Lucius stood watching her sleep, tracing the delicate features he knows so well with quiet scrutiny. She is still so beautiful, despite the years and the trials they have survived. The moonlight suits her, softening her sharp lines, an unreal statue of velvet skin, rosy lips, and black lashes against a smooth cheek. Always elegant, he had always found the soft snore coming from her slightly open mouth privately amusing. Her white gold hair spills across the pillow around her head, pulled away fastidiously from the long column of her neck.
He watches in silence, caught in the shadows by the door, breath still catching in his throat from adrenaline. The dark cloak draped around his sturdy form is torn and singed, and there's a metallic bite of fury and danger on his tongue. With a sigh he sets the mask clenched in one fist on the table, wincing mentally at the clunk it makes. There's a smirk dancing on the corners of his lips, a fire and tempest caught in his grey eyes, a weary sense of victory.
And beneath it a cloying darkness.
He slides the heavy cloak from his shoulders and drapes it over a nearby chair. Narcissa is startled awake at the dull clunk of his boots as he turns toward his closet, loosening the cravat around his neck. A panicked gasp escapes her, a rush of air caught in her lungs, and she starts upright partially.
"Lucius?" Her voice is quiet, nearly tentative. She tries to find him in the room, leaning on an elbow, sharp blue eyes peering intently.
"Of course," he replies with a trademark smirk, stepping toward the bed. And that proud tilt of his chin and the arrogant confidence that enfolds him are exactly what she wants to see.
Her features soften with relief as she sits up all the way, alight with passion kindled by desperation. Fine, silky locks tumble around her shoulder, and he takes a seat on the bed beside her, tucking a stray piece behind her ear, brushing a comforting touch along her cheek. "You always worry so much," he says with a bemused smile, leaning down to kiss her.
She catches his lips eagerly, curving a hand around the warm column of his neck to pull him closer, drinking in the security and reassurance his presence offers. "Of course," she echoes back as they draw apart. She feels his pulse still unsteady beneath her hand on his chest, and her fingers dig into the thick, dark fabric.
She was never one who needed to ask—she already knows. She had always known.
She could always smell death on him, feel the thrum of it pressed against her, the slight edge of something raw and unbridled beneath that typically composed demeanor. A gleam of hatred and fierce determination kindled in his stormy eyes.
Her expression is solemn as she stares up at him, playing with a bit of hair in the neat ponytail gathered at the nape of his neck. Ducking her head, she nuzzles against the side of his jaw, inhaling his familiar scent and the tang of his cologne lingering against the skin.
She remembers the first time.
X
He had hardly been himself that night, when he walked back through their bedroom door. That strict self-awareness and careful arrogant composure that was so much a part of who he was had been stripped clean as he passed the threshold. He had slumped back against the door numbly, the thud echoing through the silent foyer.
She, every appearance of elegance and none of the confidence behind it, had rushed in from where she'd spent an anxious night caught between pacing and struggling to distract herself enough to keep from the unladylike habit. Despite her efforts she would only to find herself lost in thought and cruel fantasizing minutes later trekking a particular length of rug laid out beneath the west windows in the parlor.
She gasped, his name on her lips, gliding across the room with a grace that was too ingrained in her movements to desert her even now. Her delicate, white hands shook with fear.
But she had stopped, freezing in the empty space between them on the hardwood floors, staring with a terrible sense of dawning realization at her young, ambitious husband as he gathered himself together once more. She knew in an instant. Something had changed, some final thread had severed.
His wild eyes snared her where she stood, and beneath the shock and confusion she felt a pervasive sense of conviction and determination that stole her breath. There was no shying away, no flinching from purpose. He seemed suddenly so much older, and she took an involuntary step away from him.
The rolling gong of the clock sounded once between them, echoing through the empty corridors of the mansion.
He crossed the distance between them, enveloping her slight form in his arm. His hand slid down to cover hers, unsteady fingertips pressing against her own, both cold and trembling. The scent of flowers and spice was a soothing balm to the fierce recklessness pulsing through him, anchoring him back down to earth when the barely contained roar of power seared beneath his paper thin skin. A shiver traced down his spine at the memory of dark magic coursing through him, a heady rush of hated and glory and danger, a feeling of being used as one used.
Cradling her head in his strong hands, he stared down into her thin, tapered face with a cold scrutiny. She swallowed, back stiffening sharply as she met his eyes firmly and with icy certainty, slipping down into the familiar mask of formality and pride. A slow, deliberate smirk slid across his thin lips, delighting in her bold front, and Lucius tucked two fingers under her strongly defined jaw, drawing her chin up and kissing her.
He tasted naïveté on her soft lips, and his eyes closed as he relished the flavor of something that has been lost to him. So young and beautiful, icy brilliance to frost over the burning uncertainty and fear and hatred. She was his purity. Not innocence—no, the war had claimed her, and she was too much cunning and ferocity to ever earn that label anyways, but he thrilled in her sharp mind and subtle manueverings. He has always been a man who appreciated stratagems and slights of hand.
But her world was glass, stunning and delicate, and he dragged the security of it closer as he pressed against the small of her back. She knew so little of the horrors he had witnessed, and she was so perfectly removed from the nightmares out in the dark world, everything as it was meant to be in the depths of her blue eyes, firm and uncomplicated. He reveled in it, seized it in his frenzied grasp.
He pulled her hair free, sinking his fingers into the silky mass. She yielded so perfectly to his touch, not a battle the way everything else in life seemed to be. When politics and heritage were cheapened all around them, she was passion and glory and everything he took pride in still. When he struggled to retain the power and influence that was slipping through his fingers, she was wholly and completely his.
And she clung to him, young and desperate, finding her confidence within the security of his. She poured her fears into him, losing the uncertainty in a wash of heat and touch, blurring and staining the lines of their emotions.
X
Narcissa draws his hand into her own, pushing up the sleeve and staring in quiet contemplation at the dim lines faded into the skin. She still felt a faint sense of horror at the sight of it marring the white surface, but it had lost its novelty, and she stares in quiet contemplation as she runs a delicate fingertip over the forms before trailing up his shoulder. She stares up at him in the moonlight and darkness, and tangles her arms around him, molding her mouth to his.
They were so different, and so much the same.
Lucius and Narcissa are so interesting and so pretty, I couldn't resist. And I was kinda disappointed by most of what I found, so I had to write something of my own. Let me know what you think.