what you were doing. Sure, they weren’t back in their cabins doing nothing, but it wasn’t like they preferred doing this over nothing.
Regulus knew he was standing behind him long before the DEA actually approached. He could feel the burn of his eyes running up and down his form, tracing his movements and watching his work. When he did finally come up, he pressed close. There was a no touching rule for the kids there, but that didn’t mean the officers couldn’t touch him, which they did. Like now, as the man's chest pressed to his back, and his boots, a matching pair to what Regulus scrubbed with renewed interest on the table, dug harshly into his ankle, biting into the soft skin.
“Ten… thirteen…. Seventeen…” he counts slowly, his arm leaning over Regulus’ shoulder to flick at the laces as he did so. He could see Evan glance over, his own work slowing. When Regulus didn’t respond, the officer managed to press even closer, his other arm now over Regulus’ other shoulder, forcing him into the man's chest.
He wanted to shrink down into the floor until he was nothing but the freezing concrete beneath him. He wanted to dissipate into the very air and cease to exist.
“Wrong,” the man was whispering roughly into his ear, elbowing his side as he picked at another lace, examining the slick of polish on them.
“You’re doing it wrong, boy. Look at me!”
A trick. They weren’t supposed to look at them.
Chuckles sounded behind him — not from the boys, but the other officers who were now watching the spectacle. It felt like Regulus was burning, despite the cold draft breezing in from the open door. It couldn’t have been any more than thirty outside, but sweat was beginning to trace down his forehead.
Evan’s elbow brushed against Regulus’ beside him, maybe just to remind him of his presence. His expression was stony, lips pinched, and Regulus could only imagine the words he was biting back, holding on his tongue.
The DEA picks up a boot, then with deceptive calmness lays it back out in front of him. In just one sweeping motion, he’s knocked the whole bin of them off the table and to the ground.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong! For a green, you’re awfully stupid. A pretty face won’t get you anywhere here, doll. You’ve done the laces all wrong.”
Regulus’ shoulders curl into themselves as the man prods a finger over and over again into his temple, tapping out his anger. Red had begun to bloom against his neck and disappear down into his uniform.
“Are you deaf as you are dumb, Green?” He snaps, Regulus’ silence having only egged him on. He bites harsh at his tongue, eyes on the ground, back rigid.
Then, deep and low in a dangerous tone, Evan speaks.
“That was my bin.”
No, Regulus squeezes his eyes shut, resisting pinching at his nose bridge or screaming or tearing his hair from his very head. No, you idiot. Just let him rant. Don’t get yourself into any trouble.
“What’d you just say, boy?”
Regulus did not have to look at him to see the insult rise to his lips, burning his eyes with hatred. “You heard me. Or did you get dropped one too many times as a baby and lost the only poor brain cells you were born with?
God damn it, Evan.
He could feel Evans look burning into his side, could feel him asking for backup, but he’d frozen, blank. He stayed in his spot, tucking further into himself, wrapping his arms around himself as the DEA stepped from him to Evan instead.
Don’t, he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut again only to peer over at the scene. It’ll be different for you then him. You’re not like how he is. It felt like he was betraying him, his voice once again locked within his throat and burning.
He's back in his house, six years old as his older brother takes his punishment, again and again.
No punishment for Evan would ever be as bad as if they looked into Regulus’ files and saw them blank, ready to be filled. If they started poking around in his head and found out what he truly was.
That’s what he told himself, at least.
“Well, don’t you have a loud mouth.”
Come on, Regulus, he could all but see Evan say — in the way he tilted his head and squared his shoulders. Help me like how I helped you.
But he couldn’t.
The DEA stepped forward, snatching his arm up and wrenching Evan away.
Look back. He begged in his head as Evan was dragged off. Look at me. So he could see how sorry he was.
But he didn’t.
The punishment for speaking out of term to a DEA was a day's worth of isolation, handcuffed outside in the garden, no food or water. It didn't matter the weather, like now, how it was raining and cold.
Whatever the repeat offense punishment was, Regulus would never know. Evan came in two days later, shaking and wet and too angry or maybe terrified to say. He strolled right in past Regulus, who followed him anyways, eyes wide and stomach knotted.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pleading. His hand slipped around his arm, his head pounding, but Evan pulled away sharply, jaw tight, eyes narrowed.
“Evan,” he begged, hating the way his voice shook. He knew he wasn’t worthy of having such a friend, not when he was cowardly, not when he hid when Evan did all he could to defend him. But he needed him. Evan didn’t stop or deign to look at him until they were both at the bunks, one of his hands curled into the wood and ready to haul himself up.
“Please, say something.”
“You just stood there,” he says darkly, voice harsh like he hadn’t used it in days. Regulus flinches, bottom lip wobbling.
“You shouldn’t have—”
Evan snapped his head up, glaring at him, eyes dark and narrowed. Regulus wished nothing more than for him to look away again now instead.
“Of course I should have, Regulus. I told you before and I’ll tell you again; I will protect you. Shit, I just wish sometimes you’d stand up for yourself. That maybe one day you’d stand up for me, too. They say all these horrible things, hurt you, and you never fight back, never even speak up. Do you even care? Do you even want to make it out of here? Or are you happy to die in this camp, in these cabins, to their hands?”
Regulus was shaking too, now, gasping in sharp breaths as he shook his head. Evans' voice was barely above a whisper, but he might as well have been screaming and shaking him.
“Ev- Evan–”
“I want to be alone now,” he whispers, darting his eyes away. Tears caught in his lashes, a sight Regulus didn’t see often, but they didn’t fall. He noticed now, though, the dark purple marks that circled his throat. “Just for now. Just for a while.”
He shouldn’t have reached for him. Not when he felt so feverish. Not when he was so upset. Not when he was trembling with bone deep hatred for himself. But his hand circled Evans wrist anyways, desperate to explain, to not make him look at him like that ever again. He was all Regulus had here. He couldn’t stand to think that Evan might hate him forever now.
And then his head was splitting open, and his bones were expanding out of his skin, and he wasn’t himself anymore. He was staring at memories, but they weren’t his own— flashes of being in a schoolroom, of a man standing over him with horrifying eyes. Of a pretty woman with blonde hair and pale skin stroking his cheek softly, singing a soft lullaby. Of a baby sister he got to hold in his arms who he was barely bigger than. The vegetables being pulled up from the gardens. The brick wall of the mess hall against his face as another and another fist rained down onto him.
Then Regulus was jerking away, gulping in fresh air like his head had been ducked underwater. He thought, for a second, Evan had realized what he’d done. That he had known he’d picked and plucked through his memories like he was flicking through tv shows. He tensed, frozen, lips parted as he stared at the blurry, distant, wide eyes of his best friend before him. He recognized that blank look, though.
“Are you new here?” He demanded, looking suddenly fierce; defensive. His eyes flicked down Regulus’ skinny figure, to his shaking hands, to his face all over again. He sucked in a deep breath, like he was coming up from dark waters for a breath of fresh air. His eyes flickered, warring, glaring, brows knitting. “Do you have a name?”
“Regulus,” he whispered. It was the last word he spoke for nearly two years.