Another entry for the The Pairing One Hour Challenge/Hardest Challenge Ever II. Pairing: Bellatrix/Barty, Prompt: Knife.
AU ending.
Throughout his early adult years, she was there. She simultaneously fascinated, terrified and disgusted him.
(fascination: noun - a fascinating quality; powerful attraction; charm)
He watches her prowl the room, observing the group of junior Death Eaters practice duelling techniques. Her expression is haughty – she is superior to them and they know it – yet hungry. Her wand is clutched tightly in her hand, ready to use at her slightest whim. Barty tears his eyes away just in time to deflect Rowle's hex and throw back one of his own which lands on target, eliciting a sharp yelp from his victim as a dark crimson stain begins to seep across his shirt.
Barty's mouth twists into a smile and again he catches her eye. Her dark orbs travel slowly down his thin frame and he can't help but shiver. She takes a step towards him and his breath catches in his throat… but then she seems to wince and clutch her arm. Her eyes light up with undisguised joy, she turns on her heel and vanishes. A wave of disappointment washes over him and he turns back to Rowle, raising his wand once more.
(terror: noun - a state of intense fear; one that inspires fear; a frightening aspect; a cause of anxiety; an appalling person or thing)
"I swear I don't know anything!" The mudblood lies sobbing and broken on the floor; his arms twisted at odd angles making him look like a puppet whose strings have been cut. And she is the vicious marionette, standing over her puppet, the gleam in her eyes matched only by the gleam shining on the knife she clutches.
"Time to finish him off, Bella," Rodolphus says lazily. Barty wonders how he can sound so calm, when he shares a bed with this woman, this… creature. He feels slightly ill, it's the first time he's ever witnessed a torture session this brutal. He sees the flash of irritation at the pet name that crosses her face and she turns to him, sending ice straight through his insides.
"Kill him," she says, as though she's just asked him to pass the salt at the dinner table, and she tosses him the knife.
"Wha- What do you want me to do with this?" he stammers, catching it clumsily.
"It's a mudblood, don't waste magic exterminating it," Rodolphus replies in her place and again Barty sees the irritation in her eyes but she continues to watch him. He's not sure whether it's just his imagination or not, but her chest seems to rise and fall more quickly, her breasts heave and strain against her robes-
"Get on with it!" Rodolphus snaps.
"I don't know what to do," Barty replies looking helplessly at the man cowering before him.
"Cut his throat!" Bellatrix snaps. She moves forward, as if to get a better view. Barty kneels, pulls the man's head back by his hair.
"God, no, please!" he screams desperately. Barty can hear Bellatrix breathing now, almost panting. Soon, blood spatters them both and the man screams no more.
(disgust: verb - 1. To excite nausea or loathing in; sicken. 2. To offend the taste or moral sense of; repel.)
It's years later and again he watches her from across the room. Her face is gaunt, her hair matted and wild, the gleam of insanity that once shone in her eye now the full blown wide-eyed stare of a mad-woman. Yet she sits at the right hand of his Master. Rage and indignation bubbles underneath the surface and Barty clenches his fists under the table. He is much more worthy than her, he brought the Dark Lord back to glory while she languished in Azkaban, only growing more useless. She sickens him.