One shot. AU.
Disclaimer: the characters herein are the property of JK Rowling. I make no money from this.
This is a prequel of sorts to This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable, but as they are both one-shots they can just as easily be treated as independent from each other. I will leave that up to the reader to decide.
And, please share your thoughts on this – I would love to know what you think.
"I Think I Know Enough of Hate" or Prelude to Battle
The prelude to battle has turned her into a shell.
The war has been dragging for years, and she is tired and numb. Weary of always being the one to hold it together, the one to be relied upon, provide solutions and brilliance and support. She has ceased to feel and is very nearly indifferent to the loss. One part of her is desperate for emotions – any kind of sensation – and another simply does not care. Somewhere, in the middle, rests what remains of her heart.
She wishes for it to be over. Wishes for the day of battle to finally dawn so that afterwards she can sleep.
One day he catches her. She is careless of course, perhaps deliberately so, and it is an easy thing for him to snatch her away. She knows she is in enemy hands, she knows he will hurt her so badly and then finish her, but she cannot bring herself to care. At least that will be an ending of sorts, and these days the only thing she craves is an end.
He circles her languidly, drawls threats and insults, tells her in that refined voice precisely how much he will hurt her. He gleefully details all the ways in which she will suffer. He is a predator with arctic eyes, a sleek wolf in snow, all graceful lines and deadly intent.
She finds that she wants to suck his icy voice into her mouth, wants to swallow his venom and malevolence and use it as the antidote to what she has become.
So she moves first, touches his cheek with one hand and pulls up the hem of her dress with the other. She feels elated when he responds to her, elated because she knows that he does not want to, knows that he is repulsed by her but unable to help himself. Their coupling is frantic and ugly and violent, and she screams in rapture and pain. He might be otherwise naked, but he refuses to remove his gloves, refuses to touch her with his bare hands. His hatred for her is intoxicating, and for the first time in a very long while she feels alive. It is disgusting and wrong, sick and so very, very sweet.
She turns to him afterwards.
"You will let me go." It is not a question, nor is it a plea.
He snarls, and punches the wall with all his force. She licks blood from his knuckles. It is delicious.
"Yes", he hisses.
"We will do this again."
"We will", he affirms, face contorted into a hell-mask of rage.
She laughs.
ooooooooo
And so it continues, over and over and over again. Days, weeks, months. The danger of it makes her breathless, makes her smile, and it makes him snarl and reach for her with cruel hands.
She feels so alive when he is deep within her, fucking her and bruising her and hating her. The self-loathing on his face is exhilarating, almost enough to make her forget her own self-disgust. Every time he wraps a gloved hand – oh those long, elegant fingers! – around her throat and squeezes as hard as he can, bringing her tantalisingly close to death, she comes harder than she ever has before. She refuses to let go of his eyes – amber meeting mercury and her willing him not to stop, willing him to keep crushing her windpipe until there is nothing left of her but fragments and atoms. She knows that one day he might not let up, knows that he might finally end her, and that knowledge is the sweetest of all.
She wears his fingerprints like the most exquisite necklace.
Afterwards she taunts him – mocks his warped, sick ideals, his antique promises and his betrayal – until finally he gives her what she wants and punches her, throws her into walls, calls her awful and revolting things.
She treasures every single cut and bruise. They prove to her that she is alive, that blood still courses through her veins – a fast, pitch-black river rushing for him. It ascertains that she is not just a walking dead, shuffling through mindless motions of war with broken eyes and broken mind.
Then she weeps, curses both of them, loathes herself and him with horrific intensity, and she leaves again and again, swearing to him and her that this is the last time, the very last time. He smirks lazily, and is careful to show her how much he hates her. She hates him too. Almost as much as she hates herself.
Sometimes she clumsily attempts to entice secrets out of him. Battle plans, information, strategies, anything that might justify her doing this. If she does this with him as a sacrifice for the Light, manages to inveigle something crucial out of him, maybe then she can forgive herself for what she is doing. What she has become.
He always sees straight through all her attempts and calls her pathetic.
She agrees.
ooooooooooo
"If we meet on the battlefield, will you kill me?"
"Yes." There is no hesitation in his voice. This pleases her.
"Good. Me too."
"I know."
Then he shoves her forward and pushes into her so hard that she thinks she might fracture a rib on the edge of the table. She stops thinking.
It is bliss.
ooooooooooo
There are times when they appear to be caught between two seconds, between coupling and derision, when they lie tangled and exhausted, afforded some small amount of peace. She trails her fingers over sharp angles and plains, journeys along deep lines of experience and marvels at how someone so refined at the same time can be so corrupt and ruined. He plays with her curls and touches her mouth, and he is almost gentle.
It is their precious time in the eye of the storm, and she is calm.
In the background there is the countdown, always the countdown, and she come to realise that she has grown to fear it. Soon what they have become together will end.
She finds the thought unbearable. And she despises herself for it.
ooooooooooooo
She sits naked on the floor. He is getting dressed – all velvet and silk, fur and embroidery – and does not look at her. So she watches him instead. He is beautiful and lupine and she wants to wrap herself around him, take him inside her and keep him there forever. But she has become too small.
He brushes his hair back and turns to her, crouches down to face her on the floor. Fingers on her temple, and a palm cupping her cheek.
"This was the last time."
She knows that he is right. She knows that in a matter of days this fucked-up prelude will be over, and then the closure she once coveted will finally be hers.
She covets it no longer.
"I suppose you are happy", she sneers in his face. "Play your cards right, and you might be the one to kill me. That will please you greatly, will it not?"
He grabs her by her elbows, drags her upright and then slams her hard into the wall. The back of her head connects with stone and she sees white light. She clings to the pain. He leans so close – long silver hair over her collarbone and her soul shattering into a million jagged pieces. His breath on her face, and her palm against his heart. She wants to clutch his heartbeats in her hand. Gloved fingers on her jaw, gentle, oh so gentle, and then brutal lips on hers. He kisses her, and it is obsession and possession, savagery and pure fury. He bites her. She bleeds.
Then, abruptly, a step back. She slides back down on the floor curled with her knees against her chest. He breathes heavily, flared nostrils, mouth stretched to a thin white line. As dishevelled as she has ever seen him. Exquisite.
She feels dead inside.
"I hate you," he says and turns to the door.
"I hate you more," she says to his retreating back.
He does not slow his steps or hesitate, but walks out, slams the door shut and is gone from her life.
She looks at the palm of her hand. She can still feel his heartbeats against her skin.
"Please do not die", she whispers to the empty room.
Her eyes burn dry.
ooooooooo
The title comes from the poem Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost.