Fears and doubts; Château de Saule Noir [NBM, RL] WHO: Narcissa, Rabastan WHERE: Château de Saule Noir WHEN: Sunday, 23 January, 2000; very early a.m. SUMMARY: Hannah's kidnapping touches the lives of others in not-so-unexpected ways. IN-PROGRESS LOG. RATING: PG
Rabastan couldn’t help but peek in on Allyssa once more before going to find Narcissa. Though he and Narcissa had both been there only a short time ago, tucking Allyssa in (as he did every time when he was home in the evening instead of at the Centre) he worried about her, and about Narcissa too. His trust in his brother so rarely wavered, but now he didn’t know what to think.
The Abbott girl was missing, no doubt because Dominic Abbott was not the good little Death Eater that Roddy wanted him to be. Then again, Rabastan could hardly be the judge of who was and wasn’t his brother’s favorite from where he stood, just a few short months from regaining his freedom by renouncing the Cause. Closing Allyssa’s door most of the way but not shutting it entirely, he sighed and started looking for Narcissa
Finding her a short time later, he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“She’s still sleeping soundly,” he said softly.
At the window in the sitting room downstairs, Narcissa didn't hear Rabastan as he approached, for she was lost in her own thoughts. Three times now, in less than a month, people had been kidnapped and each kidnapping was becoming more significant, more revenge motivated than the last, and thus far more fearsome. Though she had only come into contact with Hannah Abbott because she had recruited her for the Centre, she had found it difficult to do anything but like the young woman. Very few who worked at the Centre had such an innate optimism about their work, a tireless assurance that they could make a difference, and though she knew the motive here was revenge, she could not help but fear for Hannah more because she knew how counter she was to all Rodolphus and Bellatrix were. They might well destroy her as they had destroyed other things like her in this world.
It was only when Rabastan reached out for her, when she felt his warmth at her back and around her waist, that she realized he was there.
"I am glad," she said quietly, leaning back against his chest, her eyes closing a moment.
Rabastan closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that he had, as though Cissa or Allyssa could be next, but really, he did have much to be thankful for. Hannah had given him the paperwork necessary for a bit more freedom, he had a daughter who he adored who grew more and more clever with each passing day, and he had a woman in his life who clearly loved him. Still, the thought of losing either of them left him aching, and he could only imagine what Dominic Abbott was going through, losing his daughter after so recently reeling over his girlfriend’s kidnapping.
He had looked over the warding of the manor several times recently, and couldn’t find any weak points. The fact that he even thought there was a need to look concerned him, as he wanted to believe that his brother and sister in law would never turn to striking him, but he had no idea what to think anymore. “Any news on the Abbott girl?"
His sense of dread was shared, for though Narcissa did not want to think about it, she knew the deeper Rodolphus and Bellatrix feel into vengeful acts, the winder their possible target base would become, as they would feed on the anger and whatever else motivated them until they wanted everyone to pay. She wouldn't let those she loved feel the effects of that, not directly, and she would find a way to soften the indirect as much as possible. The girls simply thought Hannah had not been at the Centre because she was at home, feeling poorly, and she intended to keep to that lie once Hannah had been found. Being so young, it was easier to do so, as they could be kept from exposure to gossips and the Prophet.
"No, I have not heard anything new, though I doubt we will until they find her, for it would be too dangerous to pass the information on," she said quietly.
Yes, until they found her, one way or the other, there would be little that Rabastan could do, even less that he could know. One way or the other…a shudder went through Rabastan as he chastised himself for thinking like that. He could still see her, looking so idealistic with that Auror boyfriend of hers at her side, so naïve and innocent that she actually believed Rodolphus’s lies, that she thought him capable of change and reform. Though Rabastan didn’t know Dominic well, he knew that he had fought hard to shield Hannah from the war, from everything, that he had even hidden her away somewhere after her mother’s death. That he could relate to, as he daily found himself wishing (though he knew it would never work) that it were possible to send Narcissa and Allyssa away somewhere where their ‘family’ couldn’t find them. Damn it all, but none of this was going as it should. The time leading up to his release was supposed to get easier, not harder, and now he found his every waking hour away from the manor spent worrying.
Perhaps it was a blessing his time still belonged to the Centre and its schedule, because were his time his own he would be sorely tempted to go find Rodolphus and give him a piece of his mind. Attacking children was a new low, and Hannah Abbott, while not strictly a child, was hardly on their adult level. “I want to hire some private guards tomorrow.” He said, his voice a persuasive whisper. “Just to be safe.”
It was certainly persuasive, but Narcissa was not easily moved on the idea of it all. The manor was protected, better than most other residences, and precautions had been taken that any tricks there had once been to come into it, ones known by family alone, had been negated. She understood his caution, and could understand why he would wish for something like this, knowing he worried when not here, but she did not like the idea. There were too many dangers in opening the house to people she did not trust with her life, including the danger of allowing too many people access to the manor.
She sighed. "I do not want strangers here, Rabastan."
“Neither do I,” He said quietly, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, “but it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had an unexpected visitor here before.” He paused, a smirk making its way to his face as he remembered the night on New Years when he snuck in to her kitchen, thinking that she would be at the Malfoy home, and tried to have a late snack before Narcissa Black Malfoy startled him with her own security measures. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“It’s just that I worry about you when I’m not here.” True, there was Regulus to protect her and the children, but he didn’t trust any one man with her or his daughter so much as he trusted himself, and if he wasn’t going to get to protect them himself all the time, it was tempting as hell to surround her with as many people who could. “I worry that our siblings won't be able to hold their tempers."
"Only this time, the visitors will be very much unwanted," Narcissa murmured, running the palm of one hand over his arms where they rested at her waist, opening her eyes to look at him over her shoulder. "Should they attempt to set foot on this property, I will know about it before they even reach the manor, let alone have the luxury of time to find a way inside. And if they do attempt to set foot here, they will be quite sorry they even wished to try."
He look softened. "I know you worry," she said quietly, "but I would worry, having individuals who I sis not trust, who were only paid to do a job, here where they might very well weaken the measures all ready taken."
Rabastan relaxed a bit under her touch and softened look, but not entirely. Narcissa had always been a force to be reckoned with, she was strong and capable and woe to the man or woman who underestimated her, but she did have a weak spot when it came to her family, and like it or not, Bellatrix was family. Hestia Jones was an Auror, with a lifetime of specialized training, training Narcissa had never had, and she had been taken. That wasn’t a comforting thought either.
Things were simply too turbulent. It wasn’t just a matter of him missing things back at home, it was a matter of home perhaps not even being there any longer when he was finally a free man to return to it. She was right about the guards, perhaps paying people to be there would not be the best idea, but he…
“There is a another option.” He said, lowering his voice to a whisper. He had not talked of escape in a long time, indeed, it would be exceedingly foolish to truly even consider it now, but the thought of them here without him if and when Bellatrix and Rodolphus tired of their leniency made his blood run cold.
Narcissa rested her head against him as she continued to look up at him, eyes too knowing, expression too telling. "I cannot imagine what option you might even be thinking of," she said evenly, purposefully not calling attention to what instinct told her he was referencing. The idea was mad, mad for him to even voice it after all of his work to reach this point, and she would not hear of it.
It was foolish to think of risking months of work with so little time left to go. If he escaped the Centre now Merlin knew there would never be another chance for him to be a free man, and if he were caught he would rot away the rest of his life in Azkaban with no chance of ever seeing Narcissa or Allyssa ever again, which would have made the idea outlandish for any other reason than to protect the two most important people to him. If they were in danger, if he thought that they were going to be harmed, Rabastan would sell his very soul to be here, and damn the consequences.
“You know,” he said softly. “You know what I’m thinking about. You know if it comes to it, where I’ll be.” It’s all he would say for the moment on the subject, all that needed to be said. Freedom was one thing, but if you had no one with you to share your freedom with, it was nearly worthless.
Unable to accept that, Narcissa stiffened and then turned in his arms, so she was looking up at him, her expression entirely serious now.
"You will be in the Centre unless it is a day you have free from it," she said, a hard edge to her voice. Doing otherwise would mean him returning to his fugitive life, or something far worse, and she couldn't accept that, couldn't allow that to happen to any of them. While it was a thought for others, such as Allyssa, it was also a selfish want.
Rabastan’s look was firm as he shook his head. This wasn’t about some masochistic desire to get himself killed for a dying cause, it was about the very thing he had thought the cause had been about when he started—protecting those he loved, and ensuring that his child and loved ones would be alive and well at the end of the day.
“What good is it to obediently follow every rule to regain my freedom if I come back here to nothing.” he said fiercely, a dangerous edge to his voice. “If by staying there I risk losing one of you, you know as well as I do that that it won’t be even close to worth it.”
Though his tone was fierce, Narcissa expression soon matched it. "And what if nothing is to happen? What if you risk yourself, your future, Allyssa's future, our future, for nothing?"
Her hands on his arm tensed, her fingers curling around the fabric of his robe sleeves. "You have no way of knowing what is to come, only knowing that which is the best course of action. You continuing to follow your program is and will always be the best course of action."
Rabastan pulled her closer, feeling powerless at this winless decision of his. Either he sat things out in the Centre and risked waking up one day to discover Narcissa or his child dead, or he escaped and risked their future as a family. If he did nothing, there was a chance that one or both of them would be killed and he would have to live with that, the guilt that there had been something more he could have done and yet he did nothing, and if he did escape…well he would have to live with what that would do to the two people closest to him. There was no winning solution.
His kissed her lips gently, closing his eyes, then turned his face a bit so that his lips were near her ears and he could whisper. “How am I supposed to just sit there, knowing I might be contributing to them hurting one of you by doing nothing?”
Narcissa leaned her head against his, repressing a sigh as she fought against the natural response to his distress, for giving in meant encouraging plans that should never be acted upon. "Think about this rationally, please," she coaxed softly, smoothing her palms down his back. "Even if you were to run away from the Centre, you might only serve to give them more fuel for this vengeful fire of theirs, as you would prove, in their minds, that those who defect would return and those who encouraged the defection were the worst sort of traitors."
It was manipulative, admittedly, but it was also not without truth. The further Bellatrix and Rodolphus sunk into vengeful acts, the less they would consider about ties and bonds, caring only for making others pay. She could see it no other way, even if that were the truth.
Rabastan closed his eyes. There really was no winning this, because she was right, coming home to protect his family might bring more danger to them. He sighed heavily, focusing on the soothing sensation of her palms running over his back. She knew how to coax him into almost anything, his Narcissa, and it might one day be his undoing.
“It’s just been so long.” He said, his voice indicating that he was close to giving in. “And it feels like it will never be over, and I can handle that most of the time, but when I think that perhaps things will never be as they were, that I could lose one or both of you before I get back, it’s all that I can do not to run back here.” It wouldn’t be hard, given his new level of freedom, he had, after all, broken out of Azkaban. He knew that running would hurt her and Allyssa, and hurt them for the rest of their lives as it was their very future they were talking about, but it was difficult for him to relax enough to see that there was a chance that Rodolphus and Bellatrix’s good will would hold out until he was free.
Narcissa continued the soothing movements of her ands, not entirely as a weapon to convince him, but to try and calm the unrest that raged within him. Though she wanted him to see the error in this plan, his happiness was her priority.
"Even if you ran, you could not come here," she said gently. "They would know to look for you here. You would have to hide elsewhere. The Aurors would watch the manor, at the very least, and that does not even begin to address the scrutiny I would be subjected to. You could not do that to Allyssa, leave her like that."
Allyssa was Rabastan's weakest spot, holding his heart the way that only a father's little girl can. “They took her from a ministry gala.” He said, voice low, tense even as his back and arms relaxed more under her touches. “I don't want you, or Allyssa, to have to live some secluded life of hiding, but the months that it takes me to get free of this might be...dangerous if you both don't.”
For what had to be the millionth time, Rabastan marvelled at his own exceptional stupidity. He had wasted his youth following blindly behind those two, he had considered Bella as much his family as Rodolphus, and now he worried more about them striking at his family than anything, and any trust he might have had for them was gone. He rotted in Azkaban for years for nothing.
“I can't lose you, lose either of you.” He said plainly.
"Allyssa is no more than a baby," Narcissa said gently, continuing with one hand as she wrapped the other arm around him, holding them close together. "To her, the life she leads is exciting every day, even if she remains in the manor for the majority of it. We will not be risking her safety at large events, even if they were to continue, which I doubt once Hannah is returned and the world learns what occurred."
It was not easy to face these feelings about their family, for Narcissa had always been unwaveringly loyal to those of her blood and those not of her blood she held so close, but she had done it before in following the family dictates of disownment of Andromeda and Sirius. Now she would do it again, not for age old expectation, but because the family in question had gone too far.
They had taken Carina once before, and though her assertive big sister-like attitude made her seem much older than Allyssa, she was little more than a baby herself. She had been snatched on a day out shopping with her father and her tutor. Hannah had been taken out from under her father's nose too. If such things were possible with a father present (and Rabastan knew full well how a father worried and protected his daughter) then the things that were possible without him there made his blood run cold. Complicating matters there was Narcissa, who might well get in the way of Bellatrix and Rodolphus's plans. Rabastan knew that Bellatrix's temper would only hold out for so long.
“I work so hard, everyday, to try to come back here as soon as possible. I obediently do every mundane assignment, I talk about my feelings, I'm the model prisoner.” His jaw clenched, because though the centre was far from Azkaban or prison, it was something that separated him from his family on occasion. “I do it all because I know that one day I'll be free to come here as a freed man, but how selfish was that, to risk the safety of the ones that I love so that I can be free?”