Missing her Master is not the Long Sadness.
It is the Great Inertia, the ever-present crush of "no," the resistance against her daily everything. It is losing the will to breathe, the will to inhale and exhale. It is losing the ability to contemplate the notion of food. It is the loss of thought.
It is not endless tears, but a swallowing shadow, a threatening beast in the corner, lurking, growling, waiting.
Depression devours her passions, turns her powerful extremes to mediocrities. It festers, an infected wound, anxious and sorrowful, hopeless and perseverating.
But she will come out of it, alive and awake. She will be iron forged in darkness, stronger than before.
She will. And he will. She knows this, somewhere buried in her mind.
Seeing her Master again was the sweetest sensation, like the first breath her lungs had ever taken, and she sobbed on the ground at his pale, cold feet. She breathed in the essence of him, of this new him, and she didn't mind one bit that he was white and bald and tall and thin now. She didn't care one bit what he looked like; he was here; he was alive.
"Master," she sobbed, and then again and again. "Master, Master, Master."
She clutched at the hem of his robes, fingers curling, hand squeezing around the rough fabric there, and her tears dampened the material. If he minded, he said nothing to indicate it. He just stood there, towering and silent, and let her cry out her emotions.
They'd cleaned her up after they'd broken her out of Azkaban. Potions to rid her of lice. Spells to Scour her body clean, then real showers. Dental spells to fix the rot. Narcissa had even cleaned up Bellatrix's nails, giving her a buffed manicure the likes of which Bellatrix hadn't had in fourteen years. Now she stared at her fingernails, shiny and fresh, where they clutched at Lord Voldemort's robes, and she wondered if he minded how she looked.
Old. She looked old. She had wrinkles now. She had grey hairs. Did he mind? When last they'd parted, she'd been thirty years old. How time had changed them both.
"Master." She raised her eyes to him, still kneeling on the floor, and his massive snake curled around his ankles affectionately. He smirked and petted the snake's head, hissing something in Parseltongue. Bellatrix gave him a questioning look, and he translated,
"I am informing Nagini that you were - are - my best and bravest soldier. My most treasured servant. She likes you for this."
Indeed, Nagini edged toward Bellatrix, and Bellatrix reached out to touch at the snake's head tentatively. Voldemort said something else in Parseltongue, and the great snake slithered away heavily, leaving the two of them alone in the centre of Voldemort's office. Voldemort shut the door behind Nagini, and he sighed through the slits where his nose ought to have been.
"Rise, Bella," he murmured, and she did, letting him help her to her feet. Then it was like she couldn't breathe again, though this time her breath had been stolen by Lord Voldemort himself. She stared into his red eyes, and she listened as his sibilant voice hummed,
"You were one of the only ones who never gave up on me."
"How could I ever, in a thousand years, give up on you, Master?" Bellatrix asked, her eyes welling. "How could I ever rest, knowing you were out there somewhere?"
"But how did you know that?" Voldemort asked patiently, folding his long fingers, and Bellatrix shrugged helplessly.
"It could not have been any other way, My Lord. I could not accept the alternative. In my mind, you were just waiting to rise again, and we, your servants, were bound to find you and facilitate that."
"And during your years in Azkaban?" He raised his eyebrows, or at least, he made the motion. He lacked the actual brows these days, not that Bellatrix minded. She let out a shaking breath and said,
"The Dementors nearly got to me, My Lord. They stole away every ounce of happiness I ever possessed. But it was already too late. I was broken already. The loss of you… having had you taken from me… it was a level of grief, of depression, that even the Dementors could not touch."
"What did it feel like?" Voldemort bent down, his lips near Bellatrix's ear, and she shook where she stood. She struggled, suddenly, to remember what the suffering had felt like, but she shut her eyes and mumbled back,
"It felt, Master, like taking one breath and then another was the most difficult thing to do in the entire world. It felt like crawling off the cot to eat the gruel was far too difficult a task. But I did it, because I had to keep on going, because I had to keep telling myself that someday you would need me again."
"You were right." His long, claw-like fingers pressed to her curls then, and he snared his fingernails into her hair. He brushed his lips along her cheekbone, sending a chill and a shiver down Bellatrix's spine. She wanted to wrap her arms around his shoulders, to fling herself onto him, but she just stood there, listening as he said again, "You were right, Bellatrix. Eventually I would need you again. I need you now. I do."
He stood upright and cupped Bellatrix's jaw in his elongated hand, and she instinctively leaned against his palm and fingers. She adored him more than anything in the entire Universe. Did he know? Could she ever tell him?
"I know," he whispered, and Bellatrix's eyes seared suddenly as he added, "and I need you now, Bellatrix. Will you serve me again the way you did for so long without question?"
A single tear boiled over Bellatrix's eye and streamed down her cheek, and she whispered,
"Master, I shall serve you in perpetuity, to my fullest, to the death."
"I need you as a soldier again, Bellatrix," Lord Voldemort said quietly, "but I need you for a higher purpose, as well. It could only be you. It could… there could be no other."
Bellatrix frowned up at him, confused, studying his white skin and his red eyes and remembering the middle-aged man she'd said goodbye to on that fateful Halloween. She shook her head, and she asked gently,
"How may I serve? Master?"
Half his mouth quirked up, and he took her face in his hands, bending down and touching his lips to hers. Bellatrix gasped, and Voldemort deepened the kiss. She was so confused that she didn't notice the way his tongue was cold as it crept between her lips. She just panted against his mouth, her hands clutching at his robes, and then he was pulling away and informing her,
"You'll be staying in my personal quarters until further notice, Bella. Welcome home."
Author's Note: Gotta love canon-compliant reunion scenes between these two, no? Thanks for reading - please do leave a review.