Disclaimer: I do not own Rodolphus, Bellatrix, or, considering how many times this basic plot has been done, anything about this chapter. I don't think there are any other OCs called Al Garvenbach, senior or junior, so I, in all likelihood, own them. (However, my saying this will automatically ensure that, not only has the name 'Algernon Garvenbach', silly as it may be, been used before, but it was used several weeks before the posting of Chapter Eight, and I now look like an utter twit.)

A/N: This was originally the ending of Chapter Nine, but I eventually decided that it worked better as a stand-alone chapter. Also, Chapter Nine was getting utterly and completely out of hand. Consider it, if you will, a bit of a reward after the horrific(ally long) action. Well, a reward for RodolphusxBellatrix shippers, anyway, though my silly-and/or-abusive version of the pairing is quite likely to make many of these shippers angry.

Plot Summary, For Those Who Found Chapter Nine To Be Of An Unreadable Length: Bellatrix is annoyed at Rodolphus for various unclear reasons, generally involving Rabastan. Nothing is new there. Rodolphus attempts to redeem himself in the eyes of his schmookiepoo by killing people with great relish. Again, not much is new. Aliens invade the earth, but this is unimportant and not actually mentioned, nor will it have any bearing on the story beyond a throwaway joke in the A/N. After a brief moment of camaderie, Bellatrix abandons Rodolphus when she decides that torturing Barty Crouch, Senior, is far more interesting. Then Crouch gets away, for reasons that are never made entirely clear, because Slytherite is a hack.

Summary of Plot Summary: Bad things happened. People died. Aliens.

Warnings: Swearing, dysfunctional relationship, alcohol use, some blood. As this chapter is exclusively about the Lestranges and their creepy relationship, this should not be news. However, and it probably says something creepy about me that I wrote this, it also contains explicit but "offscreen" sex. This chapter earns its M rating. Feel free to skip it, as it's largely a character sketch and doesn't really advance the plot.

Things That You Know You Want To See: See above.

---

Rodolphus killed Algernon Junior, slicing him to ribbons in almost the same way that he gutted Al's mother. He butchered the poor child, gleefully, remorselessly, with no silly ideas that tonight could have ended any other way. Al (isn't it sad that he has a name now, in death?) was always doomed; is the moral of the story never to piss off Rodolphus Lestrange? It wasn't out of anger that he killed. Is the moral to avoid those who would do you harm? Cowardice: it saves your daddy so much anguish. Is there any moral whatsoever? Is this whole charade tasteless of me? Al is dead.

Of course it is!

Rodolphus, irretrievably insane, brutal, loving, broken, hateful Rodolphus...what a sick fuck. He's almost psychotic enough to be sympathetic, in some mad way that will be suicide for all involved, but not now. He's a child killer. And that, dear kiddies, is horrific. Did you ever stop to think about how many children he must have killed away from your prying eyes? Did his freak fetish for bloodshed not tell you everything you needed to know? He's dangerous, stay away. He's a murderer, a torturer, Lord Voldemort's most loyal brute; don't fall in love with him! And now he's done away with little Al. Do you still love him?

Of course you do!

Al was a child, a pure, sweet, innocent child, and his purity is only reinforced when there's nothing left of what he used to be. He loved his mum. He always said his prayers. He's a good boy, a dead boy, a cheap shock for the idealistic; who cares about Al? You know as well as I why he was here. He was a target by his very nature, born to be cut down. Born to turn all of you against Rodolphus, who, after all, never had the benefit of a proper upbringing, and, moreover, feels the repercussions of his great-grandad's sick sibling lusts every time he breathes. Rodolphus is a victim of society! He's not bad, he's mad! And he's broken, so delightfully broken, sacrificed upon the altar so that you sick fucks can wish it all away.

More than that, he kills the little twits who half deserve to die!

...can still feel him bleeding.

Rodolphus stares at the page, willing some sort of inspiration, some sort of intelligent thought, to come. Poor thing. Hope springs eternal, doesn't it? The scarlet ink flickers in the candlelight, and, subconsciously (he hasn't got enough of a consciousness to do it any other way), he grins, remembering something else red that looks pretty in the light.

Little bastard died too quickly. They always do.

Still can't believe they fell for it.

If Rodolphus were capable of articulating his thoughts, they would be something like this...and they came streaming in like soldiers, probably knowing that they were going to die, but they went anyway. The stupid fools were heroes. Idiots. Heroes bleed. They screamed soprano, even the men, and they died in the green light of our wands. It was a tragedy. Bodies all over the floor, and no wedding. None of them will ever be kissed again. And it was fun. And because he's Rodolphus, he'd add a few 'fuck's.

"What are you doing?" Bellatrix snaps, but it's really an accusation, and a nasty one at that. She knows what Rodolphus is doing.

He holds up the book briefly, and the ink runs, once again reminding him of blood (or a nice red wine). "You impatient?" He laughs darkly, even when she doesn't think it's funny at all. She has her own things to mock, and she gets revenge:

"How silly of me to hope that you'd given up that stupid diary," she mutters, and he almost likes to think that she's angry because of Rabastan and his little...interference.

"Fuck off. You know what I told you."

Bastards died like animals. All of them. (Memo: was the kid's death in the plan? Ask Rosier)

Bella's pissed off now that she has to fuck me. Probably almost glad I'm writing this (she'd never admit it), just so she can wait before I take her. But she can't go back on it. She won't. Might try, though, but I won't let her. She's mine. Sometimes she forgets that.

If I need to remind her that she swore she'd be mine forever, I will. It'll be different from the others because it's Bella, but it's never that different. I've never fucked anyone else, so I don't know what it would feel like...but hurting Bella is almost the same when the blood flows. Even when I remember it's her, it's so close to the same feeling. It's better, even, because she hurt me. So we're even, and I don't have to hate her anymore.

I don't want to be her master. I just want her to love me. And to know that that's what she fucking has to do, or I'll kill her.

I love her and I hate her.

"I meant him to find it. It was a decoy. I meant to do that. So you think that you can lie to me and make it all better?" she rasps, using her own voice.

He nibbles the tip of the quill, noticing vaguely that his hand doesn't feel too good, and wonders how he can make his declarations of impassioned confusion any more melodramatic (so reminiscent of the grand theatre, and the opera he adores). "You think I'm lying?" Rodolphus turns, brown eyes wide and empty. "Why the hell would I have left it there if I wasn't trying? Why the fuck else would I have said those things I don't believe? I told you this already, Bella...I'm fucking Rabastan up." He grins like a little boy. "Think I'm stupid, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." Bellatrix, with her hair like oil in the light, unspooling from her lowered hood, and the eyes from hell, is Rodolphus's tragic beauty, proving, mainly, that he doesn't quite understand. "You are. Didn't you know?"

"Sometimes, Bella, you're such a fucking--" And here, Rodolphus uses a word that I'm sure you all know, perverse little boys and girls that you are. Therefore, I don't need to spell it out...He closes the diary, and flicks his wand; the locks click shut and slide across the cover. The diary is cut off from Rabastan's curiosity (would that he were here to read it), sealed more tightly than Bellatrix's black leather corsets.

"That's exactly what you wish me to be, isn't it? Don't deny it. You get what you want, Rodolphus, and then..." She cocks her head dramatically. "You complain." But there's a hint of warmth in her tight smirk, and there might well be more in her tight...

...gaze as she tortures his face with her eyes. They're hard and heavy and black, like little dabs of lead on the canvas of the portrait from hell.

Rodolphus likes those eyes. "Insatiable shit that I am, Bella. Mad fucking bastard that I am." She scoffs, and lets him know with her eyes exactly what she thinks of his accent--at times he sounds almost Glaswegian, and that doesn't do much for his claims of noble French ancestry--and his 'special' grammar (which doesn't do much for his claims of literacy). If he notices--deluded fool that he is--he doesn't show it. "I'm such a fucking hedonist...isn't that the word Rabastan uses? Hedonist. Pretty word, that. Sounds French." Bellatrix waits, wondering if there will be any more. Rodolphus takes his own sweet time, blank-eyed, absently running a finger over the back of his hand. He has an attention span, I swear; he'll stare at anything forever. Can he concentrate on what he's saying long enough for it to make it out of his brain with no unfortunate diversions? Do I even need to say the word "no"? No.

Her chest quivers a little, under the robes, and Rodolphus notices. He devours her, every last tiny sensual impression of her body leaving a little burst of flavor before it dissolves. The way the rough black cloth of her Death Eater robes drapes over her shoulder, folding a bit at her neck and her cocked head. Her lips, tense with infinite disdain, pulling in a bit at the corner and forming a nasty little smile. All the little things about her that could possibly inspire lust, and a few that were never meant to. His brain forms long, purple descriptions of her, and they boil down into one thing: She's mine, and I'm going to fuck her, and there's not a damn thing she can do about it.

He notices that the direction of her gaze has changed while he stared. Why is she looking at his hand? His hand isn't that interesting, is it?

"You're bleeding," Bellatrix hisses.

It stings.

There are red-hot metaphorical bees under his skin, buzzing and chewing away at his tendons and his nerves, and...he looks down. "Fuck."

"It took you so long to notice, Roddy," she says, and comes over to take a closer look. The cover of the diary is spattered with blood, and the mahogany top of the desk is smeared red; his split palm is vomiting up little bubbles of gore. It's hot, as if iron flecks are under the skin he no longer has, heating from some mysterious source until they melt through his flesh and bone. Of course, he isn't that articulate about it. "Which one of them was it? Who did this to you?"

Her concern, reluctant though it may be, is as warm on his skin as the coagulating streaks of blood.

She strokes the wound with one finger, eyes flickering from it to him, and he pretends that she's really concerned before he realizes that she is, she cares, she doesn't like to see him hurt by anyone but her. Self-mutilation is the obvious next step, and perhaps, one day, Rodolphus will make the connection, and Bellatrix, unimpressed, will gleefully join in.

"It was Crouch, wasn't it?"

He opens his mouth, and sees the intensity in her expression, the need she has to believe it, and his resistance gives up and goes away. "Yeah," he growls. "It was Crouch."

"He will die, Rodolphus. He is...an enemy of the Dark Lord. I came so close to killing him tonight--I could have done it--"

Rodolphus realizes what, in that sentence, bothers him. "You didn't kill him?" It isn't, technically, his immediate intention to sound so utterly incredulous. "You had the old bastard and you didn't do it?" His hand comes down, hard, on the desk. She flinches, and glares. "What in hell, Bellatrix?"

Thank you, Rodolphus. I've wanted to say that for so long.

"It was not my fault!" she snaps, blood pouring into her face. "Scrimgeour was there, Rodolphus! He would have taken command immediately--it would have been suicide to try--you were below, fighting the Aurors! I was alone, save for Wilkes--Wilkes is nothing! To kill Crouch then would have been a monumental mistake!" Her chest goes up and down, in and out, like a broken jack-in-the-box, and the lead in her eyes heats up and burns.

"Right. A monumental mistake. Yeah." Rodolphus watches the blood trickle out of his hand. It's coming more slowly than it did during the fight, pumping less insistently out, and he wonders briefly how much is left. It's sharper than the ache in his throat, the ache that comes from loving Bella, and--if he tries--it feels hot and liquid and almost good. It feels like the taste of blood. His blood. His blood that Bellatrix cares so much about. Red like cherries, warm like a kiss, the blood that Bellatrix wants to draw herself; the blood that no one else can draw. The blood that holds them together, closer than lovers, closer than siblings. Masochism breeds melodrama. "You could have killed Scrimgeour," he says at last. "I know how good you are, Bella. You could have killed them all like I killed the kid. Fucked them up."

Bellatrix goggles at him, finding herself devoid of anything scathing to say. She strides away from him, and flings herself down on the bed, her back turned to Rodolphus. He thinks he hears her whisper unpleasant things under her breath.

Rodolphus takes his wand out, and siphons the blood off the desk. The blood on his hand stays where it is. He's had worse injuries. Pain isn't so bad.

"Bella," he growls.
She expresses her feelings on the matter with a simple hand gesture.

He laughs. Vicious contempt: that's his Bella. He gets up and sits down beside her, stroking her shoulders, or at least making an effort; she gasps when he touches her left shoulder blade, and he assumes it's something he did wrong. His hand stays there, and finds the wet patch quite by accident. His fingers skate over something warm, and the damp cloth sticks to her skin:

"Bella, you're hurt."

"I know!" she spits, still not looking at him. Her muscles are tight under his hand, and she twitches as he presses deeper. (Rodolphus, dearie, I think you said it best yourself: what in hell?) "You think I need your help?" Bellatrix's back arches involuntarily as Rodolphus's fingers find the gash and slide inside, circling, massaging through her clothes--

"It was Crouch, wasn't it?"

He doesn't catch the incantation, leaving him without any sort of warning before her spell swats away his hand.

"Fuck," he growls, exasperated, "what do I have to do, Bella? You're hurt--"
She turns just enough to let him see her pretty face. "--I did not ask for your help--"

"--and you're damn well going to get it--"

"--where were you when I fought him? The most powerful man in the Ministry--"

Perhaps that's an overstatement. Bartemius is only the second most powerful wizard tasked with enforcing justice in the Wizarding world. There's no shame in being hurt by him as it is, Bellatrix; you're exaggerating his power to make yourself feel better. And that's a shade pathetic.

"What, you want me to protect you? That it? Is that it? You want me to save your frigid little arse? Is big scary Barty hurting you, Bella? What'd he do? Did he make the bitch bleed?" Rodolphus's blank eyes are almost more disturbing when he's angry: they show nothing. They feel nothing.

"I think he did," snaps Bellatrix, and her gaze jumps to Rodolphus's bisected hand. Rodolphus, the bitch's bitch. (Translation: Rodolphus, who takes it like a woman from the nasty, unpleasant female.) "My little bitch is bleeding, isn't he? Is he jealous?"

"Did Crouch fuck you? That what happened up there?" His fingers slide under her robes, even as she squeals, and he pulls her close to him, drawing his wand with the other hand. Look at her! She doesn't want it, does she? She agreed she would! Rodolphus doesn't consciously decide to be brutal, but there it is; his wand's resting against the corner of her eye. Will her demise be magical or entirely mundane? Or is it possible that she'll save herself and keep her bloody mouth shut?

But she's Bellatrix. If she were a quiet, submissive little lady, Rodolphus wouldn't give a flying fuck whether or not he could have her. That's love for you. Don't ever fall in love, kids: it isn't real unless it hurts.

"Are you going to rape me?" she spits, and throws her head back. His wand follows, of course--did she think she would be freed so easily? He's close. Too close. His fingers are sliding in and out of her back, clumsy and unrefined (he can't begin to compare!), and his hot breath is almost condensing on her skin, adding another pretty layer to the slick of sweat and blood across her elegant, easily ripped-open throat. (Rodolphus is nothing beside the Dark Lord!)

"You said you would," says Rodolphus, eyes vacant. And that's really all he knows about the matter.

She could, quite probably, kill him.

Her muscles twitch and writhe, aching, hot, almost liquefied under her skin, and they're useless, useless, pathetic and useless against Rodolphus's superior strength and size--

--he holds her like a doll, and maybe he doesn't know that she'll break--

--of course he knows, that's why he does it--

--"I suppose," she whispers, "that I did, Rodolphus. I said that I would."

She stops resisting (he has a right to me, does he not?) and yet the bastard doesn't loosen his hold--

--but now it's somehow tender and affectionate, even though nothing's really changed--

--warm, soft, sensual--

--human--

--"Right." Rodolphus licks his full lips. Slowly. Tenderly. They glisten a little with his saliva, and she's reminded of Voldemort's face as he spoke to them, but nowhere near as beautiful. She doesn't imagine that tongue between her legs, and when she does, she shudders and wonders why he thinks she likes it.

Disgusting--

--he's like a brother--

--His fingers scrape across her breast, and stay there. He squeezes her like a ripe fruit, too hard, claiming her, and she wouldn't mind at all if Voldemort did it, but Rodolphus is just too much. Somewhere along the line, her robes came off. She couldn't tell you when, or how, or who. She could easily--unfortunately--tell you why. He wants to put a thing into another thing, where, she's almost certain, she doesn't want it to go. He desires her, doesn't he? He wants to--

--she can't force the words into her brain--

--and yet, it's just something physical. Something unpleasant and a bit absurd that she and Rodolphus do every so often. She can't imagine why. Sex with him is on the same level as letting him stamp on her foot: it's vaguely painful and absurd, and he wants to, but she doesn't know why he does or why she would. She supposes she might let him. He's her husband.

"You're bleeding," he growls, and perhaps it says something about Bellatrix that she thinks, mainly, when will this be over? "You don't know how randy that makes me--"

She meets his eyes, and her body tenses for the inevitable. "You're sick," she snarls, "you, with your dead eyes and your animal lusts, knowing nothing, seeing nothing. Inhuman, subhuman, barely alive, Rodolphus, you're a freak!"

Rodolphus embraces her; he's warm, she thinks with a twinge of nausea. His breath almost, but not quite, matches hers. "You're just like me, Bella. Don't deny it," he says, and his voice is warped by lust and, unfortunately, by ten packs a day. "We're mad fucks, right?"

Her blood tastes bitter on his tongue.

---

So that's it, then. Rodolphus does Bellatrix. Goodnight. That's all there is.

Are you still reading this? You're all perverts and voyeurs and I hate all of you.

---

When he's finished, she can tell immediately. Isn't that progress?

His breathing slows from labored panting to almost nothing. He holds her gently, lovingly, and wonders why she won't look him in the eye.

Her skin is soft and white, with little red lines traced across it by his fingers, pink crescents where he bit her, and blue bruises adorning whatever parts happened to struggle. She's slim and graceful, and Rodolphus is intrigued by her elegance, the delicate, clean lines of her body. Her nipples, he thinks, are like rosebuds; I'll agree with that one, if only for the stupidity and accuracy of the metaphor. Roses have thorns. Thorns are painful. Pain is what you get if you touch Bellatrix's breasts. There's something to it, but not quite what he intended.
She's tense even now, after he's stopped hurting her. There's blood--he touches it, and decides that it isn't all blood, it's the wrong consistency--flowing from the torn gash between her lovely thighs. Bellatrix is the very portrait of the bitch submitting.

"Bella."
"Bella," she hisses. "Bella." He waits. "You have a lot of nerve, Lestrange."

The first time she called him Roddy, or even Rodolphus, was after they were married. He's been Lestrange to her for far longer than he's been Rodolphus. But every time he hears it, he thinks that it'll be the last...he's always wrong. (The small absurdity of her own surname now being Lestrange doesn't seem to occur to her. Who, really, is surprised?)

He caresses her ribcage, and she shudders. It's a knee-jerk rejection, without pausing to consider how much pleasure his touches could give her; so typical of Bellatrix. "You're pissed off at me."

"Why, in Merlin's name, shouldn't I be?" she explodes, ripping herself free and yanking the sheets over her naked body. The blood doesn't heed practical considerations, and it keeps flowing, soaking almost instantly through the silky red sheets and dribbling back down onto her. "You don't even realize--Merlin, you don't even understand--you think I desire you, Lestrange?"

"Yeah," growls Rodolphus, "I could tell, Bella." His voice is gentle; he isn't angry at all. Not now. He got what he wanted, and it was almost better than killing (almost). He hasn't had a drink since before they left, and he'll be needing one soon (alcoholism doesn't wait), but he's so relaxed. So calm. He feels good. If Bellatrix let him inside her more often, he might not be nearly so homicidal.

What does that say about Bellatrix's 'marital duties,' then?

"You're deluded, Lestrange," Bellatrix mutters. "Insane."

"Think I have to be," Rodolphus says, leaning over and stroking the unfortunate shoulder poking out of the sheets, "to love you."

"...to love me," she echoes. Still, she rolls over to face him. There's disgust in her eyes, but not nearly enough. "You adore me, Lestrange. Isn't that true? You worship me?"

He stares into her face, and--though light falls on his retinas, and his optic nerves transmit the image to his brain--his eyes don't see a thing. "Yeah."

"Such love," Bellatrix whispers. "Such passion. Shouldn't you feel those things for the Dark Lord? Isn't it true, Lestrange, that such adoration should be for the Dark Lord and the Dark Lord alone?" And there's a nasty tinge to her voice, an accusatory overtone: treason! Betrayal! Perfidy!

The light from the candle falls, broken into a million pieces as it flickers and quavers with the excitement of the moment, on the two of them, and--if you know nothing about them at all--it almost looks like they're in love. But that's a pathetic joke.

Rodolphus doesn't know how to lie, or even that he should. Here it comes. "You're just like him," he rasps. "In your eyes, it's the same. The same damn thing."

"And you feel for him?" she says. He said--he says--the same--we're just the same--the same power--the same glory--he lies--he lies, she thinks, and God knows what it means.

His eyes are innocent, like a child's. There's always been something wrong with those eyes. They're empty, vacant, and to look into them is to see something not quite human, something that laughs at reality and doesn't see sanity the way we do. The first thing people notice about Rodolphus Dante Lestrange is his huge brown eyes. Everyone, no matter how jaded, shudders and turns away. They aren't the eyes of a murderer. They aren't the eyes of a bastard. They're the uncanny eyes of a corpse, and even now, when the rest of his face is lit with emotion, his eyes are silent.

"The same damn thing." By which he means: love.

---

Now that you've thrown the story against the wall, please be so kind as to retrieve it.

---

Time passes in the usual way. It's been almost three hours since Al Garvenbach died; Bellatrix is starting to really feel the effects of the neurochemical stew that killing shot through her brain. Even Rodolphus couldn't hold the good feelings away forever. She lies in his arms, and she doesn't fight. Movement almost, but not quite, spoils the effect, sending the warm feelings currently inundating her body sloshing down and out through her fingers, pressed out by gravity. There's no metaphor or snippet that will quite suffice, shamelessness be damned. I'll say, to be done with it, that it's hot and electric and almost unbearable, and that she has Julie Garvenbach's bleeding, amorphous body pasted inside her eyelids, and that she's perhaps wondering what will happen if she does the same thing to Rodolphus. Rodolphus is bigger and stronger and he won't go down easily. What a challenge. She'll do the same thing but more, then, until there's nothing left but blood—(Lovely.)

Rodolphus himself? He wants a drink.

"Bella."

Like a puppy, she thinks, and mentally scrubs her retinas clean. Shame. She'd almost topped herself in bloodiness. "What is it now?"

"You want a glass of something?" He nuzzles her shoulder. She's bleeding again. So tempting. Rodolphus, Rodolphus, you are not a vampire. Learn that and you will go far in life, possibly as far as Azkaban.

Bellatrix nods sharply. He finds his wand and flicks it twice; the cabinet in the corner shudders and disgorges a bottle of something tasty, red, and toxic. (It's dusty, yes, but there are fingerprints in the dust, clearly indicating that someone's been drowning his conscience lately.) A glass settles into his hand, and he fills it to the rim. Of course. He laughs darkly as Bellatrix sneers: "Hedonist, remember?" Perhaps it proves that he knows what she's sneering about. Perhaps it proves that he knows three big words and uses them, at random, as a defensive measure against any implications that he might be a drunken, brutish, moronic pig.
"Drunk," she corrects him, pouring her own.

"Same thing."

Hedonists have some class, Rodolphus.

He downs a considerable portion of the wine in one go, splattering droplets across the no-longer-so-lovely sheets. It's delicious. He's rich and boorish and he's allowed to do that, damn it! "Did well tonight, didn't we?"
"For the Dark Lord," she retorts, holding up her glass.

He echoes her. "For the Dark Lord." They couldn't possibly drink to the name of anyone else. The man that both of them love. Yes, it's sordid; don't even mention Rabastan's contributions to the romantic situation, or we'll be here all night.

He leans over and kisses Bellatrix. His lips taste of red wine and blue blood. She bites his tongue. "Is this your tragedy? You promised me one, did you not?"

"You want one?" he teases gently, pawing at her throat.

And Bellatrix smiles. She can't possibly be drunk yet. That would be ridiculous. So she must really be giving him a smile that is aggressive, but...affectionate. "Only if you die with the rest of them."

"You first. That's how it works, isn't it? The bitch dies, and the hero..."

"So this is theatre, and you're the hero? No, Lestrange--Rodolphus--" (his eyes widen, and he grins without quite knowing why) "you're the victim. You'll rot alone, unmourned, and the Mudbloods will have us all."
Another kiss. Against all odds—but hell, I know by now that Rodolphus and odds don't mix—he likes the thought.

And they're reconciled. They drink and fight and make their evil plans, and when Rabastan comes home, he finds them asleep in each other's arms.

---

When Rabastan comes home.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Though, in my opinion, the more pressing question is: why is the little freak in their room in the first place?

---

Well, there we go.

No, I can't write a short character sketch to save my life.