Lucius' memories came back, bit by bit, and every bit was a struggle. Bella still shouted and threw stuff at him, she still ran out the door to cruciate muggle hikers when she got frustrated, and she still made acidic comments… Yet when it came to it… She fed Lucius calming draught, let him sleep in her arms, read to him from the books Andromeda sent her, and made sure she never left him alone long enough for him to hurt himself, even checking the bathroom if necessary. She was still coming to terms with the fact she actually cared about that, that she cared about anything of it at all. Bella told herself it was only a matter of pride; no one should have to turn to self-harm when in the same house as her, it was practically an insult to her craft. With that slightly nonsensical thought she pushed the feeling away once more. But pushing feelings away only goes so far…

(Pagebreak)

Bellatrix didn't think she was good at caring. She had never wanted children, knowing that she didn't have a motherly bone in her body. She hadn't cried for her husband when he died. She had cast away her sister and killed her cousins without a hint of remorse. Bella didn't know what kind of person that made her, but it sure as hell wasn't a caring one. She scowled, looking at Lucius who was asleep in bed. Bellatrix Lestrange didn't do caring, as simple as that. Only, she did. The thought was highly disturbing, but undeniable. It had lingered in the back of her mind for quite some time, occasionally slipping to the forefront only to be repressed and rationalized, and now the point had come where Bella couldn't ignore it anymore. She cared for Lucius Malfoy. The murderer of her sister, a treacherous part of her brain still reminded her. Bella decided that when she died she would get her hands on the malicious spirit who put this into workings and make him regret messing with her, but for now there was nothing to do about it. She actually cared for Lucius.

She cared enough not just to want him to live, but to want him to have something to live for. It was a strange feeling. As her hand softly caressed Lucius' tangled blonde tresses, she smiled bitterly.

"Look what you did now, you absolute idiot."

She wasn't entirely sure that was meant for Lucius.

(Pagebreak)

It was paradoxical, but the more Lucius remembered, the less he seemed to understand it all. He remembered his life now, but it was like watching someone else's memories in a pensieve. They felt wrong somehow, alien. He knew he had done the things he remembered, and he knew why, and the reasons he remembered made sense given the context… yet still.

He stood outside the cabin, watching the falling autumn leafs. The wind blew through his hair as he pulled his robe closer around him. He heard the creak of the front door, and he knew Bella was there too. Staring at the sky he said.

"I remember who I am, Bella… But I am not who I remember. Not anymore."

In the months he had been without memory, he had been obliged to become a new person. To start from scratch. Even now he remembered all again, those months formed a discrepancy, a glitch in his mind. Inconsolable with what had come before. There hung a silence, only broken by the howling of the wind and the rustling of leafs… Then Bella's voice resounded.

"We are born with no memories, but who we are is already inside us. Otherwise all babies would be identical and you know well enough that's not the case. What we become and how we act may be determined by our memories, but who we are, our core being, is set."

"Do you honestly believe that, Bella?"

"If I wouldn't, do you think I would still be alive? You have been to Azkaban. Do you think you can survive 14 years of that shit without honestly believing that you won't lose who you are because of it?"

"No. But I don't think I would have survived 14 years of Azkaban anyway. I barely survived a month in that hellhole."

There was a silence, again. Then she said,

"You're an idiot, Lucius. Come inside before you catch a cold."

Lucius followed her inside. He remembered Bellatrix from during the war, and he remembered her after it. The women in his memory were alike enough to be unmistakably one and the same, yet different enough to confuse him.

He had tried to keep them apart, to draw a thick line between "before" and "after", not just for his memory of Bellatrix but for all his memories. He had tried to remain the person he remembered from the months after, thinking that was how it was supposed to be. It didn't work. Memories and impressions mixed, ignoring the lines he drew.

"You're looking awfully pensive. What are you plotting? Should I be concerned?"

Lucius frowned at Bellatrix, who sat backwards on a chair and dangerously wiggled from side to side with it. She threw him a wide, toothy grin.

"What? Why're you looking at me like that?"

He raised an eyebrow, and Bellatrix cackled.

"Morgana's tits, you look just like Snape!"

For a moment his lips quirked... but the half-hearted smile turned into a frown when he remembered how his old friend had died. Bella noticed it, and in response her dark eyes gained a serious glint.

"You are who you are, Lucius. That's all there is to know. Just roll with it. You survived up to now, I'm pretty sure you'll make it a little further too."

It was strangely comforting to hear her say that.

"I suppose."

Bella wiggled a bit too much and the chair collapsed, making her fall hard on her bum. She laughed cackling once again, couldn't even get up so hard she was laughing. Lucius watched her and felt the urge to shake his head. Was he taking advice from a madwoman? Well, maybe advice from a madwoman was exactly what he needed. He got up and pulled Bellatrix from the floor.

"You're going to break your neck one day, you know that."

"One day, but not today!"

Maybe he should try to be a little more like Bella, and think a little less about it all. Live in the moment and all that.

(Pagebreak)

Not all days were as good. Some days he couldn't gather the courage to even get out of bed. Some days he got out of bed only to look for something to hurt himself. Some days the nightmares got the better of him even in the daylight, leaving him lost in memories. It was a day of the last kind. Bellatrix found Lucius curled up in a corner of the bedroom. He really had something with corners on bad days, she thought when she slowly approached him. She heard him whisper,

"Please… please kill me instead… d-don't… no, not again… please…"

She sat down and held him, knowing that was all she could do. Her hands softly raked through his long blonde tresses as he whimpered and trembled in her arms. Caring was an odd feeling… Bella had always thought any display of weakness would make her loathe a person, that sentiment made someone liable, an easy victim. She had thought she would never respect someone who couldn't keep his emotions in check. Yet now she was holding Lucius as he cried his eyes out, and she didn't loathe or disrespect him. On the contrary even. She respected him far more now than in the years she had known him with his stoic mask firmly in place.

When he eventually broke free from the nightmare, he looked at her and asked softly.

"How can you even stand to look at me?"

She rolled her eyes theatrically.

"Don't talk nonsense, I've had more than enough time to get used to your complexion."

"W-Why don't you just kill me? I deserve to die."

Now she gave him a stern look.

"You do not deserve to die."

"What I d-did was unforgivable."

"Maybe. I killed my sister's daughter on my own accord, in full control of my own actions, and at the time I had great fun over it. And still my sister didn't think I deserve to die. Moreover, despite what I did to her she helped us while she could have killed us or called the authorities. Now tell me, Lucius. Were you in full control of your own actions? Did you kill on your own accord? Did you have fun while doing it?"

He shook his head.

"Then what makes you think you deserve to die? If I didn't deserve death, then you certainly don't."

"I s-should have fought it…"

"You couldn't. None of us could and you know it."

"I… I want to die. I am weak. I… I c-can't let it go. I'm c-confused all the time. I just want it to end."

"You aren't weak. Greater minds have broken under a fraction of what you've been through, never to regain even a semblance of sanity. If anyone can know it's me, I have tortured more people than any other death eater. Brilliant Unspeakables, courageous Aurors, in the end all their brains and brawl didn't save them from going mental. But you survived, Lucius. I don't know what to call that, but it definitely isn't weak."

Bella would never pretend she was good at comforting and encouraging people. She simply stated facts as she saw them. It appeared to work though. Lucius looked at her with big, slightly disbelieving eyes. Then he looked at his feet again and sighed.

"I don't know how to live with myself."

Bellatrix laughed.

"Does anyone know? I mean, I certainly don't, I just improvise all day."

Despite everything, it made a hint of a smile break through in Lucius' eyes. She helped him up.

"Come, let's see if there are still some of those chocolate cookies left. I'm having a craving all of a sudden."

In the kitchen, while Bellatrix was looking for the last of Andromeda's cookies with her back towards Lucius, he suddenly said.

"I don't understand why you care."

It was as if he had read her mind. Bella stopped what she was doing and turned around, meeting haunted silvery eyes.

"Why? I have asked myself the same question often enough. I don't know why." She limped closer to Lucius, until she stood right in front of him. "But a fact is, I care."

Lucius' eyes widened.

"R-Really?"

Bella rolled her eyes.

"Of course I do you idiot. Do you think I would do all what I do if I didn't care?"

And with that, all was said.

(Pagebreak)

"Sometimes I wonder why we're still alive."

"We're survivors, that's why."

"But… why? There is nothing left to live for."

They were sitting outside in the winter cold. All the leaves were gone, and the wind had become icy. Bellatrix watched Lucius. She had asked herself the same question often enough, but as usual her brain refused to remain stuck in a loop so she had let the question go and accepted she didn't know the answer.

It was strange, she thought. She had never bothered with existential questions, saying she was too no-nonsense to keep thinking the same thing over and over again. Yet she knew there were 17 knives in the cupboard, 12 forks, 10 spoons of which one was a soup spoon, 7 plates of which two were chipped, and 8 glasses although there used to be 9 before she threw one at Lucius' head one day. She knew the number of pots and pans, the number of tiles against every tiled wall, the number of pillows and the number of pages in every book in the house. She counted, and her mind ran in circles over and over again as if the answer to existence was hidden in the number of stupid, unimportant objects. It was tragically humorous in a way, but Bellatrix couldn't bring herself to laugh about it, for once in her life.

"Tell me, Bella… do you have something to live for?"

Lucius had turned and looked at her, questioning… and in a sudden moment of clarity, she knew. She knew what she had to do, what she was bound to do anyway some time, and she decided to do it right then, right there.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Then what is it?"

Bella grinned and tackled Lucius, suddenly jumping on him like a cat catching prey.

"I live to give you something to live for."

And she pressed her lips on Lucius mouth in a desperate kiss, which despite everything he answered with equal hunger. We all make do, she thought in the last glimpse of fading clarity. And when we don't have something to live for, we find something. It was her last relatively coherent thought. They stumbled inside, not letting go of each other, not even reaching the bedroom in their ardour. They ripped their clothes off and fucked on the couch until they were both exhausted. Afterwards, Bella lay sleepily in Lucius' embrace. She was happy. For the first time in years, possibly. Who would have thought, right? They were two severely damaged people with undesirable pasts and lack of future plans. Maybe it was madness, but madness might just be exactly what they needed… Bellatrix closed her eyes and smiled.

"You are so pretty when you smile…"

Her smile turned into a grin before she knew it. She turned at him and gave him a manic look.

"Really now?"

Lucius smirked.

"You wretched woman."

"You total idiot."

They both laughed, and their laughter was quite possibly the most liberating sound to ever resound through the cabin…

(Author's Notes)

So, yes, the story is finished. There is an epilogue (already written out and everything!), which I will be posting if there's demand. I really hope you enjoyed this story, and I also hope I will have persuaded a couple more people to the Lucitrix ship xD

PLEASE REVIEW!

This may be the last chapter of this story, so please, please review! Just let me know what you thought of it, it makes my day, my week even, to have completed a story and see that people actually read it! And if you're interested in the epilogue, just say so! ;)