Disclaimer: I don't own anything of the Potterverse and also nothing of the Batman-verse.
Imaginary Friend
Metamorphing Magic
Rachel had said to Harvey that the safest place in Gotham City was Bruce's penthouse. When she had said that, she had failed to consider Bellatrix. As the elevator doors opened, she remembered that Bruce's penthouse was now haunted by that woman. Rachel wouldn't call Bella's company safe by any stretch of the imagination and she didn't trust the impossible woman as far as she could throw her, but at the same time Rachel was pretty sure that Bellatrix wasn't Joker's agent.
She had no proof of that, of course, it was just a feeling, but to think differently would make even less sense. It was the same as - it was a feeling that Bellatrix wasn't good, not in any way that people are normally good unless they're bad, and the feeling that Bellatrix was wrong for Bruce. All Rachel now really hoped for, as she exited the elevator, was that Bruce was home. As lack of luck would have it - the first person she met was Bellatrix.
Bellatrix was lounging on a couch, a glass of white wine in her hand and Gotham at her feet or near enough. She was staring at the neon lit, pulsing heart of the city spread out before her.
Rachel hesitated for a moment, stopping by the corner. Unsure whether she had been noticed, unsure how to start a conversation. "Where's Bruce?" she finally asked, walking in confidently a moment later.
Bellatrix closed her eyes letting the annoyance she felt be reflected on her face for a second as she took a sip of her wine that had turned strangely tasteless before replying. "Out."
"He'll be back soon?" it wasn't much of a question, styled to get only one type of answer - agreement.
Rachel surveyed the open area thinking where best to sit down. She didn't want to sit too close to Bellatrix, but she also wanted to appear unconcerned and confident as if this was her home and Bellatrix was the intruder. Rachel unconsciously bit her bottom lip. Unbidden passed a thought that this would be much easier if Alfred was here. Alfred had always liked her.
"Maybe."
"With Gordon's death it's not safe at the precinct. It's not safe anywhere. Bruce said I'm welcome to stay," she explained moving further into the room and finally selecting an armchair.
Rachel sat down and composed herself. She wasn't scared of Bellatrix, not any more than any sensible person would be, but she was safe here. She was safe, because Bruce said so, because she could take care of herself, and because she was the youngest female DA assistant in Gotham City, period. She was not a small girl that could be easily intimidated. Not anymore.
Truth is that Bellatrix wasn't trying to intimidate Rachel. As long as Rachel didn't choose to become a problem, Bella had many other thoughts on her mind, many other problems. "I know, Bruce warned me."
"Warned you not to hurt me?" Rachel couldn't resist a jape.
"Warned that you would be coming to stay tonight," she finally spared a glance for Rachel. "You're welcome to the wine," she generally gestured towards the opened bottle on the coffee table. There were two other glasses as well, originally meant for Bruce and Alfred. "I find I have no taste for it tonight."
"Chardonnay?" Rachel asked reaching for the bottle. She couldn't read the label from afar, but the queen of wines felt like the right guess.
"Sauvignon Blanc," Bellatrix replied off-handedly.
"Californian?" she asked as she poured trying to at least appear civil.
"No."
"French?" Rachel finally took a look at the label. "New Zealand?"
"I recently bought a vineyard there," Bellatrix remarked, "in the Marlborough region." It did have the distant ring of a petty jab, but Bellatrix honestly didn't intend to brag. In a lukewarm attempt at a conversation she elaborated on the topic. She certainly didn't feel guilty for the fact that Rachel wouldn't even dream of owning a vineyard much less discuss a casual purchase of one.
"You would," Rachel muttered in her glass, sitting back, sliding deeper in her armchair.
Bellatrix ceased to pay any attention to her. It was a while before Rachel spoke again. "Is Alfred here?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good. Where?" she sat up straighter. Rachel hated how she felt so awkward and out of her element here. Every moment seemed to drag on for eternity. This was Bruce's home. She had had no problems feeling at home in his place before - that didn't feel entirely true, but Rachel didn't pursue that strand of thought.
"Somewhere, I haven't tagged him with GPS."
Anger sparked and Rachel gladly embraced the emotion that felt more comfortable and familiar than awkwardness. Every question she asked was met with some sort of non-answer. Talking to glacier would be more productive than conversing with Bellatrix. Cornering a lying witness into incriminating themselves at the stand was easier. "Your skills as a host are exemplary," she noted coldly.
"You're not my guest," Bellatrix replied easily.
"I'm Bruce's guest. To put it in your words - by association - you should care about that," Rachel responded raising her chin a bit higher.
"In my words - I would more categorize you as someone else's pet that's been dropped at my doorstep for babysitting."
"Well, I would categorize you..."
Bellatrix rose smoothly. "I don't care," her lips even were stretched into a smile. "You're welcome to any of the guest bedrooms. Take your pick. There's food in the fridge or you can phone the reception, or you can order a takeout. If there's anything you need," Bellatrix smiled wider, straining her lips, "Call the reception."
Then she left and the smile dropped.
BBRBW
Bellatrix was fascinated by Gotham at night. She liked the city at night. Truth be told she liked many cities at night. The rough edges faded away, most of the aspects became unseen and only the lights shined, blazing outwards against the darkness, illuminating only what was worth being seen. At night-time Gotham seemed to be pulsing with life even more so than during the day. It was calming like the beating of Bruce's heart.
"Rachel is …" he wasn't really sure how he was going to continue, but something along the lines of - she's just worried; or she just got carried away; or even she doesn't mean as much to me as you - had to be said. He couldn't contain himself though, a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips, betraying his amusement.
"I honestly don't care," Bella replied staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window in their bedroom. Her arms were crossed under her breasts and she was quietly seething. It wasn't just the fact that Rachel was snoring and defiling one of the guest bedrooms tonight, it was the conversation Bellatrix had walked in on mere moments ago.
"I told her I'd go to the press conference tomorrow. That I'll admit to being Batman. That I'll give myself up," tentatively and softly he laid his hands on her shoulders, caressed her arms down to elbows before hugging her to his chest, trapping her in his embrace.
Bellatrix had heard that part rather plainly. "Did you lie?" she leaned back against him, letting him draw comfort from her. What made her mad was how Rachel had reacted to that piece of news. She knew logically that she couldn't control other people unless she Imperio'ed them, but still sometimes she just wanted to … She bit back a frustrated sigh.
"No," Bruce admitted quietly.
Bellatrix pursed her lips but didn't say anything. What could she say? She didn't like it. Not one bit. She wasn't going to hold him back though, because he didn't hold her back when she needed to go. Nonetheless she was worried, worried about him.
"Bellatrix - say something," he didn't say it aloud - please -, but his tone was pleading.
She closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted to tell him all she thought - about how this seemed a monumentally stupid move, because he would endanger himself, but the way he asked, as if he was afraid that she would turn him down and send him away to deal with this on his own... Like Rachel had. She couldn't do it. She had left him on his own once and when she came back, she swore to herself that never again, not like that.
"You know what I think?" she asked trying to keep the tone light, swallowing everything else.
"I'm an idiot?" he asked laughing, quietly.
"Reckless," she replied far more seriously than she had intended.
"Reckless idiot?" he smiled, nuzzling against her ear.
"I don't see how giving yourself up to satisfy the bloodlust of those peasants is going to solve anything," she wasn't in the mood to be playful. This was serious, she knew he knew that. He wasn't a reckless moron like Dumbledore's enthusiasts, that's why it grated all the more - he saw all the aspects of the situation and he still chose to go down this road.
She turned in his arms a little to look him in the eyes. "And you must know that when you do give yourself up - the Joker will come for you. Is that what you want?"
"I want him to stop targeting innocent people," he replied just as sincerely.
"And you believe this is how you'll stop him? When you're alone and defenceless in police custody?" she poked holes in his strategy, but she wasn't aggressive, she was mainly just concerned. He had to know that somehow somewhere along the way they had thrown their lots together and Bellatrix, for one, was in this for the long run.
"I was hoping I wouldn't be all alone," he had the nerve to wink and grin.
"You want me to take him out?" she asked, frowning. She could burn this city to the ground and sleep soundly for the rest of her long life if it kept him safe but somehow, she doubted that that was what he meant.
"I was thinking more along the lines - bail me out, and I'll take care of Joker, but your version is also a workable scenario," he replied, his voice quiet and a bit rough, his attention only partly on the subject topic and mainly on her lips. He leaned closer brushing his nose against hers, leaning in for a short kiss.
"Bring you your Batsuit baked in a cake and all..." she elaborated a moment later, her gaze slightly glazed. The closer he leaned the harder it was to concentrate.
"Yes...," he managed to drawl between raining short, heavy kisses on her lips. He needed her like fields need rainwater. He had lost and regained her so many times that a moment like this had always seemed nigh impossible. And yet here she was, and he had no words for the surety and confidence it gave him when she accepted the darker parts of him. The dangerous parts.
They were so alike. Both half belonging to world that others weren't privy to.
She turned in his embrace to fully press against him. He was full of initiative tonight and she gladly let him take the lead. Gather her close. She laughed when he picked her up in his arms. "I can do that," she continued the nearly forgotten thread of conversation.
"Good," he grinned and playfully spun on the spot to draw another laugh from her before heading towards the bed.
Her hands around his neck, she played with the short strands of his hair, and tried not to think about all the repercussions to his plan. Not tonight. This was not the night for that.
BBRBW
Next morning when Bellatrix woke Bruce was already gone. She half remembered him kissing her forehead and saying goodbye as he left. Anyway, his side of bed was long cold. She stretched and yawned as she woke slowly. This was an important day, but there was no reason to rush it. She felt heavy with sleep. It was another hour before she got up.
Press conference had already started by the time she sat down in front of TV. Bellatrix was nursing a glass of orange juice, she didn't feel brilliant this morning - her head felt stuffy as if she had overslept, but at the same time she wanted to sleep some more. The fact that Rachel was already there didn't improve Bella's tired mood one bit. Couldn't she have watched this in her room?
"Good morning," Rachel greeted her coldly. Bellatrix managed a small, polite smile in response, but no comment.
And then Harvey Dent took the stand and both women turned their full attention to the screen. Bellatrix was pleasantly surprised when the District Attorney claimed that he was Batman drawing the ire and the attention to himself. Rachel gasped audibly. Bellatrix enjoyed the moment, even the juice tasted sweeter when the moment lasted, and nobody challenged Dent on his confession.
It was once again the situation where an individual takes the fall for the greater good, but Bellatrix was glad that in this case it wasn't Bruce. She didn't generally approve of such heroics and self-made sacrifices, but this time she found herself feeling a sense of grudging respect for what Dent did. It still was hilariously stupid as his whole improvised plan hinged on what would Batman do now, but Bellatrix already knew that Dent had won this bet. There was no way Bruce was going to leave that man for slaughter. Dent's confession pleased her; because this way it felt like Bruce wasn't doing all that he was doing for nothing.
"How could he?" Rachel gasped at the screen as Harvey was cuffed and taken into custody.
Bellatrix looked at the other woman. "I believe it was a matter of opening his mouth and letting the sounds come out."
"You think this is funny?" Rachel turned to Bellatrix, enraged.
"Hilarious," Bella replied in good humour, eyes sparkling. Her mood had improved drastically.
"Did you tell him something? Something that changed his mind?" Rachel demanded.
"I can honestly say I've hardly spoken to Harvey Dent at all," she met him at the fundraiser, but he'd been pre-occupied, and she'd drifted off to other guests.
"I meant Bruce," Rachel spat, in her anger her vowels became more pronounced and throatier giving the impression of growling.
Bellatrix thought for a moment. She could lie or she could tell the truth. Since it didn't really matter, "Yes," she replied. "I told him that the universe will implode if there is one more stupidity committed within the next twenty-four-hour period."
"Be serious. This is Harvey's life, it's ruined now!" she could hardly believe her ears, but of course - the life of other people was inconsequential to Bellatrix Rosier.
"You mean - your life with him, right? Because it all comes back to you, doesn't it?" and now Bellatrix felt angry too. She remembered all too well that conversation yesterday when Bruce had told Rachel that he's going to unmask himself and all the silly girl had talked about was how it was going to impact her and therefore their friendship would become impossible.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean," Bellatrix stared pointedly at her.
"I have honestly no idea," the tone was mocking as Rachel abruptly rose and left.
Bellatrix perched on the armrest and took another sip of her juice. "Well, she knows how to ruin a perfectly good moment," she muttered to herself.
When she was sure that Rachel was out of earshot, she leisurely pulled out her cell phone and called Bruce.
"You okay?" she asked softly.
"Surprised," he admitted, but to her he sounded a little relieved.
"Are you coming home now?"
"No, not yet, I have to find out what's going to happen now and prepare. I don't think the Joker will attack Dent while he's in a holding cell, but if they're moving him, and they probably are... I have to know. I have to be there, after what he did - it's what I have to do. It's the least I can do," Bruce explained. He had to be there to prove that Dent wasn't Batman now that Harvey had sacrificed himself to protect Batman's identity. And he had to be there to protect Dent because the attorney wasn't Batman.
"Alright, dear," she agreed in the same soft tones. She had already expected that he'd act like this - it was just who Bruce was. "Call me if you need my help. I'll be home."
"Thank you," and he meant - for everything, for understanding, for supporting and for all the things she didn't do - scolding, interrupting, condemning or even leaving.
She ended the call and moments later Rachel marched across the room towards the kitchen. That wasn't anything particularly curious, but the envelope in her hand... Bellatrix had a bad feeling about that. She rose and Apparated. She appeared a step from Rachel with the sound of a crack of a whip. Rachel almost jumped out of her skin in surprise.
"That better not be what I think it is," Bellatrix said pleasantly pointing at the envelope. A glass of juice was still in her hand.
"Astute," Rachel quipped, regaining her composure fast. "It's a letter. The deadliest form of attack completely on par with wiping people's memories and as dangerous as appearing out of thin air."
Bellatrix ignored the smart-ass comments. "Deadly, perhaps," she agreed, "depends on the written word."
"Well, it's not for you, so you can rest in peace," Rachel didn't particularly like the person she became when she was with Bellatrix, but she couldn't help the snide comment. After all, when with a pack of wolves - act like a wolf.
"It's for Bruce," Bellatrix observed before taking a sip of juice, her posture was completely relaxed, but she still stood in the way and wasn't going to budge.
Rachel didn't deign to answer that. What was obvious was obvious. She stared at Bellatrix wanting her to move aside.
"You're not leaving him a letter," Bella explained.
"Did he hire you to screen his mail?" Rachel asked indignantly. This just crossed every boundary! What the hell did the woman think she was? She had no right.
"That letter will never reach him," Bellatrix paraphrased calmly.
"How exactly are you planning on stopping me?" daring, a bit incredulous, Rachel didn't believe that a lightning will strike her where she stood if she annoyed Bellatrix enough no matter how mysterious or powerful the other woman was. She wasn't scared, not in that moment.
"Don't play dumb, you should know by now that I could kill you without breaking a sweat or dropping this glass, so I'll say it again - you're not leaving him that letter," Bellatrix didn't have much patience today, not for Rachel.
"All you do is threaten. Is that what you do to him too?" it was hard to believe that Bruce could be intimidated, but Rachel allowed for the possibility, after all, Bellatrix could erase memories; perhaps she had messed with Bruce's mind too. It would certainly explain a lot.
"Only when he asks nicely," Bella grinned salaciously.
Rachel was disgusted. "You won't kill me, or you would have already. I on the other hand can tell…"
"If I thought for a moment that you're a security breach, you'd already be dead," Bellatrix had never thought that Rachel would tell anyone what she knew, because nobody would believe her. It would be all too easy to refute her and all of Rachel's career would be in smithereens and the woman herself in a white, padded room. That's, of course, if Rachel even got to making her revelations public and Bellatrix had many more ways of stopping her before that happened.
"Yes, well I'm not," Rachel moved forward, but Bellatrix sidestepped her.
"I told you - it's not going to happen."
"You can't do this!" Rachel was starting to get red in the face.
"I'm already doing this."
"Why?"
"Because I won't let you break his heart again so you can vent your frustrations in a shabby little note. I don't give damn that your life is not working out as you would like and even less, I care that you can't get everything you want, because I'm in the way. And, yes, I know I'm in your way, I have been for far longer than you suspect, and you know what? That's exactly where I'm going to stay. I'm not going to let you tear him apart, because you're petty and vicious," Bellatrix had to restrain the urge to accentuate every point by poking at Rachel.
"I'm vicious?" Rachel spluttered; she just couldn't believe the utter crap that the other woman was sprouting. "You're so completely blind when it comes to yourself! You are controlling, manipulative, scheming, evil woman and you're selfish, because I've been his friend for a very long time and you're driving us apart!"
"You drove you apart. You never listened, you never supported him, ever, all you ever did was try to impose your own truth and values and you refused to accept anything else, and in the height of arrogance you believed that to be an act of a friend. Well, let me enlighten you - that's not what friends do."
"How would you know what friends do?"
I stood by his side when he needed me. I let him go so that he would be safe even though he was the only thing that anchored me. I went to war and won it so that I could come back to him. "You're still alive, aren't you?" Bellatrix quickly pulled the letter from Rachel's hand. "I'll take that."
"I'll write another," Rachel threatened. She was going to mail it through actual mail, if that's what it took, she wasn't going to be deterred or intimidated.
Bellatrix looked hard at her and drew her wand. "No, you won't." Imperio.
BBRBW
Bellatrix and Bruce were enjoying the moment, and Rachel wasn't in the penthouse. They were sitting comfortably on the couch, Bellatrix had stretched her legs over Bruce's lap and for the moment there was nothing important to talk about - not Joker or Gotham, nor Malfoy and London. For the moment, every problem in the world did not exist for them.
She twisted a lock of his hair between her fingers. "It's getting a bit long, isn't it?"
He grinned and patted her knee, his palm covered her knee fully, and his fingers caressed her thigh as he moved his hand. "You don't like it?"
"Well, they might start calling you the hairy crusader instead of the caped one," she replied, smiling, leaning back against the couch.
"I'll get it cut soon," he meant - after he'd dealt with Joker.
"I could do it," she said, still playing with his hair, pondering.
"You?!" of all the people he would not have expected her to even think of offering.
"It's a matter of few swishes and flicks," she grinned and then pushed her hand completely through his carefully coiffed hair hopelessly ruffling it.
"Do you cut your own hair?" he asked, leaning sideways before teasingly pulling out a hairpin from her hairdo, letting it all cascade in loose curls around her shoulders.
"Mhm," she murmured in agreement absent-mindedly, still playing with his hair. "It feels strangely intimate when somebody's running their hands all over your head. There aren't really any hairdressers in Wizarding world. There are specialists that offer the whole package of getting someone ready for an event, but there's nobody that does just the hair. I did try hairdressing the Muggle style, but I did not warm up to the experience, so unless it's a wedding I just usually..." she drew her wand and a wave and a flick later her hair was perfectly done again.
"Do you often go to weddings?" he teased softly before leaning into her for a kiss when Alfred walked in on them.
"I'm sorry, but there's a phone call for Miss Rosier. From London," he handed her the home phone on a silver platter. Nobody had called Bellatrix here before so as much as Alfred would have liked to smile at the scene he had walked in on, he was apprehensive.
Bellatrix frowned. She took the phone, glancing questioningly at Alfred. "Yes?" she asked blandly, speaking into the receiver.
"Would you care to explain why I'm being pestered by the Minister for Magic?"
"Adrian," Bellatrix breathed somehow relieved. It was a bit of a leap for her godfather to make, but she could see how he'd thought that by calling here he might reach her. And then she realized what he'd just said. "Sirius called you?"
"He visited me," Adrian corrected.
Bellatrix did not like that at all. She knew better than to think that Sirius would threaten her godfather, but she also wasn't happy that her cousin was digging into things - into her life. He already knew far too much. "What did he want?"
"You. Malfoy's head on a silver platter. World peace and a poodle," Adrian replied smartly.
Nearly thirty years ago Adrian Burke - a squib from an old wizarding family - had accepted an unlikely job offer from a wizard and that day he had chosen for his whole life. He had not only gotten work that settled him for the rest of his life, but he had had the chance to help raise one little girl that years later changed the world. Wizarding world still didn't love Squibs, but now it was forbidden for a wizard to hurt or kill them at leisure like any other sentient, living being. He had never been as proud of his goddaughter as he was the day she announced that as a Minister she was renouncing the whole Squib Rights act as they had every right as members of the Wizarding world and citizens of Great Britain, and set a committee of political activists and professionals to rework all the Limitations of the non-Wizarding creatures Law.
"A poodle?" she asked blankly.
"It's an educated guess," Adrian replied grinning.
"A poodle?" Bruce mouthed at her. Bellatrix shook her head. She would not ask for details on that.
"Anything else?"
"I got the feeling he didn't really want to elaborate and let me in on state secrets, but there's trouble brewing. In the last twenty-four hours Alastor Moody, Minerva McGonagall and Hagrid have been found dead. Greengrasses, Notts and Parkinsons were attacked. And it's all over the news," Adrian explained.
"Moody, McGonagall and the Gameskeeper are Dumbledore's people. From his Order of Glorified Mail Birds," she reasoned thinking that therefore they were not her problem, but Adrian was right - it was troubling, all of those people had been high-profile and hard-to-get targets when Voldemort had been at large.
"Yes, and Greengrasses, Notts and Parkinsons sided firmly with you when you became Minister. Not with Dumbledore, not with Voldemort, and they most certainly didn't lay low."
Bellatrix tried to keep her expression impassive. Adrian tried to imply that those people were her allies and friends, and therefore she should care, but she only had one friend, she was in his lap and he was safe and sound. All the others had followed her, because it had been the smart choice, she wasn't going to applaud them for having common sense.
"Any survivors?"
"Daphne and Aurora Greengrass, one is too traumatized to speak, the other too young to know how. The Parkinson manor was destroyed. General opinion is that no one survived, but Sirius just said that they have found no bodies, period. The elder Nott is in critical condition in St. Mango's," he paused... "And I got most of that from Daily Prophet."
"What?" Bellatrix hissed. "When Sirius turned up to pester you - did he happen to mention why such sensitive information has been leaked to the press? Since he obviously isn't in the habit of keeping his mouth shut."
"I think that's one of the problems he wanted to speak to you about."
"That's what he gets. Working with do-gooders that don't know when to shut their traps," Bellatrix would have glued the lips of any person she suspected might talk too much. She could just feel her blood-pressure spiking in anger.
Bruce drew her attention and ire starting to slide his hand up and down her leg. She glared at him, but he grinned at her continuing his ministrations. She drew a deep breath, calming down. "All you mean to tell me with this is that it's the beginning of something, am I correct?"
"Yes," Adrian replied. "Your sister... He did that because he could. He has more plans than just revenge," there was no mistaking about whom Adrian was talking about.
"Malfoy always has had delusions of grandeur," she dismissed his concern easily.
"Don't underestimate him, Bellatrix. Malfoy is not Voldemort."
"I defeated Voldemort," she had to repeat that far too often lately. First her father, now Adrian and she wasn't even going to mention Bruce who didn't think that Voldemort counted for anything.
"It took twenty-eight years to orchestrate his demise. Right now, you're blinded by your own arrogance," he saw now what Cygnus was so concerned about. Bellatrix had been the figurehead, she had been all alone, on the top fighting the Dark Lord, but she had not been the only one fighting him, countless other people, including Adrian himself, had contributed to get her where she was, to give her the chance to end Voldemort. Right now, Bellatrix was acting all alone, blinded by her own success, she didn't think she needed anyone. Adrian was worried. They were losing, after all.
"Adrian..."
"When I took the job as your godfather one of the perks of the position is that I get to tell you when you're acting like a spoiled child. Be careful, Bellatrix," he warned again, though he didn't think he was getting through to her.
Why did everyone think that she was not careful? "If Sirius comes calling again - tell him I'll visit soon." Malfoy was tearing through hers and Dumbledore's supporters, destroying their power bases, he certainly wasn't wasting time. Divided we fall. Well, she will at least have to talk to Sirius.
"By the way, I'm just curious. Any idea how he thought to come looking for you through me? Nobody knows you're my goddaughter, but your Father, and we both swore secrecy on this matter," if Sirius found him, could Malfoy too? The last thing Adrian wanted to be is a hostage for his goddaughter.
Now that wasn't a very hard question. "He knows I spent years in the Muggle world. Lily probably steered him in the right direction. Rosier Limited is not exactly inconspicuous - the rest was just easy guesswork and Lily knows her way around." Bellatrix knew what Adrian meant by his question, but Voldemort had never thought to look for her in Muggle London instead tearing through all the continental wizarding communities and if he hadn't found her in ten years, she doubted that Malfoy would in ten months.
"Lily Potter?"
"Yes," she answered. "Why do you ask?"
"Never mind," he brushed it off. "Come home as soon as you can, alright?"
"Alright," her tone was noncommittal as far as she was concerned - she was home. She ended the call and managed a tight smile for Alfred as she gave him back the phone.
"Problems?" Bruce asked concerned.
"Always," she replied before pulling her lips into a wider smile. She wanted the earlier moment, before the call, to continue a while longer.
"Do you have to go now?" he didn't want her to go, but lately it seemed to matter very little what they wanted and what not.
"I'll go in the morning," she replied snuggling closer to him.
"It'll be night there then," he objected.
"Well, I want to spend this night here with you."
BBRBW
Bruce did not have the entire night for her. In late evening, when the traffic could be accommodated, it was arranged to transfer Harvey Dent from precinct to city prison. Batman had to be there for that ride.
Rachel had left the penthouse early to say her goodbyes to Harvey, to beg him one last time not to do this. Bellatrix said her see-you-later's to Bruce at the Tumbler's garage where she teasingly run her hands over the ripped armour on his chest promising all kinds of things if he returned before the night was over. Afterwards she headed home with Alfred, careful to avoid all the roadblocks in the city.
She expected that if everything went more or less smoothly then there would be a few more salvageable hours of this night, so she relaxed on the couch with a glass of sparkling water and shut out all the thoughts about what trap was Malfoy laying and to what end, as well as some reasonable fear that maybe, maybe Joker was somehow better than Batman. Her peace of mind had a name - dragonhide.
She didn't notice when she fell asleep, but she woke with a start as if from a bad dream when she sensed she wasn't alone. Bruce laughed quietly and took her face in his hands, hushing her. "It's all right, I'm back."
Bellatrix blinked sleep away from her eyes, she hadn't intended to fall asleep, and it was almost embarrassing. She glanced at her hand, she was sure she had fallen asleep with the glass in her hand, but a short look around the room assured her that the glass was safely on the table. "Are you okay?" she patted down his chest checking for injuries.
Bruce hissed when she touched a sore spot. "I may have bruised a rib or two, but I'm fine."
She winced. "I know only a spell for broken bones, and that one isn't very pretty," she apologized with her tone of voice. "I'll bring you something from London," she said pulling up, pushing her face against his, and enjoying the closeness.
"It's all right, I've been much worse."
"Doesn't mean you have to be in pain," she argued quietly. "Come to think, it's ridiculous how little I know of medicine. If you insist on being hurt, I suppose I should learn," before she'd been far more concerned with learning how to hurt people rather than how to put them back together. As necessary as the Healers were, she had always thought Healing to be a soft art and she had never thought of herself as soft.
"Just stay with me here for a moment," he asked pulling her close.
She put her arms around him, hiding his face in the crook of her neck. She cradled the back of his head and drew patterns on his back with the other hand. A rune for protection. He was wearing a soft sweater, his hair was slightly damp from shower, because she could smell the shampoo, he'd been home for a while and he'd let her sleep. "What happened?"
"We got him," he replied.
"You got him," she whispered back.
"Gordon saved me," he recounted how he couldn't just drive Joker down, how he'd chosen to go down instead and how the detective had saved him when he'd lain there - dazed on the asphalt. "He's alive."
Her hand trembled as she tried to refrain from fisting the material on his back. He was all right. He was here. There was nothing a little potion wouldn't cure. "That's good."
Bruce exhaled shakily. "It's over. Joker is in police custody and Gordon's alive. He's alive," he repeated against her skin.
"It's okay," for a change it really was, otherwise she wouldn't have said it. "It's okay," still half asleep she clung to him and let him cling to her. "You're home," she breathed in deep, resting against him as he was resting against her.
And then a phone rang.
BBRBW
When he left again, she couldn't fall back asleep. She didn't even move from the couch, curling on her side as she stared at the phone on the table. Alfred had brought her a hot mug of tea, but she didn't think she could swallow anything down. Joker had asked for Batman. Of course, he had. Harvey Dent was missing. What kind of morons this city employs? Joker had been imprisoned. Everything had been solved; everyone was free to go home, but no... Something went wrong just like that.
She was more apprehensive than worried, but still she felt bad, though it was mostly a physical sensation. Bellatrix wasn't sure to whose credit she felt so under the weather. It was just damn annoying that there was no bloody end in sight no matter what was being done. Maybe I'm coming down with the flu. She wasn't sick often, but it did happen - as soon as she could get a Pepper Up potion that problem would be fixed.
And then her mobile rang. She reached for it quickly as a striking snake. "Bruce?"
"I can't get to them both, I can't make it," he said quickly, his voice rough, moderated - he was wearing his mask. "And the police won't make it either. I need your help."
"Tell me," she demanded sitting up. Them? And only now Bellatrix realized that Rachel went away hours ago and hadn't yet returned.
"He's got Harvey and Rachel," Bruce confirmed her suspicions, the engine of his bike hummed softly in the background. "Rachel's closer, I can get to her. Can you take Harvey?"
As if she would refuse him. "Where is he?"
"250 52nd street," he replied. "I'm not sure what's there or how it looks... Maybe take the Lamborghini and...," he pressed harder down on gas making the engine purr louder speeding past late cars on the street. "Be careful."
"I'll figure it out," she replied promptly, "Trust me." She dropped the call and opened Gotham City map application in her phone typing in the address. The street level photo was grainy and shady, but this was hardly going to be a difficult Apparition. And then she paused.
Bellatrix wasn't into saving-people business. That was something the Potters, Sirius, Dumbledore and their kind did. That was something Bruce did. She tsk-ed as she rose, slipping her feet back into her high-heeled shoes. But Harvey Dent was important - for Bruce's peace of mind at least. She grabbed her coat from the wall closet in the hall and Apparated once the last button was buttoned.
BBRBW
There is no imagining Bellatrix's surprise when instead of Harvey Dent she saw Rachel Dawes. The surprise most definitely left a bitter taste in her mouth. The click-clacks of her heels stopped as she leaned against the doorway, shrouded in shadows and watched as Rachel began shouting, calling for someone, anyone.
Bellatrix was silent. And then Dent's voice trickled through the speakers on the phone. Bellatrix listened to their tearful conversation where Rachel sobbed and Dent tried to stay brave, and she wasn't moved at all. Maybe it was because of the people involved. Maybe because she knew that both of them would live. Maybe because she was just in a bad mood.
She didn't rush forward to save Rachel. After all Rachel was certain that she was the one who was going to be saved anyway - she rather let Rachel make promises that Dent would later cash in. She felt rather like a matchmaker listening to Rachel avow herself to Dent. And then Dent started to scream - Batman had come for him. At this moment she felt that the Joker deserved applause - he couldn't have possibly known that she'd factor in this, so in the end Bruce would have saved somebody he'd chosen to leave for others. She was sure that would have struck him hard if Rachel were to die today.
And that was her cue to move. She placed a silence spell on the phone and another on the bomb effectively freezing the whole thing with two seconds left on the counter. The wires frizzed a bit, but nothing blew. Yet.
"What?" Rachel's wet sobs stopped as she stared at the timer that had stopped.
"Good evening, Rachel," Bellatrix moved out of the shadows.
"You," Rachel spat, struggling against the ropes that tied her to her chair. "I should have known!"
"Oh?" Bellatrix chose an oil drum that was out of Rachel's spitting range and perched on it. "That sounds interesting. Enlighten me." She didn't know for sure how long the spell would hold. That is - she could cast it permanently, but muggle technology didn't always react positively to magic and while the bomb was rather crude mostly wires and.. oil drums, she really didn't know. And in that moment - it felt exciting not to know. Incredibly reckless, but Bruce couldn't monopolize recklessness all on his own, now could he?
"You and the Joker. You're in this together," Rachel hissed angrily, still struggling against her bonds.
"Have you ever led a case in court?" Bellatrix asked mildly curious thinking about what kind of questioning Rachel could lead if she kept jumping to the wrong conclusions. Assuming that Bellatrix was working with Joker just because she gave off the impression that she couldn't care less whether Rachel lived or died was sloppy deduction work, not an abysmal one, but just lazy.
"What?" Rachel was dumbfounded for a moment.
"Yes, exactly," Bella answered.
Rachel's gaze narrowed gathering the implication. "You're not with Joker," she made a new conclusion a moment later.
Bellatrix nodded. Her services were not for hire.
"Then help me to get out of here!" Rachel demanded pulling at her bonds to accentuate her point.
"Yes, well, now that's a whole other thing," Bellatrix surreptitiously cast a cushioning charm on the drum that she was sitting on and got more comfortable. "I thought I was supposed to save Harvey Dent, but it turns out that Joker has a formidable sense of humour, though he'll probably never know exactly the kind of joke he managed to play on us tonight."
"You won't save me?" Rachel's tone was half incredulous, half resigned.
"I didn't say that," truth is - she couldn't not save Rachel, and it wasn't like that because she was one of those people who just wouldn't think otherwise or because she felt like she needed to prove that she was the bigger woman. No, plain and simple, she couldn't leave Rachel because of Bruce. Human lives mattered to Bruce and in the end, it was such a little thing that made him happy, and Bellatrix liked making Bruce happy.
"What are you saying?" Rachel asked tiredly. In the position she was now, she had nothing. She was two seconds from being dead, but at the same time she knew that Batman had saved Harvey and that made her happy, happier than she thought she should be when facing her own death. "I'm not afraid."
"Then you're a fool," Bellatrix replied quickly and the words struck a chord. She wasn't afraid of Malfoy either. Was she a fool as well? She was sitting on an oil drum, unsure whether her spell would hold to keep her safe, procrastinating and all that just so she could talk to Rachel of all people. Yes, I'm definitely a fool tonight.
"The worst that will happen is I'll die and Harvey must already think that I'm dead, so, you see," Rachel almost smiled, "there's nothing you can threaten me with, nothing you can do to me."
"How very naive from you," Bellatrix commented. Death was hardly the worst pain in the world. "There are hundreds of things that I could do to you, but I won't, because you're not my problem anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"You're Dent's problem now," Bella grinned. "You promised yourself to him and while words are just words to you, I do believe you'll find it hard to turn him down when he throws himself at you after this harrowing experience."
"Is that what this is? You're jealous?!" Rachel couldn't express her incredulity enough.
"Jealous would mean that I fear that Bruce would ever leave me for you. It's not going to happen. I'm just keeping my end of the bargain," she paused, let the moment stretch and then looked Rachel dead in the eye, "I swore I'd never let you break his heart again."
"You're insane," Rachel spluttered.
"Maybe," she allowed. "It is said that such things run in the family," Bellatrix said only partly meaning it as a joke.
She jumped off the oil drum and removed the spell from the bomb in the space of the few moments it took to make two steps closer to Rachel. Rachel had the time to open her mouth to scream before Bellatrix grasped her shoulder and they Apparated in the wake of an explosion.
BBRBW
After the building exploded Bruce called Bellatrix. Or rather - he tried calling her just as he was patting down Harvey to extinguish the fire burning him. His Bluetooth earpiece was on automatic redial but all he heard amidst Harveys' screams of grief and pain was the solid, emotionless beep of an outgoing connection.
He gave Harvey away to the paramedics as soon as they arrived - which was about ten minutes later. He watched as they loaded him in the ambulance and drove away. He stood as if frozen - the beeping in his ear almost hypnotising. Why isn't she picking up?
And then his outgoing call was interrupted by an incoming one. He picked up hurriedly, but it was Gordon's voice that came through. "We didn't make it. Dent's dead."
Bruce swallowed hard. "No, he isn't," he grumbled as Batman. "Joker tricked us. He switched them."
Thank God. Gordon couldn't say it, and even in the privacy of his own mind it sounded callous, but Harvey Dent was much more important to Gotham City than his assistant. Harvey Dent was Gotham's white knight. "Is he alright?"
"The paramedics have him. He got burnt."
"But he'll live?" Gordon needed reassurance, he needed to hear that it was going to be okay even if it wouldn't be, and he needed to hear it from Batman.
"He'll live," Bruce confirmed.
Then there was commotion on Gordon's end of the line. With so many explosions going off almost simultaneously, within minutes of one another it was hard to tell which was coming from where and reliable information was only just coming in. "He blew up the precinct."
"What happened?"
"One of the guys we had in the holding cells - he had a bomb. Joker has escaped." It is as it should have been, it always was part of his plan. Gordon hated feeling played. All he had done; all he had been through and all he had put his family through - in the end all he got for that was more death.
"We'll catch him again," Bruce said, his voice growling through the mask. Then he dropped the call. This evening had been an exercise in futility, and he hoped that it was just that. He called Bellatrix again. She didn't pick up. He went straight to the penthouse.
The penthouse was empty. Alfred greeted him in the garage just as he arrived and told him straight up front that Bellatrix wasn't there. Bruce still changed out of his armour as fast as he could. For a few moments he entertained the possibility of going to the Tumbler's garage and checking if she was there, or at Wayne Tower, but he knew that she had less and less reason to be at any of those places and out of the two of them - she was the one who could travel just by imagining it in her head.
It was better to stay put. That didn't mean he liked it. He found her phone on the coffee table in the living room space. That answered the question of why she wasn't picking up. But, where is she? It had been twenty? Thirty? Perhaps as much as forty minutes since explosion and he knew for a fact that she wasn't... couldn't be stuck in traffic - all his cars were in the garage.
Then of course there was the question whether Rachel was with her. And if yes, then, where were they? Bruce paced in front of the windows along the whole floor. He was afraid, he was confused and he sure as hell didn't understand. He tried being calm, especially when he saw how Alfred was watching him, but what could possibly take so long? And if either of them was injured? What if.. What if she didn't make it? What if something went wrong and he had sent her to her death? The suspense was killing him.
And then just as he turned Bellatrix appeared in the middle of the room with Rachel in tow. It took him ten steps to reach her and then he clutched her to his chest as if she was the very air he needed to breathe. "Thank God."
Bellatrix winced; his grip was crushing. "So, I was a bit longer than I thought?"
"An hour," his voice came out somewhat strangled. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps it wasn't. It certainly felt like an eternity. "Where the hell were you?" he asked as he released her.
"Better ask where I was!" Rachel intruded angrily; she had finally gotten over the momentary confusion that the Apparition had left her in. "She put me in a prison cell!"
"It wasn't entirely like that," Bellatrix answered Bruce's questioning gaze.
"She dumped me in a place with no doors and no windows and she left me there for what felt like forever. What if I had run out of air? It was like I escaped one death only to face another!" Rachel dropped in an armchair near Alfred. Finding herself in a dark basement - for the room could hardly be described any other way, had shaken her up more than her previous kidnapping. And then Bellatrix had left, and she'd been there entirely alone.
"Bellatrix..." Bruce started.
"There were some things I had to do, I thought I had the time," she answered vaguely enough. "And you," she whirled to face Rachel, "were never in any danger so stop milking it, your whining is grating on my nerves. It was just a wine cellar."
Bruce's nerves on the other hand were just getting accustomed to the change in the situation. He felt frayed and battered. He stood close to Bellatrix, just because he could, just because she was there. "Don't do that again," he asked quietly.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, "I won't," she promised a moment later. Bellatrix didn't make promises that she knew she would break. But the truth she didn't always comprehend was that – she did not know or foresee everything. She had no idea how soon she would break that promise.
"Where's Harvey?" Rachel asked suddenly.
"He's at the hospital," Bruce answered, keeping his hands Bella's shoulders hugging her close.
"He was hurt?!"
Bruce winced, but before he could answer, Bella gripped his arm, twisting out of his embrace. "Are you hurt?"
Bruce shook his head.
"Mister Dent unfortunately got burned in the accident. He is in a hospital now, in surgery, I believe," Alfred answered instead - laying a comforting hand on Rachel's shoulder.
"I have to see him," Rachel brushed away Alfred's attempt to comfort her as she stood up. "I have to go to him."
"No!" Bruce and Bellatrix spoke almost in unison.
"I have to be with him," Rachel argued, standing straighter.
"You can't help him now, you heard Alfred - he's in surgery now," Bellatrix argued with more patience and understanding than she felt able to display.
"Does he even know I'm okay?" Rachel asked pointedly.
"I don't think so," Bruce replied.
"He doesn't know anything now!" Bellatrix continued. "He's in a surgery. Are you deaf?"
"He'll know I'm there if I'm by his side. He'll feel me," Rachel was sure of that. She had chosen Harvey. Harvey loved her and Bellatrix was right - Rachel couldn't leave him now, not when she had told him she's choosing him over Bruce.
"Ridiculous," Bellatrix muttered. She wasn't going to loudly argue against someone who just wasn't listening to common sense. Bruce reached for her, his hand around her waist to restrain her a bit and to keep her close. They were pulling and pushing at each other in turns – incapable of becoming separated.
"It's too dangerous. You can't go," he explained. "Joker escaped."
"What?" Bellatrix looked up and over her shoulder at him. What?
"There was explosion at the precinct. Many people, officers among them, died and the criminal known as Joker escaped custody," Alfred supplied once again.
"So, you see... We don't know who's working for whom anymore or who we can trust. After tonight - it is safer for you if everybody thinks you're dead until this blows over," Bruce continued.
"No," Rachel shook her head. "No, I can't do that. I have a life! And I won't do this to Harvey."
"You are a target because he is a target. You make him vulnerable," Bruce was loath to say that, but that's how it was. It made him think how Bellatrix was his weakness, though she was far more able to protect herself than Rachel. "It's better for everyone if you stay out of sight until Joker is caught again."
At the first moment Rachel wasn't sure how to counter such a statement. "He needs me," she pleaded finally. "You can't let him think I'm dead. I won't let you!" And then she was struck by another thought. "And you need me too! I'm his assistant, I know all our cases forwards and backwards, and I can help! Joker must be working with the mob; you need my knowledge!"
"You're not listening," Bellatrix ground out through her teeth. "The best thing you can do now is lay low."
"And what are you going to do?" Rachel asked snidely. She hated how Bruce formed a team with Bellatrix against her. She was a part of this! They couldn't just dismiss her. She could help, she wanted to help. There were a million things she had to do besides being with Harvey, she couldn't drop everything and pretend to be dead just because it would be more convenient for them.
"Ladies..." Alfred started.
"What's this got to do with me?" Bellatrix was momentarily stupefied. This was hardly a fight – Rachel was being unreasonable.
"Everything," Rachel answered suddenly, angrily, before turning back to entreat Bruce, "I will not hide. I can't. I must see Harvey. I have to know how he is ..."
"He's alive," Bellatrix repeated patiently, interrupting Rachel's rant.
"I have to be with him. I must let him know that I'm ok. And I can help you two. I can help, Bruce, I really can," her tone changed to pleading for a moment before she changed her tactics becoming aggressive and insistent again. "I won't run and hide. Joker doesn't scare me."
At this point Bellatrix would have remarked that that fact only makes Rachel an idiot, but since she had said that the first time Rachel mentioned something along the lines; Bella didn't think it bore repeating after the fifteenth time.
"Stupefy," Bellatrix finally just drew her wand and stunned the woman. Bruce startled, though he had been expecting something - it hadn't been this. Alfred rushed forward catching Rachel before she hit the ground and Bruce, shaken out of his surprise, moved to help him put Rachel on the couch. Alfred went after water and smelling salts while Bruce sat on the edge of couch besides Rachel and glared up at Bellatrix who hadn't moved an inch and wasn't remorseful in the least.
"She was repeating herself. A lot," the witch explained.
"She will wake up," Bruce said, it wasn't a question; it was part of the problem. Batman was his alter-ego to protect the people he cared about, what good was his mask if his friends kept throwing themselves in the path of danger? Whatever reasons Rachel thought she had - he just couldn't stand aside and watch her become a cannon fodder.
"I can take care of it," Bellatrix mentioned thoughtfully.
Bruce looked up. "She won't like it," he said allowing for the possibility and at the same time partially hoping that Bella didn't mean putting Rachel to sleep permanently.
"I'll take care of her. She'll be safe," Bellatrix assured him, moving closer to them.
"You don't have to do this," he whispered as Bellatrix sat on the table beside him and crossed her ankles. Randomly he realized he had never seen her cross her legs one over the other, only ankles.
"Don't mistake me. If I do this, I'm not doing it for her. I'm doing it for you," she said pointedly. It couldn't be stated enough - she didn't give a damn about Rachel, but she gave a hell of a lot about Bruce.
Bruce nodded. "What do you have in mind?"
Bellatrix grinned unreservedly, "At this point, the less you know the better." Quite unintentionally she put a hand on his knee to keep herself more balanced. The jeans he wore were soft and expensive.
Bruce looked back at his witch, "Which means you know that I won't like it and you don't want to tell me." And still he knew that there was nothing he wouldn't forgive her; he'd already forgiven her for the worst – for leaving.
"Perhaps," she allowed squeezing his knee lightly. "I promise you though, she will not be harmed," it was the best promise that she could make.
It all came down to trust and Bruce trusted Bellatrix with everything, "Fine."
BBRBW
"This is going to give you a headache, but I don't care and I'm short on time," Bellatrix didn't apologize before waking Rachel.
Rachel woke with a start and her movements became all the more panicked once she realized that she's in a straitjacket. Then she noticed Bellatrix. "You!" she spat venomously.
"Obliviate," Bellatrix wasn't going to listen to more of what Rachel had to say. She was quite tired of Rachel's comments already. Most of them were repetitive anyway. "You don't know who you are. You don't know where you're from. You don't remember even your own name. All you know is that feeling deep inside you - like somebody's after you. That you must hide. Blend in. Try to be as unseen as possible, because if they will find you, they will kill you and most of all - you do want to live. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"One day I will come for you...," it was on the very edge of her tongue. And I'll end you. "And when I tell you to - you will remember everything up to this moment, but only when I tell you. Clear?"
"Clear."
Rachel's eyes were glazed for a moment, but then Bellatrix sealed and broke the spell. Rachel blinked as her lack of knowledge sat in, then she noticed Bellatrix and shrunk away from her, furrowing into the jacket that bound her as if it could protect her. "Are you one of them? The ones that want me dead?" Rachel asked.
Bellatrix smiled kindly. "No. But I will come to bring you home once they are gone. Deal?"
"Deal," Rachel whispered as if even breathing too loud would give her position away to those that hunted her thus signing her death sentence.
"Good," Bellatrix was satisfied. She signalled the nurses and they opened door so she could exit. She didn't look back to see Rachel huddling in the corner of the white, padded room as she left the high-class private mental institution in Montreal.
BBRBW
"How did it go?" Bruce greeted her with an open bottle of reasonably chilled Sauvignon Blanc.
"How do you think?" she took the glass he offered and settled beside him on the couch. Outside Gotham was just starting to wake. Red tail of the rising sun was colouring the eastern horizon, it was long past sunrise. Their night was gone.
He winced sympathetically and didn't comment, "You have to go soon?" He also knew what the morning meant. It made him think back to that time all those years ago when he'd thought he'd never see her again, somehow - this felt eerily similar.
"Mhm," she took a sip of the wine and spit it back out. "Ugh!"
"You okay?" he took the glass from her, placed it away, and leaned closer to check her over.
"Yes," she answered confused. Lately wine held no taste for her.
"Coffee might have been better?" he smiled a bit and tried his own glass. "It seems fine. Are you sure you're..."
Bellatrix shook her head. "Wine is perfect, I don't know, I just seem to have lost taste for it," she wouldn't have bought a bad vineyard. She had bought it precisely because she liked the product. But it wasn't the most important issue for now.
"You will come back?" he couldn't refrain from asking.
"Of course," she replied as if the question was ridiculous, but that reminded her of something. She pulled away a bit and burrowed in her coat's pocket for something. She drew out a miniature box and then shook her hand to shake her wand loose; it slid into her palm and she taped the box once and it grew as big as a moderate jewellery box. She pushed it towards Bruce. "Open it," she encouraged.
He pulled the box in his lap and looked first at it - then at Bellatrix questioningly. "What is it?"
She smiled. "The reason why I was late," she explained.
Even more curious he tentatively opened the box and neatly arranged in rows various glass vials with old fashioned cork stoppers popped up with long pieces of parchment attached to their necks. "What is this?" he asked picking out one of the bottles. It was undoubtedly magical.
"It's a Healing kit with specifically assembled potions that I chose for you," she explained. "There was no reason getting a standard box when you're unlikely to ever mistransfigure or splinch yourself while it seemed prudent to stock up on something against cold, bruises, broken bones, cuts and near-death-experiences."
He looked at her, speechless for a moment. Bellatrix licked her bottom lip; she certainly wasn't nervous. "I honestly didn't think that it would take as long as it did, but the Apothecary was ancient, and she moved … Well, she barely moved at all, but since I was there, I wasn't ..."
"You went to London? To get this?" he interrupted her.
"Liverpool, actually," she replied frowning slightly. It's not like she was very familiar with the magical communities on this continent. As a Minister she had dealt with the leaders of this country, but she had never had time for a visit, and with that Daryn Hughes around she didn't want to run into a new problem before she had dealt with all the rest. Liverpool was convenient and for a short visit - seemed safe enough.
"It's amazing," he said and laughed, a bit unexpectedly, but relief and joy to him tasted like laughter. "You're amazing," he leaned sideways for a kiss that would go with the gift.
BBRBW
Bellatrix Apparated lazily into the entrance hall of her father's manor. It was but a moment before a house elf appeared with a soft pop. The house elf appeared in tears, violently pulling her own ears, wailing in distress, "I don't knows what to do, Mistress Trixy! I don't knows! Master is being attacked, what should I do? What do I do? Nobody tells Nerra anything!"
It took her but a second to process what she saw and take into account the burn marks that curses had left on the walls, to notice that the sofa in the hallway was on fire. "Get Sirius," she ordered. The small coffee table lay broken on the floor, pieces of wood mingling with the remains of the vases that her mother had specifically picked when she designed the interior of the hallway. Sometime during her observation, she had already drawn her wand.
The grand staircase lead upstairs. Wide archways connected the hallway to both living room on the left and drawing room on the right leading to different wings of the manor. Oh, why she hadn't asked the elf where her father was?! It was the paintings that pointed her in the right direction. Her mother's image run into a painting of rolling hills, appearing for the first time in years, and warned her to be careful. I'm always careful.
She rushed through the drawing room, through the breakfast lounge where mother's favourite china was and where they always took their breakfast as kids. The porcelain was broken because a curse had struck the case holding it. Thousand little pieces of ceramic were scattered over the furniture and the floor. She didn't pause. She kept opening the next doors and the next. Every door was closed and locked, but not sealed. She rushed through; careless with the magic she pushed forth slamming every next door harder than the previous one. The last thundered as it hit the walls and broke off the hinges.
It was dark in the veranda; the late autumn sun was going down. Glass rained as her father and his assailant exchanged curses. It took a moment to understand why her father was using mostly defensive spells. The light hair of the witch that attacked him glowed like silver in the moonlight. And then the woman turned casting a flesh-eating curse at Bellatrix. Narcissa.
Cygnus attracted Narcissa's attention with a stronger curse than he had used before - bone breaking curse - while Bellatrix rose from the debris where she had dived for cover from the sudden attack. Her father kept retreating while Narcissa attacked in a flurry of furious action casting spell after spell as if she didn't fear exhausting herself.
A cutting curse, a bone breaking curse, a torture spell, a vacuum spell that would suck the air out of its victim's lungs, and then Narcissa turned and cast already in half a turn at her sister, a fire spell, a cutting curse, a bone breaking curse, a torture spell, she turned again, keeping up a rotating shield all the time. She was furious as an autumn storm at sea. She was as deadly as a storm. She was also overextending herself.
Bellatrix weathered the attack behind a powerful shield that shuddered and only collapsed after the bone breaking curse. She dived away again slipping on the broken glass and catching the tail end of a torture spell as she fell. The glass as it cut through her clothes and into her skin hurt more than the tail end of a spell that would build a slow fever and rise to boil her blood from inside without a counter spell. She gasped arching as small, sharp pieces of glass burrowed into her skin. A larger shard was stuck into her forearm, damaging the nerve.
Cygnus was a businessman not a warrior, but his shields held, as he carefully alternated between magical and physical shields throwing pieces of furniture in way of Narcissa's spells, reluctant to return the fire. Bellatrix on the other hand, having received one off-handed hit had had quite enough.
Cygnus saw Bella rising and he guessed her intention, "Stupefy," he shouted, but Bellatrix was faster, "Avada Kedavra!"
The blonde froze mid-turn and dropped bonelessly to the ground. The stunning spell hit Bella's shield. Bellatrix who had managed to get half-way up slumped gratefully back down to the floor. Cygnus stood frozen on the spot.
"Bellatrix!" he couldn't keep the distress from his voice.
"It's not Narcissa," she said grasping the piece of glass stuck in her hand and giving it a rough tug, pulling it out. AAAAaaargh, she bit her bottom lip till it bled. Fresh blood poured forth from her arm as she dropped the shard and grasped the wound to try to stem the flow of blood.
"I know, darling, I know, but...," he called a house elf and demanded healing supplies. He had known that it wasn't his own daughter attacking him, but still - it had been her, her face at least and he couldn't just dismiss it. It had taken him less than a minute to realize that the creature he had let into his house was not his youngest child, but by then it had already been too late.
The fact that his attacker wore his daughter's face, it just stopped him, he couldn't hurt his child even if he knew on an intellectual level that it wasn't his baby girl. Not to mention that to have Narcissa's likeness – whoever this was, had to have the real Narcissa as well.
"Yes," Bellatrix agreed to something, she was losing the thread of the conversation and a fair amount of blood.
"Here," she hadn't noticed when the house elf had reappeared but at that moment her father was pressing a vial to her lips and the potion inside smelled suspiciously like blood supplements.
She drank and tried not to spit it all up. Cygnus cast a spell to heal the hundreds of little cuts from the glass and then he helped her rise before he checked for the correct counter curse to the one she had been hit. Within minutes she was tired, but once again in one piece.
"I told you to be careful!" her mother unexpectedly appeared in a painting right next to the sofa she was resting on.
"I was..." she meant to continue, but the sofa was soft, and the blood potion still hadn't replaced all that she had lost. Her eyes were open, but she felt like drifting off.
"Barging in and getting hit within the first ten seconds is something you call careful?" her mother's nose appeared squashed in the painting as if she had pressed it against invisible glass. Absent-mindedly Bellatrix noted that magical paintings would greatly benefit from a 3D effect.
"What do you want?"
"What do I want? I want to …" her mother spluttered before going off on a rant about irresponsibility, recklessness and just plain bad judgment.
Cygnus moved to the other room to start picking up pieces of Druella's china by himself. It was hard for him to see his wife's portrait when he knew he would never see her living self again. He preferred inanimate objects that reminded him of her rather than paintings. He did listen with half an ear to the lecture that Druella was giving Bellatrix. That painting had been painted when Bellatrix was a trouble making nine-year-old and the mother in the painting would forever be stuck on time when her little girl was nine.
Bellatrix clenched her wand in her palm and tried to refrain from the urge to forcibly shut her mother's painting up. That talking picture felt nothing more like a caricature of who her mother had been. The constant flow of words was almost lulling if she didn't listen to the particulars, though. Instead she stared at her sister's dead face. Their father had put her body on the table - the only unbroken piece of furniture aside from the sofa - and Bellatrix could see her perfectly. It wasn't Narcissa, yet it was eerie. She could understand why her father had hesitated.
"How did you know?" Cygnus asked, standing in the door.
Bellatrix looked up suddenly. "What?"
"How did you know it wasn't our Narcissa?" he couldn't explain how he'd known - it was the way she talked when she entered, the way she moved, the way she seemed as foreign as she had never seemed even when she'd left this house claiming it had never been her home.
"The doors," she replied. "They were locked not sealed. You would have sealed them to prevent anyone else following you and cornering you if you had locked them, so it must have been her. Whoever she is - she didn't seal them, because she couldn't. Narcissa could have done so, she's still keyed into the wards," Bellatrix didn't mention the metamorphmagus who had been captured as Lucius Malfoy. "If she went to the trouble of locking them, she would have sealed them. If she could," her tongue seemed clumsy in her mouth as she realized she was repeating herself.
"And if they had been sealed?" Cygnus asked leaning against the doorframe. It wasn't the what-if that concerned him as much whether Bellatrix had made her decision truly because it was the logical choice or whether she had made it just because she felt like it and it was a convenient and acceptable solution? What was acceptable to her?
"But they weren't," she did not want to be pulled in a pointless discussion that would undoubtedly lead to another conversation about how bad her relationship with Narcissa is.
"What if they had been?" he pressed.
I would have killed her anyway. "She was attacking you," and to Bellatrix that answered everything.
"Bellatrix..."
Bellatrix did not want to pursue a hypothetical, useless conversation and even less she wanted to be pulled in a discussion about Narcissa herself. She knew that their relationship was bad and upon reflection she was reasonably sure she knew why, and it was the last thing she wanted to talk about. To tell the truth, she was angry with Narcissa and it was hard to get over it. She wasn't sure she could do it, to tell the truth. It may be harsh, but Bellatrix had never liked her sister. Therefore, Bellatrix tried to focus on one thing at a time.
She rose to put some physical distance between herself and the conversation and took a few steps around the veranda to take in the devastation. The plants were as good as dead; there were only two pieces of furniture still whole and the glass doors, floor-to-ceiling windows and the glass roof were all in a million pieces at her feet. She needed a plan of action. They needed a plan of action.
She hummed quietly under her breath. "They did attack you so technically not much tweaking is required, all we have to do is let everybody know that they succeeded..," her voice was quiet she was more talking to herself than telling anybody else, spinning a tale that she wanted to present to the world.
"Has this become a solution to your every problem?" Cygnus had moved further into the room to be near Bellatrix. It was hard to look at Narcissa and in background there was still the ranting of his wife's portrait. Bad parent, she called him. He was. The painting was painted when Bellatrix was nine and he'd given her a broom and she'd fallen. Druella had been angry as she sat down for the painting and her words were out of context, but they still fit. She had put this portrait away when it had been finished, but a picture was not required to stay in the frame wherever it was.
"What do you mean, Father?" Bellatrix looked at him curiously.
"There's a situation. You're uncertain about how to deal with it. You decide to fake a death," he did not want to relive the first time he'd heard of her untimely demise. It had been Andromeda who'd called to calm him nearly a day later.
"I'm not faking my death, I'm faking yours," she argued not seeing the problem.
"Semantics," he replied. "I'm concerned, dear," he'd done all he could to teach her, to help her grow up and do it fast, because that was the only way to stay ahead of Voldemort, to help her stay herself. All he'd done he had done for his family to give them a fighting chance, to help them survive and now, nearly thirty years after that visit to Madam Mynatt he still wasn't sure if he had succeeded.
The prophet had told him that his family would die with him. Bellatrix wasn't lost to him, not in the manner the witch had said, but she was still outside his reach of influence. He had raised her to know how to take control and that's exactly what she did. Narcissa was lost to him though he believed her to be healthy and well with his grandson. And Andromeda... By certain laws he shouldn't even be allowed to call her his daughter anymore.
"Don't worry, Father. I know what I'm doing," Bellatrix's tone was measured and reassuring, allowing no room for argument.
"That's what I'm worried about. This is becoming a bad habit of yours."
"This is the best option," she brushed away his concern, drawing out her wand and starting to rearrange the mess in veranda to comply with her imagined battle scenario to show that there had been only two not three combatants.
"One-time people will stop believing it," he pointed out.
"Then I'll apply other methods," she argued carelessly. "Besides there will always be those who'll believe a good death."
"I suppose this is my fault in a sense. I taught you how to do this."
Bellatrix frowned. She supposed her father was referring to how he helped her disappear when she finished Hogwarts. "No, Father," she said softly, affectionately finally turning her full attention to him. "You taught me how to survive."
"Bellatrix!" Sirius cried barging in and skidding to a sudden halt once he saw her and his uncle. "I came as soon as I heard. Are you okay?" she looked like she'd been through a literal bloodbath, only then he remembered about Cygnus, "Lord Black and you? Are you okay?" Seeing them both alive and calm startled him into momentarily forgetting about the Aurors that were supposed to be Apparating in right on his heels.
"I'm fine, thank you for inquiring, Minister," Cygnus replied rather formally. "Though my daughter believes me to be dead."
"What?" Sirius liked to think he didn't blink like an owl, but he liked to believe many other things that equally weren't quite true.
"I think he should be dead. Officially," Bellatrix said finishing rearranging the debris in the veranda.
"Why?" Sirius watched his cousin intently and with concern. He never liked it when she started talking about death.
"Because of Narcissa," Bellatrix glanced rather obviously at the cadaver and Sirius understood the hint a moment later.
"Shit," he cursed as he realized what he was seeing. "Is that... Is that Cissy?"
"No," Bellatrix replied pocketing her wand. "And I don't want it to become her so it's better if Father is dead as far as anyone, but us is concerned. Understood?"
"But..." Sirius frowned not quite understanding how those two things were connected.
"Narcissa won't thank you," Cygnus spoke guessing his daughter's mind.
Bellatrix smiled, lopsidedly, "She just might."
Sirius looked disbelieving, but before he could comment Bellatrix continued, "Even if she won't. She'll live. And Father will live. And that's a lot from where I'm standing."
"Of course, it is," Sirius agreed wholeheartedly. "And the majority of the population will believe whatever we want them to believe, but … Not Malfoy," he paused. "A print in the paper will not convince him and to be honest, he's been a step ahead of us this whole time and with his … that," he pointed at Narcissa, "dead, we don't even have a minion to brainwash to lie to him for us. I just don't see how …"
Bellatrix glanced over her shoulder at her sister's dead body, thinking. A metamorphmagus transformation transforms every cell to the smallest unit to be identical to its target form the same as Polyjuice potion does, but just like it's impossible to use the parts of a Polyjuiced person to create more of the same potion, there was no use from the dead metamorphmagus, because essentially the form was empty. There were no magical properties - the hair couldn't be used to make a Polyjuice and assume the form, the blood couldn't be used to sign contracts - it was essentially a useless, dead body. "You still have all of Narcissa's things, right, Father?" she asked turning to Cygnus.
"Yes," he replied warily.
"What are you planning?" Sirius asked.
"You'll see," Bellatrix answered. "I can trust you to handle this?" she indicated the room and the mess, she didn't like dividing responsibility, but time was pressing and Sirius... Well, she wouldn't trust him with everything, but she felt like she could trust him with something, because if she couldn't then... What the bloody hell the last few years had been for?
"Of course," he agreed readily.
"Good," she smiled. "Thank you," she said before squeezing his shoulder as she passed on her way out.
"You didn't answer," he turned with her, not quite done with this conversation. "What are you planning?"
"You'll see," she winked. She always felt a rush when she had a plan, she was sure would work out.
Sirius chuckled before pausing as he remembered that he hadn't ridden to the rescue alone. He had called for backup before leaving the Ministry. Aurors should be long here by now. "Any of you want to elaborate why my Aurors are not storming this place yet? Because I didn't come alone, I'm sure of that."
There was a time when upon receiving a call for help, he would have dropped everything to run into the situation head-first, but if there was something he'd learned from working with his cousin the last few years, it was that there always should be a backup - whether a plan, army or a trump card up his sleeve, but always some kind of a safety net. He'd lived most of his life with the certainty that he would give his life for his friends, and he still would - in an instant, but he'd realized that putting his life on the table wasn't always necessary and that his life was important too.
"Oh," Bellatrix noted. Right. She had completely forgotten, "The place is warded against unwanted visitors, it's either they're let through the main door or they remain behind them. Nerra called you and let you in, but I forgot to tell her to let the Aurors in too."
"That doesn't seem... legal," Sirius said tentatively glancing outside the window. They were too far in the East Wing, but he could perfectly imagine a group of wizards dressed for battle uselessly battering against the goblin warded door.
"Oh, it perfectly is. I made it so when I became Minister," Bellatrix explained before turning on her heel and leaving back through the path of destruction that she had come in on. "It's in the law about protection of ancient houses and private property."
Sirius made a mental note to carefully examine every notion Bellatrix had introduced to the legislature. He had a bad feeling there were many more loopholes and traps she had put in there than he had noticed in the first place. "So... Should they be sent home, or can they actually do their jobs?" he called after her.
Bellatrix didn't look around. "Just handle it," she waved her hand to accentuate her point as she walked away. It was a sign of trust.