A/N Beta'd by the wonderful StoryWriter831. Everything belongs to JK Rowling.
...
I read the confirmation in his eyes.
My mind was awhirl with spinning, disjointed puzzle pieces. But some of them were snapping together, as if drawn into place by a powerful magnet.
"You know who I am, don't you?!" I gasped. "You've always known!" My voice was getting shriller. "You've been watching me d-drown in this—this blankness, this nothingness, and you've just sat back and—and enjoyed it, haven't you? Haven't you?!"
To my disbelief, Lucius actually smiled, a tight, cruel, exultant expression to match his eyes.
"You bloody bastard!" I cried out in anguished fury, and before I knew what I was doing I was leaping towards him, my hands curled into claws, intending to rake them down his loathsome, beautiful, insufferable face.
It didn't happen. In my blind rage I didn't see or even feel the hit, but none-the-less I was sent flying backwards a full several feet, colliding with the wall and dropping to the floor. I knelt there, winded, trying to catch my breath, as Lucius strode over, his face twisting with venomous ire.
He crouched down, his fingers clamping painfully about my upper arms. "Oh, I know who you are, Alice," he snarled, a furious incandescence lighting his eyes. "And if you knew who I was, you would have a care how you dared address me."
"I - don't care - who you are!" I cried out through panting gulps of breath. "You - can't stop me - from leaving!"
"Oh, can't I? We shall see about that." He hauled me up to my feet and shoved me against the wall.
I struggled wildly, but to no avail. His body was plastered the length of mine, and if his superior strength had not already precluded resistance, his sheer height and weight would have easily done so. I brought my hands up again for a second attempt at his face. With an angry grunt he caught my wrists and jerked them down to my sides, pinning them against the wall. I wriggled against him, trying to bring up one knee, but he quickly jabbed his own into my thighs, preventing me from reaching the intended target. "Try it," he growled warningly, "and I'll make your ears ring."
I was crying, almost hyperventilating, sucking in wet tendrils of my hair, crushed as much physically by the man as I was by his revelation that he knew my identity, had known it all along.
He pinned me there in place until the fight drained out of me and my violent sobs had subsided to trembling shudders. Despite his rough handling, I could not help welcoming the warmth, that forbidden warmth of his body, thawing out the chill that had sunk into my skin after my recent excursion into the frozen night. ...So much for the snow being warmer than him, Alice.
I could hear the strong thud of his heart, close to my ear. I'd often debated whether he had a heart. But perhaps it was a mechanical one, made with cogs and clockwork and steel valves and rivets...
"You can't s-stop me," I insisted again; ridiculously, given my present position, squashed between the wall and his solid frame. My voice was muffled by the velvet lapel of his coat. "You c-c-can't."
"Of course I can, Alice," he softly replied. The vibrating resonance of his voice was strangely comforting. "I can do whatever I want with you."
"What do you want with me?" I asked.
He did not answer. Just the deep thud-thud-thud of his heart resonating through me, so I could not even feel my own.
"Do you really know who I am?"
Still no reply.
"Who am I, Lucius?" I asked desperately, craning my neck to meet his eyes. "Why am I here? Please, just tell me my name! You - you owe me that, at least!"
His grip suddenly tightened, pulling my arms tautly behind me, causing me a sharp inbreath. "For what possible reason can you imagine I owe you anything, Alice?"
"I saved your life!"
"A fitting repayment for my saving yours. Thus far, do our obligations negate each other." He stooped over me, bringing his lips level to my ear. "...But you don't really expect me to be grateful to you, do you?" His breath was hot on my wet cheek. "When all that has ever mattered to me has gone from this world—do you actually think I care to prolong this...paltry existence, let alone be grateful for it?"
"I don't expect you to be grateful," I said, my voice cracking as more tears spilled down my face. "I...I just want to go home! And if you're really don't care about anything, then you won't care that I've gone."
Abruptly, he released my wrists, stepped fractionally back, and straightened to his full, imposing height. Looking haughtily down his nose at me, he coolly said, "I'm afraid you're not going anywhere, my dear."
He spoke with such antagonising certainty, the flame of my recent fury leapt back to burning life. "Are you going to lock me in a dungeon?" I asked, my hands balling into fists. "Because that's what you'll have to do, if you want me to stay!"
"There is no need for such measures," he replied. "Nor for these histrionics. You will stay of your own accord."
"If you think I'm scared of you—"
He made a sudden, slight movement with his shoulders, making me flinch. His eyebrow lifted fractionally, as if to say, Oh, yes, you are.
"All of this is beside the point, Alice. You will stay."
I glowered up at him. "What makes you so sure?"
"Because if you leave, you will never recover your memories."
My eyes widened with disbelief and horror as his words sank in. "I don't believe you!" I hissed. "You're bluffing!"
He shrugged. If this was his poker-face, he certainly looked as if held a Royal Flush. "Perhaps I am," he replied. One of his hands raised to cup my cheek. "But the question is, are you willing to take that risk?" His thumb gently wicked my tears. But I knew that tender look and gentle touch: from experience I knew that it only ever preceded some stinging word or cruel remark.
Well, not this time. I swivelled my head and bit his hand as hard as I could; he gave a brief grunt of surprised pain and slammed me bodily back by my shoulders, causing my head to knock against the wall so hard that I bit my tongue. A spurting metallic taste filled my mouth even as Lucius's fingers clamped about my jaw, and seconds later a stream of blood spilled down from my lips, onto his hand. Even at such close proximity I could see the bright scarlet vividly striping his strong, pale wrist.
I heard a sharp intake of breath and immediately, reflexively, Lucius pulled his hand away and wiped it down the front of my robe. His palm, hot and hard, seared through the sheer fabric of my robe and connected with the curve of my breast, brushing to instant tautness the sensitive tip. His gesture had been automatic, even accidental, and his hand jerked back as if scalded. As it did, one of his rings snagged on the fabric of my silk robe, and then the entire upper part fell open, leaving me naked to my waist.
For a moment we stood, locked together in a terrible parody of a passionate embrace. Then, with a kind of reluctant compulsion, his gaze dropped downwards, grazing my throat, skimming over my shoulders and clavicle, and at last falling to linger on my exposed breasts. I gulped, holding my breath, trying to curb my heaving, panting gasps...and I became aware of an unmistakable rigidity pressing into my abdomen.
Our eyes met, and I don't know what he read in mine, but his were plainly expressing shock, disbelief... With a hiss of discomposure, he quickly stepped back, releasing me. I fell in an ungainly heap at his feet.
He stood over me for some moments, staring down with a fierce, riveted look in his eyes, watching me attempt to pull my robe back into place and stem the flow of blood with my sleeve. Tears were running freely down my face and I knew I was a complete mess.
Then abruptly, he turned on his heels and strode out the door, slamming it behind him. I heard the echo of his booted footsteps hurrying away down the hall.
I sat there, trembling with shock and pain...and something else. ...His touch had electrified me, not in the brutality of his violence, but in the startling, unforeseen force of his sudden desire...and there was no denying my own response to him. A blaze of euphoria was coursing through me: my whole body thrummed and tingled with it.
And through the messy jumbled confusion of my mind, I kept thinking, he knows who I am.
And suddenly, unexpectedly, I was relieved.
Relieved that someone knew, anyone. Even him.
Now I just had to get him to let me in on the secret.
...
All night I lay awake, unable to sleep for the dizzying confusion in my head, the relentless thudding of my heart.
I couldn't quite believe what had happened and was, as usual, inclined to doubt everything—except for the all-too-real pain in my back ribs and the throbbing of my swollen, bitten tongue. I stared into the darkness, trying to somehow tether and subdue my wildly careering thoughts.
He knows who you are, Alice, I thought. Unless, of course, he is just toying with you. ...Just like everything else, I couldn't be sure.
Fervently I hoped that he did know. For some reason I felt that if he were to reveal the truth of my identity, my name, then my memory would come flooding back, everything would make stark, sudden sense, like a lightbulb switched suddenly on in the dark chamber of my brain...but then, what if he didn't tell me, or he didn't know? Would I be forced to remain in this infernal darkness forever?
He must know who you are, I decided. It was the only rational explanation as to why he would prevent me from leaving.
...Something I had kept well-suppressed inside me was forcing its way into my consciousness—that I had always known that he knew me. That from the very moment I first saw his shocked, incandescently angry eyes, there had really been no doubt about it.
Why had I been so determinedly blind? Was it simply a kind-of false device of self-preservation? That if he didn't know me, he couldn't really wish to hurt me?
Probably. Yes, in fact. From the very first, he had made me afraid of him—threatened me physically, insulted me verbally. Of course I had wanted to detach myself from personalising such hatred and contempt. I had wanted it to be his flaw, his fault. I hadn't wanted it to be about me.
Alright, Alice, then let's say he knows you. Now what?
What did he have in store for me? Why keep me here? Did he believe I owed him something? Technically, he had saved my life—but I had likewise saved his. By his own admission, our debts in that regard were nullified. Then perhaps I was here to serve a purpose? To solve a problem—settle a score? Perhaps he had plans for a ransom, perhaps he had been negotiating with my family and friends all this time... My family...maybe it was an old family feud. What had really happened?
So, you're a prisoner. His prisoner.
I tried to understand what that actually meant. How did a prisoner act? How was I supposed to act? Had he always treated me like a prisoner, and I, subconsciously, had always acted like one?—I supposed I had, in a way. I hadn't really had much choice in the matter. Did the fact it was openly acknowledged really change anything?
What was the etiquette? What was the accepted form of interaction between captor and captive? Hopefully he wouldn't get any worse. He was already unpleasant enough as it was, with his mocking jibes, his rules, his threats, his sporadic violence. The last thing I wanted was for 'consequences' to become 'punishments.'
I thought about the traditional forms of punishment for prisoners. Beatings, torture, starvation, rape...were such things what I now had to look forward to? Was that what had happened to the wailing lady? Was I going to end up locked in the same room as her, wailing my wrongs to the unheeding walls?
Or maybe he was planning to turn me into his slave, make me call him 'Master', crawl on my knees, kiss the hem of his robe... Well, that was never going to happen. His power over me—his physical advantage, as well as his compelling magnetism—did not, and never would, extend to my subjugation. He might be able to bully me and manipulate me, but he wasn't going to degrade me. That much I knew for certain.
Well, what's the worst he really can do to you, Alice? I wondered—but I didn't care to look too closely at the answer.
Escape. I had already tried and failed. But that didn't mean I couldn't try again. My hasty, fool-hardy attempt had been doomed to failure, I could see that clearly now. Perhaps I had wanted it to fail. Perhaps I had been merely trying to force some kind of crisis on my stagnant situation...and if so, it had worked. Albeit against me.
But now—now I knew that he knew who I was—I wasn't sure if I wanted to escape anymore.
If I ran, I could lose the answers I was so sure he had. That was what he had said, wasn't it? "If you leave, you will never recover your memories." Was I willing to pay such a price for my freedom?
But if I stayed...
...The danger lay in my frighteningly snowballing feelings for him. It was like his power had somehow wrapped its tendrils around me, at first silently entwining, and now rapidly pulling me into a place of complete, inextricable helplessness. I was falling for him.—Not falling in love—"love" wasn't the right word. Love couldn't be this—this fixation, this craving that I was experiencing, that I could no more understand than I could deny... This was more like...like hunger-pangs of an oncoming starvation...and he was the only form of sustenance available to me. Poisoned, but irresistible.
You're a fool, Alice.
I was clinging to him because he was all I had, he was the only thing that was real in this surreal, this unreal existence. The lighthouse in the dark. The beacon in the fog. Because if I didn't, perhaps I would never find my way out. And yet I knew I was in danger of being dazzled by that very same light. That I could wreck myself on the rocks surrounding him.
What is the greater risk? I wondered.
Stay, and risk being blinded by the light?
Escape, and risk forever belonging to the fog?
...
Thankfully, my fears of slavery and subjection proved unfounded. Things went on pretty much the same as before. We still sat together at meal-times. We still exchanged less-than-pleasant pleasantries.
Perhaps the most obvious difference was that Lucius stopped staring at me while I ate my food, instead perusing various letters, or gazing out of the window. I suppose I ought to have viewed it as a victory, but it was rather a hollow one, for in some ways his undivided attention was all I had as a buffer between myself and complete, annihilating loneliness. When his eyes did happen to accidentally meet mine, their expression never varied from the most arctic disdain.
He was more frequently absent than before, often gone during the day, occasionally in the evening. Sitting at that huge table by myself was... unnerving. His presence, however antagonizing, had always provided me with something to distract myself from the enormity of my missing memory. Without it, that black chasm loomed large, threatening to swallow me whole.
Blankness and loneliness, two circling vultures, waiting to consume whatever scraps of me remained.
Even worse, my courage was slowly but surely failing me.
I couldn't bring myself to form the questions I so desperately wanted to ask. I couldn't bring myself to demand the answers I was so sure he had. Words stuck in my throat, dry lumps I could neither spit out nor swallow away, gradually constricting my vocal chords so I could hardly speak for congestion...
I hated this new reticence and could hardly understand it. It wasn't fear of his anger, for his sporadic fits of violence no longer held much terror for me, beyond a certain apprehension of pain. But I could cope with pain.
No, it was something quite different to physical fear which held me back...it was his hatred. I didn't want him to detest me any more. Seeing his eyes glint with that unfathomable expression of loathing made me almost ill with anxiety. And I knew that to broach the subject of...me...would be to throw petrol onto that ever-burning flame of his hatred, when all I wanted to do was to stamp it out, extinguish it altogether.
And so I persuaded myself that I ought to wait. That it was the sensible, rational thing to do. I told myself that first I had to break through the granite armour of his antipathy, and then—only then, would it be safe to pursue the secrets of my past. Our past.
So, we went on much as we had before, but now it was with my complicity.
Until one night, when everything changed.