Author's Note: There are several references in this story to other stories I have written.
Lucius learned at an early age that crying was not tolerated. He was a male Pureblood. But more importantly, he was a Malfoy. That meant he wasn't allowed to cry. Crying was shameful. Crying was a weakness. And a Malfoy could never do anything that was shameful or weak. A Malfoy was above such things.
Lucius would never forget the first time he could remember crying. His father had been punishing him for some mistake. Lucius couldn't exactly remember what he had done wrong, a common occurrence after receiving a punishment. But Lucius did remember crying. And he remembered what had happened afterwards. His father had become even more brutal. And it had not ended until Lucius had finally stopped crying.
It had not ended there, though. Abraxas Malfoy had truly wanted his son to learn that crying was unacceptable. So, he had dragged the young boy down to the dungeons beneath the manor. Once there, Lucius was locked in a small cell.
It was so dark and cold in that tiny cell. Lucius couldn't see a thing. All he could do was feel around blindly, and it never took him long to feel solid, unbreakable wall.
Lucius remembered that it had not taken him long to start crying again. He also remembered that he was not allowed out of the cell until he had stopped crying.
Lucius had always been a quicker learner, so it did not take him long to grasp that crying only made things worse. So, he conditioned himself to accept punishment without crying.
It did not take long after that for Lucius to not show any emotion at all while he was being punished. He showed neither pain nor anger, just a cold indifference.
Lucius even learned how to become like stone when the Dark Lord came into his bedroom at night. He whimpered a little at first, but he never shed a tear, not even a single tear.
Narcissa quickly became a breath of fresh air. Lucius remembered all the times he held and comforted her when she cried.
Pureblood society was very traditional, and that meant that women, even Pureblood women, were allowed to cry. Of course, they couldn't cry in front of Mudbloods and Blood-Traitors, but they were allowed to be a little emotional in private.
Pureblood men, on the other hand, weren't ever allowed to be emotional, not even in private.
It did not take Narcissa long to start opening up to Lucius. She told him things she would never feel comfortable telling anyone else.
And Lucius did the same. There were few things he kept from Narcissa.
But unlike Narcissa, Lucius never cried. He did not ever think less of Narcissa when she cried, for he saw an inner strength in her that no one else seemed to be able to see. But he just couldn't cry. There were times (shameful times for he had always hated being weak) he thought about doing it, but that thought never turned into action. He was incapable of crying.
As Lucius grew older, he found himself faced by several situations in which a lesser man would have been justified in crying. His and Narcissa's stillborn daughter. All the miscarriages that followed afterwards. Regulus's death.
Narcissa cried in all those situations. But never Lucius. He didn't even cry when he went to visit his daughter's grave alone. A part of him (a weak part of him) really did want to cry, but the tears just weren't there.
When he was imprisoned in Azkaban, it did not take Lucius long to have nightmares that involved the dead bodies of both his wife and son. In those nightmares, he begged the Dark Lord to spare them and to kill him instead.
But never, not even in his nightmares, did Lucius Malfoy cry. He just couldn't cry. He was incapable of crying.