A / N : Bellatrix, as requested by Expecting Rain.
Bellatrix and Rodolphus aren't sharing a cell because, well, frankly I never heard of any prison that allowed maximum security prisoners to share a cell, just because they were married. Bellatrix is a hell of lot less sane than I usually write her here, but that's not so unexpected. Let me know what you think of it. Love, hate, not sure, etc. Enjoy!
(Is it a little sadistic that I offer up each of these with the word 'enjoy'? Possibly . . . . )
Bellatrix Lestrange
Bella never suffered a punishment she didn't whole-heartedly deserve.
Well. Maybe one.
Just one.
But every other punishment – every torturing she ever recieved, every fine nuance of agony – she earned them all. With ill-considered actions, with weaknesses she ought to have been able to control, and with folly. It was folly, was it not? To persist in trying to express a truth that cut like glass? To love, when she ought to have been happy merely to serve?
Folly . . . . was it her word? Or his? She couldn't quite recall. But it was a word that spoke of hurt, of foolish infatuations and delusions, of failure . . . . . .
Oh, what did it matter, in the end? The word had probably been his. All the words she clung to now were his.
Little by little, she let everything else go. She had to, because she was dying. She could feel it. So she did what she had to do. She sacrified the last broken pieces of her sanity, to keep herself alive.
It seemed a fair trade.
What had sanity ever done for her, anyway?
The air was cold, so cold . . . . icy cold, corpse-like cold . . . and her heart was freezing too, though it would never be cold enough. Not for him.
Love. Such a cruel and mocking thing, an agony worse than all the torture in the world. They had been so angry, at her torture of the Longbottoms, but really, couldn't they see she'd been merciful? Torture? If they knew how tortured she'd been, they'd laugh at themselves. Laugh and laugh. Because it was so sad it was funny.
It is a weakness, to scream. To cry out in pain at a well-deserved punishment. But wherever her master is, he isn't here. And he can't hear her. Wouldn't he come, if he could hear her? Wouldn't he reward her, for her loyalty, her faith . . . .
Faith . . . . . The word is too close to that other, unspeakable truth, so she screams to drown it out, that never-spoken painful hurting truth.
Bella screams and screams, and claws and hits, until her throat is bloody and her skin is ribboned in red, patterned in purple. Pretty words, ribbons and patterns. They remind her of someone she can't see clearly, someone small and sweet and really far too innocent, with fair hair.
She screams, because pain is something else, something real, and it speaks to her of past hurt, of a life etched in it, in fact, and that reassures her. If it can hurt this much, if she can feel it so sharply . . . . it must have been real.
It was real.
And if it was real, then he was real.
And if he was real . . . .
"He'll come for me." She hugs herself, rocking back and forth, childlike. "He's coming for me."
And then she laughs, because when he comes for her . . . . now that will funny. So funny it hurts.
And oh, how it will hurt . . . .
Alone in her cell, Bellatrix's laughter bounces off the walls, wild, manic laughter. And it chills anyone who hears it to the core.