"Fata Morgana," Bellatrix/Sirius, R Title: Fata Morgana Author:kethlenda Characters/Pairing: Bellatrix/Sirius Summary: She tells him there will never be anyone who will understand him like she does. He knows she speaks the truth, and hates it. Rating: R Warning(s): Incest Originally Written: 12/05 Notes: This was written to thank starrysummer for her beta help on a fic for sionnain. This one was betaed in turn by sionnain, which means I'm caught in an infinite fic-gratitude loop. Or something. ;)
The first time she comes to him, he is sleeping. It is her touch that rouses him, though he does not know at first that it is she. He only feels the sensation of rising from sleep—it’s rather like surfacing from underwater—and as the pleasure wakes him he is sure he is only moving from one dream to another. A dream, the hand that strokes him, the lips that drink of his own, a dream, nothing but a dream.
But he opens his eyes and she’s there, so very there, heavy-lidded eyes and the scent of poppies and dragon’s blood, hair falling around him in a black curtain and he moans and pulls her down to him. She rides him like a nightmare, a succubus, and he closes his eyes again and surrenders to her.
Some nights she cradles his head in her lap and tells him fairy tales. King Arthur, and how he wed Guinevere for her dowry but took his sister Morgana for his true bride, the mother of his heir, the twin of his soul.
And does he not know Sirius is a twin star?
He likes it better when she doesn’t talk. When she speaks, her words drip with destiny, ring like fate. She says they are the greatest witch and wizard of their time. He says they are but the maddest, and proof positive there are already enough tangled limbs on the Black family tree. She tells him the two of them can rule the world, hold fire in their joined hands, reign like the Pharaohs of old, and did they not wed their flesh and blood, too?
She says the Blacks are a race unto themselves. She tells him there will never be anyone who will understand him like she does. He knows she speaks the truth, and hates it.
Some nights he speaks, reasons pouring from his lips instead of kisses. Madness in the blood. What would a child of theirs be?
“A king among men,” she whispers. “Or a queen.”
Every night he tells himself he will turn her away this time. She crawls into his bed, and how she eludes his locks he does not know. She presses her body against his, and he lets her. This is innocent, of course, completely innocent; may a cousin not embrace her kin?
Her hands undo the buttons of his nightshirt, baring his skin to her with only the stars to witness. Her lips taste his throat as her hands slide down his chest, and he does not stop her. Innocent, and maybe if he repeats the word to himself over and over like a prayer, maybe this time she will kiss his cheek chastely and leave, and that would be the worst of all but it would be for the best.
And by the time he can no longer deny that it’s happening again, he is hard and aching and desperate to be inside her.
In the mornings he wakes alone. She is calm and composed with the family at the breakfast table, polite and charming, and utterly remote. Nothing in her face or her demeanor hints at their secret. It makes him wonder whether their trysts are nothing but phantasms that bleed into his waking mind.
Yet she peppers her meaningless pleasantries with words he remembers, whispered or screamed, from their endless tumbling nights. How innocuous they sound by daylight, yes, Auntie, it has been quite hot of late.
The nights he pushes her away, his conscience is cold comfort. She tells him he is bound by some narrow Muggle notion of morality, that such rules were never meant to apply to such as she and he. Then she leaves, and he is alone with his unslaked need and the surety that she will come again and give him again the choice between toxic bliss and bloodless righteousness.
She sells her soul to the Dark Lord in the end, and comes to him one last time, eyes blazing with borrowed fire. She tells him she has found her destiny. He tells her she has made a slave of herself. She asks him to join her. He would gladly join her, the true Bella (not that he will ever admit this to her), but he has no intention of signing himself away to her new master. It was always she, only she, that he wanted. Not a cause or a crown or a line in the history books.
It is only a few years later, though it feels like a thousand, that he hears her voice echoing from the stone walls of Azkaban. A hallucination, of course. He often hears her when the dementors come to call.
Yes, there they are now, the silent sentinels who haunt this place, sweeping by in hooded robes. Three of them.
No, two of them, leading a third figure that is similarly swathed, but not tall enough, no, and those are human feet that pad upon the floor.
The figure shakes its head to doff the hood. It is she. She meets his glance and smiles a twisted smile.
It seems he cannot escape her, not in the wide world, not on this tiny windswept island. She closes her eyes. It makes him think of curtains falling, of veils.