Title: Worth Dying Without
Summary: "Regulus couldn't cooperate with the Order of the Phoenix, for reasons that made perfect sense to him but which he would never make Sirius understand."
Rating: T for language and morbid themes.
Word Count: 3,500
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related trademarks belong to J.K. Rowling. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.

Pairings None.
Contains: Much needed frank discussions. Maybe AU, maybe not. ;)
Warnings: Major Character Death

Regulus opened his eyes, for what little good it did, and whimpered. "It's funny," he said, "I hadn't expected the afterlife to be nearly this painful." He wondered if he'd be given a chance to explain himself before he was murdered. Regulus had no excuse for his behavior, but it was unlikely he'd be asked for one anyway. He hadn't been gagged, but that was probably because they didn't want to muffle his scrams. The Dark Lord did not give easy deaths to traitors. Regulus had been saved, but for what remained to be seen. It would probably begin with a cruciatus in just a moment.

"Aw, did you miss an appointment with the Grim Reaper, Regulus?"

Regulus smirked, but only because ten generations of Slytherin breeding had made it his default expression when he had no fucking clue what had just happened. That was not supposed to be the last voice Regulus heard before his public execution. Since Slytherins don't ask their enemies questions they don't already know the answer to, Regulus played along instead. "I'm afraid I have. I do hope he isn't angry with me."

"I shouldn't think he is. You're more than a little under the weather, and that sort of news tends to reach him."

Regulus didn't answer. He did roll over, and the odds that this was going to turn into a public execution decreased exponentially. He was lying in a bed, and a fairly comfortable one at that. He buried his head into the soft pillow and took a bit of the blanket in his arms, and even though it hurt to breathe he smiled briefly as he allowed himself a little fantasy: they were at home. The last three years had been some godawful dream, and in a moment Regulus' mother was going to walk in and shoo Sirius away so he wouldn't catch whatever godawful disease Regulus had caught that had left him blind and bed-ridden and delirious for half of the Chirstmas holiday. And then Regulus would get well and their lives would go on. He stubbornly refused to allow the soft magical chord that seemed to be binding his left ankle to the foot of the bed disrupt that fantasy.

"...Regulus?"

"Yes?" Regulus didn't take his head out of the pillow, so his voice was muffled. He couldn't decide if the slow, shallow breathes he was taking through the pillow of the fast, full breaths he'd been taking when he first woke up hurt less, so he wasn't sure how long he'd remain in that position, but for now... Well, things were probably going to get bad in a moment. Why not let them be nice and comfortable now?

"If I take that blindfold off, what will you do?"

Regulus sighed. The fantasy was thoroughly shattered, and was probably going to be furthered shattered in a few seconds. He lifted his head out of the pillow, but turned it in the opposite direction of the voice. "Probably look around the room. Maybe look at you. I don't suppose you'd let me do any reading?"

"Maybe look at me?"

Regulus was silent for a second. "I suppose prisoners aren't allowed to read. I shouldn't have asked."

There was silence for a few seconds. Then, "You wouldn't attack me? Or try to escape?"

Regulus shrugged. "Well, you went to all the trouble of blindfolding me and shackling me to the bed, so it seems unlikely that you left me my wand, and with nothing to attack you with and nowhere to escape to, it seems like rather a waste of energy, particularly as I am feeling so poorly."

Regulus head movement; rustling robes, a creaking floorboard, footsteps approaching. There was very slight pressure on the back of his head for a second, and then the blindfold was lifted. Regulus' headache immediately made its preference for the blindfold known, but Regulus was determined to see what kind of prison he'd been thrown in. He blinked hard a few times, and was more relieved than he thought he'd be to be instantly certain that he was not in an Azkaban cell.

It was an attic, but not a dusty attic filled with neglected things. It looked like it had served as a girl's bedroom once, and though the furniture was quite old, the room had been well-preserved. Regulus would believe the place was regularly cleaned by an elf. The walls and ceiling had been painted lavender, and the duvet Regulus had been cuddling a moment ago was white with purple flowers. There were two bookshelves in the room, and a comfortable-looking white chair, an ottoman beneath the window, and a writing desk. The one window didn't really let in enough light for as large as the room was, but there were enough candles around to make up for it.

He glanced at Sirius, but immediately returned his eyes to the duvet and refused to look back up.

"How are you feeling?" Sirius asked.

Regulus sniggered, but the sharp pain that shot through his ribs wiped it off pretty quickly. "It hurts to breathe. It hurts more to swallow. My head hurts. My entire digestive system thinks it's been set on fire..."

"Do you know what you drank?"

Regulus shook his head. He stole another glance to his right, and found Sirius squinting at him.

"I knew it was poisonous, if that's what you meant to ask."

Sirius shook off whatever thought he'd been holding. He waved his left hand dismissively and turned around, walking toward the white chair near the bookshelves. "No, I meant to ask if you knew what it was called."

Regulus shook his head again. "Haven't a clue."

"Hm..." Sirius knelt down and opened a black doctor's bag on the floor by the chair. He started to examine the potions within, quickly skimming the labels on the sides. He didn't seem to see the enormous snake that slithered in a fast circle around him then vanished. He put two red potions and a green one off to his left side, then put a blue one off to his right side, and finally pulled out a vial that with just a little bit of clear liquid in it. He poured the clear liquid into the vial with the blue, put the cork back and shook the vial as he stood up and walked over to Regulus' bed. He uncorked the vial and held it out. "Drink it all," Sirius said. "Even though it hurts. You should have plenty of practice at that..."

Regulus sobbed. It was ugly and it hurt like Hell, but if anyone in the Order of the Phoenix was going to have any sympathy for him, it would probably be his former brother.

"It's for your own good, Regulus."

Regulus sobered a bit and took the vial. "Will this heal me?"

"No," Sirius said. "You're not going to get any more healed than you currently are without someone figuring out what you drank. It might dull the pain, though."

"How healed am I, currently?"

Sirius sighed and shrugged. "It's impossible to say. The best we could do when we brought you here was pump your stomach, give you some general antidotes, and try to get you hydrated again. You might yet bounce your grandchildren on your knee, or you might die in anywhere from two hours to two weeks. But you can either find out in find out in incredible pain, or you can endure just a few more mouthful for some long-term relief."

There was no bracing himself for it. Regulus tried to block out the horrible, painful memories of swallowing mouthful after mouthful of liquid that felt like lava, but he couldn't. And his head had been cloudy then. After a certain point he'd been accepting the mouthfuls of poison Kreacher gave him because he'd forgotten that he could do anything else. Of course, he couldn't really do anything else now. He brought the vial to his lips and downed the blue liquid in one, even as his mouth and his throat turned hot as Hellfire. As soon as he was finished, he flopped backwards on the bed and held the vial up for Sirius to take back. Slowly, the burning faded back to the level it had been at when Regulus woke up, and then it faded even more, along with all of the other pains. The headache went away quickly, his innards started to feel like less like someone had ran a cheese-grater through them and more like Regulus had just been kicked in the stomach a few times, and the pain when he inhaled faded to just a dull ache. Regulus still didn't feel good, but he undeniably felt better.

"Thank you," Regulus said. "It's very sweet of your Order to mix pain killers in with the truth serum. Do you do that for all injured captives, or do I get special brother-of-the-mediwizard privileges?"

"A bit of both, really," Sirius said. "It helps that we found you injured. We don't generally have much sympathy for captives who are injured because they made us injure them. How are you feeling?"

Regulus shrugged. "I've felt better, but this is an improvement. How well do I have to be to be walked down to the torture chamber?"

"The torture chamber?"

"Sorry—We call it a torture chamber. You probably call it 'the interrogation room' or something."

Sirius shrugged. "I think you're in it. We don't really have one. The Ministry has an interrogation room, but I am not a Ministry official and we are not on Ministry property."

"But you do torture Death Eaters."

"Not ones who cooperate," Sirius said brightly.

Regulus closed his eyes and lied there for a moment in silence. He couldn't cooperate with the Order of the Phoenix, for reasons that made perfect sense to him but which he would never make Sirius understand. Regulus could betray the Dark Lord. That was easy. Regulus felt no real loyalty to the Dark Lord. He never particularly had. Regulus' loyalty was, and had always been, with the Death Eaters. He didn't approve of what the organization did, but so many of them were his friends and his family. He couldn't betray them. He couldn't help their enemies. He could fight the Dark Lord and pray without him that their lives would go back to normal, but he couldn't fight them.

Sirius seemed to understand his silence. "They probably won't... er... I think Dumbledore would fight for you, if someone wanted to... You're too young. He wouldn't like it. I mean, he never particularly likes it, but... you're too young."

Regulus scoffed. "Thank God we young Death Eaters have Dumbledore to look after us." It couldn't have been as sarcastic as Regulus meant it, though, because the truth potion didn't stop it. Regulus was a little bit relieved.

"Regulus," Sirius said, and Regulus didn't have to look at Sirius to know that Sirius was glaring at him, but he did anyway. "You'd be dead if it weren't for the medical care the Order of the Phoenix has provided you over the last twelve hours. Do you really mean to imply that your master takes such wonderful care of you that Dumbledore's concern is superfluous?"

Regulus brushed off a few fire-ants that weren't really crawling up his arm. "I mean to imply that Dumbledore's 'concern' is dragonshit. If I've got no better advocate than him, save your lot some time and just start on me now."

"You don't know Dumbledore, Regulus. He's not like what mum and dad—"

"—Don't call them that!"

Sirius was quiet for a second. He shrugged. "Alright. But you're all wrong about him."

"Noted," Regulus said coolly. He turned away from Sirius again. He stared down the staircase, at the door that presumably led into the house-proper, and he wondered if he was going to die in this attic, or in a cell in Azkaban. Given those options, he liked it here, but he didn't think he'd like it so much when they started torturing him for information he wasn't going to give them. They probably thought he was on a suicide mission for the Dark Lord when they found him. How did they find him?

He pondered this in silence while Sirius did God-only-knew-what, and after a few minutes he thought he'd figured it out. "Sirius?" he said, turning back around.

"What?" Sirius said testily, not looking up from the book he was reading. He was back in the white chair by the medical supplies.

"Do you hate me?"

Sirius clearly stopped reading. The look of concentration on his face dropped off into a completely blank look, and his eyes stopped moving, but he didn't look up from his book.

Sirius didn't answer him.

"I thought so," Regulus said, cuddling up to the duvet. "I can't say that I blame you. Do you blame me?"

Sirius' mind couldn't seem to catch up to the conversation. "Where the Hell did that question come from?"

Regulus wanted to say that it had been obvious for years, but the truth potion he'd drank was just strong enough to kill the words before they left his lips. His choices were between silence and truth. He choose the truth, for this question. "I told Kreacher that after he fed me the potion, he wasn't allowed to tell anyone what had happened or to fetch anyone who loved me to help me... So, I imagine he went and found the one person he knew who did not love me."

Sirius nodded. "Kreacher's a sneaky wretch like that."

"Fuck you, Sirius. He's worth a million of you."

Sirius scoffed. "I will never understand how you manage to have more love for house-elves than for human beings whose circumstances of birth just happened to be different from your own!"

Regulus sat back up. "Oh get off your goddamn high horse! Do you think anyone on either side of this fucking war has forgotten that but for the grace of God and your best friend you'd be every bit as much a murderer as I am?!"

Sirius didn't speak for a second, but when he did speak it was so quiet that Regulus almost didn't hear him: "How much of a murderer are you, Regulus?"

Regulus sighed and lied back down. "Why did you give me such a weak truth potion? You didn't have to give me the option of silence."

"I had a feeling that our conversation was going to be about this much fun ," Sirius said. "There are some truths I don't need to hear."

Sirius returned to his reading, and Regulus lied there for a moment and searched for enlightenment on that slanted lavender ceiling. He didn't find it. He wondered what circle of Hell he might be sent to that was worse than being locked in a room with Sirius. "You should have left me there to die." He thought: If I ever see that elf again I'm going to kick him across the room, but the truth potion wouldn't let him say that.

"Why?" Sirius said. "I don't understand that part. I don't know who rigged that trap, but you didn't have to die there. Why didn't he send another Death Eater along to save you? Why didn't you just have Kreacher drink the—"

"Go. Fuck. Yourself."

Sirius shrugged. "You're too defensive over that elf." He glanced back at his book, but it was obvious that he wasn't really reading. He only kept the ruse up for a second or two, then he turned back to Regulus. "Does your master want you dead, Regulus?"

"Yes."

Sirius looked gobsmacked, as if he hasn't suggested it himself. "Then why did you obey his orders?!"

Regulus rolled his eyes. Sirius caught on incredibly slowly for a boy who'd breezed through all his lessons at Hogwarts.

"What did Kreacher take from that cave?"

"Get your torturers."

"Goddammit, Regulus! He wants you dead. We can help you!"

Regulus laughed bitterly. "No one can help me, Sirius! It doesn't even matter what I do now! You can't protect me and he won't forgive me. All told I think whatever death Dumbledore's men dole out might be just a bit gentler than a public execution in the Death Eater circle. All I ask is that when you're done torturing me, you kill me rather than hand me over to the dementors."

Regulus heard movement behind him, then felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Do you love the Dark Lord?"

"No. I hate him."

"Do you want out of the Death Eaters?"

"Yes."

"Let me get you out."

Regulus sighed. "Be my guest. I prefer my death quick and painless, and please leave off the torture."

"Regulus, three other Order members and I did not stay up all night saving your life just so I could kill you now."

"No, you stayed up all night saving my life so that you could drug and torture me until I told you all the Dark Lord's secrets and then you could drag me off to Azkaban." Regulus looked Sirius in the eyes. "I wish you'd let me die last night, but since you didn't I ask simply that you correct your own damn mistake and kill me now."

Sirius' hand slipped off of Regulus' shoulder and down into Regulus' hand. "Mother and father will never get over it, you know. You were the good one."

Regulus shook his head. "Not anymore. They'll have to get over it. They'll be better off without me."

"Better off without their child?"

Regulus turned and met his eyes again. "They're better off without you. And they're going to be better off without me, too, when they find out what I've done. It's really for the best that I just die and spare them the trouble of disowning me. At least they'll be allowed to grieve when I'm dead."

"Can I tell you something, Regulus?"

"I don't see how I could stop you." Regulus didn't let go of his hand.

"I am better off without them. I have a good job, a nice flat, and the best friends anyone could ask for. I'm helping the Order and working toward my medical certification... Regulus, I'm actually doing some good for once in my life. And whatever you've done as a Death Eater, you could still do some good if you just turned you back on all of that and helped us. I'll help you. And so will the other outcasts of that dysfunctional mess you still call your family. I'm sure Andromeda would be as happy to see you again as she was to see me again. Her husband's a good guy and they have a really sweet kid. And Uncle Alphard's still great and would probably kiss you as soon as look at you if you showed up on his door. Don't worry about the others. If it's true that the Dark Lord wants you dead, Bella would kill you on sight and never think twice about it. I know. Regulus, she has tried to kill me before. And it's not just politics or the war to her, it's personal. She has chased me during raids because she wants me, specifically, dead. And she'd do the same to you. Why is that worth your loyalty? I know that you aren't like me and it may seem unfathomable to you now, but I'm asking you to trust me. They're not worth it."

Sirius would never understand. It was for Bella to decide if her loyalties to Voldemort were greater than her loyalties to her family. Regulus had already made his choice. "I don't think it very much matters." Regulus tried hard not to hear the screams of the young woman just behind Sirius. He was never going to bounce his grandchildren on his knee. It had been obvious for a while now. That's why he hadn't screamed at the snake, or the ants, and even the woman... and she was the least real of them all. He remembered watching her die months ago. "I'm really thirsty." His voice cracked as he said it.

"Shit," Sirius said, jumping up. "You're dehydrated again..." He rushed over to the writing desk, where there was a half-empty pitcher of water, and poured Regulus a glass. Regulus drank gratefully, even though he could see small hands reaching out of the water and grasping at him. For a moment, the cool, clear water felt like the only real thing in the universe.

And maybe it was.

"Regulus? What did you take from that cave?"

Regulus laughed. His vision started to swirl and snakes and ants and screaming victims and Sirius were all her could see. Everything else was just a swirl of color and darkness. "Would it matter if I told you? Are you real, or am I still hallucinating back in that cave?"

Sirius laughed nervously. "Regulus, I—"

Regulus died before he heard the answer. It would probably have been a lie, anyway.