Regulus Black

[[OOC: Saturday night, after this.]]

It's nice to be home.

(And also it's nice not to have a tail any longer, but that's much less important.)

Still, there's one thing left before it's really home, and so Reg starts walking through the Threshold carefully, looking for someone with dark hair and golden eyes.

Midmorning, out at the lake, and it's far too nice a day out for such horrid things to be happening elsewhere and elsewhen. Reg thinks so, anyway, but weather is always good for a touch of irony, and besides there's nothing he can do. He's still got a coffee, but today he's nursing it outside, by the lake. There's a grave there, and he's avoiding looking at it; he paid his respects to whomever it was, but he doesn't want to think about graves lined up near the lake. Coffee. Coffee is good.

Tell me something about (Regulus, Ame, Pintel, Jamie) I don't know.

He sits in an empty corner of his room, one knee pulled up to his chest and the other curled around him. It's quiet, up here. Nobody to subject to his ineptitude and varied other problems.

It's so attractive an idea just to sit up here, forever, and never go down to the bar again. He needn't put anyone else through this. They don't need it, after all, and he doesn't deserve to have the happiness he'd get from being down there.

And yet -- in the top drawer of the dresser lies the ring Desire gave him, placed there on Monday. He hadn't been able to give it to Desire then; even though he knew he should've, he just couldn't. And maybe he didn't want to, then. He still doesn't. Giving it back means finality, means that it's really happened. Somehow, he doesn't want that.

Still.

He knows what he needs to do.

He doesn't deserve it, anyway.

[[Upstairs, Reg's room, Monday night/early Tuesday morning]]

Regulus sits huddled back in a chair, a knee pulled up to his chest, and watches Desire silently as he gets comfortable in the room, shoes and jacket near a chair. When Desire is, he considers going and sitting next to him, but decides against it.

There's an awkward pause, and Desire's mouth opens. Regulus knows, just knows that Desire's going to ask if he's all right, so he speaks before the question can come out. "If I ask you something will you swear to answer me honestly?"

[[Upstairs, Reg's room, Monday evening/Tuesday morning; continued from here.]]

Regulus shucks off his shoes and sits crosslegged on his bed, gesturing for Desire to make himself comfortable. When he has, Reg cocks his head again and frowns. "What's wrong? Can I help?"

Regulus wakes up in the fourth bed he's slept in since he got here; it's alien, uncomfortable, but as soon as he realizes he's in his own body it doesn't matter. He sighs with relief and considers going back to sleep, but decides against it. He ought to eat, even if it is just a muffin and some coffee.

He grabs his shoes from where they were dropped - where they look to have been dropped, anyway - and exits the room, reaching into one of his pockets for his room key. He wants to change; even though he knows it was his body all along, it still feels as if someone else has worn his clothes. It's not there, though, so he roots around in his other ones until he finds it, vaguely registering that something is missing and wondering what it is, though he's not too concerned. He's back in his own body, he doesn't have that strange sense of loss any longer - he'd never realized how much he took his magic for granted until it wasn't there any longer - so he's fine.

He leaves his room and turns to lock it, still idly curious, when his eyes widen and he stops mid-movement.

His wand is gone.

It's not in his pants. It's not in his room. It's not in the spare room his body had slept in. The person who'd been in his body - Todd, his name was - had to have it. Still, he forces himself to calm down. He hasn't done anything with it in ages, it was more of a comfort thing, and anyway it hadn't felt like the body he'd been in the night before had had much magic.

A niggling voice chanted "Maybe it's a different kind, maybe it's a different kind," but he ignored it for the time being.