A/N: For the Last Ship Standing comp, using the prompts infinity, a character drinking firewhiskey, and inspired by the quote That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt - John Green.

Dedicated to Amber because she is my wifey and I love her (and also because the ChoLuna I owe her kindofsortoflate. Oops?).

Thank you to Sammie for betaing this, she's a goddess.

The Dark Lord has you on puppet strings.

Little Regulus Black, the youngest of the disgraced, fighting your family's name back into the good books; the Dark Lord laughs in your face, twists your limbs in invisible strings and says, "I could use you."

And then there's unimaginable pain, a time turner around your neck that burns white hot until it starts to melt into your skin and you are screaming, clawing at your own neck, and then – nothing.

When you wake up, you are shivering, soaked in your own cold sweat, and the Dark Lord's smiling.

"Thank you, my Lord," is all you have it in you to say before you collapse once more.

Barty looks at you with adoration in his eyes when you tell him, when you bare your Mark before him and show him the twisted scars around your neck.

He traces them with his fingers, then his lips. He tells you he's proud. He slips his hands along your side, pulls you closer, and lets you taste the pride on his tongue.

"He's given you forever, Reg," Barty says, "Infinity," and you have no idea what he means until the world begins to shimmer, shimmer, fade, and you feel your puppeteer's tug and the room melts away.

The Great Lake blossoms before your very eyes, the sky grows dark and inky, blooming from nowhere, and the ground feels shaky, shaky, shaky until you blink and it has stilled.

Barty sits at the shore, skipping rocks across the lake's surface, and you watch the ripples that break the moon's reflection into a thousand tiny waves of light and try to breathe, to understand.

"Barty?" you call, your croak of a voice creeping up on his lonely form. He shivers.

"Regulus?" He doesn't turn, but you watch his spine straighten, watch the way his shoulders square and the light falls heavy on him, making his shadow the darkest thing in your line of vision, and you cannot look away.

"Barty, what's happening?"

The night wind whispers across your body, cool and weak. Barty starts skipping rocks again. The noise echoes around you.

"I don't know, Reg," he says softly. "I wish I did."

You walk forward, sink to the ground beside him. He keeps his eyes on the bouncing rocks, and you keep yours on the tremble of his lips.

"This is His doing, isn't it?"

Barty chuckles, a quick exhalation and nothing more. "Isn't it always?"

You reach for him then, wrapping your fingers around the cool skin of his wrist. He turns to look at you, and you see something in his eyes, something like fear, or lust; you never could tell with him. He raises his hand gently, traces the scars on the back of your neck with shaking fingers.

"Barty. Barty, when am I?" you murmur.

"May," he says quietly. "It's May. When are you from?"

"August."

He smiles, makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a sob and you find you never want to know why.

"This isn't the first time this has happened to you, is it?" you ask, as he shifts closer, so close that his every breath is the only air you breathe.

"No," he says, and then his lips are soft on yours, desperate and loving and confused all at once, and his fingers still read your scar like Braille. "And I don't think it'll be the last either."

"When was the first time?" you whisper, lips barely touching his, waiting, needing to know.

"February," he says, and you try to swallow it, to close the gap between you again, but he's already fading and your edges are blurred and the ground shakes and you open your eyes and you're home.

"I can use you," the Dark Lord says. "I daresay I already have."

He smiles, mouth contorting, eyes glinting.

"Tell me what you find."

And he pulls once more at your puppet strings, jerks your body into sometime far from now, and you hear his cackle fade as the world brightens and the Great Lake dances before you.

There are stands around it, full of students wearing their house colours and screaming at the top of their lungs and there's a familiar man with a gnarled face and a wooden leg and magical eye – but older, Merlin, so much older – who you recognise, who might recognise you, and you stumble backwards into the crowd and hope he doesn't see you.

But he does.

He twitches, jerks upright, and starts towards you, limping along quickly.

The crowd does not swallow you fast enough, and you wonder if there's a way you can lie your way out of this, and when he reaches you, he grabs you by the shoulders and barks, "What's your name?" and your mouth flops uselessly at the power in his voice.

"Your name, boy," he growls, shaking you in his strong hands.

"R – Regulus Black," tumbles from your mouth and you feel sick and weak and scared, and the man just stiffens and nods solemnly, as if he had expected this.

"I thought so," he says, and his voice sounds different, softer, familiar. "Go to the edge of the forest," he hisses. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

And you slink back into the trees, ignoring the questioning eyes that follow as you leave, and you hope he knows to be quick because you don't know how long you have and you don't even know what you're supposed to be looking for and –

"Regulus," he whispers when he comes, and he smiles sadly, softly, like you're a long lost friend, an ex-lover, like you're someone. "Reg, it's me."

And that voice, that sweet voice; it's Barty, but not as you know him.

"Barty? What are you doing here? What are you doing as – When – What's happening?"

He limps towards you, his one good eye trained on you, the other turned inwards, staring through the back of his head, and you wonder if he knows how little time you have. He must.

"It's a long story," he says, and sighs long and low. "And it's not a very good one. This," he says, gesturing up and down the body that isn't his but is, "is for Him. It's 1994, Reg, and this is all still for Him. When are you from?"

"August," you say, "August 1978," and that's never something you should have to explain to someone.

Barty closes his eyes. "Haven't seen you in a while," he says, and you watch his – this stranger's body's – thin eyelids as they flutter. "I miss you."

"Wh – where am I?"

Barty opens his eyes, and this time even his magical eye focuses on you as he says, "I don't know. I don't and I – I wish I did. If I tell you that I'm sorry now, just...remember, yeah? Remember, Reg."

"Barty, what are you talking about?"

"Christmas," he says, and the world begins to shake again, and Barty must know because he's trying to stumble forwards but his legs are clumsy and it all happens too fast anyway. "Regulus, I love – "

"What did you find?"

"The war's still on."

"When?"

"1994."

"Oh."

It's September and you're back at Hogwarts and Barty tastes like cigarettes and firewhiskey, and you must too because the empty glasses clink around your feet and the ash stains your fingertips dark grey, and Barty's left blackened fingerprints along your ribcage and love bites along your neck – always kissing your scar, always – and he says, "Where do you keep going? You always go..."

"To the lake," you whisper. "If you ever need me, try the lake."

And he laughs against your throat and you laugh back, and he pours more firewhiskey into those clinking glasses and raises one in toast.

"To needing," he says, words slurred, eyes half-closed.

"To needing," you murmur, and clink.

You only go back once, and you're pretty sure it's an accident, but you find a young boy with familiar cold eyes who sits by the lake in the dead of night and he says, "Do I know you?"

"I don't think so."

"Tom," he says, and extends a graceful hand.

"Regulus," you say, and he narrows his eyes and stares a little too long. "Regulus Black."

His eyebrows twitch. "A Black, eh?"

He appraises you for a moment, and you stand tall, shoulders rolled back and strength in your stance. You're not going to be weak in front of this boy now; there will be plenty of time for that in his future.

"What do you know of Dark magic?"

"A fair amount."

His mouth twists into a chilling smile. And then the questions come, questions about curses and hexes and gruesome, horrible things and he keeps asking about horcruxes, of all things,and you feel uneasy and unsettled.

"I don't know much about horcruxes," you say and Tom frowns and the world shakes, "and neither should you."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing, my Lord."

"Nothing?"

A dark, probing touch to your mind, and you cover, cover, cover –

"Very well. Next time, do try harder. Crucio."

The puppet strings still for a while. The Dark Lord's distracted, or busy, or no longer cares, and you are too busy making plans to notice that it's November already and you haven't left your time in weeks.

Too busy making plans, making plans...there's a cave, you know, and a locket and piece of his soul and if you don't get out alive at least you might have a way of making sure he doesn't either.

Barty asks why you spend you spend so long staring at the walls.

"Do you ever wonder why we do this, Barty?" you ask.

"Do what?" He reaches for you, his hands sliding underneath your robes, caressing the smooth skin of your shoulders, the rough scar on your neck.

"All of it."

He kisses your collarbone, draws his teeth along the sharp line of your throat. "For Him," he says, and then he falls into your open mouth and neither of you say anything for a very long time.

Shimmer, shimmer, fade –

Barty sits by the lake again, back to you.

"I waited," he says quietly. "I waited for weeks, Reg."

"I'm sorry."

"You never came back."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."

"When is it?"

"February."

"I'm sorry, I really am."

Shimmer, shimmer, black.

The mistletoe hangs over the dormitory door and Barty keeps trapping you against the stone wall and kissing bruises onto your skin and you let him, because you know you don't have very long left.

"I love you," he says, and you always say it back, and you always, always mean it, even when he kisses the Mark on your arm and talks about pride.

Sometimes there's no tug of your strings, no pupeteer's hands to guide you anywhere, and you end up somewhere else anyway.

Somewhen else.

And that's okay.

"When?" you ask.

"December."

"I'm from December!" you say, and Barty chuckles against your cheek.

"1979."

"Oh."

He pulls you closer, keeps his arms locked around you so tight that breathing is near impossible, but you let him because you know what you are going to do and you know he must hate you.

"You're from December, eh?"

"Yeah," you whisper, and you wish the words didn't taste like a betrayal.

"So how long do we have left then?"

"Sixteen days," you say, and the words sit heavy on your tongue, weighed down with a sense of finality and you shiver in arms because a part of you knows you will never – could never – make it out alive. "And you already know what happens."

"I do," he says, and his voice is so low it's a growl in your ear and you shiver again.

"You said sorry once. For Christmas."

"Did I?"

"Not yet. But you will."

He chuckles in your ear, soft and light, and you inhale the scent of Barty off his robes like it's the oxygen you need to breathe, and you wonder if he's doing the same.

"It doesn't end well, does it?"

"No," he says. "No, not at all. And I hated you for a long time because of it."

You twitch, but his hold on you does not loosen. If anything, he holds you even tighter.

"Do you wish I had told you sooner?"

"No." He presses his lips to your cheek. "I would've tried to stop you. I wouldn't have understood. Still don't, really."

You laugh, soft and breathy, and it sounds forced even to you. "Me neither."

"The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I might still see you again, you know." His whisper is warm against your face, his breath still ashy and so very Barty. "Tell me I see you again."

"You do," you promise, and you don't want to hear anything else, so you kiss him, slow and sweet, and you know he's memorising the touch of your hand and the taste of your lips and when he starts to taste like salt and tears, neither of you are surprised.

And you slip your robes from your shoulders, push his robes from his and fall forward until you are the shield that covers him, so he can only see the moon, the stars, you, everything bright and whole, everything and anything you want him to remember when things are so dark he can't even see. He still cries, so that his moans are caught around half-sobs and his body shakes with pain and pleasure and everything in between and he keeps chanting your name like a prayer, like a song he never wants to leave his lips, and you keep saying it's okay, it's okay, until all you see are stars and then your bodies are curled as close as possible, chests rising and falling in sync.

"I never told you I was sorry, did I? I am sorry. I will be. I don't want – but I have to do this."

Silence. You trace the tear tracks on his cheek with your fingertips. "I love you."

"I know," he says, and you entwine your fingers with his and breathe easy together, like this, underneath the stars, and you know how much it means to him that you don't let go, won't let go, even as everything begins to fade.

"Find anything new?"

"I – I don't stay around for much longer."

"Is that so?"

He chuckles.

"Yes, my lord."

"Should I be worried, little Regulus? Do you...betray me?"

"Never, my lord."

"Crucio."

It's Christmas Eve, and the snow falls lazily.

Barty wears his scarf tightly around his throat and you shake your robes down so that the fabric covers your cold fingers, and you sit by the lake and sigh.

"Here," he says, pushing a small a box into your hands. "Merry Christmas, Reg."

It's long and slim and wrapped in silver paper that shines just like the moon, and you peel the wrapping paper off carefully, exposing the slim black box beneath it. You open the box, feeling your breath hitch, and yes, there it is; a beautiful, sleek, silver watch, hands ticking and face shining and you suddenly want to cry because time is the reason you're in this mess in the first place.

"Turn it over," he says, and you do and there's an inscription, an elegant script that reads To needing. To all the time in the world. To us.

"It's gorgeous, Barty. Perfect, even. Thank you," you say, and the tightness in your voice is painful to your ears. You slip the watch around your wrist, close the clasp with your icy fingers, and the metal is far too cool against your skin.

"Here," you whisper, leaning across to press your lips to his cheek as you slip his gift onto his lap.

It's bigger than the box he gave you, heavier, too.

He tears at the paper hurriedly, and you smile. He's never had much patience with things like this. You look down at your watch. All the time in the world. You wonder if he ever learns to be patient. Wonder how he does it without you.

"Regulus, it's – you're so sentimental, you know that?" he grins, and pulls you closer by the scarf, presses a chaste kiss to your cold lips.

"Do you like it then?"

He just laughs and holds the photo album out before you, so you can both see. The first picture is you together – they're mostly you together – and you're drunk and laughing and Barty's lying across your chest, and you have one hand twisted in his hair and your drink in the other and you're looking at him like he is the only thing in the world, and he is looking right back, and you can almost hear that familiar chuckle. Your chest aches as you wonder if you will ever hear it again after tomorrow.

"We look so happy, don't we?" you whisper.

"Aren't we always?"

"No," you murmur. "Not always."

"Reg?" he asks, turning to look at you. Your hands have started shaking. "Regulus, what's wrong?"

"Do you ever wonder why we do this?" you ask, and the words are familiar and you know his answer but you just – you still – "I can't do it anymore, Barty, I can't."

"Regulus, what are you talking about?"

"It's not – not right and I don't – we can't live in a world where He wins, can we? I can't. I won't," you say, and your voice is shaking right along with your hands, and your vision is blurring and you are so, so scared.

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm – I know what he's doing. How to stop – I know how to stop Him, I know how – "

And you're shaking so much worse and you realise it's not you, it's the world and you say, "Barty, don't look – don't look at the back until I'm – until I come back, okay?"

"Where are you going?" he calls but everything's blurry and fading and he is gone.

Too far, you've come too, too far and Hogwarts is a ruin, crumbling and broken. The grounds are covered in debris and bloodstains, the remains of fallen buildings and the impressions of fallen soldiers, and you know that it's over.

That it ends.

One day.

And then you see him – the boy, by the lake, with all that red hair and that sorrow in his eyes and you say, "What happened here? Are you okay?"

He blinks up at you. "You don't know what happened?"

"Did you – is He gone?"

The boy stares at you. You stare back, and notice with a moment's shock that he's missing an ear. "Yeah. Yeah, he's gone."

"Then why are you so...sad?" you ask, fighting the hope and excitement and everything else that's dancing in your chest; you don't understand why he's not shouting his joy and punching the air.

The Dark Lord is gone.

"Because," the boy says as he rises to his feet, "he's not the only one who's gone, is he?"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I'm sor – " you start to say but everything's already fading and you think the universe might be sick of your apologies anyway.

"Well?"

"It all ends, my lord."

"When?"

"I'm not sure."

"And...?"

Silence.

"Speak, Black. How does it end?"

Silence.

"Crucio."

"What the fuck happened out there?" he hisses when you crawl back to the dungeons, freezing to your bones and shaking from more than just the cold.

"Something's very wrong, Barty," you say softly, reaching for his hands and hoping he will understand. "It's been wrong for a while now and He did something – I keep ending up in different times, always at the lake and I – I know how it ends, Barty, I know how it ends and I've got to – "

"Reg," he says, voice firm. "What are you talking about?"

"I – I don't – "

"Please."

"You didn't read it. I thought you would read it."

"You told me not to."

You smile. "I know. Just promise me this – when you do, you know I'm sorry, I have been sorry, I will be sorry again and again and again, okay?"

"Okay, but - Reg, what are you – ,"he tries, but you pull the photo album from his bed and flick through it – you on your broom, Barty pulling at the twigs, you on the floor, Barty's legs on either side of you, you and Severus with Barty on your shoulders, Barty and his father smiling broadly, you and Barty, young and drunk and in love – and there at the end, right there, is an envelope with his name on it and your heart in it and you know this is going to hurt in so many ways.

"Here," you say, and you hand it to him and fall back onto the bed and listen to the sounds as he reads. As he understands.

There it is; the sharp intake of breath. The indignant sigh. The choke of disbelief.

"Reg, are you saying – "

"I leave tonight."

"You don't plan on coming back." His hands still hold the letter out in front of him, but the parchment trembles.

"I want to," you murmur, letting your eyes fall closed. "I want to, but I don't."

"What do you mean you don't? You haven't tried yet; you can, you have to come back, you can't leave me – "

"It's already happened," you whisper. "I've seen it. You've told me."

"I haven't told you anything," he growls. "I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do," you say, and you know he does, he has to, because he said it once, long ago, didn't he? He's given you forever, he said. Infinity, he said. He said it and he knew and he knows now that forevers and infinities are no longer within your reach.

"I – fuck, Reg. I can't let you do this, I can't let you go off to be killed trying to do the impossible. Why can't you just – why can't you just do what the rest of us do and – and bow like good slaves and do as you're told and fight and then we can win this, Reg, you and me, we'll be kings."

You look at him then, at those bright eyes and the way his entire thin frame bounces, reverberates like an echo.

"We won't win, though," you say. "We never win, Barty. Hewants to win. Here's a secret; he doesn't."

"You can't fucking – you're a selfish little shit, Black," he growls, and raise your eyebrows at him. "You're pathetic. You think you can stop the Dark Lord. You think this one little act will get you somewhere? I'll tell you where it'll get you; a fucking grave. And you know what? If you don't want to win this then maybe we're better off without you – maybe I'm better – "

"Please," you whisper softly, eyes falling closed again. "Don't say it. You don't mean it. You'll regret it."

"Maybe the only thing I'll regret, Regulus Black," he spits as he storms towards the door, "is you."

The door slams behind him.

"Merry Christmas, Barty."

But he is gone.

The Great Lake blooms once more and your heart is heavy.

He's not here. A part of you know he wouldn't be – the Christmas decorations are still up, you can see them in the castle windows, and he said February was the first time, didn't he? – but there's note, held down by small, grey rocks. You watch the paper flutter aimlessly against the heavy weight and wonder if this is what you look like to the world.

You reach for the note, pick up the smooth rocks to skip them across the lake, but your arm is clumsy and clunky and heavy. You watch them hit the water with a thunk and sink to the bottom.

The note says

To needing. To all the time in the world.

You said I would find you here.

You never came.

You let the wind pull it from your fingertips, carry it along until it lands on the water, where you watch it float lamely, watch the ink blot and blur and run until it is illegible, unreadable.

You sink to the ground and write 'To us?' in the dirt with your finger, and you hope he finds it.

He isn't there that night, Christmas night.

He hasn't been back since –

You swallow thickly. This is not the goodbye you wanted, not the ending you needed.

His pillow sinks beneath the weight of the photo album as you place it there, open on a photo of you both, his arms slung around your shoulder, yours around his waist, and you can't help but stare at your bare wrist and feel the heavy weight of the watch that sits there now.

All the time in the world.

"Goodbye, Barty," you murmur, and you walk out the dormitory door, down to the statue of the humpbacked witch, and you walk through that tunnel until the darkness that presses on your eyelids begins to fade into light and then you are in Hogsmeade.

You turn on the spot, and you know it's one of the last things you will ever do.

The cave is dark and dead and you summon Kreacher with a frantic whisper and a pained sigh.

You press hard on the cut on your arm. Your fingers are slick with the blood you needed to spill to gain entry, and Kreacher appears before you looking worried and terrified all at once.

"Master Regulus!" he croaks. "What is Master Regulus doing? Master Regulus is hurt, Master – "

"Kreacher, I need your help."

But the world begins to shake and shimmer and there's a tug that you can't resist.

"Wait here," you gasp, as the lake blooms once more.

He's standing there, head thrown back, staring up at the sky, and you've never seen him look so lost.

"Barty," you choke, and he turns around with his face as white as a ghost's and you say, "When? When?"

"February." His voice is an echo of his past self, timid and broken, and you don't care that you're bleeding and weak, and you reach for him, pulling him as close as you can. This is the first time he has seen you since you left, the last time you will ever see him, and you don't ever want to let go.

"Barty, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry – "

"You've got the watch," he says slowly. "You've got my watch."

"To us," you whisper, and you kiss him one last time.

"To all the time in the world," he says, and you choke out a laugh. It is an empty sound. "Reg, you're bleeding."

"I know."

He stares at you, eyes bright but dull, full of love and disgust at the same time, and he says, "I did a bad thing, Regulus."

"Merlin, Barty," you say, but you don't let go, you can't. "What did you do?"

"I've – He asks me to kill people. To do bad things, to – to torture them and I – I do it, Reg." His confession falls into the slope of your shoulder, soft spoken horror, and you hold him tighter still. "You said we – we wouldn't win. And I thought if I could prove you wrong, you would come – you'd come back. Come home. To me."

He's crying now, falling apart in your arms, and you forget how to breathe, eyes burning, and all you can feel is him, safe and warm and Barty, I'm sorry.

"You know I can't," you say. "You know I can't."

But he sobs and cries and wracks in your arms until you feel everything begin to shake and you say, "I love you, I love you," all over again and he melts from your arms like a ghost and all you can see is the sickly green glow of the cave and Kreacher's expectant eyes.

He does as you tell him, feeding you the potion until you're screaming and crying and you're not sure if the Barty that dances before your eyes is real or not, if the Barty with the cruel eyes and the twisted smile is your Barty, will be your Barty, if the shadow of murder in his blurry edges are real or imagined and Kreacher's saying, "Just once more, Master Regulus, just once more," and the words, "I just want to go home," are all that crawl from your throat in a desperate, heartbroken mewl.

"Almost there, Master Regulus, almost done," he says. "Please, Master, there is not much time, quickly – "

And the potion burns your throat and tears at your insides and you're sobbing onto the cold, hard ground – "He said we had all the – all the time in the world, he said it," – and then Kreacher has the locket and you feel his long fingers search your robes for the fake and you are chanting now, saying kill it kill it kill it over and over and over and –

"Water," you croak. "Water, please."

And he tries to fetch it and the wet, rotten hands rise from the lake, clawing grotesquely until one of them has you by the ankle, until it pulls and pulls and Kreacher tugs at you desperately, but nothing helps and you whisper, "Kreacher, let me go," and he's screaming that he doesn't want to, but his hands release you anyway and you are slipping deeper and deeper into ice cold nothingness and –

You reach desperately to the sky as the water fills your lungs, but those monstrous bodies are scraping at your skin and dragging you deeper still and you see it glint in the light, your watch, and you wonder if it will keep ticking when you are gone.

If it'll keep tick tick ticking for all the time in the world.

You hope it does.