A/N: Or, alternatively titled, In Which Everyone Is Especially Unhappy But Nothing Really Happens. Except me maybe getting a bit heavy-handed with the extended metaphors. Oh well, please do tell me what you think, I'm quite anxious to hear!
Chapter 1: In Ice
I.
Victoire smokes.
She doesn't think that Teddy knows, but he does. Of course he does, because he knows everything about her, like she knows everything about him. It's always been this way, and it always will be. Since that chilly, enchanted winter morning when his dull gray eyes peeked over the edge of her pram and he saw her. He saw everything. Still, she carries on with her illusive ways, as if he wouldn't notice the stale scent of cigarettes lingering on her pastel colored cloaks and wound around the strands of her blonde hair. Teddy isn't quite sure when or why she started her dirty little habit, but he wishes she would quit, or at the very least confess, because it's getting harder and harder to pretend not to know.
At half past two, like clockwork, Vic carefully untwines herself from his comfortable embrace. She slips out a single cigarette from the pack she's spellotaped to the bottom of their bed frame. Perched on the edge of the mattress, body hunched and arched protectively over her thin secret, she waits one, two, three beats before lighting up. The smell of the sulfur from the ignited match burns his nostrils and he can see the vague yellow-orange glow of the flame from closed eyelids.
The first drag, her soft exhaled hiss of satisfaction, is always in the bedroom.
Teddy listens to the sound of her feet padding across the hardwood floor and wonders if maybe she wants to be caught. If maybe she's out there waiting for him to clamor after her and say something, do something to acknowledge that he already knows, like he always does, because that's the way it's supposed to be between the two of them. He should do it. If not to soothe away her concerns, then to expose her dishonesty.
But it's cold outside of the cocoon of blankets. Victoire is already long gone out onto the fire escape, her ashes flicked into the late February air, so he lets it go.
In the morning she smells like sugared violets and smiles blindingly at him, and so it doesn't really matter in the end, after all.
II.
They let their families pretend they're the perfect couple.
"Made for each other," Ginny coos, grinning at them.
"Destiny, of course," Harry adds, winking across the table.
It feels natural, mostly, because the root of their union runs deep into the past. Neither one of them can really remember a time when they didn't silently belong to each other. But occasionally when there's talk of stars and fate and perfect matches, he gets this queasy feeling like ice water dripping down his spine. Teddy knows Vic gets it too, because sometimes her eyes meet his and she fills her blackened lungs with air like she's trying not to suffocate under the pressure of it all.
They're two dolls, with pink plastic lips pressed together, living out someone else's fantasy in a cutout dream house.
He feels no guilt in this.
The family returns to the meal, laughing and clinking silverware against plates as they take up steaming forkfuls of spicy food. Teddy lets his fork lie untouched, instead taking a strange sort of solace from the sudden cool touch of Victoire's thin hand in his. He meets her ice-colored eyes and shares a smile, his heart skipping a beat at the loveliness of her smooth, pale face. With a quick movement, Teddy wraps her hand in both of his, encasing them in the warmth of his skin.
Later, when he is drowning her in kisses, and she is inspiring great shivers up his spine with the sweep of her fingertips, Teddy pretends not to taste the cigarettes in the corners of her mouth. Her lies are bitter against his tongue and her hands are freezing as they run through the turquoise hair at his forehead. But in time they warm, and in time he finds he can taste only what he has come to know as her.
The stars and all the destiny that is written in them burn outside their bedroom in the inky blue sky, and if he has to live out his life in a doll house Teddy is glad for her company.
III.
Victoire doesn't quit and he doesn't sleep.
His body has attuned itself to her habit, to the cold, widening empty space on her side of the bed as she prepares for her nightly ritual. Teddy's getting to be quite exceptional at feigning sleep and ignorance. It is for this reason that at ten of two one drizzling Monday, they're both already awake when she arrives. There is a soft, familiar crack that echoes down the corridor, a sure sign of apparition. They give up the pretense of sleep and rise immediately, the ever-cautious children of war. The light of their wands reaches copper-red waves splayed over apple-red robes and Victoire is breezing past him, arms outstretched and open even before Teddy fully realizes it's her sister. It is an unexpected visit, but Vic doesn't think about Dominique's motives.
She doesn't ask the right questions because she doesn't want to hear the wrong answers.
Teddy doesn't know how to greet Dominique. They've got this bizarre sort of understanding that they're strangers in company and company in solitude, but he isn't sure if this counts as either so he tries to meet her in the middle and nods at her. As she looks out through the curtain of Vic's long blonde hair, her dark eyes give off sparks and she is swaying because she never really stops dancing. But Teddy doesn't know if he's supposed to notice that, either, so he stays silent and wraps his arms around himself to keep out the chill.
"It's so good to see you, Dom. We've missed you."
Dominique's freckled face splits into a wide grin and she and Vic are looking at only each other. He fades into the background, as significant as steam or shadow. This is the sort of moment where he doesn't matter, where the blood that beats in the both of them means more than what or who might encourage it to beat faster. He doesn't intend to break it, but it happens anyway.
Teddy moves or he breathes or he doesn't, and he can feel the magic shatter as both pairs of eyes land on him.
IV.
Dominique tears down a calendar page and the seasons begin to change.
During the three weeks she's been here Teddy's begun to feel his world enter that in-between stage. Winter grips his bones, clings greedily to the frosty, frozen earth with barren icy fingertips. He knows it isn't quite time yet to shed the false warmth he finds in sweaters, to pack away the thick socks and cloaks and all the weariness sewn into their threads. But he wants to. Some mornings, he goes out to the fire escape dusted in ash. He wears no cloak and no thick socks and the wind bites at the skin on his wrists, stinging and burning until he's nearly numb. The sun is warm on his cheeks, though, and the birds are chirping melodies from the branches of budding trees. Dominique joins him on occasion. She talks about the clothes in France and the dragons in Romania and the sea, always the sea.
Her deep scarlet curls catch the wind and blow in all directions, and her long white fingers curl around the frigid, rust-red metal railings. She is never cold. Her skin pinkens but does not prickle into bumpy gooseflesh even though she wears even less than he does. Her fashionably-cut robes with plunging necklines and climbing hems offer little protection from the weather. But whenever Teddy's feeling brave enough to touch her she is always radiating warmth. It's almost unnatural.
"What are you doing here, Dom?" he asks once. "It's so dull."
She grins, but when the question remains unanswered he repeats it.
It's not an unreasonable thing to ask. After all, she'd shown up expecting a place to stay and they had readily given her that, with no explanation required. But it is now well-past what might be considered a usual visit from a girl who was typically in the grips of heavy wanderlust. Dom's quiet for a moment, the thick red of her lips pulled downward in thought. Framed by the light of the morning sun, Teddy thinks she's more beautiful than she has a right to be.
"I think it's nearly spring now," she replies earnestly, fingers tapping against the railings.
Dominique doesn't lie very often, she isn't afraid of the truth. There is a definite kind of honesty in her answer, but Teddy isn't quite sure he gets it.
"Still too cold for swimming, though."
She laughs, hugs him, and all he can see is the red, blood red of her hair as he smoothes it with his ice cold fingers.
V.
She doesn't shut her door, and it's a problem.
Well, it isn't as if she blatantly leaves it hanging open, a wide mouth of space that leads to the bedroom she's made her own. Or, he doesn't think she does, anyway. But Teddy's noticed that Dominique has issues with forcing it all the way shut, with cutting off the doorframe by fitting the wood into the latched closed position. He tells Victoire about it once, but she brushes off his concerns with a sweep of her uninterested eyes, and so it goes on.
He sees her.
In the mornings, still dressed in her thin pajamas and sprawled out across the bed. In the afternoons, when she leads a red-faced Kent Davies into her bedroom with soft secret smiles and long, deep kisses. In the evenings, when she strips out of her robes and turns out the lights. They're glimpses only, of course, and almost always accidental, but one night he's passing by and she's there, maroon blouse unbuttoned and eyes smudged in black liner. The blouse is parted in the front, just enough, and Teddy sees swathes of pale freckled skin and soft curves and suddenly he's consumed in smoke, in fire.
She sees him.
He doesn't move, not even to take in a much-needed gulp of air. There are sparks in her eyes, again, and Teddy can't pretend not to notice this time. Her fingers remain poised at the button holes, slowly tracing the material. The corner of her glossed mouth pulls up and there is danger tucked in the folds of those lips. She reaches for the handle of the door and Teddy isn't sure if he wants her to pull it closed or throw it open. He isn't sure if he wants to walk through the fire, to let it lick and burn at the paper doll house he's living in. Instead of letting himself know the answer, Teddy turns away and makes for the fire escape.
Vic is there.
Smoking, of course. The air outside, despite the heat of the sun and the climbing temperatures, feels like a crash of bitter cold on his flushed skin. Victoire tosses the half-burned cigarette over the balcony and Teddy looks away, briefly, allows her a moment to spit out the smoke still curling in her chest. He's not going to speak out on the matter, not now. This isn't the time for exposing secrets. Instead, he reaches for her, touches the cool fabric of her satin sleeves and closes the distance between their bodies.
"Ted, what—"
He swallows the response between their lips, pressed close together. He wants to melt her, to drown in the puddled remains, to feel everything they are together all at once, in hopes it might douse out the flickering flame of desire that has sparked in him. When they break apart, his tongue is stale with the taste of her bad habits and she's breathing like she's been under water for a thousand years. Heavy, wheezing. She lifts a delicate hand to his flushed forehead, pressing it to his cheeks, his neck, down the collar of his robes.
"God, Teddy, you're on fire," she whispers, breathless.
Teddy closes his eyes and feels the ice beneath his feet begin to crack and splinter.
A/N: Other two parts are on their way to being finished off, so let me know what you think of this bit!