A/N: 'Kay. Chapter two. Feeling slightly unloved at the moment... Would really love some feedback on my writing, even if all you have to say is that I'm rubbish. I hope that's not the case, though. love to hear I'm not that happy with this, it was hard to get all my thoughts across and maintain the erratic mindset of Bella at this stage. I'm a big fan of sentence fragments to do this, but it didn't work... Anyone has any advice, would .

Chapter Two

The Azkaban escapee paced the room, her footsteps making her cross from one side of the room to the other. She had been pacing mostly in front of the only door into the room and she could have sworn that, if the floor wasn't wood, she would have by now worn a track into it.

She lifted a hand to tug through her ebony brindled locks as a continuous growl stayed upon her lips. Her ribs ached every time that she turned, a result of the crushing pressure of the golden-coated statue that had held her at bay in the Ministry. But she didn't let that stop her pacing, for it was her pacing that kept the urges to rip into anything available and breakable, away.

The Slytherin stopped by the door once again and she tried the knob, finding it locked still. Why had he locked her in? Why did this man care enough to lock her in? But a small voice told her that he didn't care. Or... he did. Just not in the way she so craved.

It was a point of immense pride for the Black heiress that she had been singled out by her master for refinement of her substantial skill and power. She knew that her loyalty was unrivalled. And he knew it too.

But her display of that loyalty was utter failure.

Her master had side-long apparated with her into the room and promptly vanished. All that had been uttered aloud had been from her lips, where her master had remained silent. That, if anything, had frightened her more. She had felt the waves of fury radiating from his form. But... where she would normally associate such sensations with blistering heat, it was no so with her master.

No. It had bed cold. Uncomfortably so. Like ice. She shivered at the memory, at the unnaturalness and uncertainty. Bellatrix was hurting, both physically and emotionally. She had once been told that Voldemort had no use for incompetence. It was her poor judgement which caused the Dark Lord's ire. That, more than anything else, was cutting away at her.

She wanted to lash out, to kill something and taste the crimson blood as it spilled from its vessel. Even the satisfaction of having culled and removed another unworthy member from her family line was not enough to keep the overwhelming fury at bay.

Slowly she turned to view the window with heavily lidded eyes and she crossed the floor so then she could peer out at it, her hands lifting to rest her weight upon the window sill. When she had met the Dark Lord, Bellatrix had been but a schoolgirl. Yet she had been confident of her place in the world and he had encouraged her ideals and channelled her skill and power to his cause.

And her repayment of his teachings had been failure.

The words echoed inside of her head as she lifted her hands so then to push on the window pane, pushing the window open so then she could let the air drift into the room. As the wind drifted in, she lifted her chin just a little so then she could feel the wind's playful caress across her pale skin.

The glass of the window panes rattled, a warning that her frustration was dangerously close to surpassing her limits of magical control. Years in Azkaban had caused more damage than she cared to admit. But how much, she wondered. Was she damaged? Had her wardens' own detest full magic rendered her incapable of fulfilling her potential in the inner circle? A crack appeared. A sliver of glass narrowly missed her eye.

The witch inhaled, drawing in the the oxygen in the crisp night wind, feeling this activity expand her lungs before she exhaled and she repeated this process a couple more times. She had to calm down, she knew it, but she just wanted to revert back to her basic nature of survival.

Her father had, since childhood, instilled a strong sense of pride in her supremacy over all, be they muggles, half-breeds, mudbloods, or half-bloods. Even most pureblood families were beneath her.

With her failure, however, she was troubled by the knowledge that her position as one of the Dark Lord's favourites was in jeopardy, if not already lost. She had a limited window of opportunity to reassert herself. She could not remain trapped in this room.

A frown creased her forehead at this thought and she turned away from the window to view the door, she felt tinges of despair colour her fury. He had risked exposure to break her out of the wizarding prison. He had risked his cause to see her free.

Yet her gratefulness for his mercy had been shown only in failure.