a/n-this doesn't really pick up where the last chapter picked up, but since this is a dark story of slightly deranged characters, I thought that maybe before Tonks, Sirius might've had a memory of him and Bella together. Anyways this is him remembering a moment with Bella. Then it will continue again with Tonks/Remus/Sirius

17 years ago and 17 seconds ago.

Bella is both his past and present.

Bella. Bella. Bella.

She's insane.

He loves her.

She'll bite and tear him to pieces, it doesn't matter, he loves it.

He wants to be torn apart by someone as broken as him.

"Bella how long has it been?"

She cackles a laugh and her bony hands twist down to play with his belt buckle. Begins to unzip it. Then she stops and pouts and laughs as she looks up at him.

He takes a sharp intake of breathe.

Because she has that look.

That teasing cruel glint in her coal-black eyes, the type of mania that you can't decide whether it will destroy you or heal you. Whether she will take you too far or just to the edge.

Bellatrix is the type of hedonistic lover that would laugh as much to push you off a cliff as she would to see you happy. She doesn't really care what happens to you, as long as it's exciting for her.

She drags her pointed nails along his exposed crouch.

Her voice a sharp edge and Merlin it arouses him, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something obscene and grabbing her by the hair. He can't hold on much longer. Though he breathe is cool on him.

"Siri," her voice is dripping with sarcasm, or is it delight? He can't tell, though she has that mock-babyish tone of speaking. Like they're children again and she pouts as she looks up at him, as if angry at him for not playing along with her game. Though what the fuck kind of twisted game are they playing anymore? They're adults, and he has her on her knees below him.

"Siri," her voice is hoarser, rougher, greedier. "How long has it been since we last played our little game?"

He laughs because she can sound so innocent when she wants to. "I wouldn't call this a little game Bella," he instructs her crisply. "We threw out the rules a long time ago, didn't we?"

She giggles a tinkering mad laugh, and briefly it occurs to him that Azkaban has once and truly taken all semblances of sanity she once had. The Bella he knew, the Bella he grew up with...is gone and replaced by the hollow mad shell. But she still looks like Bella, despite the lines around the corners of her eyes or the droop in her breasts, she is still beautiful Bella Black.

"Sirius always likes his ickle games," she grins and her eyes are magnetic, cold black holes drawing him in. Her pink tongue plays and wets her full lips, before flicking over her shiny white canines like she's a feline or predator about to bite it's prey. She's teasing him and he knows it. Making him wait.

Sirius narrows his grey eyes. "Why doesn't Bella," they like to refer to each other in third person, it makes the game easier, "start her part then? Why doesn't Bella do Sirius a favour?"

She laughs gleefully and sinks down further on her knees, eyeing him. "Oh yes, Bella wants to. Bella wants to please Sirius."

"Good."

But then her nails are digging into him and the sound of her mad shrieking pops his eardrums as she draws blood from him.

"What are you doing?"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

She is shrieking like a banshee and he can't tell if she is having fun or this is an episode. Like the ones she had in Azkaban where she'd howl and bash against the bars.

"Let me out Sirius!"

.

He awakes to a shriek, and he realizes with a sweat that he's still in his bed in Grimmauld Place and he hasn't seen Bella for more than two years, not since Azkaban.

It isn't much relief. Though he hates her on so many levels it's hard to count...On some levels, he still cares and feels responsible for his cousin. Because they did used to play little games in Grimmauld Place. A very long time ago.

His hands rake guiltily over his face. And now he has repeated this vicious cycle of Black family incest with Tonks.

She has no idea, does she? Sirius thinks to himself.

Nymphadora Tonks—proud, vibrant, rebellious as a streak of lightning—has no idea how much she is like her aunt. The Aunt she never met.

The woman with long black curly hair he used to love. With the small waist and porcelain skin. Bellatrix Black was his gothic doll back then, his fuck toy. He was the handsomest young member of the Black family and young virginal Bella had taken notice. She'd allowed him to take advantage of her pretty body.

The young Bellatrix he used to know and made love to across the floor in front of his mother's mantelpiece. The Bella he used to whisper secrets and naughty jokes to, meanwhile at Hogwarts, they pretended to hate each other and sit on different sides of the Great Hall.

And he knows the situation is messed up. In so many ways.

But then things have always been topsy turvy in Grimmauld Place.

.

Yet what right did he have to go re-starting this turmoil with Tonks? This had the whiff of Bella all over it.

Hadn't Grimmauld Place seen enough secrets and abuse?

Sirius felt so powerless against his own nature in this moment. He'd walked right into, he knew, from the moment he'd seen his second cousin, he'd knew some part of her wanted her...wouldn't stay away forever.

It didn't help he'd been in prison so long and would've longed for the touch of any young woman, let alone a literal Nymph.

Andromeda would be mad if she ever found out.

She'd seen firsthand what he did to her sister. How he had helped push Bellatrix's sanity and stability over the tipping point and off a cliff...or perhaps, no, Bellatrix had always been destined to be mad and he blamed himself for something that couldn't be helped.

Could Nymphadora be helped?

Had she enough light in her to withstand the darkness that threatened to corrupt them from all sides of their bloodline?

Whether she could or not withstand the darkness, Sirius can't see her anymore, that's for sure. Not when he knows now how Remus loves her, the werewolf would go madder each day he continued to date Tonks.

Dating, that's a laugh.

He hasn't taken Tonks out anywhere once.

They shag, that's all. Homebodies. Using each other.

Not that he can go out much. Yet if he did, would he have even bothered taking Tonks out to dinner or to a theatre? Even bother to treat her like a lady?

Not likely.

He'd never done any of these things for Bellatrix either. They were fucking partners. The type that snuck a quickie in the closet at family reunions. That's how pathetically low him and Bellatrix had been.

So Bella had ended up hating him even more when he joined the Order and stopped seeing her altogether. He couldn't risk Bella spying on the Order through him, even if they barely talked then while fucking.

Sirius had a feeling the grudge Bellatrix held against him would one day kill him...

He couldn't risk Tonks hating him in the end either, or Remus hating him for what he did to her.

He had to end things with Tonks. But how? Nymphadora would hardly take his word for it.

If he told her, 'Tonks it's for your own good', she'd laugh right at him, say wotcher and then carry on as before.

Nymphadora Tonks couldn't be told what to do. She was as rebellious and headstrong as Bellatrix.

Sirius would have to do it the hard way: freezing her out, not answering her letters, ignoring her, acting like they didn't even know each other.

...Maybe in time Remus would come to forgive him too and then they could carry on before, Padfoot and Mooney, ever full moon...not hearing his bestfriend scratch at the walls in agony.

.