Days passed, and the emergency food ration she had kept at the cabin became smaller and smaller. She didn't eat much, and Lucius didn't eat at all –she refused to feed him so if he didn't take something for himself he didn't get to eat-, but nevertheless they became short on food. Worse than the hunger was the boredom though; Bellatrix was bad at being confined; she had read all the books in the cabin at least three times, counted all the cracks in the ceiling (23), all the peas in their last can of peas (897), all the flowers on the ugly wallpaper in the bathroom (153), and virtually every other thing she could count in their small house, but eventually she was out of things to count and therefor out of things to keep her mind occupied. It made her resort to the last thing she had ever expected herself to do: trying to get a reaction out of Lucius.

She called him names, threw water over him, tried to cruciate him, declared him her undying love, drew on his face with a magical pen, braided his hair, tried to startle him from behind, poked him, tickled his feet with a feather… nothing gave even the slightest glimpse of a reaction. After a while her imagination concerning non-life-threatening things she could do to Lucius that wouldn't soil the carpet ran out, and for lack of something better to do she went to hunt in the forest.

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When Bellatrix came back, she was terribly giddy. She had covered herself in blood, the blood of a deer she had killed. She had killed the beast with a simple Avada Kedavra, but she hoped she looked like she had jumped it and cut its throat with her dagger… if that wouldn't coax a reaction from Malfoy she didn't know what would.

"Honeeeey, I'm hooome!"

She threw the door open and sent her most maniac glare at Lucius, expecting to meet his empty silver grey eyes again. Strangely enough… that wasn't the case this time. Lucius had fallen to the side of the couch and looked extremely pitiable. His eyes were half-closed, he trembled, and sweat stood on his brow. It only took Bella a moment to realize he was sick. Great. Maybe she shouldn't have thrown a bucket of water over his head. And when was the last time he ate anything? Right.

"This is just so typical. I go out for just a couple hours, and you manage to get sick. Urgh. If there's a God, I'm pretty sure he hates me." Bella chuckled to herself. "With reason, I'd say…"

Nevertheless, she crouched down next to him and felt his forehead. The man was glowing with fever. She sighed to herself, wondering what she should do. If she left him here, he would probably die, whether it would be of this sudden illness, or of starvation. And no matter whether she liked him or not, she had to find out who had killed Cissy. She sighed again.

"Well… to bed with you."

She levitated Lucius to the bedroom, removed his robes with a simple spell and put him in bed. Then she went to see if there was any kind of fever-reducing potion in the medicine cabinet.

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She wondered what they would say now, if they could see her. Playing nurse to her annoying brother-in-law… The things one does for family! The Dark Lord would most likely have mocked her, Yaxley and Avery too, Nott would have sent her his patented concerned glance (the one that said "I'm not sure if you're crazy or just weird but I'm worried either way"), Rabastan and Rodolphus would have made fun of Lucius for being sick ("real men never get sick") and reminded her to take photos for blackmail purposes, and Cissy… Cissy would have looked at her with that sad, proud look in her eyes. The one that said, "That's my sister". It was an unexpected sting in Bella's chest, thinking about that, so she quickly pushed it away and concentrated on the task at hand, namely feeding Lucius.

"When you're better, I'm so going to get back at you for this."

Lucius didn't respond. Instead of blatantly empty, his eyes were now hazed over with fever. He sometimes moved his lips, as if he wanted to say something, but he never brought forth a sound.

"Take another bite. I mixed the fever reducer in the food, so you better eat all of it."

Bellatrix had prepared the deer meat together with the last canned vegetables, and using a dark torture spell meant to turn muscle tissue into slimy goo she had made it a mash Lucius wouldn't have to chew. Now she fed it spoon by spoon to the man, who diligently swallowed every bite. In a way it was good to have something to do, Bellatrix mused, and it was better than counting things. When Lucius had eaten enough of the mashed meat-and-vegetables, she put the plate away and watched how the man fell asleep under influence of the potion.

"You're the first person that dares to fall asleep while I'm looking at him, you know that? Even Rod didn't dare to do that. May he rest in peace, the idiot."

Despite everything, she remained at Lucius' bedside. She didn't feel like being alone all of a sudden, and even the non-company of Lucius Malfoy was preferable to an empty room.

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She didn't know how it had happened, but suddenly she realized it had. Unconsciously she had taken Lucius' hand, softly rubbing circles over it with her thumb. She suspected it had happened when he had started whimpering in his sleep. Bellatrix almost pulled her hand away again, but then she didn't. She told herself it was just because it gave her something to do, softly rubbing the man's hand. It definitely wasn't because she cared about his comfort, not at all.

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The first two days, the fever was high and Lucius –after not having eaten for quite a while- was too weak to fight the illness properly. He just lay there, softly whimpering and trembling. And Bellatrix held his hand, she wiped his head with a cold rag and handfed him, because "she needed something to keep herself busy anyway, why not use the entertainment provided by nature?"

After a few of Bellatrix' hearty meals of goo-ified deer meat with fever reducer, things started to get better… or worse, depending on how you looked at it. Lucius became physically a little stronger, which resulted in tossing and turning instead of weak trembling during the night. During the day he was his usual, unresponsive, emptily staring self, and Bella found herself practically permanently at the man's bedside, most of the time making one-sided conversation.

"I have seriously no idea why I'm doing this. Talking to you, I mean. For all I can guess they cursed your brains out and I'm talking to a plant. Wouldn't you make for a great houseplant, Lucy?"

She paused, as if she was waiting for a response.

"My thoughts exactly. Actually, conversing with you now is so much more interesting than when you were still, you know, actually talking."

Bellatrix cackled to herself, and then pointed her attention to the man in bed again.

"Sometimes I think you're just sulking. I wouldn't put it past you."

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The first real development happened when one night Bellatrix woke up because someone was screaming. The kind of screaming people did when they were terrified, just an inch away from death, the kind of screaming she loved. This time the first thought wasn't glee however, but an uncomfortable sense of concern. There was only one other person in the cabin, so… She hurried to the bedroom and threw the door open, finding Lucius with his eyes wide open and a terror-stricken expression on his face.

"Please, NO! No more! Don't… DON'T… Please… PLEASE! Not again! No! AAAH!"

It was instinctual, Bella would later say. Pure animal instinct, nothing more, that's how she explained it. She wrapped her arms around the terrified man and held him close, rubbing his back and softly cradling him.

"Ssssh… it's just a dream… it's not real…"

At first he was stiff and tense in her embrace, but then he relaxed against her, the terrified cries turning into soft, desperate sobbing, the fear in his eyes slowly fading into their usual emptiness. Bellatrix continued to cradle him until he was asleep again, then she tucked him properly in again. As soon as she was done she felt like hitting herself.

"I did not just do that."

That, she decided, was an explanation as good as any other. She decided to go with it.

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It was because she disliked being awakened every night by that screaming wimp, she told herself. It was because the ache in her leg, dulled by the numbing charm yet always present, got progressively worse from sleeping on the couch. It was because it was her bed and she was the one who should sleep in it just to prove the point. Any rational explanation for the fact Bellatrix woke up one morning with her arms around Lucius would serve its purpose. Maybe it was just something that happened when you were the only two people stuck in a small space, the need for human contact growing stronger than mutual aversion and dislike.

Bellatrix shunned the idea that she would "need" human contact, let alone human contact with Lucius Malfoy. That didn't stop her from sleeping in the same bed as him every night, and pulling the man closer every time nightmares struck him. It had become something of a habit, just like the handholding and feeding had become a habit. And habit or not, they both slept better through it.

(Author's Notes)

So, Bellatrix is slowly but surely tricked into caring for Lucius by the physical laws of "two human beings stuck in a forest cabin"...

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