[Summary] - Bellatrix/Voldemort [Space!AU] He was the first one to really see her – to understand her. Everyone else, they called her and her kind a planet. And she knows that he will come back for her.

A/N – This is written for Round 11 of QL with the lyric prompt 'When sooner or later it's over' – Iris by The GooGoo Dolls; I didn't include it in the narrative, but it was the inspiration for this. I also had the optional prompts:

[picture]

[word] determined

This is a Space!AU with the implied one-sided pairing of Bellatrix/Voldemort.

I'm not sure how much sense this makes; I came up with a lot of backstory for this universe, and used very little of it here. I probably shouldn't try writing something so complicated when I'm so tired.

He was the first one to really see her – to understand her. Everyone else, they called her and her kind a planet. A planet made of living metal the kinds of which they had never seen before.

They called them Toujours Pur and named it their ever expanding home. But he was different.

He heard her call one night and he listened. He let her into his mind – reluctantly, at first – and she showed him her world.

She showed him the consciousness inside the twisting metal tubes that grew like plants; how they were not one giant planet, but several hundreds of creatures all connected, twined together, using each other to sustain life.

She took him with her, helping his mind to navigate the twisting currents; showing him the different life forces that his kind had dubbed a planet, each clearly unique and yet without any verbal distinction.

They were creatures of concepts, and this was how they had lived for millennia.

"You are concepts?" He always insisted on speaking aloud, even when their minds were connected; even though he knew she couldn't.

Yes.

"Then why are you female?"

I am not. We have no need of gender.

"And yet you always refer to yourself with female pronouns."

That is how you have always referred to me. I had thought it would make you more comfortable; a link from my species to yours. Would you prefer I stopped? Confusion was not something she had experienced before; her kind had no reason for it.

"Do as you please."

"Are you bound here?"

What?

"Are you bound here? To the other life forces? Or can you leave?"

It has never been attempted before.

"That's not what I asked."

Why would I need to do such a thing?

"Because you are useless to me here."

I will try.

She pulled; tearing, ripping, shredding. The pain was excruciating, for her and all of her kind. It burned through their link like fire and, when she was finally free, it left a gaping wound in their side.

Metal tendrils reached out towards her, trying to latch on; thoughts extending the vines further in an attempt to repair them. To bring her back.

Her mind was lost, trying to expand to fill the void that had been left behind, but she clung to the shattered shards seeking some way to ground herself without reconnecting to them.

And then she found him.

Being linked with a human was... different. She found herself receiving a lot of emotional backlash; he couldn't control his thoughts as easily as she was used to and he did not appreciate her constant presence in his mind.

But he needed her, so he allowed it.

She reformed herself into something that could keep him alive; reconnecting severed nerve endings, expanding, stretching her conscious up and around. She had a floor now, and ceilings, made of metal that pulsed with constant movement.

She could see herself in his mind; blackened where she had originally been attached to her kind, stretched so thin in places that the light of her conscious could be seen through the blue-silver of her metal casing, but it had worked.

They were both still alive.

They travel that way for years, just them, before he decides that things must change. She argues fiercely, but in the end he gets his way, as they both knew he would.

They build up their forces over the years, and she must continuously expand herself to accommodate them; most of her metal is transparent now, already thin to begin with, and she's not sure how much more of this she can take, but she will always do as he asks.

They call themselves her crew, and she their ship. He is the only one that treats her as she is; as something alive.

He uses her in the same way he uses everyone else, but she hopes that she is special to him like he is special to her.

They cross paths with a ship unlike any they've ever seen before. It's badly formed, and a lot smaller than the amount of life forces detected upon it would suggest. It seems to be mostly made out of scrap metal, but underneath the rust and grime there is the blue-silver of her kind.

She hates this ship that's been patched together so badly it's a mockery of what it must once have been.

She hates it, because now there is no need for her. He can find another of her kind willing to shun all they have known; another who is less damaged from the years of space travel and who could carry the numbers that he had originally envisioned.

The first ship had passed them by without initiating any form of contact, and he had not wanted to destroy something so pure. She could feel her conscious attempting to withdraw into itself at the very thought.

But this next ship, even more damaged than the first but a lot larger, had stopped right in front of them and the ship called out to her. She recognised the strand of consciousness reaching out towards her, but only barely; it had changed to such a human way of thinking, and she knew they had to destroy this abomination.

But he stopped her.

She separated a small part of herself off, creating something so disfigured that it was a miracle it managed to hold itself together. The pain of creating it was like ripping herself from her home once again, but she had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

She allowed his consciousness to slip into it, having to help his mind traverse the paths between herself and this thing she had created.

The pain worsened as she watched him leave in it, her mind barely holding itself together without him there to ground her.

She is left to rot on the prison planet Azkaban, unable to keep herself up amongst the stars. Most of her crew is killed in the landing, the rest a slowly picked off by the native species of the planet leaving useless shells of themselves behind; empty vessels that would be better off dead.

She cannot bring herself to care for them.

It is several years before she realises that the other ship is there with her. She had aimed everything she had at it, but it's patched together surface must have been stronger than it appeared.

She cannot feel sympathy for this creature – she cannot even feel sorry for herself – because they are no worse off than they were before he came.

And she knows that he will come back for her.