-Release-
Summary: Bellatrix/Rodolphus just released from azkaban. Fourteen years she has waited for this.
Warnings: Implied murder/torture, sex.
"I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drowned, reply not in how many fathoms deep they lie indrenched, I tell thee I am mad."
-Shakespeare
It was bitterly cold on the night they escaped from Azkaban, the moon and the stars shining with a bleak, cruel light, occasionally hidden by drifting wisps of clouds in the sky. The first blast of air on her face was sharp as a knife, the spray from the sea hitting in her face and stinging her eyes, and Bellatrix loved it.
She had two options when she became dizzy from the openness around her. she could fall to her knees and press her flushed face into the earth below, covered with cold sand and dead remnants of wildflowers and grass.
Everything is dead here. Like I was.
Yet Bellatrix bowed her head for nothing save her Lord, even nature. So she chose the other option and lifted her face to the moon and howled like a wolf.
Fourteen years I've been in that place. Fourteen years of filth and degradation for my loyalty. Fourteen years of brutal hands that did not know how to hurt me like I wanted. Guards who laughed at me while they raped me, thinking that I cared. But I did not.
Bellatrix walked down the beach in her tattered rags, moving like a ghost into the icy water of the North Sea. She kept moving forward, ignoring the slicing pain that the water brought wherever it touched her. the sea spray wet her face, a salty caress that got into her eyes. The sea roared in her ears- no longer a distant sound, a torment to be endured in one's cell, but a breathless reality of pounding surf and the pain of Thousand icy knives on her skin.
A tall wave hurtled towards her, and she thought she heard Antonin Dolohov in the background shouting at her, calling her mad, telling her to come out of the ocean and wait for the others. The Prophet would call this a mass-breakout, but they did not storm the fortress on masse. Rather, they used the skills of subterfuge and silence to kill the guards and meet in the Island for the boat that would be sent to them, training they had not forgotten even after all these years.
She laughed and let the wave take her, let herself be pulled under.
Beneath the cold, black water, she felt cleansed. She was jarred into full wakefulness, as she was tumbled around from the force of the water. Her teeth chattered but she was smiling as she broke the surface, salt-water held in her mouth. The taste almost made her gag, but being taken by the wave was a beautiful feeling of submersion, as if she were giving herself back to the pain which had been taken away from her. They had hurt her, but never had it made her feel alive as she did at this moment, when she waded into the sea with arms raised in supplication to the darkness that had never left her and waited for her skill.
A hand reached out and pulled her from the water, dragging her up the shore. She sputtered in outrage and the saltwater spilled from her mouth, her free hand going to push her sodden hair from her face. Her eyes opened, and it took her a moment to see who it was who would dare manhandle her in such a fashion. Her would-be rescuer's back was to her as he pulled her out of the crashing surf, spinning her around finally to catch her shivering, trembling body in his arms. Staring down at her was a pair of dark eyes she knew almost better than she knew her own, though she had not seen them since the day she'd been torn from his arms by laughing guards.
Maybe we'll let you know when he dies, they'd jeered. Or maybe we'll toss you one of his bones for company. Bet we know which you'd like, eh boys? The sound of their mocking, ribald and cocky, and the sight of him watching as she'd been shoved in her cell, echoed in her mind.
"Rodolphus?" Her voice was quiet, a whisper lost in the roar of the sea. Somehow she thought he heard, regardless of the noise. He had Always heard her.
His hair was long and he had a beard, in contrast to his former neat appearance, but he was still her husband, and she had not seen him in fourteen long years...
"Bella," He whispered, hand coming up to trace her sunken, gaunt cheekbones. "Bella." His voice was reverent, as quiet as hers had been, but she heard it nonetheless.
She had Always heard him, regardless of the madness that raged in her blood, regardless of the screams that seemed to follow her wherever she went.
They stood on the shore of the sea, the water swirling around their ankles, both soaking wet. On the shore, the rest of the Death Eaters stood quietly, talking and laughing and cleaning blood-soaked blades in the seawater. Inside, the screams of the guards could be heard, lingering wounds left by those who had taken years of anger out on their captors killing them slowly.
She had done her share; once more her hands were stained with blood, and the world had begun to make sense again.
"The one you hear screaming? I did it for you," Rodolphus murmured, hands in her hair, fingers cold and tracing her face. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight. "My dark love," he whispered. "I slit their throats, those who touched you. The first blood not my own that I've seen in so long..."
She moaned and pressed herself against him. "My love..." She tangled her hands in his hair and tugger him down to her, pressing her lips against his.
They kissed as the sea roared around them, as the Death Eaters behind them laughed or applauded. There was a wild mania in the air around them; years of waiting for this moment, of living their respective nightmares over and over again as they languished in cells, trapped in the prison of their own minds.
It had never bothered Bellatrix much, those memories. The most horrific images from her past were some of her favorites. To relive them was a way to pass the time, nothing more. The Dementors were kindred spirits, not ememies, not for her.
But when they wanted to torment her, thoughts of Rodolphus would creep in, teasing her memory. She tried to force them out wiht the remembrances of blood and pain, torture and death- the Dementors preferred those to idle thoughts of her and Rodolphus in a window seat, afternoon sun dancing off the glass as they laughed and spoke of trivial things.
She had not even heard his voice- they had put him in a cell on the other side of the prison, far away. When the Dementors began to show excitement over an imminent death, she would pray and hope that it was not his. Sometimes, she saw them carrying the linen-wrapped body past her cell, and she would close herself off, refusing to contemplate that it might be his body caressed by that clinical, white cloth. She would imagine it was someone else- perhaps her horrid cousin- shoved into the earth with the empty words of redemption.
He will rescue us. We will be exalted. Do not give in, Rodolphus! They will not redeem you. Not while I live.
Somehow, she had Always known she would not die. She whad been sure that they would be rescued, and that he would be with her on that most auspicious day. It took a strong man to be her lover, to stand as her husband. Strong enough not to become jealous to her devotion to their Master, strong enough to be proud of the screams she pulled from her victims' throats, rather than disgusted.
I loved the way you looked at me when I tortured them. Your eyes would narrow and heat, like fire under obsidian. You would take me in the spill of their blood on the floor, as they lay dying an screaming for mercy.
His kiss was harsh and violent, his hands bruising as he pressed her to him. "Bella, Bella," He murmered her name against her lips as he kissed her. "Want you, want to fuck you. Dreamed of it, every night, my Bella.."
He moaned and pulled her to the ground, where the cold water rhythmically caressed them as he fumbled with her tattered robes, pulling until she was naked, adorned only by the moonlight, the swirl of the water, and the burning darkness of her Dark Mark. He kissed it reverently, and Bella thought she might have heard him laugh in the darkness- but perhaps the shiver that ran up her spine was only from the chill of the water. There was a moment she was shy with him, in a way she had not been even when it was their first time in the Potions classroom, in the middle of an argument, driven finally to do what everyone had been waiting for since they'd first met. They had Always hated and loved with equal fervor.
She was nothing like she had been- her graceful and lush curves he had so admired had faded in her years behind bars, sharpening her body into harsh angles and bony planes. No softness remained on her; her body was like the edge of a knife blade, dangerous and sharp.
Rodolphus did not seem to care as he pulled her on top of him, eyes drowned with lust as he looked at her body. The remnants of her robes were swept away by the ocean, out to sea. "You're so beautiful," He said, a trembling hand tracing down the prominent peaks of her collarbones.
"I used to be beautiful," she said, hands curling into his sodden clothing. It tore easily under the grasp of her long fingers as she sat astride him.
"You are, Bella. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said hoarsely.
She cried out at that and tore at his clothing frantically. He was thin, too thin- bony as she was, and she could feel his ribs as she drew her hands down his stomach. "You're beautiful, too," she choked out through tears she had refused to cry in all the years of her imprisonment.
She felt him beneath her, hard and aching, and threw her head back again. Wet hair clung to the planes of her back, and his hands closed her breasts and pulled at her nipples. "Want you to fuck me, god, please," She moaned, arching her back so that he could remove what little clothing separated her from him. "Waited so long. Make it hurt, Rodolphus, like you Always do..."
He growled and moved her with one quick motion to lie back in the sand, in the freezing water. He loomed over her with his hair whipping about his face in the wind, eyes wild as he thrust inside of her. Her hands went up above her head, and dug into the soft, wet sand. Turning her head, she saw the skull of the Dark Mark on her arm and she smiled.
Beneath her, small pebbles and shells cut into the skin of her back as he thrust into her. She tossed her head, hair caught in her face, her mouth. The smell of the sea was strong around them as he fucker her, pushing her into the sand, hands everywhere. He pulled her hair, scratched her with his nails, grasping at her in harsh, hurried urgency.
"Yes, yes," She moaned, legs entwining around his waist. Fourteen years I've waited for this. His fingers moved down between her legs, twisting her clit and rubbing his thumb over her, again and again.
"God, I can't wait to feel you come," He moaned, leaning down and licking her neck, nibbling her nipples, his lips cold on her skin.
The water would sometimes wash over her face completely, so that she was gulping saltwater and choking on her pleasure at the same time. It did not take long for his twisting fingers and his thrusting cock to push her over the edge, a long, hot spiral into bliss too long forgotten.
She cried his name and arched into him as she came, hands raking long nails down his chest. His eyes looked like fathomless pools of night and she locked her gaze upon him, the cold seawater heightening the pleasure of her release.
He came with a low growl, biting her so hard on her neck he broke the flesh, blood spilling in hot and sticky rivulets onto her skin. he licked it and looked up at her, his face beatific. "Bella," He whispered, and she thought he might have been crying, too.
For a moment, they lay entwined, the water rushing and cleansing the dirt and the grime of fourteen years imprisonment from their skin. Their threadbare garments were long gone, swept out to sea. The water had turned them into shivering, trembling, naked, white things lying on the beach, comprised of sharp bones, dark minds, and a furious passion that fourteen years apart had done nothing to erase.
Rodolphus stood up, pulling her against him, shielding her body from the other Death Eaters as they left the cold embrace of the sea. Antonin Dolohov walked up with two thick cloaks, and quirked a brow but said nothing. "We have taken these from the guards. They won't miss them, no?" His razor-sharp smile and narrowed eyes showed his pleasure at the bloody massacre they had left behind in the prison in the wake of their escape.
"The boat will be here soon, and then someone will use a warming charm on you. It was foolish to romp so in the sea, but I suppose we cannot blame you." Dolohov's sinister smile turned into a sneer. He left them there and walked away, looking out for the boat.
Rodolphus wrapped her in a thick cloak, and she screwed up her nose. "It smells like them," she hissed, but huddled into the warmth nonetheless.
"We killed them, Bellatrix. I made sure it hurt," He said, and she smiled up at him, tenderly running her fingers down his face.
"I know, baby," She purred, and insinuated herself into his arms. "I know. I heard their screams, I remember how you were, before. How you used to make them beg..." she closed her eyes in ecstasy, pleased this memory was now hers and hers alone- no Dementor to steal sustenance from her beloved nightmares.
Together, they stared at their prison, each of them shivering slightly from the sight and remembering the last time they had seen it thusly, when the boat had delivered them here long ago. The screams from within had finally fallen silent, and the wind had died down, somewhat, leaving everything eerliy quiet. The air reeked of death and the salt water made it taste like tears.
"If I had a wand, I'd burn this place to the fucking ground," Rodolphus bit out, tightening his arms around her. Then he smiled. It was a terrifying expression, and it made Bellatrix's cold body warm to see it. "But I want them to see what we've left."
"Do not worry, my love," she said, kissing his neck. "Soon, we'll be given whatever we want to destroy. In the Dark Lord's name, as we were before, we shall make the world tremble and bleed in our wake."
He laughed. "So poetic, my Bella. I cannot wait to kill with you once more." He kissed her again, on the shores of the North Sea, the lights of the guard tower still gleaming in the dark of the night.
Somewhere in England, Voldemort laughed in pure, unadulterated joy.