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Ever since he returned from Azkaban, Sirius is unnaturally quiet. He’s distant, staring into space, and so still. Her restless son, that could never sit still, that shone so brightly, burned so hot, now spends his days in silence, only moves from his bedroom to the nursery, to sit silently with the little half-blood and with the dog.
It’s the potions, she thinks. She hopes.
But when he doesn’t take his potions, he goes from quiet and lost, straight to rage. Not like before, no. Not his regular outbursts.
He could always be cruel, her boy, but now he spits things at her with never before heard levels of vitriol.
She reminds herself she yelled plenty of cruel things at him throughout the years, and that she rarely meant them. She stays calm.
She’d take his hate gladly, over the times when she finds him screaming in his sleep, when she shakes him awake, and he curls into a ball and whispers he wants to die.
So she just gives him more potions, far more than what she was told, because she’s afraid of what he’d do without them.
She’s afraid she’s not enough, that Potter is not enough, that nothing will ever be enough to keep Sirius alive.
“He’s in no state to marry,” she says, when Arcturus insists this is the perfect time to do it, when Sirius is so malleable.
“If he has a child of his own, then he will live for that child. Even you, as useless a mother as you are, still understand the love one carries for a child of one’s flesh and blood.”
That’s true. Walburga once wanted to die, when her daughter died.
She couldn’t bear breathing, resented every morning she opened her eyes, but Orion kept asking her to think of her sons.
She stayed alive for her sons.
Sadly, she started resenting them, instead, for keeping her in pain; Sirius especially.
Regulus was so young, she didn’t think he’d miss her much if she were to disappear, she didn’t think he’d remember her, but Sirius…
She couldn’t leave Sirius, she stayed alive for him, and she ended up hating him for it.
She got better, eventually; she started living again, but by then, Sirius grew wary of her moods, grew closer to his father, and she never knew how to mend what she broke between them. As the years passed, she only made it worse, she only resented him more, because he preferred Orion, perfect Orion that never once lost his mind, like she had, and he won over her eldest son, the light of her eyes, while she was grieving a daughter Orion forgot so swiftly. Not only did he steal her little daughter, while Walburga slept, but he stole Sirius, too, while Walburga suffered and struggled to live.
“You know that is not what happened,” Orion says, holding her hand. “I didn’t steal Sirius from you; he was only four, he was confused and hurt, and you pushed him away.”
He’s starting to look sick; it’s starting to become real. This man, made of stone, this man that saved her from a cage, by trapping her into another one. This man she loved ever since he was born and she was first allowed to hold him in her arms.
“I know you didn’t steal him,” she says. “But that’s how it felt.”
He smiles, and he’s still so handsome, even now. She never met a man as handsome.
“You live your life based on feelings, rather than reality,” he says, and only smiles wilder. “But I always loved that about you, even when it drove me crazy.”
“He’ll run away when you die,” she says, holding onto his hand, hoping against hope somehow this would be enough to make Orion defeat death.
He sighs. “He’ll run away even if I were to live.”
The tears are hot against her cheeks. He wipes them with his other hand.
Sirius is restless lately, more than usual. She sees him struggling, sees how defiant he’s growing, sees the rage boiling under the surface. He hates her, but he loves his father. Even so, during the past year, Walburga can sense the shift in him, the boy becoming a man, bristling at having to obey, glaring daggers at Orion when he’s being reprimanded.
“He would,” she allows. Even Orion ran, in his own way. He ran to Egypt, eager to place some distance between himself and Arcturus; eager to escape old Sirius’ harsh scrutiny. Perhaps Sirius would have gone to Egypt as well, or to another Institute. He’d have gone abroad, became his own man, got some space to breathe, and he’d return. But if Orion dies…“If you were to live, you’d always bring him back. Without you…he’ll never come back just for me.”
“He will. He doesn’t belong out there in the world; he’ll learn that the hard way. No matter what, no matter how long it will take, Sirius will return home. It’s where he belongs. It’s his destiny.”
Walburga knows all about living for the sake of her sons. She lived for Sirius, when she wanted to die because she lost her daughter. And when Sirius left, she wanted to die again, but she lived for Regulus, who was suffocating under all the responsibilities suddenly thrown on his shoulders. It was hard to exist in her silent home, with Orion prone, with Sirius gone. But she woke each day, for Regulus.
Arcturus is right, for once. Sirius will have to find the will to live for his child.
So she agrees to conspire with Arcturus, to get Sirius a wife, when he’s in no state to refuse.
He still avoids it, even as lost, even with his mind hazy, Sirius still avoids the subject.
But he caves, eventually.
He marries three months after he’s out of Azkaban.
“When he’ll recover, when he wakes up, he’s going to leave us again,” Walburga tells Arcturus, watching Sirius stare right through his bride. “He’ll never forgive us for this.”
Arcturus sneers at her. “He’ll never leave again. And if he forgave you, if he found it in his heart to eat at your table again, after all you did to him, he can forgive anything.”
For all the arranged marriages in their families, for all the tantrums she threw, her wedding was beautiful. After two years in Egypt with Orion, she fell in love with him. Her wedding night was beautiful.
She feels nauseous on Sirius’ wedding night; it feels wrong. A crime, a most ugly crime.
Astrid’s mother worries for her daughter, wringing her hands, but her daughter is sane of mind, she consented to this wedding and all it entails.
Her boy, though- her beautiful boy…She can’t stay at the party anymore, once Sirius leaves with his bride.
She Apparates to Orion’s grave. She goes there every week.
“Would you have done this to him?” she asks.
Orion never made a move to engage their sons. Oh, he alluded to it, kept other families on their toes, on the mere suggestions maybe their daughters will be picked for Sirius and Regulus, but Orion never discussed it seriously.
“I’ll let them choose, when they’re old enough,” he’d argue with Arcturus.
Orion wanted Sirius to marry Narcissa; he kept pushing them together, sending them at parties, seating Sirius next to her at dinner, hoping Sirius will take a liking to her.
“He won’t. How can he like Narcissa when all he does is stare at Bellatrix?” Walburga mocked her husband.
Thank the gods, Bella already married before Sirius grew old enough to make it an issue.
If Sirius was only two years older, Walburga knows nothing and no one would have ripped Bella away from him. Like his father before him, Sirius would have wed her, everyone else be damned.
Orion hoped he’d be able to stir Sirius towards Narcissa, that in a matter of years, when he was old enough, when Orion would give him choices, he’d pick Narcissa over others.
But had Sirius rebelled too much, had he been more contrary than expected- would Orion had drugged him and sent him to bed with a stranger?
She can’t picture it; she can’t picture it because she knows that if Orion lived, Sirius would have never ended up in this situation. Oh, maybe he’d have ran away, maybe he’d have had an episode, but he’d have never ended up in a war; Orion would have never allowed Riddle and Dumbledore to sink their claws in their boy. Sirius would have never set foot in Azkaban.
“Gods, he’ll hate me more than ever when he recovers,” she says, hands shaking.
She sits on Orion’s grave. She nicked a bottle from the party, and she pulls it out of her robe pocket, where she shrank it.
She waves her hand, and it returns to its normal size. She takes a swing of it.
“Oh, shut up,” she spits at Orion.
Once she drinks enough, she feels better.
“I suppose it’s fine if he hates me again; better he’s alive to hate me, than- than the alternative.”
She returns home when dawn breaks.
“Mistress has been naughty,” Kreacher reprimands her. “Mistress promised Bad Master that she won’t drink, but Mistress drank. Kreacher can smell it on her.”
She ignores him, bathes, brushes her teeth, and orders Kreacher to make her strong coffee.
By the time she heads to breakfast, her head is pounding.
Her in-laws are grating on her nerves. Orion spoke highly- or as highly as Orion would speak of someone that wasn’t a Black- of Thor, but Walburga doesn’t like him much. She doesn’t like his wife. Or his son. Or his daughters. Especially the daughters.
When Sirius shows up, he looks as dead as always. He plays with his food, stares into space, and doesn’t say a single word.
Regulus shakes his head. He’s the only one that protested to the marriage.
Lucius and Narcissa were helpful, Walburga’s parents were helpful, everyone agreed it’s for the best.
Regulus didn’t like it. “It’s wrong,” he told her, weeks before. “You know it’s wrong to do this to him when he’s in this state.”
Thank the gods Bella is- well, she’s not there. If Bella was sober, if she’d exist in reality, then she’d have never allowed this.
And it’s necessary. Wrong or not, Walburga wants Sirius to live. And he will- when he has a child, when he sees his child, he’ll have to live.
It’s a parent's most sacred duty.
And Sirius- rebellious, spiteful, driven by anger- is dutiful. He already makes supreme efforts to look after the little half-blood. He makes an effort to take him to the park, even if he looks as if all he wants is to curl into a ball in his bed and never leave it again.
Walburga is grateful for Potter. He’s a placeholder, he keeps Sirius alive, until the real deal will come along.
She even took a liking to the boy. She doesn’t understand how it’s possible for a half-blood to be that…cute. But he is cute. He even made Sirius smile once.
But he is a half-blood, so he isn’t very intelligent, gods bless his little filthy soul. Must be his mother’s muggle stupidity that makes the child think Walburga is a safe person to be around.
He toddles around and his face splits into a grin whenever he sees Walburga. He raises his hands, and when she lifts him, he cuddles at her chest, or kisses her cheek.
Narcissa’s son is a pureblood, he’s intelligent. He doesn’t like Walburga, understands somehow that she destroys every child she touches, so Draco shies away from her.
But poor Potter lacks this instinctive awareness. Even if he spends all day with Sirius, a living proof of how Walburga destroyed her own son, Potter doesn’t get it.
He calls her ‘mum’, once.
In one of the rare occasions Sirius leaves Harry in the nursery at night, Walburga heard crying, so she went to investigate.
And when she wrestled the boy from Dobby, Harry wailed, threw his hands around her neck and called her ‘mum’.
“No,” she told him. “No, I am not your mother. Even your worthless, filthy, stupid mudblood mother was better than me. She died to save you. I couldn’t save my children, even if I’m still alive.” She starts crying, too, and Dobby slinks back, fearful. “I almost lost them both; Regulus took that brand and would have ended up dead, and I couldn’t stop him. His brother saved him, not me. And Sirius-”
Harry just cries harder, and she cries, too, until they both exhaust themselves.
(-)
The baby in Astrid’s belly could die. Why didn’t I think of that? It can happen, and that will send Sirius over the edge.
Though Sirius doesn’t seem to care that much about anything.
Even when Arcturus overruled her, and the healer lowered the dosage of the potions, Sirius still stares through walls, wanders through the hallways at night like a ghost.
Even when Lucius and Narcissa forced him to attend parties, Narcissa says he just sits there on a chair, quiet, unless she makes him dance, or speak. That he doesn’t eat a thing, but has started drinking, instead.
Walburga prays to all the goddesses at night, every night. She forgot how to pray. She never really knew, truth be told. She was taught, long ago, but only briefly, because Blacks aren’t in the habit of praying, more in the habit of making things happen themselves, but she looks through some books and she attempts to pray for the baby’s safe delivery.
She goes to Druella, because that woman knows her sacrifices, and every full moon, they kill whatever animal Druella considers appropriate and they draw the runes; they chant.
They must be worth something; sure, Druella never got the boy she wanted, but Cygnus said Druella spent all the months Sirius and Bella were in Azkaban chanting away in the woods, that she came home every morning covered in blood from head to toe. And it worked, didn’t it? Both Bella and Sirius are out of Azkaban.
Walburga doesn’t remember much of those months. She went to the only god she trusted, to Orion’s grave, and she sacrificed her liver, drinking everything she found, begging Orion to do something, anything. She even begged old Sirius, buried right next to Orion.
She even begged her mother, her insufferable mother -
But insufferable and hateful as the woman is, she came to be with Walburga.
She held her sometimes.
“We’ll get him out, don’t worry,” her mother said. “Arcturus, Pollux, Cygnus- they’re all doing their best.”
“Useless,” Walburga spat. “It’s been months. He’s wasting away in that place while they go around having dinners with politicians. If Orion was here, he’d have gone straight to Azkaban, first day. If Orion was here, he wouldn’t have let you take my wand.”
Because they took her wand, her parents did.
When they arrested Sirius, Walburga fought. She fought even after they disarmed her. She scratched at their eyes, she bit them, she pulled their hair, until they stunned her.
They arrested her, threw her in a ministry cell, with all the petty criminals.
She spent two nights there, before Arcturus and her father came to get her.
They didn’t charge her with anything.
“A grieving mother, you understand,” her father told Crouch. “She lost her mind, poor thing, but she didn’t do too much damage-”
“She almost blinded two men! With her bare hands!”
“She lost her mind! What mother wouldn’t when she sees her child attacked by thirteen Hit Wizards?”
“Her child is a murderer,” Crouch spat, but he let her go.
Her father collected her wand, and he didn’t give it back to Walburga until Sirius was released.
Because if Walburga had her wand, she’d have went to Azkaban and died there on the island, just so she can yell to Sirius that she loves him. Just so he would know.
(-)
Even when the potions stop completely, Sirius doesn’t recover. In fact, he lost his mind entirely, because he starts wearing Riddle’s ring.
“You should have beat him as a child!” she yells at Orion’s statue. “Clearly, he needed it! He was never afraid when I slapped him, but you should have beaten this…this wrongness out of him! I told you it will cause problems. But no, you didn’t listen to me! And now, look! He’s wearing Riddle’s ring!”
She kicks at the statue, but it only hurts her foot. Whenever she lashed out at Orion, she only hurt herself.
“Of course you didn’t believe me! What would you know about loving horrible men? You were the horrible man! But I knew! I knew what grief loving men can bring him! And look! Do you believe me now?”
(-)
“Calm,” Druella holds her back, when Walburga means to sink her fingers in Astrid’s mother’s hair.
“Auntie,” Narcissa hisses. “You’re not helping!”
Everyone is so concerned about Astrid and her wellbeing. No one cares about Sirius! They’re only focused on that stupid girl, that weak, frail little shit that can’t even push.
They plan to endanger the baby’s life, just to make it easier for the girl.
Outrageous. Does no one care the baby is Sirius’ last chance to snap out of that horrible pain that eats him up? That is killing her son, day by day, erasing everything he was, leaving only a blank, expressionless face in his stead?
Walburga looks to Bellatrix, hoping for an ally. After all, in that room, it’s only Walburga and Bella that truly love Sirius.
But when she looks at her, she only sees the same blank face, the same nothingness in her eyes.
They were always meant to be, these two. Oh, everyone wanted to stop it, and they stopped a marriage, but they can’t stop fate. They are mirrors of each other, always have been.
Bellatrix is Sirius’ soulmate.
Like Walburga was Orion’s. Ever since he died, Walburga walks around with half her soul missing.
She only has her sons, their sons, but one is far away from home, and the other- the other is in the house, but he’s even further away than Egypt.
He’s in a place Walburga cannot reach him, and she needs that fucking baby to get Sirius back.
But Sirius is too much like his father; Sirius, like Orion, priorities his wife over his unborn child.
(-)
She didn’t expect she’d fall in love again, not after everything.
The baby was for Sirius.
And yet when Walburga holds him, she falls in love.
It looks so much like her babies. Only…new. Untainted.
“I’ll do better this time,” she promises. Little Orion. Sirius hasn’t come up yet, hasn’t named him, but she knows this is his name.
Sirius wouldn’t think of any other.
(-)
Orion is a delight. A breath of life in a house of dying.
But Sirius doesn’t get better.
Oh, he holds his son, he’s more aware when he holds him, but he’s not better.
In fact, he’s worse.
“Your father would be so proud,” Walburga tells him, one night, when she finds Sirius in the nursery, watching over the baby.
Sirius hums.
“This is what he wanted for you,” she tries. “A beautiful family. And you have it. You have that wife of yours- whatever else, at least she’s beautiful. And you have this wonder right here, to carry your father’s blood, his name, his legacy. Even Harry,” she remembers to add.
Sirius doesn’t answer, runs his thumb over Riddle’s ring, like he’s prone to.
She goes closer. “I know you’re still hurting, but you owe it to you new family to be present. Leave the past behind. She gestures to the ring. “Throw that away. It doesn’t belong here.”
He tuns to look at her, her beautiful son. He looks better than the wraith they brought back from Azkaban; he looks like her Sirius, but his eyes…they’re empty.
“I went to where we lived,” he tells her.
We.
That fucking mudblood, half-blood, whatever type of mongrel he’d been.
We.
If only Walburga could have access to the room where Sirius put his body.
She’d rip it apart, limb by limb. She’d spit on him. She’d set him on fire.
“Why do I have to go?” Walburga asks, put upon, when Slughorn summons her and Riddle to his chambers, late at night, to inform them a couple of fourth year Slytherins have gone to the Forbidden Forest to summon vengeful spirits for Samhain.
Apparently, one of them got cold feet, turned back and snitched to Slughorn.
Who now is sending Walburga and Riddle to retrieve them, before ‘Albus gets wind of it, and we’ll all be in trouble’.
She gets why Riddle was chosen. Not many students would be able to navigate through the Forbidden Forest safely.
But she doesn’t understand why she’s made to go.
“Well, you are the Head Girl, Miss Black,” Slughorn says. When she raises an eyebrow, unimpressed with his reasoning, he sighs. “Orion is with them. I’m afraid Orion won’t-hmm- heed advice from Tom.”
She snorts. Orion doesn’t acknowledge mudbloods. He plays this game where he pretends he can’t see them, or hear them.
“You are the only soul he’d listen to.”
And so she ends up with Riddle, wandering through the forest, instead of enjoying a feast in the Great Hall.
“I’m going to kill Orion,” she mutters. The little rascal.
“Only if the assortment of creatures that live here hadn’t killed him first,” Riddle says.
“Shut up, mudblood,” she snaps. “As if a lowly creature can hurt a Black. I could throw a Black toddler in this lousy gathering of trees and it would be perfectly safe.”
“If you say so.”
He’s so irritating. Especially since apparently the boys in his year lost their mind and now trail after him like lost puppies. Even Malfoy- what an embarrassment.
Worst, her own brother has grown prudent around Riddle; obviously, Alphard is a Black, so he doesn’t follow Riddle around, but since that accident with the dead mudblood a year before, Alphard started saying things like ‘he is dangerous, best not to antagonise him’.
“If I say so,” she mocks. “You know I’m right. You might be a mudblood, but somehow you’re not as stupid as the rest of your ilk. You know how powerful my blood is, how valuable. You crave it.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing all your blood on the forest floor, I admit,” he answers, with a smirk.
Not his polite, dazzling smile that has every student in the other houses think him Merlin’s second coming, gracious, kind, perfect Tom Riddle.
The devious smirk looks better on him, Walburga has to admit.
She rolls her eyes. “Please, Riddle. You don’t fool me. It’s not my blood you want, it’s Alphard’s. And not on the floor, but inside his veins, making him all handsome. You think I didn’t notice how you look at him?”
Alphard says she’s mad. “Trust me, I’d know,” he told her. “I know when a bloke is interested in me and he is not. He’s not interested in anyone.”
He would know, generally. Her brother is quite the slut. But he’s mistaken about Riddle.
Alphard is quite oblivious to his surroundings, sometimes, and he’d never pay attention to a mudblood.
But Walburga saw the glances Riddle throws his way, on occasion.
Riddle freezes at her side. He stops walking. “What?” he demands.
Oh, she hit a sore spot. That’s so hard to do, with Riddle. He’s seemingly unaffected by everything. Only Dumbledore gets a reaction out of him.
Even when they used to beat him up and destroy his belongings, in his first year, he didn’t show much of a reaction.
“Don’t deny it. You fancy him. As if he’d ever give you a second th-”
She yelps, steps backward, because Riddle’s wand is suddenly in her face and she didn’t expect it. In the six years she’d known him, he never aimed his wand at her, understanding it would be the end of his schooling.
How dare he?!
She’s so indignant, she almost forgets to feel fear.
Almost.
But Riddle looks- he looks- for the first time, she can see why Alphard would call him dangerous.
In the moonlight, face half covered in shadows, his eyes glint red for a second.
I’m a Black, she reminds herself. I can’t die under the night sky.
So she pushes his wand away, even if her fingers shake.
It comes right back up, the tip pushing into her neck, and Riddle steps closer. He’s ridiculously tall.
“Gods, relax, will you,” she snaps, trying to keep her voice steady. "It’s not that serious-”
“If you ever imply such a thing again,” he snarls. “I will eviscerate you.”
Oh.
Oh, that’s right. It makes sense. Even if she calls him a mudblood all day long, she sometimes forgets he actually lives with muggles when he’s not at Hogwarts. It’s just so hard for her to imagine anyone living with muggles.
And muggles, mudbloods- some of them were downright horrified when they saw Alphard holding a boy’s hand, or bending close to whisper in his ear.
Truly horrified, not just the disapproval Abraxas displays as such gestures.
One mudblood actually told Alphard he will burn in the deepest circle of hell, whatever that means, for all eternity.
It’s not just anger that is twisting Riddle’s features as he looms over her.
It’s shame. Disgust. But aimed at himself, not at Walburga.
What an incredibly stupid thing to get one’s knickers in a twist for. Sure, it’s not socially advisable, but by the gods, the mudbloods need to loosen up a little.
“Riddle,” Walburga says, firmly. “Put those big brains to work and snap out of whatever lunacy compels you to aim your wand at the daughter of the most important family in this world you’re trying to survive.”
A few seconds pass, though they stretch as if they were hours.
Walburga refuses to show fear, but she feels it.
And then Riddle steps back, lowers his wand. “One day,” he says, breathing hard, as if he just ran ten miles, “I will make you regret every single indignity you made me endure.”
She straightens her shoulders. Riddle is in his right mind again. “Tell yourself whatever makes it easier to fall asleep at night, Riddle. It’s no concern to me.”
They walks in silence the rest of the way. Walburga half forms a plan, where she tells her father the mudblood pushed his wand into her neck-
But no. However satisfying it would be to have Riddle expelled- or, in case Sirius finds out, murdered- Walburga can’t make herself admit to anyone that she allowed a mudblood to get the best of her. She’d never live it down.
When they reach the boys, who also apparently indulged in some wine they must have stole from Hogsmeade, Riddle is still pissed off.
He does have authority in his voice, she hates to admit it, he always did, but now it’s overwhelming.
All these proud little purebloods hurry to obey him, follow him out of the forest, with no protests.
Except, of course, Orion.
“He looks livid,” he notices, with a smirk. “What did you do to him now?”
“Oh, the usual,” she brushes it off. She slaps him over the head. “We best get moving, we don’t want to fall behind, otherwise, the things I’d do to you for being so irresponsible-”
“We can fall behind,” he says, with a huge grin. “Go ahead, do things to me.”
She grabs him by the hair. Gods, but he’s getting so tall. “Come along, I can’t see Riddle anymore, and I don’t want to get eaten alive by some-”
He growls. “You don’t need Riddle! What, you think I can’t protect you from werewolves and centaurs and whatever else?”
His indignation is so amusing, it makes her lose some of the tension she gathered in her shoulders after her …conversation with Riddle.
They bicker all the way to the castle, and Orion grows more and more upset when she laughs at his boasting that he could definitely kill a werewolf.
Orion did kill a werewolf, in Egypt, in wolf form, no less, and brought her his pelt.
He was a man, no longer a child, and he was the best student that ever crossed the gate of the Institute.
Walburga felt safe with him. Well- she knew no one else could hurt her, if he was there. She still had her doubts if maybe he will end up hurting her.
But she felt confident Orion could protect her, and their family, from anything else.
As the years passed, her confidence only grew. Even when he did hurt her, even when they were fighting, even when he was out with his whores, Walburga knew she only had to call, and he’d come running back, and he’d keep her and her sons safe.
Even when Riddle returned from wherever he’d been, all draped in power, and everyone, including Orion, seemed so wary of him, Walburga never feared. Orion was the most powerful man in the world, the strongest shield, the only thing mightier than his magic was his indomitable will.
Sons of her acquaintances were getting wrapped up in what was quickly becoming a civil war, and she felt pity for them, but she never feared.
She kept calling Riddle a mudblood, refused to use that ridiculous ‘Voldemort’ monicker, even if Orion asked her to stop.
She felt safe. Untouchable.
And then Orion fell unconscious.
She stopped calling Riddle a mudblood. She stopped calling him anything.
Orion was still muttering Sirius’ name, the only word he ever said after he closed his eyes for the last time, and Regulus was already putting up posters in his room.
He was talking about ‘the dark lord’.
And then Bellatrix came home with a mark.
Regulus was next.
Sirius - Sirius was sure to fight against Riddle, what with his blood traitor friends.
And Walburga remembered; “One day, I will make you regret every single indignity you made me endure.”
She was sure Riddle will kill her son. At least one of them, if not both.
But she never imagined this. She never imagined this would be the way to kill her lovely boy.
Sirius looks at her, with that dead stare of his. He thumbs at the ring again.“This,“ he says, “is the only thing keeping me alive.”