minnow // sirius black

thirty-six

36 ;   him

*This chapter is very dark, very heartbreaking and potentially disturbing. You've been warned.*

They did everything they could to save him, but the damage... They didn't even know if he'd ever been alive.

I didn't want to tell Lily and James. I did not want to tell them, ever, but when Sirius and I came home we were accompanied by Dean, Kayla, and their daughter Riley. That mixed with the extremely sudden shift between Sirius and I... it raised a lot of questions. The way it seemed like we tiptoed around each other like we were surrounded by thousands of shards of glass. He was uncomfortable around me, and I around him. For the first time in our relationship, I didn't feel immense love when I saw him. I only felt pain, and I knew he felt it too.

James and Lily were both curious as to why Dean's family joined him. They kept trying to squeeze the answer out of us; Lily thought that Dean had wanted to protect them too, or missed them.

James made a passing joke that maybe Kayla was pregnant - that Dean didn't want her to be alone.

I had been pouring a glass of wine. I had been drinking a lot more over that week, and nobody (aside from Kayla) seemed to notice, or they didn't care. Such a small and simple act, completely calm, like the countless times before. I was standing in front of the kitchen sink, the refrigerator to right and the stove to my left. There were two spaces of counter on either side of the sink, the one beside the refrigerator is where I had set my wine glass. I held the neck of the bottle in my left hand, watching the plum redness swirl in the glass as I tilted the bottle. I could think of nothing but the blood soaked hospital bed, the haste with which I threw my pretty blue dress away, burning it. It was such a normal and constant thing for me now.

The moment that James said it, "Maybe she's pregnant", I threw the bottle against the wall. It was a flawless, thoughtless, action. I was overwhelmed with pain and anger in that moment, and my subconscious decided the best way to let that out was to throw something. A forty pound bottle of wine sufficed.

I didn't even turn towards the wall. The only part of my body that moved was my arm.

One swift movement and the bottle was no longer in my left hand and instead was in shattered remains on my kitchen floor. The wine dripped down the wall in a way that resembled veins. One little droplet would merge with another to make a larger droplet and a larger river. The initial impact point was a large plum colored splatter, the little rivers falling from there.

The moment I heard the shards hit the ground, I crumbled. My knees refused to hold me up, and I fell mostly forward, my body twisting just before I hit the counter. I ended up on the floor, my knees bent at awkward angles as I leaned my shoulder against the lower cabinets. The noise that erupted from my lips at that moment startled everyone in the room. I could faintly see everyone turn towards me, but their expressions were blurred through the endless tears.

Well, everyone who wasn't as numb as I had been.

Sirius didn't move from his spot on the couch, where he'd been sitting since that morning. He had not moved from that exact spot except once to use the bathroom. He returned to the couch immediately after, not even speaking to anyone else.

Esme was upstairs with Riley and Dean, the latter reading to the girls. I could faintly hear our daughters giggling at the story, Riley fawning over Esme's tiny smile and soft laughter.

I could barely see James furrow his eyebrows, looking from a distraught me, to an empty Sirius, to his wife and back. Lily stood and began to move towards me, but Kayla - who'd come from the bathroom when she heard the bottle hit the wall - shook her head softly.