It's strange how the best laid plans often go astray. One moment everything is lined up perfectly. You know where you're going and where you have been. You have loved and been loved. Laughed, lived, and learned. Then like the breaking of a wave against the rocky shore you realize it was all a lie, perfect in its beauty and realness. Yet how deluded you have allowed yourself to become, turning your eyes to a future that doesn't exist. It is easier to feel that you love the monster than to understand you have no choice. I have always had the inkling in my mind that not all was right with my life. It was like a shimmer of movement in the corner of my eye there and then gone. Dismissed and forgotten.
How to explain it? To say that blind obedience was better than the pain that promised death. How had I lost myself so completely? I leaned into my master's hand as he touched me. I craved what only he could give me. Had it been so long ago that I had been nothing? Here I had my place. I was cherished, and loved even as the whip bit into my back its lashes burned fire across my skin. I was the monster, the thing that had to be hurt. He knew this just as I did. Hermione always told me that I wasn't what everyone said. She always moaned the best when restrained.
It's rather funny when you think of what I once was. After the death of Voldemort I was at a lost. Cast a float in an ocean of confusion. I was hurt beyond repair broken inside. I had waking visions of many things. Of how I would make them hurt as I did. The darkness clouded my eyes and choked me in its mire. No one noticed or so I thought. The day I first realized that not all was as it seemed was the day that my master took me. I remember the blood and the pain but what stays with me is the knowledge that everything was what I wanted. Every last bit sipped and savored. He is always at his best when the moon is full bloated with its rays. His anger is palpable and it sheds itself in my flesh in my agony.
I have never asked why and he has never told me. So much death and anger I no longer can live the lie.
Hermione understands she feels the same agony as me. Ron loves her even if sometimes I see him look at the situations that we have caused in bewildered agony. He is not like my master he has yet to come to the full understanding of what we need. I realize that all has fallen silent. My back is an agony of trails that tell the story that my tongue cannot speak. I feel him as he stares at his work and then the lights are turned out and I am left alone bound and weak. I will be able to sleep now. He knows this because he always knows what is needed. I know that when the time comes he will do what he must as he has always done. In the end they all will. Life moves on for those on the outside. In here I am safe from the passage of it. Just as his scars mare his neck so do those on my soul. I am no longer alive but I live. Innocence is a pathetic thing that I no longer have. Master Severus knows this.
I hear as Hermione screams and the command in Ron's voice as he casts the curse. Life is so much sweeter when the pain is caused by those we love. No longer will we want and hope only to be betrayed and hurt. We have become the dark no longer afraid.
It took me what seems like eons to realize the descent of madness that gripped us. It took me far longer still to understand that in the descent we found ourselves.
I hope you liked this little one-shot. I thought it might help get my creative jucies flowing again so to speak. As always reviews are welcome. Cheers,
Bella