rp log; bellatrix and rodolphus
Who: Rodolphus & Bellatrix Lestrange When: New Years Eve (so this is srsly backdated, folks) What: The beginning of the end for the little bundle of joy. Where: Their home. Status: Part I; in progress.
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Rodolphus remembered spending New Year's Day intolerably bored with relatives, or less than sober with a bottle of wine. He remembered illicit trysts with his wife between courses of family dinners and he remembered laughter and warmth and richness.
Now, he sat upon a chair, beside a bed, chilled to the bone but for the place where Bellatrix's fingers wrapped haphazardly around his own, seeing nothing but the way red seeped between parted lips, brilliant against the paleness of white white flesh.
New Year's was not meant to be this way.
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"Bellatrix!" Rodolphus's cry against the howling moor winds was mottled with amusement and irritation. These whims of hers could scarcely be borne, yet here he was - bearing them - in the freezing rain at midnight to visit a pair of miserable horses he felt no affection for. His wife was tromping on indomitably, and he couldn't help but feel the faintest smear of admiration for her irrepressible spirit, inconvenient as it was. She had apples in her hands and they shone red against the stormy backdrop, illuminated only by the bright moon and the sharp flashes of lightening overhead. "Wait, damn you!"
She could feel the wind rip at her cloak, unbinding her hair to fly out like a sail as Rodolphus followed somewhere behind her. The mud was deep and, stepping lightly, she was thankful that her delicate horses were inside where their bones and tendons would be saved the strain of an unfortunate slip. They might have been horses but they were, in her estimation, beings of great worth and intuition. And in her condition, she missed them. Terribly. So it was with her apples that she made her way down the path and stopped at the door of the barn to do as he asked. To wait. "You need better boots," she called above the whinge of the torrid air.
"My boots are fine, thank you." Though he grumbled (loudly, over the wind), it was the sort that implied amusement - or as close to amusement as Rodolphus typically emoted, anyway. His weight made crossing the mud difficult, but his strength allowed him to keep up (mostly) with Bellatrix on these wild rampages. Tonight was no different, and he closed the gap between them quickly, a sharp undercurrent of breath the only hint at any weariness. "Shall we?"
One corner of her mouth drew upward as he drew aside and she nodded. At the lightest of touches, the barn door opened with nary a creak. The aisles were well-lit, swept bare and the warm interior smelt of worn leather and hay as the horses on either side of them contentedly chewed the remnants of their dinner. With her wand, she divvied up the large apples and placed slices in the grain bins of each. "We'll give your horse and the grey mare their New Year by hand."
"Such sentiment," came his teasing reply, one hand reaching out to wrap around Bellatrix. Her cloak was soaked, and he held her back long enough to unclasp it and draw it aside; the wool would not have time to dry before their departure, but she could at least dry out whilst within the stable. His cloak followed, and when they'd been hung near the door, he joined his wife by the stall of her mare, a ghost of a smile quirked into the corners of his lips. "Do you think they are grateful?" He eyed the mare, expression one of mixed indifference. The mare eyed him right back.
She expressed her gratitude by a brief squeeze of his wrist and a kiss for the underside of his jaw. Now freed in the shoulders, she gazed at the grey mare who gave her husband such a quizzical expression and she couldn't help but laugh softly. "Give it to her, Rodolphus. See what happens."
His eyebrows curled a bit as he palmed the apple, fingers curling hot around its cold, damp surface. He had no great love of animals - the only exception being the meagre affection he held for his wolfhounds. But he relented - as he always relented to his wife's whims - and stretched out a large arm in offering to the beast. He simply watched, expression as inscrutable as that of the creature to which his wife owed her affections.
"See? You've just got to give her a chance, Rodolphus. They've got hearts and minds, too." As the black muzzle inched toward Rodolphus with quivering lip, she turned to gaze at the inhabitant of the stall on the opposite side of the aisle. Housed therein was to be a black Friesian stallion, Rodolphus's mount of choice, who should have been nickering the moment her hand hit the latch. "Where ..." she managed to say before the apple fell to the floor and she, in spite of a swollen belly, careened toward the door.
Though well aware that the creatures had minds, he had little positive opinion on whether they had 'hearts' in the spiritual sense of the word. Animals lived to eat - and their loyalties could be bought with sustenance. But, no worse than most men, he mused with a cynical grunt, turning to wax philosophical on precisely that point... but Bellatrix was already toward the door - and it took him only a glance in the direction of his horse's empty stall to reckon why.
"Bellatrix!" His sharp growl of warning was sucked dry by a gust of wind that swept through the now open door, and with a curse, Rodolphus barreled after, shoving himself through the stable doors and into the mud after her. "BELLATRIX." But even that powerful bellow could not compete with howl of a furious wind - it cut into him, against him - separating them.
From somewhere behind her she could hear her husband's tone all gravelled warning and worry. She paid it no mind other than a quick look back, her visage lit in the lurid glow of a Lumos charm. The horse was too valuable to be left to weather the storm in the mud with no shelter and no food. It would surely harm itself if she did not act quickly. Any whistles were torn from her lips and she resorted to casting her wand about the paddock, sliding between the gates to search him out.
Rodolphus cursed the mud; he simply couldn't keep up with her as she swept, lighter footed, over the moor. His teeth gnashed at every slip and stumble against the treacherous mud, and his fury was bred of frustration and anger (and worry, and fear). "Get back here!" His voice boomed, only to be torn and hushed by the rain and wind. He couldn't move fast enough over the malleable earth, and he watched as the gap widened between them, eyes wide. It was half tempting to stun her - but he was neither foolish enough nor secure enough - how easy it would be to send her tumbling over and into the rocky underbed. His talent was with spells that damaged and discovered, and he had felt no dissatisfaction with that shortcoming until this very moment.
One bolt of cloud to cloud lightning revealed the horse at the far end of the paddock with its head hung low as the rain coursed over its broad back. Was it injured? She skidded to a halt, calling its name and straining her eyes to see if its ears would stir. She called again, louder this time, and waved one arm at the stallion whose head jerked into the air. It snorted in relief;
"It's alright, come along." With outstretched hand, she began to walk toward the animal, her steps halting as the mud sucked at her feet. Thunder bellowed from some distance and the horse snorted, frightened. She made soothing noises and soon caught its halter in her firm grasp. Her lips found its soaking nose as she began to turn back toward the barn and Rodolphus.
He hadn't paused for a second as they'd fled the barn, though his thighs ached at the strain of rising again and again against the greedy suction of frozen mud, but now Rodolphus took a moment. Bellatrix was returning, horse in tow, and though he cursed her impetuousness, he sighed with heavy relief before moving forward again, grateful for both Luck and the small respite. He could shake and scold her later, then feel foolish for fretting about so capable a witch.
... it was half a heart-beat later that the storm clouds that had been gathering overhead finally released their fury upon the ground below. With a crash of thunder and a bolt of cloud to ground lightning that struck so close Bellatrix could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, the world was lit up in pale fire. The horse couldn't take it. Overwhelmed by its flight instinct, it defied Bellatrix's grip and rose on its hind legs, thrashing the offending air before coming back down to earth to run as fast as it could.
More shocked than frightened, Bellatrix initially attempted to hold on and soothe the animal though, as it continued to rise, she realised that the situation was long past manageable. Her own escape was hampered by the now blinding sleet and the sticking mud. A sickening crack resounded in her bones as a hoof met her right arm. She fell beneath the force, thinking of nothing but her vulnerable child as she curled away from the flailing hooves. Struck again and again (she knew not where, not even how) until the horse departed, she bore the pain and lay in the mud with the precipitation stinging her blooded face. Her whole body convulsed in paroxysms of fear and pain as she tried to maintain consciousness. What had she done? Oh gods, what had she done?
Rodolphus had raised his voice to yell after her again as lightening struck, as the horse reared, as she reacted, but it sharpened into a scream of fury as she fell. His hands tore down at his boots, ripping buckles and socks free of him with a blind urgency before throwing himself barefoot upon the moor, too dumbed by anger and fear to feel the pain of bloodied feet over rocks and ice.
His heart and lungs and blood and feet pounded together; he moved faster and faster, abandoning coat and jacket - anything that might prevent his movement, until no protection remained but shirt and trousers. He was soaked through as he slid onto the ground at her side, mud seeping up his thighs and into his hands as he hunched over her, shaking with frost and fury. He couldn't call her name. He couldn't breathe.
Broad palms dug through mud to find her back, her thigh, and he pulled her to him, too stupid to think of gentleness and care. His groping hands felt her wand in the mud beside them and he gripped it, stomach twisting briefly before they ripped out of existence and reappeared elsewhere.
The frozen state of vacuity and nothing between leaving the paddock and arriving ... where? in their room served to only compound her precarious hold on consciousness. Her lips made the shape of his name as her eyes fluttered. "I ..." she managed. Her stomach lurched. She knew something was wrong, she knew she needed to take stock of her body ...
Sorry.
Her eyes began to drift closed, she sputtered and threw out her uninjured hand to grasp whatever bit of him was closest. His shoulder. She took a tremulous breath.
There was a relief in her life that made him both giddy and furious, and if Rodolphus had been capable he may have wept. Instead, he forced himself up the stairs, suddenly, viciously aware of the pain that scraped across his feet and up his legs with agonizing intent. His eyes closed and his teeth gritted; he could think of nothing but beds and doctors - to do otherwise would be dangerous. "You little fool," his voice rasped out against teeth and warm air (for which his lungs were not ready), and he gripped her tighter against his chest. The stairs, the hall. He stopped long enough to growl out orders at a terrified houseelf, and then kicked open the door to their bedroom.
The curl of her fingers against his shoulder made her pain all the more unbearable, and he grimaced before laying her out upon the bed, weariness, cold, and pain, pain, pain flooding through every extremity.
"A doctor is coming." His palms went out over ribs, though he did not feel. "Can you breathe?"
Once bereft of the little warmth he could provide her, she felt abandoned in the midst of their large bed and twisted her hands in the covers, soaking them with a mixture of her blood, mud and ice. His hand seemed to float somewhere above her. "Bugger doctors!" she managed, trying to sit up and promptly crumpling into a heap. Take care of yourself, Rodolphus. She ground her teeth deep into her lip. She knew where the pain originated; even in this state she could feel its resonance all throughout her body ... No, little one. Please.
Rodolphus was thinking very little of the child. It would be useless to waste his efforts upon a baby if its mother... he stiffened, a broad palm curling over one shoulder. Thumb to collarbone to hold her steady and he reluctantly, carefully, began to peel her coat and shirt away. "Hold still, woman," he grunted, frustration beginning to mingle with the pain - all a rough wall against the hope he dared to have. She wasn't dead. She seemed too feisty to be dying. "Does this hurt?" Broad fingertips swept across her lower ribs with an oddly expert precision, and he watched her to see if the fussing that commenced was any more scathing than Bellatrix's norm.
She was suddenly and most thoroughly livid with the situation, with what seemed to be broken ribs (though she was too proud to cry out or even wince that much) when the child was dying and Rodolphus was torn and bleeding above her. "Shoot me!" she said through gritted teeth "and don't you touch that horse." Her hands gripped his wrists with what little strength she yet possessed.
This is my fault, she tried to tell him with everything but her words, even as the stomach cramps began to soak her in a chilly sweat. I am letting us down. "Start a fire, Rodolphus, don't catch your death over me."