Author's notes: I have no decent excuse for writing this when I have so many multi-chaptered fics to update. But the idea came to mind and I thought it was somewhat good so here's what I ended up writing.
The text in the beginning is from Carol Ann Duffy's poem The Devil's Wife.
But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.
The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife
which made me worse. I howled in my cell.
If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell?
The sun made its way through the small window on the wall and woke her up earlier than she liked to. It was piercing through her eyes while she was still asleep and forced her to stay awake for another day when, actually, she wasn't sure she wanted to wake up at all.
She was starting to hate that.
Fourteen years of the same thing every morning were a bit too much for Bellatrix. The sun shining through the bars in the early morning, another scratch on the wall that helped her count the days, then the sun disappearing somewhere by the time when the jailor would bring food to the prisoners. Then the Dementors passing through the corridors – then she tried to call every terrible and hurtful memory in her mind and make them don't pay attention to her. Then the sunset she couldn't see properly from her window, and the night falling again over the prison and the small island it was placed on.
And today's morning was no different. Bellatrix tried to ignore the hunger and the loneliness that was slowly driving her insane, for she hadn't seen any visitor near them – the high security prisoners' cells were forbidden territory now and she thought she knew why that was. The Ministry was afraid that someone might succeed in letting them go. Because the Dark Lord was back.
The mere thought made her laugh quietly; a little sound of relief and almost happiness – something Bellatrix thought she would never feel again, for she had a life sentence in Azkaban. There was hope now. For the last fourteen years, almost any hope she had had died. It was too much time to wait and everyone that came around repeated to her that the Dark Lord is dead. That she's waiting in vain. But she never gave up. She waited, because she knew that one day, her waiting would be rewarded.
"Trix? Are you awake already?" somebody whispered in the cell next to hers. She raised her head and saw – as she had expected, for he was the only one who would call her like that – Rabastan looking down at her from his window – there were this small holes in the cells that allowed the prisoners to talk to each other if they tried really hard. Bellatrix looked up at him questioningly. His lips – for her great surprise – curled into a smile.
"Rod says that it would be soon." He whispered and then looked around, afraid that somebody might hear them. Rabastan seemed alive, full of energy and power – something pretty rare in place such as Azkaban. Most of the people Bella had seen when the Aurors brought her here were sitting in a corner of their cell, wrapped all over themselves and muttering something to nobody. And yet, this morning, Rabastan's eyes were sparkling frantically and a bit scarily. "The… you know." He added as an afterthought. Bellatrix raised an eyebrow.
"What are you talking about, Rab?" she asked, already almost lost interest for what he had to tell her. It was most likely not something important. And he seemed so weird... She wouldn't be able to take if he was going crazy too. Or his brother as well, whatever he had told him. "What is going to happen? Rodolphus is most likely mocking you or something…" she began the conversation they had had so many times. Rodolphus liked to fool his brother around and Bellatrix couldn't blame him. There was no other entertainment in here.
"No, no, he's not." The man said, still terribly excited. "He says that his Dark Mark burns his whole arm and I know he's not lying, because mine is burning too and… well, you said that when it's burning… The Dark Lord needs us." He finished his sentence simply. She rolled her eyes.
"Of course it would burn, Rabastan." She said hopelessly. "We all know that the Dark Lord is back. And what do you expect me to do about it? I don't have a wand, I don't have… anything. No matter how much he needs us, all we can know about it is that the ones that left out of Azkaban after the war are now with him while we can't be there." She could almost hear the whining in her own voice and she hated herself for that, but there was nothing she could do. Again.
"No, there's something else also." Rabastan continued. "You know that Rod's cell is near the corridor that leads to the office of the jailor." Bellatrix nodded approvingly. "Well, yesterday… come closer, Trix, I can't talk to you so loudly about that… Yesterday he saw Malfoy and Narcissa."
"What?" This time Bellatrix stood up from her small wooden bed where she was still laying a moment ago, and climbed on it to get closer to the little window that made the connection between her and Rabastan possible. Her sister has been here? Why would they do that at all, why would they come? They knew that nobody could visit them anymore. "What were they doing here?" she asked in disbelief. Rab looked around again and kept talking, lowering his voice even more.
"Well, they had a lot of influence all over the Ministry." The man pointed out. "Malfoy paid some unholy amount of money for it, and Narcissa cried in that heartbreaking way of hers, saying that she needs any memory from us if she can't see us anymore and other stuff like that… and they convinced him to sell them our wands." He said and stopped talking, giving her time to realize what she had just heard.
It was all pretty confusing. Bellatrix couldn't see why they would take the wands from the jailor. They were of no use anymore; it wasn't like they could give them back to their owners and she was quite certain that her wand wouldn't work for anybody else who hadn't took it with power from her.
"Well, that's good of them." She said indifferently. "But… why?"
"You know that moment in the evening when the jailor goes to take a nap for an hour in his office?" Rabastan said, not even waiting for a response, and kept talking. "Nott will come by that time tonight with a lot of people from the old days, also. Rod heard the Malfoys talking about that when they passed near his cell. The ones that come to free us will give us our wands and we're out." Before Bellatrix could react in any way, he kept talking. "We're out, Trix! Do you know what that does mean?"
"For how long have they been planning that?" she asked. Not that it mattered now, though. There were two possibilities – Rodolphus was crazy and was imagining things. And, the second one – he was actually saying the truth. If so, she had to… do something. Bellatrix was used to be the leader in every plan of the Death Eaters when their Lord wasn't around. Always she gave the orders, she had the best ideas. And now, she hated the thought that something's going on – something she was supposed to be involved in – and she couldn't take part of it.
"Months!" Rabastan answered; his face almost gleaming from the joy and excitement which mere words couldn't truly express. "They were waiting for the exact moment and now they've got it. We'll be free!"
Bellatrix nodded slowly, but didn't gave up to hope this much. Of course she was glad that someone was going to save them. But still, it could quite possibly be a failure. So she couldn't allow herself to get overexcited about it.
o.O.o
Exactly at nine o'clock in the evening – the time when the jailor took a nap every night since she was here – a slight, almost unnoticeable noise appeared. Soon she heard footsteps echoing in the corridors of the prison and muttered spells and orders under someone's breath. It had to be that. No matter how afraid she was to believe it, it had to be. It became clear that she wasn't wrong when she heard someone talking in front of Rabastan's cell.
She lowered herself near the door of her cell and in the next moment she heard a voice whispering something in front of the door. Her name.
"Bellatrix? Is that you?" It was Nott's voice, no doubt.
"Yes." She breathed. "It's me."
Her old wand – for which she had believed for years that was destroyed when they took her to Azkaban – rolled under the door and she took it in her shaking hands. She felt almost as she was holding something holy, a missing part of her, and then she smiled as she felt the power – the power of the wand itself and the realization that she's not helpless anymore – spreading through her whole body.
She wanted to destroy that door, to destroy it, but she couldn't make any noise if she wanted to really succeed in escaping from here. So she whispered a simple Alohomora – now matter how less she believed that it would work, it did – and the door opened slowly. She ran down the corridor, not looking back to see where the other ones are, until she reached the top of the prison – she knew they wouldn't be able to get away through the front door down at the first floor.
She smiled without looking at Azkaban again. The mere feeling of the wind and the life and all that space around her made her tremble with anticipation. Bellatrix looked down at the sea appreciatingly, for she knew that she would have to jump if she wanted to Apparate – the magic of the prison wouldn't allow her to do it and she could see the other prisoners doing that not very far away from her – before she slowly placed her foot on the edge of the building, preparing to leap.
She was ready.