"Bellatrix, I honestly wasn't certain we were all going to make it out of there!" exclaimed Rodolphus, yanking off his mask as he and Bellatrix dashed up the staircase inside their home. Bellatrix was flush with the thrill of having killed two members of the Order of the Phoenix tonight - Lilac Whitlock and Elspeth Auger.

"D'you know who I was duelling?" Rodolphus huffed excitedly as he and Bellatrix stripped off their battle attire in their bedroom, and Bellatrix shook her curls. She glanced at Rodolphus as she tucked her mask away onto its shelf in her wardrobe. He cocked up an eyebrow at her. "Your cousin Sirius! Little bugger came out of nowhere. He and that bloody Gryffindor mate of his, James Potter, and that Mudblood, Lily. Rabastan and I had the three of them. But Sirius is all show, whipping his wand about like a clown and shouting for his friends like it's all a great game."

"The Dark Lord wants those three dead," Bellatrix snarled. "Well. He wants all of his enemies dead, of course, but those three. Hmph. Sirius annoys him endlessly, and the Potter boy and his Mudblood girl have defied him repeatedly. They must fall. I wish you'd taken them out, Dolph."

"Well, we did our best," Rodolphus said quite defensively, pulling on pyjamas. "Rabastan just barely dodged a Stunning Spell before the Dark Lord ordered us all home. Next time, we'll get them, Bellatrix."

"Right," Bellatrix mumbled, thinking of her wicked little cousin and his treacherous Gryffindor friends. Then she thought of her master on the battlefield, scarred and aged, so deeply affected by years of fighting this war. She thought back to how handsome he'd been years earlier when she'd met him. He was older now, chipped and worn by over a decade of fighting, of scrambling for power.

"Bellatrix?" Rodolphus came up behind her and threaded his arms around Bellatrix's waist. He kissed at her cheek, and Bellatrix shivered. She shut her eyes. For years, her husband had touched and groped at her, had been physical with her in their marriage bed, and for years, Bellatrix had wished against logic and reason that it had been Lord Voldemort instead. Bellatrix just nodded silently, and Rodolphus murmured into her ear, "Come. You know I'm always hot-blooded after a good battle. Come with me."

She let him seize her hand and take her toward the bed.

Bellatrix gasped and sat straight up, panting and sweaty. She trembled and blinked as she tried to calibrate where she was. Her eyes seared like fire and her stomach ached. She was dizzy and vaguely nauseated, and she touched at her forehead as she tried to make sense of her awful dream.

"Mmm," said the low voice from beside her, "lie back down, Bella; it isn't morning yet, and you wore me out last night, hmm?"

"My Lord?" Bellatrix squeaked. She glanced down at him. They'd been married a week now, and they'd spent every night frantically grasping at one another's naked forms, Bellatrix swaying atop Voldemort or him driving into her. He'd watched her bathe and she'd watched him shave. They'd taken breakfast together and dined together. She'd read books outside on the forested lawn here whilst Voldemort had meetings at Malfoy Manor, and when he'd come home, he'd wrapped her up in long kisses and whispered to her that he loved her. It had been a blissful week. Now he was sleepy beside her, and his fingers curled around her bare thigh as he hummed again,

"Come here, Bella,"

She slowly lay down, her heart absolutely pounding in her chest, and she felt her eyes round as saucers as she turned to face her master and husband. She could see him clearly now, much older as he'd been in her dream. She could see him damaged by warfare. She cupped his jaw in her hand and whispered, her voice shaking,

"Master, I think I… I think I saw something, and I'm terrified it was real."

His eyes blinked open then, and he frowned deeply at her. He pushed himself up a bit onto his elbow and gave Bellatrix a very serious look. He sniffed just a bit and stroked at the scruff that would need a shave in a matter of a scant few hours.

"What did you see, Bella?"

She hesitated, for just a moment, and then she whispered helplessly, "Perhaps you ought to just look."

He nodded. "Legilimens."

She gasped at the relatively violent shake in her head as he invaded, the feel of him crashing through her skull and invading her mind. He found the dream at once, for her consciousness shoved it forward urgently as though it were a message just for him. It played inside her head for him like a Muggle film. He saw everything - the way she and Rodolphus stripped off their clothes in their bedroom and discussed the battle they'd fought, the way they talked about Sirius Black and James Potter and the Mudblood Lily. He saw Bellatrix's thoughts, pining and even sensual and longing, toward the older and damaged Lord Voldemort. He saw all of it, and then he withdrew from Bellatrix's mind with a careful pull that made her ears rush and left her dizzier than ever. She grasped at the pillow and felt a tear escape her eye, and she asked softly,

"Was it real, Master? Any of it?"

He just stared. At first, he said nothing at all. Then, at long last, he shrugged a little and admitted, "I was never in your bedroom; I don't know what you and Rodolphus talked about."

Bellatrix's blood suddenly went frigidly cold in her veins. Her heart seemed to stop for a few beats, and then it hammered as she slowly sat up. She quivered as she met Voldemort's eyes, and as he sat up with her, she realised she'd fallen asleep naked the night before. He'd fucked her vigorously from behind until she'd been keening into a pillow, until she'd come hard, and they'd fallen asleep tangled like vines. Now she felt very silly, utterly devoid of clothing as it sank in that something was very, very wrong. She pulled the blankets up around herself a bit, and, as if he'd sensed her discomfort, Voldemort reached for his wand off of the bedside table and aimed it at the wardrobe.

"Accio dressing gown."

The wardrobe doors opened, and Voldemort's black quilted velvet dressing gown came soaring across the bedroom. Bellatrix scowled but murmured quiet thanks as she pulled the dressing gown on and bound it around her little waist. Voldemort set his wand down on the blankets beside him and sighed.

"My Lord," Bellatrix said carefully, "What do you mean, you were never in my bedroom, so you don't know what I talked about with Rodolphus? Why would I have had a bedroom with Rodolphus?"

Voldemort seemed to consider something for a very long moment. He shut his eyes and looked like he'd be sick. Finally he whispered,

"Because, Bellatrix, you were married to him for thirteen years."

"I was…" Bellatrix felt like she'd faint. Confusion washed over her like a wave. She shook her head wildly. "Thirteen years. You said you'd gone untouched for thirteen years, that you'd been alone for thirteen years. When you and I were in my bedroom in London and you kissed me, you said it felt like it had been -"

"Thirteen years." Voldemort nodded. He raised his eyes to her and seemed more serious than she'd ever seen him. His throat bobbed. He carefully reached for her hand, and as he stroked her fingers, he said, quite anxiously, "Do you know, Bellatrix, what the last thing I did with you was? Hm? We plotted an attack, you and I, over several glasses of rich red Spanish Rioja wine. You were thirty years old. You were catastrophically beautiful. And you had been my most able soldier, and the wife of Rodolphus Lestrange, for nearly thirteen years."

Bellatrix started to pull her hand from him, but he seemed to panic a little, and she let him hold onto her. She felt herself shaking so bad she wondered for a moment if she were seizing just a bit. But she managed, somehow, to choke out,

"Do you mean to tell me that all of this… already happened? Somewhere else? That there is a future that has already come to pass? You've lived it? What, you… you time traveled? Is that it?"

"Erm… yes. Actually, that is precisely it. Only, I've no idea how. It was entirely accidental." Voldemort was visibly trembling now, too, and his hand was unsteady as it held Bellatrix's. He chomped his lip and then explained, "That dream you had of me killing James and Lily Potter, of the Killing Curse rebounding when I attempted to eliminate their son Harry… that was real, Bella. In fact, you dreamed it in real time. When the Killing Curse rebounded, I was sent into a great black void for a while, and I awakened in Malfoy Manor, in the same suite where I'd lived in the early years of my ascent. I quickly ascertained I'd traveled back thirteen years in time. And that day I… I met you. I had luncheon with you and your father. We ate goose."

"Oh." Bellatrix felt tears streaming down her cheeks. She shook her head. "I didn't know. I had no idea. You mean that I… you know me. You've known me? You knew me as I grew older?"

"I loved you," Voldemort said quietly. He reached with great caution then, threading his fingers into Bellatrix's hair and leaning forward until his forehead touched hers. "You don't understand. For thirteen years, you were my most loyal soldier, my most ferocious fighter, and you did remarkable work for me. You served me better than any of the others. But you were Rodolphus' wife. And I loved you all the while. When I awakened here and I thought… perhaps I might at last be able to tell her, to touch her…"

"What, in all those years you knew me, you never made me yours, Master?" Bellatrix gasped in wonder, and he shook his head, murmuring,

"I was a coward. It was an aching regret, Bella, the way I denied myself -"

"Both of us," she interrupted in a whisper, and he seemed surprised until she pointed out,

"In my dream, Rodolphus was touching me, but I didn't want him, My Lord. I wanted you. And we were discussing Sirius on the battlefield. I had to have been thirty, or close to it. I had probably craved you for ages by then. You wanted me, and I wanted you. You'd denied both of us. But it doesn't matter, does it? You're here now. I'm yours now. You can have me now."

"Bella." He seemed overwhelmed by her response, and suddenly he'd swallowed her up in a kiss. She felt his lips on hers, felt his tongue creep into her mouth, and abruptly she wanted more. Her hands searched his bare chest and then grappled at his shoulders as if she were afraid to lose him. She panicked, suddenly, fearful he was going to lurch away from her through time and space back to the era from whence he'd come, back to the future where she was thirty and drinking wine with him and married to Rodolphus Lestrange. She made a helpless noise into his mouth and sobbed a little, and when he pulled his mouth from hers, he said breathlessly,

"Bella, I didn't tell you because I didn't understand what had happened. I still don't understand. And I didn't want to ruin anything, you realise. It was so painful for me, all those many years, to see you with him, to watch you be his wife, and to never once drum up the courage to tell you… battle after battle, you were beautiful in the light of your Curses. You were intelligent and cruel and wondrous, and I wanted you so keenly that it physically wounded me not to tell you. I wanted nothing more in all the world than to kiss you."

"Then kiss me, Master," Bellatrix mumbled, "for you have come to me, through all these years, and you have made me your wife. Don't you suppose there must be a good reason for that?"

"Bellatrix." He planted a few soft kisses on her lips and then said quietly onto her mouth, "I was on the verge of victory the night I went to kill Harry Potter. You must understand, Bella… I was attempting to fulfil a Prophecy. To eliminate the last real tatters of violent opposition to my ascent into glory. But then the Killing Curse backfired. I thought… perhaps I'd been given a second chance. The opportunity not to make the same mistakes, to win battles I'd lost, to eliminate enemies sooner. I've already killed James Potter and Lily Evans. I did it before I married you."

Bellatrix's chest quivered. She nodded and kissed him, stroking at his whiskered jaw and seeking a deeper kiss from him. He obliged her for a moment and then pulled back, meeting her eyes as he told her,

"I must say, Bella, that you are… you seem less shocked than I'd expected, somehow."

Bellatrix huffed a breath. She shut her eyes and felt them burn badly again. She was shaking a bit less now, now that he'd explained things. He was right. She was not, perhaps, as frenzied with disbelief as one might expect her to be. She told him,

"You called me Bella, over and over again, when we scarcely knew one another. You told me all about the atrocities you knew I could commit, the ways you knew I could serve you, as if you knew me very well indeed. You spoke repeatedly about an empty period of thirteen years in a way that made no sense at all, for I knew you'd been on the Continent. You seemed to harbour odd feelings toward Rodolphus, a strange bitterness about his relationship with me. And then there was the dream, the dream I had the night before our first luncheon, where I saw your older face and sensed you harmed by a rebounded Killing Curse. I couldn't possibly have put it all together, Master, but my heart told me that something was very… off."

She stroked at his wrist with her fingertips, and his dark eyes bored into hers as he said in a low murmur, "And yet you married me."

"Because I love you so ferociously," she whispered, "and because I intend on committing atrocities for you. Master."

He looked overwhelmed again. He glanced toward the window, toward the dark night sky, and he pursed his lips. He said then, "There was a Danish witch I met. Well. I want to be honest with you. I was with her, for several months, over a winter in Denmark. Her name was Gry Alba, and she was a practitioner of a long-buried Norse shamanism, seiðr. One day, she told me I would meet a witch, and then meet her again. She would be my weapon and my consort, Gry Alba said. I did not understand then what it all meant, that she meant you, that she meant I'd know you in one time and then know you again. I understand now."

"My Lord," Bellatrix said eagerly, for a wash of urgent panic had come over her. She seized Voldemort's hands almost roughly and waited until he met her gaze again. She leaned forward and hissed, "We have to kill them all. All of them. Every last one who was your enemy in the life you lived who gave you trouble. My cousin Sirius! He was apparently fighting against you on a battlefield. He was at our wedding! Why didn't you kill him?"

Voldemort scoffed softly. "He's a boy right now. He's, what, eight? Nine? I'll have plenty of time to -"

"Please, My Lord, once the Trace is off me, let me kill him for you," Bellatrix pleaded. "We must get rid of everyone who poses a threat. You must be victorious. Every way that things went wrong in the life you lived… we mustn't let that happen! You mustn't be allowed to fail. Who else, who else? I dreamed I killed two people that night. Lilac Whitlock and Elspeth Auger. I'll take them out, too."

Voldemort smirked. He petted at Bellatrix's cheeks with his knuckles and nodded. "There she is. There's my beautifully vicious little lieutenant, out for blood."

"Who else, Master?" Bellatrix pleaded, her eyes nearly bugging out of her skull. "Who else was in your way? We'll kill all of them, you and I, won't we?"

He was calm then as he kept stroking her face. He tipped his head to the side and informed her, "Albus Dumbledore wanted nothing more in all the world than my destruction. By 1972, he had created a formal but underground organisation, the Order of the Phoenix, that rivalled my own Death Eaters in force and ability. He publicly called for my personal downfall, and whenever he and I would meet wand to wand, we'd fight bitterly and he would always manage to escape. I do wish… I very much wish I'd managed to take him out before he'd realised just what a monumental threat I was. Before he'd managed to compile a resistance against me. A clandestine assassination or something. I wish I'd been able to eliminate Dumbledore very early on, so that my own path to success had been more unencumbered by him. If you want to know who was in the way… Albus Dumbledore was profoundly in the way, Bellatrix. He was more in the way than anyone else."

She nodded. She planted her hands on Voldemort's bare chest and whispered, "We'll kill him as quickly as possible, then, Master. Because we must not permit him to block your path, hm?"

He gently covered Bellatrix's hands, and then he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed her knuckles. He sighed and said carefully,

"There were others. Your, erm… your sister."

Bellatrix scowled very deeply, her hand twitching against Voldemort's lips.

"What did Cissy do?"

He choked a little laugh and shook his head. "No. Narcissa was a good little witch; she went on to marry Lucius. When I saw them last, they had a boy. Draco. White-haired creature just like his parents and grandparents. It's Andromeda. She became a Blood Traitor. She married a Mudblood. Ted Tonks. The two of them joined up with Dumbledore. Of course they were disowned by your family, but more importantly than that, they actively fought against us. More than once, you faced her husband in combat. He escaped you twice that I remember. They had a daughter, rumoured to be a little Metamorphagus. Nymphadora, born in 1973. It, erm… I have many memories of you sitting in meetings declaring how you meant to kill the lot of them. Andromeda and her Mudblood husband and their little girl. You were angry."

Bellatrix's mouth had fallen open, and she shook with rage. She started to pull her hand away from Voldemort, but he gripped her fingers and warned her,

"You must not let on, not to anyone, that you've got any idea what's happened to me, Bellatrix. I am giving you my permission to eliminate Andromeda before she has a chance to betray the House of Black. I promise you that once you are seventeen, we will carefully orchestrate a plan for Andromeda to go missing. But there are ways to make this sort of thing slick and elegant, and there are ways for it to become a colossal mess. You were, in my memory, profoundly gifted with targeted assassinations. I won't allow you to be messy out of misguided passion. Hm?"

"Yes, Master," Bellatrix whispered. She bowed her head. After a long moment, she heard herself whisper, "I didn't want him to touch me. Rodolphus."

Voldemort was quiet, until at last he said, "I wouldn't really know. You two always seemed to like one another well enough."

"I don't think… it didn't seem like I hated him." Bellatrix raised her eyes. She shrugged. "But, then, here in my own life, I didn't hate him, either. It's always been, with Dolph… he'd have been fine, you know? We would have been fine. But I could tell in that dream that I was not in love with him. When he was touching me, I was wishing it was my master."

Voldemort looked helpless. "Well, if I'd have had any idea that any of it was mutual… I would have… I didn't know. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to tell you how pretty you were. The last few years, I desperately wanted to tell you that I loved you."

Bellatrix smiled just a little bit, her stomach twisting oddly. She snaked her arms around Voldemort's shoulders and shifted until her body was almost against his. He grunted softly, and she murmured,

"Tell me a story, My Lord. Tell me about a time you wanted to tell me you loved me."

"Don't do this to me," he pleaded. "It was difficult enough then."

"Please," she whispered. She brushed her lips over his and pulled her body up to his. His hands moved to untie his dressing gown, to push it away from her naked body, and she shivered a little as his hands began to paw at her chest. He squeezed a small breast and told her,

"It was 1978. It was your twenty-seventh birthday party. You weren't expecting me. You and Rodolphus and Rabastan and a few others had been discussing the party at our most recent meeting. Ungh."

Bellatrix landed on her back then as he shoved her rather roughly down and pinned her wrists onto the sheets. He smashed her mouth with a kiss for a long moment and hovered over her, seeming very aroused all of a sudden. He wasn't making any moves to enter her body; he was just looming over her as he broke the kiss and continued,

"The party was to be held at Lestrange House outside King's Lynn, you were all saying. There was to be raucous dancing and loads of drinking. I scolded you all to be careful. We were at war. It was dangerous for my Death Eaters to gather and wind up vulnerable. You all promised to be cautious. Well, I showed up to the party. None of you were expecting me. You were all horribly drunk when I came walking into the room to the blaring sound of The Doxies' latest hit."

"The Doxies," Bellatrix murmured against his mouth, thinking of the way he'd recognised the song she'd had playing in her room in London when he'd come over. He nodded and laughed a little.

"Always your favourite. Anyway. You were staggeringly, blisteringly drunk; they'd all let you down firewhisky for hours. And you had on a microscopically short skirt; it was a veritable scandal. Everyone was shocked I was there. You made a fool of yourself, practically falling into my arms to thank me for coming."

"I need you inside of me right now," Bellatrix hummed desperately, feeling warm and wet and needy. She squirmed on the bed, arching her back a little until her chest met Voldemort's. He groaned quietly and used his knee to push Bellatrix's legs apart more. She hooked them up and around his hips, and when he slid into her, she moaned wantonly and held fast to his head, breathing deeply for a long while as he pumped his hips and thrust into her. After awhile, his lips were beside his ear, and he was breathless as he told her,

"It was incredibly loud at the party, and I felt odd being there. I didn't stay long. I wanted to give you my gift in private, so I took you out into the corridor."

"Gift," Bellatrix whispered, and Voldemort was quiet except for his breath until at last he admitted,

"I'd made you a necklace, a pendant, smaller than the one I gave you for our wedding, though with a similar meaning. It was a star, meant to represent Bellatrix. And I told you it was for my most able soldier, that you'd earned it through combat and torture and service. I thanked you for your loyalty and told you that I rewarded my best operatives. You cried. You had tears streaming down your… ungh, Bella… your lovely cheeks, and I just wanted to wrap you up in my arms and tell you that I loved you."

Bellatrix sobbed silently as he made love to her, quivering with satisfaction as his hips swayed against her body. She wouldn't come this time, but that was fine. He felt so good moving within her. But his story was breaking her heart into a thousand pieces. And then it got worse, for he pulled back just a little and he said in a cracked little voice,

"You thanked me for my gift, and you said, Goodnight, My Lord, and you went back into the party, and before I left, I saw Rodolphus draw you up for a dance and kiss your cheek. So. Hm."

"No." Bellatrix shook her head wildly. She tightened her hands on his hair and insisted, "No, Master. None of that matters now. I'm your wife. I love you. You're here with me, and we shall always be together. I'll fight with you to ensure your victory; I'll kill Andromeda and you'll kill Albus Dumbledore. We'll kill my cousin Sirius and anyone else in your way. And Rodolphus can marry whomever the blazes he likes, but I'm your wife. And I love you so very much."

"Bella." His face twisted then, and his hips stopped bucking against her, and she knew he was finding his satisfaction. He bent and kissed her very, very gently, and then he murmured, "Thirteen years, and all I wanted was one single kiss."

"You can kiss me all day, every day, for the rest of our lives, Master," Bellatrix told him.

After a long moment, Voldemort pulled himself out of Bellatrix's body and flopped onto the sheets beside her. He stared at the ceiling and tossed a forearm over his forehead.

"Well," he mumbled, "This has all been most illuminating. I think I could use a good cup of tea."

Bellatrix glanced at the clock on the wall in confusion. "It's a quarter past two in the morning, My Lord."

"I know." He sighed. "There's hardly any chance I'm falling back asleep after any of that, though, is there? Come on, Bella. Let's go have some tea."

Author's Note: Sorry for two things - first, that this chapter isn't as crazy long as most have been in this story, and also for the horrible delay in updating. The Christmas season has been just absolutely insane for me. I will update as often as I possibly can, but it is bonkers at the moment. I do very much appreciate your patience and also very much appreciate your feedback.