Serious Note Before We Begin This Update:
Firstly, C&I is undergoing its umpteenth plot overhaul. Which is why this update is so delayed, and why updates are going to be erratic from now on, mainly because I have to be very careful that anything I overhaul now does not negate everything that's already come. However, I do have a new deadline – 1st March – which gives me over three months to get it done in.
Most importantly, although I said 'keep reading' at the end of the last chapter, you are of course not obligated to do so should you think I've pushed the boundaries of reason, logic, dei ex machina or just plain sanity to the point of no return. However, I will say that it is rare for me to introduce something and leave it hanging – generally (although admittedly not always) there is relatively solid theory behind everything waiting to be explained, but I tend to work on an 'action first, explain everything later' principle. Anyway, enough of that, onwards to the update! And since I'm in a good mood having discovered the joys of folk dance, have two chapters!
Note: I may as well say it now: this chapter in particular is an indulgence to me as a writer and a die-hard Icicle 'shipper. Having put him through so much, I wanted to write the slightly suaver Lucius I know and love. Allow me my little moment; we'll be back to normal (whatever normal is…) very soon.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Save the Last Dance
Narcissa stood at the window of the master bedroom, her forehead pressed against the glass as she looked out over a grey and uninspiring sunset. It reflected her life perfectly. She was at a complete standstill and her world was bleak and colourless. Everything seemed to be slipping away from her, lost to the shady dealings and incomprehensible moral maze of warfare. Whatever happened though, whichever side one fought on, there were some things that no-one could consider just. The slaughter of Finn and Mareike Rowle was one of them. Oh yes, Narcissa thought to herself bitterly, there were those who had fought against him who would say, callously, that Rowle, as a marked Death Eater, deserved his fate, but what did they know of the man who had died that night? And what of Mareike? Was she guilty by association to the extent where her murder was also justifiable? And Susie…
Narcissa shook her head. She could only hope that Susie was safe with Camilla, wherever the pair of them were. She had not received any news from her older friend since her last disappearance into the chimney with Daniel hot on her trail. A tiny part of Narcissa was optimistic, hoping that Camilla's maternal influence over Daniel would come to the fore and that she would be safe, and that little Susie would grow up loved and unharmed in the absence of her adoring parents. Narcissa did not want to even think of any other option, and she concentrated on focussing all her energies towards hoping that all was well, however much she knew, deep in her heart, that this would not be the case.
So much injustice, but where could she turn to in her sadness? Since July, Narcissa had led the family through their many, many trials; the person supporting the entire infrastructure could not afford to break. There was far too much at stake for her to give in to her misery, but she was fast running out of energy with which to keep up her mask. Her make-up was rapidly flaking but the show had to go on. Narcissa was glad of moments like these, when she was alone and unobserved, and for a few moments she could stop fighting her grief and unhappiness. Finn's death still haunted her in idle moments, his final strained words suddenly filling silences, and she would wake in the middle of night with a start, still able to feel his blood smearing her hands. She felt as if she was a murderer pursued, and although she had committed no crime, the guilt still gnawed at her. If she had only been quicker off the mark, if she had only understood the warning signs sooner.
Narcissa gave a snort of cynical laughter. If she had been there quicker, then she would probably be counted amongst the dead, struck down by her sadistic sister. Narcissa couldn't think anymore. She suddenly felt the weight of the year's events pressing down on her with unbearable pressure, and in that moment all she could do was scream, a long, loud angry scream that only stopped when she paused for breath, panting. She drew in air for the second round, but before she could let rip, she felt a familiar warm hand between her shoulder blades, and like a soap bubble disturbed by the gentlest of touches, she crumpled into her woe, unable to support herself any longer. She had done a lot of screaming recently, but she cried relatively seldom. This was one of those rare occasions. Lucius caught her as she stumbled and they ended up sitting on the floor beneath the window, Lucius's robes soaking up Narcissa's utter misery.
At length, she simply ran out of tears and lapsed into silence. Lucius shifted his hold on her and pulled her closer into his side.
"I've missed you," he murmured to her hair. Narcissa nodded her agreement, finally feeling safely enveloped from all the many evils of the world in her husband's arms once more. As time, stress, sleeping potions and pain had taken precedence, the level of intimacy in their marriage had dwindled to the occasional chaste kiss snatched when they could be guaranteed to be without a sneering audience. "Whatever happened to the halcyon days? When we could dance the Viennese around the drawing room in our dressing gowns if we so wished."
Narcissa could not help but give a slightly snuffly laugh.
"As far as I can remember we have never danced the Viennese around the drawing room, or indeed any other room, in our dressing gowns."
Without a word, Lucius got to his feet and wandered across to the wardrobe and Narcissa shook her head in despair at his intentions, rising from her place under the windowsill as he returned, holding out her dressing gown and wearing his own over his shirtsleeves.
"There's no time like the present," he said. "It would of course be better in the drawing room, but it seems a shame not to be able to say we've done it at least once."
Narcissa smiled, pulling on the white silk and waving her wand at the floor below them before taking Lucius's offered hand. The first tinkling notes of a familiar Viennese waltz floated up to them from the piano on the ground floor, and before long they were whirling around the room, newly-weds once more, nothing in the world to care about except each other, and preferably not crashing into the furniture. Eventually the music slowed and their pace dropped with it, but as the next tune began, they did not start again, staying motionless, looking at each other.
It would have been enough, thought Narcissa. If they had simply remained standing in the centre of the room, staring into each other's eyes, neither willing to be the first to look away and break the magic of the moment, then it would have been enough for her. But as soon as Lucius kissed her, a powerful kiss that threw off all the caution that they had been wearing for so many months, a kiss filled with frustration, need, overpowering want… The fire that she had kept so tightly suppressed roared into life again and she responded to the kiss with a tenfold passion of her own. Lucius staggered slightly under the forcefulness of her ministrations but caught himself and let go their ballroom hold to take her in his arms properly, crushing her with the same desperation as he had done on his return from Azkaban and the same longing that she felt herself. It was then that she knew that to end it there would never be enough. An irrepressible hunger had been re-awakened after lying dormant and she would not rest until it was sated, the consequences be damned. Scrabbling for her wand where she had left it on the windowsill, Narcissa managed to break away long enough to lock the bedroom door before refocusing her attention on the matter at hand, ignoring the world outside, ignoring the bleak state of her existence that she had been lamenting so shortly before. As she succeeded in sending him backwards onto the bed this time, they kissed with the urgency of new lovers and the ease and familiarity of long-established ones. Far below them, out of sight and out of mind, the piano continued to play.
X
Narcissa was not asleep, and she knew that Lucius was also aware of this, but she knew that unless she kept up the pretence then there would be no way she'd let him get out of bed and go to meet whatever fate awaited him that night, and everything would be for nothing. She felt him shift, sigh, and finally let go of her.
"Ciss…"
She did not reply and she knew that Lucius had not expected her to. He sighed again and she felt a rush of cold air fill the void where his body had been as he got out of bed. Finally trusting herself not to do anything rash, Narcissa half-opened her eyes and watched him dress, the black robes so familiar and so alien at the same time.
"Cissa…"
"Yes?"
He paused, fiddling with one cuff, and gave a hollow laugh.
"I'm scared."
That was definitely true. It was rare enough for him to admit fear; it was rarer still for him to call her Cissa. Their private pet name only ever came out in the most desperate of times.
"We're doing the right thing," she replied, although her throat constricted around the words, unwilling to let them out, and immediately she regretted the plural. She was not doing anything other than lying there being completely hypocritical, urging him onwards when all she wanted to do was grab him and hold him back from fate.
Lucius nodded slowly and sat down on the end of the bed, easing his wedding band over his knuckle. It had always been a tight fit, metal moulding to the long-term wearer just as anything else did, but up until last year this had made little difference. Then came Azkaban, and Narcissa could still remember the horrible jolt that she had received in the pit of her stomach when she had opened the battered brown paper parcel that had been sent from the dread island to see a mocking twinkle of broken gold nestled in the midst of her husband's effects. Broken gold, snapped by the wand of an impatient administrator. Magic could repair everything, but since his return to civilisation, Lucius had made a point of removing his wedding ring before going out to do the Dark Lord's bidding for fear of a repeat performance, although why they did not know, since Azkaban was theirs and he would not be going for an extended stay any time soon. As much as she accepted his decision, however, Narcissa couldn't say that she liked it. To her, the nigh-on immovable ring had always represented a reminder to Lucius to come home in one piece. It hadn't worked, of course, and the psychology should have been broken with that, but the association was still there.
Tonight, however, its removal was a necessary evil. At length, he gave up and held his hand out to Narcissa, who tapped the ring with her wand. It slid off into her palm and she stared at it, twisting it between her fingertips as she had done so often the previous summer when he had left it with her for safekeeping. That was before he had surrendered his wand, of course. Since that day (Narcissa could still remember it as if it were mere hours ago; every detail was clear in her mind down to the colour of the stockings she'd been wearing), their lives had become material for barter, constantly traded between Draco and the Dark Lord. However they looked at it though, there was to have been no way to avoid the situation. Whoever had lost, whatever had happened, they would still be living on the brink, dispensable. The Dark Lord had made that much clear when he had come to her after the Department of Mysteries debacle and said, in cold, amused tones to a woman still surrounded by Azkaban brown paper, that in the incapacitation of her husband, he would be requiring her son. Draco had taken his father's place long before Lucius was ostracised from the ranks; it would only ever have been a matter of time. Was there any way in which this horrible inevitability that they now faced could have been avoided? Not really, thought Narcissa grimly, and she knew that no matter what, no matter how much she regretted, had she had the choice she would probably have done it all again, simply out of not knowing how to make it different.
Lucius went momentarily rigid, the fingers of his left hand clenching involuntarily.
"It's time," he said. "The point of no return."
They both knew that so much hinged on whether or not he walked out of the door; something far bigger and more important than both of them. Neither of them moved for a moment that seemed to span an age. Narcissa bit her tongue to prevent her from saying anything.
Finally Lucius stood, walked calmly round the bed and kissed her briefly on the lips.
"I'll see you later."
Narcissa nodded; she still did not trust herself to speak and she knew that her husband understood. I'll see you later. It was a definitive statement; a fact. The only thing left in any doubt was quite how much later they would meet again.
"I love you."
She allowed her mouth off the leash long enough to reply.
"I love you too."
Lucius kissed her again, lingering a little this time, but all too soon he was gone, through the door: choice made, path taken, events set in stone. Narcissa sighed and got out of bed, knowing that the longer she stayed staring at the door, the more tempted she would be to follow him through it. She padded through to the bathroom and began to run water into the tub; she had no intention of taking a bath but the noise blocked out all other sounds and, conversely, all silence, silence in which her thoughts were far too free to wander. She ran a finger along the shelf above the sink, counting out empty potion vials that had accumulated there during the past month, all brews of varying strength, efficacy and experimentation prescribed alternately by Severus and Camilla and all ultimately useless.
Thinking of Camilla inevitably brought her mind back full circle. She hoped that her words to Finn before his death had not been a lie; that Susie was safe wherever she was. Narcissa looked into the mirror and sighed at the tear tracks down her cheeks; she had not even realised she had begun to weep again. She dried her eyes on a towel and took a deep breath. There was no use in standing in the middle of her bathroom contemplating. The future had been laid in motion, and she had her own contribution to prepare. She went over to a cabinet mounted high on the wall and locked by magic; a relic from the days when everything had to be kept from a child's wandering and inquisitive fingers. Narcissa opened the door and found what she was searching for with a simple summoning charm. It was time…
Note2: In case anyone was wondering, I do actually dance ballroom myself, I haven't picked all this up just from too much Strictly Come Dancing… Also, bonus points to those who found the Moulin Rouge reference. (I swear I don't put these things in deliberately, they just happen as I'm writing!) Onwards!
