A/N: Written for the quotes challenge on the Bellatrix Lestrange: The Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum.
Quote: "I have no illusions. I lost them on my travels."- Valmonte, Dangerous Liasons
In later years he begins to feel the wind.
It seeps into his stiff joints, a product of the howling gales pounding against the walls of his cell. His disability soon grows to the point where Rodolphus sometimes finds it difficult to stand and sit. It is an uncomfortable realization, an acknowledgement that he is not as young as he used to be.
Rodolphus has not looked in a mirror for over a decade, but he has no doubt that he would not recognize the face staring back at him in the glass. He is only just approaching forty, but he would not be surprised if the years made him look twice as old. He wonders at these times what she looks like now…
In the beginning they let him see her. But then Bellatrix had to attempt that crazy, desperate escape borne out of her own innate need for action--earning herself solitary confinement. He has not seen her for over three years.
But he will now. It has taken a very long time; bribing the guards, arranging a place for them to speak. He didn't mind; the years in confinement had taught him patience.
On the appointed night he stands to his feet with difficulty and smoothes his hair, smiling wryly at the utter futility of that gesture. A nod to the guard, then a fast walk down deeper into the bowels of Azkaban, hearing the screams of the less fortunate prisoners terrorized by the Dementors (he prays Bellatrix is not among them) . Their cries do not trouble him as they used to.
He avoids the guards through the passageway he has discovered. Rodolphus knows it is too risky to use again; he fully realizes this may be his only meeting with Bellatrix. Her door is unlocked, as arranged.
When he finally sees her, little more than a stick dressed in her non-descript prison uniform, her hair like a creature of its own and her face pale and gaunt, he wonders if it's too late for them. Her face is a mirror of his own—withered and utterly destroyed. An icy clamp of despair wells up inside of him. How can he help her when he cannot even help himself?
She shrinks from him as he approaches, and he thinks he can read the same apprehension in her eyes. Then she speaks, her voice hoarse from disuse:
"Rod?"
She holds out her hand confusedly, as if feeling the air. He grasps her icy, thin fingers in his own, holding on to her like a drowning person.
"I am here."
Rodolphus raises her wasted hand to his lips and looks into her haunted eyes, and he realizes in that moment that it is not too late, not for either of them.
He feels he has reached out to life itself.