[His eyes don't leave the necklace when it appears again, and he follows the little wrapped bundle. It looks so innocuous like this, wrapped in pale cream linen as if it's something precious to be kept undamaged. But the lifted weight is so much, he's able to shoot Sirius something like his old skeptical stare.]
You don't like my new look?
['Exhausted suspicious traveler' is easy to maintain.
It's easier to make even a weak attempt at something lighthearted than tell Sirius he doesn't sleep very much.
He finishes the last few spoonfuls of stew first, then stands and lets his feet take him upstairs to his room. The fire is going, and the bed has been turned down, and Kreacher has worked hard to at least make the place look livable. He hopes, as he kicks off his boots and undoes the long white wrappings on his arms, that Sirius' room looks like this too.
It's fatigue that lets him drift in uninterrupted sleep as long as he does, but eventually the whispers creep back in around the edges, perhaps only memories of the whispers he'd heard from the locket every night, but this time he can hear Sirius, he can't hear what he's saying, only his voice, angry and afraid and in pain and screaming and the whispers are laughing and—
—and he opens his eyes with a sharp, dragging gasp that sets him to coughing, curling up around seizing lungs, but as soon as he can draw a clean breath he's moving, he needs to know, he needs to see him. When he opens Sirius' door, he hardly notices that Kreacher had indeed made some effort here as well, he can only look at his brother. Here. Alive. Asleep. It must be fifteen years since he'd last ended up in Sirius' room after a bad dream, but he closes the door behind him and curls up on top of the covers, weak with relief that he's all right. He'll go soon. In a minute. He'll just close his eyes for a minute.]
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You don't like my new look?
['Exhausted suspicious traveler' is easy to maintain.
It's easier to make even a weak attempt at something lighthearted than tell Sirius he doesn't sleep very much.
He finishes the last few spoonfuls of stew first, then stands and lets his feet take him upstairs to his room. The fire is going, and the bed has been turned down, and Kreacher has worked hard to at least make the place look livable. He hopes, as he kicks off his boots and undoes the long white wrappings on his arms, that Sirius' room looks like this too.
It's fatigue that lets him drift in uninterrupted sleep as long as he does, but eventually the whispers creep back in around the edges, perhaps only memories of the whispers he'd heard from the locket every night, but this time he can hear Sirius, he can't hear what he's saying, only his voice, angry and afraid and in pain and screaming and the whispers are laughing and—
—and he opens his eyes with a sharp, dragging gasp that sets him to coughing, curling up around seizing lungs, but as soon as he can draw a clean breath he's moving, he needs to know, he needs to see him. When he opens Sirius' door, he hardly notices that Kreacher had indeed made some effort here as well, he can only look at his brother. Here. Alive. Asleep. It must be fifteen years since he'd last ended up in Sirius' room after a bad dream, but he closes the door behind him and curls up on top of the covers, weak with relief that he's all right. He'll go soon. In a minute. He'll just close his eyes for a minute.]