Schrödinger's Lestrange (lupusmalus) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-06-21 13:26:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! [1979-06] june, bellatrix lestrange (née black), rodolphus lestrange |
Who: Rodolphus & Jo
Where: An interrogation cell
When: 21 June
What: An interrogation
Status: Completed
Rating: PG-13
If the ministry thought this continued persecution was going to break Rodolphus Lestrange, they were sorely mistaken. Yes, he fond the idea of the holding cell exceptionally unpleasant. Yes, he found interrogations tedious and not worth his time. Yes, he was guilty. None of it made the damnedest difference. They would have to torture him beyond what any of them were capable (and at this he smiled grimly, a subconscious satisfaction at his own willingness to breach such boundaries), and even then he did not believe he would break. He would rather die than betray his cause, and that gave him a strength that was unbeknownst to much of the population, too shrouded in their mundane little lives to understand true loyalty. Still, it was aggravating - being treated like a common criminal, like some peasant. He was Rodolphus Lestrange, heir to one of the oldest legacies wizarding Britain knew. It was intolerable.
He'd demanded an owl and been refused. He'd demanded a solicitor. Refused. Now he was stuck in this holding cell, waiting - infuriating waiting that was almost worse than listening to the idiots attempt interrogation. He would not break. He would not budge. He was a Lestrange and they would never take that from him.
When Josephine found out that Rodolphus Lestrange was waiting to be interrogated in the holding cell-block, she promptly dropped her files off with the secretary and made quick time to the hallway outside of where he was being held (stabled, she allowed herself to think with a smirk). She plucked his thick file-folder out of the hands of his intended interrogator and said with some measure of authority -- "Chief wants to see you in his office. Immediately."
The lesser Auror skittered away as she peered at him through the one way mirror, gauging Rodolphus's mood. It was black, she decided, not particularly raging but it would not take too much prodding to push him in that direction. And here he was, without his wand. She smiled.
With her long braid flipped over her shoulder, she walked into the small cell and sat opposite him with the folder balanced safely in her lap. "Bon soir, Rodolphus Lestrange, " she said, playing up her accent with an arch of her fine brow. "Welcome to the Ministry of Magic."
A black mood indeed, and it grew no lighter with Savage's entrance to the cell. He did not desire to play games tonight, and her presence only reminded him of the unconscionable idiocy of the ministry. Who would let this child in to interrogate him on so important a case? He could scarcely keep from rolling his eyes, and but for his exquisite breeding, he might have indulged in the puerile gesture.
"I have no interest in your games, Josephine." Rodolphus spoke with the dismissive nonchalance of a person with all the time in the world.
" ... Rodolphus Lestrange," she said matter-of-factly, despite his tones, "do you know with what you are being charged?" As far as games were concerned, she wasn't particularly up for playing them, herself. She was simply ready to see him hang for something that, if he did not do with his own hands, she was certain he was involved with.
"Ministerial incompetence?" He asked thoughtfully, tone utterly saturated with indifference. Where many men might tremble in their boots, demanding freedom or begging for lenience, Rodolphus simply sat. Bored. Uncaring.
"If they sent you to interrogate me, it can't be so very serious a charge, mm?"
Who said I was sent? She could only smile, slow and infuriating as she laid her folder of papers on the table between them and began to idly flip through the thick parchment.
"You're being held on suspicion of murder and torture, Lestrange. There were several Ministry employees that were - it seems - systematically terrorised last night. Two have escaped with their lives, though after what happened to them I'm sure they wish for death."
"And the evidence for such suspicion? Or are you telling wild fairy tales about me again, Josephine?" It was a careless familiarity - and juxtaposed with so very careful a man it was unsettling and uncomfortable an emotion (if one could call it such when the origin was Rodolphus). "What care have I for ministry workers? I have far better things to do with my time." And at this, his gaze dropped across her, throat and mouth and fingertips all caught up in one vicious sweep of green eyes. Far better things.
"Factors which, I do not doubt, you could enumerate with enough encouragement. You see, Lestrange, a holding cell is a great equaliser. You're no more important here than a dust mote." Nonplussed (he didn't have his wand), she turned her gaze from the papers to lay a stare upon him that rivaled the disgust of his own. The tips of her fingers itched to wipe that all too smug aura from him. "You're in my domain now," she said simply and leaned across the table within striking distance. "It's time to act like it."
The vaguest of emotions slipped past Rodolphus's lips - though if it were pleasure, displeasure, amusement or anger would never be known, for by the grace of his stern humour it was washed immediately away. Equal? No. No room could bring them upon even footing unless, perhaps, it was that lone room in his house, where their raw insides had bled together. "A bug does not call the place it defecates upon its domain, little one. Delusions of grandeur will not earn you my respect."
"And allusions that compare humans to shitting insects will not earn you mine." As if it could be earned at this late date. Smirking - though who could say why? - her fingers brushed gently over his cheek before giving a firm (if ringing) pat on those sculpted jawbones. She sat down again and cleared her throat.
With a nod of her chin, she had a pitcher of water and one glass brought in. Taking the time to carefully fill it and have a sip, she looked at her opponent with narrowed (disgusted?) eyes. Soon, perhaps, she could move onto more physical tactics. This was only the beginning. "Mmm. Now, Lestrange, where were you on the evening of 18 June, between the hours of 4 PM and 4 AM?"
As if it were something he desired whatsoever. As if he wished to earn anything but a salary of blood and fear for his patience. She could toy with him. Taunt him. Tease him with water and caresses, but Rodolphus did not budge for the likes of her. He would react if and when he chose to react, and she would know him by the pitch of her screams. Such reminiscing was far more productive than listening to her rattle on, and Rodolphus leaned back in his seat, fingers interlaced behind his head. He'd been stripped of his robes and several layers of jackets and things with pockets, so he was dressed down indeed - how very intimate.
"Home with my wife, I'd imagine."
"That's a fabulously unsubstantiated alibi," she said simply, pushing her chair out as she stood and enjoyed the height (finally) as she loomed over him. As he leaned back, she carefully considered the weight and balance of his chair. What would it take ...
Walking around the table, she smiled beatifically and hooked her foot around one of the chair's metal legs. "One that, I'm afraid, is below your intelligence bracket." And she jerked her foot to upset his (and by virtue the chair's) delicate balance.
Unsubstantiated wasn't the half of it, but Rodolphus hardly had time to muse on the subject before she was moving, circling. He had never been a master of subtle body language, but very little about Josephine was subtle; he had been in her blood, caught up in what made her tick. She could hardly resist toying with her prisoner. He knew it. She knew it. But he didn't react to this knowledge - didn't steady his weight against the chair, didn't move his hands away from his head - because underneath every ounce of hard stoicism and unfailing logic was a simple consuming flaw: the belief that there was a way people of his status should be treated, and the belief that this mere expectation was immutable fact.
But the chair twisting beneath him was a plain, clear message that not only was this code of conduct mutable but that Josephine had no intention of treating him as he ought to be treated, or even as a regular prisoner ought to be treated. The mixed anger and satisfaction that pressed through Rodolphus was rapidly dissipated by the pain of impacting the floor, and he wondered whether it was luck or fate that they'd bound his wrists with cuffs before her entrance, for they prevented him from lashing back immediately, stupidly, in some outburst of pained ego. And pained it was, for a Lestrange ought not to have been on the floor at all, much less upon the floor and struggling to sit upright against his bulk and binds.
"Don't slip, Josephine." When he finally spoke his tone was dangerously even. "Your emotional control wavers."
"Is that all you have to say, Rodolphus Lestrange? A confession would be more adequate and I say, more time-efficent. Who was it -- Edgcombe, Fforde? Or is Kirke more your style?" She paused. "I am well within my rights to make this interesting," she replied, masking her sneer with the back of her hand over her lips before she knelt next to him. "And don't tell me you're not even slightly glad to see me, I've saved you from the most doe-like and innocent of our employees."
But he was right. Her control was quickly slipping and it took several heart-beats to remind herself that here was neither the place nor the time to mete out vengeance for past wrongs. Training her face to appear as unmoved as stone, she leaned in close and pressed her full lips against his ear.
"I couldn't care if you're innocent because you've been guilty so many times."
After saying thus, she leaned back and rested her hands upon her thighs as she regarded this man. Her teacher in so many ways, she also despised the very air he breathed and the enigmatic way he truly believed that this world belonged to he and his kind. Before she could stop herself, her fist flew on its own (and she would later refuse to regret it) and aimed to strike the side of his jaw.
"To the likes of you? What more breath could I waste?" He was low and calm - unnaturally so - but a razor sharp edge ran through every syllable - begging her to rise to the bait and cut herself upon them. Within her rights? He could spit upon her for her injustice - not because he felt especially maligned or inconvenienced but because of what she represented, what this situation represented. Mudblood filth abusing those with proper claim to these laws. It was unnatural, vile, and here she stood mere inches from him daring to believe she had rights.
And pain cracked across his jaw, vibrant and red, forcing it to angle back and upwards, into the tangle of prone metal that was once his chair. Heat flooded out across bone and into his mouth, one a dull, painful fire and the other a sharper warmth with a metallic tang. He would not fight back. Not here. Not now. A wise man enacts vengeance swiftly but not in the heat of rage.
But he was not without his pride, and as his face swept back toward her, every molecule in his glance devoted to disdain, he spat hot blood at her.
Between the tangle of blood and saliva her vision ran crimson and she was blindly overtaken. There was no point in wiping the blood from her face (his precious pure blood), she had seen and tasted before. They would be in soon to remove her. She didn't have much time.
"I could drown your ego in a bucket!" she seethed, rising to stand over him with the heel of her boot firm and dagger-like upon his chest. "It's nothing but this -- " and wiping the bloody mixture from her face, she slung it back at him with her hand, "that keeps you from the Kiss! You've been guilty so many times and have evaded capture ... "
And before, when there were witnesses? None, this time. None at all. She needed him to understand the injustice of this and the way that her crimes against him tipped the scales back toward the noble and the good.
"Buying off officials and relying on your name! Your fucking name be damned! You'd be a maggot without it."
Rodolphus's arms swung up to knock her foot from his chest (and hopefully her from her balance). "And you Josephine?" His voice rocked, a mixture of amusement and barely repressed anger. His temper lingered just below it, and while he kept control for now, he knew that soon, very soon, she would feel what true anger was. "A maggot with your good name and the filth that flows through your veins? Show me this justice of yours, this morality and humility you possess with the blood you've spilt upon you."
"Show me that rage hasn't ripped you open and laid you bare for me to watch. Show me that you are better than me, with your self-control and patience. With your laws by which you so faithfully abide. By your ethics." His timbre had pitched so low that his voice was barely above a rumble, but now it raised, anger and challenge rippling through every breath. "You will not. You CAN not!"
His arms swung true and she was knocked from her feet, grunting as she landed hard on her backside and struck out at his midsection with her foot. The world she saw, the good and true world, wasn't for those of her nature (the nature he woke) ... she knew that and didn't need his growling to tell her so. It was something, however, that she was more than happy to nurture and safeguard.
She'd build the foundation of her world upon his broken body. But first, as the distance between them seemed to swell, her lips pursed and she silently climbed to her feet. Release - especially after this incident - would be eminent and she would more than likely be reprimanded. Some part of her recognised her chance and as she gazed upon him in his undershirt and trousers, the thought of someone's hair being upon his robe made her smirk.
To impersonate his wife, to return with something substantial that could potentially put him behind bars (to be given the opportunity to beat him seven shades of shit) brought a higher, purer smile to her face. She was done in this room. Wiping the excess blood from her face with the hem of her blouse, she smiled.
"Good day, Rodolphus."
And then, turning upon her heel she shouldered through the guards poised to pluck her from their all too famous prisoner to make her way directly to the storage rooms that housed the prisoners' personal effects.