A/N: Bellatrix in Azkaban, 1994, and slowly going mad. Please review.
(blasphemy, she thinks, blasphemy)
Azkaban (hell on earth) tastes like cold, stale earth and bitter rain, madam, don't do that—you'll hurt yourself, and the days bleed together like the letters she smeared in dirt onto the rough fabric of her dress, monday tuesday wednesday thursday fridaysaturdaysunday—today is november 14, 1994. Thirteen years, she thinks. It's been thirteen years. Forever and a day, tomorrow and today. She likes the words on her tongue, they have an odd, eerie, almost singsongy quality to them, and when she says them fast enough and too many times to count, scratch one two three onto your hands with your blood (pure blood), they slip into each other, like fluid, sinuous snakes, twisting and turning until you can't make head or tails of them.
It's always grey here, dark grey in the afternoons, a light, bluish-grey during dusk and early morning, and a shade of grey so dark it's almost black during the night. Today is grey, and tomorrow, when she wakes up, it'll be grey.
(maybe when they carry her rotten corpse out of the place, she'll be grey too, every single bit of color sucked out of her by the damp cold and the sheer greyness of the place)
Sometimes she's allowed to see Rodolphus or Rabastan— (relatives only, you see) always, they are shoved into the cold, sterile (reminds her of St. Mungo's) visiting room, and she sits on one side of that unwelcoming glass and he on the other. The room is painted an unfriendly white, white is the color of purity (pure blood), and there is nothing but a table and a chair on each side, that there's stuck, missy, and don't try to remove it—there's an awful little charm on it, and the only décor is a tiny window on the door, reinforced with wire and mesh. (to keep them in—or is it out?—it doesn't matter, anyway)
Hello, Bella, he says to her, in his low mournful voice, like rolling church bells in a place with meadows so green they hurt your eyes.
His voice seems to echo in the silence of that so-called visiting room: bella ella ella.
She says her name over and over again (bella bella bellabella) until it doesn't make sense anymore, digging her grimy nails into the pale white of her palm.
Rod, she finally says, her voice cracking in the middle of that oh-so-simple, one-syllable word, Rod, oh Rod.
She's aware she's having hysterics, don't laugh, don't laugh, he'll think you're not serious (please, oh Merlin, please don't let me laugh), and so she clamps her mouth shut, just for a second, pushing that madness back down into her secret self.
(and there it is, still inside of her, and scratching at her with mad little nails)
I love you, he says, almost earnestly, but she knows better to believe him. He didn't mean it when they were young and hungry , fumbling hands gripping at hems and overheated, eager kisses in hidden alcoves and dark corners, he didn't mean during their honeymoon, black silk and dirty sheets, and he doesn't mean it now, here in hell on earth.
But she is a liar too, so she smiles the best she can, but it feels strange, (she hasn't smiled in too long) and tells him, I love you too.
(liar, bellatrix, you're a liar)
And too soon, one hour is over, and she is flung back into her cell, and he to his, watching the dashing rain fall onto the sills of the tiny 13 inch by 6 inch rectangle cut into the wall that they call a window. They remind her of tears, streaking down lifeless faces and washing away the dirt. There should be something beautiful inside.
(but there isn't anything beautiful, just dead worms)
She slips into her corner, dirty and worn with blood and tears—but it is hers, along with her name, bellatrix lestr-no, I am always a black (always), and her pure blood, sanguine as it tumbles over the paleness of her inner wrist and the dirty woven cloth of her dress. Sometimes, on the better days, when the dementors aren't on the prowl, she likes to remember. In her dreams, she is eleven again, not quite twelve but oh so very self-important, dressed in a cotton slip, clean and pure, with violets knotted into her hair, and she is holding hands with her sisters, as they run down a hill, underneath the weeping English sky. Their feet trip down the shrubby grasses, and the raindrops hit their upturned faces with rat-a-tat-tat regularity, as they shriek, out of pure joy and fear, and the wind tosses their long hair.
They land at the bottom of the hill, slender bodies nestled in the damp grass, and mouths exhaling loud, panting breaths. She and Andy (no, don't think of Andy, don't think of how she left us so easily—DON'T THINK OF HER—don't remember her) manage to struggle to their feet, pulling little Cissy along, and dance, hands still joined, around and around, hair flying and damp strands of tawny chestnut, deep black, and white-blonde mingling together.
The three girls twirl and spin to their hearts' content, pale flashes of bare leg (almost too fast to see), their mad dance occasionally punctuated by shrieks of laughter and something that feels like pure, unadulterated joy. They are young, innocent and loved—oh, how they are loved—and here, every minute seems to last f o r e v e r, the sands of time trickling like quicksand through their young hands.
Bellatrix closes her eyes, the dull black enclosed behind waxen, almost-translucent shades of flesh, and she thinks, I would give my whole life for that one second of forever, to again be young, innocent and loved—oh Merlin, I would give it all up.
What is my life worth now to me, she thinks. To her, it just seems like days weeks months years, spent in the same shade of grey. Oh, she has nothing to live for now, nothing. Her beauty is gone, dark eyes long shining hair and pretty face missing, somewhere in between the metal bars and damp walls, her name is gone, and she is nothing. The Dark Lord—He will not come and save her this time, no, and somewhere she knows he will come back, but when? When her brain is rotted by the madness that seems to eat away at the very bars of her cage?
Will He come back when she is dead and gone, nothing more than a pile of burnt bones? When she cannot serve her master anymore—for it has been thirteen years, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and she is just nearly gone, blown away by the wind and the harsh slam of the gavel (Bellatrix Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange and Bartemius Crouch Jr, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment) and the grey, soured rain, falling in drips through the bars, and into her dirty, outstretched hands.
(pray for absolution, she thinks, pray for my absolution)