A/N Beta'd by the wonderful StoryWriter831. Everything belongs to JK Rowling.
...
I woke the next morning to the sound of a door clanging and the echo of footsteps approaching. My eyelids flickered reluctantly open, gritty with sleep. I was stiff, sore and terribly, terribly confused.
"Lucius?" It was the first word to escape my lips, then I sat up with a lurch as the events of the previous day came flooding back to me.
My deep warm bed had transformed to a cold metal slab. My elegant room was now a grey concrete-and-metal cage. The man opening my door was neither silver-eyed nor pale-haired. It was the same custody-officer from the night before.
"Good morning, meess," he said through the bars. He looked just as blasé as he had yesterday. "Are you well?"
"Yes," I replied shortly, for I was determined to cut to the chase. "Can I get my phone call now?"
"There is a visitor to you, meess."
I was caught completely off-guard. "A v-visitor?" I stammered. "From the British embassy?"
"No," he said, with a slight smile, "not from the Breet-teesh embassy."
I immediately started to shake, backing into the far corner. Had Lucius found me already? Had this all been for nothing? "I don't want to see anyone," I hissed. "I don't know anyone!"
But then—then I heard a voice, a female voice, ringing with worry and impatience. "Where is she? Where is my girl?"
I froze. My heart seemed to stop, and there was a strange buzzing in my head. Or was that the light-bulb above me?
The words filtered slowly through my brain like a liquid echo, but I couldn't quite grasp them, I couldn't quite make them out, although they were spoken in clear, perfect English. ...Where...is...my...girl...
"M-Mum?" My voice was high as a child's. And then I was half-running, half-stumbling over to the grated door, but my legs weren't working properly, and I ended up on my knees, clutching at the iron bars. "Mum? Mum?"
"Darling..." There was the sound of hurrying footsteps and a slender female figure emerged next to the custody-officer, then swiftly knelt down in front of me. "Darling, I'm here."
A strangled sound issued from my throat, part joyful gasp, part despairing sob. For I didn't recognise her.
My heart felt as if it were being rent in opposite directions by dizzying elation and wretched disappointment. I stared and stared at her through the bars like a caged animal, desperate to forge a connection to my memory, to force an illumination upon my past... But the spark didn't ignite, the nexus failed; all remained dark and closed.
Finally, I blinked. "Are you...my mum?" I whispered.
The lady smiled at me. Her soft-gloved hand reached through the bars and gently traced the line of my cheek. "Yes, darling," she said. Suddenly, nothing, nothing, nothing else mattered.
The custody-officer unhooked a large bunch of keys from his belt and noisily unlocked the door, gesturing to her, to my mum, that she could enter. Moments later I was in her arms, just shuddering and crying like a baby and she was rocking me and crooning sweet nothings in my ear.
"I c-can't remember a-anything," I stuttered between sobs. "I can't even...r-r-remember you."
"It's alright, darling," she said soothingly, stroking my hair from my brow, gently touching the bruise. "It's alright, you will. I promise you will."
"I love you," I blurted out abruptly, fiercely. I couldn't help it, I needed to say those words, to unstopper them from my overfull heart, to give them to someone who would not fling them back in my face. "I love you, mum! And...I'm just so...so s-sorry. I got l-lost...I'm sorry..."
She pressed me tighter to her. "Hush, now, darling," she murmured quietly against my wet temple. "I've found you. I'm taking you home. You're safe now."
Safe...I'm safe... The knowledge of it spiralled slowly through every part of me, warming and calming and unspeakably beautiful. ...I'm going home.
Finally there was a tap on my shoulder and the officer indicated that we should leave the cell. I wiped my swollen eyes and gulped down some steadying breaths of air. For the first time I noticed a numbness in my left forearm, and I wondered if I had slept on it awkwardly. I rubbed it through my sleeve, trying to coax the circulation back into it.
"Come, darling," my mum said softly, helping me to stand. "It's time to go." My legs were wobbling so much I had to lean on her to keep my balance.
Hand in hand, we walked behind the officer down the long hallway and back out to the questioning room, where I had spent the best part of two hours the night before, trying to explain my situation to a skeptical audience.
Everything seemed to happen in a surreal blur. There were forms to fill, more questions to answer, blue-uniformed people flurrying everywhere... It was as if time sped up all around me and I sat alone on pause, just nodding and uttering the occasional single-syllable word, unwilling to take my gaze away from her. I was afraid that if I did, she might somehow disappear.
I tried to etch her image into my brain. My mum. She looked like an angel to me. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown, her complexion was paler than mine. Her eyes were hazel, large and mild; and she was calm, so very calm, speaking to the officers, answering for both of us, squeezing my hand every so often as if to reassure me that this was real; really, truly real.
I was finally shaken out of my strange reverie when a small burgundy-coloured booklet was handed over the desk to me. I blinked, gasping with surprise. It was a British passport—surely, my passport. Mum must have brought it with her, I thought. Finally, finally I'm going to find out who I am...
Hands trembling, I slowly opened the cover and gazed down at the passport photo.
It was me alright.
But...but it was too much like me. The lost me. My too-pale skin, my too-wild eyes, my shadow-marked, drawn features. The same bewildered, frightened girl that had haunted the gilt-framed mirrors of the house I had so recently fled. I felt my whole body stiffen and there was a kind of dreadful coldness in the pit of my stomach. I dragged my eyes over to the small block-capitals spelling out my details, terrified of what I might read.
And there it was.
ALICE CARROLL
"No," I gasped. I couldn't seem to breathe properly. Cold, skeletal fingers of dread crept up the back of my neck. There was a high-pitched ringing in my head. "No. No. This is the wrong passport. You have given me the wrong—the wrong passport—" I turned to my mum, fraught with panic. "Tell them, mum! Tell them it's the wrong passport!"
Her brow furrowed with concern. "What do you mean, darling?"
"I am not Alice!" I cried vehemently, gesturing frantically at the passport. "I know I'm not Alice. Who am I? Please, please, who am I? Just say my name once—quickly, please!"
She shook her head, her eyes full of worry. "But you are Alice, darling," she said in her sweet, chiming voice. "You're my little Alice."
The high-pitched ringing was getting louder. My temples were pounding and my left arm was tingling, prickling. "I'm not Alice!" It was a piercing shriek, almost a scream. The bustling activity of the room suddenly ceased, as every head turned to me, every pair of eyes fixed upon me.
I lurched to my feet and my chair tumbled backwards with a dull thud. "I'M NOT ALICE!" Blindly I turned and staggered towards the door. I couldn't breathe, I needed—needed air—
There was a series of bright flashes behind me and a noise like lightning striking a tree. Screams, shouts, paper flying, splintered wood, thick black smoke all around—I reeled into a wall and my mum was suddenly there, next to me—but she wasn't my mum, how could she be?—she was Alice's mum, and I wasn't Alice—
She grabbed my arm tightly with her ungloved hand, and I screamed in agony as a sizzling burn shot up from my wrist to my elbow, as if I were being branded along it by a red-hot iron. The loose sleeve of my robe fell back and I stared in horror at the jagged letters appearing along my pale skin, one by one, spelling out in indelible scarlet: M—U—D—B—L—O—O—D—
As the last letter formed my eyes turned up to her face and I saw that her hazel irises were changing colour, darkening and enlarging, darker and darker, wider and wider, until there were no whites in her eyes, only horrible, gleaming blackness.
Just as my legs gave way, she made a jerking, turning movement and there was that sickening, squeezing sensation I had felt once before...
...Then I was on a freezing cold stone floor, panting and twitching and dizzy and sick. The passport was still clutched in my hand, open to the photo-page. A pretty, plump, blonde girl now stared back at me. The words were no longer in English, but, presumably, Romanian. 'YLENIA MIHAILESCU', it said. I threw it from me and began to crawl away, to nowhere, to anywhere.
A brutal blow to my ribs sent me sprawling onto one side. I thought I heard the crack of bone, although I could feel nothing but the unbearable burn in my arm.
She stood over me, an indescribable smile on her mouth. I couldn't tear my eyes from her face, for it was changing, it was literally changing, as if it were made from molten wax, not flesh. I felt myself retching and retching as her features bubbled and blurred, then refocused and coagulated...until finally, she stood there. The Woman. Resplendent in a ball-gown of glossy black feathers, just as beautiful as she had been on that night, when I had watched her dancing in the moonlight with Lucius.
Her voice was as dulcet as it was deadly. "Luci ought to be more careful with his playthings," she said.
...
Terror and pain coursed through my veins like a fast-acting poison, paralyzing my muscles. I screwed my eyes tightly shut. Please let this be a dream, I prayed. Please let this not be real. But I couldn't block out the horrific pain in my arm, or the annihilating realisation in my heart. I'm not going home. I don't know my name. She isn't my mum.
There was another sharp blow, this time to my stomach, driving the air from my body with a sickening thud.
"Mummy, I love you!" she mocked me in a high, childish exaggeration of my own voice.
My eyelids snapped open and I nearly choked with rage. I wanted to scream at her to shut up, but I had no breath to give the words voice.
"Don't leave me, Mummy!"
"You...monster," I managed to gasp out.
The Woman's eyes narrowed. "So speaks the little mud-blood abomination," she said. I could feel rather than see her pupils moving over me, indistinguishable from their black-saturated surrounds. Her expression was different to the one I had become so used to beholding on Lucius's countenance. It was deeper than disgust, more twisted than hatred. It was...malevolent. As if she would like nothing better than to watch me being flayed alive.
"Where is Lucius?" The question tumbled out of its own accord and I was aware that I fervently wished him near. That I would rather spent an eternity in his captivity than a minute more in the demonic presence of this...this fiend.
"Why?" she said tauntingly. "Do you think he will rescue you?" Then, more quietly: "As if he could give two sickles whether you live or die."
Icy, numbing despair swept over me. "He didn't send you to find me?"
The Woman's lip curled. "Do I look like I run errands, mudblood? Do you imagine me to be at any man's beck and call?"
"No," I whispered. My heart was drumming heavily. Lucius hadn't sent her. "Then you're...you're not his wife?" I said faintly. I wanted to move, to get up, but felt pinned like a butterfly to a board by her frightening stare.
She laughed, and once again I was reminded of silvery bells. "His wife..." she said the word scornfully. "His wife was a traitorous bitch who deserved every misery she brought upon herself. I only wish I had been present to witness her demise. I would have laughed in her lunatic face."
Immediately I thought of the wailing woman locked away on the third floor of the house I had so recently fled. Prisons within prisons, I thought. I remembered Lucius's silver eyes looking distantly through me as he murmured, "I have no wife...not anymore." ...What had he really meant by that?
"What do you want from me?"
The Woman's ghastly black eyes glittered with malice. "How sweet of you to ask," she murmured. For a moment she seemed to be giving the matter real consideration. "...Well, I should very much like to smash you like a vessel, mudblood, and grind my heel into your aggravating little face. How does that sound for starters?" She smiled at my fear-filled grimace, then added, "Luckily for you, however, your master simply hates it when other people break his toys."
I sat up with a lurch, my anger suddenly usurping my fear. "He's not my master," I exclaimed furiously, "And I am NOT his toy!"
CRACK!
White stars shot before my eyes as my head collided painfully with the hard floor. For a moment everything swarmed darkly around me. When I regained focus the woman was standing over me, the tip of her pointed boot stabbing into the soft flesh under my chin. "Do not dare raise your voice to me, you filthy little worm!" Both her arms were outstretched towards me, fingers splayed and slightly curled, like the talons of a bird-of-prey bearing down on its quarry. The black feathers of her dress only added to this disturbing impression. "You only live because I have decided that death is too good for you."
I felt a hot trickle on my upper lip and realised my nose was bleeding. "Why?" I croaked, my voice breaking on that one, pivotal, ever-futile word. "What is so terrible about me? What have I done to you? I don't know what I've done wrong. I don't even know who I am."
She pressed her boot harder into my neck, forcing my head back so I could barely breathe. I could taste the blood from my nose in the back of my throat. "That, mudblood, is half the fun."
Fun. Fun? What kind of evil psychopath are you? I was certain she could read that thought in my eyes, for her own glittered with maniacal pleasure before she removed her boot from my throat and turned to move away from me. The rush of air and blood in my windpipe caused me to nearly choke and when I wiped my face with my hand it came away smeared with bright scarlet.
Even in my fear and pain I could not but help notice the grace of her steps, her lovely curvaceous figure and the ringlets of waist-length hair, black and glossy as a raven's wing. With those horrible eyes no longer connected to mine The Woman was beautiful beyond measure...so beautiful she hardly seemed real.
Perhaps she wasn't real, perhaps she was some spectral figment of my own broken brain, along with all the other impossibilities: my suddenly altered surroundings, the letters branded into my arm, her grotesquely-morphing appearance...surely these could only be the things of dark dreams?
But the pain was all too real. And my blood was all too red.
"Get up, worm," The Woman said over her shoulder. "Such pitiful crawling offends my sensibilities." Wincing with pain, I obeyed her command, though I half-expected her to strike me down again. Cradling my still-searing arm, I hurriedly took in my new surroundings for the first time.
I was instantly reminded of the strange dream I had once, of waking up in the bowels of a castle. The walls were bare stone and arched over to form a ceiling, the floor was paved with great flags of unpolished stone. Black, wrought-iron lamps jutted irregularly, flaring with naked flames, providing the only source of light, for there were no windows. There was no way to gauge if I was above or below ground, although the cold, damp atmosphere certainly felt subterranean. The worst thing was the absence of a door. It was as if I had been walled alive in my own private nightmare.
"What is this p-place?" I stammered, unsure I wanted to know the answer.
The Woman turned back to me, locking me into another of her frightening stares. "This was once a special kind of kennel, shall we say. Quite fitting for the use to which I intend to put it."
A sickly, smothering claustrophobia was descending over me. She was going to keep me here? "Please," I said desperately, "let me speak to Lucius." I could hardly believe I was saying those words, but now he seemed like the last glimmer of light in a swiftly-enveloping darkness. "I have to see him."
Her ruby lips curved. "May a dog demand to see its master?"
"I'm not a—" I began heatedly, but she made a quick gesture with her fingers and my voice suddenly died in my throat. My lips were still moving, I could feel my vocal chords vibrating, but nothing came out. I clutched my throat, attempting to cry out, then to scream—but there was no sound, not even a whisper. Finally I gave up, panting with exertion, my throat aching and raw. I let my hands drop to my sides, bowed my head and waited.
"That's right, mudblood." She sounded pleased at my submission. "You will curb your brattish tongue or I will cut it from your mouth. I'm sure Lucius would appreciate such an improvement, wouldn't you agree?" She giggled, evidently much entertained by the prospect. "You would do well to adopt a respectful tone when addressing your betters." She made another gesture, and I felt my voice released from its unnatural aphasia. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," I croaked hoarsely. I hated the feeling of debasement as I yielded to her, but my survival instincts had gone into overdrive, warning me against bravado. Too well I remembered that devastating agony that I had already endured once at her hands—for now I was certain it had been her hands—and it was something I never wished to experience again...that I surely could not survive again.
For god's sake don't anger her, Alice! I cautioned myself desperately. Be careful, be docile....
"Tell me, little mudblood," the Woman said suddenly, in an insinuating tone, "what did you and Lucius get up to, all that time together?"
Almost blind-sided by the unexpected question, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. For a moment I was so confused that I simply couldn't form a reply. "Nothing," I said at last.
"Nothing? You never went to his bed?"
"No," I said. I couldn't help flinching at the memory of that night in his bedroom, of those frightening, bruising kisses... Trembling, I dropped my eyes to the floor, afraid that she could read every unbidden thought.
"But you wanted to, of course?"
"No!" I repeated fiercely.
"...Did you fall in love with him, mudblood?" Her voice was now caressing. Dangerous.
"Of course not!" I said, but my voice sounded strange, strangled. As if I did not quite believe my own words.
"Why not?"
I gulped. "What do you mean?"
She waved her hand impatiently. "All that time, all alone, with a handsome, powerful man... I should think it rather strange if you did not fall in love with him."
Perhaps because it brushed too near some complex, ever-distorting truth, I felt my hackles rising. "He was arrogant and cruel a-and I hated him," I spat angrily.
"You hated him?" Her eyes seemed to pour into me, extracting and scrutinizing my very thoughts.
To my dismay, I heard myself involuntarily amend, "I mean...he...he hated me."
"But of course he did," she said, sounding faintly amused. "But that would not preclude your falling in love with him, would it? Nor would it prevent him taking you to his bed. For some men—perhaps I may say most men—hatred is even more enkindling than love."
I did not know how to reply, and so I stood silently, tongue-tied, face burning.
"You know," she murmured softly, "there is something quite...beautiful about you, mudblood." She began to drift gracefully towards me and it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. My arm throbbed excruciatingly as she neared. "Really quite beautiful," she continued. "Oh, I don't mean your appearance—that is commonplace unto insipidity..." She was close enough to touch me now. My insides clenched and twisted with dread. "No..." she murmured, "...no...it isn't your face or figure...it is your fear. It is...irresistible. It...almost...shines..."
"I'm not afraid of you," I said through gritted teeth. It was so absurdly, obviously untrue that when I heard her silvery laugh I actually had the urge to join in.
"It is an amusing little creature," she said with a sigh, reverting to the infuriating third-person. "I can scarcely see how Luci could resist it."
"Perhaps I resisted him," I said combatively.
"Oh, no," she said, with a dismissive gesture. "If it had pleased him to have you, you could not have resisted."
"You don't know me!"
Again, that beautiful, horrible smile. "Wrong, mudblood," she replied. "I know much, much more about you than you do...don't I, little worm?"
I could feel my eyes prickling hotly at the truth of her words. It was unfair, so absolutely, overwhelmingly unfair. "You might know more about me," I countered determinedly, "but you don't know me."
I winced as she raised her hand. I held my breath as, slowly, with the very tip of her pointed nail, she traced a line over my lip and chin, I suppose following the smears of drying blood.
"Strange isn't it," she murmured quietly, almost dreamily, "the things we women do for the men we love. We bleed, we suffer, we lie...sometimes we even die." At the last word her black eyes flickered and glowed with amber veins, like surging flames. "We make of them our gods, and of ourselves their fools and slaves."
"I don't love him," I insisted urgently, although whether my conviction was for my own benefit, or hers, I could not quite tell.
But she seemed not to hear me. "And yet, how rarely they deserve our devotion," she continued. "How often they merit our contempt...even our wrath." Her hand moved from my face to lightly caress a strand of my tangled hair. "...You are so perfect..." she said, in the same, dreamy voice. "So hungry for affection, for love...so full of beautiful fear. You will break him very soon...oh, yes."
Though I had no idea what she meant, her words ran through me like a rapier. Hungry? I wasn't hungry for affection, I was starving. Wasting away. A sudden, gasping sob escaped me and I staggered away from her, unable to bear those black-saturated eyes, reading me, knowing me, any longer.
"Why are you doing this?" I could hear the despair of my cry echoing around the dank walls of the chamber.
"In time you will know the truth," the Woman replied serenely. "And it will destroy you."
The purity of her hatred branded me deeper than the letters searing my arm. "What have I ever done to you?"
"What have you done?" she snarled suddenly, turning on me with such ferocity that I reeled back in terror. With a flick of her wrist an invisible force sent me hurtling backwards through the air to collide with the stone wall behind me, where I crumpled to the ground in a broken heap. For some seconds there was only darkness and the thud of my heart.
...Then her icy-cold breath on my cheek and her voice whispering in my ear. "What have you done, mudblood? ...You dared to exist. And for that alone, little worm, you must be punished."
"I'm n-not a worm," I mumbled through the throbbing, swimming darkness. "I'm a p-person...with a brain and a...a heart and a n-name—" I stopped.
A name? What name?
She was laughing again. I could feel hot tears escaping my closed eyelids, sliding down my cheeks.
"But you have no name, have you?" she said mockingly. "You are still imaginary little Alice, a borrowed identity, a fictional account. Indeed, you are not a 'thing'. You are nothing."
I heard the rustle of her feathered dress as she moved away. There was a thunderous, frightening crack, like a gun-shot, and when I finally managed to haul myself up from the floor and blink blurring vision back into my eyes, I saw that she had simply...disappeared.