(no subject)
For dizilla
Title: as a burning and a fever
Characters: Bellatrix (with Sirius and Regulus and vague Blackcest)
Rating: R
A/N: Works as a companion piece to venture on a piece of sleep, but it isn't necessary to read that fic in order to understand this one.
Here: it is winter in the cracked shell of her, in the last mad green dripped from her mouth, in the slack curl of her wrist on stone, against stone, herself stone, grey on grey on grey. Grease smudge of her lips - and lips that are not lips, but hungry mouths, black and opening, opening, their hungry mouths. She sentences herself; she is guilty; she relishes the verdict. They, with animal eyes slack in their faces, blank as stone, blank as fear, listen to the white sea noise of their cells and forget her and forget their glory and his.
(He will come again, she knows. Let him see her here; let him judge her; she has been faithful.)
Syllables stick to her teeth, Cru-ci-o, Cru-ci-o, Cru-ci-o; she wraps her lips around them, holds them, forces them back and down into the heart of her where the hot and green world blooms. A-va-da. A-va-da. The dementors cannot take these words or do not understand their worth (such worth: a mollusk shell echoes the white roar of the sea); she warms herself with them.
The fish belly sky split and rain shivered down on the house; a round noise rolled across the roof, first touch of the storm, and green light touched the carpet and the velvet curtains. The house sunk down in the rain, drowning, the whole family, drowning, and the house a ship slipped into the sea.
Absurd - a fire burned in the grate, a log crackled and split, ash stuck to her pale hands (and to them and to their finger bruises and to their mouths, their open mouths, their hungry mouths like night). White roar of thunder and two red birds fell suddenly down the chimney, a tumble of feathers and ash and quiet (such quiet; the fire split them, but they made no sound). At least, she did not hear them scream (Crucio she whispers and they scream).
She wakes, and her cousin is there, Sirius with his stone eyes that do not blink (and how could she miss those eyes, those grey eyes like his brother’s eyes, those eyes like the sea: the sea, pounding against the shore, the sea beyond her window). She wakes - the queen raising her regal head, a proud tilt of her chin and slant of her eyes, though the movements are foreign, now, stiff - and regards him as he once was: her little cousin, childish with his raised fists and his flower-pot mouth, his filthy, open mouth.
(She watched them, once: curl of pale bodies and rough tumble, like the vulgar flight of bumblebees in the garden, swoop and catch and pin, reeling with the green hot scent of his bedroom, flowers and the froth of wine like sea foam, brother’s blood, Cru-ci-o. Day slipped through the room; green shadows balked at the touch of them; their white bodies were bright with heat - not bright as her white hands wrapped around his throat, but no, that’s later, Dark Mark a smudge of green in the sky. When he shuddered a last breath, she kissed him, swallowed it down, and thought of his brother yet to be broken.)
She whispers the story to him, and Sirius laughs, his mouth torn across his face; he laughs and laughs, and the dementors swarm around them, but he never stops laughing.
Here it is winter in the cracked shell of her, in the last mad green dripped from her mouth. She is: an inward curl of limbs, the last rose touched by frost, fist of petals tight around a green strange heart. She screams; grease smudge of her lips opening and opening, her wide black mouth, opening. Crucio he whispers, and she screams.