Who: Bellatrix and Lily What: Avoiding each other is working very well! Where: The Location Formerly Known As The Duck Enclosure When: Friday late morning Rating: Some risque references to wanking thus far and otherwise pretty tame for something with Bella in it
Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily.
Intrusive thoughts about people were nothing new to Bellatrix. Of course, she was prone to the normal range of them- missing friends and family, or wanting something, and on very rare occasion feeling upset about the state of her interactions with someone. The people that really lodged themselves, though, the ones that inspired thoughts that repeated over and over and popped up whether she wanted them there or not were inevitably the ones she loathed. Anger had a way of leading to obsession with her and the more she hated someone (or at least the more she wanted to hurt them), the more often unbidden red tinged daydreams took over her mind.
This was entirely different.
The whole thing started Monday. It had started Monday, or maybe she’d just noticed it Monday, and the daydreaming and idle thoughts and impulsive glances at meals had only gotten worse since then. Disconcerted, to say the least, Bella initially kept as far away from her as she could. It was one thing to maintain a sort of friendship with Lily in this not-real bubble of a place, where the consequences were purely social as opposed to contributing to tearing the very fabric of society apart. It was another thing entirely to be- to be-
There was just something wrong with daydreaming about kissing a mudblood. A female mudblood. A female mudblood who was married to someone foul- nevermind Bella’s own betrothal. But her feelings for Rodolphus paled in comparison to what this was becoming in her head against her efforts and better judgement; it had always been I want with him. With Lily, the refrain was now I need, and whatever village nonsense that had caused this had torn at her for days. Processing it was too difficult, because thinking about it at all had been more than enough to churn up images of long red hair and enthralling green eyes and pale skin and oh Merlin her lips and why was this happening to her?
So she turned to distraction, to try to rein it in. Painting, trying to train the ducks to respond to their names, archery practice in her room (which didn’t help the state of her walls), seeing how far she could get into a ribald story before Cissy came out with a scandalised ‘Bella!’. Nothing worked for more than a few minutes before the thoughts came back, flushing her cheeks in embarrassment as she tried desperately to maintain composure in both private and public.
Today was even worse; Bellatrix had dreamed about her, waking up sweaty and achy between her legs and pressing her face into her pillow. Things only got worse from there, and her efforts to stop thinking about Lily included hours clearing snow to start to forge a proper path back out to the forest, and turning a few fallen trees into rough hewn posts. These, she brought with her to the site of the ducks’ (their ducks’) home. More hours, clearing the snow, baking the ground dry again, marking out locations for the posts.
None of that really worked either, but at least as she slashed her wand through the air and drove the posts into the ground she felt like she was accomplishing something more than indulging lurid fantasies.
It had started the way it had with James: the strange wrongness of noticing, glancing where she shouldn't, searching out details to admire. Her brain, all the while, reminding her how jarringly wrong it was. With him because she was supposed to hate him. With her because she was -- because -- Bellatrix. All that came with that name, all the tiresome fights that had left her wrung out and directionless, feeling as if she was letting people down or doing something wrong by simply extending a hand of friendship. Maybe she was naive. Maybe she was stupid. Maybe this was nothing to do with any of that -- was something else entirely.
It had started innocuously. Monday night, a feature in a dream. Those black coils, the upward curve of her lips -- the wildness of her. She had beckoned her somewhere, Lily had followed willingly, curiously, had woken before they reached their destination.
Still, she had purposefully avoided her at mealtimes the next day.
The innocence had slipped away as it had progressed. She had tried to think of her husband, as fraught as things were between them, replayed the memory of their wedding in their head, seeing Harry in his arms, that very first kiss by the lake. And it had worked, for a while, living in those halcyon days for as long as her concentration could keep up. But eventually it faltered, other thoughts seeping through the cracks, those grey eyes quickly becoming impossible to deny.
When sentimentality had proved ineffective she had tried to remember the physicality of it; his hands on her hips, his lips on hers, kisses trailed down her stomach and --
Lily's fingers slipped past the waistband of her knickers. With her lip caught between her teeth she imagined him, that look she could elicit if she moaned the right way, her fingers tangling in that messy dark hair of his, his mouth -- right there, yes, just there. But as she inched closer the fantasy shifted. She wasn't picturing his dark hair any more, his mouth, any of him. Her nails dug into the fabric of the pillow above her head, her forehead found the crook of her elbow, Bella, Bella, Bella thrummed a frantic rhythm in her head as she let herself come completely undone.
"You're bloody married," she had hissed at herself later, barely able to meet her own gaze in the mirror. You're bloody married she had thought again as her gaze had bore into the other woman at dinner the night before. And then it was morning again, and the need to fix this whatever the hell it was, felt unbelievably urgent.
It hadn't taken long to find her. Even that fact made her feel guilty. How had it gotten to this point? How had she let it get to this point?
"Hi," she said abruptly, twisting her wedding ring around her finger in sharp, anxious circles.
Lost in thought, Bella’s concentration wrenched away from her spellwork as Lily’s small word shattered the relative silence, the wooden post which had been hovering in mid-air seconds ago falling heavily to the ground as she turned on her heel. And abruptly she knew how right she’d been in trying to avoid Lily, as her skin went boiling hot and freezing cold all at once with every nerve at attention just at the sight of her.
(As the feeling spilled out down her limbs, made them feel heavy, made her feel eerily calm for how tense she was, she reconsidered and wondered if avoidance had really, truly been the right course of action.)
That initial moment of dumb staring, eyes crawling over Lily as her wand arm dangled uselessly at her side, felt like it stretched on for minutes. Rather, it was a few seconds before Bella recovered enough of her faculties to stick her wand and hand in her pocket and tuck her hair back behind her ear, leaving her fingers on her neck to rub back and forth over her nape.
“Hello,” she replied, unable to pull her gaze away from Lily’s face now that it was right in front of her but grateful that her voice sounded normal enough. “Are you-” Still fighting with that idiot? Looking for me? Aware of what you’re doing by coming this close?
“-doing alright?”
Are you doing alright? The question near made Lily want to scream. No. Her heart was in her throat. It was impossible to keep her mind off her, to focus, to do anything any more. Whatever this was, whatever it had rapidly become -- it was torturous. Pining. Chest-aching, lip-biting, pining. No, she most certainly wasn't doing alright.
"I don't think we should see each other any more," she blurted, forcing the words past her lips without answering her question. Had she paused for pleasantries she might not have been able to muster it, might have collapsed into friendly conversation -- or worse, said all of the terrible things she actually wanted to say.
How had this suddenly become so difficult? Resisting her felt like a fucking endurance test.
Tears pricked Lily's eyes. She twisted her wedding band again, taking her engagement ring with it, the stone pressing hard into the skin of her middle finger. She loved him. She had loved him. If she closed her eyes and scrunched her face up and tried her hardest to picture him, maybe she could feel that again, for a fleeting second, maybe she could stop all this before it got any worse.
But despite having said her bit, her feet weren't leading her away -- she was rooted there, leaning forward a little, her weight on the balls of her feet. Unable to leave until she heard Bellatrix confirm it to her. Or until she disagreed.
So much for calm; she’d expected this, Bellatrix had been waiting for it ever since their first cautious tea and after every fraught interaction and reaction of those around them. But to hear it now tore at her chest and hurt in a way she hadn’t hurt before. It was worse than the feeling of the knife into her cursed wounds, worse than an angry cruciatus. It made her limbs feel like jelly and her heart try to pound its way into eternity, and all she could think, as she lurched forwards, was that she needed to change Lily’s mind more than she needed anything else in the world.
That, and fuck James Potter.
“Why?” Nevermind that she’d been avoiding Lily for days; her voice broke over the question, managing to warble between two octaves on a one syllable word. She took a deep breath, tugged at a stray curl that had already escaped its confines in a futile attempt to ground herself again. “I haven’t- I’ve been trying so hard-”
What was she even trying to say? The words died in her mouth as she couldn’t fabricate the end of the sentence in her her head, and she felt the familiar sting in the bridge of her nose that heralded the worst sign of weakness, tears. What would The Art of War have to say about this?
Fuck The Art of War, too. Think. Lily’s eyes were closed; she wasn’t leaving. She was waiting, but if there wasn’t room for Bella to say anything or try anything she would have left, she’d left before. So Bella took another step forward, slowly, cautiously. “Lily. Look at me,” she said, not entirely sure if it was a command or a plea or both. Another step. “Tell me why. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Lily swallowed hard at the sound of her name on Bellatrix's lips. Like she was hearing it for the first time. Like nobody else had said it right until that moment.
Lily Potter. In the weeks after they married she had whispered that to herself like a poorly kept secret; it was so old fashioned for her to like being his, but then he was hers too. Now it felt like a piece of old clothing, once loved, drenched in nostalgia, but just not fitting right any more as much as she might want it to. All she wanted to be now was Lily, the way Bellatrix said it, the exact cadence of her voice.
With that realisation it all came crashing down -- all that resolve, that steely determination she prided herself on, war hero, cherished wife, loving mother. Hollow epithets. Heroes and wives and mothers didn't sink to this kind of desperation, didn't want to surrender themselves to the pull of it.
Her eyes flicked open, meeting grey. And with a shaky exhale she realised how monumentally fucked she was.
"Because I'm losing my mind. Because I can't stop wanting you."
Oh. Oh. All of a sudden there wasn’t enough air in the world, as small as it was, to fill Bella’s lungs. The only thing she could do was stand there with her lips parted while she tried to breathe properly and stem the pleasant dizziness threatening to topple her to the ground. As her mind helpfully replayed I can’t stop wanting you over and over, flashing images of taking Lily somewhere and lying her down in the grass (there was no grass, there was only snow) and testing with her lips to find the pulse in her neck and…
Turn around and go home, came that unhelpful voice in the back of her head (or perhaps it was the helpful one? Bellatrix couldn’t tell right now). A frown darkened her features and she glanced down as the voice continued with, it’s not too late. Remember your blood. Remember your family. Don’t be like Andromeda. Except- this wasn’t really, was it? This wouldn’t be, if she gave in. This wasn’t the real world, she’d said it herself so many times. Nothing she did here had any bearing on that. And she’d sacrificed so much here, put up with so much. Fought herself so often against the impulses that helped lead her to a future of being manipulated and imprisoned and pushed to sacrifice her entire life in the name of nothing at all except speeding along the downfall of that blood and that family she was meant to remember.
Didn’t she deserve something that felt good, for once?
She did. And Lily wanted it too, although she had to be cured of the notion that not seeing each other was the solution here.
Full of purpose now, Bellatrix looked back up with a decidedly calmer expression and sought out Lily’s hypnotic eyes. She took a few steps closer, each stride drawn out like she was approaching a skittish cat. “Those aren’t good reasons not to see each other,” she insisted, shaking her head slowly. “That doesn’t work, does it? It wasn’t working for me. I don’t think it was working for you, either.”