A dull, throbbing pain in her limbs. The sensation of needles poking into every pore on her skin. Stabbing agony behind her eyes. The sensation that a great weight sat upon her chest. Churning nausea.
"Bellatrix?"
He could sense her waking up, she thought. Her Occlumency shields would be nonexistent just now; he'd be able to tell that her mind was coming out of this hell. Bellatrix turned her face to where she could tell he was, and she blinked her eyes open.
Immediately, he scowled deeply, but then Voldemort corrected his features and murmured,
"I know you're in pain. Unfortunately, neither a Painkilling Charm nor Anodyne Potion will help that. Only time will make it fade."
"All right." Bellatrix's voice was so hoarse she could barely hear it. Her throat burned like fire when she tried to swallow. Almost immediately, Voldemort brought a mug of something to her lips. There was a steel straw in it, and Bellatrix closed her chapped lips around it, drinking without hesitation.
Lemon water with a hint of honey and ginger. It was lukewarm in the mug, which for some reason felt like just the right temperature. Bellatrix sipped more eagerly, gulping down the citrus and spice and sweet.
Perhaps, she thought distantly, this was why he so despised lemon flavour. After five Horcruxes, he must have grown quite weary of the taste.
"It helps with the nausea and thirst," Voldemort said matter-of-factly. He flicked his eyes to the bedside table, where a large pewter pitcher sat, and he informed her, "You should drink as much as you can. Your body is extremely dehydrated just now."
Bellatrix just shut her eyes, for the pain there was bad enough that she couldn't think straight. Suddenly she felt an ice-cold sensation there, on the place above her eyes, and she gasped a little.
"It's just a wet rag that I've charmed to stay chilled," Voldemort said quietly. "It'll help that stabbing pain go away very quickly. The first three times, I waited that particular pain out, but it'll be gone in ten minutes with the rag. Here. Drink more."
"Thank you, Master," Bellatrix rasped. She felt the cold metal straw at her lips again, and she sipped the soothing concoction for awhile before Voldemort took it away again. She felt his hands gliding over her skin, rubbing firm circles with his thumbs in a perfect sort of massage. He worked his way along her shoulders and down her arms, and then he whispered,
"It'll all fade."
"Did it work?" Bellatrix asked, blinded by the perfectly icy cloth he'd put on her eyes. She heard him sigh.
"It worked perfectly," he said at last. "It's beside one of mine, under the floorboards of a shack just outside the town of Little Hangleton."
"A shack," Bellatrix repeated. She knew there must be some significance to the hiding place. Lord Voldemort did nothing arbitrarily. There was a long pause, and finally he said,
"The shack is… is where my mother was raised. Both sides of my family came from Little Hangleton. I've got a Horcrux - an old family ring that I took great lengths to acquire after its loss - beneath the floorboards of the deserted shack. It's very strongly protected, of course. I have written out all the spells you'd need to take down the wards. If ever you need it, though, your Horcrux will draw you to it. Know that it is safe."
"Beside yours," Bellatrix whispered, and after another long pause, Voldemort said,
"I have a theory that they strengthen one another by being side-by-side."
Bellatrix curled her lips up weakly. "Oh. I quite like that theory, My Lord."
"Bella." She felt his lips on her cheek then, and some of the worst of the pain evaporated as he kissed her. She sucked in breath hard and begged him,
"Kiss me again."
She could feel him hesitate, but then his lips pressed against hers, far more gently than they'd ever done, and Bellatrix felt more of the pain subside.
"Oh, again, please," she beseeched him. He kissed her once more, still careful and soft, and Bellatrix reached up to snare her arms around his shoulders. His fingers pulled the icy rag from her eyes, which no longer hurt, and she read deep surprise in his dark eyes as he hovered over her.
"Bella," he said again, looking her up and down. "It… what, it helps the pain when I kiss you?"
"Yes." Bellatrix nodded and tightened her arms around him. He kissed her a little harder, or at least more urgently, cupping her jaw in his hand and licking a little at her bottom lip.
"I love you," he mumbled, his breath hot against her wet mouth. Bellatrix groaned a little; the pain was almost entirely gone now. He kissed her once more, this time so deeply that Bellatrix was lost in it. He traced a pattern of some kind on the roof of her mouth with his tongue. He sucked her bottom lip between his teeth. He sighed against her, his fingers threading into her curls, and as he pulled away, he said again, "I love you, Bellatrix."
"Oh. Oh, My Lord." Bellatrix was a little breathless then, her eyes struggling to stay open as she nodded. "Oh, I love you, too. Very much. I'm so tired. So very tired."
"Yes; you'll sleep on and off for a few days. It's all right." Voldemort still sounded a little disbelieving, and he asked, "How's your pain right now?"
"Gone," she said honestly. She was fatigued, but the stabbing and throbbing and burning had gone away entirely. She opened her eyes to see Voldemort smirking a little in his chair beside the bed.
"Well, I certainly wish I'd had the luxury of someone kissing me and telling me they loved me when I made my Horcruxes."
Bellatrix reached for his hand and said very sincerely, "I am sorry I was not there… that you were alone."
He blinked. "I am rather accustomed to being alone, Bella. Not anymore, of course. Here. Drink some more, will you?"
Two days later, Bellatrix was strong enough to sit upright in bed with a tray on her lap. She breathed in deeply, and Voldemort said rather proudly,
"I baked that bread myself, I will have you know. With magic, mind, but… still. And there's a whole great pot of the carrot and ginger soup if you want more."
Bellatrix smiled broadly and pointed to the wooden bowl on the tray. "You've put parsley on the serving of soup and everything."
"Yes, well. Do it all the way or not at all," Voldemort said. He watched her spoon soup into her mouth with a shaking hand, then decide that it was better to soak her dense brown bread in the soup and eat it that way. As she chewed, she smiled a little at him, and he could read the gratitude in her eyes.
A few times over the last few days, they'd flashed scarlet. When she'd blinked her eyes open for the first time, he'd been staring at crimson irises. But it hadn't happened at all today. She seemed a little thinner, a little more weary, but he thought that would improve, too. Overall, she didn't seem much worse for the wear. Voldemort had gone through a phase after creating a Horcrux during which his features had gone blurry and horrid, and it had taken quite a lot of Healing magic to put himself to rights. Something had been off, he thought, when he'd made ring Horcrux. He'd damaged himself badly that time, but he'd repaired most of the problems with his appearance. Bellatrix, it seemed, had handled the creation of her Horcrux perfectly. If anything, she looked more beautiful than ever.
She sipped at her cup of tea and set it back down with a little clatter, and as she let out a shaking breath, she admitted,
"I can't eat any more right now. I'm sorry, Master."
"No. It's… you're doing so well. Really." He Banished her tray to the kitchen and set the dishes to washing themselves in the sink. Then he glanced out the window and noted, "The waves are enormous today. Would you like to go have a look? Get some fresh air?"
Bellatrix hesitated, pulling a little at the quilt as she admitted,
"I do not wish to disappoint you, My Lord, but… I'm not certain that I have the strength to walk all the way to the beach just yet."
He cocked up a brow. "Who said anything about you walking?"
He pushed the blankets aside and threaded one arm beneath her knees and sent the other to carefully cradle her back. He cast a wandless, nonverbal charm to partially levitate her, such that she felt like she weighed hardly anything, and he smirked down at her. She reached up to hold him, clasping her fingers together behind his neck, and she grinned.
Voldemort gathered his abilities to wandlessly yank the front door of the cottage open and to pull it shut once they'd gone outside. The chill was bracing; the wind was intense. It was magnificent. His boots crunched on the little stones in front of the cottage as Bellatrix's hair was blown everywhere. He'd kept her clean with Scouring charms and had helped her limp to the bathroom when she'd finally been able to relieve herself. He'd fed her and comforted her with kisses. He had grown quite used to taking care of her over the last few days. But this was different; she was finally feeling the outdoors again, and suddenly she seemed a little stronger.
As he approached the ocean, he watched her eyes - perfectly brown and not at all red right now - stare out over the grey, churning sea. She seemed mesmerised. Voldemort stood on the rocky beach, just out of reach of the waves, and he just held her. His black cloak whipped around and behind him in the wind, and his greying hair would be a shameful mess when they got back. But it was cloudy and cold and windy and perfect. The waves slammed with anger against the rocky shore, and for a very long time, both Bellatrix and Voldemort just watched the aggressive ebb and flow. Finally, barely audible over the wind, Bellatrix asked,
"May I stand, please?"
He hesitated but then set her down carefully. Her bare feet stumbled a little as she tried to get her bearings, and Voldemort laced a hand to the small of her back, propping her up against him. He shook his head and assured her,
"I won't let you fall."
She stared up at him then, her curls coming and going from her face in the wind. She just stared, not studying him, not communicating any secret message with her chocolate eyes. They were locked up, the two of them, and Voldemort suddenly felt that he wouldn't have been able to look away for all the world. He actually tried; he tried his best to cast his eyes back out to the sea. But all that happened was that his hand tightened at Bellatrix's back, and he promised her,
"I won't ever let you fall, Bella."
Her eyes welled just a little then, and she nodded. "I know, Master. I'm not sure I can walk back. Will you carry me?"
"Yes." He scooped her up again, cradling her carefully and eschewing any assistive spells this time. As he plodded up the stony soil toward his cottage, he knew she'd only require a few more days of respite before they could leave the Isle of Man. A tiny part of him didn't want to leave. Some fragment of his being wanted to stay here, here in this windy and deserted place, alone with her. But he had an empire to build, and she was his Dark Lady now.
They'd always be alone together. No one would ever understand either of them properly. She'd come the closest to understanding him, and he liked to think he understood her. But no one would know this terrible secret, the fact that they had both split their souls and concealed the fragments in Horcruxes. No one would ever know the way he adored her, in a way that he could have never cared for anyone else.
In a few days, they'd go back to Malfoy Manor. They'd go back to meetings, to assassinations, to Ministry infiltration and social events. But they'd done something that couldn't be undone. They'd crossed a line from which there was no return. And they would live forever, alone together.
THE END.
Author's Note: Please don't be mad at me, buuuuuut… I have decided to end this story here. That's because it's Christmas season and I have very limited writing time, and I just *know* that I will be writing a fanfic for The Last Jedi as soon as it comes out. In between now and then, I have to do some editing on my next original novel that will be published soon. My plan right now (and if you know me, you know I rarely make these kinds of writing plans) is to 1) edit and publish my original work, then 2) write a fanfic for The Last Jedi, then 3) finish Wars and Warlords (which is a Bellamort fic that got abandoned in a situation like this, that I'm trying to avoid). Eventually, my hope is to write a full length sequel to this story in the same way that I made the Troublemaker storyverse.
I want to thank you sooooo very sincerely for reading this story, which has been an absolute joy to write. I have loved exploring this very different Bellamort dynamic, and I sincerely hope to expand upon it in the future.