An: There is a line in the excellent TV show that is Firefly that goes "Sometimes a thing gets broke, that can't be fixed'. Enjoy.

Buried

He'd never really spoken about it before. Not when he was drunk, not when he was tired, not when he was hurt. He'd never told us about his family. We guessed, of course. We assumed, reading between his jokes and his initial uneasiness around our parents. But I had never imagined that it was as bad as it was.

I don't know why he chose then to tell me. I don't know why he suddenly turned to me and let all of it pour out. The beatings, the curses, the arguments, the insults, the pain, the brainwashing, the isolation, the horror. All the things he'd kept inside for so long suddenly bursting out, like he couldn't keep it in any longer.

I went to take his hand but he flinched away. He thought that it would affect how I saw him. That his wrecks of parents would have ruined even this for him. He shook as I put my arms around him, and when I held him tightly he cried.

The next day it was as if he hadn't said anything, hadn't bared his soul. But he didn't run away from conversations involving family after that. Didn't watch our parents with wary eyes. Didn't fret over his brother anymore.

It worried me that he gave up on his brother. But if I brought it up, he'd run away, skipping far from my questions, turning to James or Peter, plotting some new scheme. So I left it. But seeing his face now, all these years later, trying to talk about Regulus but not knowing where to begin… it makes me wonder maybe his family would have been better left untouched. Untalked about. Buried.