"What did she do, Lestrange?" Voldemort called jovially down the table to where Rodolphus sat. In return, Bellatrix's husband smirked and stood to speak, but with none of the dramatics of his wife. 
"She put the baby to sleep, and begged me to spare her." As the story unwound, and Rodolphus recalled the way he tortured the muggle woman, playing with her until she was crying and begging on the floor, Regulus found himself gripping onto his legs very tightly for stability. He had known for a long time that Bellatrix could be cruel, and that Rodolphus encouraged her, but nobody at the table seemed to see anything wrong with the tale they were currently telling back and forth, taking turns to fill in the twisted details. Bellatrix had talked openly about wiping out the muggles and the blood traitors before, but he had always assumed it was the same hyperbole with which Sirius had threatened to kill their mother on several occasions. 
He looked to the Dark Lord, whose amusement didn't seem to fade as Bellatrix detailed disarming the 'blood traitor'. She had paralysed the man, forced him to listen to the muffled screams and pleading of his wife, the strangled crying of his infant child. Regulus felt sick. the Dark Lord met his eyes, and he tried to clear his mind. What reaction would the Dark Lord want him to have? The same joy they all seemed to be sharing at this family's expense? They had spoken often of the Blood Laws, but Regulus highly doubted they would find a mandate to pass such laws while carrying out the atrocities his cousin was detailing. He tried to think of something, anything else, to hide his dissent, but all roads either led back to Voldemort and his meetings or to his blood traitor brother and ex-lover. He had no option but to simply listen to Bellatrix and imagine the story exactly as she told it, trying to keep any emotion far out of it. The Dark Lord's eyes passed by him, returning to his cousin with a twinkle that Regulus had seen only a few times. 
"The mark was cast, so I assume you cleaned up after yourself?" Voldemort asked.
"Yes, my Lord." Bellatrix stepped back to bow, hands clenched with the raw energy she was constantly trying to contain. 
"And what of the child?" 
"Sleeping soundly by the time we left, my Lord. Obviously tired itself out with all the crying, poor little mite!" She answered, which elicited a few more chuckles from around her. 
"If the child possesses magic," Rodolphus spoke up, "it will attend Hogwarts in a few short years and warn its friends. A cautionary tale in the mixing of blood." 
"Call it a deterrent!" Bellatrix piped in, and Regulus didn't think he had ever seen them so united in a couple as now, when they were detailing the torture of a couple whose crimes Regulus could not quite figure out, beyond being a blood traitor and a muggle. 
Later, as the Death Eaters trickled from the room, Voldemort called him back. If he was honest, all that Regulus wanted to do was to return to the castle and hope that sleep overtook him before he could think about what he had heard and throw up. But he stayed, turned to face the Dark Lord and waited as the last few people passed them, leaving them alone. 
"I sense your unease, Regulus." 
"Did you know they were going to do that?" He asked, so caught up in his quiet outrage that he forgot to add 'my Lord'. 
"I don't think that I need to tell you, Regulus, what a fierce spirit your cousin is." Regulus took that as a no, though would later realise it wasn't explicitly one.
"What did they do? The blood traitor and his wife?" His question had been the wrong one, he could tell as soon as Voldemort eyed him, trying to discern something that Regulus couldn't even begin to consider. 
"Blood traitors threaten our way of life. You know this. You're one of us." He said slowly, and his eyes glimmered, redder than usual. 
"If we're going to convince people that we're right, it can't be at threat of torture." Regulus said, and he couldn't tell if he felt brave for saying it, or just like he was parroting something his brother or James would say. Voldemort placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Not everybody can have your brains, Regulus. Bellatrix acts for the group, for you, offering what she can. One day, you will change things so that she won't have to." In his letters, the Dark Lord had made several more references to Regulus becoming a politician, becoming Minister even. He had almost convinced the boy of the appeal of it, made it sound like his own idea, but interweaving Bellatrix's actions to his possible future in the field didn't help to make it seem more desirable in that moment. 
When he returned to the castle, Regulus did throw up. He tried to shake the images that Bella and Rodolphus had put there, but to no avail. He couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the couple they had visited. Did they recover from their injuries? Would they go to aurors, and bring the whole group under suspicion? What would happen to the baby? Most of all, Regulus wondered how typical this was. Was this the kind of thing that was discussed at every meeting he hadn't been allowed access to before now? Was that the thing that attracted Snape to Voldemort?
He had seen the way Voldemort's eyes shone as Bellatrix was speaking, and the way that she spoke to him, knowing her words would please him. The Dark Lord had told Regulus that he didn't condone the spilling of magical blood, but Regulus had never given any thought to the blood of muggles. Had he walked into this too blindly? It was too much to think about, and he endeavoured not to. 
It was easier thought than done, when so many of the students at Hogwarts would have been considered by his cousin and the Dark Lord to be 'blood traitors'. He watched them, watched James. He remembered how James had told him there would be 'no hard feelings' when they talked, consumed only with thoughts of Quidditch. If he had known the truth, how different his words would have been. How much simpler. Regulus didn't want to think back to their argument the previous summer, when he had defended the Dark Lord to James, let their relationship fall apart over their polar beliefs. It was much easier to convince himself that what he had witnessed was a one off, just Bellatrix being Bellatrix. Nobody had ever managed to tame her before now, and why should he expect the Dark Lord to do so? No. He would return to the next meeting and the business he would hear would be more similar to that he had heard in the past, to the words that the Dark Lord had written to him over the past year. 
Still, when he watched James with his girlfriend, he couldn't help but wonder. If James couldn't love him because of what he believed, would anybody? Or would the black ink that spanned his arm put an end to any romantic endeavour he journeyed on? Their group was so small, exclusive. There were no other boys his age, and if there were, they would probably be more focused on doing their duty to the pureblood cause, marrying and producing heirs. If he were to commit to his decision fully, then Regulus ought to take the kind of intimacy he'd experienced with James off the table. He watched him with Lily Evans, doing all the things that he wanted to but probably never could now. It felt unfair, that he should be alone, when everybody he knew seemed to have somebody. James had Lily. Sirius had Lupin. Carmen and Willa had one another. Then, none of them had allowed the Dark Lord to mark their skin, to request their devotion above all else.
Nobody would lace their fingers with his, pulling him closer,
or put their hands around his waist, bringing their bodies together as one.
He would never feel himself sinking deeper, losing himself in their love.