Lucius Malfoy is the Flaming Death Eater (mal_foi_bon_roi) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2010-03-25 00:05:00 |
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It had been impossible that his journal not make noise, but after that Lucius had slipped out of bed at his summons as silently as he could manage. Calls did not always come so late, but those that did were often the most important--or the most dangerous. He hadn't wanted to wake Narcissa. He attempted to return just as silently, replacing his cloak and mask in their hidden compartment--a crack in a post on their bed. He moved the curtains drawn like a shield around the bed and peeked the silhouette of his wife, unusual since her pregnancy had begun to show a bit more. She seemed at peace, and with luck would remain so until morning. He knew he would have to tell her of Evan's death before the paper came, or she saw her journal. But a degree of poetry--the same which had initially drawn him to the Dark Lord's ideals--made him wish to extend her innocence just a little while longer. Lucius slipped out of his clothes, replacing them with his pajamas and moved back to bed. His arm moved to slide around her as he drew under the covers and closer to her. They were safe for tonight. It was very late by the time Lucius returned home. Narcissa had been awake when he'd been called away and she was awake now, though she lay on her side in their bed with her back to the door. Her eyes were open, however, and were he to notice the small details--the tenseness of every muscle, the shallowness of her breathing--he would know she wasn't awake. Narcissa worried, of course she did. How was she to sleep when her husband was out in the night, in the darkness, and doing whatever was bid of him? It was not safe. Many of the wives, Narcissa knew, preferred to pretend they didn't know what was going on. Perhaps it made it easier, but Narcissa had never been that way. She didn't have the stomach for the details, and she got very upset very easily, but she still wanted to know. She still had to know. Lucius was more than her husband. He was the man she loved, and she considered herself his partner. She would support him and provide him alibis and lie for him and cover for him and do whatever at all was necessary to protect him. She did not, however, wish to remain in the dark. Once she heard him come back, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. She counted the moments from the sound of his arrival to his movement around their quarters all the way up to the feel of him sitting down on the bed, trying to figure out if it was long enough that he was tending to an injury, or cleaning up a mess. She wasn't sure this time, but she felt something was wrong, and when he put his arm around her, she knew. She rolled to face him and reached out, hand gentle as it touched his chest. "Lucius?" she queried softly, all at once unsure what to ask, afraid of the answer, and desperately needing to know. He mentally swore as she reached, uncertain if he had made too much noise, caused a stir in climbing into bed, alerted her in some manner. Or had she been up for the past three hours? Either way, if she were up, she would question and while Narcissa was definitely a woman who demanded answers, she would not want them. At times, Lucius wished his wife were the accepting sort who didn't pry, or at very least, kept her disquiet to herself. But he would certainly not deem himself unlucky for such a fact. Narcissa was, in fact, a valuable tool and, in her own way, an active collaborator and shelter. Men would count themselves lucky for a woman like her. But now was a time where Narcissa's curiousity would do no one any favors, so Lucius rolled forward, planting a soft kiss on her brow. He tried to reveal no disquiet as his hand shifted to take and squeeze hers as her voice broke the tremoring silence. He whispered in kind. "I'm here, dearest. Go back to sleep." Though she wasn't sure why exactly she was so certain, Narcissa knew something was wrong. She pushed him away slightly and closed her fist in the front of his pyjamas, her heartbeat already speeding. She upset easily, even more so since she'd become pregnant. Now, after being awake and worrying for hours, she was in no mood to be brushed off and it was with equal parts frustration and concern that she demanded, "Tell me what happened." Narcissa was a woman of extremes, it seemed. She loved in extremes and hated in extremes; she wanted to be both safely protected and intricately involved; she belonged utterly to Lucius but she would not bow to him. There was much about Narcissa that was wholly one way, wholly another, or somehow contradictingly both. Now, her voice trembled slightly even as she tried to sound commanding and imperial. She both wanted and needed to know, and feared what she might fight out. It was how she approached much of what Lucius did for the Dark Lord, but though it scared her, she would never shy away. Certainly the gritty details were better left for those with the stomach for them, like Bellatrix, but Narcissa refused to be placated with vague whispers and patronizing kisses. Perhaps Lucius was the one who actually went out and risked everything for their Lord, but Narcissa was the one who would be left behind with a broken family if something happened to him, and she refused to be a pawn in her own life. Being a pawn was too much like being a victim, and Narcissa had never let anyone, not even her father, take away her autonomic spirit. Besides, Narcissa wasn't sure she'd recognize herself if she wasn't as stubborn and demanding as she'd always been. She'd never shied away from her fears, really, even if they reduced her to hysterics or tears. Just because she wasn't a warrior didn't mean she was a coward, and Lucius knew her well enough to know all of those things. He ought to have known she wouldn't let him just kiss her goodnight and go to sleep. He knew her intimately. They were not one of those couples that wore companionship like a tiara only to sequester it to its velvet box in the privacy of home. Therefore he wasn't suprised that she refused his attempts at dismissal, genial as they were through the strain of the night. But Lucius was tired--more than physically, but mentally. He had known Evan of course, but they were only family in the sense that nearly all wizards of acceptable blood were. He had liked the boy enough, though not counted him amongst his closest friends. But it was not the specifics. It was what this all represented--chaos, a reversal of the proper order of things. Rabble were not meant to be assassinating Blacks and Rosiers just because of who they were; even if Evan's circumstances had been more where he had been. Lucius stroked Narcissa's cheek, staring across the darkened bed and sighed. "I'm uninjured, Narcissa. It's nearly three-thirty. We can discuss it in the morning." "You know how I get, Luc. I won't sleep if you don't tell me now," Narcissa said sounding both annoyed and slightly pleading at once as she put a hand meaningfully on her stomach. She had absolutely no problem using the fact that she was pregnant to get what she wanted, but in the case she wasn't just being manipulative. Her health was more important than ever, certainly, but she wasn't just using that as a vague threat. She really wouldn't sleep if he didn't tell her. She would lay awake and worry all night and by the time the morning came, she'd have a hundred worst case scenarios stretching her imagination to breaking point. It seemed like more of her family than not did what Lucius did, and if he was called out on an emergency, it could've been in regards to any number of her loved ones. She closed her eyes as she had a moment of panic over the fact that he'd only said he wasn't hurt and that certainly didn't mean no one else was. She felt a flare of frustration and she grew impatient enough to snap, "Lucius, please. I'm glad you're okay, but I need to know, and I need to know now." "I wish that you did not." It was not contemptuous; she was hardly prying worse than usual. But he was not just hiding some burn beneath his shirt or more personal news of failure. He worried for her, he worried about worrying her. When she brought up the baby, he nearly always caved. It was a blindspot in the paragon serpent's view. To be so manipulative yet so easily swayed. The worst part was that she was right. She did need to know--if not now, then far sooner than he would have liked. Lucius reached for his wand with an air of acceptance. He didn't look away from her as he mutter his spell Lumos and flicked the wand to a dim light. He started to push himself up, moving a hand to help steady her. "Sit up with me." Pushing herself into a sitting position with him, Narcissa watched him with an obvious look of concern on her face. She settled next to him, her legs still under the blankets curled against him, one of the wide straps of her silky, lace lined pyjama top sliding off her shoulder, but she ignored it. The expression on her face was one of trepidation as her tired eyes widened. Her attention was solely on Lucius as she waited for his news. She couldn't voice her concerns out of fear for making them real, so instead she just put a hand on his arm, fingers curling into the material as she all but held her breath. Now it seemed truly serious, because he was putting it off the way he was. What had previously been baseless now seemed much, much more concrete. Something terrible really had happened. Lucius slid an arm around her shoulders. It was not so much a comforting gesture as one that Lucius quickly knew would be supporting. There were only so many words that could delay the inevitable. Though Lucius knew nearly all of them, for once, he kindly, cruelly, spoke directly. "Narcissa. Evan is dead." Though she heard the words, there was a moment where they faded to white noise. She stared at Lucius, forgetting to breathe, until she sucked in a great breath and then covered her mouth with her hand. She turned her face into his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut, pretending for as long as she could that she hadn't heard. She just counted her heartbeats and her breaths and then curled against him and shook her head. "No," she said, but it wasn't a wail of despair so much as it was a refusal. He couldn't be dead. He was family. "No, he isn't." Lucius watched her for a moment, drawing her into his arms. Though her face was hidden, he could see through the line of her back, and feel the shifting expression. He could see her try to soothe and erase the news. While it was nowhere near as heartbroken as she had been when she learnt of her father's murder, her pain cut through him. This was precisely why he bade her sit up. He didn't speak to contradict her, but in many ways the solid silence and stiffness of posture spoke more than any confirmation might have. His silence did indeed speak volumes, and she shook her head again against him, feeling her long hair tumbled against her largely bare shoulders. It was the little details--the feel of his heartbeat against her cheek, the warmth of his arm around her--that she clung to as the tears hit. She took deep breaths, fighting the tears for a moment as she said, "No he isn't." That was as far as her denial went, though, and she broke down then in earnest, pressing her hand more tightly over her mouth as she began to shake against Lucius. Lucius wasn't sure what to say, there really weren't words for these situations. Explanation was too close to truth, condolence too close to apology. Words empty of their power in this current state. He settled against the pillows and ornately carved headboard of the towering bed and allowed his fingers to play in the blonde hair spilling over her wracking shoulders. Even now, it was too soon to attend to her and it was far too late at night. Lucius stroked the back of her neck, trying to make his presence known but uncertain how. There wasn't much that Lucius could do, though at the very least, his hand in her hair was a reminder that he was still there and he loved her. She sniffled slightly (which she felt was by far the least dignified aspect of crying, though she didn't care in that moment) and lifted her head, tears still wet on her cheeks. Narcissa valued family above all else, and losing another family member after the still recent death of her father was just... it was crushing. Evan was such a wonderful man. She had never been as close with him as she was with Regulus, perhaps, or even as close as she was to Tristan, but she had still loved Evan dearly. "How... what... what happened, Luc?" she asked him, voice beseeching. Lucius, for his part, could not fathom how it was a stronger indictment that Evan be 'killed by a muggleborn' than had he been yet another victim of the violence of Aurors. It could only have served to keep the Rosiers clean so far as he assumed. Lucius thought, were it his story to spin, that he might have left the lad to be killed by aurors, just like the Black Patriarchs. It gave Druella and Narcissa a very strong sentimental lobbying point in the current drive to castrate the DMLE. Nott had hardly seemed in the mood for argument this evening, so Lucius had followed orders. On the other hand, it was probably for the best that Evan not be revealed as a Death Eater--for someone at least. "I was told that he was killed in battle, Narcissa." Lucius purposefully did not drop the word Auror anywhere in the vincinity of his speech. "Patrice did not share the details, but... it did not appear that he suffered." People liked to hear reassurances like that, but truly, it looked as though Evan had been swiftly slain, and not much else. It was unsettling that these sociopaths were now freely slaying noble men. "It will look like a murder, and we must maintain nothing else, you understand." Along with Narcissa's overwhelming grief, there was an anger burning inside of her too. First her father cut down by those who claimed to be the protectors of society, and now some worthless rebel had ended the life of a good, worthy man, and for what? Because those idiot vigilantes were fighting for the right to slowly poison society, to wash away centuries of history and lineage in the name of an equality that was not earned? Because her father and Evan had stood up for tradition? For family? For blood? She hated the war in that moment. She hated that the fighting was necessary at all, hated that there was any cause, worthy or not, that was destroying her family so. Evan was so young. He was a child. She couldn't imagine he was dead. It didn't seem possible. She'd just been reading his thoughts on the word 'bogus' in his journal a few days ago, and now he was supposedly deceased. It made her chest ache and she let out a sob, squeezing her eyes shut, managing somehow to control her breathing enough to keep from gasping. The worst part of it all was, all of those in the Dark Lord's service faced vigilantes often enough that it had likely been routine. Had Lucius been called instead of Evan, it very well could have been him. It could be any of them. "Let me guess," she said, the pain and bitterness thick in her voice. "It was noble. He died for a reason. He was twenty years old, but his death had meaning." Lucius was a firm supporter of Lord Voldemort's goal. Especially now that it mattered more for him. He still was not certain they were having a son, but if Lucius's child was going to enter the world, Lucius did not want it to be this world. But he had no pretenses that every act was faultless, justifiable. Sometimes one just had to get one's hands, or italian leather gloves a little dirty to keep society pure. "Not at all. He was murdered. But we can do what we must to see that his murderer, and their cause suffer for it." "It isn't fair," Narcissa said softly, and though she was grieving for the loss of her young cousin, she had other worries too. "Promise me it will never be you. Promise me, Lucius." It was a ridiculous demand, but she wanted for him to assure her he wouldn't go out one day to serve and not come home. Even if he couldn't mean it, she just wanted to hear him say it. It wouldn't be an honest assurance, but it might ease her worries somewhat. Lies could be comforting, and sometimes Narcissa wished she was stupid enough to be able to believe them. He couldn't promise that. They both knew that, but Lucius found himself nodding and drawing his wife against him. "It will never be me, darling. You have my word," He watched his step, more than many. He had just as vested an interest in returning home. Perhaps he didn't think what happened to Evan could happen to him--though how wasn't clear. There was still the question of an heir, and a selfish urge that Lucius had no desire to die. It was late; Lucius regretted that he had fallen into the habit of overthinking. But words had a vacant power of erasure, of reassurance, so he settled his chin atop her head. "It won't be me, darling." Narcissa settled against him, eyes still red and wet, and as she closed them, tears clung to her eyelashes daintily. Many people did not cry prettily, but Narcissa was certainly not one of them. Her cheeks had flushed with emotion, but she did not get that puffy, pinched look some developed. She looked elegantly sad, her young face made all the more innocent seeming by the delicate way it displayed her pain, even when she felt raw and ragged with it as she did now. "Thank you," she said softly, and then reached to pull the blanket up over her slightly chilled shoulder. She may not sleep tonight after all, but she could tell Lucius was bone tired, and she would not keep him up. If she, sensitive as she was, was fated to lay awake and cry, she would at least do so quietly, and without disturbing her husband. Before she could really let him unwind, however, something occurred to her and her eyes opened once again. Shifting to look at him, her expression was accusing. "You were going to let me go back to sleep without telling me my own cousin had died?" She thought he understood her by now, understood that she did not wish to be kept in the dark, that though she may be easily upset, she did not want to be sheltered or lied to. Had he really been willing to assure her all was fine and let her sleep without sharing something with her that he had to know she would desire to know immediately? What Narcissa required to know and what she actually needed to know were often quite different. There was much about his work that could be withheld from his wife and much that she should know not to demand. Her cousin's death was scarcely in that category. But, she was not wrong. That had been exactly what he had intended to do. A moment's pause stilled Lucius' breath as the accusatory voice questioned him. There was no apology, there was nothing to apologize for when a man sought to protect his family. He had wanted her to be rested before fatiguing her. "I had thought to tell you in the morning." He placed a hand on her stomach with every ounce of manipulation she had earlier used. "You need what rest you can manage." Were Narcissa not feeling quite so distressed by the news of Evan's death, she likely would have allowed her anger at what she deemed his thoughtlessness to simmer and grow. Despite her current despair, she did still narrow her eyes at his admission. Of course, then he put his hand on her and she could not help but exhale, breathing out all affront at his actions and letting it go. He was a good man, and he worried for her. Perhaps she didn't agree with his decision to try and put off sharing the news, but she believed his reasons for doing so were just. Besides that, in the end he had not withheld the information when she had pressed him. She didn't even mind that he was wielding her own pregnancy as an excuse against her anger, just as she had used it against him in the face of his refusal to share with her what had happened. At the very least, their casual manipulation was a reminder of just how well-suited they were for each other. Still, though she had let her anger pass quickly, she still wanted him to know what she thought of such actions. "I sincerely hope you will never have such news to return home with again, but if in the future you do, you must tell me immediately. And if I am sleeping, you must wake me. Please, Lucius," she said, and though she was trying to remain put together and rational, there was a desperation to her words. "There are a great many things I will defer to your judgement on, but I need to be able to trust you will deliver news of my family to me immediately. Promise me." Lucius would have liked to think that she was not truly in a position to make such demands, but she was a force of nature in her own spheres. He let his fingers rub the back of her neck as he considered the request. So long as it didn't contradict his duties, there wasn't anything truly to think about. It was certainly not worth the fight, in any case. "Very well. Should I have to bear so again, I shall wake you." "Thank you," Narcissa said in a breath, relaxing against him, once again settlign down to ready herself for sleep. She swallowed around the sudden formation of a lump in her throat as she pillowed her cheek on his shoulder. Her arm slid around him in a hug as she said again, "Thank you, Lucius. Thank you." |