RP Log: Aludra and Caradoc. who. Aludra and Caradoc where. Eleanor's room in Edgar's house, and then the street outside Aludra's flat. what. Caradoc does what he thinks is necessary, if not exactly right. And then sends Aludra home. when. 10 November; extremely early rating. R for nudity - but not graphic! status. Completed log
*********************
When it came time to return Aludra to her loved ones (such as they were, for Caradoc saw no love between the greatest lot of them), he approached Eleanor's room with a set expression hardened into his weary and bearded face. There was something left undone, something that he did not trust to Frank's familiarity with their captive, and so (after alerting Edgar to his plans) he gave a single knock upon the door before entering.
There was the general feminine splendour of a young girl's space and in the midst of it, Aludra Wikes, with her hand-made chess set fashioned from the book he had loaned her to help the time pass. With a shake of his head, he dropped a set of loose neutral clothing from his arms onto the bed before speaking.
"While I appreciate the effort and the creativity, I'll have you know that book is one of my favourites and what you did was tantamount to the destruction of my soul -- " was said out of the corner of his mouth, vague amusement sparking in his eye. "But again, cheers for filling your time with something. I wish you could take it with you."
Aludra watched him enter with barely a movement. The end of a cigarette was snuffed into a makeshift ashtray, and her eyes followed him the bed, though she said nothing of his cargo nor the initially hard expression he wore in to see her. She was familiar with wearing emotions -- on better days she chose hers out as one might a hat, to complement her appearance or argument. Today she sat in neutral silence, with nothing to betray whatever fears lingered whenever someone different entered the room. There was no food nor gifts, and so she wondered, with an optimism that sat poorly with her, if this was the end. An end of some sort. She had frequently wavered to and fro from the opinion that Frank would allow nothing to happen to her, and in darker moments wondered what violence these men would inflict upon her if left to their own devices.
When he spoke, her gaze travelled back to the reimagined book and the chess set she'd constructed from it. Her hand moved mechanically to begin the Queen's Gambit, though she did not expect him to partake in the diversion.
"I assure you I have a superior one at home." She forced the suggestion that she was leaving to imply that it would be alive, though she had no real reassurance.
" ... I'm sure everything at your home is superior in every way," he said carelessly, narrowing his eyes as he perceived the well-known strategem upon the board. His eyes lit back upon the woman, curiousity piqued in them, even as he tapped the table next to the book cover with his index finger.
"If we were unkind, we could have killed you. We could have sent you back to Avery in pieces, until every Muggleborn was returned to their homes. I want you to know that, Wilkes. I've killed before. If it means keeping my people safe, I will do it again."
Aludra refused to allow curiosity, and even as it spilled across his dark stare, she recognised it as dangerous. She was nothing more than an inbred society woman, and any doubt of that necessarily immutable fact was a threat. She quietly moved another piece in a blatantly illegal move before acknowledging that he'd spoken at all.
"I am well aware of the unpleasantness you could bring upon my fiancé," she replied with sedate blandness, directing any and all concern away from herself and onto Atticus. She was nothing of importance here and she wanted it clear that she both recognised and required it. A pawn. "I appreciate the hospitality I have been shown, thank you." Any thoughts on muggleborns and their return were quashed, though she had no intention of letting the comment pass without note. "It is unfortunate that you have misdirected your anger. I assure you that these terrorists have no interest in my well being. If, as I understand it, Mrs Longbottom was taken, they clearly have no compunction in taking pure women."
"Personally, I think you should take your assurances and shove them up your -- " he cut off with a shake of his head, knowing that Aludra would have no way of fathoming the current condition of Alice Longbottom or the manner of her abduction (it all being very well that they barely did, either). A sigh, then, and a cut back toward the board. "I should think that your fiancé and his colleagues play at life as incorrectly as you play at chess." He shrugged, then, and traced the barely discernable pattern of a whale's tail with his fingertip. "You will have no memory of the time you spent here, when we are through. I will return you to the place in which you were taken. It will be as if none of this ever happened."
A surge of anger remained pressed below carefully moulded features, and Aludra glanced back at the board with some mimicked resignation. She did not correct her misplay, but allowed it to stand, following it with a similarly poor movement from the opposing side of the field.
"I would rather you not malign my fiancé," she said quietly, curling one hand into her lap. It was an unconsciously defensive position, though she certainly had no means of defending herself -- not without her wand. It was the only equalisation of the sexes, and she'd been deprived of it. That stung more than anything else they could have inflicted upon her.
"He has done nothing untoward and any accusations that our office is not making its best efforts to locate those missing is cruel and unfounded." She dared make no greater logical argument. Now was not the time to become heated. Every impulse had to be stifled lest she make it known that she was something more than what she appeared.
"Cut the bollocks," he said, abruptly sitting on the edge of Eleanor's bed with his leg slung over the opposite knee. "Because you talk just like him and you both wear me out. You say so much and none of it has any fucking substance."
Aludra's lips twisted downwards, the first semblance of emotional reaction to this man, who was considerably less polite than her cousin and the auror had been. She did not appreciate vulgarisms thrown at her, because they suggested she was in a position to take them -- and she was not. Women of society were not subject to such lower class behaviour. She should not have been different. That he likely had no concern of her position in purist society had little bearing on her immediate reaction to his brusque mannerisms, and despite the fight to conquer the impact, Aludra remained displeased.
Her gaze followed him, almost accusatory, and yet she did not comment on his chosen place of rest. "I apologise if etiquette surpasses you. I made no attempt at instigating a conversation." Her tone was clipped, and she cut herself off from continuing.
"Is there a real one among you?"
Indeed there was little that was high class about Caradoc; his mother, though well-off as Wizards went, did not have the names of these London elite and his father, a humble Muggle bookseller, had never sat down to a formal dinner a day in his short life. But, perhaps, from his days in the Muggle school system (and a keen sensitivity to the language of one's body), his own face drew up with amusement. It was ironic, he supposed, that Aludra's anger brought the laughter out of his chest, even as he leaned forward to place his hands upon his knees before he rose again and turned to face her.
"I intend to release you today. There are a few things, however, that we need to first accomplish."
His laughter made her only the more convinced to stifle anything rising to the surface. At first it was only anger, rage even, that she was being made to suffer this indignation; Aludra did not do well beneath the mockery of those who were not her superiors (and it could be argued that beneath her ever subservient humility, she still reacted poorly even then). Then it was fear. Accomplish had an ominous ring to it. She attempted to believe it was only obliviation, though that hardly comprised a few things.
She rose, an instinct she could not repress.
"What, precisely?"
His arms crossed over his chest as he regarded the way she seemed to stiffen. He wondered what she expected of him, knowing that he was the most crass of his fellows to her eyes, and as she rose he suddenly understood. His eyes hardened.
"I need to know what you have hidden on your person that will lead your hapless loved ones back to our very noble cause. So unless you produce full disclosure within the next ten seconds, I will require you to strip completely and put on -- " he pointed toward the mess of clothes on the bed -- "that right there."
Aludra's heart felt as if it had stopped, but she realised quickly that her lungs were pounding so violently that she could no longer feel it. She had left evidence of only one thing on her person, and that was the name of Edgar Bones, scratched into her stomach, where it could be found even if she were left for dead somewhere. She hadn't the heart or will to implicate her cousin, and this man was completely unknown to her. It was her only chance.
She didn't move, though she wanted to shove herself against a wall and kick, bite, scream, but stared at Caradoc with mixed fear and darkness. It was the look of a society girl cornered -- almost. As always, there was something slightly off. Something she couldn't repress. If he thought she was removing even one scrap of clothing of her own volition, he was insane.
"I assure you that stripping me of my dignity will not reveal the very lifelike effigies I have created and swallowed," she replied with a sharp cut of sarcasm.
" ... out of my favourite chapters, no less," he intoned from the corner of his mouth, smothering a sigh behind his hand as he stepped back and arched a brow. "Twenty three, if you bothered to read it. Entitled 'The Lee Shore'." A pause. "Though I should assure you that this has nothing to do with dignity and everything to do with business. I don't want to see you naked but I do want to ensure the safety of my friends."
"I have taken nothing from this room that was not mine to begin with," she said, taking a step backwards. She wanted as much room between them as possible. The consequences of nakedness had not even dawned upon her beyond the fact that she would not take her clothes off in front of a stranger and she would not let her only chance of this debacle passing noticed go. There was no middle ground. She would have to lie her way through this. She was a good liar. But even as her heart consumed her chest, she was afraid of how this would end.
He met her rising tension with a shrug and a looseness in his own body that belied the tension he too felt creep into the pit of his belly. It was entirely expected that she would fight back; he would respect her if she did -- "Again, your cagey words do nothing for you. I have no desire for this to be painful, Wilkes, but I will tell you now that I will brook no refusals. You may maintain your modesty by removing them one piece at a time or I will simply vanish them for you."
"I will do no such thing," she said sharply, though the undercurrent of fear and embarrassment was already leaking into her tone. Another step back brought her closer to the door, and she turned to it, fingers pressing against wood, as she hoped, prayed, begged her cousin to be on the other side. "FRANCIS!" It was a plea that would fall upon deaf ears, but she had to give herself some semblance of an escape. "Please."
"There is no one else here. And as for Frank? He is seeing to his wife," he responded quietly, "who was attacked by a werewolf. So there will be no one to hear you scream." It was not in his nature to so thoroughly humiliate a person (though he did comfort himself by remembering that she would hold no memory of it) and so he very slowly withdrew his wand from his pocket and gestured toward the center of the room, close to the bed where the clothes lay. "Prepare yourself."
Aludra's confusion at werewolf was dismantled easily and quickly by the notion that she could prepare herself for being so utterly exposed to a stranger. Her fears of his ulterior motives were not helped any by his reminder that she would remain unheard, and she felt trapped, threatened, numb. "Don't touch me," she rasped; either by force or magic, she wanted no part in this. Her fervent desire to remain composed and indifferent was rapidly crumbling and now she wanted nothing more than to go home. She wanted someone to blame this on, someone to punish, but she had no more power than what lay in her own two hands. The wild, insane idea to try and transfigure into a bird trampled through her, but she knew she hadn't nearly the skill to pull that off when concentrating, much less mid-panic.
Her shoulders found the corner of the room farthest from him and she slid down a few inches, knowing there was no other outcome she could create. She would never make him suffer for this because she wouldn't remember it. The helplessness infuriated her, froze her.
"I'm sorry -- " he began, swallowing the lump in his throat, even as he squared his shoulders to prepare for this objective and clinical viewing. His own wife's countenance sprang unbidden to the backs of his eyes - her softly flowing black hair, pale freckled skin, ice-coloured eyes - and he asked her forgiveness as well. "But this is war. This is necessary -- " His wand flourished at her. "Evanesco."
And Aludra was trapped in the corner of the room, suddenly chilled, suddenly very very naked. He had left her nothing, and she made a noise of horror -- it was intended to be fury, some exertion of spirit, but she had lost the ability to appear cold with the stripping of her armour. She curled up against the corner, against the floor, arms pulling her legs tight against her chest so that nothing would be exposed; it was a fruitless endeavour, and she knew it, but she watched him hawk-like for any movement. Though she could not fight, she would not go silently down whatever path he intended for her.
He knew, intrinsically, that such a small bird-like creature would shrink before this. He felt unconscionably vicious for visiting this upon her, bowed down by the great guilt of it even as he took a step forward and plied his wand to make her stand straight with her back against the wall. The time for talking was over. He knew the dehumanising factor of what was being done, he understood it acutely, but it was the Bones family he conjured in the back of his mind to fight off the negative feelings. He was doing this for them.
Aludra's fingers escaped her knees to claw against the sides of the wall, taking with her small fragments of wallpaper and sharp bits of wood as she rose -- barely enough to speak to her desperation. Once standing, she flushed an unattractive red, from her collar to her cheeks, and her hands fell at her sides. So trapped, there was little for her to do but stand and endure the humiliation -- the likes of which she had only endured at Atticus's hand before, and even then it seemed a trifling to this. Pride did not keep her hands still but practicality; if she covered herself, he would only undo it, and she wished at least some part of her to remain free. It was the only pitiful condolence she had. Teeth gritted, her cheek turned to press against the cold wall, to try and extract some sort of shelter that did not exist. At the very least she did not have to look at Dearborn while he examined her. The very thought made her want to vomit. "I hope you're pleased with yourself," she spat out. Words, words. They were all she had.
"Not in the slightest -- " With a press of his lips into a thin and colourless line, he began the slow and methodical observation of her body. Beginning at the head, flowing down the hollow of the neck, over the collar bones and there -- on the upper arm. A bruise? It seemed faded, far too old to be given by any of them. He shuddered. He took his observation back up, sliding down along the curve of her arm to the concave plane of her belly. There, along the curve, he saw her attempt to identify her attacker. "See? That is what I was looking for -- " and with a wave of his wand, it was gone and there was smooth skin left in its wake.
Aludra said nothing at first, attempting to quell her ire; she had no interest in angering someone this close to her -- she'd learned that lesson the hard way and more than once. Instead, she glared at the wall, wishing that her hatred and fury could burn a hole through which she might escape. That he wasn't touching her directly was no comfort; his appraising stare enraged her. Only after several deep, vicious breaths, did she speak, and it wasn't to address his statement of the obvious. Of course she had made an attempt. She wasn't an idiot. "Congratulations. Get away from me."
Without responding to the threat, his gaze skirted back to the fading fingertips on the thighs, the lacy protruding scars upon her ribcage, eyes only getting wider and jaw only getting tighter as he continued on. He saw nothing, besides the scar he had already vanished from her body, but for the marks that seemed to suggest she had been beaten by Avery on a regular basis. "You need -- " and he shook his head. "The clothes are on the bed.
Had Aludra realised he was regarding her training scars with such an aggressive eye, she might have thought to make excuses -- but at this point she wanted nothing more than to be away from him, and to try not to think what he'd been looking at. This was humiliating enough. She longed for obliviation. For home.
Ducking out from beneath his stare, she rushed to the other side of the room and put on the hideous clothes he'd brought without complaint. If he thought she wasn't going to realise the second she was home that these were not her things, he was out of his mind. She would never be seen dead in such unflattering garments. But right now they were the only thing between them, and she wasted no time. Once her modesty had been restored, Aludra was back against the nearest wall, murder in her quiet eyes as she finally willed herself to look at Caradoc. It seemed as if his face would be burned into her skull for a lifetime, but she knew that, despite her greatest efforts to the contrary, it would be taken along with everything else.
" ... I know this isn't going to mean much," he began slowly, watching her as she returned to her corner as much a cornered animal as he was the force that endangered her. "But when I return you, I am going to tell Frank about those bruises. I don't know whose doing it is, but whomever it is ought to be stopped."
"Tell whomever you like," came her scathing, wet response as she refused, refused to cry. Her fingers were pressing so hard into the wall behind her that the knuckles whitened; the lie was ever-ready at the tip of her tongue, spilling out without even the need to think about an excuse. "I am sure the stable boy who kept me from falling off my horse will be thoroughly scandalised."
He shook his head, wishing that he could afford this woman some sort of kindness before he released her back to the people in her life that were supposed to love her. "I may be many things but stupid's not one of them. Your hand and your hip like that -- I'd say it was your hapless fiance. But what do I know? I'm just a stupid Muggle-loving halfblood."
"Don't you dare refer to Atticus that way. You aren't fit to say his name, and it isn't because of your love of animals." Aludra's exhaustion, fear, and stress had reached near the breaking point; she didn't have the will to be violent, but she would not let him impugn her fiancé's character. It was one thing to accuse him of kidnapping and murder -- it was a seemingly ludicrous enough charge to be laughed off -- but this, this hit too close to home. As much as she raged at him, hated him on occasion, he was the one person who took care of her, and she was viciously protective of his 'good name'.
" -- animals?" he asked, canting his head as he took a step nearer to her and took a deep, settling breath. Anger roiled beneath the surface of his countenance, only coming to light in his gaze that was narrowed upon her far less gently than every other action that had been accounted to her had thusfar been. "Well, this leopoard's finally showing her spots. I have no guilt anymore. We may be animals, Aludra Wilkes, but at least we care for our own."
"Unlike you," she replied quietly, "my prejudice doesn't influence my actions. Think about that while you justify violating a woman to yourself."
"Violate you? I didn't touch you." He rolled his shoulders, taking a deliberate step back to disengage from this conversation that he could only envision ending in something drastic or unkind. "And I certainly didn't leave bruises or scars -- in fact, in ten minutes, you won't know it ever happened."
For the first time that night, Aludra made direct, genuine eye-contact -- no furtive glances or drifting slightly askance.
"That doesn't make it right."
His jaw tightened a moment - eyes hazing with what could have been perceived as pain - before he nodded. "I know," was spoken softly, before his usual pitch and timbre rose back into normal range. "But this is a war. And we all must do things with which we do not agree for the good of one's whole. The end has justified the means, Aludra, and tonight you will sleep in your own bed and return to your life as if you had never left it."
"There is no war. Just missing people and conspiracy theorists. I really do feel sorry for you for believing that people are out for your friends and family. I'm sure it is frightening. I'm sure you think it justifies this -- but it doesn't. At some point you'll realise that and I hope you realise what you've done here.
" -- I realise very thoroughly what I've done," he told her, slowly moving forward with his wand loose in his fingertips. "And here is what I am going to do. I will take you by the arm and Side-Along Apparate you to the street outside your flat. At that point you will be Obliviated and I will simply vanish. You will have no memory of being abducted."
Aludra tried to imagine what she would think when Atticus inevitably told her... but it was impossible to imagine what it was like not to recall an event. That all of this would no longer exist in ten minutes was frightening. A piece of herself sacrificed for someone else's cause. She would still be exhausted. She would still be in these hideous clothes. But she would know nothing. It was comforting, repulsive.
Without a word, she pushed herself away from the wall; it required some force, as she did not want him coming into contact with her in any conceivable manner. Gritting her teeth, she approached him, eyes flitting towards the door as she offered him the very arm he had scrutinised moments earlier. There was an irony to it that appealed to her. She didn't expect he'd actually tell Frank.
He, however, did not take her arm, preferring instead to wrap his arm firmly around her thin shoulders, pinning her firmly against his chest. Perhaps the time for talking was long past, but as he raised his wand for the tell-tale flourish of Apparition, he rumbled a near unintelligible warning before they were very suddenly out of Edgar's daughter's room and beneath a street lamp on the sidewalk where she had been originally abducted. His grip, however, did not lessen until he murmured -- "All right?"
All anger seemed torn away, replaced with confusion and fear, as she shrunk whole-bodiedly at the touch. There was nowhere to go, and she could feel nothing for a long moment but his chest and arm and then the twisting, aching shift in space. It left her dizzy and nauseated, and she struggled for her footing before he loosened his grip on her -- not enough to get away, but enough for the few inches she needed to avoid this peculiar, uninvited intimacy. A vague nod substituted words that wouldn't come.
There seemed to be no need to place any other charm on her that would keep her in her place as he finished the work that needed done before they could fully be rid of one another. His countenance, then, as he stepped out of the circle of light and bled into the shadow, was not so much apologetic as it was business-like. The remainder of their interaction would be a simple transaction --
The wand flourished and silvery light spun toward her, the spell to fully Oblivate her experiences from the moment before she was abducted until the moment he had left her sight as well as the identities of her captors from her mind, reaching toward her like hungry tongues of frost. There, alone, but with the ability to be found and to return to her own home he would leave her.