A / N : Rabastan, as promised. Regarding the appraoch I chose with him . . . . it's probably unusual, but hey, there's no canon evidence one way or the other. Let me know what you think, as always!
Rabastan Lestrange
He isn't suffering as much as the others. He knows this. There are horrors – tortures – in their pasts that he has never known, has never allowed himself to know.
The torture that makes Bellatrix scream.
The one that makes Rodolphus silent.
That torture Rabastan has never allowed himself to feel. He is safer that way, or so he always told himself. Never love, and love can never hurt you. The places Rabastan could love would only get him into trouble anyway. People talk, after all.
So he has never allowed himself to love another, and oh how clever he thought himself. Oh, how safe.
But the result is that he is empty.
Empty.
Hollow.
And in the empty cavity of his chest, mocking echoes sound. Places he could have gone, men he could have loved, if he had allowed himself to.
But he didn't.
A life of didn't and couldn't and wouldn't, and he wonders at how a life so filled with nothing – with dreams quickly squashed and longings instantly suppressed – can hurt so much.
He isn't suffering as much as the others. He knows this. But the empty echoes that haunt him, that taunt him . . . they make him wish he was.