A/N: This didn't turn out at all the way I wanted it to. I apologise for any typos, my new computer has not yet adjusted to all the 'Muggles' and 'Slytherins' I use in my writing and therefore I tend to ignore the red squiggly lines. Slight Lucius/Bella, but nothing to be worried about. And I really feel I should put the entirety of the Joan Armatrading song in here somewhere, despite the fact that this is not a songfic, but I'll settle for the lines that I think are most relevant because I know you won't read it if I put up the whole thing.
Why do you come here when you know I've got troubles enough?
Why do you call me when you know I can't answer the phone?
You make me lie when I don't want to
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool
You make me stay when I should not,
Are you so strong, or is all the weakness in me?
When she took the first breath outside Azkaban and relished the feel of it, fresh and cold in her lungs, when she looked for the first time in more than thirty years on the man she had married so long ago and held him in her arms, she realised she no longer loved him.
Maybe she never had. Their marriage had always had an air of convenience about it, and she thought that perhaps the only thing they had in common was that they both loved the Dark Lord more than they loved each other.
She had loved someone else once, back when she was young and foolish enough to believe every word he said, his blonde hair smooth and silky, fanned out in bed around him like some twisted halo. She'd told him she loved him, kissing his neck, his chin, his collarbone, and he'd said he loved her, too. Why had she believed him? Even his name was slippery, like a snake writhing through her teeth and sliding away.
Lucius. And he'd married her sister, and itty bitty Bellatrix Black had had to make do with second-best, second-rate, never quite good enough to get what she wanted. It had driven her insane, until Rudolphus had found her with the same wild passion and she'd married him, half out of spite for Narcissa, half because she thought his name would become her. The rest because when anyone came up behind her and whispered 'Bella' in her ear with any degree of affection it was enough to drive her crazy.
She sat on a bench in the too-pretty gardens of Malfoy Manor, brooding. Not brooding because the house and the husband belonged to her sister, as her childish self before prison would have done. Not brooding because she didn't love her husband, as she would have foreseen herself doing had she ever thought to imagine the situation.
The Dark Lord was the only thing that mattered to her now, the thing she had comforted herself with while she rotted in the depths of Azkaban for him. He was all she knew, all she wanted to know. He cared about her, valued her. She loved him and adored him and treasured him. Her all and everything, her One. He deserved even his pronouns to be capitalised, like the demented thing Muggles called their God.
And still, with all that obsession, all that attention, her Lord didn't love her. Was it childish to want Him to? He was above such petty weaknesses as the desire for human affection. But she wasn't, and she knew in her devotion that she no longer wanted it from anyone but Him.
She looked down at the empty bench beside her, at the words carved there by some hand other than her own.
When the moon is in the sky and the clouds are dancing by
You will find me where you are!
"Where You are," she whispered. She didn't even know where He was, and for some reason it hurt her that He hadn't thought to tell her. She needed Him, and He – surely He needed her? She was his favourite… his favourite…
His favourite servant. A tiny tear dripped from Bellatrix's vivid eyes. That was all she'd ever be, just one of the many people who served Him. And unlike the pathetic deity that Muggles called God, the Dark Lord didn't care about His every subject. They were all dispensable. Some, perhaps, more than others, but really, if she died in His service, would He care?
Anger washed over her, bitter, desperate longing for something she knew she could never have rising like bile in her chest. She used the power He had given her to rocket up into the air, kicking over the bench in the process, and screamed all her anger and frustration out. She wasn't one to suffer in silence. "Why don't you love me?"
She had her arms spread like a crucifix and her head towards the heavens, and it came, like so many times before, His voice in her head. Bella, it whispered, soft and almost sensual like always.
"My Lord," she breathed, out loud this time, uncaring who might hear.
Bella, it lilted, you know you are precious to me. My most valued, most loyal, most special Death Eater.
She sobbed in her miserable fury. "But you don't love me, my Lord," she shouted.
You know love is a weakness, Bella.
Another scream escaped her lips; in her anger, she destroyed several shrubs around the upended bench. A weakness, the reason she followed him so blindly in his every endeavour. A weakness, and one that brought her right down until she was almost on par with Harry Potter or Albus Dumbledore or, Heaven forbid, her pathetic, pathetic cousin Sirius. Look how easily his love had fallen, crushed like a beetle beneath her boots.
And yet… wasn't Harry Potter's weakness, then, the reason they were hiding out at Malfoy Manor, dangling Muggle-borns above tables and remote-controlling the world while the Dark Lord made midnight forages to who-knew-where? He knew her weakness, the weakness in all of them, was Him. That was why they served.
Bellatrix floated gently back to the ground and sat on the edge of the upturned bench, sobbing angry tears and wishing she could just curl up into a foetal ball and not know that her Lord and Master was watching her, always watching and judging and never caring.
I do care, Bella.
"You don't."
I do. Rebellion washed over her; why should she be dismissive if He didn't care? "Show me," she said sullenly.
He said nothing.
"You see?" she screamed. "You don't, you don't, you don't care, you don't care –"
"Bellatrix?" She looked up sharply, suddenly aware of how mad she must look, crouched in a foetal ball, shrieking at the top of her voice to someone who, from an outsider's perspective, wasn't there. "That biting hydrangea was quite expensive, you know."
It was Malfoy senior, which only served to put her in a worse mood. Draco she could have dealt with, maybe even produced a smile for. He was her sister's child, after all, for all that he looked and acted like his father. But to have Lucius Malfoy discover her like this made her sick to her core.
"What do you want?"
"Ooh, Bellatrix, harsh," he said coolly, and with a touch of disapproval and command in his voice that clearly said, the Dark Lord placed you in my house, therefore you abide by my rules. She scowled at him. "Your sister… my wife," he said, emphasising the connection she so despised, "commanded me to come and see what the noise was."
To her disgust, he picked up the bench and sat, his shapely bottom (and she hated herself for noticing still) covering the words that had so upset her. "Well, it was me," she said shortly. His piercing green eyes lingered on her for a while longer, so she relented. "Sorry," she added grudgingly.
"May I ask who doesn't care?" he asked, so lightly, as though he did not realise that his newfound knowledge was her heart and soul. Hot, angry tears sprang to her eyes again.
"No." She turned away from the man she had loved for too many beats of her young heart.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and shrugged it off. "Bellatrix…" she wanted to accept his comfort, wanted so badly to fold into his arms, but the knowledge that He was watching and her ever-present notion of her own pride held her too hard. "I understand," Lucius muttered finally. "The Dark Lord pretends not to know about such weaknesses as love, but he always manages to use them to his advantage. There's not one of his inner circle that doesn't love him, and he knows it."
Bellatrix sniffed. "But I love him," she whispered. "And everyone knows. You all laugh at me. Even Cissy. You all think I'm weak, stupid…" And I am, she neglected to add aloud, her last idea of dignity and pride in front of him stopping her from giving this final confession.
His hand found her shoulder again; her pride shrugged it back off and she stood up, still facing away from him because his face was just one more thing that she wanted but could not have. "Bella," he whispered.
"Don't," she cautioned sharply.
"You don't think I know about love, do you, Bella?" he asked. "Know about it, or care about it… well, I do. I love my wife. I love my wife, and it kills Cissy and me both, what that Dark Lord is doing to him."
It was the use of her sister's nickname that hit her hardest. She was about to spit out the usual Draco should be honoured stuff, but her new resentment to Him bit her tongue and twisted it into new words.
"And me?"
He was silent. She cursed herself for the question, for the weakness of needing to know the answer, for the way she knew that her weakness was just as obvious to him as it was to her, for the way he said nothing, and nothing, and nothing.
"Bella." His tone, while soft, was an admonishment. Don't be so childish, little Bellatrix. Why on Earth would I love you? A tear finally escaped one dark eye and she held her breath against the sobs she knew would follow. "Promises made by teenage boys cannot be expected to hold forever."
She choked on her words in her hurry to spit them at him coherently. "I don't know one person I can really trust to keep their promises," she hissed.
She heard him stand up. "The only reason anyone thinks you're weak is that they know He is watching them, listening for signs of that same weakness in them," he said lightly.
She turned to say something, anything, in reply, but he was already gone. She sat back down and looked at the bench's inscription one more time.
Bella…
"Leave me alone," she whispered hoarsely, but she knew He was still watching her as she put her head in her hands and sobbed.