Chapter Text
Regulus Black blinked his eyes open, squinting against the onslaught of blurred, indistinguishable colours that bled together, like a watercolour painting.
He inhaled shakily (he could breathe? how, why could he breathe—), only to choke on the heavy, suffocating, metallic tang of blood. He blinked, long and slow. Mind blank as he stared, uncomprehending, at the liquid, pooled mere inches from Regulus’ face.
A layer of cold sweat clung to Regulus like a second skin, leaving him feeling weary, disorientated, too small and too large all at once.
He placed his (too small to be his) palms flat on the cold, hard ground (but he’d been in a lake, drowning, dying—) and pushed himself upright on trembling limbs, movements excruciatingly slow, encumbered by that sense that this was all very, terribly wrong—
Nope. He squeezed his eyes shut tight against the dizzying, non-sensical sight before him. Regulus remembered the cave, the potion, the horcrux, the Inferi, drowning, pain, and then nothing. His consciousness and sense of self fading, a dull haze embracing him as he died—
He swallowed jaggedly, throat scraped raw with dread. He clenched his jaw against a wave of nausea, and clambered clumsily onto trembling legs, knees and palms scraping against concrete.
The side-alley he’d awoken in was illuminated by the faint glow of the full moon, and the ominous pool of liquid he’d laid beside (blood, it was blood—) gleamed a brilliant blackness, like a puddle of tar.
He turned. Blinked. Oh. There was a body.
Regulus inched around the puddle, and closed the distance in two steps, peering down into unseeing, wide eyes forever frozen in terror. He stared and stared and stared—
He tore his gaze from the corpse, stumbled out of the side-alley onto a wide street, and—
Regulus stilled.
It was a macabre sight, something out of a nightmare, like the aftermath of a Death Eater raid. A street, littered with bodies, painted red with blood, chords of moonlight casting shadows across hollow, stiff faces.
His movements were awkward and stilted, as he struggled to adjust to his smaller (far too short) legs, stumbling over his own feet. Regulus teetered along, tripping over splayed limbs and slipping on blood, gut churning with a muted sense of terror.
His feet led him down the streets without conscious thought, the sound of Regulus’ footsteps the sole sound cutting through the eerie silence.
His gaze lingered on the traditional Japanese architecture, on the red-and-white paper fans depicted on the walls, on the signs written in a language Regulus could not read, mind spinning with incomprehension.
(where was he? why was he still alive? why, whywhy, why—)
He came to a halt before a large, ornate building with high walls and a gated entrance, black tiled roofing with broad eaves, and perfectly curated shrubbery. It was extravagant, beautiful. Yet, it had Regulus’ nerves screaming with alarm.
Pointedly ignoring the glaring, blaring warning signs, Regulus walked inside. It was a horrible mistake, he already knew, but there was a tug in his navel, an impossible-to-ignore foreign sense of urgency driving him onwards. It was silent, save for Regulus’ too loud footsteps echoing down the dark hallway. He walked and walked, noting that all the shoji screen doors were shut, except for—
He stood in an open doorway, staring into a pair of eerie, glowing red eyes belonging to an impossibly pretty, young boy. No older than fifteen.
His gaze snagged on a flash of metal—a sword dripping crimson, and glanced down at the two corpses splayed at the boy’s feet. He gripped the doorframe so hard his knuckles turned white. Ears ringing. Regulus could taste terror in his mouth, coating his tongue.
“Otouto.” The boy’s expression was icy and unforgiving. Like winter at its cruelest, frigid like the blistering wind. He stared and stared, unblinking, eyes blown wide, mind utterly blank—unable to understand the word spoken and very unwilling to let the boy, the murderer know.
The boy opened his mouth, again, to speak—still wearing that terrible look of cold indifference—but the words were lost to Regulus, as he internally reeled, trying and failing to comprehend that the one obviously responsible for the sea of corpses choking the streets outside was a child.
He stumbled backwards, every inch of his being screaming at him to run as Regulus abruptly, jarringly realised that he was alone with a mass murderer. So, he turned and fled, footsteps thundering as he pelted outside and down the bloodied streets, mind churning with fear and confusion—
He staggered as light exploded behind his eyes, a sharp lance of pain ricocheting through his skull, head pounding erratically as images (memories) rushed to the forefront, clear and sharp—of nii-san’s piggy-back rides, of finally producing a successful Katon; Gokakyu no Jutsu, of nii-san teaching him to throw a kunai, of his kaa-san’s soft voice reading him bedtime stories, of Shisui-nii’s infectious smiles, of impatiently hovering by the front door; waiting for nii-san to come home—
A pained wail tore its way out of Regulus’ throat. His reality fracturing, shattering, and reshaping itself as the memories of two lives—of eighteen year-old Regulus Black and seven year-old Uchiha Sasuke—assimilated.
Then, the boy—Itachi—was standing in Regulus’ path, having dropped down from the rooftops with an inhuman grace.
Regulus stumbled, pitching forward, feet skidding on the concrete. He choked on the mess of emotions tangling up in his throat, breath coming out in sharp, shallow pants, trembling fingers curling into white-knuckled fists.
Harp strings of moonlight chased shadows across Itachi’s flat, cold expression, giving it an eerie edge. His terrible red eyes burning with a searing intensity.
He could now recognise the corpses that Regulus had stumbled past, disregarded without care. Could put names to unseeing, bloodied faces from Sasuke’s memories. But that’s all they were. Memories. It was akin to watching a play, reading a novel, or one of those Muggle films—seeing it all from a third person perspective, with none of Sasuke’s accompanying emotions. But still, he knew them, and now they were all dead.
He was a raw nerve, an exposed live wire, blindsided by the strength of the grief that clawed at his throat.
He took a shuddering gasp, flinching as he registered the wetness on his cheeks. He swiped at the tears with shaking hands, utterly mortified (he hadn’t cried in years—). He swallowed down the growing sobs that were locked up in his chest, stretching and straining his lungs, searing Regulus’ throat—as though a knife had been dragged down the soft inside.
He choked on a warbled, incredulous gurgle. Regulus was pathetic. Truly. Mother had constantly mocked him for being too ‘soft,’ too emotional as a child. She’d tried so hard to purge it from him. It hadn’t worked. Obviously.
He clawed at his cheeks, dug his fingers into the soft flesh, and dragged his nails down—hard. It was because this was a child’s body, he knew, with a child’s emotional sensitivity. It reminded him, unnecessarily (as if Regulus could forget), that this body wasn’t his. It was Sasuke’s. And the knowledge that he had essentially stolen an innocent child’s life made acid churn in Regulus’ stomach—
He couldn’t breathe, Regulus realised distantly, a wave of blank panic washing over him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t—
His head was full of fog. He felt dizzy. His vision swum, black spots dancing on the edges. Then, abruptly, his sight cleared, coming back into focus with a vengeance that had him flinching backwards in surprise, the shock snapping Regulus out of his panic. His head whipped up, breath stuttering at the newfound clarity of his vision, at the sharpness and intensity with which Regulus now saw. It was as though the world had slowed down, as though everything was moving in slow motion.
Itachi’s haunted, cursed gaze threatened to consume everything as their eyes locked, something indecipherable flitting through Itachi’s blood-red eyes, there and gone, too quick to read.
I don’t know you, he desperately wanted to tell him. Because he didn’t. Not really. All of what Regulus knew of Itachi was based on memories, and as vivid and real as they may feel, they didn’t belong to him. They were Sasuke’s.
Itachi’s face resembled a slate of stone, utterly still and cold, as he spoke, “I only acted like the brother you desired—”
There was static buzzing in-between Regulus’ ears, the white noise muddling his already fractured mind, drowning out his surroundings. His heart stuttered with a mixture of terror and desperation. He still didn’t understand what had happened, was still happening to him. Regulus was absolutely certain that he had died, dragged downdowndown to the depths of a lake by hoards of Inferi. So, what was all this? There were questions lodged in his throat, silenced by the fierce, uncompromising malice radiating from Itachi’s crimson gaze.
“—My foolish little brother.” Not your brother, he protested internally, half-heartedly. But, he was Sasuke now, wasn’t he? So this Itachi—with hateful red eyes and a face carved of ice, was technically his brother. “If you wish to kill me, resent me, hate me—” Regulus’ chest filled with cold despair “—run, run and desperately cling to life.” The three-point pinwheel in Itachi’s crimson pools begun to spin, shifting and transforming into three spiralling-curves. Regulus’ breath hitched. “Tsukuyomi.”
His body went limp, dropping to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The world begun to blur before Regulus as nausea slowly crept from his stomach to his head.
Then, everything went black.
“I only acted like the older brother you desired.”
There was a clean, precise slice through the woman’s (kaa-san) neck, another through man’s (tou-san), their blood spraying across the tatami mats. He flinched, tears choking his throat, as their bodies hit the floor with a jarring thud, again and again—
“Run, run and desperately cling to life.”
For a split-second he saw Sirius instead of Itachi, and terror spiked, cutting Regulus so deep that he could scarcely remember how to breathe. Sirius, too, had abandoned him, discarded him like he was nothing, replaced him with laughable ease. But at least Sirius had spared him the villainous monologue before his departure. That and he hadn’t killed everyone, either.
He blinked and Sirius was gone, his face fading back to that of Itachi’s.
“Then one day, come before me with the same eyes that I possess.”
The pool of crimson crawled closer, and if Regulus stretched his fingertips an inch further, he could touch it—feel Sasuke’s (his? were they his now, too?) parent’s blood on his hands. He swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat.
“There is no value in killing you now.”
It was not just Sasuke’s (his) parents, Itachi replayed the slaughter of the entire Uchiha Clan. He was reduced to nothing but an audience member, watching their murders again and again and again—unable to do anything but stare in silent despair as their bodies dropped, lifeless and bloodied, to the floor.
“To see what I was capable of.”
He had seen copious amounts of blood during his stint as a Death Eater, but he had never seen so much at once. It seeped into the floorboards, splattered across clothes and pale faces, coated Itachi’s sword, and stained his fingertips. On constant repeat.
“If you wish to kill me, resent me, hate me.”
He wondered whether Sirius spared a thought for his dead little brother, or if Barty had mourned him. He doubted he would if he knew the truth—that Regulus was a traitor to the cause Barty had devoted his very life to.
Their friendship had dwindled in the face of something bigger, grander—a new world forged by blood, torture and murder. Regulus’ awkward affection was nothing compared to the honeyed words that the Dark Lord had murmured in Barty’s ears. The praise from his idol keeping him tethered, chained, loyal.
“My foolish little brother.”