A/N: Oh, wow, my 100th fic! Yay! That's a scary thought.
This is for Cheeky Slytherin Lass' House Cup Comp. Go Hufflepuff!
Using the following prompts: AliceBellatrix, a character forgetting something important, relieved, heartbeat, a broken quill. "That changes nothing." and the quote below.
"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.
They live inside us, and sometimes they win."
Stephen King
I don't know how it happens, or why I stay, or even when it will end. All I know is that I somehow ended up her plaything, a puppeteer's lover with a shaky laugh and fear like a tightened fist around my heart.
She cackles and I shiver; she smiles and I wince; she kisses me and I kiss her back because her lips are soft and she smells like autumn and I think I could love the madness in her.
We are sixteen and she rattles against my bones, her heartbeat hammering mine into excitement, the ghost of her breath hot on my throat, and I think I love the madness in her.
-x-
The library sings with its silence, echoes around the cavity of my chest. It's winter. Dark outside. He sits across from me, ink staining his clumsy hands. Even upside-down, I know his star chart is horrifically wrong; he never was one for looking up, for losing himself in things far away. I think that's why I like him.
"Frank, that's not – "
He sighs heavily, and shoots me a crooked grin. It's oddly affectionate, sweetened at the edges. "What now?" he asks.
My fingers are pale next to his, pristine in comparison to the dirty splotches on his skin. "This one here. Gamma Orionis – or Bellatrix. It should be a lot – a lot closer."
He nods, picks up his quill, and tries to fix the lost star. I stare at him, wondering if he meant to rewrite our galaxy. It's a tale as old as time, him and I – if only there weren't so many stars between us.
"Beautiful though, isn't she? Bellatrix?"
My hand tenses, the long spine of my quill digging painfully. I feel it snap, and blink at him.
"What's – oh," he breathes. "No, no, Alice, I meant the star, not the bloody mad Slytherin bint!"
I say nothing, just drop the pieces of my broken quill onto my parchment and stare, see how the ink drips from the nib, black as night, and stains the poor, plain parchment.
"I mean," Frank stammers – when I look up, he is blushing. "I think you're – that you are a lot more beautiful than her. Than - than anyone."
My chest flutters, something soft and gentle beating its tiny wings there. Relief tingles on my skin. Relief that he doesn't know, relief that he cares for me, relief that my heart responds to his awkward mumbles and the rise of his blush; relief that something about me might be normal after all.
"Thank you," I murmur, and I smile at him with an apology between my teeth. I hope that he knows it's there. I hope that he never finds out why.
-x-
"Why do you – why me?"
Laughter. Soft, strong fingers pressing into the small of my back. Grey eyes and grey smile and grey heart.
"You're just as messed up as I am, Fortescue," she purrs. It reverberates in my skull, that purr. Just as messed up as I am.
"I wasn't," I say, though my voice is low, dull. "Before you."
"And that," she says, dragging her lips along my collarbone, "is exactly why we must stick together."
"We can't, Bella – you know we can't."
She does not speak. She nips at my throat with her teeth, runs her tongue over the soon-to-be bruises she kisses on to my skin. Her fingers claw their way into my hair, tugging at the roots 'til it burns.
"There's a – a boy," I say, and it's all I can manage before her lips claim mine and she is breathing her laughter into my lungs so that I might catch her madness and keep it running through my bloodstream.
When we are running short of air and her body is lean and firm against mine, all sharp lines and restless hands, she whispers, "Longbottom? That changes nothing."
And I let her kiss me again and again and again, let her wandering hands lose themselves along the coastline of my body, feeling the waves crash against me over and over and over and never, ever breaking.
I think of Frank, and then I think of Bellatrix. And I think, perhaps, I love the madness in her.
I think, perhaps, I have to.
-x-
He kisses me for the first time, softly, under mistletoe. I catch my fingers curling into his robes like they have found a home in the warmth of him. It's sweet and romantic and strange, and I think I could love him.
"Merry Christmas, Alice," he says, and lets his lips cover mine again and I think I could love him. All of him.
-x-
We don't talk much, her and I. She prefers whispers on skin, and lips that are otherwise occupied, likes it when there are more items of clothing on the floor than words hanging between us. So we sit, silent. Most days she touches me, growls in my ear, bites at my collarbone.
Today, she stares. She smoothes her hand along my thigh gently, scarily affectionately, and sighs.
"Falling for a Gryffindor," she says. "How foolish."
Her eyes are wild and bright, dancing from my lip to my knee to my own blue eyes, drinking in the shy slip of me as I tremble beneath the pads of her fingertips.
"You don't love me," I whisper, and she stiffens. I feel her fingers tense at the hem of my robes.
"No," she smirks. "Nor do you love me, little Alice. But the Longbottom boy..."
I swallow, and it's like drinking glass, sharp shards of fragmented excuses caught in my throat. I've never known what to say to Bellatrix, never known how to say no, or stop, or I love you, but right now the words come easily, like the glass in my throat is melted and liquid.
"Frank loves me," I say softly, "and I deserve that. I don't know who I am when I'm with you, and I don't know who you are at all, but I thought I could... You're different, Bellatrix Black."
She smiles appraisingly, an elegant eyebrow arched. "You're stronger than you look, Fortescue."
My voice drops. I stare at the spider of her hand, still perched on my thigh with its long fingers and sharp nails. "You almost broke me, you know. Until Frank."
She laughs, a cruel cackle, and I suppose I expected nothing more. "You don't need me to break you, you know. I did nothing," she drawls. "If anyone's going to break you, it's that little monster in your chest."
I look up, meeting her silver eyes, ignoring her mocking smile. "What?"
"Your heart," she says, wicked grin stretching, "is going to ruin you."
I look away. Her hand falls from my leg, closing the boundaries between myself and Bellatrix forever, and we both feel it like a physical thing, like the slamming of a door. "Well," I murmur. "Your lack of heart is going to ruin you."
And I mean it. I think.
-x-
When she comes for us – as I knew she would – she does not acknowledge me as a past lover, as an ex confidante, as anything other than Alice Longbottom, Auror. Time has changed her, twisted her into a murderer and a warrior and a fool. I wince at the shadow of her eyes, long lost to the madness that used to sound in her laughter; she is not long for this world, I think. (I hope.) Too far gone.
When they scream their curses, her voice echoes in my head, shrill and gleeful and entirely unlike the voice that caught around muffled moans dropped into the hollow of my throat so many years ago, and I thrash violently, screaming, fingernails pulling desperately at my own skin because I must be burning, this is fire and hell and oh Merlin save me I'm –
When she is done with me, I no longer remember the silhouette of her, sitting naked beside me and combing her thick hair. No longer remember the shape of her, swinging hips and delicate wrists, no longer remember the stolen moments and secrets we kept, no longer remember the madness in her, the madness I loved, thought I could love, the power she had, the way she used me, kept me, terrified me into feeling something that shouldn't have been, and I no longer remember the feel of her soft lips on mine, muttering her half-hearted Alices like punishment, like prayer and –
I no longer remember my husband. My son. My life.
What I do remember, what I will always remember, is a shadow in silver-grey eyes and feminine fingers, a boy with ink-stained hands under mistletoe, a tiny bundle of blankets that sometimes cries, and a heavy, uneasy feeling in my chest that tells me something has gone wrong and can never again be right, that there is a monster inside me who fights himself because he has nowhere else to turn.
I think it is a madness in me; I no longer know who to blame.