Yvon Leffoy (yvon) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-05 11:54:00 |
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Current mood: | pensive |
Owl from Yvon Malfoy to Arianwen Rosier, dated 15 September 1942...
Strongly warded, with blood, and sealed with his seal; illegible to anyone not at least one-half Malfoy even after the normal wards are removed; instructions for making a matrix-lock are enclosed. In reply to her owl:
Ari ma chère,
You’re right; you are being a bitch, and I’m proud of you for it. You never whine; you insist on your due, and I love that in you. I’m sorry things are so bloody difficult for you right now, and I apologise for having made you think I would make things worse. I know, what was I thinking? It was four in the morning, and Alessio was in pain; so I was an ass. And that’s a reason, not an excuse. He’s better now; he has his leg again. We’re going to be married as soon as Amadeo and I can arrange it. I’m sitting here in my office while Yang examines him and he tells Wilkes what’s going on with us (I don’t want to be there for that) and failing to find my notes on Lovegood, so here I am, writing you, because I owe you an apology.
I’ve warded this letter well enough to be kept, so long as you keep it in a matrix-locked box. Alessio may read it before it is posted, because we cannot keep any secrets from him, since you and I have been lovers, though not in the usual way—but I will not share your secrets, and he will not ask me to. No-one else can read it who doesn’t share our Malfoy blood, but your mother could and your cousin Liane could, if you left this where they could find it—so don’t. (You don’t know Liane, but you will very soon—she’s my niece, by a bastard brother who tried to kill me. I do mean bastard in both senses of the word, and I am trying not to blame her for the failures of her parents, as I should not like to be blamed for mine. I didn’t know that she or her father existed ‘til yesterday, but he still tried to kill me!) In case you don’t know how to make a matrix-lock, I’ve enclosed the instructions. You’ll have to sacrifice one of your points for it, but I know you’ve got spares; everyone does on our floor, we go through them like children do sweets.
I don’t really know what you’re going through with the patient you mentioned, because I’ve never had your experience, so I have to speak from my general knowledge here. I was fairly sure that we’d managed to remove all your sexual triggers, but there are other kinds, and there is no predicting what they’ll be. No matter what sort of anchor this is, you need to take time away from the situation to induce your calming trance and pull yourself out of your patient’s experience. No matter what Pomfrey says; if she is any kind of healer at all she will shut up when you say you’ve been triggered or mired, and let you alone.
I hate finding myself in a position to identify with someone I dislike, and so does everyone. But having the same experience does not negate your differences. And if a part of you feels she is stupid, remember that you made different choices and that even if either your problems or hers could have been avoided, the fault lies in the offender, not the victim. It’s hard to work trauma and not feel that patients are stupid sometimes, because they absolutely are, and even some of the ones who have got into trouble that neither a saint nor a genius could have managed to avoid are still stupid.
There are times when compassion is difficult. You must always take care of yourself first, or you won’t be able to do anyone else any good. (I know, coming from me. Alessio would laugh so hard he’d probably herniate something. But do as I say, not as I do, and I’ll learn from you both.)
If Pomfrey isn’t letting you take proper care of yourself then I will have to intervene, regardless of what people say about us. I don’t take very well to people breaking what’s mine, and you are my apprentice, not hers. I suspect this is what she resents, for she’s been told that all the apprentices are her business. At Hogwarts, they are. But at Mungo’s, you’re mine, and I will be sending you readings to do and exercises to complete, once my life settles down a bit. She will adjust her pace to what the others in your seminar can tolerate. And I will not.
As far as Mr Gresham’s concerned…well, I always knew I wasn’t the right man for you, you’re just so brilliant that I had to try—but I did suspect Gresham wasn’t either. It will be harder for you as a dominant woman than it is for me as a man, but I’m willing to help you weed out the ones who don’t know they belong on their knees. Your taste for mundane men may be problematic, as they do tend to have certain prejudices. When you are older you can look for someone who is attracted to older women, because that’s common in submissive men. But you’re fifteen, and even the boys your age haven’t caught up with the girls in maturity, and I can’t see you going for anyone who still thinks spit-wads and farting are funny. Come to think of it, that rules out a good many forty-year-olds.
I want to slip you into the club decked out in black silk satin and pearls, and tell everyone that you’re my apprentice there too, and that we’re looking for someone worthy to kneel to you the way that Alessio does to me. I don’t know how Martius Snape missed that the whip belonged in your hand, but he was an idiot. It’s not very Christian of me, but I hope he suffered when he died and I rather hope he’s in Hell.
I ought to do it, but Priscilla would murder us both when the word got out, and if I died, Alessio would probably explode. I do mean this rather more literally than I care to think about. And I’ve given up clubs; I’m going to be faithful, and I can’t give up women if I’m going to be staring at women stretched out on racks all the time. (Though I do think Alessio would love to be taken and used to the fullest in front of people we trust, sometimes.)
I wish I knew why we are all so bent. Sometimes I wonder if Susie and Király are just as fucked up as we are. Miranda says we’re not fucked up, we would have been like this regardless of how we were treated as children, but I can’t help wondering. There must be some reason why an ordinary love is not enough for me, why I can’t be satisfied with the amount of devotion someone like Corinne is capable of giving. I need more from a partner than any sane man should require; but I have learnt what I must give in return for it, and it’s a pleasure I had never hoped to know, to give it gladly; I won’t let you make the mistakes that I made with Alessio once.
I know you get tired of hearing me sing this refrain, but you really should talk to Miranda. It would be good for you to have some kind of therapeutic relationship with someone who has neither power over you nor any sexual chemistry with you. If I think you are stumbling, I’ll order you to do it. I know you hate that, but even though we are no longer lovers, you are still my responsibility.
We have fractured every professional ethic we have in the way we relate to each other. I don’t regret it; you are too good to let shatter. It was even good sex, once I managed to strip out the muck that bastard left in your mind. But once I realised you were like me, there wasn’t much point in drawing it out; I just feel badly for you about Gresham, because I know how badly I do without someone to be devoted to, and I cannot help but think you need someone like that yourself. I am your friend, but you need other friends. There have to be people that you’ve overlooked in your House, people you’ve avoided because you were trying to blend in with the popular students, but popularity and power are not the same.
Slytherin is home to a lot of silly princesses on both sides of the madonna/whore divide, but there are also serious girls who refuse to choose a side in that game or who play their side as a game while keeping their own counsel. These girls will not be part of a clique, except superficially, for protective coloration, the way you’ve done with Olive and Bella and Colette. Fifth year is when you’ll start to find each other.
(I learned in fifth year that I could have all the silly princesses I wanted, and that often the most aggressively virginal ones wanted most to be fully debauched…but I also learned that I didn’t want them after I’d had them, and this must be much how you feel about some of the girls you are forced to call friends. Satisfaction I only found with Alessio, or sometimes with serious girls; we would have dealt extremely had we been of an age, and Portia would have loved you. Perhaps someday you and she will be friends. I would like to see that happen. You could both use more friends.)
There may also be Gryffindors you like when you get to know them. Slytherin is full of people like us, whether they know it or not. Every Slytherin loves power, though we don’t all want or love the same kind. The people who want to serve an ideal are in Gryffindor, so that’s where you are likeliest to find the friends who can be lovers, too. There are also people who want to serve in Hufflepuff, but Hufflepuffs want to get married and have children, or think they do, and the ones who don’t won’t figure it out for some time. It requires a certain kind of imagination for a man to want such a thing without imagining his woman at the heart of his home. Gryffindor tends more to imagination, and there is not our sort of love without imagination; you are likely to make the Hufflepuffs cry, and Helena would enjoy that—she loves pain, but not responsibility, which is why she is best loved in stronger chains than I have the will to forge. But you won’t enjoy it at all. You would hate to hurt someone you loved, and if you hurt someone you didn’t love, you’d find the necessary dealings with it tiresome. People like you and me do not love weakness or pathos much; we love a strength that bends for us alone.
I am your friend. I have loved you since I met you and I always will. I know that we were not meant to be lovers; and I have given myself completely into the keeping of the only person who can hold my soul with both hands and not let go. I should not have asked you to marry me, but I was not lying when I said that even if you signed the contract I would let you go when you were older. I knew, even then, that you were too much like me ever to be my wife. All I wanted, as I told you then, was to shelter you with a betrothal that your mother would consider advantageous, and I dropped my Fidelius to make that offer. It wasn’t because your blood is better than Corinne’s, or because I wanted a child out of you and not her, no matter what the vicious gossips in the nurses’ dormitories like to say.
I am, still, truly worried about your mother’s intention to have you betrothed before you’re sixteen and can legally refuse, even now that I have promised to wed someone else (and will do it as soon as I can). I will do whatever I can to protect you…but that is no longer possible. I don’t know what we are going to do about that, but I will not have you taken from me or your work. At any rate, you may not be at Hogwarts much longer, and if Maman succeeds in closing the damned place down, you will be with me again. And your mother must surely know that the kinslayer’s curse is the only thing that stayed my hand before.
I will not be less happy than you when she and Mrs Parkinson are in whatever circle of Hell such mothers are condemned to. When you are out of that place I will tell you exactly what happened to me this weekend. And Alessio will probably give you his side of the story, complete with flailing hands and gutter Italian; it will be so colourful, because if we did not laugh I do not know what else we might do. Not to mention Maman.
I do not think Valeria is going to sort Gryffindor when she gets to school; she is one of our own, though I cannot say what she did to make me believe it. She will say terrible things about me, and you will try to be a friend to her anyway. Remember, when she says these things, that you are tired of being talked about, and that if you go about defending me to people, it will do nothing to stop the flapping tongues of people who believe that I chose you because I could have you in my bed as well as my ward. Let her say what she will. I would probably not be alive if she had not done me a very great favour, which I will not put into writing even under all these wards, because she is Nico’s daughter, and I promised him I wouldn’t. So be her friend, because you need friends as much as she does, and for all her arrogance and vitriol she is like us. She has done things she cannot forgive herself, and she has looked true evil in the eye. If she indulges her rage in petty insults and jealousies, or in stupid sex with men she barely knows…it’s no worse than anything either of us has done, is it?
Alessio reminds me, now, that there is a great deal of work to be done. We are moving into the old townhouse in Londinium, as soon as Steren is satisfied that I can survive in a city again, and as soon as Keresek is sure that your Tante Gabrielle’s surprises for us have all been undone. So I must close this now—but I apologise again for ever having let you think I do not want to know what lies within your heart. I just don’t trust the post! In wartime, especially, things have a way of ending up in the hands of those who are most prone to misuse them. I do love you very much. At least as much as I love Corinne. I cannot say that Alessio loves you, yet, as you really did not become a part of our family till just this summer, and he was gone; but I am certain that he will. So…you must let me know whatever you need to, and I will be here for you always. And of course I always pray for you, as I know that you do for me.
Yours in Christ’s love (and my own),
Yvon
PS: We were in Londinium during the siege, if you hear about it; but we are fine, and so is the rest of the family, except for Mercutio—and he will be fine soon enough, you know I will make sure that he does not worsen.