Fall into Darkness

Chapter 12: Awakening

Time to write.

After going up to her room to fetch her diary and writing supplies, she made her way to the garden. The garden was spacious and calming. The hedge maze wasn't much of a maze, but after getting through it, she took a seat near the delivery entrance to the lodge, which was a barred door near some pergola's put down near the koi ponds. It was there where she got comfortable watching the fish for a moment before opening her diary and continuing the story where she left it yesterday. More of the story of Bellatrix Black, her sisters, her mad crusade for pure-blood wizardry. Her magic powers. Her vicious anger. Her loving girlfriend. Her road to redemption.

It all seemed very… ridiculous the more she thought about it.

And yet… the memories of growing up with her sisters. Three relatively normal girls. Was that a fantasy too? Was that wish-fulfillment? She clearly remembered sneaking out of the mansion to go to Manchester to gather kebab rolls which she and her sisters would eat in secret. Supposedly she had never even been to Manchester, or England for that matter.

And then there was that girl. A brown-haired, brown-eyed girl whose gentle face stubbornly invaded her mind whenever she closed her eyes. Hermione. Someone she desperately wanted to be real. If it was was all a fantasy…

Write. Write the story. Make it physical and then separate yourself from it. That was the therapy. She'd get to Hermione's part of her fantastical story eventually.

She was mid-sentence when she heard a bark coming from the gate. Looking up, she spotted a dog sat on the other side of the gate. What was a dog doing so far out here? Now curious, she closed the diary and put it down on the bench. She approached the gate and found a golden retriever sat panting, obviously happy to see her. At his feet, and partially covered with dog slobber, was a camo-printed backpack.

"What the…" muttered Trixie when she pulled it through the bars. It seemed so… familiar. When she opened it, she found it only contained a map of a region.

The dog barked and pushed his snout through the bars. Trixie lay her cheek against his soft fur and found herself the recipiant of enthusiastic licking.

One word, one name burned as bright as a candle in the night.

"Max," whispered Trixie.

Something flew by her head and hit the dog in the side. The dog yelped and whined, scared by the sudden attack and ran off. A rock lay where the dog had once stood.

Trixie snapped her head to the direction it had been thrown and found Odin standing in the garden, his hand still outstretched. An anger like she had never felt before burned deep within her as she glowered. "Why… did… you… do… that?!" she hissed, her tone low and dangerous. In that moment, Trixtie wanted to kill this man for harming Max.

"I just saved his life!" Odin replied, his one eye glaring intensely at her, challenging her. That was not the response Trixie was expecting. "Nurse Birch is watching your every move and when he sees that dog, he will shoot him!"

Trixie blinked. "Shoot… Max?"

"Tor's keeping him occupied for the moment, but we don't have much time, kid," said Odin as he strode towards her. He immediately grabbed her by the shoulders, startling her, looking deeply in her eyes. "Your pupils are as wide as saucers. You're doped up somethin' fierce, and not with the good kind of dope! Hartman's doing to you what he's doing to the others."

"What do you mean?" Trixie demanded.

Odin chuckled. "You don't strike me as a woman who goes around bringing cheesecake to strangers," he chuckled. "Feeling docile? Complient? As if you're not all there? If your brain's not even in your skull? It's the stuff he feeds you. Don't trust Hartman. Not a word."

Trixie grit her teeth, shaking her head in defiance. "He is trying to keep me from sinking back into the fantasy!"

Odin said nothing. Instead, he unfolded his hand and shot small arching jets of lighting from the tips of his fingers, running it across her arm to let her feel it was real.

"Ow, hey!" Trixie hissed.

"That is magic. You can do it too. We all can," said Odin. "Hartman's pills are suppressing it. Think kid, think! You've supposedly been here for five years, but nobody really knows you. You've left no mark on the lodge. Your room is almost empty. He says you've been here for five years, yet me and Tor saw you arrive from the ferry and walk right into the diner. Fans of us, you are. A loyal fan of the Old Gods of Asgard. Said you are your sisters loved our music."

Trixie gasped. That was… that was the fantasy! How… how could these two men know this if it had been all in her head like Hartman said?

Odin grabbed her by the shoulders and started to sing a tune with his gravely voice. "You put the lime in the coconut. You drank them both up. You put the lime in the coconut. You drank them both up, put the lime in the coconut, you drank them both up. Remember? That was the song you I asked you to put on from the jukebox."

Trixie grit her teeth, her eyes narrowing. "How… how would know that if all that happened in my head?"

"Exactly! Need more?" he grinned and put something in her hand. When she examined it, she found it was a silver locket in the shape of a jackdaw skull with a black string. It looked very well crafted and very old. And… quite familiar. "That belongs to you," Odin said. "Look in the storage locker of the conference room in the staff area when you get the chance. You'll find the rest of your belongings there, kid."

Trixie grasped her hands. It was hard to think. Memories started to fade into each other. Trixie White. Bellatrix Black. Who was she? Who was real? Who was fake?

Odin rubbed his beard. "Haven't seen the gardener in a while. I wonder what happened to ole Ben," he said, looking intently at her.

"Old… Ben?" Trixie blinked. "Ben… Mott?"

Flashes of memory. A knife. A scream. A man in pain. Anger. He had Hermione. Then he had not. He pleaded for his life. Bellatrix was going to take it regardless. Darkness. The lake. She felt her own despair, her own fear for a girl she loved more than her own life.

"Ah, that stuck in your noggin," smiled Odin. "Look, kid, my bother and I aren't as demented as we pretend to be. We too fought this evil, in the past. Like Tommy did before us. Like you are now. But it's not our fight anymore. It's yours, and so are the stakes."

Trixie swallowed hard. "What is it? The darkness?"

Odin's expression turned grim. "I don't know, I don't think any of us can know. But we do know this. It can't move. Not on its own. It needs people like us, creative people, to make everything real for it. Remember that, Trixie. It can't do anything on its own," said Odin. "But it will damn well do its utmost to make you do what it wants you to do."

Odin closed his single eye and sighed. "There were four of us once. It took Balder. It broke Loki. And now only me and Tor remain. It took something from you too. It's what it does. It makes everything twisted and wrong. It wants you to open the door. We tried to close it and it cost us everything. But we left it open on a crack. It made you throw it wide open again by stealing your girl. I wasn't talking out of my ass, kid. You need to go to our farm."

Trixie nodded as he reached into her pocket to take out the bottle of pills Hartman had given her. "If nurse Birch is watching me…"

"If you let Hartman take your soul away with his pills and his preaching, you'll end up like Wendy before the year is out," said Odin. "She was proud and fierce and defiant. Now there's nothing left. That will be your fate too if you let Hartman have his way. But I know just the thing."

Odin produced an identical bottle of pills for her to take, filled to the brim with white pills. "Coffee sweetener tablets from the diner. Virtually identical to Hartman's poison. How do you think me and Tor manage to escape all the time? Hartman has still to figure it out. Drives him nuts! Still, you got a choice to make now, kid. Stay here and fall into this safe complient hell or raise your axe to the heavens and be the drengr you were born to be!"

Trixie held both bottles of pills in her hand. What was real? Who was real? Hard to think. Her head was starting to hurt. She needed the pills. Or did she? Hermione. Max. Nymphadora. Her head started to hurt. She could forget. She could stay here and just be Trixie. She could fly off into fancy again, a dangerous world full of shadow-people and a girl waiting to be rescued.

Hermione.

Hermione meant everything to her.

But was she even real?

What to do? What choice to make?

A bottle was thrown into the koi-pond where it swiftly sank to the bottle and another bottle raised in front of her face. The bottle of coffee sweeteners.

"Good kid," said Odin as he clapped her on the shoulder. "And don't worry. They're sugar free."

Trixie closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. "You said takes crazy to know crazy? Well, maybe it takes evil to fight evil."

"Whatever floats your boat, kid," said Odin, looking over his shoulder. "Tor's not going to keep Birch off our backs forever. The rest is up to you."

That left Trixie sat at the garden alone, trying to make sense of what had just happened. When coincidences piled up, were they still coincidences? What was real? Who was real? Had she made the right choice by throwing the pills away. Was there a real Hermione? Was she a fiction born from her own lonely mind? Was she sinking into the fantasy again? Was it even a fantasy?

It was hard to think. Her head was pounding, as if her brain was trying to escape from her skull. Perhaps… perhaps she needed to lie down for a tad. Not to mention, she needed to hide the backpack the dog Max had brought her. Heeding the warning Odin had given her, she headed back into the lodge as quickly as she could. By the time she got to the second floor, she was breaking out in hives of sweat and her vision started to cloud a little. She stood in the doorframe to the patients wing to steady herself, when one of the small tv's mounted to the wall near a set of sofas sprang to life like others had been before when she'd been out of it.

The voice of her. No, the voice of Bellatrix Black, spewed forth while Trixie was close to fainting. "Something's wrong," said the voice of Bellatrix Black. "It's hard to think. There's a shadow inside my head. I can only focus on writing. Everything else is a blur. I'm trapped in here, have been for days, but it's always dark outside. Hermione is here, but... she's not Hermione. I don't know why. Covered in clinging shadows. I think... I think I'm making a horrible mistake."

"You and me both," muttered Trixie as she staggered towards her room. The first thing she did was toss the backpack under the bed and out of sight before rolling onto the bed and trying to breathe as calmly as she could. Whatever chemical Hartman had been putting into her body had started to run its course and her body craved more of it.

When she opened her eyes, nurse Birch stood at the edge of her room. The burly man regarded her with disdain for a moment. "Ah, so here's where you ran off to," he muttered.

So he had been charged with watching her.

"Take two of those pills the doc gave you," he stated with an implied sense of urgency. "You'll feel better. Doc wants you to write. So you write. Got it?"

Trixie opened the bottle and took two coffee sweeteners, following by a drink of water from a glass she held with shaky hands. Of course, those fake pills wouldn't do a damn thing to stop the withdrawal symptoms, but she managed to force a smile and made a move to pull the leather bound book from her desk, prop herself up and put the quill to the paper. It was hard to focus on the paper and it was was even harder to write. But for her own sake and with her newfound audience standing at the door, she had to soldier on and make the best of it.

At some point, sleep claimed her weary and addled mind.

Hermione breathed heavily, moving her hips effortlessly to match every thrust from Bellatrix' fingers deep inside of her. Quickening breath, she was fighting it but she was so close now. A losing battle in which Bellatrix pressed the attack.

Their lips met for an ever deepening kiss. Hermione moaned into her mouth... and lost it. A shudder went through her and her leg kicked out, hitting the nightstand and sending it sideways across the loft. Bellatrix held her as she fell and the two of them collapsed onto the mattrass. With Hermione panting on top of her, Bellatrix allowed herself a self-satisfied smirk. Hermione wasn't down for the count yet. Her girl could be… quite aggressive. Hermione nipped at the nape of her neck, her collarbone. Bellatrix let out a long, drawn out sigh when her tongue flicker around her nipple, followed by another trail of kisses. A smile crossed eager lips when Bellatrix was at the mercy of a severe tongue-lashing while soft brown hair tickling her thighs. She endured Hermione's wrath. Delicious, intense and incredible wrath.

Two witches lay panting on the bed, the duvet long lost over the side during their struggle. With persperation evaporating in the cold air, they basked in the light of afterglow.

They'd been living like this for months. Their secret. Their guarded treasure. Every single weekend of furlough, they lived as passionate lovers. Every weekday at the prison, they continued their 'friendship' in secret without anyone being the wiser. Though they did often manage to sneak a cheeky kiss in whenever they were alone and sure of themselves.

A small choked sob from the silence of the night. Turning her head, Bellatrix could see tears in Hermione's eyes as she lay cuddled up against her.

"Hm?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"This," Hermione sniffed. "All of this. What have we done, Belle?"

Bellatrix snorted. "Shagging. Isn't this rather obvious?"

"You know what I mean!" Hermione retorted. "This... this never should have happened! This is breach of ethics. This... this..."

Unbelievable. "Bit late for that, isn't it?!" Bellatrix challenged harshly. "We've been shagging for months!"

"I know! And it's been eating away at me!" Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.

Bellatrix let out a snarl, grabbed the sides of Hermione's head and forced her to look her in the eyes. "It's not just about what YOU want anymore. We're beyond that now!"

Hermione's eyes darted around the room to avoid her intense glare. She let out nothing except another sob.

"Rules and being goody-goody," Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "Some things never change."

"You don't understand!" Hermione exclaimed. "Do you realize what will happen if they find out. They'll... they'll probably just fire me, but... they'll assign someone else to you. The progression we've made will all be brought into question. All our years of hard work will be undone. All you have achieved will have been for nothing. They'll stick you back in prison and leave you there forever! And all because I couldn't keep my legs together! I couldn't keep it professional. You will be the one that suffers for my failure!"

Bellatrix' expression softened. Again, her glorious girl was more concerned about others than her own wants. But she'd have none of it today.

"You wanted this as badly as I did. And you still want it. Don't lie to me," Bellatrix smirked. "We're in bed together, naked and fresh off a shag."

Hermione threw herself to her side, facing away from her. Bellatrix sighed and let her fingers slide over the soft skin of her arm. She buried her face in her soft brown hair and kissed the side of her neck. "Dry your tears. If it happens, it happens. But I don't want to trade this for anything in the world. Risks are worth it, if the reward is grand enough."

"Belle..."

Bellatrix flipped Hermione onto her stomach. "They won't find out," she said, leading a trail of kisses down the length of her spine. "Scores of aurors couldn't take me down. I was the scourge of the wizarding world for over a decade. I have killed. I have destroyed. I have decimated."

Hermione was on the receiving end of a soft bite on her bum. A startled giggle sounded. "And yet I am undone by a mudblood girl. Because she is glorious. Hermione Granger is deserving of a lover like no other. And no other lover will as devoted and dedicated to her as Bellatrix Black will be. So hush. Enjoy the moment and stop worrying about tomorrow. Tonight I will make you see stars."

Hermione giggled briefly again, despite her tears. "Who exactly is the therapist here?" Hermione muttered into her pillow. "I honestly don't know anymore."

A light brightened up the room. Both Bellatrix and Hermione looked up to see the contours of… a man? No. A helmet. A suit. A man in a suit with a helmet?

"Darkness won't come for you in this dream," spoke a man's voice. "She is your light in your darkness. I will shield you in this dream. But beware, the darkness will make its move sooner than you wish."

Hermione stared into the bright light just as it started to fade again. "W-who is that? What…"

"Ssshhh..." Bellatrix put a finger to her lips. "It's not important."

She lay Hermione down on her back and kissed her lips. Bellatrix felt her soft hands on her back, in her hair. Such bliss.

"I love you," Hermione whispered to her.

Bellatrix grinned and ran a hand through her girls' soft brown hair. "Of course you do."

They made love until the warming light of the sun poured through the bedroom window.

Trixie started awake. A loud bolt of lightning had disturbed the darkness of the room. It was night. Wind was howling across the side of the lodge while rain slashed upon the window panes and the slanted roof above. She turned her head and could barely see out the window. It was pissing out there.

But then things go a lot more clear. Her head was no longer pounding. It was no longer hard to think. It was no longer difficult to tell fantasy from reality. Reality had become altogether clear now. Fingers dug into the mattress she lay upon, tearing into the fabric. Power surged through her, jets of magic arcing off her skin and through her fingertips.

Bellatrix Black was back in business.

And she was beyond enraged.