The Veil
I do not intend to plagiarize either works by Rowling or Tolkien; I am merely using my imagination and applying it to their fantastic worlds. I've just tweaked some things to make the story relevant.
Chapters:14 of many
A/N: It seems as if time was not on my side these last few months. I deeply apologize for the neglect on this story, but know that I have not given up writing it, I just might be writing the chapters extra slowly. Anyway, this one gets kind of gory.
oOo
"Aragorn! We will break upon the docks soon." His dark brows settled themselves over his exotic eyes sternly as he looked afar, "I can already see where they await us."
Bellatrix didn't bother looking, she of course knew by now that Legolas had this thing where he could see abnormally well, far better than her at least, so she knew that she probably wouldn't be able to see anything. She settled back against the railing of the ship, where she had planted herself after her failed attempts at helping tie knots and what-not.
"Good. Do they look as if they suspect our coming?"
"No, but they don't look particularly patient either."
Gimli chuckled a little probably admiring the elf's ability to make a funny, and then came back to stand near her. She looked at him heading her way and smirked.
Like a lost puppy. It seems we can't be parted for more than a few minutes.
Visually, Gimli was the farthest thing from a puppy. He leant against the rail, holding his axe before him with both hands gripping tightly. Nothing like the dwarves she knew guarded her vault at Gringotts, his face was set sternly, and she could only imagine at what was going on in his mind. She hadn't ever been good at empathizing with others.
But she knew it had to be related to the battle looming before them.
Was he scared? He must be.
If he didn't fight his whole world would be destroyed, everyone he cared about enslaved and killed. All tortured to the brink of death and then tortured some more for the hell of it.
She felt foolish for saying it, but she could empathize with him in that way.
Aragorn was in conversation with Legolas on the other side of the ship, and she wondered what it was he cared for and defended.
He had said that the woman he loved was no longer in this world. Perhaps she had died?
Either way, he had to be fighting for something. When they had first met she had be stricken with how much he had looked like her late cousin, but now she could see that he didn't look like him at all. He was… well, a lot more manly. He walked with a confident swagger that Sirius lacked, definitely epitome of a leader. Not like the sidekick that Sirius had been. His skin had been kissed by the sun and he was a lot tanner now than just a few weeks ago.
A few weeks?
It had been a few weeks. Time flew by so quickly here, even though she found the days were filled with less events and she had more spare time on her hands than perhaps she ever possessed.
She didn't know how far away she was from every one she knew, be assumed it was too far to ever see them again, and she found more comfort in that then she thought she would.
The wind pushed her free flowing hair around her, and she spotted her companions through it.
She didn't want to go back anyway.
"Quickly! Get down!"
They all ducked, in what they had previously explained what would be their surprise attack. Showing up fashionably late and then taking them all out.
Personally, the plan was more of her style than they would ever know.
She could feel it again, the pumping of heat under her skin that she always felt before she knew she would be thrown into action. It was eerie how she welcomed it as a lover, letting it sweep across her body in its pumping.
Something she would never grow tired of. And that set off a few bells in the nearly non-existent rational part of her brain.
The ship was slowing, its slight bobbing not affecting her as much as the blood flowing in her ears. Somewhere in her chest her heart could feel it, and with each thump she could feel it coursing through every part of her.
Her vision got fuzzy, and all sounds got knocked down a few octaves.
She could barely hear Aragorn as he warned them.
"Yeah, right behind you." Her lips moved, but she sweared they made no sound.
Suddenly she was on the dock in front of the ship, staring at a really ugly collection of orc faces. She had blacked out again, and even though it was only a few moments, she needed to stop doing that.
Who knows where she would end up the next time she did it.
The three males began to charge, and she followed when her feet found their footing.
"There's plenty for the three of us." Gimli grunted, "May the best dwarf win."
She began going faster, and from her side she drew her wand. It was near searingly hot to the touch, as it usually was when she begun to fight, and it had its own thumping heartbeat.
Her signature cackle crashed upon her opponents, but then was soon over powered by the sounds of the dead as they made themselves known.
She rushed into the fray, the orcs all about her breaking rank to try to escape the deadly warriors.
Curses shot every which way, and to the untrained eye, looked like total chaos until it was observed that every curse was so well aimed it took out an orc from just one hit.
She could have been dancing, the way she moved.
Her companions weren't the only ones who had changed, she had changed so much as well. She had something worth fighting for, even if she couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly. Deep down she knew now she had something worth protecting. One could say she was changed, but perhaps not completely.
From her wand a spark started to form, growing exponentially until it became a towering column of Fiendfyre, and using both hands to control it she sent it in the general direction of the enemy. It was fast, and as many orcs tried to outrun the flames, they were immediately engulfed, leaving the echoes of screams behind as their only evidence of ever existing.
She laughed as she saw that all was left behind after the fire dissipated was a wide area of field scarred black, a giant black marker that gave away her position to the enemy.
She heard it before she saw it.
It was unlike anything she had ever heard before. So high-pitched, so deafening that she could not resist covering her ears and flailing around, looking for what was making it.
High in the sky was the creepy thestral from her vision not too long ago. Long-necked and wide-winged, it screeched again, and this time she didn't cover her ears in sheer defiance. On its back was a dementor, waving a sword and flying straight toward her. Her eyes narrowed.
She remembered this thing. In the vision she had been riding it, and all those she had now grown to care for were enslaved and tortured, while she sat happily, an ugly corpse of a woman. Exactly as she had been for Voldemort- blinded by "duty" and the promise of a reward that she would never get.
Her eardrums popped, she could feel the blood running down the sides of her neck. Everything sounded like she had shoved a load of melted candyfloss in her ears.
And it hurt.
But she ignored it.
She gripped her wand tightly and was off into the sky in a stream of black smoke.
The thestral saw her coming and made a lunge for her with its great toothy mouth. She swirled around, nearly missing a collision with the beast as she flew out of the way. Its broad sails-for-wings had vast holes, and to escape from being eaten she flew straight through the hole, coming up behind the rider.
"Confringo!"
The cloak of the dementor erupted in flames and it began to scream again. This time it was muffled due to her burst eardrums, and she ducked out of the way of the thestral's tail as it came up and around to swat her away.
The rider somehow put out the flames, and turned to her in rage.
"You will not escape, she-maia."
It was not in a language she knew the name of, but she understood the words perfectly as if they were part of a language she had known all her life.
She had not the time to respond, for from somewhere the dementor pulled a whip from beneath his cloak, reeled it around, and sliced her straight in the face.
"Ah!" She screamed. "Bloody fuck!"
She could feel it like fire against her skin. The blood leaked out and ran into her left eye, making her squint. On the right side of her face it leaked into her mouth, and she tasted iron.
Distracted, the dementor took the chance and ran the whip at her again. Narrowingly missing her, she flew off to the front of the long-necked thestral.
"Foolish girl." It hissed at her, waving his sword in her direction. "If you fight me you will die."
"Well it's too late to be thinking like that now, isn't it."
Bellatrix raised her wand, but she made a mistake.
Pain. Pure pain.
She raised her wand arm to defend herself but nothing happened.
Her arm, her right arm was gone.
Her wand. Her hand. Her forearm. Gone.
There was only a few inches of forearm left before the elbow and the rest of the arm met with the shoulder that still remained.
Bellatrix screamed, screamed so loud she thought she saw even the Dementor flinch.
"Sauron will win you."
He spoke and as the breath of his words met her the black smoke around her disappeared and in a matter of seconds the dementor and the thestral flew off, and she was falling for the second time since she came to this world.
She grabbed her arm and tried to put pressure on the stub, but it was no use. Blood spurted out of it at an alarming rate and made it too slippery to grab. The wind around her stole her breath away, and before she could feel the last sensation of hitting the ground before she died, she lost consciousness looking at a sea of green.
ooo
"Anything yet, laddie?"
Legolas looked around him at all the carnage. Amongst all the orcs and uruk-hai there was no sign of their female counterpart. The earth was smoking, heated by the battle that had ended mere hours ago. The smell of the rotting and burning corpses stung their nostrils with their stench. He had been keeping an eye on her, but had lost track when he got involved to deeply with battle.
"Not just yet Gimli."
It was as if she disappeared completely. He scoured the terrain for her one more time, searching for her black clothing or hair, or her eggshell white skin—
"Legolas!"
He turned and ran to Gimli who was some yards from him.
"Gimli?"
"Look." He pointed toward an ominous point on the field before them.
There, nearly covered completely by dirt and the rather large body of an orc, was the delicate hand of the woman they were searching for.
The fingers held tightly to the wooden stick she called her "wand," and was the only part of her that poked out from under the corpse.
"Hurry Gimli, help me push aside the uruk and get her—"
But there was no her.
Gimli fell back onto his backside, staring in shock at what was before him.
What they should have found was Bellatrix attached to the arm, possibly suffocated under the heavy body. What they did not expect was to not find her body at all.
It was only her arm that they found, cut cleanly off at the forearm. Blood pooled on the ground below it, the light skin so lifeless and see-through it looked to be made of candle wax.
"Bellatrix?" Gimli said, nearing the arm on the ground. "What do we do?" He asked Legolas, looking up at him with total question.
Legolas took in the arm once more. He felt and overwhelming sadness as he kneeled down next to it.
"We will have to keep searching." He said retrieving a spare bit of cloth from his pack.
The arm was limp when he picked it up to wrap it in the cloth, and it dropped the stick on the ground. He wrapped the arm effectively, and Gimli picked up the wand and placed it on his side where a smaller axe would have been placed in its holder. He held his hands there a few moments, and after muttering a small dwarvish prayer, met Legolas' eyes.
"There is still a small chance." Legolas said, wanting to believe his own words so desperately.
"We can only hope."
"If it is the will of the Valar."
They both turned from the site, and went off to look for her.
Gimli was having trouble. He sight was obstructed by something.
His eyes, they were watery.
When he first met Bellatrix, the thought would have never crossed his mind that he would come to care for her, let alone search for her body desperately. He knew she had to be dead, there was no chance that that woman could lose a limb and survive, no matter how remarkably strong and resilient, and magical she was. Legolas and he would find her body, and give her a proper burial, perhaps even in the dwarven fashion, if the elf would allow it. A great tomb of stone, decorated with the legendary architecture and jewels of the dwarves. He had felt her strong spirit could have belonged to any of the rare dwarvish women, and she could have just been born in the wrong body. It was only now did he realize that he saw her as a sister, a young and confused sister, whom he'd try to help guide with words of wisdom. At times he thought her a lost cause, but then he would see that spirit of hers flourish again, and his beliefs would be reinstated.
And now he was looking for a body, hers nonetheless.
Legolas searched even harder for her this time. He didn't want to give up. If she was dead the least she deserved was he body to be found and given a proper burial. At his side the arm was hidden deep into his pack.
He didn't know why he had taken it with him, other than proof of what they had found. He did not feel that any part of her deserved to be littered amongst the corpses of the enemy.
He knew that all odds pointed to her certain state of death if they found her, and with each passing minute he knew that if there was even the slightest chance of her having life within her still, the light of it would grow dimmer as the time passed.
He braced himself to find a woman he had learned to deeply care for dead in the wreckage, and said his own small prayer for her.
He had never gotten to tell her how much he appreciated her company, in all its many forms.
They came upon a large area of completely charred earth, and walked around its perimeter. It was an odd piece of land. There were no burnt corpses to be taken account of within the area, and it was almost as if it were made by—
And there she was.
He spotted her first, and yelling for Gimli, ran to her.
The first thing he saw was the blood. She was completely drenched in it.
Her arm was missing, and what was left of it was miserably angled to her person that it would have been broken had the cut off end been attached. Her hair was everywhere around her, but it was sticking peculiarly to the blood on her face. There, they found a cut stretching from the bottom of the right side to the top of the left, and had cascaded down her face like a waterfall. She was covered in dirt, and there was no telling what else could have been broken or missing on her.
Legolas reached out and placed his hand on the groove above her collar bone, feeling for any trace of a pulse.
"Is she…?" Gimli whispered.
Legolas paused, feeling for any sort of pulse. If it was weak, he would wait. But he didn't feel anything.
"There is no pulse Gimli." He said.
Gimli feel to his knees and placed his large hand on her chest. He began to wail, and his shaking caused his tears to fall from his eyes onto her body.
But he did feel something.
"Gimli." Legolas said in confusion.
Gimli looked up, alarmed by Legolas' tone.
"Gimli. Her body is dead, but I feel as if her spirit still remains."
Gimli looked at him in disbelief, "How could this be?"
"Hurry, we must get her to Gandalf!"
ooo
She couldn't see anything.
It was far too bright and she couldn't open her eyes.
She stretched out her arms around her, feeling for any sort of structure. But there was nothing.
"Bellatrix."
Someone was calling her name.
She'd learned by now that people liked to call her name in different tongues.
"Who's there?" She called out.
"Open your eyes."
She tried again but closed them quickly.
"Who are you?"
"Bellatrix. Open your eyes."
This time she opened them fully, and even though she could not see for a moment and it pained her, she kept them open.
There, standing before her were two figures. Both were dressed in long flowing robes of the brightest whites and it was almost as if she was looking upon the brilliance of every star in the universe combined. She could not see their faces, for they were too magnificently illuminated. All she could make out were long locks of flaxen hair on one figure, and hair of a darker color on the other.
"Bellatrix."
It came from the flaxen-haired one. A voice, too akin to the twinkling sound of bells to be described as anything else floated towards her.
"Who are you?" She asked again.
The twinkling voice laughed at her.
"Bellatrix. Come here."
This time, it was the other figures voice. This one was more like the sounds of a cool running river.
She was hesitant to approach but did anyway. Her footsteps were light, and as she got closer the twinkling voice held out an arm to her.
She meant to raise her right arm, but found that she couldn't. She looked to her side, and was instantly reminded. A frown made its way to her face, and she grabbed the stubby arm with her left hand.
The twinkling laughter sounded again, and she looked up at the person distracted from what she was missing.
"Do not be troubled. Come, reach for me."
She reached out with her left hand, but the figure laughed again, this time the river laughed with her.
"Use the other."
Bellatrix furrowed her brows together, but looked down at her arm.
It was there. Her arm! It was back.
She flexed her wrist in front of her face, and noticed her hand.
It was fleshier-looking. Her hands, they were… younger? They were devoid of scars, and her nails were no longer yellowed and broken.
She looked up at the figures, and now she could make out blinding smiles.
The twinkling one still had its arm out for her to take, and she grabbed it lightly.
It felt—it felt as if she wasn't touching anything, only entered her hand into cooler air.
The river chuckled, "You still have a long way yet, young one."
Even so close to them she could not see anything other than the faint color of their long hair and the slight outline of their lips.
"Who are you?" This time it came out delicately, lower than a whisper.
They both laughed once more.
"More important to ask," the river said, "who are you?"
She felt herself being pulled toward the yellow-haired figure. It wrapped its arms around her, and pulled her in for a hug.
"You have been brave. And fought admirably. You have earned this gift."
"Gift? What—"
But they became too bright, and the light of every star shone suddenly, causing her to close her eyes again.
ooo
It was white, she was seeing white again, but this time it was different from before.
She was in a tent, a rather small one from what she could gather, lying in a cot. Her head was propped up onto a pillow, and she was dressed in an odd gown of some sort, white as well. She could hear bustling sound of people outside of the tent, and made the conclusion that she was inside the city that they had fought to defend earlier.
She thought back to her dream. Who had those people been? Never had she before seen people so brilliant before, but she could remember what they had looked like. Only the sound of their voices and laughter.
She made to sit up, and moaned loudly when her joints cracked, loosening her body and apparently attracting the attention from someone outside.
The flaps to the tent were moved aside, and Gandalf entered the tent.
He came to the bedside, and looked at her with a smile.
"Bellatrix Black." He said, "My, have you changed."
Thinking he was talking about her actions she scowled.
"Well wouldn't you know?" She said, her voice oozing with sarcasm.
"It doesn't suit you now, that attitude of yours. Not when you look like that."
She remembered her severed arm.
Using her left she reached over herself to grab it, and looking down, she saw that it was there. It was there! Her arm hadn't been cut off!
"My arm, it's not gone—"
And that's when she saw the scar. Clean and straight as a razors edge right across her arm a few inches below her elbow.
"The Vala must be in your favor." He said to her, placing his hand on her knee. "When Legolas and Gimli brought you from the battle field, we all thought you dead."
"Dead?" She breathed out.
"Like I said my dear, you must have someone in your favor." He went to a stand on the side of the tent, and brought back a large bowl filled with water.
"The Valar?" She thought back to the figures she had seen in her dream.
She had died?
"Look."
He handed her the bowl and she looked inside at her reflection.
She had not expected to see what she did.
It was her, but her as she had remembered herself twenty-five plus years in the past.
Her hair was in near perfect ringlets of onyx black, her eyes a perfect color to match. She had thick eyelashes, and her nose was no longer broken and crooked and neither were her teeth. Her skin was free of blemishes, and her lips were a soft pink. There was something else though, a thin scar, almost unnoticeable. It was a shade lighter than her already light skin, and ran diagonally across her face.
From the whip.
It didn't nothing to change her happiness though. If anything it was a gift.
She was the beautiful Bellatrix; the Bellatrix Black before Voldemort.
oOo
Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah! And Happy New Year! Thank you to all those who stuck with this story for these past few months and favorited, reviewed, read, watched, and supported me and this fic! It's not over, and I promise I'll make time to write more. Thank You!