Inferius | Regulus Black

ptolomaea (I)

"Killing is not always personal." Regulus implored, Annabelle wouldn't listen to him, shaking her head and walking away, "you of all people must-"

"Me of all people?" She asked, whirling around to face him, rage surfacing in her eyes,

"Yes. You." Regulus replied, "You kill if the price is right."

"Don't phenomenal television into this." Annabelle said, glaring at him. "Killing is always personal."

"So all the people you murdered-"

"They'd have done the same to me for far less."

"Avery was good. He was a good man-"

"He killed my sister. He killed her. Voldemort didn't know-"

"Don't say his name-"

"Voldemort didn't know she existed, Avery wanted her dead."

"You kill on orders, Aelin. So did he."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"And what would you know about me, Regulus? Honestly. When have you ever thought of me before yourself?"

"Every day-" he started, Annabelle grabbed hold of his left arm and shoved his sleeve up to his forearm, he struggled to get out of her grip. Her painted nails dug into his skin.

"Even this one?"

Regulus could hear his heart thundering in his chest. Annabelle wore shimmering eyeshadow which had sprawled over her cheeks. Her eyes were locked on his,

"Then why-"

"I've loved you for too long. I don't know how to exist without it." Her voice grated in her throat, she had tried. She had failed, "But you you don't get to stand there and lecture me on my life when you don't give a rats arse about anything which doesn't involve you!"

She released his arm revealing cuts from where her nails had broken the tender skin she used to protect with painted forget me not flowers.

"That's not true."

"Christ, Regulus, our entire relationship I took care of you." Annabelle said, laughing at her own exhaustion, "when- when did you ever take care of me?"

Regulus was silent for forty-three seconds and seventy beats of his heart,

"You never needed me. Not the way I needed you," Regulus informed her,

"I needed you not to be ashamed of me."

"Aelin-"

"I needed you to actually love me-"

"I married you for Merlin's sake-"

"Merlin j-"

"Yes, yes, Merlin jar," Regulus said, scoffing and setting a knut on the table to be placed in the jar later, "I told you I loved you first. You wouldn't let me love you for the longest time-"

"I just don't have positive associations with love. I mean- you only told me when you found out you were going to be a death eater. And then you kept the important bit hush hush-"

"I thought you would leave me."

"Maybe you should have given me that option then." Annabelle said, "Maybe if you loved me you would've either left your cult, or left me."

"Leaving you would be like severing a limb or carving out my heart-"

"Enough with the poetics."

Regulus looked at his hands, one twitched on instinct the way it always did when Annabelle was near and he wanted her hand in his. She drank her tea. Good.