Author Note:
This will be a very dark fic. This will be the only time I tell you lovelies what a dark fic it is.
Triggers include Angst, Murder, Rape, Language, Torture, Abuse, etc...
I do not own any HP characters or plots.
Enjoy my brain.
Prologue
Bellatrix tried to sleep. She'd been trying to sleep for thirteen years and had never done so successfully. Every moment, waking and sleeping, was filled with memories. Memories she didn't even know she had. In a way, they weren't hers, but the dementors found them anyway. Her worst memory, the one she revisited again and again, kept her awake or haunted her fleeting dreams. It was not hers, in the sense that she did not remember making it. Her aunt had gleefully told her what she had done under the Imperious curse. Her damnable Aunt Wahlburga. Poor Sirius. Poor Regulus. They had been raised by that pure-blood crazed witch. Sirius had escaped early, being sorted into Gryffindor. She had never told anyone except Cissy how jealous she was of him. He never had to pretend. He got to be himself. She spent years pretending because of a vow she never meant to make. He was the lucky one she told herself before the memory encroached. Bellatrix desperately clung to her sister's image in her mind but the dementors stole it away and replaced it with that horrible, horrible night.
Riddle watched her enter the room, her eyes somewhat glazed over. Beautiful, intelligent Bellatrix. Pure-blood Bellatrix. Bellatrix who was superior to both of her sisters. If he could love, he would love her. "Why, dear Bella, are you feeling alright?", he asked her, knowing full well what an Imperius curse looked like. "My Lord," she simpered, "I wish to swear fealty to you. If you would give me such an honor."
"How unlike you to simper, dear," he drawled. " "I wish only to serve you."
Riddle cocked his head and smiled. He, of course, had known Bellatrix was torn between loving him and hating his ideas. Lately, she had found herself engaged in plans with Narcissa whilst he plotted. Plans he knew she found tedious. If he loved her, he would have denied her Imperuised request. He did not love her, however, so he allowed the witch to swear a vow of fealty. Bellatrix Black became the first person to take the Dark Mark and the only one to swear fealty to Lord Voldemort. He relished in her screams as he branded her with his Mark. No, Tom Riddle did not love Bellatrix Black.
Bellatrix woke screaming, clutching at her burning arm. The dream, it was the same dream every time, had left her arm burning in a gut-wrenching reality. After she awoke, the mark on her arm continued to burn. Slowly, terrified, she realized the awful truth. He was back. The man she once loved, the monster she was forced to serve, was back. And he was calling his most loyal servants.