Part Ten

"I'm curious darling." Voldemort broke the post-coital silence between himself and Elizabeth after a long, dozy intermission in which neither really slept and neither was really awake. She stirred next to him and mumbled something intelligible into his chest.

"Why did you choose to attack Bella with your bare hands and not your wand?" He asked as he stared up at the dark taffeta that was draped across the bed posts, over the bed. She drummed her finger tips on his stomach and extended her form to kiss his neck. It tickled but he did not shy away from it.

"You don't need a wand for everything, Tom." She said. She propped herself up on one elbow next to him and stroked his chest with her free hand, tracing lines over his torso and exploring his contours.

"And now you call her 'Bella', not 'Bellatrix'? Are you only informal when those you are informal about are not around to see you be informal about them?" She asked as she looked down at him. Her forefinger stopped over his heart and tapped it rhythmically.

He twisted his neck to look at her more directly and furrowed his brow at her. "Could you possibly have fit the word 'informal' into that sentence any more times than you did just now?" He asked.

She poked him hard over the heart and he winced, laughing. "Could you possibly be so kind as to deflect my questions with something more creative than criticizing my command of the King's English?" She asked, laughing herself.

He nodded. "I could. But I wasn't really trying to avoid your question." They stopped laughing and he looked up at her, studying her youthful face. He touched her face and then let his hand drift down the locks of dark hair that framed her face to the newest shock of white hair. He flipped it up to examine it and she did as well.

"Really Elizabeth, what is going on with your hair?" He asked, not feeling self-conscious about the note of genuine concern he could hear in his own voice.

He touched her face again and ran his palm over her cheek, then her forehead, and then he touched the skin around her eyes. "I think you are mistaken about aging." He said as he flipped his hand over and touched the same places with the back of his hand. "You have yet to line."

"I'm not that young anymore, Tom." She said. "These things are to be expected." She smiled reassuringly. It was the reassuring smile she bestowed upon worried patients and he didn't like it. He stood up and pulled her up as well. He placed a hand on the crown of her head and tilted her head towards himself, examining the shocks of white hair. They ran root-to-tip and there was, in fact, another one.

She jerked her head back and blew hair out of her eyes. "Tom. I'm thirty-three years old!" She protested and pushed him back from her with a hand she placed on the center of his chest. He frowned at her.

He cocked his head to the side and raised his lack of eyebrows at her. "Thirty-three is barely free of girlhood, Elizabeth." He said sternly. She rolled her eyes and sat back, glaring at him and bare-chested.

"Yes Tom, I know, you're ancient." She spotted a lock of hair running over her shoulder and threw it back as if it were pestering her. "We all seem like babes before a man who'd be Lord-knows how old by now?"

He regarded her with caution. She wasn't angry, but she was annoyed by his fussing over her hair. She was chewing at her lower lip and looking around the room as if ignoring his presence. She avoided eye-contact with him when she felt they were arguing. He knew that while she enjoyed bickering with him as much as he did with her, when it threatened to become a serious argument she was no longer interested.

"If you find it that repulsive I'm sure I can get rid of it." She said with a touch of a pout. He closed his eyes a moment and drew in breath. He didn't find it repulsive. He imagined that it would be very hard for him to ever find Elizabeth repulsive. He reached out blindly and placed a hand on her knee.

When he opened his eyes he was startled for just a moment to see her staring at him, her dark eyes gleaming with that rusty crimson again. His reflexive action against the image that invaded his mind was to flinch, take his hand off of her and retreat several inches away.

When he opened his eyes again she was on her knees, holding a length of the sheet over her naked form and reaching out to touch him, an expression of concern on her face and worry in her completely normal brown eyes. Evidently she had not registered what had just happened.

He snarled in rage and grabbed the wrist of the hand she had extended so delicately towards him and twisted it against the joint. She cried out in pain and the rest of her body followed, her form fell back into a supine position on the bed.

He pulled her legs open and mounted her, not beginning another engagement but instead baring down on her. He put one hand on her forehead to stop her from thrashing. She was shouting and cursing at him and while it did register with him that he was upsetting her, the he had probably even hurt her, he had to see more of what he'd just seen.

"Who was he?" He snarled as she thrashed beneath him and he took hold of her face, his fingers digging into her cheeks "Who was he?" He shouted. She finally looked at him and realization seemed to come over her face and her body went limp as her mind became open to him.

When he'd touched her knee and then looked into her eyes, eyes that were beginning to look a little like his own, he'd felt as if he were looking out of her eyes in a similar situation but in a different room, at a different time, and more importantly...with a different man that had been the object of her eye.