A/N Congratulations, dear followers and friends...we have made it to Part II! Let me mentally shake your hand and say how nice it has been to have had you along for the journey. I want to thank every reviewer whose feedback I've been honoured with. Your encouragement and support is incredibly important to me, and I cherish every single review. Special thanks to my lovely beta StoryWriter831, without whom I could not tell this story.
I hope you enjoy the next stage of the journey :)
xox artful scribbler
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PART TWO
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Everything was the same. Everything was different.
I awoke in my bed with no recollection of getting there.
The last thing I remembered was the feeling of strong arms gathering me in a tight embrace, and Lucius's face close to mine, murmuring something to me in slow-motion, but I couldn't make out his words, I couldn't move, and there was a swarming darkness I could fend off no longer...
I left that nightmarish world, begging and abased: a shivered husk, a fractured doll.
I awoke a changed woman.
I—I was the same, yet different. Both lost and found. I had gone through fire, been twisted and warped and stripped to my core, but what was left was something true. In order not to break, I had been forced to bow. But to him whom I bowed, I owed my life. He had saved me.
I could face him, now, without fear. If he mocked me, or tried to hurt me, it didn't matter. I was protected by the knowledge that he didn't hate me. Not truly. He had not triumphed in my degradation, or revelled in the shattering of my pride. He had gathered the pieces, bound them in his mercy, and borne them away to safety. Do what he would, he could no longer make me believe that he didn't care.
It was morning. A new day.
With a struggle I sat up, my limbs trembling with feebleness, but not with fear. The terror of yesterday's events held no more power over me, I felt only relief. Because everything was the same, and yet everything—everything—had changed...
I gazed around me.
My room was as if I'd never left it. The windowpane had been replaced, and all was as grand, opulent and familiar as before...and yet the light had changed. The pale glare was now softer, warmer, for the snow outside was gone. And floating through the thick walls was a sound which had never penetrated them before: a bird's song, heralding the spring.
Ignoring the protests of my aching body, I left my bed, and, as I had so many times before, I limped over to my old foe, the gilt-framed mirror. It told me a similarly dual narrative.
My face was marked with scratches and bruises, but the skin was clean as if, at some point, it had been carefully washed of blood and dirt. Dark contusions ringed my throat and blossomed in clusters over my stomach, ribs and back, but I was relieved to discover the letters welting my arm had faded to faint scratches.
I remembered that very first morning, so long ago, when I had stood in this same spot and wondered what had happened to the girl staring back at me. I realised I was thinner now, my skin paler, my hair darker. I combed my fingers through my tangled curls, brushing it forwards to cover the unsightly patch sheared off on one side.
The bright hope I had encountered in my eyes at the truck-stop bathroom was quite extinguished now...and yet, it had been replaced by something else, something that back-lit my irises so they seemed to shine with a tawny glow. There was a subtle rosiness tinting my usually-too-pallid cheeks and lips...despite the battered surface, I looked strangely radiant.
...I turned away from the mirror, afraid lest that oracle reveal too much to me.
Entering the bathroom, I saw that the robe-stand was empty. Before, I would have met this omission with anger and panic, but not today. I moved back into the bedroom and approached the towering wardrobe, slowly drawing open one of its double doors.
My breath caught.
Just as I had somehow known it would be, the wardrobe was now fully furnished with clothes...beautiful clothes, in that distinctively historical fashion that seemed synonymous with the house and its master. For, if Lucius always dressed like some Renaissance prince, these clothes seemed fit for a princess. Voluminous skirts, delicate blouses, diaphanous dresses...the styles spanned hundreds of years of fashion, abruptly curtailing at some point in the late nineteenth century. High-waisted Regency, full-skirted Victorian, even the wide-sleeved flowing lines of the medieval age, all represented in rich, shimmering fabrics, all exquisite to a fault. Besides these gorgeous creations, there were also several plain tunic-style dresses, in pretty pale colours.
An unfamiliar but pleasant scent seeped out into the air, not of expensive perfume, as one might expect from such a collection, but something more earthy and organic. It reminded me of sweet herbs. I reached out and caressed one of the garments, wondering to whom it had once belonged. His wife? The wailing woman? The thought was disconcerting, and made me shiver.
I pulled open the second door. This side contained a row of robes—not flimsy silk bathrobes, nor heavy homespun wool ones, but made from plusher, softer materials, all satin-lined and fur-trimmed, all obviously expensive.
At the bottom of the wardrobe, peeping out from beneath all of these lovely garments, were countless pairs of delicately-embroidered and beaded slippers. They did not look at all practical, but they would certainly be preferable to padding around in my bare feet as I had done for so many months.
So, Alice, I thought, he's finally decided to treat you like a human being...does that mean he will start to act like one?
I selected one of the tunics and a forest-green robe, as well as the plainest of the pairs of slippers. The lovely dresses I left undisturbed. It was enough that they had been offered.
In a strangely pacific state of mind, I bathed and dressed. The tunic was beautifully soft, and the rich twill of the robe clung comfortingly to my body like a blanket. I changed the parting of my wet hair to conceal the shorn patch, then braided it tightly to keep it in place.
As I moved over to the door, I had the oddest feeling that I had gone back in time...that I was somehow starting over with a blank slate.
Everything was the same. Yet everything was different.
...
The front door stood invitingly open, beckoning me outside.
For a moment I paused at the top of the stone steps and looked about me. How changed the house now appeared, no longer cloaked in snowy severity! Only days ago, it had seemed a forbidding prison. Now, with the morning sun spilling down its ancient facade, it had a charming and tranquil aspect. Even the climbing roses, which had so cruelly ripped through my bare skin, were now flowering with small, pretty white buds. It seemed incredible that it should change so much in such a short time...or perhaps I was looking at it differently, through newly-enchanted eyes.
As I descended, I noticed a small cobbled path leading around to the side of the house, and this I instinctively followed. I passed beneath an arched frame, thickly overgrown with foliage, which lead me through to a wilderness of shrubs and trees. Moments later the the greenery parted to reveal a wide expanse of manicured lawn.
To one side of the lawn was a paved terrace, and upon this a marble table stood, flanked by long benches. A silver tea-service in its centre gleamed brightly in the morning sun.
Also gleaming brightly was the sheet of snow-blond hair belonging to the man seated there.
Lucius was dressed in crisp morning-grey, the lines of his long body relaxed but elegantly composed. He seemed to have been waiting for me: he beckoned me with the slightest movement of his left hand. A wisp of smoke spiralled from his right hand, and I realised he was holding a slim cigar. I had never seen him smoking before.
As I approached him, my heartbeat quickened, but it wasn't with anxiety or apprehension. Why should I be afraid? My life was safe in his hands. My pride, I had already forfeited to him. I had little enough else left to sacrifice.
I expected to feel a pang of humiliation, remembering that, only hours ago, I had grovelled, naked, at his feet. But strangely, I did not feel humiliated. As our eyes connected, I was aware of only a sense of serenity and elation, and...I hardly knew what else.
"Welcome back, Alice," Lucius murmured when I neared. His gaze brushed over me, taking in at a glance my choice of garment without comment. "Come, be seated."
He made no directive gestures as to where I should sit, so I stationed myself opposite him. I wanted, I needed, to see his eyes. I had to find an answer to the question I had read in my own eyes, in the gilt-framed glass. As yet, their slate-silver depths were unreadable...but not cold, like before. Not hard.
At that moment, with the sharp angles of his face softened in the morning light, and a gentle zephyr coiling his silken hair, Lucius had never seemed more beautiful to me. I felt it physically, almost like a pain. He's different too, I thought. This change has touched everything, even him. Especially him.
When I had settled in my place, he gestured to the silver service. "Will you have some tea?"
"Yes please," I said rather hastily, for I was aware this was the first time he was deigning to join me in the so-pleasantly-ordinary ritual of taking tea.
Unhurriedly, he set his cigar to one side and poured out two cups. His hand was firm as he handed one cup to me—mine was less steady in receiving it.
I heaped in several lumps of sugar and an overload of cream, and, happening to glance up, I encountered an expression on Lucius's face, something very unlike the sneering derision I was used to. Flushing, I dropped my teaspoon, and it fell onto the paving with a small clatter.
Once, Lucius would have mocked my clumsiness, but today he merely proffered another teaspoon without comment.
For a while there was no sound but the skittering of leaves on stone, and the pleasant chime of silver on china.
Eventually Lucius softly spoke. "You left so abruptly, I was not able to bid you farewell." There was a note of irony in his voice.
"I didn't want to create a scene," I replied, trying, not very successfully, to match his tone.
"...And yet it was quite a scene I extracted you from, two nights since."
Two nights? Had I been unconscious that long? A sudden shudder ran over my body, and my eyes dropped to my teacup. I nodded. "Yes," I said.
There was another silence, and I sensed him resume smoking his cigar. At length he spoke, this time more seriously. "Why did you run away, Alice?"
My eyes snapped back up to his. "You know why," I said.
"It was not wise."
A resentful smile curled my mouth. "Perhaps in my real life I am not a wise person. I wouldn't know."
Ignoring my sarcasm, he tapped the ash from his cigar and briefly replied, "Perhaps."
"You would have done the same, in my position," I said challengingly, wanting him to concede something to me.
At this he looked amused. "I? I should never have waited so long," he said.
His reply stung me. He made it sound as if escaping him should have been the simplest thing in the world for me to accomplish. "No...I guess not. I suppose it would have been an easy thing for—for someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
"Yes," I continued, attempting to counteract the sting with a venom of my own, "someone so calculating a-and cold, so...so wholly without feelings."
His eyes narrowed. "Wholly without feelings, am I?" he said, his silvery irises glinting.
I knew I had strayed into dangerous territory, but could not find a way to retreat. Instead, I took refuge in taking a gulp of tea.
"...Well, my dear," he said, and there was now a perceptible edge to his smooth voice, "do you know how I felt, when I discovered you had gone?"
I thought of the vision I had had of him thudding his fists against the door-frame of my room. "You were angry," I mumbled.
"No," he contradicted me. "I was relieved." The harshness of his words made me wince. "I was glad that you had gone. I never sought your company, and, indeed, it has caused me no little trouble over these many months."
I gasped, staring up at him. "I caused you trouble? You can really say that, a-after everything I've been through—everything you put me through?"
"Yes," he replied bluntly. "I have lost count of the times I regretted not leaving you to expire on my doorstep that...fateful evening."
I wish you had, I thought miserably, for I couldn't, couldn't speak.
"However," he continued, "for those two days that you were gone, I waited. Waited for news of what had become of you...if you had made it to safety, or if you had been discovered dead in a ditch somewhere." His eyebrow arched, and the corners of his mouth flicked up in a strange, wry smile. "...And then it occurred to me that I rather hoped you weren't dead in a ditch."
Warmth spiralled slowly over me as his words sunk in, ameliorating the hurt he had recently inflicted. I turned my face away, not wishing him to see the dampness on my cheeks. He cared. He cares.
"And as I waited, I prepared..."
"Prepared for what?" I whispered.
"For prison, of course," he said, almost lightly.
Strange to say, I had never actually thought of this eventuality. My lips felt numb as I stammered, "I w-wouldn't—I never would have—"
My faltering words were interrupted by his sharp laugh. "Oh, believe me, Alice, the moment you know who you are, and who I am—that will be among the last I enjoy as a free man."
My stomach twisted sickeningly. "Then we really are enemies?" I asked. "We really do...hate each other in real life?"
"Since the moment we met."
"But why?"
He smiled sardonically. "Irreconcilable differences, my dear."
Somehow the bitterness of his words did not match the almost caressing tone of his voice. I shook my head. "No," I said firmly. "I don't believe I could hate you—not now, not anymore. I...I'm...I think that I'm—"
"Close your foolish mouth, Alice," he said softly.
I did, but the words I suppressed formed a hard lump in my throat, making it difficult to swallow. "Then why take me back? If I'm such a burden—if we hate each other so terribly—why bother saving me from Her?"
Lucius did not immediately answer. His gaze detached, unfocused, as if he were seeing something, or someone, just beyond me. Absently he drew on his cigar. "Not for your sake," he murmured.
"Nor for yours," I added.
His eyelids flickered and his pupils trained upon me once more. "...No. Nor mine."
I nodded. I knew—perhaps I always knew—that there was someone else, to whom we were both somehow inextricably bound and beholden.
"Lucius...for the sake of that person, for whom you took me back...will you return me to my family?"
His jaw muscles tightened. "That is impossible," he said.
"Why? Why is it impossible? I swear I would never betray you—"
"No," he cut in, the word bristling with finality.
I gulped. "It's her, isn't it?" I said. My voice had started to tremble. "She has some kind of hold over you—blackmail, or—"
"Be quiet, Alice," Lucius interrupted me again, and there was something quietly imperative in his voice which made me obey. "...It is not...safe..."
...to speak of her... I read the remainder of the sentence in his eyes. A creeping disquietude spoolled along my spine. Who—what was she? From what terrible, hellish place had she escaped, to hold such dominion over both our lives?
"She is the reason you won't tell me who I am, isn't she?" I whispered.
He did not answer, and I bit my lip, thinking. "What if I were to run away again?"
Lucius shrugged. "I'll not stop you. You may leave now, if you want. But I believe it would be tantamount to suicide, if that's what you wish for."
I felt the truth of his words. She had found me once, when I ought to have been beyond all danger, and I doubted not she would do so again. Her strange, unworldly powers seemed to be directed through a lens of calamitous hatred towards me. I wouldn't survive another encounter with her, of that I was quite certain.
For a moment I sat toying with the delicate, gilded handle of my teacup, gathering the courage to submit my next question. "Lucius, may I ask you something?"
He waved his hand in a gracefully affirmative gesture.
I took a deep, determined breath. "Is there something...wrong with me? With my brain, I mean?" I blushed for the awkwardness of my question. "I have seen things...so many things, that just don't make sense. Things that couldn't be possible. I'm afraid I might be...damaged in some way."
"We established long ago that you may be suffering the effects of trauma," he replied coolly.
"I know, but...don't...don't you see them too?"
"See what, Alice?"
"All the impossible things that happen!" My voice was urgent now, pleading. "Things, objects—moving, disappearing, changing...don't you notice them? Can't you see them? And the—the things she did to me..." I trailed off, shivering as a chill breeze swept by, rustling through the surrounding trees. "...I just wonder if all this is really happening...or if it's just some kind of hallucination..."
"If that were the case, I would be the first to excuse myself from it," said Lucius, his mouth twisting cynically.
"But then, if I'm not hallucinating, I must be losing my mind," I said glumly. "Along with my memories...soon there will be nothing left."
Then, very quietly, very slowly Lucius murmured, "Did it ever occur to you to simply believe what you have seen?"
"W-what do you mean?"
A strange look passed over his face, a kind of reckless self-defiance, glimmering in his eyes. "I mean, my dear, that rather than questioning your sanity, why do you not accept the things you see as reality?"
For a moment I stared speechlessly up at him, wrestling with the implication of his words. "Because...because if it is reality...then I live in a world I do not understand...or...or I have..."
"Or you have forgotten," he finished the sentence for me.
I had forgotten? My vision blurred and there was a strange buzzing inside my head. ...Forgotten a world where the impossible was possible?...
A sudden, blinding whiteness flashed behind my eyes and I cried out, screwing my eyes closed and clutching my head. I heard the smash of china on stone as I knocked my cup off the table, and I rocked backwards as a second flash hit me—but this time the outline of a face was superimposed upon the whiteness—a face I had seen before in the throes of agony—
I opened my eyes, gasping.
Lucius was standing, leaning over the table, his hands wrapped around my wrists, and I realised he had stopped me from toppling backwards. His face was pale.
"I s-saw him again," I stammered out, hardly knowing what I said.
Lucius went paler still. "Who?" he said hoarsely.
"The boy...the boy who looks like you."
Lucius let go of my wrists and I slumped forwards, dizzy and faint.
I heard him moving away, his boots scuffing the tiles as if he were not quite steady on his feet. When the sickening undulations receded enough for me to look up, I saw him standing at the end of the terrace, his back to me. His head was unbowed, his spine ramrod straight...but I could see strain in the lines of his shoulders, as if it were taking all his strength to bear some terrible burden which lay across them. Defeat and despair wrapped about that proud, erect form like an invisible film, subduing the tangible power that had always crackled around him like a live entity.
And for the first time I...I pitied him.
He's your son, isn't he?
I couldn't say the words aloud, but I knew. I had seen that boy every day in the man before me: the same sharply-chiselled, arresting features, the same haughtily tilted head, the same unconsciously arrogant bearing... Their similarities were striking; but more so their differences. For in those brief seconds of illumination, I had also seen a mouth that smiled softly, without the curl of contempt. Grey eyes that shone mildly, and did not glitter with icy rage or burning hatred. I had seen gentleness and kindness, and something like—like gratitude?
And that was not all. I had seen those eyes elsewhere, too... The moving photo in Lucius's bureau. I had gazed, fascinated, at that beautiful face, right before Lucius had slammed my hands so cruelly in the drawer.
There was a painful swelling sensation within my chest, as if my heart was trying to tell me that which my mind could not: the beautiful boy had meant something to me. A lot to me...but it wasn't love, not in the romantic sense. Swirling through my blood, my being, was an innate kind of tenderness and trust, and a fierce protectiveness. And anchoring it all, an inexpressible sadness, a sense of terrible loss...tinged with something metallic, something that tasted like blood on my tongue. Guilt.
We had lost him—we had both lost him. And somehow it was my fault.
I remembered the words that had headlined the photo. "Tragedy At Training College." Tragedy. What tragedy? ...What had I done?
I was still too shaken to move or speak. Vaguely I wondered if it was better not to know what had happened. To never find out. Perhaps, rather than losing my memories, I had actually suppressed them; maybe the truth had been too terrible for me to cope with. Perhaps everything I had gone through was some kind of self-imposed sentence, some kind of extreme penance to expiate extreme guilt.
The dizziness was receding, but there was a heavy ache behind my eyes. To add to the confusion, Lucius's recent words—"Why do you not accept the things you see as reality?"—spun in the dark void of my missing memory, enormously important, and yet frustratingly nonsensical to me. ...But I couldn't think about them, not right now, not with him standing there, as lustreless and burdened as a monument of Atlas.
Shakily, I rose from my seat and went to his side.
Lucius didn't acknowledge my presence—he did not so much as blink—but somehow, I'm not sure how, his right hand closed around my left one. His skin was warm and smooth, his strong fingers firmly and gently encasing, and I felt his thumb brushing my palm in the lightest of caresses. For such a touch I would have gladly crossed deserts.
Time suspended, the world stalled on her axis; we stood side by side, united in unspeaking sorrow: me, for a loss I could not remember; he, for one he could not forget... In a kind of trance I imagined myself as a second statue, connected forever to this man of marble...long years, decades, centuries passing, moss and lichen gradually covering us over, creeping ivy binding us together...until we were completely enclosed and hidden from the world...never to be found...
This strange reverie was broken by the sudden billowing of the sharp, brisk wind, making my new robe flutter around my legs, and whisking Lucius's hair into a thousand shining rivulets. I became aware of an awful tightness constricting my throat. There was something I had to say now, or perhaps I would never find a way to again...
I forced the words from my trembling lips. "I'm sorry, Lucius," I said, peering up at him. "I don't know what...what I did...but I...I feel..."—my hand pressed to my throbbing, hurting heart—"I feel so sorry."
Lucius paled visibly, and I bit my lip, not afraid of incurring his violence, but rather of causing that dreaded stony mask to appear once more. But he didn't, or couldn't, hide his emotion. Pain, stark and raw, suffused his features, darkening his silver eyes to stormy granite. He did not let go of my hand, but his fingers tightened like a vice. "You stupid girl," he said through barely-moving lips, a taut, stricken look on his face. "What am I to do with those words? The words of a mudblood. What are they worth?"
I swallowed his harsh speech like a bitter dram. "I don't know," I said. "But I mean them, all the same."
His voice had the sound of a warning snarl of a wounded wild animal, dangerously low and quiet. "If you knew what you had done, you would not dare insult me with your hollow apology."
"If I knew what I'd done it would not be hollow," I said pleadingly. "Tell me. Tell me what I—"
Lucius turned on me, the suddenness of his movement cutting short my words, and jerked my arm so roughly my shoulder-socket jarred and I stumbled forwards against him with a small cry. His hands clamped down on both my shoulders, and he loomed over me in a way which would have frightened me only days ago, but now it was his tortured expression, not his physical proximity, that made me wince. "You—must—not—ask—me," he said labouredly, his eyes blazing with an anguish that was full of rage, yet wholly, beautifully, devoid of hate.
At that moment I knew that, whatever part I had played in that unknown "tragedy", however dreadful my crime...he had forgiven me. He, who had only ever looked on me with disgust and loathing, now turned his gaze on me with a grief as pure as it was piteous, exonerating me even as it engulfed me.
His grip was painful, but instinctively I understood it was not a punishment, rather an expression of his own agony. And so I clenched my teeth and bore his despairing fury, refusing to struggle or pull away. His fingers dug deeper and deeper into me until I could feel my bone bruising beneath their crushing pressure...and at last I couldn't help gasping in pain.
At this sound Lucius blinked and drew in a shuddering breath, like a drowning man suddenly surfacing. His expression was rapidly changing, relenting, the colour returning to his lividly-pale face. I saw awareness flicker into his eyes, followed quickly by realisation, and he pulled his hands away from me as if scalded, balling them by his sides.
For a moment he closed his eyes; when he opened them he was once more contained. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I did not mean to hurt you."
I stared up at him, stunned to speechlessness.
Never, never had he apologised for hurting me before.
Reading the amazement in my face, a bleak smile touched his mouth. "I had thought you would have learned not to provoke me by now," he said. "But you continue to plague me with your accursed, incessant questions." Though his speech was caustic, something just beneath his brittle tone, subtle as a sound-wave, thrummed to my ear, and his callous words were negated, belied.
The horrible strain that had lain over him seemed to be lightening, dissipating into the ether. Despite his fierce, furious reaction, I knew my blindly-offered apology had done him good. Lucius had needed to hear those words, as much as I had needed to say them.
The wind had lulled as quickly as it had risen, and all was tranquil and sunny once more, but the intensity of our encounter had left me hollow and shivery. I longed for him to touch me again, to gently take my hand once more and flood me with the warmth of human connection...but he had half-turned away from me, his hands still clenched beside him in tight fists, and I didn't dare reach out my own.
"Do you remember the night I found you in my bedroom, Alice?" He spoke without turning, his gaze fixed somewhere in front of him.
My whole body stiffened at his unexpected words. That night? How could I ever, ever forget that night?
"You mean the night you broke my fingers." My voice sounded oddly flat, but my stomach churned as an alternative sentence flitted at the tip of my tongue. You mean the night you almost raped me. ...But I swallowed it deliberately away. I had to believe that he had only meant to frighten me. He couldn't really have intended to inflict such a damaging, degrading act upon me...
"Yes, Alice," he said, and I could hear by his tone that he knew what I was thinking. "The night I broke your fingers. ...Do you remember what happened after you returned to your room?"
"I'm not sure," I said, a blush beginning to creep up over my face. "I think I fainted."
"Before that. Do you recall...calling for help?"
"I think. I think I called for—you."
"You did call for me," he said softly. "Even after my...abysmal treatment of you, you still called for me. I found you on the floor, half-strangled by your sheets."
"I don't remember."
"You were...in a bad way, barely conscious, delirious. I tended your injuries and returned you to your bed. When I was about to leave, you whispered something. It sounded like a name. But I was not sure...perhaps I did not wish to believe it..." He paused, and when he spoke again his tone was dark and frayed. "I heard that name again yesterday, but this time there could be no doubt. You were—screaming it." He stopped abruptly.
I waited for him to continue, but he did not, and I could not find the words to press him.
A sharp ache in my abdomen was forcing itself on my notice. I hunched over a little, crossing my arms over my stomach, trying unsuccessfully to hug away the discomfort.
"You're cold," said Lucius, and I wondered if my ears deceived me, for his voice sounded almost tender. "Go back inside."
"I think I'm just...really hungry, actually," I blurted truthfully, suddenly realising that I had not eaten anything since the small meal at the truck-stop cafeteria. I would have blushed for the sheer mundanity of my comment, but I really was too exhausted, and famished, to care.
With a graceful motion, Lucius turned to gesture to the table. "Then you should eat something," he said.
I saw, then, that there was a large food-laden platter next to the silver tea-service, although I could have sworn it wasn't there before.
...Why not accept the things you see as reality?...
Well, that was certainly easier said than done.