"Inevitable," Bellatrix/Andromeda, PG Title: Inevitable Author:kethlenda Characters/Pairing: Bellatrix/Andromeda Summary: It would be impossible to escape the sister who was my other self. That was why I had to do it. Rating: PG Warning(s): implied incest Originally Written: 2/06 Notes: Beta by Sionn; written for the hp_literotica Valentine's challenge.
"He knew that was what was meant for her, that her family enfold her, that someone of her own mettle, within her own clan, should be her inevitable love." --Anne Rice, Taltos
Bella always said, "You can't run away from me." I meant to prove her wrong.
We were too alike, she and I: stubborn, passionate, ready to die on every hill. It was her face I saw in the mirror, staring back where my own should have been. It was her face, shadowed and hair-veiled, that descended to my own every night. It would be impossible to escape the sister who was my other self. That was why I had to do it.
She sent me letters, even after my marriage: I burned them unread, watching the wax of the Black seal run to blood and the parchment give itself up to the devouring flames.
Then came the package. I opened it at arm's length on the front steps, unwilling to bring it inside my house until I knew what it was; unwilling even to cast Incendio until I knew it wouldn't explode.
A slim silver blade tumbled out of the folded parchment and clinked on the stone. A knife? I picked it up, turned it over in my hand. Not a knife; a letter opener, stiletto-tiny and engraved with the Black crest.
The note was short. Sister dear: You seem to be having trouble opening my letters. I thought this might help. P.S. It can double as a knife, too, if you should feel like killing anyone.
I clenched the letter opener and my teeth. Bella always had nerve.
I burned the note. The letter opener I buried at the bottom of a drawer; some shred of sentimentality kept me from tossing it in the bin. It was the only thing I had to remind me of her; I'd taken no token of my old life when I ran away to the new. I wanted something of hers. I told myself it was only to remind myself of the sin I must shun, the darkness I must avoid.
She is gone now, my sister: it was Dora who took her down in the end; her own blood was her Achilles' heel, though she never would have acknowledged it.
Some women creep out by night to meet a lover; I rendezvous with a memory, leaving my husband sleeping peacefully in our bed while I slide the cold silver of the blade over my skin. In the heatless light from the street outside, I gaze into its surface.
My face in the mirror is no longer hers. Mine is rounded with comfort and marked with the lines of a thousand smiles, and hers--hers--
Her face is in the blade now, her beauty narrowed to the gaunt face that grimaced from her Wanted posters. Narrowed to the world she knew at the last, nothing left but rage and hatred and cruelty.
I never saw her again after I left at eighteen, not in the flesh. Bella was wrong. I avoided her. I ran from her and she never caught me, not in all her life.