Dorcas Meadowes is still alive (_dorcas_) wrote in afreshrpg, @ 2012-07-04 06:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | !backdated, !complete, character: dorcas meadowes, retired: dominic mulciber, time: 1998-06 |
Who: Dorcas Meadows, Dominic Mulciber
What: Dorcas runs into Nic after an emotional jog.
Where: Around Godric's Hollow, and then Nic's apartment
When: Backdated: A month ago. After their conversation in Nic's Journal.
Rating: SFW, although I believe there is some swearing.
Home was boring. Dominic couldn’t sit still, and there was nothing to eat. He’d poked at Dorcas enough for the evening. There was the thought of drinks again, but Nic wasn’t really feeling drinks, either. He was feeling restless.
It was for the reason that he’d ended up at some late night market at odd hours, piling an odd mix of fruit and vegetables into a bag, not even looking at the clerk as he paid. A toothpick satisfied the current craving for a cigarette he was feeling, and, groceries in one arm, Dominic left the market to start his trek home. He’d walk for a while instead of apparating. He appreciated not always taking the easy way out, and he wasn’t in any particular rush to get home anyway.
Lost in contemplation of whether or not he should take an apple out of the bag and eat it, Dominic very nearly collided with a runner, dipping his shoulder back just in time to cause his body to turn enough for her - her? - to skirt by him, but close enough that she might feel the need to yell at him and tell him to watch where he was going.
“Little dark to be jogging,” he commented, still eyeing the apple for a few more seconds before he actually glanced toward the person as she regain her footing. Well, imagine that. And he hadn’t even been trying to find her this time. “Impressive ink show.”
Dorcas had been shaking so bad that she had to take a moment before she even stood. Ink had spilled, and then she had slammed her journal shut and then picked it up and thrown it against the wall with a frustrated shout. It was only after that that she took a moment to herself to breathe, covering her face with her hands and hoping that the neighboring residents at the Leakey had not been too disturbed by her behavior, despite the late hour.
There was something about Dominic that just got to her. Dorcas had never been one to walk away from a fight, and she was really bad at ignoring people that picked at her. It had gotten her into trouble more than one time at Hogwarts, and with Mulciber in particular. He always seemed to know just which buttons to push.
She finally got the nerve to to change her clothes and sneak quietly out of the Leakey. Dorcas barely took the time to stretch before taking off down the streets of Diagon Alley. Most of the shops were closed for the night, but a few windows hosted lights that winked at her as she ran. Dorcas appreciated the darkness, and she ran hard and long until her body was completely exhausted.
Only then did she slow to a walk. She paused for a moment outside of Godric’s Hollow, not even realizing how far she had run without thinking about it. Dorcas slipped quietly into the cemetery, sitting near a random grave that wasn’t her own. It didn’t matter who she sat near, she realized, because the body under her own grave was alien to her. She could sit anywhere and feel the same sense of remorse.
It was here that everything started to catch up to her. Without warning, the sudden rush of memories flooded her senses. The way the dungeon had smelled when she would wake, barely conscious. The pain her body would feel when dark magic was cast upon her. The way she’d run through the Muggle village with no thought about what she was doing other than pure instinct. And then the bodies just dropping all around her.
Dorcas didn’t even realize she was running again, nor had she realized that she was sobbing uncontrollably. The dark figure in front of her didn’t even register, and Dorcas had nearly collided with him before she even realized that someone was there. The man had stepped out of the way, just barely, but so startled had she been that Dorcas stumbled and went down nonetheless. She struggled to refoot herself when the man spoke, and Dorcas felt herself fill with dread. It may have been more than twenty years since she last saw him, but Dorcas still recognized the sound of Dominic’s voice.
In the back of her mind, she knew that she should keep running, but her body suddenly wouldn’t cooperate with her. She certainly wasn’t clear-headed, and could only hope that she wouldn’t slip up and say something to Dominic that she shouldn’t. Her hands were trembling again, and she blindly tried to wipe the tears from her cheeks as her mind rushed a mile a minute. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her so unstable, but everything was happening so much.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tried to add some bite to her voice, but what came out was shaken and raw.
“Alright.” It was always so simple with him. When someone denied something obvious, he simply said okay and moved on. He knew the truth, and more importantly, they knew it. Nic rarely pushed in that particular case. Picking at a scab prematurely would just reopen the wound and give it time to heal properly. Dominic wanted it to scar.
But then, Dorcas was already scarred.
Ignoring how she might have reacted to him approaching her at all, Dominic moved just close enough to reach out, offering a hand to help her up. A hand he highly doubted she would take, because that would make her look “weak”. It amused him, what people often thought weakness was. She had survived direct torture and pursuit from Voldemort himself, probably by some guilty means. But survived nonetheless. Yet... Taking his hand now. That would make her seem weak. As if prompted by his thoughts, Nic’s lips quirked into a very tiny smirk, but it faded quickly enough.
“You were crying.” It was different now, being in person. Dominic always found the game changed when looking at each other face to face. It became easier and also more difficult. Facial expressions needed to be read and protected, but that meant from both parties. Luckily, Nic was usually more talented at hiding the minute range of emotions he seemed to be capable of feeling anymore far better than his opponent.
If there was one thing that Dorcas was incredibly untalented at, it was hiding her emotions. Between the shadow branches of waving trees, Dominic would be able to see the glint of tear streaks that dampened her cheeks.
Not only did she refuse his hand, she slapped it away. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling at the moment, but something dark and emotional was ripping through her chest, making her breathing ragged. Fresh tears ebbed at her eyelids, and she wiped at them with the back of her hand when he commented on the fact that she’d been crying. Even though both of them knew that it was true, Dorcas didn’t want to admit to it.
A brief flicker of annoyance across his features, and then Dominic took his hand away altogether. So much for that gesture, not that he’d expected her to accept it anyway.
“You don’t have to say it.” His voice was soft, almost comforting as he spoke. Reassuring. But his eyes were cold as he looked down on her, wondering when she was going to get up. And if she ever would. Dorcas was something like a skittish cat now, with good reason, maybe, but still - he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d grow out of it. Overcome it. Move on. Stop crying and stop running.
To fill the silence, or rather, as he waited for her to speak (she must have loads that she wanted to say after all), Nic finally allowed himself to reach into the bag of groceries and retrieve what looked to be the sweetest apple he’d ever seen. When he bit into it, his taste buds confirmed this assumption.
“Would you like one? With a run like that, you must be hungry. Running all the way from wherever you live to here.”
Her first thought about the apples was that they were poisoned, despite the fact that that she’d just witnessed him taking a bite of one. Dorcas finally pushed herself to her feet, and even though his tone was gentle, all she wanted to do was hit him.
Where was the rage coming from? She had a feeling it was more than just what had happened and what she had remembered in Godric’s Hollow. It was everything going on that moment around her that made her feel so helpless. She knew that if she hit him, she wasn’t likely to walk away from it feeling righteous. She would probably hit him, and then break down into sobs.
“No, thanks,” she finally managed, a numb mumbled. She was stil trying to avert her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the tears that he’d already confirmed he had seen. “I’m not hungry,” she claimed, although her stomach chose that very moment to growl in denial.
With a sigh and half chuckle, Dominic shook his head. Of course he expected people to be suspicious of him. It was only natural, especially since he really made no effort to confirm or deny half of anything that was said about him.
“Dorcas. If I were to kill you, as you seem to fear, I would not poison you.” He made it sound like it was beneath him, and while that was a straight up lie, Dominic could at least say that he rarely, if ever, used poised for anything. It took away so much, and Dominic liked a challenge. Poison was not very challenging. It was more of a thoughtless convenience. A white lie, in the grand scheme of things, right?
“Come have dinner. I’ll keep the games to a minimum.” Nic took another hearty bite of his apple, wondering if she would agree, or just run off in another direction and cry some more. And he couldn’t imagine this crying was all about him. Sure, he’d pushed, but he hadn’t pushed that hard. Not yet. He’d brought up Mary, and Dorcas had basically unraveled for him.
She should say no. Really, she should. But lately Dorcas’s heart had been empty, and for some reason, Dominic had been talking to her. Maybe it was partly the fact that she’d found out, rather unexpectedly, that Regulus and Mary had started dating behind her back. Maybe it was because she felt betrayed, and that she suddenly felt like she’d only been a substitute to Regulus rather than a friend. Maybe it was because she felt like she deserved to get hurt, because she had done some pretty unsavory things in order to save her own life that night twenty or so years ago.
Dorcas stared at him for a long moment, feeling utterly defeated. They hadn’t fought, he hadn’t made a single wrong move at her, but she still felt so damn uneasy. Her body felt completely exhausted, and she didn’t know if it had been from the run or because of how much the crying had taken out of her.
Finally, she heaved a great sigh. “One wrong move, and I’ll hex you into oblivion,” she promised him. And that was her way of saying yes.
“That sounds like it could be dessert,” Dominic said. In a way, it could be seen as a trusting gesture. He reached out, shifting his groceries so they were in his other arm, and curling his hand around Dorcas’ wrist before she even really had time to react. They apparated with the expected crack, and to an alley in London they were. Nic was taking her to his home. His only real home. He didn’t run some decoy home for guests, as a few other criminals he’d met had. He only had one, excluding the large house his father had owned, which Nic had yet to step into since Meriadoc’s death. Since Dominic’s return. It could’ve been trusting, minus the fact that there wasn’t anything compromising there. And there wasn’t anything compromising because, at the moment at least, Dominic was actually trouble-free.
He didn’t really have the hands to unlock the door himself, what with groceries and his intent on finishing the apple, so the key did the work on its own, gliding up to the door, sliding in, and turning to unlock the door with the softest click.
“Rhino,” he said as he entered the doorway, and the smallest sound could be heard, as if tiny, tiny shards of glass were shattering into even more tiny ones, before the sound vanished altogether. Word-activated security spells. Random words. Lucky he had a great memory, since he changed the word every time he left. Dreadful, the day he forgot what the password was.
“So, with the... random assortment of ingredients I’ve got here, I can make us a lovely...” Dominic frowned while he started fishing through the grocery back as he set it down on the counter. And anything else he had, which was not much. Some chicken, vegetables, and noodles. “Stir fry, apparently.” Could be worse. Perhaps not so random after all.
Dorcas regretted the decision immediately. A sharp sense of panic exploded in her chest when snatched her arm with his fingers, and she decided that there was no worse feeling in the world than panicking at the same time one’s body was ripped into a side-along apparition. Her breathing was heavy and ragged by the time they arrived at their destination, and she was too riled up to pay attention to what was going on when he unlocked the building.
She did find herself wondering about all of the security spells, given the time of peace, and could only assume that it meant he was hiding something. After all, he’d ‘mysteriously’ found her after harassing her all night about joining him for dinner. Had he gone looking for her when she said she was going running? She couldn’t be sure.
It was hard to relax when she stepped into Mulciber’s home. She thought of Mary, and the agony of the Cruciatus curse seemed to be reliving it’s pain just beneath her skin. Dorcas hugged herself tightly, feeling faint. “You can cook,” she wondered quietly, and it occurred to her that, for some reason, she found this very surprising. Her eyes meekly scanned the room, trying to take in as much as she could despite her panicked state. She had always imagined Mulciber’s home to be full of dark and disturbing artifacts.
Dominic wasn’t very surprised by how Dorcas seemed to be mildly, absently, shocked that he could cook. Cook was a loose term, he thought, for what he could do. “Mm, you learn a thing or two. Traveling.” He was by no means a chef, but he liked good food, which meant he either ate out every night or leaned to make a few tasty things every now and again. Besides. It was a stir fry.
Most of the home was open, an advantage Dominic liked to have for the simple fact that he could keep an eye on his guests. Just because he didn’t have anything to hide hardly meant he didn’t have anything. Ignoring the fact that most of the items of importance in his home were cursed to high heaven for those trying to steal them. “Torture chamber’s downstairs, if that’s what you’re looking for.” He was watching Dorcas now, having got all the ingredients going. Ah, the advantages of cooking with magic.
That was, at least to him, a ridiculous notion. He didn’t have a torture chamber. He wasn’t really like that. Though he had recently found out that, rather unsurprisingly, Rodolphus apparently had one that he often conducted experiments in. To Dorcas, however, Nic wasn’t quite sure the words would come off as what they were: a joke.
“I’ve got beer, water and milk.” His way of offering her a drink.
Dorcas, too, had learned to cook a bit during her travels. Of course, she could only cook a certain few traditional Russian dishes, but she thought they were pretty tasty, now that she had a flavor for meat. Nonetheless, she still found it a bit strange that Mulciber could cook. She’d always just assumed he would have a house elf or someone else to do it for him.
Her eyes flicked up at him briefly when he mentioned a torture chamber in the basement. Regardless of the situation, she knew, or at least hoped, that he could only be joking. If he did have something of that effect, she doubted he would mention it so casually to her. For now, her thoughts were preoccupied wondering why he’d been so insistent that she came over for dinner.
She wandered a bit, gazing at the items and wondering about their origins. She’d finally managed to get most of the goosebumps to flatten on her arms. She desperately wanted the beer he offered, though she could go for something stronger, but knew she needed a clear head around the former Slytherin. It had become evident to her just how dry her throat was from all of the running and crying, and she cleared it with a bit of a cough before wandering closer to the kitchen to lean against the door. “Water is fine, I guess,” she said quietly, still trying to find the confidence that had escaped her voice. Being here felt surreal, and she couldn’t help feeling a little dazed as she watched him at work.
A tap of his wand to the glass chilled it, and as it filled with water the sound of crackling filled the glass as if ice ought to be in the cup, but wasn’t. Dominic walked over and handed Dorcas the cooled glass, looking at her with a sort of unreadable expression. The food was almost done. It wasn’t an incredibly difficult meal, and if he noticed the lack of confidence (which, of course he noticed) he didn’t comment on it. For now, at least, Dorcas could... well, probably not relax, but at least take small comfort in the fact that Dominic wasn’t openly trying to make her nervous. In truth, he wanted to give her some rope and see what she did with it.
As for himself, Dominic pulled out a beer, prying the cap off and taking a sip as he finished up the food. It was one beer, and he was already the one in control. She was in his home, and she was the one afraid of him. He could have a beer without worrying about saying something he shouldn’t. As of right now, he had very little to say about anything, except the one thing she did want to know.
“So,” he started, idle conversation as he did inane things like get the plates out and start to put food on them. “Are you happy to be back? I can’t quite tell.” His voice was a little more distant as Nic left the kitchen to get everything on the table.
As Dorcas watched, she did become a bit more relaxed, despite her instincts not to. It was fascinating to watch him work with magic; clearly it was something he did often. Dorcas had lived as a Muggle for many years while on the run, and so had nearly forgotten things like charming a glass to cool, or any number of little everyday things. Rather, it wasn’t that she’d forgotten the spells, but that she rarely felt compelled to use them. Her habits had simply changed.
With that as a distraction, and the fact that Dominic apparently was alright with letting his guard down enough to have a beer, Dorcas slowly released the rigidity of her muscles, her breathing slowed, and her mind stopped racing. Or at least, it slowed down.
Her eyes darted up when he spoke to her, having been trained to his hands and the magic he produced during the silence. For a moment she was silent, contemplating the best answer, and then decided that there was no harm in going with the truth. “No, not really,” she gave a bit of a shrug for no reason other than to give herself some movement.
“Why not?” In this moment, Dominic seemed merely to be a curious individual. Not interested in gathering information to use against her later; not prying. Just curious. Of course, he was always gathering information by default, which made this little deception relatively useless. But all the same, he wasn’t actively trying to find ways to fuck her over later.
He knew where she worked. Where she lived. He was certain those were only part of the reasons she disliked being back, however. Undoubtedly, he was a factor as well. But still, none of those were particularly personal. She had to have other reasons. Possibly the same reasons that she came back at all. Had she come back for something that wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped would still be?
With the table set, Dominic only nodded for Dorcas to follow him as he moved to take a seat and eat his dinner. It wasn’t much by way of ingredient, but it tasted good enough. “It’s not me, is it Dorcas?” he asked that with a smirk.
She felt awkward sitting across from him at the table in his own home. Slowly it was sinking in how very strange it was for her to be there. Mulciber, of all people. They’d never gotten along, and she’d always hated what he seemed to stand for. And yet, she couldn’t seem to say no to him. Perhaps it was just everything going on and her state of mind.
Dorcas chose to ignore his last comment, instead changing the subject to what she truly wanted to know. “What about my family?” she asked him. “Do you know who killed them?”
“I know who killed them,” Dominic confirmed evenly and without hesitation. In fact, he even took another bite directly after speaking, as if he hadn’t finally just thrown Dorcas some sort of bone. The thing about playing games with people was... You had to stop playing for a moment. Just long enough to keep them still invested in playing. The moment they doubted the worth of the end result, you’d already lost them. And Dominic was not currently interested in losing Dorcas. Not yet, though he knew inevitably her time would come. Probably soon. Likely not from him; her death held no real achievement for him, and why kill what didn’t need killing? It was wasteful.
“But I won’t be telling you tonight.”
For a moment, she stared at him incredulously. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to keep herself calm by taking deep breaths. But it wasn’t working. Her eyes sparkled with an angry glint. “Why the fuck not?” she wanted to know. She’d slammed her fist down on the table, causing her water glass to jump.
“Do you want the truth or a lie as to the reason?” Nic lifted his glass, incidentally just in time as Dorcas slammed her fist down on his table. He liked this table. He’d gotten it in Malaysia. His eyes dropped down to the wood briefly, before lifting back up to Dorcas’ face, that tiny hint of amusement he usually held not present on his features. But fully present in his eyes.
She’d probably say the truth, but it’d be interesting if she asked for a lie. He wondered what he’d say to either, then settled on his answer and simply waited for her to choose her path.
“Why would I want a lie?” Dorcas barked. Her patience was starting to run thin with Dominic. The constant taunting was starting to get to her, and it was mentally exhausting trying to constantly figure out what Dominic actually meant when words came out of his mouth.
“Just tell me their names, and I’ll get out of your hair,” she sat back, crossing her arms low across her chest, which was still rising and falling as she took deep breaths. “And you can eat your damn stir fry in peace.”
“I’m eating my dinner regardless,” Nic said, and seemed very much focused on his food as Dorcas pressed on about her family yet again. Sure, he got it. Family was family, and hers was dead, and he knew who did it. His family did it. “Peace or not.”
But considering it was his own father and his father was now dead, it was almost a useless piece of information, and the fact that he knew... well, that caused him some trouble. He needed to right set of circumstances to part with such info. And this was not it.
“Hm. No. Oh wait - There was a Henry... Something. Henry. Damn, I’ve forgotten the last name.”
Dorcas realized that she’d started holding her breath the minute he’d started to think about it. But it quickly became obvious that he was merely toying with her once again. The rage that bubbled inside of her was familiar, taking her back to her days at Hogwarts when she had used her fists against him. Only this time, the table was between them.
Her fingers closed, instead, around her water glass, and before she even know what she’d done, she’d splashed water all over her face. Dorcas slammed the glass down on the table so hard that it nearly shattered, and she was up on her feet and storming at the door. “Let me out,” she barked, knowing damn well that if she tried the door on her own she’d be trapped.
“Goodnight, Dorcas,” Nic said, wiping his face and standing to go to the kitchen for a proper towel instead. Though he wasn’t paying her any mind, there was a dismissive amusement in his tone that said she could get out just fine without him.