jo is keen on stopping this. (aliasgrace) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-11-21 02:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-11] november, josephine pepper (née savage), rodolphus lestrange |
RP Log: Rodolphus and Josephine.
Who: Rodolphus and Josephine
Where: Azkaban, in Dolph's cell.
What: Jo goes to 'interrogate' - other things occur.
When: 21 November 1979, morning.
Rating: Uhm, R.
The stairs of Azkaban seemed to stretch all the way up to the sky, cracking through the clinging clouds to stand as sentinel to some ancient, nameless power that seemed older than the ocean itself. Older than laws that bound the prisoners here, older than the Dementors who lingered at the edge of her vision and retreated before her. Jo pondered the significance of this as she trudged ever upward, raking her fingertips along the damp, lichen-covered walls.
Loose raven tendrils escaped the messy bun piled at the nape of her neck to cling damp to her forehead as she counted first one cell, then the other. There was Greyback, there Malfoy. MacNair lingered over there ... and Lestrange. Sliding her body flush against the bars of his cell, she stuck her arm through and beckoned to his bent form with one crooked index finger. "Hey there, songbird. Why so silent?"
Rodolphus had scarcely stirred since his incarceration. What human being could live here - much less a human being of his status, of his typical comforts? This was an intolerable existence; oh, not the food, the stone, the bed that felt as if it were merely a warmed slab of rock - no, he suffered most from being stripped of all intellectual pursuits. No books here, no - not even a quill and parchment that he might amuse himself with some sort of literary analysis. But he would suffer ten times over for his only child, and it was this thought (amidst thoughts of duty, of art, of literature) that sustained him.
Two weeks, only, and he had lost weight; it was barely noticeable on his thick frame, but he could feel the tendrils of weakness creeping at his innards, threatening. It frustrated him, and yet he sat - day and night - moving only to attempt reconciliation with his sister, whom he regretted being unable to save each and every day.
And today there was a new sight upon the grey horizon; flesh and curves and a dark smear of hair above freckles and a lower class chin. Josephine. He turned only so that he could stare at her; Rodolphus moved himself for no one if he felt it unnecessary - even his favourite mudblood harlot - and he deemed her, today, unnecessary. She was here to what? Boast? To gloat and delight over his downfall. He had the time to entertain her petty desires, certainly, but not the will. So he sat, tucked into a corner of a cell as only a very large man can manage, and stared. "Have you grown lonely so quickly, little Josephine?" he mused aloud.
"I just can't seem to stand the empty streets since my favourite homocidal sociopath is locked away up in the North pole." From her pocket she drew a key gripped tightly in fingerless gloves. Unlocking his door, she slid through and turned to refasten it, laying the key across the topmost bar. For what she was about to do ... she couldn't have witnesses. With her wand, she created a streaming fan of water across the doorway and then neatly froze it in place.
"There. Now we're cozy."
Turning back to him, she pulled an apple from her coat pocket. Massive, crimson and gleaming, it seemed to be the only living thing in the room. It's vibrancy, set against the damp walls, against the green ice, seemed to pulse in the palm of her hand. She tossed it to him.
Still, he remained seated; there was a certain comfort that standing would bring him (physical intimidation had always been a particular pleasure of his), but Josephine would have to earn his effort today. He was tired, in his way, restless to the point of apathy. If this was the effect of two meagre weeks in Azkaban, he dared not project what two months, two years, two decades would bring. What a depressing prospect.
The apple hit his palm with a resounding finality, and he contemplated it a moment before setting the rich fruit aside. It looked astoundingly red against his pale skin and the grey that saturated everything. Even his clothing, resplendent as it was, added to the monochrome palette. Black pants, white dress shirt. Everything else had been promptly confiscated - down to his shoes. "Trying to poison me already, Josephine? You've barely said hello first."
"Well, considering the symbolism, I couldn't help but get behind the idea of it," she said, kneeling a few feet before him, though well within reach of his massive hands. "You know - the knowledge of good and evil. All that." A crooked smirk twisted on her lips. "Whaddya say, Rodolphus?"
The temptation to grab her by the throat and drag her -- well, where wasn't as important as the impulse itself -- was overwhelming, and Rodolphus's fingers twitched in the aftermath of temptation's repression. "You acquiesce that I know something of good? I am sorely disappointed in you."
"We've all got good and bad in us, I'm disappointed that you failed to learn the lesson you taught me," she replied, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead as she leaned closer to him. Tempting. Waiting. "But I didn't come here to chat about philosophy. You're going to tell me what I want to know."
His expression twisted from one of bored interest to one of bored -- boredom. He had no desire to acknowledge any 'good' within himself if it was Josephine's tainted variety. As for telling her anything -- no, he wouldn't. "Oh, I see," he replied flatly. "I tremble to think of the harms you shall inflict upon me."
Arching an arm over his shoulder, using the wall as leverage, she rose and crossed her arms over her chest. "I killed him. I killed Marius myself. He killed a young girl and I stuck him like a pig."
Darkness crossed his eyes, a macabre, frightening change, and within two violent heartbeats, Rodolphus's hands lashed out - one at her wand arm and one at her throat, until they were tangled against each other. His palm spread across the vulnerable expanse of flesh with cruel purpose, tightening before a vague flex of muscle sent her hurtling backward into a wall and up, one inch, two, until her small, feminine feet dangled. Oh, and he wasn't finished. His frame angled against hers, pinning her legs, her stomach, her breasts, and at long last she was at eye level to him, so that every angry breath spilled hot across her lips, her tongue as she yearned for breath.
Her back hit the dank wall with a dull, wet thud as she found herself bereft of ground and further imposed upon, gagging for the air that he denied her. But his eyes ... Unblinking, she stared hard into them, willing herself to silently say Yes and Your sacrifice was worthless and Your life is forfeit, your life is mine. The free hand, bound into a fist, pounded repeatedly into his face, desperate to break the concentration that held her bruisingly high and breathless.
If she thought physical repercussions would free her, she was sadly mistaken, and blood spattered from his lip and nose across the expanse of her collarbone and breast as he squeezed his palm tighter and tighter around her.
And logic stepped in, a bane of this impulsive rendezvous; if Marius was dead, Bellatrix would surely have owled him. Two seconds to accept this as truth passed and then his gripped loosened, and he was away, letting Josephine tumble to the ground of her own accord. "It annoys me when you lie to me, Josephine," he rumbled, fingers dabbing at the blood drooling from his chin onto his crisp, startlingly white shirt.
All the air rushed back into her lungs with a quaking, effusive gasp even as she took greedy breaths, glad once again to feel the ground beneath her feet. She knew that she could never beat Rodolphus in a physical match, not even with weeks in Azkaban under his belt.
But she would be damned to hell if she didn't try to break him, anyway. She heard Rufus's voice in the back of her mind - Leave no evidence. Good thing she knew basic healing charms, then. Regaining her feet, she pulled the long-handled silver knife out of her boot and gave it a casual toss in the air.
"This is what I killed him with - and I can kill you now, too. One little whistle and I'll get the Dementors to Kiss you, one little slip of the hand and this knife can free you from prison. Just like it freed your son. Or you can tell me who else is in your little organisation and maybe I can bring you some books."
"No."
A simple proclamation that Rodolphus did not expound upon. Did she think him afraid of a knife, a girl, a dementor? She could draw and quarter him for all he cared; he was not some child fighting a battle he did not understand or some mercenary with no loyalties. He did not betray - his family, his cause, his life.
"You really, really enjoy martyrdom. Don't you?" The simplicity inherent in this made her angry. She wanted to cast aspersions on his fanatically held faiths. She wanted to see him ... what? A sigh. The flat of the blade slapped against her thigh.
"If you say so." His response was clipped, abrupt, and he continued dabbing the blood from his face until the flow ebbed. This tired him - this little dance, this charade. Or perhaps, at some vague, indiscernible level, he would have preferred Josephine coming out of choice, not duty. How dull. "Will you renounce your filthy blood status if I hold a knife to your neck, Josephine?" His eyes narrowed.
"Who knows what I'd say to keep breathing," answering thus, she spanned the space between them, reaching up to dab lightly at his split lip with the sleeve of her jacket. "A rat like me."
He considered her briefly, though his eyes did not follow the trail of her gaze but the movement of her hips, of her wrists, and once he had bled upon her, Rodolphus - in a fit of compulsion - let a few fingers sweep across her cheek, ostensibly to keep those few wild strands of hair from the taint of blood. Ironic. "You would say nothing." It was a statement. A fact. A given. He did not indulge in errors.
And she said nothing, the gleaming silver knife prone in the tips of her fingers. What was this strange desire that seemed to build in her body - here he was, for nothing more than a moment, vulnerable. She could see the man beyond the Death Eater, behind the Purist. The man that was simple, that saw things in crystal clear choices. She wondered what he tasted like, she tried to remember the way his hands felt when he held her as Bellatrix. Most of all, she tried to refrain from hating herself for entertaining the notion.
The pause between them was pregnant, but Rodolphus did not lash out again. This place drained him - not of energy so much as will; he was fully capable of murder and violence, still, but the urges came fewer and farther in between than he was accustomed to. His fingers fell back into his lap, and he became a sitting, staring thing once again. "If it will fulfill your duty to torture me, do so; but you will have satisfaction but that of my blood upon your tongue."
"Duty?" she rasped. "Duty. I begged to come." Stepping up to him, planting a foot on either side of his knees, she lowered herself to his eye-level and brushed her lips across his broken skin. Milimetres from his face, she pondered over the tiny amber flecks in the deep hues of his irises. "Begged."
A dangerous temptation if ever there was one - and he could feel his heart in his throat as he was tempted, sorely tempted. His hands were at her throat again, before he was cognisant of what he was doing, palms wrapped around the slender curve of throat into shoulder; this time he did not squeeze, simply allowed his thumbs to rest - a promise of murder that was every bit as enticing as the violence itself. She muddied him; his mind, his actions. He didn't know what he wanted from her, but she shouldn't have been here and her mere presence made him burn. Lust or hatred or the sheer unhindered desire to rend her limb from limb - he couldn't distinguish them. "You shouldn't be here."
From the balls of her feet to her knees, she rolled down over him and gently placed the knife at his neck, a mirror image of where his hands sat upon her clavicles. You're not pushing me away. You're not.
Gentle pressure on the silver blade and she leaned in, hips splayed, lips parted and eyes wide, daring him to claim her mouth as conquest. Daring him to lose himself to this power. Just once.
She wasn't doing this to him. Rodolphus couldn't even articulate what she was doing, but whatever it was was wrong and she wasn't allowed -- but allowed had never been a word that existed in whatever strange relationship they indulged in. Allowed was the antithesis to Rodolphus and Josephine. Allowed was a concept they spat blood upon.
And here they were.
His fingers flexed at her neck as silver kissed his flesh, and he dragged her in closer, tightening the pressure on her throat, forcing the knife into his own so that a thin line of blood curled out over the blade; red on grey. It was the theme of this little interlude, was it not?
She was so close Rodolphus could taste her breath; and he held her there, an uncomfortable mingling of flesh that remained unsated, unconsummated. "You shouldn't be here." The statement, a low rumble of cacophonous syllables, spilled across her lips - hot, heated. And still, they remained - separated by a hair of propriety and generations of bad blood.
It came to this: if she couldn't lie, if she couldn't make him believe her, she would sully him. She would take his mind - his sense of self - with her as she left. Her hips rolled, wrists twisting the knife to lay flat against his neck as she took this time. With her mouth open, she bitterly tasted what it would be to kiss him, the alkaline tang of his blood thick on her tongue.
In a moment of severe weakness, Rodolphus reciprocated - but as he was wont to do; her violation became his, hands dragging down from her throat to her collar to her arms, and it was here that he gripped her, a painful, visceral motion dragging her against him; his lack of concern for her weaponry was patently clear from his domination of the situation. She could cut him all she pleased - for these rampant, violent seconds he didn't care.
And for those seconds he could feel nothing but heat and lips and the brutal slamming of his heart into his ribs; he smelled her cheap perfume, the sheen of passion on her skin, the curl of her hair around his cheeks.
But Rodolphus was not a creature for prolonged indulgences, and when he had thoroughly, thoroughly debauched her mouth - his mouth, he thought in a fit of possessiveness - he forced himself to regain some semblance of self-control. Tearing himself away, Josephine was deposited back upon the floor, and he - he turned his back upon her and found the window. He stepped away from her. From this. From himself.
Bruised. She was going to be fucking bruised for days, the tell-tale press of his fingertips over her neck, her waist. But there was some victory to this battle: he kissed back. He ravaged and claimed and sullied her, as much as she him (and he himself). There was not even his self-righteousness left to keep him warm.
Picking herself up off the floor, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shrugged out of her oversized denim jacket, dropping it wholesale on the floor. It wasn't charity that made her leave it, but she couldn't describe ... not with the heat of his body still so fevered within her skin. With one final look (the tips of her fingers stretched - met the small of his back), she used her wand to vanish the ice so that she could unlock the gate and flee. Flee.
No information for Rufus. Nothing to validate her visit on a 'professional' level. But she knew that she had reached the pinnacle of something with him, something that she would never manage to forget, as long as she lived. It was this that jangled out of tune and harsh through her mind as the North Sea air chapped her face and she prepared to return to ... where? Home?