Numb, she wiped the marble countertop. It was clean. The accusing ring from her teacup was a distant memory, an evaporation from the map of physics. Yet still she wiped the marble countertop.
Her eyes were on the window opposite. And perhaps she watched the cardinals flirting outside, or the bobbing of a bee on a bruise-colored belladonna blossom. But in all honesty she saw nothing. She wiped the countertop.
"Narcissa."
The dream only wavered. She didn't quite wake. "Hm?" It was a sort of autonomic response from a clockwork witch. Tick tick tick tick...
"We have an elf." Her husband watched her from the kitchen archway. There was genuine concern on his handsome face. It was like watching a lunar eclipse, meteor shower or some such wonder of the galaxy that occurred only seldom.
"Oh." He inhabited some other world. Was a stranger. The encroacher. But he always was...wasn't he?
Inescapable reality. He approached her and she tensed. He pressed his firm bigness to the back of her smallness. His arms surrounded her like misplaced parentheses. "I know it will be difficult for you, but it isn't like he's dead, darling." A kiss on the top of her head added insulting placation to injury. "Draco will return. I promise you that." Another chuckle. Another language. "I doubt his new wife can cook as well as you can. And if nothing else, your pie will bring him home most certainly."
Bile rose in her throat and she had to lunge forward to keep it at bay. She starved, but hadn't eaten in days. She lacked the appetite. Lucius steadied her. "Gods," he murmured. She'd looked upon fragility herself and knew its power of alienation. "Wife, what can I do?" He was helpless. Useless to her. As usual.
Die. "Leave me alone." She whispered. Then snapped. "Now!" He released her, hands hovering over her arms like peace treaties. When he was gone, backed from the room as the defeated enemy, she crumpled over the counter. Let her face fall into her hands. Smeared the makeup. Fractured the facade. Why fucking bother?
For who could know? Who could begin to fathom her loss? Not the mother's loss of her child - not so simple as that. No, it could not have remained simple no matter how strong their wills had been.
For Malfoy wills - when confronted with lust - were notoriously weak. And the witch was no exception. She'd folded into her own son's sheets as though she were a part of them. For time incalculable they'd reawakened one another from the nightmares of war, smirked in the guilty face of 'almost lost forever.'
They'd been lovers. Perfect lovers, really. Sickeningly adept at discovering each other and shamelessly eager to exploit one another. And the ease was bliss. The lackadaisical days laying in sweat, whispering, laughing, touching and fucking...mother and son. Taboo. Forbidden. Addictive. They built a protective wall round themselves comprised of the words "just this." Just this. No love. No emotion. No complications.
A contract of lies. Draco had signed it.
Love grew rampant in soil that had never nurtured it.
She pushed up on the edge of the counter. There were no more tears to cry and her cheeks felt swollen. Her eyes were caves on her face. The silence now was like a womb. She curled in it and could almost disappear, almost make herself into someone careless.
But the amputation itched each time, uncoiling her from stupor to scratch at nothing. At the bit that was gone. A half of her very soul...hacked by her own hand.
It was what was done. She'd told him so. Pureblood boys marry pureblood girls and make pureblood babies. These were her words and they'd been convenient truths. Convenient truths corralled the less noble, less acceptable honesty her heart coveted: that the boy - in his boyness - had hurt the witch in her witchness.
He'd joined them on holiday. The Greengrasses. And perhaps Narcissa had known or at least suspected the end of that story. That her young lover had found his own young lover - the body firmer than her own, the fresher beauty, unwithered blossom. Easier. And far more handy than the completely inappropriate incest. The 'never-quite-right' his mother represented.
Narcissa felt...cheap in comparison. Shamed and dirty. Desperate and old. The decision had come quickly as a punch to her gut: she'd breached the contract unwittingly; sever all ties.
Yet still he'd cried. Why? He'd wanted to know, demanded answers. Wanted her in his life. "I'm your mother. I love you. I will always be in your life." The deeper truth was not so easy to speak, so she snuffed it. Humiliating. Falling in love at my age...wanting for such a fatuous thing... "I'm sorry." She'd also said that. And she was sorry: too sorry. Sorry to have tricked him so cruelly, to have tricked herself. Sorry to have hurt him, to have hurt herself. Sorry for this sad self-surgery, for the bright, bleeding slice that left her aching and empty. So much sorry and so much self.
Why must he make my hurt worse with his own? So she'd separated from herself, watched him weep as if he was a particularly difficult orchid needing attentions. She was as clear as possible. They were hours of misery that culminated in lost, confused faces and last lingering touches.
All in all, she was proud. She'd not broken down until he'd left her chambers. The mirror above her altar shattered privately (and with admirable restraint) as testament to her great acting abilities.
Then wedding dates were set. Then banns were announced. Her shell hardened. And now he was gone.
A belladonna blossom bobbed. The bee buzzed away. The last cardinal flew to the rafters. Narcissa wiped the counter.
The witch ached.
The amputation itched.