MAUGRIM (maugrim) wrote in raveled, @ 2016-12-27 16:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! decade: 1990s, ! log, rodolphus lestrange |
WHO: Rodolphus
WHAT: thanks for the insp dro
WHEN: 90s
WHERE: London
WARNINGS: possible mild body horror trigger
Rodolphus stands before a floor length mirror in a room that is still his by rights if not by law. The last room. The remnants of the Gallery. An elf has laid out the trappings of his old life around him. In offering, he supposes grimly, to a resurrected master it hardly recognizes. These vestiges feel more like debris—from a life proceeding obliviously along, violently interrupted. "The dogs can travel through the mirrors. And come out in the hall." Once a tuft of hair might have been caught on the frame. But nothing subtle remains in a room scrubbed within an inch of its life. With little to do after the dogs passed, the pair of elves tidied and dusted and painted til they were half mad with boredom. A room needs people, and this one is a waiting vacuum—no more a room now than before he stepped into it. He explores the length of a straight razor with pale, gnarled fingers. How many times in Azkaban had he wished for a razor; not to clean his matted jaw but to open himself up and christen the raw stone with purest blood. To bless his crucible. He considers his half-dressed reflection. Maybe I am the debris. Every speck of comfort and luxurious living has been scraped away, leaving blades where there had once been angles and hard corded muscle in place of ambiguous thickness. What came before had not been the war: the war had been Azkaban, his suffering the shrapnel. The scars are everywhere. Under his palm, a vein protruding from his belly hides against a broken life line. "There, you see?" He points to a livid organ. A sharp eye peeks through a barricade of lank hair. "It is closer to the surface than most think." Severus' anxiety—not from the corpse, but their proximity—is close to the surface too. Closer than he'd think. After fifteen years alone he can scarcely remember what a human face looks like, and what stares back at him does little to jog his memory. His mouth is a humourless line beneath hard eyes. It reminds him of someone. His hair and beard have become a wild mane, dark in the festering shadow of the tower, tangled and curled. Two of his teeth are broken. A scar splits his eyebrow in half. Rodolphus had never been vain, but he had been proud. There's nothing left to be proud of. Only his sacrifice. Loyalty. Lord. "Ready?" The water is so hot he cries out, voice a rusted, unused saw in an empty room. The tub was once too small for him but now he slides under the water, letting his ruddy knees breach to make room and it's enough. His hands warm. His purple knuckles brighten. Even the scars pink as he soaks in obstinate silence. A placid reflection begins to spark as lights blink behind his eyes. And his chest is bursting. And his limbs begin to twitch and jerk. And under the water he screams. When cleaned and dressed he sits to eat what he'd once considered food. Bloody wine, cloying and thick. The smell of it makes him sick and the color hurts his eyes. The cheese is too pungent, discarded. He turns over a piece of brown toast in his hands and sucks on an ice cube. Azkaban had been unspeakably cold. Indescribable. In the heart of London he is sweltering. Yet there's a cold so deep he doesn't think it will ever be warm again. Seeing them stirs up thoughts, long forgotten. Rodolphus remembers a boy who reminded him of himself. A boy he liked, a boy whose pain peeked through well-kempt cracks like fire through the shutters. There were years when Rodolphus beat out a single question on the freezing stone walls—where were you?—when the only answer was an unyielding ocean beating back. Now on a face as old today as he was then there are no cracks. There is no fire. Only mangled knuckles and an unanswered question. "You were right about him." Agreeing with Bellatrix is so easy now. He can't remember the purpose of arguing, the pleasure in it. The way her brow would crinkle and her lips would purse. "Of course I was." Her brow crinkles, but the memory of a woman who inspired murderous passion is merely a sigh in the echoing dark. A painting of heat and light in a destroyed gallery. Love, Rodolphus remembers obliquely, is obedience. And obedience is easy. |